What has two wheels and an umbrella?
It wasn’t until we saw the third or fourth person riding a scooter with an umbrella (on our first afternoon in Luang Prabang, Laos) that we realized it was “a thing”. It wasn’t raining—the umbrellas were simply shade from the sun. Often if two people were riding, the person in back would hold the umbrella for the person in front. We were completely charmed.
A few days later I went out in the afternoon, with the sun beating down, to take a few shots. I realized then it wasn’t just scooters with umbrellas—people on bicycles rode with umbrellas too.
It’s 32°C: do you wear a sweatshirt hood or carry an umbrella?
Bicycles with matching umbrellas, too cute
Holding an umbrella and purse while scooting
Where not next
Handy map from the BBC on where not to go next:
Source: The losing battle against Somali piracy
Guess we’re not taking a boat from Mumbai to Nairobi…
Sweet sidecar, Pinoy
We spent two nights in Iloilo City during the Dinagyang Festival to be as close to the action as possible, but for our last two days in the Philippines—not to mention our last two days with Jeoffrey and Fatima—they booked side-by-side bungalows at a small coastal resort about an hour west so we could all just chill out.
While there, we visited the Miag-ao Church, one of the Baroque Churches of the Philippines, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Panorama of the Miag-ao Church
The church was nice, but what really caught my eye was the design of the local trikes. The sidecars were fabricated to look just like real cars. And not just any generic “car”—actual Hondas and Toyotas (and every other conceivable make), complete with headlights and an actual badge. I couldn’t help myself from taking “a few” photos. Would be neat to import a few of these stateside.
Me and the DeLorean
Posing with a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 at the WOW Classic Cars Museum in Nelson, New Zealand
Justin Watt as ‘Bullitt’
Sitting in a ’67 Ford Mustang against a San Francisco backdrop at the WOW Classic Cars Museum in Nelson, New Zealand
From Palpatine to Voyager
Meet our “new” Spaceship (and home for the next two weeks):
Spaceship Voyager
Whereas Palpatine was a brand new “Beta”-model Spaceship with only 46,000 kilometers, Voyager is one of their original (and well-traveled) “Alpha”-models—with 314,000 kilometers! We knew what we were getting, but it did take some adjusting to. Surprisingly it’s actually a little more spacious inside, but the size of the fridge does leave something to be desired.
We treated ourselves to a hotel Friday night in Christchurch, and started heading towards Queenstown on Saturday afternoon. We decided to stop at the Top 10 Holiday Park in Fairlie, which outside of having an impressive herb garden and excellent facilities for such a small location, also had unusually fast and free wireless internet.
Driving on the left
We’ve rented something called a “Spaceship“—essentially a Toyota minivan that’s been converted into a bright orange campervan. Our car is now our castle. This is a new approach to car camping for us—actually sleeping in the vehicle, but it’s one that New Zealand is uniquely set up to accommodate. With the numerous “campgrounds” and holiday parks, we have access to toilets and showers, cooking facilities, and even internet for around $16-22 per person per night, pretty much everywhere.
Stephanie posing with Palpatine
We picked up our Spaceship on Friday morning, ominously named “Palpatine“, and planned to head towards Rotorua, a geothermal hotspot and center of Māori culture. For the uninitiated, Māori is the general term used to refer to the many tribes of Polynesian descent that were living in New Zealand before the Europeans arrived. The Māori influence on culture here is omnipresent: in the place names, the art, and the ethnic makeup of a significant segment of the population.
Our first challenge was driving on the left side of the road. Neither of us had ever done that before. And one of the big selling points of the Spaceship was the guarantee of automatic transmission. We figured that driving on the left, roundabouts, and a manual transmission would have been too much to bear.
In the left lane
I thought the hardest part of driving on the left was going to be remembering to stay in the left lane, especially after turns. Actually that’s easy, since once we start in the correct lane, we stay in it. And at intersections, most of the time we just follow the car in front of us. Our brains quickly switched into left-lane mode.
As it turns out, the hardest part is using the turn signal! The brake and gas pedals are in the same configuration, but the wiper control is on the left side of the steering column and the turn signal is on the right (opposite from cars built for the right side of the road—at least for Japanese imports). No matter how hard I try, my muscle memory continually conspires against me, and I end up looking very foolish making a turn with the windshield wiper blades wiping furiously—in broad daylight.
Our container ship accommodations
After three weeks of living itinerantly as we traveled across the country, our 28-day stay on the Cap Cleveland was going to be the longest we’d be “in one place”, so we were anxious to see what the “owner’s cabin” accommodations were like.
The room is about 12 feet wide by 15 feet deep, all carpeted, with a single curtained window at one end (it would be an insult to call it a porthole). The view out is straight ahead, and when we boarded, it was not blocked by containers (though they were still loading the ship). There’s a double-bed in the corner with drawers underneath, a couch, a coffee table, a desk with a nice chair, a small fridge, a TV with a DVD player, a bookshelf, an armoire with drawers, and a bathroom with shower, toilet, sink, and medicine cabinet.
All this and it didn’t feel cramped, which immediately put us at ease. The only downside, so far, is that the AC broke on the ship on its way to Philadelphia. They tried to get a replacement part there, but it was the wrong one. We’re in Savannah as I write this (Friday), and HOPING that they get it fixed.
View from the door
View from the couch (as Stephanie opens the bathroom door)
The window
Update: Eric Rewitzer used my photo above as the basis for a painting entitled Portal.
Looking out the window
The stacks of containers below our window
View of downtown Philadelphia (seen through the crane)
