We are a family of 4 from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories Canada. We (Sophie,14 and Neve, 11) will be posting updates every few days about our year-long adventures. We hope our blog inspires others to explore and go on adventures. Read more Yellowknife, Canada
  • Day 171

    Hiking and a bit of climbing

    February 17, 2020 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌙 11 °C

    Yesterday, we took our first day trip outside of Taipei. We had wanted to check out Longdong, a well known climbing spot in Northern Taiwan and the weather promised no rain. We left our Air BnB at 8:00 a.m. to catch a 9:00 a.m. bus. This seemed a bit early to me, but thank goodness we did, as it took a good 45 minutes to find the right bus station. Was it the Taipei main bus station or the bus station we could see across the street. After asking at the Taipei Main Bus station and the information desk, and several google translate cell phone conversations later, we were finally on our way to the correct bus station. While we were able to get one way bus tickets to Longdong, we didn’t quite get a clear answer on how to get back to Taipei, but as David said “I’ve heard there are buses, so we can figure it out later.” Ok...again, open mind and a bit of faith it would all work out. I had actually contemplated staying home today to just read but I didn’t feel right in leaving David to sort out the buses on his own with two kids and then also have to find out where exactly the climbing routes were in Longdong as we hadn’t purchased the Taiwan climbing book. I’m glad I decided to go.

    Longdong is located on the pacific ocean, along quite a rocky shoreline. It was windy, so we were rewarded by fairly significant waves in beautiful turquoise waters. In hindsight, we realized we were dropped off one stop too early, so had a bit of a hike to the climbing crag. We went along the shore which involved some boulder hopping, but it was really pretty as we were right by the ocean and able to see the waves come crashing in. As we weren’t sure if this was the right way to the crags, we stopped to ask some locals, who showed us a less rocky path, however, it did mean back tracking a little bit. Taking the new route involved just a bit of uphill along a well paved path and then just a bit of downhill to get to the climbing crags.

    While David and Sophie got a route set up, Neve and I went a bit further down on fairly flat rocks to take in the views of the ocean and watch the waves. It was quite windy so in the end, David, Sophie and Neve only climbed one route, but that’s ok. We can either come back or do some indoor climbing in Taipei. It was also fairly cold out and while we had warm gear, I think we all got a bit chilled. The other bonus was that we met a Canadian couple from Calgary, so it was fun chatting with them about their travels. All in all, it was a really nice day, spent hiking, climbing a bit and trying to navigate public transportation. In the end, it was quite easy to get back to Taipei, with only one bus ride and then a train ride. It was also really nice to see a bit more of the countryside, which is mountainous and lush.

    P.S. The girls will be blogging again - we just got behind because we've been seeing so many things so figured it was best to get caught up.

    Clarinda
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  • Day 170

    Vintage clothing shopping in Taipei

    February 16, 2020 in Taiwan ⋅ 🌧 20 °C

    What to do when it’s a rainy day in Taipei - vintage clothes shopping, of course. I have to say, I have been overly impressed with the fashion since we started visiting South East Asian and Aisan countries. Everyone just seems to take care and dress really nicely. What better way to try and get some cool second hand/vintage clothing by visiting vintage clothing stores on a rainy Sunday. Finding vintage stores was a bit of a challenge as I soon discovered that the Taiwanese are not into vintage clothing and prefer to buy new clothes. I guess there is a bit of a stigma around buying gently used items of clothing. After reading several travel blogs, I found three vintage clothing stores: Blue Monday, Little Sparrow and Damn it! Vintage.

    I have to say, I was disappointed, but alas, such is the risk in visiting Vintage clothing stores. You aren’t always rewarded with finding that perfect on-of-kind item of clothing. Blue Monday was the best as it actually had women’s clothing, but in my opinion, was a bit pricey. Th other two vintage clothing stores, along with Mitty Vintage which we happened upon down a side street, were all geared towards men’s vintage clothing - lucky David! And when I say vintage, I mean straight out of the 80’s. Spending a rainy afternoon finding each of the stores was still fun, but I am definitely looking forward to a visit to Vintage Vogue in Yellowknife when we get back home.

    Clarinda
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  • Day 165

    Gardens by the Bay - Part III

    February 11, 2020 in Singapore ⋅ 🌧 29 °C

    After a quick dinner, we headed over to Gardens by the Bay, a nature park spanning 101 hectares and containing more than 1, 500,000 plants. We explored the flower dome, the world’s largest greenhouse containing many different varieties of plants as well as animals carved out of driftwood. The greenhouse also had huge trees within its structure, including 1,000 year old olive tree. Next, we explored the cloud forest, an enclosed structure that contains a waterfall built into a mountain of flowers and plants. We then took an elevator up to the top of the plant wall mountain and took a walkway that surrounds the plant mountain back down to the ground floor.

    The last part of visiting Gardens by the Bay included a light show centred around the garden’s man made supertrees. These supertrees collect rain water that is then used to water the plants in Gardens by the Bay and also have solar panels in them. The supertrees light up as orchestral music is played for a fantastic light show lasting 20 minutes. Unfortunately, the rain that started during our hike, had not let up, so we decided to just get soaked again, enjoy the show and head home. What made this day really great is that we got to enjoy the Gardens by the Bay with our friends John and Andrea and their two boys, Alex and Marshall. We haven’t seen John and Andrea in about 13 years as we moved to Yellowknife and they moved to the states, so it was great meeting up in Singapore of all places.

    Clarinda
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  • Day 165

    McRitchie Resevoir Park - Part II

    February 11, 2020 in Singapore ⋅ 🌧 29 °C

    The main reason I wanted to explore McRichtie Park was to walk across a 25 metre suspension bridge. What I didn’t realize is that it was a 1 hour hike to get to said bridge and then another hour to complete the loop. If you’ve been reading our blog post on a regular basis, you will know that my girls are not the keenest hikers, unless it involves the world’s tallest mountain. They were not impressed that I was yet again, making them hike. It was also threatening rain.

    The hike was fairly easy in my opinion and took us through primary forest along boardwalks. Unfortunately, about 20 minutes into our hike, it started to rain. At first, it wasn’t too bad, but after about another 20 minutes, it started to pore! However, by this time, we were well on our way to seeing the suspension bridge, and macaque monkeys, so we persevered. Neve was most unhappy and again, blamed for this excursion. By the time we got to the suspension bridge, we were pretty soaked despite wearing raincoats, but I think it was still a great hike. We got to see macaque monkeys and the suspension bridge took us over the treetops, which was really beautiful. After we finished our hike, we took two buses to get home to get dried off and out of our wet clothes and got ready to head over to the Gardens by the Bay - see Part III.

    Clarinda
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  • Day 165

    Singapore Botanical Gardens - Part I

    February 11, 2020 in Singapore ⋅ 🌧 29 °C

    Today was our second full day in Singapore. We are really loving everything this city has to offer. Each day I continue to be impressed by the the many trees that line the streets, the beautiful parks and the various flowers. In fact, almost 30% of Singapore is covered by greenery, placing it ahead of cities including Sydney, Australia and Vancouver.

    To begin our day, we explored the Singapore Botanical Gardens, including an extensive garden dedicated solely to orchids. It was really relaxing strolling along the tree lined walking paths taking in the many different varieties of flowers. Along the way, we were fortunate enough to also encounter a monitor lizard, many turtles, a white throated king fisher (a type of bird that has a striking turquoise blue, as well as brown and white). After strolling through the botanical gardens and exploring the orchid garden, we took the bus to McRichtie Resevoir Park, Singapore’s oldest resevoir. See Part II.

    Clarinda
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  • Day 163

    The Jewel and Orchids

    February 9, 2020 in Singapore ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

    Once we landed in Singapore, we got off the plane, went through immigration and customs, we arrived in the arrivals part of the airport. In this part of the airport, there is a 10 storey mall. The mall is called the Jewel, which is in the airport, and has the world’s largest indoor waterfall. There are also smaller waterfalls and lots and lots of trees.

    On the upper level, there is a forest that has a trampoline, mirror maze, a hedge maze. We decided to do the canopy walk through the forest that had animals made out of flowers and lichens. There was a big elephant with water coming out of its trunk, an alligator, some parrots and lots of smaller animals. Each night, there is a light show that lights up the waterfall. It is very pretty.

    There was also a section called the fog bowls that were made out of fake grass and every so often, fog would come out of the different bowls. There was also a very pretty garden that had statues of really pretty mice. It’s very cool that an airport has all of this and in my opinion, it’s the best airport we’ve ever been too. You could probably spend a full day at the airport to shop and try out the different restaurants. Il y avait des fleurs qui pousser sur des arbres qui regarder faux il était blanc et jaune ou blanc et violette.

    Neve

    La journée avant hier on est aller à un jardin de Orchidée. C’est est vraiment beau il y avait un section out les orchidées était nommer après des personnes qui ont visiter le jardin. Comme un dès fleurs était nommer après Barack Obama et des autre personne important. J’ai vraiment visiter le jardin parce que les fleurs était beaucoup de différant couloir comme violette, rose,jaune,blanc et bleu. Je pense que les orchidées sont vraiment beau et colorée.
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  • Day 163

    Climbing, friends, and no gum!

    February 9, 2020 in Singapore ⋅ ☁️ 25 °C

    My parents have friends from 20 years ago when they lived in Ottawa. We found out that these friends were doing a three month trip to Singapore at the same time that we would be there. We planned to meet up in the afternoon at a climbing gym.

    In the morning, we went out to find Climb Asia. My mom had found climbing pants online that she really wanted to get for me, but couldn’t order online. It was a lot harder to find the store than we thought it would be. We got off the metro and walked a bit before we got to the street it was on. Google maps was telling us to go in an entrance in a building that didn’t really look like the entrance. Then, we walked around a bit looking for the store and finally asked someone where it was. He pointed to a building and told us to go to the fifth floor. On the fifth floor, it looked like an office building, but we went through a door and got to an open area with lots of garage’ish looking places on the side. At the very end of the area, we finally found Climb Asia and got the climbing pants. Climb Asia had a lot of really cool climbing gear, including fuzzy, animal chalk bags, but they were really expensive.

    After going home for lunch, we took the metro to the climbing gym where we met up with Andrea, Marshall and Alex. Me and Neve climbed with Marshall and Alex while my mom talked to Andrea, who she hadn’t seen in 13 years. They talked a lot!

    We climbed for about an hour and a half and then went to Marshall and Alex’s apartment for dinner. We got to swim in the pool and had pancakes with real maple syrup for dinner. It’s really hard to find maple syrup in this part of the world, and me and Neve haven’t had it since we left Yellowknife. It was so good!

    In Singapore, there are some really crazy laws. Most of them aren’t enforced, but it’s still crazy that they exist. Some of the laws are:

    -No annoying people while they are in the shower - 1,000$ fine
    -If you don’t flush the toilet after you go to the bathroom, you could get fined up to 500$
    -Connecting to someone else’s wifi could get you 3 years in jail
    -You could go to jail for two years for being gay
    -No annoying people with a musical instrument
    -No singing in public, you could get 3 months in jail
    -No flying a kite that interferes with public traffic
    -No feeding pigeons, 500$ fine
    - Jaywalking can get you 3 months in jail

    En Singapore, il y a des lois qui sont très étranges. Par exemple:

    -C’est illégal de déranger quelqu’un qui prends un douche
    -Tu ne peux pas nourrir les pigeons
    -Tu ne peux pas chanter en publique
    -Tu ne peux pas déranger quelqu’un avec un instrument musicale
    -Tu peux aller en prison pour 2 ans pour être homosexuel
    -Tu ne peux pas connecter au wi-fi de quelqu'un d’autre
    -C’est illégal de macher, vendre ou acheter de la gomme

    Sophie
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  • Day 158

    8, 574 stair hike

    February 4, 2020 in Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    After our horrible hike in Sapa, my parents wanted to do another hike in Langkawi to make up for it. My parents really like hiking and my mom was worried that we wouldn’t hike after our Sapa hike. After putting off the hike for 5 days because we were busy going to the beach, we finally did the hike. The hike was through the rainforest, up 4,287 steps and had an elevation of 800 meters. The steps were concrete and brought up the hill by Malays and probably took a really long time to build.

    We saw some really cool trees with huge roots and they were super tall. Some of the trees were twisted into cool shapes too. It was really hot, but it was slightly less hot than usual because the trees were giving us shade. Some of the trees had giant leaves and some had huge tree trunks. All of us holding hands could not put our arms around some of the tree trunks because they were so big; everything in the jungle is way bigger than usual.

    Throughout the day the insects got louder and louder. They were pretty quiet when we started the hike, but by the end of it they were so loud. We saw some lizards on trees and moving around under the leaves. There were leaves and plants growing everywhere. The leaves were on trees and on the pathway. There was one tree that was so big, it had fallen down and broken the railing for the steps we had to climb. It was fun having to climb over the very large tree.

    We were the only people on the hike. There’s a viewpoint at the top of the hike and we saw people who had driven motorcycles up, but no one else hiked up. At the top, we could see little houses and we were so high up. We also saw a really cool bird flying; we think it was a great hornbill.

    After we looked at the view and had some food, we hiked back down. On the way down we heard a drone going through the forest. We heard it going most of the way down.

    After the hike, we drove into town and got gelato. I enjoyed this hike more than the trek in Sapa because it wasn’t as long and we didn’t have to hike in the dark.

    Sophie
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  • Day 156

    Beaches and High Tea

    February 2, 2020 in Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 25 °C

    A few nights ago, Clarinda and I were out for our evening constitutional (since this is a post about high tea, pretty sure I’m not allowed to call it a walk). We noticed an ad for high tea, and told the girls about it. They were pretty excited, as they love high tea: the tea, delicate little finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off, clotted cream, jam, little tiny desserts served on three tiered trays and all things tea party. The highlight of our family tea experience (peak tea) was experienced a few years ago at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. The Empress sets a pretty high bar, so expectations were pretty high, given the fact that both Malaysia and Canada went through the British colonial experience.

    Dear reader, you may be shocked to learn that Malaysia did not deliver on our high tea expectations. Upon arrival we were confused: the multi-tiered trays, the clotted cream and jam, the scones-- all absent. In place we saw fried noodles and fried rice, curries, fish, mashed potatoes drenched in gravy, chicken nuggets, spring rolls, soup, samosas as well as a pasta station served up buffet style. They did have some finger sandwiches -- a generous coating of mayonnaise, with a light dusting of tuna preserved under heat lamps. Deserts consisted of a dry loaf and a variety of jellos straight out of a 1960s issue of Better Housekeeping magazine. Most of the food was mediocre, the highlight was the mashed potatoes, perhaps because I’ve not had them in months (or more likely because my standard of mashed potato excellence is boxed Idahoan potatoes).

    The girls were pretty disappointed in the tea experience, which given expectations, was a reasonable outcome. This served as a gentle reminder to us that expectations shape our perception of experience. If I re-frame the high tea experience as a buffet style meal that cost only about $6 CAD per person, then I would say that the meal was a total success. Perhaps easier for me to reconcile than it is for kids that have now been on the road for five months, and at times, are craving the familiar.

    David

    The beaches here are amazing. The water is warm, some beaches have lots of shade, the sand is soft and the beach is wide and long, the views and sunsets are so pretty. Unfortunately, the one closest to our house has little jellyfish that kind of hurt when they sting you but it's really pretty with the sunset. We found a beach that’s about a 30 minute drive from our place that is such a nice temperature. Today the tide was low so we could walk really far out. It's kind of like our own private beach because there aren't very many people who know about this beach because they just go to popular beaches. When there are people there they aren't too close to us. It’s really nice and refreshing to go swimming because it’s like +35 out.

    Neve
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  • Day 150

    Snorkeling on Coral Island, Malaysia

    January 27, 2020 in Malaysia ⋅ ⛅ 28 °C

    One of the popular things to do in Langkawi that we wanted to do was go snorkelling. We had to get up early because to get to Coral Island it’s a 1 hour bus ride and then an hour long ferry ride. We waited at the place where the bus should have picked us up and finally the bus came, 45 minutes late. We thought maybe it wasn’t coming, so Neve and I had walked 2 minutes home because it was hot out and boring. My dad had to run to get us while my mom waited and made sure that the bus didn’t leave without us. The bus driver almost left without us, so my mom had to stand in the doorway.

    When we got to the boat station, we all followed a man through the station onto a boat. It was really old and made of metal. It was about 1 hour on there before we got to Coral island. We had to get on another smaller boat, because the big one couldn’t get too close to the shore. Then, we got snorkel masks and lifejackets. We didn’t have to use the lifejackets, but if you use them, you can just float on the surface instead of having to stay floating on your own.

    There were lots of colorful fish, some of the fish were rainbow and some were a really pretty blue color. We also really pretty coral, some of which was the color purple and little clown fish swimming in the coral. My mom, sister and I also so these really cool fish that were about 2 feet in length shaped like eels. They blended into the coral so we were lucky to see them. There were no jellyfish in that water, and there was a rope that went all around. They said that outside the rope there were big sharks and other mean fish, so we didn’t go outside it. I was still a bit scared that there could be big sharks inside the rope, but there weren’t any. There were smaller sharks, maybe a foot and a half long. I saw at least 5 of them. They just swam around, they didn’t bite anyone.

    On the beach, the snorkel people were selling fish food and we watched some people feed the fish. It was really cool, the fish would all crowd around and I even got to touch some of the fish. They’re really fast, so it’s easier to touch them if they’re all crowded together. I don’t think we were supposed to touch them, but I think it’s okay as long as we don’t touch the sharks.

    We got to snorkel for 3.5 hours and then we took the ferry and the bus back. I got a huge sunburn on my arms and my legs that really hurts, but other than that it was really fun.

    In the evening, we were watching a movie and we heard sirens outside. We looked, but it was just a few police cars driving around. They were announcing something with speakers, but we don’t speak malaysian so we had no idea what they were saying.
    15 minutes later, we started smelling something like diesel and then some gas stuff started leaking in through the windows of our cabin. We went outside and there were people in gas masks and hazmat suits spraying gas stuff around the houses and the field. They told us that they were fumigating for mosquitoes and that it wasn’t safe for us to be outside during it. We couldn’t go back inside because it was in there too, so we walked into town and got gelato.

    When we went back home, it still smelled weird inside so we turned on the fans and sat outside for a bit. I hope that they don’t do it again while we’re here.

    Sophie
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