BootsnAll Travel Network



Petra – better than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

May 11th, 2006

Treasury S&A in the Siq
Though the bus to Petra never showed up, we were lucky enough to hitch a ride from 2 Americans who drove by and decided to take pity on us. Needless to say, thanks to their hearts-of-gold, we finally made it to Petra which turned out to be even more fabulous than we expected. Read the rest of this entry »

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Sleeping under the stars in the desert of Wadi Rum

May 4th, 2006

Wadi Rum camels S&A under the desert sun

Make a mold of the Grand Canyon and invert it; add Dali-esque rock formations, pile on red and white sand dunes, paint on stripes like fudge ripple ice cream and you’ve got some of the best desert landscape in Jordan. We spent two days at a Bedouin camp and toured the desert by camel and jeep. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jordan, here we come! First stop: Aqaba

May 4th, 2006

Aqaba gardens Shan & the tamarind juice vendor

After spending 8.5 hours on a packed ferry (which was only supposed to take 3 hours) we finally arrived in Aqaba, Jordan. Unfortunately, our first day there Anthony caught something nasty and wasn’t feeling to well so we ended up staying a little longer than planned 🙂

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

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 the rest of this entry »

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

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.

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Mandalay, Myanmar and the infamous Moustache Brothers

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 the rest of this entry »

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

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 the rest of this entry »

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

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 the rest of this entry »

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2 weeks in Vietnam

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 the rest of this entry »

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

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.

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