Hot and steamy in Panama City

We had a fairly lazy start to Panama, mostly due to the heat.  In Panama City it was 35 degrees with 90% humidity.  The sort of heat that leaves you dripping sweat even whilst you remain stationary beneath a fan.  The middle of the day saw every sofa, chair, flat surface of the hostel covered with dozing tourists.  We had based ourselves in Casco Viejo, the charming old part of the city.  It is gradually being restored and so there are crumbling, boarded up buildings, beside these beautifully restored colonial mansions many of which are now boutique hotels well out of our budget.  We were staying in Luna’s Castle.  It used to be a home and is now an eclectic mix of funky art, beautiful architectural details and the necessary practicalities for a hostel with nearly 100 guests, oh and a fort, can’t forget the fort!  We loved just meandering around the streets, even when doing necessary chores like the laundry - at the building with the giant lizard.

One of the highlights turned out to be frozen yoghurt, or to be more specific the toppings.  The yoghurt itself was good - cake batter flavour was my particular favourite.  But the main draw is the extensive array of toppings, from various crushed up chocolate bars, fruit, brownie dough, jelly beans the list goes on and on.  It’s priced on weight and it is difficult not to go overboard as even with only a small amount of each topping you would end up with half a kilo in your cup!  We managed to (slightly) reign ourselves in, and created our own heavenly delight.

I should also mention the Panama Canal, since that’s the thing most people think of when you mention Panama.  We arrived in time to see a couple of ships entering the canal, and then a ship being lowered back to sea level just before we left.  I loved watching the trains.  Yes, the whole massive tankers being raised 20m by gravitationally propelled water in a system built over a hundred years ago and still working with it’s original locks was amazing to watch.  But the trains that were attached to the ship to keep it centered were more entertaining as they made their way up and down the steep ramp between the sea level lock and the lake level lock.  Then there was the wonderfully kitsch museum with life size models of people attaching ropes to a ship that protruded slightly from the wall, and “photo spots” with footprints to show you where to stand to take the perfect photo of your companion in a fake tunnel.  If you prefer you could also have them take a photo of you in front of a green screen, and have it printed with you in various locations in the locks, or on one of the massive container ships.

Border crossings - now we're backpacking!

In some ways Panama feels like the trip proper is starting.  Hong Kong and Orlando have been awesome, amazing, but very much like being on vacation.  Now, we become backpackers.  The first challenge we hit was getting into Panama.  Panama it seems has some of the strictest policies regarding onward tickets, which means you won’t be allowed on the plane unless you have one.  

After much research and debate, we decided to use a company called flyonward who will purchase you a fully refundable ticket that is valid for 24hours for use in these situations.  It’s a real ticket, and you pay them US$10 to do the buying and cancelling for you, rather than having to do it yourself (apparently most airlines have a 24 hour free cancellation policy).  The system sounded great.   But, we hadn’t banked on Jason’s paypal being linked to his old work email, and the company sending the ticket to that email address.  We were madly trying to get this sorted, tried checking in and being honest with our flight out of Mexico, got rejected for being honest and sent away.  More frantic emails and eventually our ticket arrived at an email address we could check!  The airline check in person wasn’t the least perturbed about us now having a flight from Panama to Amsterdam, despite us having just told her our real travel plans.  She just went ahead and entered all our new flight details in the system, checked it was legit and gave us our boarding passes.

We then passed through Orlando immigration, or we hope we did.  We passed through a chaotic mess, where a guy on a chair looked at our passports and stamped our boarding pass (not our passport though), before a ramshackle queue led us towards security and the now familiar strip down to your underwear to get through system. Ok, potentially a slight exaggeration...

We kept waiting to find immigration, but didn’t.  I really hope it was the guy on the chair, but I thought American immigration would be a little more organised and official.  There wasn't even any biometric scanning, and even the theme parks were checking our fingerprints on a regular basis!

On arrival to Panama’s immigration we filled in our arrival form listing our stay as 5 weeks - the time until our flight to Amsterdam - which would be cancelled a few hours later.  The immigration official, who spoke no English, then informed us we were only allowed 30 days.  Given my limited Spanish I knew what he was telling us, but not what we could do about it.  We nodded, looked reproachful and I said 30 days back, then 4 weeks, just so he knew my Spanish was up to the important parts of this conversation.  In my head I was quickly freaking out given the complete intransigence at the Orlando end for requirements to get in.  He seemed satisfied and stamped us in anyway.  Maybe if we’d spoken Spanish it would have been a more indepth interrogation, who knows?   I was just grateful we made it in!

Theme park central

From Hong Kong we spent 30 hours making our way to Orlando, Florida.  The flight was long, but mostly uneventful.  I managed a sneaky headstand when no one was watching, but then spent an hour or so dancing at the back of the plane and amusing the cabin crew that way.  Orlando was in such stark contrast to Hong Kong.  From skyscrapers packed closely together, to a city that spread as far as you could see in every direction, but most buildings were only single story.  

On our first day we were out of it, still not recovered from the 13 hour time change, and the previous days 34 hours without sleep.  We found out there was a chocolate museum in town, and made our way there to entertain ourselves.  There were some amazing carvings, made from solid blocks of chocolate.  

The real reason for coming to Orlando was to go to theme parks, which began the next day getting up early to collect our tickets and hopefully avoid the queues in the entrance lines.  The lines surprisingly weren't too bad 10minutes before the park officially opened.  Getting straight in, paying for an exorbitant lanyard to protect our precious express pass. we had our first ride. Minion Madness, which was our first introduction to the 4D rides.  It is quite incredible how much movement your mind tells you is going on when wearing 3d goggles and you seat moves shakes shudders tilts and drops.  You start thinking you were on a real roller coster.  Thanks to the Express pass we managed to fly through the queues both on this and the last day, and it was only when we were doing the Jurassic Park ride for the 3rd (or was it 4th) time that we realised that the normal line was 45minutes long and we were just about getting straight on.

The main highlights for us oddly include the queues in the Harry Potter rides, where the entire way feels like walking through a set of the movies, with moving pictures on the newspapers, goblins counting money and many other detailed props.  The mummy returns, and the Gringott rides were top of the list for the universal studios side, while the Jurassic Park River ride, Harry Potter Journey, and the front row of the Dragon Challenge roller coster were our picks from the Islands of Adventure,  We were amazed how much more fun the dragon roller coster was from the front seat, as all of a sudden, you realised how close and fast you were coming up to obstacles, adding a lot more adrenaline to the mix.

In between the two days at the universal theme parks we spent the day at Wet and Wild, making Jason grin like a small child as he made the biggest splashes possible.   While the park was a little smaller than expected some of the slides were still scream worthy.  One of our favourites involved an enclosed tunnel with disco music blaring.  The first time down it Jason was facing backwards and he let go of the tube as he was getting into the dancing theme.  Meanwhile I was facing forward and watching the slide disappear.  I frantically screamed at him to hold on before we dropped steeply down leaving our stomachs at the top of the ride.

It was a busy few days in Orlando but a great deal of fun.,

Hong Kong

Hong Kong Day 1

Our first day of proper travel can be summed up as;

• no I don’t want copy watch/copy bag
• walking
• really, I promise I still don’t want copy watch/copy bag
• amazing delicious food
• hiking
• out of breath, wondering why we decided to walk up the mountain not catch the tram like normal people
• get to the top and decide it wasn’t that difficult after all
• no, I don’t want a tailor
• walking
• still not interested in copy watch/copy bag or a tailor

There’s more to it than that, of course.  We arrived tired and sore on the first night, getting to our hotel around 8pm.  Although calling it a hotel is optimistic.  It was in this run down ramshackle building, which seemed to contain an assortment of businesses, private flats, and hotels.  There was a... well not sure what he was supposed to be (bouncer? concierge?) at the bottom of the lift, who seemed eager to use his English to talk to us and helped us work out which lift would take us where we needed to go.  Our hotel was on the 14th floor and was really two flats that had been divided to create approximately 4 rooms.  It was run by this little old lady who spoke no English, but conveyed everything that was needed with tone of voice and gestures.  “This switch turns on the hot water so you can shower, please turn it off when not in use.” was conveyed with lots of Chinese, pointing at the switch and miming showering.  

Hong Kong was busy, crazy, full of sights and smells.   We explored Kowloon park, filled with statues, maze gardens and I was disproportionately excited to find adult sized monkey bars!  Most of the day though we spent over on Hong Kong Island.  Wandering around the streets, and then taking the mid level escalators before continuing on foot to the Peak.  We've never been good walking uphill and we were soon out of breath and questioning our folly in not taking the tram or the bus to the top.  If we'd known how far it was I think we would have been ok, but we were mentally preparing ourselves for 2 hours of uphill slogging.  Instead the walk was over, just as we were finding our rhythm.  We enjoyed the view over Hong Kong, before allowing ourselves to get lost making it back down the hill.  

Hong Kong Day 2

Our day two wrap up was more along the lines of;

-queue

-walk

-queue

-amazing view

-queue

-beautiful

-dance like nobody’s watching, even though they are.  It gives them something to talk about.

-queue, queue, queue (one hour of queuing to get on the bus, despite a near constant stream of buses!)

-yum!

-how did it get this late?  Oh, the queuing.

The photos probably tell the rest.

Off again

It was work that did it.  Not my work, Jason’s work.  It was a gradual process.  Stupidity there, ignorance here, micromanagement, no management, changing priorities, callous treatment of employees.  It just got too much.  

“I’m going to quit.  Are we going to travel before I find a new job?”

Oh my gosh!  It’s time.   Another long trip was always coming, it was just a matter of when.  We needed a trigger, a catalyst, something to stir the ever restless travel bug and give it free reign.  Maps, travel blogs, travel guides, flights.  A trip began to form, the stirrings of adventure.  My own boss granted the necessary leave and the planning began in earnest.  It took forever to arrive, and then was here before we knew it.