Call the Midwife

Beehives, bouffants and sack dresses - a month in the life of the 1950's - awesome.

Fat suits, faking labour and chinese dolls were a little more unexpected.

Though it is Call the Midwife.

Filming Call the Midwife was a fabulous whirlwind into one of the BBC's most successful television series' of the decade and appealingly dominated by a sexy, sassy female cast. So prim and proper on screen in starched uniforms and clicky lace-up heels, it was a little bewildering sitting in hair and makeup with Helen George (who plays Trixie) dressed glamorously with a fox fur stole wrapped around her neck at 6am in the morning.

Sleepless in Siem Reap

Cupcakes, pancakes and fruit shakes. Batman Tuk Tuks, Jianzi, dollar massages. Baby Alligators. Temples.

Welcome to Siem Reap.

Known as the gateway to Angkor Wat, Siem Reap is a big tourist destination. With treelined streets, a river and you know it's coming - French colonial buildings, it's a handsome town filled to the brim with great little cafes and the more schlocky Pub Street for the younger, drink-fuelled backpackers.

12 Nutella Pancakes (and lamb with all the trimmings)

Kampot was a place I kept mistakenly calling Tampon for reasons unbeknownst to me (other than that 5 of the 6 letters are the same). It was described by the little brown owl (Trip Advisor) as a 'pretty French colonial town' on the river in South Cambodia. A 'must see' by Lonely Planet. If we hadn't done so many of these towns everywhere along the Mekong River now, we might have enjoyed it but, as anticipated, there was nothing to do there except sit and stare at brown sludge. Which you can do from the retreat of your own bathroom, if needs be.

Dr Evil and the Killing Fields

All was going relatively well until I got tonsillitis on the 13 hour bus journey between Laos and Cambodia. Simultaneously shivering and sweating on shit-coloured leather seats with a trigger-happy-with-the-horn driver meant that life was not turned onto Comedy Central that day.

Upon arriving in Phnom Penh, the boy's first port of call was to find a non-dodgy chemist, in a city where behind every counter lies a Dr Evil maniacally cracking his fingers. Entering a pharmacy in Cambodia is a little like the Skittles Midas Touch advert* where everything one touches explodes into thousands of colourful sweets - except here it's obviously pills. The good news was that you didn't need a prescription for anything, just simply a response to:

"What you want? Where you from? I get you anything you want!"

The Troll and the powerplates

Like the good cop/bad cop detective routine, Alex and I have a similar dynamic duo to pat. This comes into play when bartering a tuk-tuk ride and so far, the Lao have proved our most formidable opponents. But hell hath no fury like a Scouser scenting a rip-off, and even though I know it’s coming…it’s impossible not to wince, cower or quake in his wake. So, pleasingly, we have managed to mark down most of our rides to around a fifth of the price, though the poor drivers look woefully begone when carting us around.

Without a paddle

"Look, there's a wat!"

"A wat?"

"A wat!"

"A what?"

"A wat!"

This current running joke would suggest that our sense of humour is going down the plughole, the longer we spend away from home. (But please suspend your judgement to the end of this blog as I may have redeemed myself by then).

The Rocky Road Rollercoaster

After six weeks of cetacean stranding in the sun, rubbing well-oiled and rotund bellies with Machiavellian glee whilst our brain cells dehydrated one by one, I woke up by the pool one day and could not remember my name. It was time to go.

(Our time in Phuket was not quite like this, more on this in the next blog).

Armed with a backpack and a rucksack (no points for figuring out who carried what), we flew domestic with Air Asia from Phuket to Chiang Mai, taking all aviation tips learnt during the Christmas break - resisting texting our families "Goodbye forever" or asking for a plate with our nuts.

Too soon? Sorry.

Hanoi - je ne sais quoi

Climbing to the Northern buttes of Vietnam, I have wondered whether weighing Hanoi against Saigon would be of a similar outcome to my reflections of Barcelona and Madrid. However, Alex and I have visited both cities of Spain separately and reached entirely different conclusions.

                                                    

Not at all culture vultures in real life (i.e. when we are not travelling), Alex and I seem to reach a similar conclusion about cities - judging their merits on ambience, authenticity and adventure. So why he thought Madrid was a better spot than Barcelona, I have absolutely no idea.

The right way to Halong Bay

As the sun rises, we are finishing our breakfast on Cat Ba island - omelettes served with a fresh baguette on the side and strong black filtered coffee. Our hotel on the harbour front grants us views of the limestone karsts emerging in the horizon. Fishing boats are just sailing out - round coracles with flat bottoms made of bamboo and the carvel style junk boats which are usually used to ferry around tourists making a short trip of Halong Bay.

Sapa's hills through the eyes of Me

As we fell asleep on the rocking train, Summer quickly moved to Winter, marching past Autumn in a huff. To fall asleep in a tangible, humming humidity and wake up in a blanket of heavy fog and swirling mists by the highest peak in Vietnam, was like setting ourselves as characters in a time-travelling fantastical adventure, and remaining perpetually dazed by the experiences before us.


The town, Sapa itself, is akin to a ski resort but without the snow. Hotels and Northface shops sit cosily on hills set in every direction, though one cannot see further than a few metres ahead to know that this is the case. Restaurants proclaim the promise of a woodburning fire, few actually delivering, and the Hmong tribespeople in their wellies shout 'Where you from' loudly as we pass by. Hot chocolate is the drink of choice, usually served with the sugary condensed tinned milk favoured by Vietnamese over that of the cow.

Hue is Hue?

A three and a half hour journey by train dropped us off in Hue - after a slight reluctance to leave Hoi An, knowing that it would be difficult to compare our experience there as we travelled northwards in Vietnam. The train chugged and hugged the coastline, giving us views of narrow inlets and pockets of beaches, fishermen and their boats and the scaling green hills on the other side.

Riding bicycles in Hoi An

As the plane dipped beneath the clouds for the first time since leaving Ho Chi Minh, all one could see was a narrow brown river sliding between lush green hills, reminiscent of Conrad's description of the Congo River in 'Heart of Darkness':

"Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish...you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once—somewhere—far away—in another existence perhaps."

"Saigon...shit I'm still only in Saigon"

From the air, Saigon was the largest metropolis I had ever seen. As the plane dipped beneath the clouds, all I could see was city block after city block sprawled for miles, no ending beyond what the eye could discern. And a brown snake slithering through the middle of it. The Mekong River. Welcome to Ho Chi Minh City.

One deaf, but slightly more experienced backpacker and a map-reading aficiando Scouser disembarked the plane. 

We took a taxi - with the meter on at our insistence but still managed to get ripped off by our escort adding another zero. I took several backward steps away hastedly as Alex unleashed his scorn-ridden Liverpudlian Scouse fury upon the driver, who scratching his forehead, was really only trying to rip us off by 2 pounds. But Alex was having none of it.

About

Hello this is Genevieve and Alex and we are delighted that you are visiting our blog! We hope you enjoy reading about our travels and all of the mishaps we have along the way.

Both of us 29 years old, an actress and an advertiser, we jumped up sticks for six months to see a little bit of the world - mostly in Asia. From traipsing the hills in Vietnam to surfing in Indonesia, it's been a real eye opener from the very first day.

Our blog is very much delivered from the perspectives of a Yorkshire lass and a Scouser who view life quite differently. Having lived in London now for six years, the culture and work ethic that we have both been engaged in left us feeling a little negative at the prospects for our generation - the employment opportunities, the work/life balance and whether London was a smart place to live in.

It has been a breather - a chance to reflect and to evaluate our circumstances, without the pressure of a fixed date of return. A little wandering in the wilderness, for a while.

We have also been living on a strict budget - £1500 per month, which subtracting flights in and out, works out at around £30 per day for the two of us. Fortunately most countries in South East Asia make this relatively feasible but it has been a challenge and if you would like to hear more about how we achieved this, do get in touch.

Last but not least, whilst our return to the UK is imminent, we will be continuing this blog as we travel to further horizons and you can check out Genevieve's personal blog at www.genevievebarr.blogspot.com.

We hope you enjoy and we hope that you take the opportunity to go and see some of the world for yourself. It will change you in some most unexpected ways.