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Archive for April, 2006

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I left my heart in Dahab – with the Bedouin lounges and the Red Sea

Saturday, April 22nd, 2006

Dahab

After 3 months of marathon traveling, we landed in Dahab, a laid back little beachtown right on the Egyptian shores of the Red Sea known for the spectacular dive sites and a great place to kick-back and recharge you batteries, which is exactly what we did for a week. [read on]

Posted in Egypt, Middle East, Travel | 4 Comments »

Egypt – Tip extortionists, touts, and just plain wonderful…

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

Nile Sunset Luxor Temple

Our friends Brownson and Chris met up with us to travel thru Egypt, our first stop in the Middle East. Our ears were filled with the sounds of people, animals, traffic, prayer chanting and our noses with incredible smells from the spice shops and pretty much anything you could possibly imagine. The beautiful people, the mosques and the endless slough of treasures in the desert are more breathtaking and intriguing than I could have imagined – After the first few days, I fell in love with the Egypt….except for the tip seekers and touts, who provided us with memorable adventures and laughs.

[read on]

Posted in Egypt, Middle East, Travel | 1 Comment »

Mandalay, Myanmar and the infamous Moustache Brothers

Tuesday, April 18th, 2006

Teak temple

After a couple days at Inle we caught a flight to Mandalay where another really beat up car, this time with a Mercedez emblem attached to the front, drove us to our guest house. [read on]

Posted in Myanmar, SE Asia, Travel | No Comments »

Bagan and Inle Lake, Myanmar – 2000 temples and villages on the water

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

Bagan Inle Lake

The next day we caught a 15 hour bus ride north to Bagan to visit the famous temples there. We arrived around 5am and caught a local ‘taxi’ – a horse and buggy – to our hotel where we were pretty sure we were the only people there for 2 days as it’s almost hot season and most tourists stay away. We arranged for this same ‘taxi’ driver to be our chauffer for the next two days at a rate of about $8/day, and later found out we got ripped off a bit but didn’t feel too bad because he was a really nice man. He took us to catch the end of sunrise above an empty temple and we were completely floored when we looked across the vast, flat, open landscape which revealed around 2000 ornate and majestic temples of similar style but various sizes. [read on]

Posted in Myanmar, SE Asia, Travel | No Comments »

Myanmar (Burma) a mix of India and SE Asia with no electricity and lots of heat

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

Shwedagan Pagoda

We finally made it to Myanmar, after all the visa problems and detours and it was well worth the wait. Our first stop was Yangon. [read on]

Posted in Myanmar, SE Asia, Travel | No Comments »

2 weeks in Vietnam

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

My Son

We started in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and slowly worked our way north to Hanoi for a total of 2 weeks in Vietnam complete with a ton of tours, a party boat, scuba diving, a Vietnamese cooking class, great eats AND some great company and lots of laughs. [read on]

Posted in SE Asia, Travel, Vietnam | 1 Comment »

Taiwan – all the karaoke and food you could ever want, and then a lot more

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

CKS Memorial Glamour shot 

Shan spent nearly the entire flight from Bangkok to Taiwan helping me learn a few basic Chinese greetings and other words and drilling me on the correct way to address each one of her relatives in Chinese as you don’t call people by their names there but instead call them “Big Uncle” (if he’s the oldest) or “3rd Aunt” or “younger male cousin” and these titles differ if the uncle or aunt or cousin is from the dad’s side or the mom’s side. Confused yet? Me too.

[read on]

Posted in Travel | No Comments »

French pastries and rehydration IV’s for dinner in Phnom Penh

Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

We caught an evening prop-plane flight full of mosquitoes from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia and said to once have been perhaps the finest city in all of Southeast Asia. That is, before the Khmer Rouge wreaked havoc on the country in the late 70’s, which included clearing everyone out of the capital and other cities into the countryside to “re-educate” them as agricultural peasants, leading to the death of a few million people. One can still see why Phnom Penh was once held in such high esteem as it has some elegant wide boulevards and grand colonial houses courtesy of once being under the French as part of Indochina. And it doesn’t feel anywhere nearly as overly crowded as other SE Asia cities such as Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), sadly courtesy of the Khmer Rouge. [read on]

Posted in Cambodia, SE Asia, Travel | No Comments »