Buckley's

When Canadians hear the word Buckley’s, the first thing that normally comes to their mind is “that sh!@ is awful” and then it is followed by “but it works!”.  There was a Buckley’s ad campaign years ago that poked fun at their own disgusting formula that tasted like mouldy socks dipped in steaming hot garbage (see video link).  Louisa and I have spent the last month, yes a month, doing Yoga Teacher Training (TTC) in an Ashram in Vietnam with Sivananda Yoga.  Our experience was just like Buckley’s – it was awfully hard, but it worked!

Meditating by the pond

We had zero expectations coming into our first Ashram community.  We knew we would be doing a lot of yoga, meditation and not sleeping very much.  These are all true, however, some of you are probably thinking – how amazing is that, all you do is eat, sleep, yoga and meditate?  It is going to be very hard to describe our experience in words as Ashram life has to be practiced first hand –here are a few stories to give you a better understanding:

• Morning bell – for those of you who have ever lived with Louisa (Gigi, 2na, Toma, Anne, Sawatzky’s, etc), you all know how much she loves mornings.  Every day at 5:30 am our great German mate, Jonas, would ring the wake up bell.  The bell was an ear piercing mini-gong that would make you want to cry that sleep time was over.  It took about 2 weeks to get used to the early rising.  Louisa not only stopped spitting venom at me in the morning, she was the one waking ME up!!

The Scorpion

• Yoga addiction – since we were at the Ashram for the TTC, we actually had to do yoga daily – 4 hours a day to be exact.  Yoga originally was our way to "keep fit and have fun" – however, it turned into an intense experience that drug addicts would compare to pure heroin.  Our new drug of choice is yoga – if we miss one day, we are jonesing for our next fix like Anthony Kiedis did "Under the Bridge".
  

• Yogic diet – the schedule for food at the Ashram is similar to that of jail – 2 meals a day in reward for not shanking fellow inmates.  Brunch was served at 10:00 am (remember, we woke up at 5:30 am), and dinner at 6:00 pm.  However, instead of gruel, we were served delicious, amazing and diversified vegetarian meals that could resemble Jamie Oliver`s, had he been born in Asia.
  

Enjoying the view of the lotus pond!

• Satsang – the term ‘Satsang’ literally means “company of the wise”.  Out of our 16 hour daily schedule, the first 2 hours of the morning and the last 2 hours of the evening were reserved for Satsang – a combination of daily meditation and philosophical lectures or readings on all of life’s problems (stress, illness, anger, etc.).  At first, Louisa and I thought we would not enjoy Satsang as it cut into our sleep time.  However, just like our yoga, we are itching for our daily dose of this medicine as well.  Our “company of the wise” went from 70 fellow students, down to 2, however, Louisa is still practicing Satsang with me and her inspirational speeches would put Dr. Phil out of business.

As you can see, Yoga training and Ashrams aren’t for everyone.  We didn’t know what to expect arriving 30 days ago and we sure don’t know what expect moving forward.  What we do know however, is that this experience has had, and will continue to have, an influential positive impact in our lives.  We will leave you with one yogi quote to sum the Ashram’s secret to life – “health is wealth, peace of mind is happiness, yoga shows the way”.

If you’re interested in hearing more about what we learned, we’re happy to share.

Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

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Chúc Mừng Năm Mới

Our arrival in Vietnam was perfectly timed for Vietnamese Lunar New Year, Tet (see link).  Even after repeatedly receiving advice to avoid Vietnam during Tet, we managed to arrive two days before the country’s biggest annual celebration.  You might be thinking to yourself - everyone loves parties, why would people recommend missing a country-wide party?  One simple answer, NOTHING IS OPEN DURING TET!

Discovering our misjudgement and error in timing, we frantically tried to book flights and hotels to the prime sun spots - such as the beautiful beaches, Nha Trang and Phu Quoc.  However, all flights were booked and all hotels were booked.

Tet is a very special time of year in Vietnam.  In brief, it is the celebration of the Lunar New Year – this year, it was the year of the Dragon.  The locals leave the big cities and go home to relax with family and friends to carry on traditions and bring/attract ‘luck’ for New Year.  With everyone hanging out with their families, all stores, businesses and services are closed.  However, Tet isn’t for one day, it is a week long celebration… therefore, instead of soaking the rays of Nha Trang, we ended up in a “beach” town call Vung Tau for 6 days before our Yoga Teacher Training.

Vung Tau is to Nha Trang, as Edmonton is to Calgary, Albany is to New York or Brisbane is to Sydney.  The City of Champions is not a city at all, Albany is not New York and Brisbane does not know fashion – Vung Tau is NOT a beach town.  Louisa and I found a great hotel on the port side of Vang Tau – great sunsets.  However, on the other side of town, the “beach” side, it was a completely different story.  Only pictures can describe the chaos and craziness this beach experiences during Tet – thousands of Vietnamese, fully clothed, frolicking in the dirtiest oil polluted water reminiscent of the BP oil spill.

Despite our misjudgement and lack of planning, Tet was an amazing experience.  Vung Tau showed us the local experiences that we would not have seen if we were in the touristy areas.  The most amazing thing we saw was locals stopping in the middle of a crazy busy highway at midnight to give money to an elderly homeless man – this wasn’t only for their own luck, but to give wealth and prosperity to him, as it's said that the first thing you do in the New Year is what you will be doing for the next 365 days. We followed suit and ran after him to give him money ourselves as our first deed of the New Year with hope that we will cultivate more generosity towards everyone around us.

In true Tet fashion, Louisa and I decided to start fresh for the New Year and put the past behind us… some of us were more drastic then others ;)

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới! (Happy New Year!)

PS.  This is the song we still find ourselves singing daily – sooooo good, but sooooo bad! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxlQ8kodBU

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Dollarama

During our brief stopover in Cambodia, Louisa and I had one major realization – Cambodia is the best dollar store in the World!  Now nicknamed, Dollambodia, Cambodia is bursting with deals and scams just like your local “Dollarama” store. 

Bottled water, the refreshing ionized liquid source of life, is the same price as a 30 minute foot massage or even a hand carved Buddha.  Just like all dollar stores, there isn’t any consistency with the pricing.  In Canada you can get a pen for $1 but you can also get a 10 litre stainless steel pot for $1 – how is this possible? 

Cambodia, or Dollambodia for these purposes, uses USD notes as their main currency.  With nothing lower than a $1 dollar bill in circulation, it makes it difficult to charge anything less.  This makes from some amazing deals and funny-ish stories:

• Throughout Siem Reap, a Tuk Tuk taxi ride will cost $1 if you are going 500 meters or going for 25 KM.  Louisa and I paid the same price to drive 25 km out of town to see Ankor Wat as we did to drive 5 minutes to our hotel.  We couldn’t figure out if the hotel tuk tuk was a rip off or the Angkor Wat tour was a deal – we still don’t know.

• Siem Reap has an amazing market filled with a lot of t-shirts and foot massages.  For $1 you can get a one hour massage, however, for $10 you can get a highly cheap ball point pen – we all know that this pricing is backwards by a mile.

• Like all of SE Asia, Cambodia also has great artists with many paintings and spiritual carvings.  Sucked in like the majority of tourists, we ended up buying several different hand carved Buddhas as gifts for family and friends, however, since we don’t have room in our 60 litre packs for a 6 pound Buddha, we shipped them home.  The shipping box, made of 1/100 of the wood one Buddha is made of, cost twice as much as an actual Buddha – just to be clear, a cardboard box costs as much as a carving that would have taken hours of labour to complete. Huh?

• The most surprising thing in Cambodia was the shooting range – shooting guns that were used during the war in the 70’s (I would hope that the guns used actually didn’t kill anyone – some things are better left unknown).  Shooting an M-18 in the middle of dodgy-town, was not only crazy, but was also very dollarama-like.  The bullets, worth pennies, are sold for $1 each - $60 dollars later and twenty seconds of fun, we had spent more than we had in three days in Cambodia combined.  We felt so bad that we had to give our taxi drive an enormous tip for driving us 2 hours to fulfil the “white-man’s” obsession with gun shooting.

Cambodia is a great country with so many great aspects that are just being realized by the rest of the world.  We both wish we could have spent more time touring the rest of the country as the people are just amazing and every single Cambodian we met was so genuinely nice!  If you are going to SE Asia, head to Cambodia and see what the rest of SE Asia was like 15 years ago – Dollambodia! 

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Bali Bifurcation

As some of you know, Louisa and I decided to pass on going to New Zealand mostly due to finances.  Even though I have been to New Zealand before, I found myself feeling somewhat guilty for skipping out on such a beautiful country.  However, I truly believe things happen for a reason … New Zealand just wasn’t meant to be (this time around). 

Bali originally didn’t make the cut for the Ferrungu World Tour “travel team”, but left with lots of extra time to allocate, we decided to put Bali back on the starting lineup.  At the time, the only thing we knew about Bali was that Bogan Australians overpopulate the main city of Kuta in search of booze, club sandwiches, McDonalds drive-thrus and surfing.  It didn’t sound like a first round draft pick, but we took the gamble anyway.

Once we booked our flights to Bali and officially abandoned New Zealand, it seemed as if the Universe wanted to show us why Bali should have always been in the starting line-up:

First, the lovely and soulful Chelsea Paget introduced us to Dewa - a local Balinese family man that has turned his passion for foreigners (especially Canadians) into a great tourism business.  Dewa found us accommodation, booked ferry transfers, fattened us up with his mom’s delicious cakes, provided us with a local cell phone and truly showed us the real Bali – all done with a huge smile on his face and many funny stories to tell.  Words don’t express our gratitude for meeting Dewa – if you are ever in Bali please let us know and we will put you in contact with the legend known as DEWA – so good buddy!

Second, we joined fellow corporate-hippie, Greg Clayton, and his 8/10 hippie lady friend, Gen, on an island near Bali called Gili Trawangan, where they were vacationing.  Hanging out with Greg and Gen allowed for many interesting and hilarious conversations – everything from splitting a Kambucha baby to how the moon effects your menstrual cycle.  I guess that is what happens when four new-age hippies hang out for a week.

One thing that did stick out in these hippie conversations was the discussion about a Shivananda Ashram that Gen attended in the Bahamas a few years ago.  Coincidently, we found that a Shivananda Ashram was hosting Yoga Teacher Training in Vietnam at just the time we are going to be there.  We were inspired, and since this is something that Louisa and I have always wanted to do, we booked our spots and are now attending four week Yoga Teacher Training starting at the end of January!

 “There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...” ― John Lennon

Bali was absolutely amazing – such a beautiful place full of really friendly locals and lots of Zen.  Before going, Louisa and I often thought that everything happens for a reason.  We were meant to go to Bali – not just to have it as a notch on our travel post, but to allow Bali to pave our destined path of the Ferrungu World Tour. 

Forgoing New Zealand, going to Bali, meeting Dewa, vacationing with Greg and Gen and signing up for Yoga Teacher Training in Vietnam were all the best decisions we could have made, but they do beg the question– did we make these decisions ourselves, or has the Universe always had this in mind for us?

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The Ferrungu's Occupy Australia

Before the Ferrungu World Tour, Louisa and I took several vacations a year, usually extended, and like most people(*) we dreaded coming back from them.  We are now on a one year trip, but we decided to treat each country as an individual vacation. 

The Oxford Dictionary defines a vacation as an extended period of recreation or the action of leaving something once previously occupied.  So does that mean that the protestors of Occupy Wall Street were on a vacation? Or was their vacation actually the act of going back to work?  Relevant question but I digress. ..

Our time in Australia has come to an end and it is time for us to take down the tent, walk away from the drumming circle, put away the picket signs and occupy another country – Indonesia.  When the Americans dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima {funny link}, books, movies and even statues were created to remember the events – here is our memory of Ferrungu’s Occupy Australia for the record books:

Our base – our 1.5 person tent and 1.5 cylinder car were where we held our daily contingency meetings, mapping out the day’s actions.  We spent 25 fabulous days in this tent meeting fellow occupiers that shared similar passions – a dislike for showering and a dislike for work.

Our locations – Australia is a massive land with little forgiveness. Even the Koalas would try to kill you if they weren’t always sleeping.   Louisa and I travelled from town to town down the east coast avoiding the outback and finding new places to conquer.  Short list:  Cairns, Mission Beach, Airlie Beach, Hervey Bay, Brisbane, Byron Bay, Sydney and Melbourne.  With a total of 3,500+ KM travelled by car, we are happy to say we didn’t get tear gassed by a Koala.

Our support – like most great conquests, there is always support. The British had the Americans, Michael Jackson had Neverland and the Ferrungu’s had Greek friends and The KPMGers. Our Greek friends gave us endless amounts of food and hospitality to gain strength for our occupation, while Shiermo, Craigo and DarC provided the support and warm showers we desperately needed.  We are forever debit`d (bad accounting joke) – thanks again!

Our fan club – it is always great to have people who respect you and approve of your causes.  Louisa and I are fortunate to have both – the Ottawa Boys and the City of Sydney.  The Ottawa boys traveled all across the world to watch the City of Sydney show their support for Ferrungu’s Occupy Australia – the Sydney Harbour fireworks.  This is unprecedented fanatical act that was reciprocated with ice, vodka and limes (sans knife).

We wanted to thank Australia, especially the City of Sydney for allowing us to Occupy and Conquer.  Our time is done here and we hope two “Dodgy Backpackers” we able to pump enough money into Australia’s economy to ensure house prices continue to rise and a cup of coffee exceeds the $8 benchmark.  You will be missed and forever remembered!

(*)Trevor, this does not include you – I apologize for including you in the category of “People”

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Merry Christmas from Down Under!

For the last 4 consecutive years Louisa and I have been away from Canada for Christmas.  With work, it was easy to get away and a perfect time to decompress before “what we in the biz call ‘busy season’”.  However, it wasn't just good timing that drove us to get away; it was what Christmas has become in North America that pushed us to jump on a plane – consume, buy, consume, repeat…


Our time in Australia has been amazing (less a few minor nuisances), Christmas especially.  Australian Christmas is very different from North American tradition.  There is less emphasis on presents and more emphasis on the three F’s – family, friends and fun:

• Families tend to spend Christmas Eve together in Australia.  This is very similar to Canada, however instead of turkey or ham, Australians BBQ prawns and kangaroo steaks in the many public parks.  It is a festive event that involves a lot of booze (as does everything in Australia) – here is us trying to fit in with our KPMG Calgary friends living abroad!

• Christmas day is very different from Canada.  Presents are opened early Christmas morning, and instead of making a nice breakfast, the family is rushed off to the nearest coast to claim a spot on the beach with their closest friends.  Instead of the parents nursing their hangover, they continue to drink and BBQ in the sun until their melanoma starts to appear again.  This is the view of Bondi Beach, Sydney – we were the only ones not drinking. The ONLY ones!

• Instead of Rudolf, Dancer, Prancer. Comet, Vixen  etc. (great stripper names) pulling Santa’s sleigh through the snow, Santa is pulled by six white Boomers – see video. 

What we have discovered while spending Christmas in Australia (Sydney) is that Australians treat Christmas as just another stat holiday.  They seem super relaxed and don’t stress about buying gifts, Boxing Day sales, etc.  They would much rather spend their free time with friends and family on the beach with a well-deserved beer or twelve.  The next Christmas Louisa and I spend in Canada (if we do), we will ensure that our families have some drinks on Christmas Eve, exchange laughs instead of gifts and bbq at the closest skating rink…

Merry Christmas from down under everyone!

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Why is Everything in Australia Trying to Kill us?

Back in 2004, I took my first “World Tour” (solo mission) and I spent some time in Australia.  My time here was completely different – I would tell you stories but I can’t remember much due to a plethora of consumed Goon.  What I do know however, is that AUSTRALIA REMEMBERS…

Upon arrival in Cairns a few weeks back, I instantly got a weird feeling that Australia will not be as nice to me the second time around.  Was it because I left a $50 overdraft for the Commonwealth Bank to cover?  What it because 4 guys slept in a van illegally all the way down the east coast?  Or did the 20 bartenders that cut-me-off get offended by my back-lash?  Whatever the reason, I believe in Karma (see previous blog post) and I am now getting my pay-back 7 years later (and taking Louisa down with me):

1)  Magpie attacks – apparently magpies are very vicious in Australia, especially during nesting season.  Louisa knows this firsthand – she was attacked twice by one crazy magpie in the head and managed to avoid a third consecutive attack by ducking.  Luckily she found out that it is very common or else she would have a “giant candy-apple” complex about her head … Shameless Seinfeld video reference link.

2)  Rain – apparently summer in Australia has now turned into Cyclone season due to climate change.  Since our arrival we have only had 1 day without rain.  If this continues, we will most likely drown in our sleep as our tent isn’t as rain-proof as we hoped and only made for 1 person.

3)  Gasoline – we tried to sail the magnificent Whitsundays in a catamaran, however, due to a fuel leak and the potential of the boat burning down, the skipper demanded we head back to shore.  We also rolled into a gas station after driving 99KM on fumes, while in a torrential downpour – for some reason the Australian government replaced the “Next Gas Station is 600KM” road signs with “Play Trivia to Stay Awake” signs… really? If I don’t have gas for my car how can I play trivia?

4)  Giant Flying Beetles – these large can’t fly nor seem to see – they dive bomb towards wherever is in their way.  My back got attacked by one of these monsters biting me and attaching itself to me like it was a lifeboat on the sinking Titanic. A second attack to my leg several days later didn’t end so well for the poor bastard.

5)  Falling mangoes – November is mango season in Australia.  Louisa and I love mangoes. However, we do not like sleeping in a tent under a mango tree.  These 3 pound fruits of destruction can really keep you awake at night while you hear them fall inches from your head.  The plus side was that all the ones that missed our heads were delicious – we had an unlimited amount of free ripe mangoes for several days!

Either way you look at it, Australia doesn’t want us (well probably me) here for the second time.  I am going to make peace with Australia by doing the opposite of what I did 7 years ago – I won’t drink, I will pay for camping and I will ensure I put $50 back into this booming economy.  This will hopefully satisfy the higher powers to guarantee that my offspring have a safe place to drink Goon and get into trouble when they are 23. 

Honourable Mentions:

Brown Snakes – known as one of the most venomous snakes in Australia, Louisa and I saw one hanging out by our campsite.  Needless to say, we kept close to the middle of our tent.

Jelly Fish – it is jelly fish “season” in Australia, which basically means don’t go swimming in the ocean without a stinger suit or you will die. 

Sharks – for some ridiculous reason we watched Shark Week on the Discovery Channel last week – the consensus is that sharks do like people and shallow water. Especially in Australia.

Road Construction – if you think Calgary is bad, come to Australia and really experience road construction.  Every 50Km there has road construction that turns a simple 200km drive into a 3 hour torturous crawl, with every road sign blatantly telling you that you “are going to die” if you don’t slow down. 

Wireless internet – it is 2011, but Australia is stuck in 2000.  They still have computer kiosks that you pay $5 for 20min of internet.  The word “Wireless” is more foreign to Australia then the word “Touque”… okay, okay so this one didn’t try to kill us, but it impeded our blog posting updates.

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