WE ARE NERD TOURISTS

I really have good time travelling with my husband, cause he always loved comfort but sometimes I have good time to travel alone, be almost backpacker. But sometimes, travelling with my husband can turn into many funny stories to tell to our friends and family.

1999

My first tour in China, so excited, and as usual, we always take the free & easy package. Which means, we bought our ticket & hotel voucher in the travel agency and we bought our tour package locally. So, we really have no idea about what is going on in our destination. Arrived in the South of China, arrived in front of our beautiful hotel by the river. So beautiful, luxury hotel, smell nice and clean, we did our check in and rushed outside to enjoy the scenery on walk. We didn't even take the time to read the notice on top of our bedside table. 5 minutes walk, there was a young man approached, very polite greeted us and told us that he is a student who wanted to learn english. He'd like to chat with us, then after 15 minutes chatting under the rain, he proposed if we'd like to see a museum. Everyone's excited to see this "painting museum" he proposed, then he walked us down the market, up to bridge, long and wet way, as if we never arrived. Until we saw this big building and we went inside. It's kind of exposition inside and he said there are many paintings made by his teacher. The museum doesn't look like a museum at all..but we followed anyway and then, he started to ask us to buy some paintings for souvenir, but we said no. Then he even brought us to a small house nearby and show the "master piece" from his teacher and still we said no. And finally he insisted no more, when I said in mandarin that in fact we don't have money at all. Arrived in our rooms, exhausted, we started to look at the menu to order some cold  drinks and we saw a notice, written in bold & big alphabeth, saying BE AWARE OF TOUT & FRAUD WHO ARE PRACTISING IN FRONT OF THE HOTEL PRETENDING TO BE STUDENT...

April 1998, we went to Bangkok, the weather was really hot. We lived in Shanghai at that time, and the company was kind enough to give a return ticket for two which is equal to return ticket Shanghai Paris. So, we took this opportunity to stay in a 5 star hotel, by the Chao Phrya River. Usually, we drink our beer at the beer house near our hotel, but that day, hot like a hell, we changed our itinerary, to get cold beer in the handicraft market. So we walked about 1 kilometer from the hotel, on the way we heard a lot of noise, people laughing and throwing waters & flour to each other. It was Thai New Year !!! And the tradition is to throw water to people (most of the victim are women & foreigner) and we shouldn't be mad, cause it's just for fun. So we walk slowly though it was really hot, and as usual I complained a lot and my husband was trying to keep his ears away from me, he chose to walk by the road side, just under the shop house, while me, still complaining, walked by the shop side. And out of sudden... I saw some spalsh of water and splassssh.... one pail of water was thrown from the second floor of the shop, right on top of the head of my husband....Couldn't tell how mad he was... but I said to him, control your anger, they just try to make joke...so, we had good cold beer with soaked t-shirt !!!

Another story was in Bali in 2004

We insisted our guide to bring us to one lake there, beautiful one, it takes about one hour boat to this small island. The guide seemed hesitate to bring us there, but the poor girl was trying to fulfill our happiness and get us a boat. The island is famous because they just put the dead people under some tress and piles of herbs that the carcasse doesn't smell anything. On the water, we were already greeted by a couple of old people age about 70 years old, beggars. Then, from two direction, there were 2 boats approaching, full of people, adults and children. So we arrived there, and we did sightseeing. It's sooooo cold... sooo humid.... give me shiver. Then we saw this skeletton and we even laugh because in front of it, there is a bowl filled with the bills of 50.000 rupiahs. The villagers arrived and the story started. A guy, wearing sarong approached us and asked us to put some money in the bowl. I"m still smiling told our friends to put money. Our friend put two bill of 1000 rupiahs and suddenly... the whole villagers maybe about 25 of them approacing us and surrounded the 5 of us... just like in the music video of THRILLER... insisting us to give 50000 rupiahs... We couldn't say anything, so we rushed throw the money they asked in the bowl and took the boat immediately. Told the boat man to rush back to the shore adding to our horror, the 70 years old couple approached us too with their boats and asked us more money....

The last one was 2004

We arrived Paris by TGV early in the afternoon and we took the chance to visit Eiffel Tower and the next day he would go to work. So we took the red tourist bus from the closest station at Notre Dame de Paris which is 10 minutes walk from the hotel. The day was hot and it took us 2 hours to queue for the ticket to climb the tower. We spent about 1 and half hour on the tower, taking pictures and climb until the top of the tower. Then we got on the bus, we chose the roof floor and I got this idea to take the tower construction from the bus and I saw the sky was really dark. So I told my husband to go to the first floor cause I feel too hot on top of the roof. And two minutes later, the rain started pouring... heavily. We arrived at Notre Dame and sheltered by the shops, the rain was more and more heavy, we walked step by step to our hotel but the wind was too heavy too... I even lost my new hat, flown by the wind. The sky was suddenly become night, but it was only 5 PM, summer time!!!! We finally arrived at the hotel, after struggling for maybe half an hour walking under the windy rain, soaked from head to toe... In the lobby our shoes made floppy noise, we looked down the wet carpet without seeing anybody in the lobby. And the next day, we read on the newspaper, that it was in fact a mini tornado hitting Paris....