Holy Holy Land over the Holidays! I have had a recent string of travels that didn’t quite turn out as planned. The Arctic, India, Peru and the Azores—all were great runs but were aborted or shortened due to a variety of reasons, including a urinary tract infection in the Azores, how embarrassing. For an aging travel junkie, […]
Less than a week and two countries ago, Trish and I parted from each other and also jettisoned from Japan, one of the most mono-cultural countries. She’s back in Canada, and I’ve just left Malaysia, which was only supposed to be an acclimatization for Myanmar. But I spent the better part of three days glued […]
The overnight VIP bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok is anything but VIP. We see passengers on other buses passing us with blankets,trays,water, and night lights. Our smiling travel agent who booked this no doubt pocketed most of our fare and schlepped us on this backpacker delight. On the road Trish lays a bombshell and […]
Dec 28-Jan 3, 2010 Yet another lame jungle ‘elephant trek.’ These elephants spend most of their time foraging for grass and drinking. This only goes to prove that the bigger you are, the bigger pile of shXX you will produce. As we stumble to the finish line of this magnificient Asia leg, we continually see […]
For those Laos purists who are scoffing at us for barely having left Luang Prabang, let us reassure you we did venture out into the stunning countryside for day trips. This included day treks, river cruising, kayaking and a disappointing elephant ‘trek’. Tours in Asia rarely live up to their billing. Customer safety and satisfaction […]
For backpacking adventure types, Laos is the holy grail. Within that you have Luang Prabang, the UNESCO-ed historic capital of Laos, Land of A Million Elephants (now down to 2000 in the wild). It all sounds remote, exotic and largely removed from western trappings. But to say Luang Prabang represents Laos is like saying New […]
We expect Siem Reap to be a bigger dump than Phnom Penh. Again Cambodia surpises us. It’s buffed clean and built up with western money, largley because of the magnetic pull of Angkor Wat. It’s compact and navigatable, loads of amenities (eg 2hr oil massage with mini facial for $16–sheer heaven) and is so easy […]
Phnom Penh, Cambodia – Dec 12-15, 2009 First impressions of Phnom Penh aren’t great. We arrive at night, our hotel pick up isn’t there, the tuk tuk drivers swarm us like piranhas, putrid smelling garbage and litter dominate the streets like no other Asian city we’ve seen, and one of the hardest things to deal […]
Views from our hotel, Phu An River, Vietnam Nov 28-Dec 2, 2009. The most powerful website in the travel industry must be Tripadvisor.com. We, and many others don’t make a booking without researching and this is likely our first line of defense. Hoteliers beg us to review them positively. And the Midas kiss in the […]
Nov 25-28, 2009 The Citadel in Hue As fascinating and mind blowing as Vietnam can be, it`s a spender`s nightmare. From any street corner to decent hotel, this country shops, sells and hawks as good as any. Yet it`s not always a relaxed experience. It`s a safe assumption that as a traveler, […]