Ipanema + Copacabana

Ok so I haven't posted in a while... Let's see how I go at remembering the last almost week now. 

The night I was writing my last post got even stranger. I performed open ear surgery on the French guy in my dorm.. Had to remove a piece of cotton wool that he'd wedged deep into his ear whilst on drugs before he left France. So that was gross. Then I went and joined the party. 

During the party the power went off. It came on and off a couple of times, which was pretty cool to watch from the top of the favela. But then half the favela's power came back on and ours didn't. It's not great when there's no power in a favela because people take advantage of the dark (we heard at least one gunshot). There's no street lights even so it makes things unsafe. People on the street nearby came into the bar and waited it out.

Spent a couple days walking round the favela taking pictures, documenting/drawing things.  You know.. Architect stuff. 

Then I moved to Ipanema! Was so great to be able to just pop in and out of the hostel and walk around the beach rather than having to trek down out of the favela! Made lots of friends. 

Christmas eve we walked to the lagoon to see the tallest Christmas tree in the world (85m) light up. Pretty cool. Then we partied. Christmas morning I went and lay on Ipanema beach in my newly acquired Brazilian bikini. Got sunburnt. Lunch we ate at Kilograma. I won the competition of who ate the most. Not sure that's something to be proud of... It's not Christmas if you haven't eaten so much you need to nap. 

So nap I did. But first I checked into a nice hotel in Copacabana. Took a swim in the rooftop pool (post nap and digestion) to help cool my sunburn. Ordered room service. Watched TV. Sat around naked because I've been living in hostels for weeks and that's generally frowned upon. Slept diagonally across the queen sized bed. Ate from the minibar. Christmas well spent. 

Boxing Day I moved into my last Rio residence.. An apartment in Leme (edge of Copacabana) on a quiet street just a block from the beach. It's an airbnb room so I have two Brazilian housemates, Ursula and Roberta. And there's a 24h doorman to let you in the lobby which I find very novel. 

Ursula and I escaped the heat on Boxing Day and hung out at the mall. She's gone to Chile now so her mum is staying here. She speaks some English and she's really cute. I'm making her my Brazilian mum. She keeps feeding me. Awesome.  

Tonight I went to sugarloaf mountain which is one of *the* touristy things to do along with going to Christ the Redeemer. It was a pain in the ass. Queue after queue after queue. The view was great but I couldn't really tell since there were too many people to really be able to stand and appreciate it. I saw a lot of selfie sticks. 

6 nights left in Rio. 

A xx

#favelalyf

Today has been strange. 

Didn't sleep much due to lack of glass on my window (read: lots of noisel and mosquitoes) and my new French dorm buddy getting home in the early hours and turning off the fan (apparently 30 degrees qualifies as "cool weather") I decided to get up and head to the beach. And for breakfast. Because no breakfast = not an Amiee you want to see. 

I went to a place called Gringo Cafe. It's in Ipanema. I ate bacon and eggs and fruit smoothie. I'm not sorry. 

On my walk down to the bottom of the favela I saw a guy carrying a new door... uphill... by himself (no shirt.. Reow), a Santa in a blue Santa suit on the back of a motorbike, followed by someone in a lion suit on another motorbike. 

Seems like there's actually garbage collection here. The process seems to be... Everyone dumps their rubbish in big piles... Then a garbage truck comes and collects. I'm pretty impressed considering the nature of the neighbourhood. And the garbage man waved to me. 

I went to the beach. It was so damn hot I couldn't even deal. 38 and no breeze. I am not tropical. I am not a toucan. I don't even know how I dealt when I lived in Biloela for 18yrs and 38 was a standard daily summer temperature. I couldn't swim because I had my phone with me and you can't leave your damn bag or it'll get damn stolen. So I Iay on a towel and oozed perspiration. Correction, I lay on a sarong because I left my damn towel in Chile. I think I was the most clothed and probably just about the whitest girl in Ipanema. Two beach vendor guys spoke at me.. In Portuguese.. Which I don't understand. I can only assume they were something along the lines of "girl you WHITE" "why you wear such big grandma bathers?".

I was supposed to meet Pablo at 1 but instead it turns out we both waited for each other for about an hour at different beach kiosks about 100m away. On the upside, I drank the coldest most delicious coconut of my life. 

After giving up on Pablo and withering in the heat I found a shopping mall to sit in and absorb air conditioning and steal wifi. I promptly forgot to find and buy the things I require (a towel and ear plugs) and instead ate gelato. These fancy shopping malls have concierge desks which are particularly helpful because they speak English and are paid to be polite and helpful so you can ask them anything about Rio in general. I managed to get directions to a grocery store. 

I went a little grocery happy. I ended up inadvertently spending my taxi fare back to the favela. So I had arms full of shopping bags and no money. Good work Amiee. Real smart. Luckily I am actually quite smart because I managed to find a bus that went by the favela. The streets of the favela are so steep and winding (and long) that they self organised this fantastic system of moto-taxis and Kombi mini buses that ferry people up and down the favela for 2.5BR. Unfortunately I seemed to arrive at peak period and had to wait for about half an hour in a queue while my butter slowly melted through the rest of my groceries (why do I need butter? Umm for mashed potato duh). White knuckled it up the favela, willing the helmet not to fly off, holding my groceries with one hand and the back of the moto with the other. You get right of way as a moto on the way up because if you don't keep up a certain amount of speed you fall. 

I decided to shower off the sweat of the day. The shower is so god damn filthy. Anyone that knows me knows I'm not precious... But FFS the thing is slimey and brown like it's not been cleaned in months. And I lost my thongs in Chile. Must really add that to the shopping list. 

Then I cooked dinner and promptly poured boiling water on my hand. So that's fun. There's no hot water for washing dishes, and the detergent is empty an has been refilled with water.. And even the pseudo detergent water is almost empty. Makes me wonder what I've now contracted by eating with the dishes. 

So I decided to make myself a drink (litre of vodka - $9AUD) and watch the sunset over Ipanema (the view really is outrageously sublime ... Sublime is really underused as a word). There's a party going on at the hostel bar with about 100 people.. I can't check it out right now though because I've been put in charge of watching over a sleeping baby. From what I can gather the mother is a friend of one of the hostel workers? She doesn't speak any English but she managed to communicate through gestures that I please watch her sleeping baby.. But I don't have to sit near it.. Just listen out for its cries. Oh look! Fireworks over Rio! Beautiful!! 

So the mother of the baby might be more than just friends of the hostel worker... I thought he was showing her the empty private room next to my dorm so she could put the sleeping baby in there rather on the hostel couch... But now they're in there with the door closed.. Alone. It seems I'm babysitting while they're banging. Guess I'll just wait til they're done before I check out this party....

Oh look there she is now. I'm gonna bail while I have a chance. 

Peace out. 

I live in a favela now

 

And it's pretty cool. 

It was a right bastard getting up here in the taxi. The hostel is right at the top of the favela and there's only one vehicle entry point. A couple of times there were some trucks coming down so a chain of cars had to reverse back to let them through. 

This place is definitely budget... eg. There's mould on my mattress and pillow.. But the view is amazing!

I was just chatting to the owner at the bar. An Austrian guy. This was his house and then eventually grew into a hostel over the last 6 years. It was interesting talking to him about favela politics. He bought this house but no one that lives here owns the land, and he had to ask the drug lord if he could start a hostel. That drug lord died in a shoot out on NYE 2011. Once, "hostel guy" (can't remember his name) was summoned to speak to the drug lord because word was that he was selling drugs to the hostel guests; "be there at 6 or we will kill you". Everything was chill in the end... Just a misunderstanding...

Since word of the popularity of the parties at this hostel got out, 2 other imitation bar/hostels have popped up.. One literally on top of this one and one directly across the street. The one across the street is having a big party tonight... And because of the reputation of the parties here.. They charge a fortune for entry. Like.. A FORTUNE. It's insane. 120BR for girls and 150BR for guys. That's $55-$70AUD just for entry, no drinks included... And at the top of a favela where the average monthly income  is around $220AUD. It seems.. kinda unethical. And bullshit. 

Just ate some sort of delicious thing from the tiny hole in the wall restaurant next door. It's kind of reminiscent of a tortilla but made of tapioca... Fried... With a variety of different things and then folded over like a giant soft taco. I had salami, cheese, tomato and onion. Delish.

Tomorrow I'll wander around the favela and maybe down to Ipanema to meet Pablo. 

Amiee x

First days in Rio

Tuesday:
I walked down the winding cobblestone Santa Teresa streets to Central to meet an architect contact, Pablo Souto. We ate brunch at Confeitaria Colombo, an amazing cafe, bar and restaurant that was established in 1894! It is such a beautiful place and incredible that it's still completely intact and operating. We ate a lot of pastries. I ordered a 'Colombo Cappuccino' which turned out to be espresso, chocolate, topped with a large portion of Chantilly cream, sprinkled with cinnamon. Not quite what I was expecting and super sweet but... wow. We spent about 3h there talking architecture. Afterwards we visited a unique cafe that Pablo had built the furniture for; Curto Cafe. They started in a tiny nook in the shopping centre about 1.5mx1.5m and had the concept of not setting prices for the coffee but they have a chart showing their expenses on the wall and people pay what they wish. It became so popular that the shopping centre management gave them a bigger area to set up in. When we went there it was crazy busy with people standing everywhere. The barista would just call out - "how many for latte??" and people would raise their hands, and he would make those 8 lattes. And then he'd move onto the next type. Profits, expenses, number of quantities of coffees made were all charted on the wall and there was a table in the centre with a bowl where you put money.
We visited the Sao Sebastiao cathedral which looks really strange from the outside but is really amazing inside.
Afterwards we walked to a street where there's a lot of antique furniture shops. Have decided to buy an old colonial house and stay here. Jks. But seriously.

Wednesday:
I went walking around Central with my French brothers. We visited a lot of churches and libraries. A lot. My favourite was the Real Portugues Gabinete de Leitura. It contained old Portuguese books about 500 years old. In the evening we bought some Caracha and made Caipirinhas. The boys even cooked dinner. Then we went out to a candelit local bar with live acoustic music, which was very beautiful. We eventually had to leave when they closed around 230am!

Thursday:
Had a bit of a lazy day. My French brothers left :( But in the late afternoon I visited the Cristo Redentor! It was quite expensive to visit. I took the tram up to the peak through the rainforest. The sun was starting to set behind the statue when I got there. I actually think the statue is more impressive from a distance looming over the City rather than up close where you can't really comprehend the scale, and have to crane your neck to see it all. The view was amazing though. But of course, lots of people around taking photos. No where near as busy as earlier during the day though; I was on the last tram up for the day.

Friday:
I've eaten breakfast and written this blog... should probably go out for a walk!

Amiee x

I go to Rio

Just arrived in Rio. My taxi driver took me the scenic route from the airport and wanted me to teach him Aussie slang. Great guy. He´s the way I found out the siege in Martin Place was over and he gave me his iPad so I could read about it while he drove.
I´m staying in Santa Teresa for 5 nights at Sante Hostel. There´s only 3 other people staying here at the moment - some French guys. It´s a good thing they seem lovely and don´t give off a rapey vibe because we´ve got the whole place to ourselves - staff only stay til about 3pm apparently.
I walked to the grocery store and realised I don´t speak a word of Portuguese and my Spanish is dodgy. Guess I´ll be learning very quickly.
Tchau xx

Back in Santiago

After a bit of a crazy night out with people from my hostel and a few too many pisco sours I made my way back to Santiago for my last 3 nights in Chile. 

First thing I did when I got back was go and crash the Elemental office - it was Friday afternoon aka the last working day before I left Chile and I was hoping to be able to interview one of the architects about their projects I'd visited and informal housing in general. The office is on the 25th floor of a building about 15min from my hostel in Barrio Bellavista. I hadnt really expected there to be security but I got past them with no worries. The 25th floor has an office with a glass door and the names of businesses to the left, and then a timer door that looks like a fire escape with no name or description of any kind. Go through the nondescript timber door to find Elemental. 

The receptionist spoke enough English to understand what I wanted a was very accommodating; ushering me to sit in the board room while she fetched me someone to talk to. That someone was Cristián Martínez: Architect, Chief Project Coordinator. I recorded an interview with him for about 15min with some questions I'd prepared earlier. No one from the office had visited the Antofogasta project since its completion so he asked me to email him some of my photos. Go team Amiee. 

I visited another of Pablo Neruda's houses which was just around the corner from where I was staying. He built this one for his secret mistress who later became his wife until his death. The steel grates on the windows have a logo with their initials entwined together. It  was great but not as spectacular as his Valparaiso residence. More Pablo Neruda quirky facts: he would always write in green ink, he would buy playing cards in every place he traveled, as a joke for his guests the salt and pepper shakers were labeled with 'morphine' and 'marijuana', and there is a secret passage with a spiral staircase next to his dining room, meaning that Pablo would often appear through a cupboard, surprising his guests.

The rest of my time I spent wandering around and in artisan markets. I also met with Matias, a Venezualan architect friend of one of my lecturers who lives in Santiago with his Chilean wife and children and had some interesting conversation about architecture. 

Anyway, off to Brazil now!

Amiee x

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¡Valparaiso!

I arrived in Valparaiso 37h after leaving Iquique and boy am I sick of buses. I don't want to see another ham and cheese sandwich in a very long time. They hand them out for lunch and dinner on the bus. White bread, in a plastic packet. Always ham and cheese. I've eaten so many that by the end of the bus ride I was opting for hunger over another sandwich.  

I've also developed a new strategy for getting by on buses: I become the "sweet girl" meaning I feed people around me sweets (in this case, chocolate eclairs). This transforms me from that annoying white chick who speaks terrible Spanish to that nice chick who gave me a sweet who I'm going to look out for and make sure she gets off at the right stop and her bag doesn't get stolen. 

Valparaiso is beeeeeeeautiful. I'm so glad I have a few nights here. It's hilly and by the ocean and full of colourfully painted houses and street art 

Yesterday, after I took a long hot shower to rid myself of 2 nights on a bus, I spent the afternoon strolling around the streets. I'm staying in the older part of the city up on a hill which has been UNESCO listed. The street my hostel is on is foot traffic only and cobblestoned. 

I also walked up to the only public park in the city which is in the giant walled grounds of the old prison. 

This morning I hiked up to visit the house of the poet, Pablo Neruda. Truly spectacular. He was a keen collector and an eccentric. His house was wonderful and looked over all of Valparaiso. All manner of things existed in his house; a stuffed exotic bird from Venezuala, a wooden carousel horse from Spain, antique maps, old oil paintings, prints from China. He believed water tasted better from green or red glasses, enjoyed whiskey and red wine, and never ate alone; he entertained friends for both lunch and dinner. Here is his dining table, with green water glasses and big ceramic cow punch bowl:

And here is his bedroom:

I'd have 10,000 more photos but you weren't allowed to take photos inside. So these are my secret squirrel "while the guard isn't watching" snaps. 

Here I am outside the house where you're allowed to take photographs:

I toured the house with a Canadian girl I met whilst I was sitting outside a church eating some of the 2kg of cherries I bought for $2AUD. I thought we were quite the pair; she was visiting the house because she studied literature and liked the work of Neruda; I'd never heard of Neruda before but was visiting the architecture. 

I am becoming somewhat addicted to empañadas. I would describe them as pie calzones... Pie pastry but folded over like a calzone and filled traditionally with a mince or cheese. There's the best empañada shop way too close to my hostel for my own good and they have over 60 different flavour combinations!!!!!!! Yestetday I had chicken cheese and capsicum, today I had beef mince, onion, tomato and cheese. They're about $2 and they rock my world. 

Tonight I shall drink red wine and read some Neruda.   

Amiee x

A brief stop in Antofogasta

Well.. That was fun. 

Maybe I'm crazy but I wanted to get a trifecta of Elemental housing projects and Antofogasta was sort of on the way back down South from Iquique. By all accounts it's not really a great touristic town and "a bit of a shithole", even though it's Chile's wealthiest town due to a mine and port. 

I arrived here on the bus at 05:30 and booked a ticket back down to Santiago leaving at 13:00. I figure that's plenty of time to go photograph a housing project and get back to the terminal. I had to wait around for about 90min in the terminal before it got light outside. 

I should probably have mentioned in the last post how lucky I was to actually find Quinta Monroy. I had the street address and was sitting at the hostel cafe looking for it on a map. I happened to mention it to the barista, who luckily spoke very good English because she told me tht they had actually changed the name of that street! Surprisingly she knew the project and drew the location on my map. An easy 15min walk away! 

Anyway, I realised yesterday that I didn't have an address for this housing project in Antofogasta, just a street name (it is a very long street), so I had to spend a while zooming around on Google Street View to find an approximate street address. 

At about 7am I checked my bag in the bus terminal 'custodia' and went and caught a $10 taxi out to the housing project. I think the taxi driver thought I was a bit loco. He wanted to drop me off at a particular house and I kept saying "acqui, acqui... Muy bien" (here, here... Very good). He eventually just let me out and then watched as I started photographing the complex before slowly and hesitantly driving off. 

I decided I would walk back to the bus terminal despite having only a vague idea of direction since I had hours to kill before my bus. 

Nothing like an early morning stroll through a bit of a slum. 

Well.. It was quite a long walk. I had to keep stopping and (poorly) asking for directions. At one stage el hombre told me it was only tres blocks away (woo!) but I got there and realise he'd directed me to a ticket office of the bus company, not the terminal (boo). I figured the woman at the counter would know where the bus terminal was, but she just kept telling me "lejos, lejos" and I'm like "¿asi?" (this way?) and she just keeps telling me "lejos!". Mmhmmm ok.... Whatever that means. I typed it into the eng/esp dictionary app on my phone.. It translates to "far away". Yeah, helpful. Thanks biatch.  

Well I had already made up my mind that I was going to walk, so I kept on walking! Here's a photo I took at one point looking back at where I'd come from - you can see the housing project teeny tiny in the distance:

I stopped again at the Shell service station for directions, then again a few blocks later. A kid on a motorbike was calling out to me, I roll my eyes. I stop to pat the most adorable Labrador puppy and the kid on the motorbike has pulled up behind me... I realise he's the guy from the service station that gave me directions.. And he wants to give me a ride to the bus terminal! FUN! Dw mum and dad.. He had a spare helmet...

Actually it's funny, a lot of men driving past will wolf whistle or make kiss noises at you, but the two times now that I thought someone was being really irritating/creepy (like the guy on the motorbike just now) they've actually been trying to help me. The day before yesterday in Iquique a man slowed down next to me in his car and was gesturing behind him. I thought he was being a creeper and telling me to get in his backseat so I gave him the "piss off" glare and head shake combo... Only to realise a minute later that I'd been walking down the street with my backpack open (noob.) and he was tryin to tell me! Oops. 

Anyway, the kid on a motorbike gave me a ride the last couple of km to the bus terminal and dropped me off out the front. Only about 4h til my next overnight bus....

Amiee x

Update: I have now eaten a hotdog for for breakfast. Also, it costs almost a dollar to use the bathroom here so I'm holding out until my bladder is about to burst. 2.5h until the next bus...

Santiago & Iquique

I had some serious jet lag to deal with in Santiago.. Just wanted to sleep all day and then was awake half the night. 

Spent a day walking around Central Santiago. Walked to the Universidad Catolica de Chile and then spent a lot of time in a great little artisan market. My Spanish is just enough to get by; I know enough words to get my basic point across. And Spanish/English have enough similarities that I can generally get the gist of what people are saying to me. 

I caught a 24h bus up North to Iquique to see a housing project: Quinta Monroy by Elemental Chile. The bus was actually very comfortable (would want to be for the price I paid). I went for the "Salon Cama" seat which is the 2nd best. It's like a reclining arm chair with foot rest. Very cushy. There was a bathroom on board (very convenient) and they gave out snack like in a plane. I slept a lot. I think Chile has overtaken Vietnam as m favourite overnight bus experience. 

I've been staying at a great hostel and made a tonne of friends here. And there's a fantastic little cafe attached that makes palatable coffee and delicious fresh OJ. We're just around the corner from the beach, which is quite lovely and a great place to hang out. We all had a bit of a party last night, so I'm tired today and I feel like this post is a bit uninspired by figured I haven't posted anything in a while. 

I've visited Quinta Monroy twice now. I was a bit apprehensive of how the residents would feel about my poking around taking photos but the people I did encounter were welcoming. I've just got back from recording some interviews with 3 different residents about their homes and their experiences living there (with the help of a friend from the hostel who speaks good Spanish). We were invited into a couple of the homes and it was really interesting to see how people had customised the spaces to their needs. 

Later tonight I catch an overnight bus to Antifogasta to visit a similar housing project.. But apparently it's quite a dull town so I'll just go and do what I need to do and then catch another overnight bus to the very picturesque seaside town of Valparaiso. So 2 consecutive nights on a bus... At least I'll save on accommodation....... 

Amiee x

Jugo de manzana por favor!

¡Hola from Santiago!

This post is part of my "stay awake until dark" strategy. Must not sleep too early to avoid days of jet lag. Have to confess to a big nap though which was supposed to be a little nap but sleeping Amiee decided to turn off her alarm. 

The 15h journey from Sydney - Auckland - Santiago actually went super quick, partially due to an amazing 6h sleep brought to you by every travellers' best friend, benzodiazepine. I had the window seat next to a lovely Argentinean gentleman who lives in Melbourne and builds houses in Lakes Entrance, VIC. 

I've realised that in comparison to traveling in Asia or India... It's a lot harder to tell who is a foreigner and who is a local here. The flight attendants couldn't pick it either (until I opened my mouth...) because they all started speaking to me in Spanish. I was pretty excited to understand what they asked (not that hard to guess when they're wheeling a drinks trolley...) and to answer in Spanish "jugo de manzana por favor" (apple juice please". In case you were wondering, apparently my pronunciation was "muy bien" (inner Amiee was prancing around - pretty chuffed with herself). 

I'm staying in a Colonial mansion. No biggie. It's just super cool  I LOVE COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES!! It's called La Casa Roja in Barrio Brasil, Santiago. I chose it partially because it has a pool and partially because I love saying "roja". The roll of the R and the "ha" (ja) is just so yummy. Go on - try it at home. Fun, right? RrrrrroHA. Muy bien. 

Check it out:

I would have made some different decorating choices but I still love it. 

I just had my first meal in Chile at a place suggested to me by one of the hostel staff. He told me he wasn't sure if I would like it... I thought he was suggesting I wouldn't like it because it was traditional cuisine or something so I had to go try it. 

Nope. Not traditional Chilean cuisine. My first meal was at "Cafeteria Bam Bam". A burger joint. 

Holy guacomole!

After dinner I stopped by the Shell service station to buy M&Ms. I'm classy like that. Hey, it's jet lag day... Don't judge. I was able to use my minimal Spanish to tell him I wanted the "negro" packet, not the "amarillo" one (peanut m&ms suck). 

I'm really going to hit the Spanish study hard over the next few days. Es necessito. I'm currently just stumbling through transactions but would like to sound a little less stupid.

Ok that's all I've got to tell. Gonna sit in this mansion and eat my m&ms til it's dark and es acceptablè a duermo. 

A xx

19 days in Itahari

My 2014 so far has been spent living in a tent, no technology, hole for a toilet, occasional camping showers, project work and a trek into the Himalayan foothills.

We've been living within the Maiti Nepal Itahari rehabilitation house compound in tents. There's 8 of us, project leader Wendy, the group nurse Jess (who we renamed 'Nurse Jackie' for the entire trip - apparently it's a tv show), 2 Nepalese architecture students, Krishna and Min, and then our guide, Sandesh, our porter, Raj, and our cook, Maila.
We renamed Sandesh 'Sundance' and he's seriously one of the most loveable people I've ever met. Sometimes we sing "you are my sunshine" together. He's constantly smiling. Raj is crazy and likes to occasionally shout or sing things really loudly. He calls me "Saltini" which apparently means "good friend" in Nepali. Maila is quiet but just an amazing guy. He had a kind face and he makes the most amazing food. He even managed to make us pizza.. On a GAS CAMPING STOVE. The mind boggles. These guys usually work taking people up proper mountains.. Sundance has been most of the way up Everest (before his clients got too sick and had to head down) so by working for Aussie Action Abroad they manage to get a month of employment they wouldn't normally get since it's currently Nepalese Winter (not so great for climbing Everest - which takes about 90 days in case you were curious).

It's been a tent city - 2 to a tent except for nurse Jackie, Wendy and Sandesh who get their own tents, a toilet tent, a shower tent, a kitchen tent and a dining tent. Raj even erected a big flagpole in the middle of the grounds with an Australian and a Nepali flag. We've been really lucky to be located in the Terai.. It's sort of like a Biloela Winter - down jackets in the night/early morning and tshirts during the day. Mornings generally began with Ricki and I bursting into song in our tent. I think the others got used to it eventually.



The project work went well. The first few days were the hardest with the full interior demolition of the bathroom, which involved a lot of chiseling, sledge hammering (massively fun) and carrying of piles and piles of bricks and chunks of concrete. All without a single power tool. There was something like 3 or 4 layers of flooring to get through because of the way they build it here. No waterproof layer.. Just dirt, then big rocks as foundation then chunks of brick then concrete then the flooring.

It was really interesting building 'Nepali style'.. There's too many funny stories to even begin to tell them all on here. The tradies each had assistants.. And then there also seemed to be a bunch of 'watchers' as well. You never really know what you're getting with tradies. We thought we'd hired a plumber.. only to have the guy tell us half way through he'd have to call the plumber for part of the job.. "uhh.. aren't YOU the plumber??!". My favourite tradie was the tiler (who turned out to actually be the plasterer/demolition guy) who was named Shiri (which kind of sounds like 'Shitty' when pronounced correctly, so we called him Tiler for most of the project until the real tiler guy came.. That guy was an ass). A few of us bumped into him at the village corner store one afternoon (on the routine chocolate run) and he invited us into his home across the road for a drink. He had Mongolian heritage and gave us a home brew beer made on rice. Beer, cigarettes and wrestling on the TV.. I really managed to make it into the 'boys club'. In Nepali culture it's considered bad to not have 2 of anything on offer so we had 2 drinks, the second one we had to scull or miss dinner back at the compound so we strolled home feeling a little merry... Sundance and I almost managing to make it off with a parked rickshaw on the way.

It's really unusual to the Nepali tradies for women to be doing construction work so for the first few days there seemed to be an overcrowding of Nepali guys just watching us work. We had some issues with chauvinism/having tools constantly taken from us/not being listened to.. But we just had to take a deep breath and remember it's just their culture and they're not used to women being involved in this sort of work. Eventually tools were taken from us less and there seemed to be somewhat less sniggering. Shiri was always good, he taught me how to demolish a wall the proper way. The tiler guy was an ass though. It's ok.. We ended up literally making him work around the clock to get the project done.

Altogether we repainted the 2 dorms complete with murals (a giant map of the world and the other room had a solar system), repaired their timber beds, demolished and installed an entirely new bathroom, painted the dining room, and built new paved footpaths and a clothesline.



No one really got sick on the trip which was lucky (and made nurse jackie's life easier). One day I got sick with a cold which then rapidly developed into a sickness I've named 'Darth Vader Syndrome' (or DVS in shorthand). Symptoms include creepy wheezing sounds and a small struggle breathing. Nurse Jackie thinks I have asthma. Asthma Schmasthma I say.

Ricki turned 21 on the 11th so we had a day off to celebrate. We took a minibus to the other Maiti home near the India border where girls are initially taken when intercepted at the border before they're reunited with family or taken to the Itahari home to learn skills like sewing etc. A real issue these girls have is that in Nepali culture, if a girl spends a single night away from her family without permission, her reputation is forever ruined and she's shunned. So even though these girls have been tricked or taken against their will, returning to their community is often difficult or not possible.

We then went to the actual border to see how Maiti works spotting girls that may be getting trafficked and had a tour of the police station. They really have their work cut out for them since it's an open border, meaning if you look Indian or Nepalese you can basically just stroll on through. It's actually just a street with an arch over it where the border line is.

When we got back to camp Wendy had managed to paper mâché a piñata and the dining tent was filled with balloons and a happy birthday banner. There was also pass the parcel after dinner. And cake. CAKE! Maila made a CAKE with RICE FLOUR on a CAMPING STOVE! I swear there's nothing that man can't do with a camping stove.

Trekking was pretty damn amazing. We drove to a little town called Hile to begin with massive bags of snacks packed. Unlike the trek I did in Burma we had to carry a full pack with sleeping bag and our down jackets, thermals, etc. By the end of the first day I had actually developed lumps on my collarbone where the weight of the pack sits. The next day I figured I needed to tighten the hip belt so it wasn't as bad. We had some truly spectacularly incredible views. Where we stayed after the first trek day provided one of the top ten sunsets of my life. The accommodation was truly local; Ricki and I had what I named the "honeymoon suite" which was literally a corrugated iron shed tacked on the back of a family home, complete with water tank, clothes line and window to the toilet. Nurse Jackie and Wendy had the penthouse suite upstairs, also made of corrugated iron. They had pigeons for companions and I kid you not the floor of their room was literally covered with corn. On the cob. Like actually covered. No walking space. The family had stored their Winter corn supply up there... But they bagged it up not too long after our arrival.

We also discovered a new local beverage called tongwa (pronounced kinda like 'tongba') which is fermented millet in hot water, served in a small wooden barrel with a brass or wooden straw. The magical thing is that when you hit the bottom, you just top it up with hot water. It's actually like magic.. It never ends!

The second day of the trek we ascended higher into the mountains and at one stage all the ground was frosted and the leaves crystallised with ice. It looked really mystical.

The third day we trekked half the day and then caught the bus back to Itahari. We made it home on dusk to be greeted by all the village children.

We've made lots of local friends. The Maiti compound is just outside of Itahari in a farmland village and all the local children like to peer over the fence and yell "sister sister!". They're also really good at picking up and mimicking things we say or do. When we were playing piñata if someone missed we'd yell "one more go!" and soon the kids were yelling it for us over the fence. We gave them all the piñata candy because they were so cute. We also played several games of soccer with them sometimes in the afternoon. The first couple of games were played on a semi-ploughed field which made it extra challenging on top of being completely outmatched in terms of skill. We narrowly avoided several rolled ankles. The last 2 games we played on a more level field amongst some tethered cows and a lot of dung.






The architecture around the village was seriously fantastic. A series of isolated fantastical mansions painted in all sorts of colours and covered in ornamentation. Multistories with towers and roof terraces with hanging colourful washing. It's really something else. I think it's really cool that they just build these fancy things and paint them whatever colour they want. No need to be modern or stylish just do what you want. This one was my favourite:



On our last day the girls that live in the dorms came back and we all ate together. They loved the improvements and made us beaded rings. Then there was a ceremony thanking us for our work which was really lovely. They presented us with traditional scarfs and posies of flowers, put a tikka on our foreheads and fed us traditional sweets. All the colour made for some great photos.



The bus ride back to Kathmandu was interesting. On the way to Itahari we'd taken a shortcut o some pretty hairy roads they were still building and down actually running riverbeds to make the journey quicker. This time Wendy decided we should take the safer roads which basically involved circling the Kathmandu valley to enter from the main highway route. 15h later....
We left Itahari at 6:30 in the morning. They blasted that Icona Pop song "I don't care" as soon as we set out. Followed by Nickelback, followed by Guns n roses, followed by System of a Down, followed by Green Day. We heard this same playlist (the only songs they had in English) three times during the trip.

We finally made it onto the national highway. A few minutes later: "traffic jam... 2 hours waiting". We crawled along. They put some slow Nepali music on. "Sentimentals!! I don't like!" yells Raj (Raj pronounces a lot of English words with an added 's'.. My favourite being every night when he brings the soup into the dining tent and announces "chicken soups"). So Icona Pop went back on and Raj started dancing down the aisle. That man can really move. I went to sleep for the rest of the traffic jam until we made it to Bhaktapur.

I'll write about Bhaktapur later... For now I'm off to enjoy my last night in the country!