Back to old habits in Chiang Mai

After our stint in Laos we went to the north of Thailand to visit Chiang Mai. As we had done in Luang Prabang, we arrived there without a place to stay. We knew of one that was well rated and cheap and got dropped in front of it. In this case the place was sadly overpriced and not really good so we took our bags and walked around in search for a place to stay. After looking at a few guesthouses we found a good one and settled down. This is fairly easy to do since we're traveling in low season and most of the places have rooms available. It often allows us to get a cheaper price than if we booked online. We only do it in small-ish, easily navigable places where many hostels and guesthouses are available within walking distance of each other.

What's not to love in Melbourne?

Back from the Great Ocean Road we settled down in Melbourne for a couple days before our next joint to Tasmania. We also spent an extra day there after Tasmania. We timed it all in a way that made us be there over the weekends, which gave us the opportunity to see the city bustling with activity.

As we had read, Melbourne is a city where people love shopping and it's apparent as soon as you step downtown, where it's shop after shop after mall after shop. It is pretty impressive. Given that we still have 3 months of travel ahead of us, shopping wasn't really an option (we did a little bit of window shopping though) so we focused on the next best thing: eating and drinking!

Random thoughts about NZ and more challenges

New Zealand, it's over!

Here are some final random thoughts that came to us while traveling New Zealand, but that were too short to justify a post.

- Here they write with a "pin" and use "tin" dollar bills. What a funny accent!
- It is very, very hard to find free WiFi while it was everywhere in Peru. When you pay, it is also very expensive.
- They need more men in Wellington. There are way too many cute women walking around
- We are a pretty good team while driving here. I drive and Denise tells me to "keep left" every time I enter a new road, just to make sure I stay on the right side, which incidentally is the left side here.
- We see a lot of French travellers, as expected, but boy do we see a lot of Germans too
- Among all those who travel, French have the worst english accent, me included
- As we meet people we realize that 6 months of traveling is nothing. Many (young) travelers are on the road for at least a year (but few go through as many places)

Photo challenges galore

We're hard at work to complete the challenges that you've given us, and we're making good progress!

There are many we haven't completed yet but here are some updates, in no particular order.
My friend Matt first challenged Denise to stop  doing easy headstands (I would argue that that one on a kayak was pretty darn hard) and do a real headstand where she doesn't use her hands. It's pretty hard, to say the least, but she pulled it off while we were visiting some wineries, and consequently lightly intoxicated, just to make it harder.

This one is for you Matt

Photo challenge #0 and #1

Right when we left SF we asked on Facebook if you had ideas of stuff you wanted us to do while traveling, that we should do and take pictures of.

The very first one came from our friend Jacob. This one is actually not even part of the challenge since he made Denise promise him to take the photo, even before we asked everybody else.

The story is simple. He really insisted for her to take his frisbee with us on our trip so that she could play some while in Tahiti. Needless to say, we don't have that much extra space in our luggage, so after much arguing he made her promise she would find one in Tahiti and take a photo to prove she'd done it.
The photo is right here. And you were right Jacob, she's actually pretty good at it.

This is right in front of our pensioin on Mataiva