17/1/2012

Xinh Chao to all you funky monkeys and secret squirrels

Well we are currently in Vietnam which is country number 62 for us and country number 2 for Kitson but instead of pigging out on awesome Vietnamese food which is why we came here, we are currently sitting in the lobby of the the Australian Embassy in Hanoi, since Avril needs to get an emergency new passport.

Now it would be great if we had an awesome travel story like the other girl sitting here who had her passport stolen by row boat pirates who rowed up to her junk in Halong Bay, climbed through her window to steal her passport and then rowed away…

…but NOOOOOOO… we are here because Kitson in a fit of “five fingers of fury baby grip of death rage” ripped the FRIGGIN’ photo page out of Avril’s passport 2 seconds after Avril said “just let her play with the passport…”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggghhhhh! I think I was able to hold back the “I fecken told you so” for all of about 2 seconds… and needless to say Avril has copped ENORMOUS amounts of shit about it ever since…

But anyways, I was hoping to keep this as our usual immature toilet humour travel blog but really, Vietnam has been a pretty basic country to travel through so we haven’t done anything truly adventurous here. So unfortunately the most interesting thing that we can blog about is how we’ve backpacked with a baby. Yep sadly it looks like our intrepid travel blog has now turned into a ‘how to travel with kids travel blog.’

So the main reason for this trip to Vietnam was for the Vietnamese food as we were inspired by a Luke Nyugen an Australian/Vietnamese celebrity chef who kind of looks like me and did an awesome show on the different regional foods in Vietnam. But the second reason was to see if we could still maintain our travel lifestyle with a baby… and to see if Kitson has our travelling superpowers.

…And… Well… all we can say is that backpacking with a baby has certainly been challenging… AND a massively steep learning curve. Continue reading →

10/1/2012

Hey there to all you movers and groovers

Well we left Australia on New Years Eve for a 4 week trip to Vietnam for Kitson’s first backpacking holiday and we’ll finish up in Hong Kong for the Chinese New Year.

But today we are currenty in Hue in central Vietnam and today was actually Kitson’s first birthday.

As you can see from the attached pictures Her royal highness Kitson spent today being crowned The Exultant Empress Kitson the First while in the Imperial City of Hue in Central Vietnam.

Her entourge and humble servants were at her beck and call to do whatever she wanted and feed her chocolate cake. The hotel staff where we are staying also bought Kitson a huge cake but she decided on being a fussy eater so instead her parents went to bed all sugared up.

Anyway the main reason for this email was to send out our late-as-usual Xmas cartoon. It’s been 2 years since our last one but as you can imagine our lives have been dominated by nappies and poo in the last year.

We do apologise for dropping out of social contact over the last 12 months and will definitely endeavour to catch up more in 2012.

We’ll do our formal travel blog soon… although our travel has become decidedly less adventurous since travelling with a baby. But none-the-less in my quest to travel blog from every country in the world, I’ll have to see if there is anything interesting to blog about.

Our contact details are the same for 2012. Avril is still on facebook but can’t seem to access it in Vietnam for some reason. Ced still refuses to use social networking and prefers to remain old-school with email and blogging.

Avril is still selling her glass work on line at 2 sites now

http://dtll.com.au/sellers/avril-bowie

http://www.etsy.com/shop/AvrilBowie?ref=seller_info

www.cedavril.com is still our travel blog site but the wordpress template has buggered up so it may not be working properly.
Otherwise our photos are still on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedavril/sets/

Anyways we’ll blog again soon

Ced, Avril & Kitson

5/10/10

Konichiwa movers and groovers and other furry monsters

Well I’m currently sitting in a zen garden in a rural town called Nagahama on the shores of Lake Biwa-ko somewhere north of Kyoto while Avril is off doing a glass course.

And…man… what a lucky find! We completely stumbled upon this really small village, which in the 80’s, to save the town from financial ruin, the locals decided to band together and start an artisan community to attract tourists… And they were so successful attracting millions every year, that the town is now considered a template for how to regenerate a town.

So now the village is only known for 2 things… a glass artisan community called Kurokabe Square… AND… The Kaiyodo Figure Museum, which is dedicated to 40 years of miniature resin figurines, especially of manga and anime characters made by Kaiyodo the leaders in fine sculpting… which is what I am about to start learning to take my cartooning to the next level!!!

HOLY CRAP!!! It’s like this place was COMPLETELY made for the 2 of us!!!! What are the chances of 2 obscure interests being in the sole attractions in 1 town!!! Avril has completely had multiple glass nerdgasms, and I’ve suffered spontaneous human ejaculation ever since we’ve been here in Japan!

Which leads me to the point… WE FRIGGIN LOVE JAPAN!!! …which I’m sure is no surprise to all you many others who have been here too… since EVERYBODY loves Japan!!!

Japan is actually the 61st country that we have been to and considering that I grew up on Astroboy, G-Force, Star Blazers, Monkey Magic, and comic books… I don’t know why we haven’t been here sooner… It is literally the centre of the geek universe!!!

And they have a thriving glass culture here so Avril is also completely in heaven!

Not only that, but everyday, we come across multiple small inventions, or efficiencies, or ideas or simple modifications in day to day things that make us stop and think “That’s so obvious and simple… why don’t we have that at home?”

We’ve seen a shit load of the world so far and I’d safely say Japan is definitely the COOLEST country on the planet! Somehow they have maintained their childlike fascinations with cutesy animals etc, and yet they really have their sh’it together when it comes to having a very efficiently run country while still maintaining a high appreciation of art and aesthetics.

We were actually trying to work out why Japan is so cool and it just seems like everything is cool over here.

They make eating raw fish cool, they make good manners cool, they make shopping cool, they make social awkwardness and geekiness cool, they make game shows cool, they make dressing up in cosplay cool, they make cute animals cool, they make men spending money on hair fashion and grooming cool, they make school girl uniforms cool, they make taking a dump and having a laser targeted jet stream wash your arse cool, they make fat men wearing nappies in a sumo ring cool, they make adults reading comic books cool, they make kinky sex cool, they make suicide harakiri cool…

…and they have NINJAS…

…oh man… SO cool…

Anyways, just when we thought things couldn’t get any cooler… then we find out that when the cities of Kobe (which was devastated in the 1995 earthquake), and Shizuoka, an industrial town needed to bring tourists back to their town… they didn’t just build artisan communities or do advertising campaigns…

NO… what they did was build life sized BIG friggin ROBOTS in their town plazas!!!!
Continue reading →

30/9/10

Konichiwa dudes and dudettes

Well we are currently in Hiroshima chilling out on our tatami mats… and before we start our travel blog we should mention – for those of you who were very astute and picked this up on our Jellyfish video and pictures… Yes… Avril is PREGNANT!!!

HOLY COW and YIKES!!!

Yep… We’re about 24 weeks and due about 17th January and it’s either a baby girl or a boy with a very small p.enis.

We hadn’t announced it until now as we thought it would be cool to see how many people were going to email us to ask us whether Avril was getting pregnant, or whether she was just getting fat.

In any case, no need to congratulate us just yet… we are still in a state of sheer terror and freaked-outness… and we’re not really into gooshy parenting right now as it all sounds a bit too grown up for us. In fact, Avril was planning to simply get a T-shirt made up saying “It’s not a pregnancy… it’s a tumour.”

So anyways, today we went to the A-Bomb Dome at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, where the remains of a building, which was directly under the atomic bomb still stands. The bomb actually detonated about 600m above the ground so the building, which was directly underneath, was in some ways, a little protected from the direct bomb blast radius… although everyone inside was still vaporised due to the intense heat…

Well, we really should have been lamenting in awe about how freaky it was standing right at ground zero for the most famous nuclear bomb explosion in history… but holy cow…  instead we were both wondering if the ground was still radioactive enough to be able to give our unborn child mutant superpowers!!!! Continue reading →

19/9/2010

Alii to all you friends, family and other smellyfish jellyfish…

So about five years ago we were watching Survivor Palau… which by the way is the only TV series we religiously watch…

…And after one of the challenges, the winners were taken to a natural volcanic lagoon that had risen up millions of years ago from the ocean carrying a heap of jellyfish with it, called Jellyfish Lake.

Well, over the years, with no natural predators, the jellyfish had lost their stingers and multiplied to over 20 million… and obviously one of the WAY COOL things to do is to go swimming in the lake surrounded by a cloud of orange jellyfish just like the contestants of Survivor did.

I remember Avril turned to me and said “Holy Shit!!! We TOTALLY need to do that!!!!” Followed very quickly by me saying “Where the fuck is Palau???!!!!”

So here we are five years later… And HOLY COW we’re currently in FRIGGIN Palau sitting on an exclusive remote beach with no-one else around…

…AND… it’s TWICE as cool since this is ALSO at The North Beach Cottages at the top end of Babeldaob Island where the contestants from Survivor stayed once they were voted off from the game!!! Continue reading →

13/8/10

Sunny And Sensible                                 Cloudy And Stupid

Hey there dudes and dudettes.

Well I’m currently in Queenstown in New Zealand with a mate of mine, Darren… and normally I’d be sending a travel blog out about how awesome a snowboarding trip I’m having since there have been a couple of major snow dumps over the week I’ve been here…

…and i’d probably be bragging that I’ve managed to snowboard my first powder runs with amazingly good weather over here…

…however…

This time I’ll let the attached photos speak for themselves… You Have Been Warned! What has been seen CANNOT be unseen! Proceed to the other photos with caution! Continue reading →