Brisvegaskid's VirtualTourist Home Page

Living in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, I,my husband and our teenage daughters love to travel simply and close to the ground. This means camping and caravan parks when we travel in Australia and when we go occasionally overseas - using hostels, guesthouses and one or two star hotels. We don't want to spend our money on accommodation!! Apart from that we really love the exposure to other like-minded travellers and we hear stories and have experieinces for stories of our own, that we would otherwise be insulated from if we stayed more upmarket.

Locally or overseas we make our own arrangements, research and plan a broad itinerary and then see what happens when we get there.

Whether camping somewhere in Australia or hostelling in Europe, Canada, San Francisco, New York, Turkey, Singapore or Vietnam..no matter what happens (and often unexpected things do)....we have really benefited from and enjoyed travelling as a family and sharing the experience of getting outside the comfort zone and into another world, stocking up on stories to tell...

We spent three weeks in Vietnam and it was awesome. The highlight was trekking in Sa Pa, but we especially loved Hanoi, Ha Long Bay and Hoi An too.

Sa Pa was fantastic because we met many of the tribal villagers, stayed overnight with a family in a village and after walking 18km up and down the hills with a guide and our daughters we got up close to a most amazing part of this beautiful country. The food was fantastic, it was spectacular with iconic photo opportunities around every corner and the people were gracious, friendly and good humoured. And very good sales people!!

Don't do this trip if you want the comforts of western society and will whinge if you don't have them (we heard a bit of this from two tourists we came across who wanted American coffee, heating in their room, western food, 5-star linen and air conditioned transport), but if you don't mind going where they go and appreciating their lifestyle and approach to living - this is a never-forget experience. The highlight of this trip.

We really love campfire cooking and when it's safe to do so, with our family we have a major feast. It's so easy with camp ovens and a good fire.
With a few bottles of red for the girls, some rum/Coke for the boys (Grandpa's home-made lemon fizz for the kids) and the stars above, the camp fire below....what a way to share conversation and a belly bulging meal. No better way to get the family together...and then some paddock cricket to work off the dinner, with the dogs to help with the fielding.

We recently spent some time around Nyngan (150km west of Dubbo in NSW) and then went north via back roads to Lightning Ridge, the opal mining town. The country out around here is really unique and we loved it.

Oh my goodness - this is so breathtakingly beautiful and I loved everything about it. I loved these Italians...how they get on public transport and explode into raucous conversation as though it's a family reunion but they are only just fellow commuters...!! They sound so happy! I loved the food, the cheeses, the smelly sausages (well, my husband did), the pasta, the bakeries...the wine.

I loved the modern marble fountain in La Spezia. And the streets and character of the place. People were super friendly and had marvellous good humour and we had no trouble using public transport and getting information - with practically no Italian!!

I loved the walking along the Cinque Terre pathways - 12km of goat tracks through the hills alongside spectacular coastal scenery and amongst centuries old terracing for vineyards that are World Heritage listed.

We went in November, their off-season and we saw almost no one else on the walk from one end of the five towns to the other. It's a good walk and you need a degree of fitness and whatever you do, don't forget the camera.

Karumba is in the far north and used to be just for prawns and die-hard fishermen. Groceries cost about quadruple because of the isolation. It's very far away from most things, which is it's precise attraction for quite a few. In the winter it's packed with Grey Nomads - retirees who live up there in thongs and sarongs for the winter before driving south for Christmas and the summer.

Fresh seafood and pretty straight forward people, no pretensions and no gloss.

We go there after the crowds have gone when it's starting to get uncomfortably hot, the hermit crabs climb up everything and the mozzies are on the boil and the fish on the bite.

We do a lot of camping. We take swags and a tent, but mostly use just swags and a tarp. We are totally self-sufficient, if we need to be and on Moreton Island near Brisbane, you need to be. The island is beautiful, accessed easily by barge and only by 4WD. Don't go at Easter, ever....way too many people and a lot of greedy fishing, hooning (the beach is a road) and carry-on.

Moreton is fantastic at any other time. The people who go there are people who appreciate it. Beautiful, isolated, you can fish, watch the whales from the lighthouse or swim, slide down the massive sand-dunes (take some masonite and a candle for waxing) or do a lot of nothing in peace and quiet. Oh yes.

It's a fantastic place and one of Brisbane's best secrets.

New York is a great city. The Empire State Building is impressive and the Museum of Natural History beautiful and the Statue of Liberty awesome. I've never seen so much food in my life. It's on nearly all street corners and every third shop and the smells, good ones, waft over you as you walk...cinnamon from doughnuts, hotdogs, roasting nuts, baking cakes, sizzling kebabs, and coffee. Everywhere you go there's food.

But the people that we came across (and I'm sure we got the worst of them) New Yorkers in Manhattan were the most uptight, unhelpful, pretentious, unfriendly, bad-mannered lot...they took themselves so seriously...seemed to be uncomfortable in their own skins. Their road rage was remarkable and they were surprised and suspicious of stranger's speaking to them and ignored it as the safest route. We experienced that they would not put themselves out for anyone and were very very annoyed if they were inconvenienced by anything. They are a prickly lot.

We went to a Broadway show which was wonderful and just as the curtain fell and the ovation finished and we were basking in the afterglow of a great show, the curtain went up and we had a 20 minute marketing spiel from the lead actor, urging us to buy, buy, buy mugs, posters, calendars, CD's and a cook book put together by the cast....we could NOT BELIEVE IT. It completely killed the show - it was so crass!

And another memorable moment was when we were coming back on the ferry from the Statue of Liberty the guide on the ferry announced as we went past where the Twin Towers were once, that "..no city has ever faced the reconstruction challenge that New York has faced in building the new Freedom Tower." Give me a break.

Frankly - this was hard to take seriously. It's one building (even if it is a big one.) What about New Orleans? (wiped out by cyclone). What about San Francisco (earthquakes) What about Indonesia's Aceh? (Wiped out by tsunami) What about Australia's Darwin (wiped out by Cyclone Tracy). What about dozens of other cities faced with way more serious reconstruction challenges after devastation of more than than two or three buildings or so (not in any way to diminish the tragedy or the immense loss of life in the fall of the towers, which was and is appalling to the world). I think some New Yorkers think that they ARE the world and need special recognition. They should get out more...

Having said that - the twin towers were in their backyard and I guess it would shake you up if you thought you were untouchable and something like that happened and the smoke and smell took weeks and weeks to clear. Would sort of scar the psyche. So I shouldn't judge them too harshly. We enjoyed the city, and they did give us a story or two to tell..

About 5 hours drive north of Brisbane and just north of Bundaberg, 1770 is a special place, a small town on the beach. It's becoming very upmarket touristy in the last ten years or so, but used to be inhabited by noone but pelicans before that.

This is a gorgeous and favourite spot...fishing, beach and a very very lovely creek for crabbing and catching yabbies - before fishing off the sand bars. A tinnie is useful and togs essential.

(For non-Aussies, that's a small boat and your swimming costume..)

It's particularly good for kids as the beach area is safe for swimming and they can also fish and usually, with a bit of luck, catch something, even if it's only little. They usually enjoy yabby pumping (for bait) and can run around the sand bars chasing pelicans or crabs when they get bored.

We like having wine and cheese on the beach at sunset (so does everyone else by the look of it) as it's unusual to see the sun go down over the water on the eastern seaboard of Australia.