Someday I will own a sheep

Hello again! It turns out the longer I waited to write a post (especially one as in depth as the travel ones I had been producing) the harder it was to begin. So, instead I am taking some of the pressure off and will try to post more frequently but with less information.

Today, a few updates:

1. We’re still in Christchurch, NZ!
2. In fact, we’re still in the same hostel
3. I now work as an assistant manager at the hostel
4. Actually, that’s one of my 2.5 jobs
5. The other job is as a retail assistant at a yarn shop here in CHCH
6. Which means I’ve now worked in three different yarn shops in two countries
7. My ‘half’ job is as a freelancer writer for an online North Carolina newspaper
8. You can see my recent articles here
9. We’re still safe – apart from a few border failure, NZ has had almost no community transmission of COVID for months
10. This is totally insane
11. It also means we have an essentially normal life here; no masks, no isolation
12. Of course, this could all change any day, so it’s still nearly impossible to plan for the future
13. But for now, it’s enough
14. We still miss everyone back home
15. There is a cat here
16. The roses are blooming

Wishing you all a happy (almost) Thanksgiving!

It is with much joy and disbelief that I write to you today to tell you that our time in Wallace has ended. Wallace, our trusty campervan, carried us all throughout New Zealand, from Auckland to Christchurch. For sixty two days we lived within his metal walls, and though I am weak with relief at the thought of no longer banging my head on his door frames or having to go outside to pee at 2am in the freezing cold, I am very grateful for the time Wallace and I spent together. My bruises will fade, but the memories will last a lifetime.

Last I wrote Byron and I were in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city on the southernmost part of the North Island. Shortly after I wrote that post we took the Interislander Ferry from Wellington to Picton.

Taking the ferry was a unique experience (did you know you could just drive onto a boat? Wild.). The crossing was freezing but beautiful, and we had a clear day for our first glimpse of the South Island.

New Zealand’s North Island is beautiful, but it’s a constant, casual beauty. There are lots of rolling green hills and blue lakes, and miles of beaches and rocky shoreline. The South Island is more dramatically beautiful. The mountains are taller and capped with snow, and coasts are dotted with seals and dolphins. The South Island is also much more sparsely populated than the North, especially now that winter and COVID have depressed tourism so severely.

Because we booked our campervan for far longer than strictly necessary, we had plenty of time to meander wherever struck our fancy. We started off in Abel Tasman, a beautiful national park with golden sand beaches and impressively long walking trails. We spotted a weka, which is a hilarious-looking bird that is famous for stealing things – food, shiny objects, anything it can get its, uh, beak on, I suppose.

From Abel Tasman we drove south along the west coast. There isn’t a whole lot to do on the west coast except for drive from small town to small town, but the drives are stunningly beautiful. We drove from Westport to Punakaiki to Hokitika (an old gold-mining town), and finally ended up near Fox Glacier where we walked around Lake Matheson and enjoyed the incredible reflections of the nearby snowy mountains.

As a side note, I am still totally thrown off by the different seasons in the Southern Hemisphere. I mean, I get that that’s how it works geographically, but it still feels so wrong to be this cold in June and July! Ah well, on the bright side all of the knitting totally paid off and we were well insulated from the cold. (Byron disputes this, but he doesn’t like to wear socks, so I think there are deeper issues at play).

After our tour of the west coast we went through the Haast mountain pass and spent some time in Wanaka and Queenstown. Both locales sport extremely cute cities up against lakes, and both come equipped with excellent options for bubble tea. I may have gone slightly overboard…

We spent the Fourth of July in Dunedin, where we celebrated by eating hamburgers (the most American food we could get our hands on) and watching our first-ever rugby match. I don’t 100% know how the rules work but it was very exciting, even though our newly-adopted team, the Otago Highlanders, got crushed by the Canterbury Crusaders.

Dunedin was a lovely city, full of old stone buildings and tons of bookshops. It’s also home to the University of Otago, so it has sort of a college-town feel, which we enjoyed after spending so many nights in holiday parks. Holiday parks are nice, but in most places they tend to attract a lot of older Kiwis who are usually perfectly pleasant, but can sometimes be quite xenophobic and judgmental. I think because New Zealand was isolated from most of the world for so long, a lot of the older generations aren’t really that jazzed about globalization and mostly want the foreigners to conform or get out. Most of the younger people we met, however, were much more welcoming, and much more accustomed to meeting people from all over the world.

After Dunedin we continued up the east coast to Oamaru, then headed inland to visit Mount Cook. Mount Cook was freezing, but absolutely worth the trip. Really if you are only ever going to see one snowy mountain in your life you should make it that one, because it is just lovely. Plus, there’s a great walking trail to get to the base, so you don’t actually have to hike up the mountain to get the incredible views.

After Mount Cook we made our way to Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city (behind Auckland). We hung out there for a few days, just long enough to get the lay of the land, before making our way to Kaikoura, our final stop of the trip.

I am still amazed and relieved that we were able to travel for the full two months of our campervan rental. New Zealand has still seen no community transmission of COVID, and while there have been new cases from Kiwis returning from overseas, the risk of contracting COVID while we are here is currently almost nonexistent. We got ridiculously lucky to be here, we only wish we could teleport our family and friends here as well.

Now we’re just trying to decide what comes next. We’re thinking of living in a few different cities while we’re here, starting with Christchurch. We found a nice hostel with a courtyard, and we have a private room with our own attached bathroom (ah, the luxury!). I bought a bike and joined a climbing gym, and so far I’ve only gotten lost twice so things are looking good.

In another bit of good news, I finally got my working holiday visa! Now, both Byron and I are approved to live and work here until next May. It’s not totally clear what sort of work we’ll be able to find, as there are conditions on the types of jobs we can accept with this kind of visa, plus most companies would rather hire New Zealanders who will be in the country for longer than a year But still, even to be allowed to stay here and enjoy the freedoms of normal life is amazing and surreal, so I really can’t complain.

Greetings from Wellington!

In the last 22 days, Byron and I have traversed most of the North Island of New Zealand. In our trusty camper van Wallace, we went up from Auckland into Northland, swooped back through Auckland on our way to the Coromandel, passed through Hamilton and Rotorua, hung out by Lake Taupo, visited vineyards in Napier, and finally headed down to Wellington on the very bottom of the North Island. Tomorrow, we’ll take the Interislander Ferry to Picton on the South Island, where our adventure will continue.

Highlights included: HOBBITON!!! Oh my goodness we saw Hobbiton and it was amazing and I wish I could live there and I took a million pictures but in the interest of not using up all of my data I will limit myself to including just a few.

Other highlight – we saw Narnia! Also known as Cathedral Cove, this is where they filmed the entrance to Narnia at the beginning of the second Chronicles of Narnia movie (Prince Caspian).

We’re now just over one third of the way through our camper-van trip, and getting the hang of Wallace-style living. We can turn the back from storage facility to sleeping cave in four minutes flat, cook anything on a camp stove, and use a dump station without soaking ourselves in dirty water.

In other exciting news – at the time of this writing, New Zealand has no active COVID cases. We’re now down to alert level 1, which basically means life as normal, except that the borders are still closed to non-Kiwis. There’s talk of eventually opening up a trans-Tasman bubble between NZ, Australia, and some of the Pacific Islands, but I don’t think that will be happening in the near future. In the meantime we’re all hoping that NZ has indeed stamped out the virus, but we’ll need a few more weeks of no new cases before we can be sure.

New Zealand continues to amaze us with its casual beauty. Even the most mundane of drives often takes us through rolling hills dotted with sheep, or along rocky coastlines with swooping gulls and beautiful blue waters. There are also plenty of freedom camping spots along rivers and beaches, though these get quite crowded on holiday weekends. Thankfully, Wallace is only a baby van, and where he fits, he sits!

We’re still missing our families, of course, and home, even with everything going on. It’s very strange to be on the other side of the world when so many sad and important things are happening. It feels like cheating, somehow, like we’re opting out of the experience of being in America right now, which has it’s benefits (re: exploring New Zealand, lack of COVID), but it’s hard not to feel like we should be home protesting or working to make things better in some other way.

Homesickness aside, New Zealand is an incredible place to be right now. Byron’s working holiday visa has come through (huzzah!), and hopefully mine will be approved soon. Those visas would allow us to stay for up to a year and earn some money if there are any jobs to be had. The earning money thing would be crucial, as between Byron visiting all the golf courses he can find, and me popping in to any yarn shop that’s even vaguely on our route, we’re rapidly losing both cash and room to move around in our van.

Either way, we have the cash and legal status to be here until at least late September, so the adventure is just getting started. Hopefully I can knit fast enough to finish a sweater and mittens before we go too much further south! Winter is coming.

We arrived in New Zealand on March 18. Exhausted from our last minute Malaysia exodus, we gratefully collapsed into the safety and sanctuary of an apartment in Auckland.

We stayed in that apartment for 61 days.

For 61 days we checked the news – “New Zealand COVID 19” is now a permanent selection in my phone’s search bar. We watched the country shut down, and stay in lockdown for five weeks.

We watched the country take baby steps toward easing the lockdown, which were encouraging but not a sure sign that things would ever really be normal here. We were gambling. Our tourist visa had been extended until September 25, and we were gambling that if we stuck it out in Auckland through the lockdown, we’d be able to travel in New Zealand once the restrictions were lifted. It was a big gamble, could New Zealand really beat the virus? If they did, would they let people move freely around the country, or insist that everyone stay in their home regions just in case? We waited and each day we were anxious and hopeful and praying that we weren’t burning through our travel budget for no reason.

Then it happened. We moved into level 2, and the government announced that travel throughout the country would be allowed.

On May 18, exactly two months since we staggered into our Queen Street apartment, we dragged all our possessions to the curb and called a ride share to take us to Epic Campervans. There we met Wallace, the little white van that we’ve called home for the last ten days as we’ve finally, finally been able to explore this amazing country.

We rented Wallace for 62 days, during which time we plan to meander all around New Zealand, soaking in the sights of mountains and sea, of rolling green hills dotted with sheep (SHEEP!). There is always a chance that COVID cases spike again here, always the chance that the freedom to travel is rescinded if the threat of the virus increases, but so far that hasn’t happened. At the time of this writing, New Zealand has seen it’s fifth day in a row with no new COVID cases. Since we arrived in March, there have been 15 days of no new cases. But there are still many weeks to go before we can really know if the virus has been contained here.

In the meantime, every day we get to travel and explore feels like a gift. We’ve spent the first week or so exploring the far north of New Zealand, camping beside beaches and bays, and beneath trees and rainbows.

Wallace is a very well equipped van. He has a pull-out kitchen in the back, his own fresh water supply, and a grey water tank that fills up when we use our sink. There is a tiny toilet (basically a fancy bucket with a lid) that we will never, ever use, but that needs to be included so that Wallace is officially a “self-contained” vehicle. Being self-contained means that we can “Freedom Camp”, aka park up in designated areas (that have public toilets) and just sleep in the van. On nights where we don’t have a freedom camping option – or our need for a shower is desperate – we can stay in one of NZ’s many holiday parks, which generally have showers, communal kitchens, and coin-operated washing machines. One particularly nice holiday park in Ahipara even had a huge fireplace in their lounge. I could have stayed there curled up in front of the fire with my book for weeks.

After we completed our tour of Northland, we swung through Auckland to take care of a few last errands before heading east to the Coromandel. We’ll be here for a few days before stopping in Hobbiton and then continuing south. Assuming all goes well, we’ll finish our NZ tour in Christchurch in mid-July. After that, who knows. My ability to plan for the future has been shattered so many times I’m wary to make plans past next week or so, but whatever happens it will be quite an adventure.

I love fingerless gloves. I love that they are quick to make, I love that I can knit them on double pointed needles with leftover yarn, and I love that I can wear them in many seasons and still have my fingers free to use my phone or take photos or knit.

I designed and knit this pair of gloves on a long train from Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to Bangkok. In preparation for lots of transit time on this long trip, I had packed two skeins of Rowan fine art sock yarn. After I used one skein to make the Sockhead hat (pattern on Ravelry), I had plenty of leftovers for a pair of gloves.

After we got to Auckland, New Zealand, I wrote up the pattern and added an option for a larger size. You’ll need a bit more yarn for that one, but it still uses less than 50g of sock yarn. I have pretty small hands but the gloves would stretch to fit most adults with small to medium hands. The larger size should work for most others, as the gloves are quite stretchy.

Gauge: approx 3sts per centimeter. Don’t worry about row gauge, just knit until you have the length you want for each part of the glove.
Needles: US size 2 double pointed needles (or size needed to achieve gauge)
Yarn: Approx 50 grams/200 meters sock yarn (or leftovers from your most recent sock-yarn project)

Pattern:

Size: Adult small (large)

CO 48 (56) sts over 3 dpns. Place marker for beginning of round
Work in K2P2 rib for approx 8cm
Work in stockinette stitch for four rounds
On fifth round: K2, M1R, knit until 2 sts before end of round, M1L, K2 (end of round, two stitches increased)
Repeat increase round every other row 3 times more – 8 stitches increased, 56 (64) stitches total

Knit in stockinette stitch for 3cm, ending 8 (10) sts before the end of a round
Knit next 16 (20) sts and place them on scrap yarn or stitch holder (these will be knit later for the thumb. Knit rest of round in stockinette stitch – 40 (44) sts remaining
Knit remaining stitches in the round in stockinette stitch for 3cm
Switch to K2P2 rib for another 3cm, or until gloves are a length you are happy with
Bind off loosely.

Transfer thumb stitches from waste yarn to needles. When joining yarn, leave a long tail to sew the gap that will be left between the knitted thumb and body of the mitt. Work in K2P2 rib until thumb measures approx 2.5 cm. Bind off loosely.

Weave in ends. Huzzah! Your gloves are finished.

Block if you please, or just wear them and block once the gloves are ready to be washed for the first time.

Hello again! Apologies for the long delay in posting, I shall try to make up for it with interesting photos to share.

First of all, both Byron and I are alive and well in New Zealand. We’re still in Auckland, in our little Airbnb apartment. We’ve extended the rental so many times, I expect we’ll be able to write a very thorough review of the property by the time we actually leave. Right now it’s a rainy Sunday afternoon, and we are holed up with tea and shortbread as the days get cooler and we are all crossing our fingers that New Zealand has avoided the worst of the epidemic.

So far New Zealand has done a great job containing the outbreak. We spent about five weeks in level 4 lockdown, and then this past Tuesday we moved into level 3. The whole city was so excited, they even set off a few fireworks at midnight when we officially moved down an alert level. If we stood in the corner of our balcony and leaned the right way, we could just see the top of the fireworks over the roof of a nearby building.

While it’s incredibly encouraging to move out of the strictest level of quarantine, level 3 is in many ways similar to level 4. We still can’t move around freely, or have contact with anyone outside our bubble. However, there are a few wonderful improvements about level 3.

First, WE CAN GET YARN! Or, more accurately, I can get yarn. Byron has (strangely) no interest in obtaining yarn, but I sense he’s happy for me. Non-essential retail is allowed to operate in New Zealand as long as there is no contact between employees and customers. Naturally, our first order of business the day we went into level 3 was to go on a quest through the city to collect my treasures.

On our way back we meandered through Auckland Domain and stopped to take a few photos by the duck pond. That’s me wearing my finished sweater, I completed it before the end of level 4 lockdown! And just in time for fall here in NZ.

The second improvement – we are now allowed to go hiking (or “tramping” as they call it in New Zealand), so long as we stay in our current region and don’t do anything dangerous that would require us to be rescued. We took advantage of this by hiking up Mount Eden, an inactive volcano with lovely views of the city and surrounding scenery.

The final perk – we can now get takeout. Under level 4 the only way we were allowed to get food was from the grocery store, but now restaurants are allowed to offer food for pickup or delivery. For us, this meant we were finally able to obtain bubble tea, the drink with the squishy tapioca pearls for which Byron and I both harbor a minor addiction. There was much rejoicing.

Overall, things have been fine. I have good days and bad days, days where staying inside (with no mosquitos, spiders, or cockroaches) and being able to cook our own food feels like an incredible luxury, and days where I am consumed with anxiety. One of my goals for this trip was to become more comfortable with uncertainty, with not having the next step of my life planned out all the time. So perhaps this is a “be careful what you wish for” type situation? In any case, I’m extremely grateful to be here with my favorite adventure-buddy, to be in a cozy apartment on this cold and rainy day, and to have the ability to check in with friends and family, even though we are thousands of miles away.

Plus, the yarn. Always the yarn.

Hello again from New Zealand! Things are both vastly different and remarkably unchanged since the last time I wrote. Allow me to explain.

We were some of the last foreigners allowed into New Zealand before the borders were closed to tourists. Since we were arriving from overseas, we were required to self-isolate for 14 days upon arrival, after which time we would be free to move about the country. Or at least, that was the situation about two weeks ago when I last posted.

However, about 5 days into our 14-day self-isolation, New Zealand announced that the entire country would be going into a minimum 4-week lockdown starting in 48 hours. Only essential services would be open, and movement around the country would be restricted. Suddenly our 2 week quarantine would become a 5 week quarantine.

So, we had a decision to make. Did we stay in New Zealand and hope that the quarantine lifted on time so that we could see some of the country before our tourist visa expired in June? Or did we try to catch a flight home rather than spend money on an apartment? Would we even be allowed to leave the country given that we were still under our 14-day mandatory self-isolation? And what would we even do if we did make it home, since the US economy was so thoroughly in shambles?

Ultimately, we decided to wait it out. New Zealand was acting early and thoroughly enough, we reasoned, that they’d have a decent chance of stopping the spread of COVID-19 in a way that the US had already failed to do. New Zealand was probably a safer place for us to be. Plus, if we stayed, we’d be together. If we went home we’d both be able to live with our respective families during the crisis, but seeing each other in person would become next to impossible for the duration of the epidemic.

So, here we are. It’s now 9 days into New Zealand’s 4 week quarantine, and Auckland is essentially a ghost town. You see, when New Zealand means only ‘essential services’ can operate, they mean only essential services. It’s not like the US where it seems any store that could conceivably sell something useful is allowed to operate, in New Zealand right now the only things that are allowed to operate are grocery stores, banks, and pharmacies. That’s it. Only a few days ago did they even make an exception to allow online deliveries of items like appliances and blankets. They are taking this quarantine seriously.

It’s still too soon to know if the restrictions are working, but we’re hopeful. New Zealand’s immigration has also been quite helpful and accommodating given the situation. Byron and I received notice that due to travel difficulties our tourist visas will be extended until September 25th of this year. This was a huge relief, as it gives us time to figure out a plan moving forward, and also makes it more likely that we’ll have time to see something of New Zealand once the quarantine is lifted. We’re also in the process of applying for working holiday visas, which would allow us to remain in the country for one year and work temporary jobs to supplement our travel funds. Given that we had only budgeted to be traveling for 8 months or so before returning to the US to look for jobs, the ability to earn some extra income during this time would be amazing.

In the meantime, we are still here in our Auckland apartment. I’m still reveling in our ability to make our own food instead of having to eat out all the time (also NZ closed all the restaurants even for take out, so we couldn’t buy restaurant food even if we wanted to). I’ve been keeping us well supplied with homemade scones and shortbread, and drinking probably 4-5 cups of tea a day, most of it from the tea garden we visited in Sabah, Malaysia what seems like forever ago. (While proofreading this blog post for me, Byron insisted I talk up the tea more. The tea is truly great, thank goodness we bought a box of 100 tea bags!)

Fortunately for us, Auckland is full of many lovely parks within walking distance of our apartment. Our two favorites are Victoria Park, which has a great track for walking or jogging, and is lined with impressively huge trees, and Western Park, which feels more like a nature walk with winding trails, a variety of plants, and many trilling birds.

Even with our daily walk, most of our time each day is spent indoors. Thankfully I am uniquely well suited to quarantining, given that I love being cozy, making myself little indoor nests, drinking tea, reading, writing, drawing, painting, and of course, knitting.

My foremost concern is my dwindling yarn supply. You see, unfortunately, the New Zealand government mistakenly classified yarn stores as ‘non-essential’, which means despite being in the land of mountains and sheep, despite being in a city with at least 4 yarn stores, I cannot buy any new yarn supplies. I have only what I brought with me from home and what I bought in Hanoi back in February.

So the knitting continues – the sweater especially is coming along nicely, though I’ve had to improvise when I ran out of the colors I wanted! – but with trepidation. For every row I knit brings me closer to the nigh-apocalyptic scenario of having no more yarn at all. Knitting less is simply not an option. I think I can make it, I think my yarn supply can last three more weeks, but if this quarantine gets extended? I shudder to think of it.

I worried about a lot of things when Byron and I started our trip in January. I worried that we were making a mistake quitting our jobs. I worried that we’d have trouble finding work when we came back, especially if the economy was in a recession by then. I worried that our credit cards would get hacked or our wallets stolen. I worried that I’d get homesick. I worried that I’d packed too much, or too little. Not once did I worry about the possibility of a global pandemic.

The first time we started to see the effects of the coronavirus was when we were in Vietnam. Tourist numbers were way down, travel bans to and from China had just started to take effect, but apart from that everything was normal. We were told to wash our hands a bunch and not sneeze on people, but those are basic traveling and safety precautions even at the best of times.

Things didn’t get much more serious than that for a while. More countries started to be affected, yes, mainly Japan and South Korea, but even then it looked like we’d be fine as long as we were careful, as long as we were willing to be flexible with which countries we visited.

That was more or less the situation on March 5 when we flew from Bangkok to Brunei, a tiny oil-rich country on the island of Borneo. Originally Byron and I had planned to spend a couple weeks exploring Borneo before flying out of Kota Kinabalu to meet friends in the Philippines and Japan. By the 5th, however, this part of the trip had been axed. Anyone flying out of the US to meet us would face quarantines and other travel restrictions when returning home, and if we visited Japan or any other country where COVID-19 cases had been relatively high, we’d have issues crossing borders for weeks to come.

So we had a new plan, we were going to relax and enjoy being in Borneo, an amazing jungle-covered island that’s largely undeveloped, for about a month. Then we’d continue on to India and Nepal, and go on our merry way.

For a while this seemed feasible. We spent a day in Bandar Seri Bagawan, Brunei’s capital city. My favorite part of the day was an impromptu river boat ride where our guide took us into the jungle to see proboscis monkeys.

On March 7th we took two ferries to get to Kota Kinabalu (KK), one of the major cities in the Malaysian part of Borneo. Ferries are not my favorite way to travel (I get seasick) but flights mess up our budget so we did our best. We spent a few days resting in KK, and it seemed all was well. Malaysia had very few coronavirus cases at that point, and Borneo is quite isolated so we felt reasonably safe. We also had a great setup. We were staying in a modern, 2-bedroom apartment for about $30 a night. We had a kitchen so we could cook most of our meals, and the apartment building was connected to an American-style shopping mall so we could wander around and get any food and supplies that we needed. I barely left that apartment, and at the end of three nights was rested and ready for our road trip.

We rented a car from KK and were planning to take an extended road trip around Malaysian Borneo. We started off with a few days in Ranau, a few hours inland from KK. The drive there was absolutely incredible. Every turn produced a new stunning view. We were surrounded by mountains and valleys all blanketed in lush greenery.

On our way in we stopped at a dairy farm, which I’m pretty sure is a tourist attraction only because dairy farms (and really dairy consumption) is so rare in Southeast Asia in general. But we were quite happy to visit. I’m pretty sure Byron drank all their available milk, but they didn’t seem too upset. We got to pet calves and enjoy the sweeping views.

We also had time to visit a nearby tea plantation, again with incredible views (and great tea – I bought a giant pack of it that I’m still working through). All was well.

And finally we took a day trip to Mount Kinabalu, where we hiked through the jungle and spent a long time exploring a botanical garden at the base of the mountain.

In Ranau though, we started to get even more nervous. Travel was becoming increasingly restricted between countries, and it seemed clear that we would not be able to finish our trip as planned. We still thought we’d be able to travel somewhere, but we knew we might be temporarily delayed wherever we ended up. After much deliberation, we decided that instead of going through India to Southern Africa to South America, we’d switch directions and to the opposite way around the globe, stopping for a few weeks in New Zealand before going to South America. Maybe we could even see Patagonia while it was still shoulder season. We wanted to be careful about where we took layovers, in case we got stuck anywhere, so we booked a flight from KK to Singapore on March 31, followed by a flight from Singapore to Auckland connecting through Brisbane. I was so excited – a month in Borneo followed by three weeks of seeing mountains and sheep in New Zealand, what an amazing occurrence! We resumed our relaxing, confident that this plan would be a good one. This plan would work.

We journeyed on to Kudat, at the very tip of Malaysian Borneo. We stayed at a place called “9 Huts on a Hill” which overlooked the beach. The accommodations there were a mixed bag. The first night was absolutely awful. True to the name, we were staying in a grass and bamboo hut on a hill. Our room consisted of a truly terrible mattress on the floor covered in a torn mosquito net. There was a single fan in the corner of the room. Surprisingly, I slept well for the first half of the night, until around 2am when I awoke with a scream. I’d felt a bug crawling on my face and mouth and was absolutely terrified. I woke Byron up and we turned on a light but I couldn’t find the bug. I was just starting to calm down, thinking I’d imagined it, when I realized the bug was hiding in my hair. It was a three inch long cockroach. I didn’t sleep well after that.

The next day we were moved a room at the other end of the hut with a more functional mosquito net and two terrible mattresses stacked on top of another. Two terrible mattresses don’t really equal one good mattress, but I appreciated the effort. Apart from this initial trauma, we had a nice time in Kudat. The guesthouse (guest-hut?) offers free daily yoga classes on a platform overlooking the sea, and our instructor was wonderful. I can almost put my heels down in downward dog now which is a huge improvement for me!

I knit, we both read in hammocks, and we tried to relax, but it was difficult. Things were getting worse. New Zealand had announced a 14-day mandatory self-isolation period for all travelers, and it seemed like walls were going up all over the world.

We tried to tell ourselves that things were going to be fine. Malaysia still hadn’t seen very many cases, New Zealand was still letting people in, flights were still available, there was no need to panic. Unfortunately, I am very bad at not panicking.

And then Malaysia’s coronavirus case count skyrocketed. A meeting at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur (the main city in peninsular Malaysia) had led to the infection of hundreds of individuals. So even though we were theoretically far from danger in Borneo, Malaysia would soon raise red flags for travel. The situation was changing hourly, and we were scared. Should we leave now? Could we even afford to? Were we overreacting?

For the sake of argument we decided to see if it would be even possible to cut and run to New Zealand. When was the soonest we could get there? We discovered that Scoot, the airline we were planning to take from KK to Singapore, was giving out free date changes because of the coronavirus travel chaos. We could take a flight to Singapore the next day. We didn’t know if we’d be able to change our flight to New Zealand, but there were flights available, so it was possible.

We agonized over it for hours. We had been so excited to explore Borneo, but would we really be able to enjoy it if the threat of new travel restrictions was always over our heads? Ultimately we decided to go for it. Better safe than sorry, we thought. Better to regret missing a couple weeks of vacation that to regret being stuck indefinitely in Malaysia.

The next morning we left at 5:40am to drive the three hours back to KK. We returned our rental car early, killed some time in the airport, and to our relief boarded the plane to Singapore without incident. After we took off, we realized just how lucky we had been. The man sitting next to us told us that just that morning Malaysia had announced that a no-travel restriction would be in place the following day. Everything would be closed. Foreigners would probably be allowed to leave, provided they could find a flight. Byron and I were stunned, we had left just in time.

The next 24 hours were some of the most mentally and physically exhausting I’ve ever endured. Byron will be publishing a post detailing the chaos of actually getting to Auckland in the next couple days (check out riversandmountains.travel.blog for the full story), but suffice it to say we spent about 5 hours combined standing in lines, kept coming up against unexpected hurdles, and were ultimately only sure we’d be allowed in when the plane landed in Auckland.

A few observations about traveling during the COVID-19 chaos:

• Rules are changing faster than people on the front lines can keep up with. Some processes don’t make sense, and very few people have the full picture of what is happening at any given time.
• Overall, the airline employees in Singapore and New Zealand were incredibly helpful and accommodating despite the chaos and the stress they are certainly under. There are exceptions to this, but they are just that, exceptions.
• Some customers are really horrible when they are stressed. A couple stand out examples of this;
• 1. A couple flying to San Francisco after leaving Bali who refused to leave the counter for almost an hour because they were only in extra-leg room sets as opposed to economy plus so they “weren’t getting what they paid for”, which to be fair would be annoying if these were normal circumstances but seems remarkably petty to care about during a time like this
• 2. Parents with two kids who’d missed their 6:30pm flight to Auckland and were literally screaming at the transfer counter employees because they hadn’t seen them waiting in the lobby and gone over to remind them what time their flight was? I’m not sure. People are exhausting.
• A lot of people will offer to help you. During one of our many waits in line we met a really nice New Zealand woman who chatted with us about our self-isolation plans, and gave us her phone number and the address of where she’d be isolating in case we ran into any trouble when we got in the country. We’ve had similar encounters all over the world, and it always does a lot to restore my faith in the decency of most people.

Miracle of miracles, three days ago we arrived safely in Auckland, New Zealand. We got through the health screening, immigration, and customs with no issues. Our bags were waiting for us. In fact, the only casualty of our last-minute exodus from Malaysia was a baseball cap I’d left behind on the plane (sorry Dad, I’ll buy you a new one, I swear!). Well, a hat plus part of our sanity, but we’re slowly gaining that back.

Again, our timing was scarily good. New Zealand has now closed it’s borders to foreign travelers. If we had left just a few days later we wouldn’t have been allowed in.

At the moment we’re a few days in to our mandatory 14-day self isolation. We rented a lovely apartment through Airbnb with a full kitchen, a balcony, and lots of natural light. I’ve never been so happy to be stuck in one place.

After that, who knows. With any luck we’ll be in New Zealand for the foreseeable future. Our tourist visa is valid for 90 days. We’re currently in the process of applying for a working holiday visa, which would let us stay in the country for one year and work temporary jobs to supplement our travel money. Fingers crossed that works out, but I’ve grown wary of making any definitive plans of late!

Still, despite the uncertainty, we are deeply grateful. We are safe, we are healthy, we are together. And finally, finally, we are in a country full of yarn.

This past week or so has been a challenge. We saw some incredible things, but travel fatigue began to set in. In Chiang Mai (northern Thailand) I got flattened by allergies, which were exacerbated by the fact that it is burning season at the moment. As slash and burn farming is still quite common in Thailand, the air is full of smoky particles that were wreaking havoc on my eyes and nose. Still, that did not deter us from enjoying Chaing Mai. By total coincidence, we ended up staying in the same guest house as one of our friends from high school, Will, who showed us around some of the many beautiful temples (wats) in the area.

For me, one highlight of Chiang Mai was a Thai cooking class. We visited a market and learned to make coconut milk soup, yellow curry, and pad Thai. Quite delicious and very fancy-looking.

Another highlight of Chiang Mai was the abundance of used book stores. We saw at least three, which was both amazing and dangerous. I (somewhat unwisely) bought a stack of books from two of them, and would no doubt have purchased more books from the third shop had Byron not forcibly restrained me. I regret nothing.

After a few days in Chiang Mai we took a twelve hour train to Bangkok. Though the train itself was quite luxurious by our standards (by luxurious I mean that we were given tea and snacks and the bathrooms were pretty clean), twelve hours is still a long time to be on a train, and we were pretty exhausted by the time we arrived in Bangkok.

We had only planned to spend a day in Bangkok. To make the most of that time, as well as recover from our travels, we spent several hours in the National Museum of Bangkok appreciating the many, many Buddha statues and other ornate decorations kept there.

In another ‘what a small world’-style coincidence, one of Byron’s dad’s childhood neighbors had been living in Bangkok for years, and offered to take us out for dinner when we were in town. We gladly accepted, and had a lovely evening meeting Neal and discussing everything from travel to family to politics. It was also the first time in weeks that Byron and I had eaten in a restaurant with tablecloths; we felt very spoiled.

After our whirlwind visit to Bangkok we hopped on an 8.5 hour bus ride to Siem Reap in Cambodia, where we intended to spend a few days visiting Angkor Wat. The most eventful part of this bus ride was crossing the border from Thailand into Cambodia. Borders are strange and stressful places at the best of times. This border was not the best of times.

The trouble began at Thailand’s exit customs, where you hand over your passport and departure form and wait to be allowed to exit the country. I waited in front of the border guard for a heart-stopping fifteen minutes after I’d handed over my documents. Everyone else had gone through immediately, but I had been delayed. I tried to stay calm while my mind raced with possibilities. Had they seen me sneeze from allergies and planned to detain me for possible coronavirus exposure? Did my fingerprints match those of a Thai serial killer and were they about to throw me in prison? No, as it turned out the delay was caused by the fact that half of one of the numbers on the bottom of my passport had rubbed off. Eventually, the guard consented to let me leave the country.

Now, normally once you get through one country’s exit immigration you almost immediately go through the next country’s entry immigration. At the Thailand-Cambodia border that is not the case. Instead you enter a strange no-man’s land filled with dirt roads, casinos, beggars, and racing motorbikes. Thankfully our guide from the bus led us through this maze to an unmarked building that served as the Cambodian check-in point. Thankfully, we were let into Cambodia with no issues.

By the time we arrived at our hotel in Cambodia I was exhausted. I was both mentally and physically worn down from our fast pace over the last couple weeks, and had reached breaking point. That I burst into tears when the shower head wouldn’t stay in the wall mount properly was a good indication that we needed to slow it down.

So, slow it down we did. We took our time in Cambodia, taking a rest day to enjoy the hotel and surrounding area before exploring Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat is an enormous Buddhist temple complex, possibly the largest religious monument in the world. We spent two days exploring the different temples, and saw less than half of the entire complex. On the second day we rose at 4:30am to take a stunning sunrise tour where we watched the starry sky become saturated with red light, to be finally overtaken by blue sky as the sun rose from behind the flagship temple and outlined it in gold.

Beside the sheer number, size, and beauty of the temples, Angkor Wat is also surrounded by a relatively untouched forest. In fact, the forest is trying to reclaim the complex, with trees growing in and around ancient walls.

It was an awe-inspiring, surprisingly peaceful place to visit. To be fair, the peace was at least in part due to the coronavirus suppressing tourism in the area, but even still, I’d say Angkor Wat is well worth a visit if you are ever able to come to the area.

Four days after arriving in Cambodia, feeling a bit more rested than before, we again boarded the bus that would take us back to Bangkok, where we are right now. We decided to extend our stay here for a few days to make sure we aren’t over-stretching ourselves. So far we’ve seen another temple, eaten a lot more Thai food, gotten Thai massages, and just this morning I finally filed my taxes (shout out to my mom for going on a video-chat-led scavenger hunt through my stuff back home to find forms and passwords).

It’s been an okay week for creative pursuits – I’m still struggling to make time for drawing and painting, but I’ve found the break between ordering and receiving food at restaurants is often just enough time for a quick sketch of something.

Sadly, I get pretty motion-sick on buses, so simple knitting was all I could handle, but I did manage to finish a pair of fingerless gloves (I just made up the pattern) and most of one sock. If we ever manage to find cold weather, I will be prepared.

WE SAW ELEPHANTS.

Other cool stuff happened because Laos has a surprising number of interesting things to see and also good food but first – ELEPHANTS!!

Please enjoy this photo dump of the most magnificent and lovable creatures; elephants. Seeing elephants was one of my top priorities while visiting Southeast Asia but we wanted to do it responsibly. There are innumerable elephant tour companies in both Laos and Thailand, but most of them care much more about getting money from tourists than they do about the welfare of the elephants themselves. Thankfully, Byron had been doing research into elephant sanctuaries with good reputations, so when we stumbled across Mandalao’s office in Luang Prabang we were confident that they had a good track record of protecting, rather than exploiting, the animals in their care.

We also had a fair amount of luck – the coronavirus has seriously depressed travel throughout much of Asia, which meant tours that are often booked weeks or months in advance suddenly had openings, so we were able to book a walking elephant tour only two days in advance.

The tour itself was amazing. We learned a bit about the conservation work that Mandalao is doing, then headed out to meet our elephant friends – Tem and Peng. We fed them bananas (Tem just used her trunk to grab them out of our hands) and walked with them along a jungle trail to a clearing where we all had lunch.

The walk itself was pretty telling of how well Mandalao treats their elephants. When elephants are used mainly for tourism they are trained to do things on a human’s schedule – walk around for hours with people on their back, stand in water for hours so tourists can help ‘bathe’ them, and so on. Training these massive animals to follow commands can result in very poor treatment. Here though, we were on the elephants’ schedule. Our short walk to the lunch clearing took hours as the elephants stopped to munch some sugarcane, to tear down a small tree in search of tasty leaves, or just because they no longer felt like walking. These delays all felt like a win-win to me, the elephants got to relax and take their time, and the longer they took to complete the walk, the more time we got to spend with them!

The elephants alone would have been enough to make Luang Prabang a great stop, but the adventures didn’t stop there. We also motorbiked to the Kuang Si Falls just outside the city.

The falls themselves were beautiful – lovely views, clear turquoise water – but for me the real attraction was the bears. Yes, bears! Right next to the falls is a small bear sanctuary for Asian moon bears. These bears are often illegally snared and kept in captivity to harvest their bile. Thankfully, many of them have been rescued and are being kept in sanctuaries like the one in Luang Prabang. They are simply adorable.

We also spent time in Laos visiting temples, wandering around the town, exploring the surprisingly large night market, and enjoying the sunset beside the river.

We spent four nights in Luang Prabang, and then the real adventure began – getting to Thailand. We opted to take the “slow boat” up the Mekong River. The journey takes two days. In case you are ever interested in taking this route yourself, I’ve included a guide to the journey below.

Getting from Luang Prabang, Laos, to Chiang Rai, Thailand

• Arrange to buy tickets for both days of the slow boat through your hotel. Be only reasonably confident that you are buying the correct tickets because of the language barrier. Make sure you do not receive the physical tickets until the morning of your departure, or that would spoil the fun.
• Take a tuk tuk (basically a cross between a golf cart and a wagon that serve as taxis) to the slow boat pier, which is just a small concrete building next to the river bank. Hand over your tickets and wait for someone to nod encouragingly to reassure you that you are in the right place.
• Board the boat. This will involve walking down a long, steep set of stairs that have been carved into the stone river bank, then walking across the 8-inch plank of wood that connects the shore to the boat, all while carrying all your luggage on your back. Don’t forget – shoes are not allowed to be worn on the boat, so before you step inside make sure you remove your hiking boots… without setting down any of your stuff.
• You made it on the boat, congratulations! Now you can relax for the next 9 hours. Might I suggest some knitting?
• Okay, great, it’s time for the first stop – Pak Beng. First, reverse the process of boarding the boat by climbing another set of steep stairs (it’s easiest if you use your hands to avoid falling over), then wander the street of this small town until you find a place to stay. You could have booked a place in advance, of course, but again that would spoil the adventure. Also you were only reasonably confident the boat would get you here at all.
• Enjoy a sound night of sleep, then wake up bright and early to gobble down some breakfast before once again boarding the boat.
• Relax for another 8 hours.
• You have arrived at the border, huzzah! Now the real fun begins. There are no stairs this time – no, there is essentially a vertical rock scramble once you exit the boat here (have I mentioned infrastructure in Laos is basically nonexistent?). Best of luck.
• Once you make it to the top, take three breaths of fresh air to remind yourself you are alive.
• Good. Now board another tuk tuk with any other boat passengers trying to make it into Thailand. The tuk tuk will take you to the Friendship Bridge that connects Laos and Thailand.
• Go through Laos’ exit immigration.
• Board a bus to take you across the bridge.
• Go through Thailand’s entry immigration. They will be incredibly rude to you for no reason. Just accept it.
• You made it to Thailand! Only you are not anywhere in Thailand you actually want to be, and the buses to Chiang Rai don’t start until the morning. If you can, team up with the other boat passengers to hire a van to drive you to Chiang Rai.
• Book a hotel in Chiang Rai while waiting for your van to arrive.
• After your two hour van ride drops you off in the center of Chiang Rai, wander the streets for a while looking for your hotel. Google maps is only sort of functional here.
• After 30 min of walking with all your luggage, arrive at your hotel at 9pm. Cry tears of relief when they offer to make you some fried rice for dinner so you don’t have to go back into the city that night.
• Eat. Sleep. Rejoice. You made it!

The slow boat journey was simultaneously relaxing and exhausting. It was also our first real taste of just winging it. Never before had I started a day not knowing where I was going to sleep that night.

Chiang Rai itself was fine. We biked around the city, ate good food, and visited a few temples. The temples were quite beautiful, but it wasn’t clear how much of the beauty had any cultural significance, or if it was just built lavishly to attract tourists. This was especially true of the white temple, which felt more like an amusement park than a temple complex and had pop culture characters painted on the wall of the main prayer area. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, sadly, but it was really strange to see people praying devoutly in front of a giant Buddha statue on one end of the room while looking at pictures of Keanu Reeves from the Matrix, Yoda, Batman, a Minion, and a pattern of guns painted on the opposite wall. If there was something deeply symbolic about this juxtaposition it was completely lost on me.

Yesterday we bade farewell to Chiang Rai and boarded a bus to Chiang Mai. In true backpacker fashion we strolled up to the station and bought a ticket for the next bus… that was leaving in four minutes. Four extremely bumpy hours later we arrived in Chiang Mai, where we’ll be for the next couple days before taking a train to Bangkok. In the meantime my plan is to eat as much fried rice as humanly possible.

Knitting update: With the hat finished I’ve been scheming about what to do with the many skeins of yarn I purchased in Vietnam. I decided to start a sweater (we will someday visit cold places on this trip, though not anytime soon). I also wanted to incorporate images from our trip. I’ve become slightly obsessed with dragons after traveling through Vietnam, Laos, and now Thailand, so I found some graph paper and started charting.

I’m using a combination of intarsia and stranded colorwork which is pleasantly challenging, the perfect thing to keep my attention for hours on the slow boat. This is the right front of the sweater so there’s plenty more knitting to go. Elephants and bears are sure to feature somewhere!