We received a sad email yesterday. The owner of the guest house we stayed at in the beautiful village of Nongriat is asking for support to help stop the building of a road which will ruin his beautiful, peaceful village.
Nongriat was one of our favourite destinations in our year of travel, and definitely one of the most unique and pristine places we had the privilege to visit. It's also home to the spectacular Living Root Bridges, built and maintained by the people of his community. The construction of a new road into this ecologically fragile community would have devastating effects on the area. Currently it's pretty difficult to get there (which only makes the journey all the more rewarding), and with the new road the increase in tourism numbers will lead to higher levels of pollution and problems with waste management. Byron and his community are fully in support for visitors to come and share their magical home, but they also realise that there is a fine balance in numbers that allow this to be sustainable. At the moment, most visitors stay in one of the only two guest houses in the valley, arrive on foot, and spend time within the community learning and living in the same way they do. If you've never heard of Nongriat of the Living Root Bridges, click here to read a previous post we wrote on the area. And if you've ever visited, every intend to visit, or just want to help keep this bit of the world special for all locals and visitors in the future, please click here to sign the petition to stop the construction of the new road.
0 Comments
We get a lot of questions about our time in this lesser-known country, so we're happy to have published our destination guide for Georgia. We filled this one with more practical information than usual, to help with getting around the spectacular landscapes and unique sightseeing that only a Caucasus country can lay claim to.
And for those stopping past capital Tbilisi, we gave it its own dedicated article too. Happy reading! Australian travel can be quite daunting to Australians themselves. Expensive and time consuming, how many readers have made the journey to Uluru itself, and gazed upon that emblematic monolith, the heart of the country? Probably very few.
Our two weeks spent around the Red Centre of Australia was unforgettably beautiful. Day after day we kept thinking "If this sight was in [exotic overseas country], we would fly there in a heartbeat to see it." And yet it took us many years to visit the quintessential part of our own backyard. Well, Emma had been once before, but we suspect the Little Miss Sunshine-style trip was instigated more by her parents than a wide-eyed five year old. The West MacDonnell National Park, King's Canyon and Uluru are world-class experiences. And if you don't mind some adventurous driving, there's plenty more off the bitumen: Palm Valley was one of our favourites. Go see Australia. It's awesome. Tbilisi is home to some beautifully crumbling streets, weird architecture, and even Stalin's original printing press. Click through to read all about time in this wonderfully atmospheric little capital of Georgia.
In the north of peninsular Malaysia is the small island of Penang. It’s widely known as the food paradise of all of South-East Asia. Now that’s a big claim, and if you haven’t heard of Penang, don’t worry. We didn’t really know much about it either.
Penang, and it’s capital, Georgetown, only really pops up in conversations with people who stare vacantly into the distance, mid-conversation, as they recount a sour/spicy/sweet soup that a mother/aunty/grandma has perfected for years/generations/eons, and it all comes down to the crispiness/tartness/texture of some herb/spice/sauce that is only available from a small village/region/country at certain time of day/season/century. Neither of us have visited a city to simply Eat, and it seems Penang couldn’t be a more perfect destination. So we reached out to two close friends from Malaysia, who in turn passed on recommendations from two local Penangites on the best hawker stalls (that’s street-food to you and I), to visit, and what to eat there. We highly recommend any and all of the places below and If you see us staring vacantly into the distance when we talk about Penang, you’ll now know why... ~ 10 ways to get more Bang for your Bhat ~We were pretty excited to arrive in Thailand. Yes we were looking forward to the white sandy beaches and sunshine, but before that we had to make the most of being in an real city (Bangkok), where we could actually wander through air-conditioned malls and get far too excited at the prospect of buying some new clothes.
We may have gotten a little too excited; and between shopping, cinemas & roof top bars, we managed to spend a considerable chunk of our monthly Thailand budget in about 5 days. When we had enough of the big city, we headed off to find the perfect beach retreat on the island of Ko Pha Ngan, and to recoup some of our spending, tightened our belts so much that we got kicked out of our ‘family run’ guesthouse “for not spending enough” (We actually thought this was pretty cool…yay us!). So, if you’re not visiting this infamous island just to let your hair down and party all night at the Full Moon Party (known as FMP to the cool kids), here’s our guide to relaxing in this beautiful part of the world on a budget: There was an epic amount of footage to squish into this seven and a half minute video, from the monumentus sights in Volgograd and Moscow, to one of the worlds most romantacised train rides, the Trans-Mongolian, to the incredibly vast, beautiful and breathtaking Mongolia.
Check it all out on the newly added 'monthly video'...Chapter 6 on the videos tab, or click here. The weirdest experience we had in Tbilisi was at the mercy of an intimidating man with his well-worn stick; a stick which had beaten its fair share of ideas into people for many decades and now pointed authoritatively at a wilted photograph of a surprisingly handsome man in his early 20’s...
Eastern Turkey turned out to be one of our favourite regions to travel through, with amazing hospitality, jaw-dropping landscapes and perhaps the best breakfast we came across yet. Read all about our adventures - and check out our photos here!
Interested in Istanbul, Cappadocia and Western Turkey? Don't miss our Turkey page with links to those articles too! and a couple of things your Lonely Planet doesn’t tell you...Myanmar was a massive highlight for us on the trip, and much of the reading we were doing before we arrived had us thinking we’d be pretty much as off the beaten track as we were in the North Eastern states of India. Off the beaten track Myanmar is no more, in a few short years, tourism here has exploded, and if you stick to the main sights (which are fantastic and totally worth it), you’ll be there with plenty of others….which is a good reason to get there sooner rather than later.
Even though the tourism industry might be thriving, you are still going to meet some of the most genuine, friendly people, with the biggest smiles you’ve ever seen. Catch someones eye and they will instantly open up into a huge friendly grin. Thailand’s the land is smiles? No way, its Myanmar by a long shot. If you’re on your way there, you’ve probably read a few things in the Lonely Planet such as being loaded up on pristine new US dollars, or the pre-planning needed to get buses around between main destinations. We found Myanmar to be one of the easiest countries we’d travelled through yet (although we were yet to arrive in Thailand), and its pretty obvious the country has come a long way in the tourism market since they opened their doors fully to tourists in 2010. It's not Lonely Planets fault that their latest edition has been superseded so quickly with the big changes in the country, but as we found travel blogs and fellow travellers the most up-to-date source of info, we thought we’d add to the bunch with our tips and a few corrections to the Lonely Planet myths. |
EMMA & PETEWe're just two Aussie's who met in London, married in Prague and travelled overland back to Australia.
CATEGORIES
All
INSTA-EMMAGRAMPETE'S FLICKR |