Ben and Megan Round the World

I Guess We Can Make it There, We've Made it Everywhere, New York, New York

2009-11-03T17:29:00.012-05:00

It has been a wild and woolly week for us back in the states. We have had a wonderful time catching up with everyone while trying to pin down jobs and a home, but it does feel a little weird being back on home turf. Everything is so easy here! There is always toilet paper in the stall, everyone speaks English, signs make sense... I had forgotten what it was like to understand how a country works, and it is really, really nice.

We flew into Dallas from Lima (via Miami) and were driven to Abilene by my sister Erin and my niece Kate (Kate didn't do much driving, as she is 4, but she provided the entertainment). It was so great to see them and have the 3 car-hours to catch up.

Kate in her Peruvian hoodie

Seeing my mom in Abilene was also fantastic, and shortly followed by an awesome BBQ-filled party! Mom wanted to throw us a post-wedding celebration since a lot of our family friends couldn't come to New York in April, so we thoroughly enjoyed the very Texas-flavored event.

The other important party waiting for us in Abilene was B'Easy, who I am thrilled to say remembered us clearly and repeatedly threw herself on the ground while whimpering and whining - those who know her know that equals happiness.

We were so excited to be reunited! My mom had taken excellent care of her, and she had apparently been a good girl for most of the 6 months. While in West Texas, we also made our way to Lubbock to see my dad and stepmom, who sadly couldn't join us at the party due to my dad's being in the hospital (I am pleased to report he is back home and doing much better!), and we really enjoyed the visit, as well as the very West Texan drive through cotton fields and windmills.

The elementary school where my mom teaches had been following our adventures around the world in combination with their geography studies (with the teachers leaving out our more wine-soaked and Bangkok-ian escapades, I presume!), so we visited to answer their questions. They were adorable! The third graders were obsessed with sharks, with which we had had no encounters but that wasn't enough to deter them, and the fifth graders were a little too cool to ask many questions. Fourth grade, we discovered, is the sweet spot, with the kids asking really thoughtful questions about our transportation methods and various climates. It was so much fun to see their enthusiasm for the world beyond the USA!

The last Abilene job was to pick up and pack the gigantic moving truck that would take us to New York. The Penske place ran out of 12-foot trucks, so we ended up with this 16-foot behemoth that I would have to navigate through the Manhattan streets! I was a bit intimidated but by the time we pulled away from my Mom's house I felt mostly comfortable behind the wheel. Good thing, because that's where I would end up for the next four days! Once we loaded in the furniture that would make the cross country trip, we were pleased to see the spacious interior would accommodate us as well, should we have trouble finding a place to live.

The drive went as smoothly as possible, which was extraordinarily lucky - no accidents! Yet! (We still have the truck - anything can happen.) Our first night we stayed in Dallas with Erin, Gary, and another great dose of Kate, who requested that I tuck her in. Amazingly, after traveling the world and only getting lost in jungles, we got completely turned around in the Dallas suburbs between buying a couch at Ikea and finding my sister's house! We did finally make it though, and enjoyed amazing steaks and a few glasses of wine, already making up for our drive.

The next two nights were spent in Nashville and D.C., with Casey and Alan, and Dom and Kristen, respectively. Both nights were fantastic opportunities to catch up, despite varying degrees of bad behavior from B'Easy - apparently excitable chihuahua mixes are great friends, blind pugs are not. The trip itself was absolutely gorgeous, with the trees just starting to turn all the way from Arkansas to Maryland, so when we weren't singing along with with REM or petting B'Easy, we were just taking in the views.

Staying up late with our friends/family combined with getting up early to get on the road resulted in a very tired me by the time we arrived in New York, but our first glimpse of the skyline from the gritty New Jersey turnpike was enough to perk up any weary traveller. We turned up "New York, New York" on the iPod and prepared to sail effortlessly through the Holland Tunnel...

...where we were turned away, directed to the Lincoln Tunnel, had our truck searched, and charged a $16 toll. Welcome home!

Our few days in New York have been no less eventful that the rest of our travels. As soon as we had parked in Manhattan and dropped off B'Easy with her Aunt Brooke, I headed to Joanne's bridal shower, and Ben met with our apartment broker! Unfortunately, that guy turned out to be a useless idiot, so we found ourselves at the Apple store using their free internet to scour craigslist for more leads, again cursing the thugs who took our laptop.

However, our hard work paid off! By the end of the next day, we had signed a lease, and as of tomorrow we will be happy residents of Williamsburg, Brooklyn! For those who don't know New York, Williamsburg is where all the cool hipster kids live, so the next time you see us we might be in hornrim glasses and ironic flannel.

The view from our new rooftop!

We had to celebrate finding our new home, so, it being a Sunday, we headed immediately to P.J. Clarke's, where our favorite bartenders were faithfully awaiting us! A pair of Hoegaardens has never tasted better. Furthering our luck, between pulling into NYC on Saturday and moving tomorrow, we have been able to use my friend Mike's house in Cold Spring about an hour north of the city as a home base, which is especially amazing as his land can accommodate both our enormous truck and our crazy dog - no easy feat in the New York area. It has been a godsend to have his house as a shelter these past few days.

So tomorrow is moving day, the last step in our wild honeymoon, which I guess is now officially over. We have had the trip of a lifetime and seen so many astounding, incredible things. However, in these past few days, the fall colors of eastern Tennessee, the wine enjoyed with friends, and the fantastic view that we, as of tomorrow, will enjoy from our balcony have reminded me that there are some wonderful moments to be had here in the USA.

It is good to be home.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Epilogue - the trip by numbers:

* Miles travelled (not counting day trips, aimless wandering and runs) - 53,515

* Most confusing exchange rate (to $1) - 18,000 (Vietnamese Dong)

* Photos uploaded to flickr - you've checked them all, right? - 2,531

* Beds slept in (including two hostels in one night in Cusco) - 64

* Nights spent on planes, trains and automobiles - 21

* Flights taken - 20

* Books read - 37

* Countries visited - 15

* Continents visited - 6

* Police incidents - 2

* Delayed flights - 1!!!

* Cheapest beer - $0.08

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Link - Keeping ourselves entertained on the drive

Macho Picchu

2009-10-22T17:21:00.000-04:00

When our bus finally pulled into Puno station about an hour late we were pleasently surprised to see that the only other passengers appeared to be a wizened old Peruvian woman, her small son and several fishing nets full of pigs(!) Given the pigs would be in the hold we thought this might mean a relatively restful journey but we were to be sorely disappointed. We haven´t yet figured out the extent to which it´s official policy vs. a nice little earner for the drivers but most Peruvian buses with space will, regardless of their schedule, remedy that by trawling the outskirts of nearby towns for anyone who needs a lift. The entertaining consolation is that the passengers already on the bus (including other hitchers), will protest any subsequent pause by drumming on the bus sides and shouting "Vamos! Vamos!" as loud as they can. Always up for a cultural experience we joined in heartily but as the evening dragged on the bus gradually filled up with shifty looking guys and old women. As we discovered on Lake Titicaca, Peruvian women take wearing lots of layers seriously and it sometimes seems that rather than changing they just add another couple of blankets every year. By middle age most appear as bowler hat-topped hillocks of shuffling fabric an effect enhanced by the fact that most also carry around several huge slings containing bales of knitwear, kitchen appliances and children. The ability to always take up adjacent seats on planes and buses is one of the biggest advantages of travelling as a couple.

Some fellow passengers:

Unfortunately at some point in the night we were treated to the most authentic South American bus journey experience of all and had our laptop and shiny leatherman knife stolen from our bags. We were awake the whole time and realized what had happened quite quickly (despite the theives replacing the laptop with a bottle of water in its case!), but with no help at all from the bus drivers there was very little we could do. Apart, of course, from shouting a lot in broken Spanish and standing in front of the bus until the driver sulkily agreed to call the police. After a long detour to the station and an hour spent watching a policeman write out a full sheet of A4´s worth of handwritten report we finally hit the road again but did not reach Cusco until 3.00a.m. Given we had a train ticket from a station (that was itself a taxi ride from town) at 7.00a.m. we very nearly went straight to the station but the freezing Andean night convinced us to find a hostel where we spent two and a half hours dreaming of elaborate and gory punishments for laptop thieves.

With a new morning came a fresh perspective and while still angry we were also incredibly relieved that our passports and glasses hadn´t gone with the laptop. Our friends Andy and Tara (see the link on the right) have recently been through the nightmare of having their passports stolen mid-trip and with their experience in mind we had to admit things could have been much worse.

The "Machu Picchu experience" was to prove the slickest operation either of us had seen in South America and that began with the Peru Rail train to Aguas Calientes a.k.a. Machu Picchu Pueblo. Punctual and clean, the train wound its way through the heart of the Incan Sacred Valley for three spectacular hours before we pulled into our destination and were immediately swept off to a decent hostel. The tiny village of Aguas Calientes straddles two rivers and the only motorized transport is the shuttle buses which run people up to Machu Picchu itself. While it´s dominated by restaurants and a tacky trinket market you can´t spend much time in South America without getting good at ignoring those and the mountain setting more than made up for any cultural shortcomings.

The next day was to be the grand finale of the trip and something we had both been looking forward to for months - our trip to the ´lost Incan city´of Machu Picchu. There are two ways to reach the site itself from Aguas Calientes: you can spend $7 on an 8km shuttle bus ride or get up early and yomp up a dizzyingly steep staircase through the jungle. We obviously chose b). and started our hike by head-torch at 4a.m.! As soon as we left the town we were treated to a amazingly clear starlit night spoilt only by the intimidating crocodiles of headtorches winding their way up the mountain ahead of us. Given how well-known the trek is I was amazed at how physically challenging it was and we wore out every one of the extra red blood cells we´d developed gasping our way around Puno.

This is the bus route - the trail cuts up the center of each switchback:

Megan celebrating our eventual arrival with a new friend at around 5.15a.m.

When the gates opened at 6a.m. we immediately climbed a little further to reach the hut from which you get the classic postcard view. The reward for arriving so early, assuming the weather is kind, is that you get to see the ruins slowly illuminated by the sun rising over the jungle coated mountains to the East. The still empty site is gradually flooded with deep shadows and the Eastern side of the ridge is soon basking in golden sunshine before the night mists have burnt away from the West. As has happened a couple of times already on this trip this is the point where words really begin to fail me. There is simply something magical in the combination of the ruins and their setting which seems to resonate deeply with everyone who experiences it and which left us grinning like idiots.

We spent the next couple of hours exploring the ruins and taking hundreds of photos of the temples, astronomical observatories and agricultural terraces which make up the citadel. While archaeologists now know a huge amount about the ruins themselves, exactly when or why they were built remains a mystery. We are currently reading "The Last Days of the Incas" by Kim MacQuarie which supports the theory that they were a form of royal retreat akin to a sixteenth century Camp David. What seems certain however is that the conquistadores never knew Machu Picchu existed and we could only wonder what it must have felt like to ´discover´the city in 1911.

The second part of our prize for getting up so early was that we were one of the first 400 people to arrive and were therefore allowed to climb Huayna Picchu - the seemingly vertical mountain which rises up behind the ruins in the photos above. If the morning´s climb was tough, this was another level entirely. I started off marvelling that back home the authorities would have had to invest in more handrails and probably made us sign a disclaimer but by the time we scrambled to the top we both agreed there is no way on earth anyone would be allowed with a mile of this mountain were it in the US without crampons, ropes and ideally a parachute. Several sections were more like stone ladders than a trail and it is no exaggeration to say that a simple slip could have been fatal along most of the route. The upside, of course, was even more photo opportunities.

After rallying ourself with a nutritious picnic of tinned tuna and chocolate biscusits we trudged back down to Aguas Calientes, bribed our hostel owner into letting us shower and headed back to the train. In order to keep to our increasingly tight schedule we had been ´forced´to spring for the luxurious Hiram Bircham train back up the Valley which was a marked improvement on the Backpacker coach on which we´d arrived. This being Peru however luxury = entertainment so no sooner had we settled in to read our books two jesters appeared followed by an Alpaca Wool fashion show all set to pounding techno music. Yay. From the train station we took a taxi for a smooth 80km back to Cusco and 19 hours after waking up finally, finally slept.

...for 3 hours until we realized that the hostel we had collapsed into was the top floor of Discoteca RAZA! Even in our sleep deprived state we had to laugh when we angrily dragged our bags across the road at 3.30a.m. and the bouncers tried to give us fliers.

As we knew would be the case we can´t help but think of our last few days in Peru as a chance to finish shopping, eat well, keep clean and not get anything else stolen. Cusco is the former center of the Incan empire - the city from which they launched the campaigns which captured huge swathes of South America in 90 years. It is also the city from which the Spanish conquered that new empire and in which all 200 of them were beseiged by their former ally Manco Inca and hundreds of thousands of his warriors in the 1530s. As you would imagine it is filled with incredible buildings and ruins and the sense of history is palpable but we are shamelessly limiting ourselves to sights that are cheap and no more than a short stroll from the pleasent Plaza de Armas and the reliable comforts of the town´s only McDonalds - after six months we just don´t care.

Incan stone walls form the foundations of many of the town center buildings:

Two sights which made the cut were the town cathedral (featuring an enormous depiction of the last supper (menu: guinea pig)), and the Saqsaywaman complex. This Incan fort, built on one of the hills surrounding the town, was the base from which Manco Inca had directed the aforementioned rebellion. The seige of Cusco was eventually broken when a desperate band of 30(!) Spanish cavalry broke out of town and rode in search of the Incan emperor, storming the walls visible in the photo below, forcing the emperor to retreat to Ollytatambo and demoralizing his massed armies.

Nearby was Cusco´s version of Rio´s Cristo Redemptor. Smaller and less elegantly proportioned than Brazil´s version, when floodlit at night he looks a lot like Casper the friendly ghost but still has spectacular views of town.

The Plaza De armas by night (Casper is top right)

If you´ve made it through this marathon post you´ll probably be eager to know when we plan on finishing this blog. Well the good news is that after 22 hours on a bus (6 movies, one dvd of Bollywood hits and one of Peruvian folkloric music) we are currently sat in Lima awaiting our flight back to the good ole USA. The bad news is that in an attempt to put off the inevitable we are planning to count our drive back to NYC itself so will probably have one or two updates yet. Stay tuned!

Lake Titicaca (hee hee!)

2009-10-18T14:59:00.018-04:00

We had a quiet first few days in Perú, mainly because a large chunk of that time was spent on a bus. When on tierra firma, though, we have enjoyed ourselves. Perú has such a rich culture and history, and an ancient way of life that is still lived and celebrated by many people.

Our time in Perú began in Lima, which is unfortunately nothing to write home about - it´s quite possibly the ugliest major city I´ve ever seen, completely devoid of interesting landmarks or natural beauty to set it apart. There are a few decent colonial buildings that we took some boring pictures of but that´s about it!

Once we´d gotten the lay of the land, we decided the best course of action would be to get the heck out of there.

Had we known what awaited us we might have been less excited, as after 27 hours on a bus we would have gladly been back in Lima rather than spend one more minute in transit.

The first leg of our trip was 19 hours, an amount of time we´ve done a couple times before, so we weren´t too intimidated. However, in Perú, bus operators feel the need to entertain their passengers, and by entertain I mean show blaring constant DVDs for 15 of the 19 hours. We only had 4 hours to try to sleep, which were interrupted by our bus blowing a tire, stranding us on the side of the road for two early-morning hours, prompting the driver to "entertain" us with yet more videos. I was shocked by the graphically violent content (Apocalypto! Some Japanese torture porn?! What!!?) when there were little kids on board (not to mention sleepy gringos who just wanted to read), as well as the obnoxious volume which made it impossible to pay attention to anything else. Once we reached Arequipa, we had an hour´s break before starting our 7 hour trip to Puno. Luckily the DVD player was broken on this bus so we were just treated to yelping folkloric music the whole way. Ay ay ay!

Puno made up for the comute by being slightly more charming than Lima, or at least having one nice walkable high street lined with native people dressed in traditional clothes and bowler hats, giving us the comforting feeling that we weren´t about to be mugged.

Once we´d explored a bit we went in search of a nice meal - 27 hours on a bus will make you desparate for a fresh green vegetable - where we decided to order the famous regional delicacy - guinea pig! Now, Erin and I had two pet guinea pigs when we were little, Nutmeg and Spice ("Cooking suggestions!" says Ben.), so I was a bit nervous to order it and even more alarmed when it showed up:

So lifelike! Despite our attempt to enjoy the culturally significant dish, we were disappointed by the miniscule amount of meat it provided - not really worth killing the cute little guy.

Once we´d gotten fed and recovered from our altitude sickness (apparently going from sea level to almost 4000 meters in one day is bad for you!), it was time to take advantage of our reason for being in Puno - the amazing lake! Lake Titicaca made me giggle throughout high school geography (second only to Djibouti!), but it actually is a gorgeous gigantic lake. The thin air at high altitude makes the lake´s surface sparkle beneath the snow-capped Andes on the Bolivian side. It´s really spectacular.

The best way to enjoy the lake is via the islands, so we embarked on a 2-day adventure. The closest islands to Puno are the Uros, a collection of 40 or so man-made floating islands made of reeds and anchored to the lake floor.

It was amazing to see how the people used the reeds to make their islands, boats, houses, cooking fuel, and even snacks! They also use solar panels to watch TV in their little huts, which I thought was quite impressive. The islanders all used to be fishermen but now that tourism has arrived they live mostly to sell their weaving and show off their islands, replacing their old Aymara language with English, French, etc. - a little too commercialized for my taste but it was a fascinating visit.

Next we headed to Amantani, a real (non-floating) island filled with Quechua speaking farmers who haven´t embraced tourism quite as obviously. We had an amazing experience on the island, spending the night (without electricity or running water!) with a local family, who luckily spoke Spanish and Quechua, so communication was easy. Our hostess cooked traditional meals for us and loaned us traditional clothes to wear to the night´s fiesta. The fiesta definitely exists just to please the tourists but we did enjoy dancing around in a circle to the pan-flute band. The island is worth visiting for the views alone, but the opportunity to stay with a family was really priceless.

The next morning, after saying our goodbyes to our host, we headed over to the other large island, Taquile (where they do not serve tequila, despite the obvious marketing connection). This island was a bit more modern and tourist-friendly than Amantani, so we didn´t stay too long - we basically hiked to the top, had a delicious fresh trout lunch, hiked down, and motored back to Puno.

We are now about to board our penultimate long distance bus, this time to Cuzco, before the unthinkable happens - our return to the USA! There is still more to see and do, though, so we´re trying not to dwell on our return just yet.

Doo DeeDoo DooDoo DeeDoo, doo-Doo DeeDoo DooDoo DeeDoo...

2009-10-12T21:55:00.008-04:00

We had both been looking forward to Rio as much as any city we have visited on this trip. Some of our stops, like Hanoi and Buenos Aires, have benefited from our arriving with few preconceptions but Rio is one of those places that instantly brings to mind a barrage of images. From its flamboyant Carnaval and love of samba music to the notorious favelas portrayed in City of God this spectacular city, squeezed between lush mountains and the famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, means something to everyone - usually something like this:

Unfortunately the defining feature of our time here has been something that people more commonly associate with Seattle than Rio. Rain. Every type of rain. Little bitty stingin' rain... and big ol' fat rain. Rain that flew in sideways. And sometimes rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.

As our life is already a one-sided struggle to prevent our clothes sprouting, this developement has been quite disappointing but we have made the most of it and thanks to a wonderful couchsurf have still had a good time. Our host for almost all of our time in Rio was a great guy called Zelson who generously opened his home to us and made up for insisting we go for a run as soon as we had dropped our bags by cooking us a delicious dinner! After such a warm welcome we were a little slow moving on our first morning but managed to take advantage of what was to be our only sunshine with a trip up to the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer. The views are absolutely spectacular and the statue itself is quite powerful given the millions of lives it oversees:

From there we took a long walk along the beach at Copacabana and took in the views of the iconic sugarloaf mountain (her name is Lola):

After an evening with Zelson spent preparing for our imminent return to the US with some good TexMex food and caipirinhas the next morning found us hiking around the beautiful neighbourhood of Santa Teresa and enjoying yet more views. From there we took a terrifying trolley car down to "Centro," the lively, bustling commercial heart of the city:

The next day the rain arrived in earnest and, although we put up a good fight and spent a couple of hours in the excellent Museo des Belles Artes, the sogginess eventually got the better of us and we headed home. After a warm hour of Tim Gunn exhorting us to 'make it work' via our laptop we rallied and headed out to the nightlife area of Lapa for a fantastic evening of live music - we had been told several times that three caiprinhas is enough to master Portuguese and Megan can now confirm that a fourth also enables you to dance the Samba!

Ashamed of the previous day's poor performance we steeled ourselves for another dousing and after moving to a nearby hostel we headed of for a tour of a couple of the city's favelas. As in Mumbai we were somewhat wary of the potential for such a tour to be voyeuristic but were again very impressed with the professionalism of our guide whose description of the role these improvised communities play in the city's life was fascinating. Over 20% of Rio's population live in favelas yet they are not marked on maps and basic services like rubbish collection and sewerage are only being extended gradually by the government. It will be interesting to see if that process speeds up before 2016. While the tour itself was very safe the guide made no bones about the prevalence of organized crime and the violence that it occasionally causes.

That evening we had a great dinner with Zelson and his girlfriend Marcella and we were very sad to say our goodbyes at the end of the evening but hope we get the opportunity to host them in New York in the future.

Our last day was supposed to see an improvement in the weather but that never materialized so after ticking the box with a soggy slog along Ipanema beach we retired to the warmth of our hostel to catch most of the 9 hours of the Hawaii Ironman - I miss my bikes! We caught a night bus back to Sau Paulo and when we finally arrived early the next morning it was, inevitably, to glorious sunshine! Shelving our plans to hole up in a hotel for the day we headed out to explore a couple of more neighbourhoods including the city's China town and Little Italy. Thanks to Megan's witchlike sense of direction we found our way to a couple of great markets and saw some very special local traditions such as the annual 'running of the goths.'

And with just enough time for one more light, vegetarian meal we were suddenly at the end of our time in Brazil with only Peru to go.

Gooooooooooooaaaaaaaal!

2009-10-07T17:05:00.004-04:00

We're shocked that it hadn't happened already, but the day finally came for our first delayed flight when we left Buenos Aires for Sao Paulo. After being herded onto the plane, made to wait an hour or so, and then removed from the plane, we waited in the airport for several more hours before boarding a different plane, this one without technical issues, to our relief. The later boarding time made it so that we missed the Rio 2016 Olympics announcement while in the air, but it was a fun bit of news to discover upon landing in Brazil!

Sao Paulo has a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges, and we have found this to be very true. There's graffiti on every outdoor surface, even dozens of stories above the ground (how?!) and the homeless line the streets. Our guide book carries plenty of warnings about preparing yourself for muggings and where to walk at night, but although we are traveling smart and keeping up our guard, we are able to relax pretty well, as the locals have been nothing but friendly and kind to us. The biggest threat we've faced was when I thought two tough kids were exchanging gang signs on the subway, but it turns out they were deaf! That told me I needed to drop the paranoia.

The pretty central cathedral:

Rough city streets:

The biggest adjustment so far has been being surrounded by Portuguese. Very few Brazilians (at least those we have come across) speak any English or Spanish, and Portuguese is almost impossible to understand or attempt to speak. Even though it looks much like written Spanish, the pronunciation sound more like Russian and even when I order agua, no one seems to understand. We're getting by pretty well with sign language and smiles, though (much like those gangster deaf kids). Luckily Sao Paulo is very easy to get around, thanks to the completely awesome, efficient, and art-filled subway, the lines of which are named after gems - you can take the Ruby line and connect to the Diamond line or the Sapphire train. Much more interesting than numbers!

Also interesting: some of the hilarious store names.

Despite the fact that we don't know any Portuguese, we are often mistaken for locals, which we've found interesting. More than once, people have asked us for directions or tried to start a conversation with us, only to find us baffled by their language. It must be due to the incredible racial diversity of Brazil - no one looks like a foreigner here. Brazilians come in absolutely every shade and with any mix of ethnic features - it's really fascinating to look at the people. We recently learned that Brazil has implemented a much more secure passport for its people, as the old ones were so often used in counterfeiting. Why? Because anyone in the world could believably be Brazilian!

Our first night, we arrived in the evening and headed straight for our hotel, where we were greeted with this room:

I guess it's one of those hotels! I swear we're paying by the night and not the hour. Still, it is a very comfortable room! After a good night's sleep, we headed out the next day determined to see some futebol - and were not disappointed! We bought tickets for that night's game at the stadium, which also houses the national Museo de Futebol, one of the best niche museums I've ever seen. It was full of interactive media displays, videos and discussions of famous goals, world cup wins and losses, and tributes to the national passion for the game. Even though I'm not a huge soccer fan, nor am I fluent in Portuguese, I absolutely loved the museum. There were so many unique exhibits and innovative effects to really make the visitor feel involved in futebol-mania - you can even kick a soccer ball at a computer goalie and have your speed measured! However, if the museum wasn't enough to make me a total convert, the game did the trick. We watched the Sao Paulo Corinthians lose 3-1, but the game was absolutely thrilling. The rabid fans all around us held their breaths at every goal attempt, and Ben received a bear hug from his Brazilian neighbor after the only successful goal! The guy next to me was literally crying when it was clear the Corinthians would lose. The trash talk consisted entirely of "Fili de Putaaaaa!" aimed loudly and frequently at the 12 or so loyal fans who had shown up for the opposition and ended up leaving early at to avoid getting beaten up following their team's victory. It was so much fun, and we felt like honorary Brazilians for the night.

The disappointed local fans:

Our other main tourist activity was a trip to the Museo de Arte Sao Paulo, famed for its huge collection of Western art. The museum was lovely, and just the right size to see every exhibit without getting exhausted. There also happened to be an antiques market set up outside which we enjoyed poking around, and a huge lush garden across the street for a gorgeous backdrop.

Tchotchkes at the market:

We also got an impromptu breakdancing show as we headed back to our hotel - a bunch of kids were spinning in the street with a cheering crowd. They were actually really good!

The only real negative to Brazil so far has been the prices - it is very expensive here. We were shocked to find a McDonald's salad for about $12 (American dollars!) - needless to say we didn't eat there. $600 Asics sneakers and $50 paperback books are the norm here, so we won't be doing much shopping.

As interesting as gritty, authentic Sao Paulo has been, we have long been itching to get to Rio, so after a couple days we boarded a 6-hour bus and took off for our next city - and our next couchsurfing adventure!

Buenas Noches Buenos Aires

2009-10-01T21:48:00.004-04:00

Megan being Megan the next night, of course, was Tango class. Before displaying our twinkling toes to BA however we decided to explore one more nighbourhood of this fantastic city and headed to La Boca - home of the famous Boca Juniors football team. La Boca is one of the poorer nighbourhoods and the graffitti'd streets and rundown buildings were a reminder that not every area of this city has a New York equivalent. The grittier atmosphere really didn't need emphasizing but as we walked down the main highway one local resident nevertheless took it upon themselves to remind us exactly where we were. I've had the misfortune of being crapped on by a bird several times and while that initially mystifying splatter is never pleasent this incident really set a new bar. Absent evidence of a coordinated attack I can only assume that one sick, sick avian was responsible for the thorough dousing that left both Megan and me gasping and every item of clothing we were wearing covered in a goopy pebbledashing that scattered our fellow pedestrians. Eventually one brave woman, crossing herself profusely and clenching her nose tightly, chanced her way across to us with tissues and water in hand and we made a token attempt too clean ourselves off. While her kindness further confirmed our impression that porteños are an unusually friendly bunch a shower was now an unavoidable prelude to the dance class so we made short work of the famously colourful La Boca market and headed home.

Even I have to admit to being quite taken with the Tango which, compared to the Salsa classes we elbowed and kneeded our way through last Summer, seems a very natural dance and dare I say it quite sexy. Our class did not start well with me displaying an incredible inability to walk in any way other than left, right, left, right but in time we managed a passable square and even a couple of more advanced moves:

The next day should have had us exploring the famous San Telmo antiques market but unfortunately the weather turned and we instead spent most of the day hiding from the rain in the warm interior of a local pub. Eventually however the time came for us to hoist our bags and head for the subway on the first leg of our 19 hour journey to Puerto Iguazu - the gateway to the Iguazu falls.

After our experience in India the prospect of 18 hours on a bus was not particularly appealing but it turns out that Argentine buses are actually great. Even the cheap seats are about the size of a lazy-boy, the services seem to be very punctual and the food, if uniformly white and bread-based is abundant. The clincher for us was probably when our waist-coated server asked if we cared for some wine with our dinner! It's sad but on this sample I would have to rate South American long-haul bus services as far more pleasant than most domestic US airlines.

After a lazy afternoon in the remarkably unremarkable Puerto Iguazu we got up bright and early for our carefully planned trip to the falls themselves. Google hasn't been much help in quantifying exactly why these falls are so amazing (they're definitely not the tallest), but it was immediately clear why they top most lists of the world's best. We started our tour by walking over a kilometer on wooden gangplanks set above increasingly rapid water until we were standing above the terrifying "Devil's Throat." The sound was indescribable and the volume of water disappearing into the cauldron below us simply remarkable.

From there we headed first to the 'Upper Trail' which afforded us spectacular views of some of the other 247 cascades and then to the 'Lower Trail' which did much the same thing but with more soaking.

After the falls themselves (and sharing the park with "The Teenagers" who, a breathless Argentinian girl that had taken a momentary break from screaming informed us, are a band and actors), the highlight of the trip was the wildlife. The falls are set in dense rainforest and we were surounded by beautiful birds throughout our visit. Jaguars are also apparently native but the only mammals we saw were the coatis. These look much like a cat-sized anteater and they had no fear of humans whatsoever (that apple was dropped by an unsuspecting Italian woman about four seconds before this photo was taken):

That evening a timely email from our wedding-reader Kate reminded us that we really hadn't been pushing our meat consumption to the levels Argentina demands so we took up the challenge of a local restaurant's grill for two and were not disappointed. When the spitting griddle arrived at our table it contained: 1/2 a chicken, a steak that I would estimate as being around 20 oz, 2 huge chorizo sausages, 1 equally oversize blood sausage, 4 kidneys, several chitterlings, 4 tripe strips, 2 sets of 3 short ribs and two pork chops. Yes we did. And we had flan. With dulce de leche.

From Iguazu we made the long trip back to Buenos Aires for a frantic day of clothes washing, haircuts, Evita museum touring and handbag buying (yay) to ensure we were adequately prepared for Brazil - suddenly our penultimate country. Argentina has definitely given Vietnam a run for its money as our favorite stop on this trip. Sadly, given the economic tribulations the country has been through, the comparative strength of the dollar is a big part of that but it is not the only factor. The lifestyle and culture of Buenos Aires in particular are extremely appealing and everyone we have interacted with has left a favorable impression. How can you fail to love a country where, if you buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket the cashier will offer to open it for you?

Don't Cry for Us

2009-09-27T10:00:00.005-04:00

I have always wanted to go to Argentina. I don't know exactly why, but I'm sure it has something to do with reading a lot of Borges in college, seeing Evita during the impressionable high school years, and having a slight and inexplicable Argentine accent while speaking Spanish, prompting my farmworker patients to ask me more than once if I were from here. Argentina also happens to be the home of Ben's and my favorite red things: meat and wine. And coincidentally, B.A. has a familiar nickname - Big Apple. Unsurprisingly, we feel very at home here.

As soon as we arrived and walked the many blocks from the airport bus dropoff to our hostel, we were amazed by the grand architecture of BA. As a whole, the city feels more like Paris than any other non-Paris city I've ever been to - every balcony is gorgeous wrought iron, and every corner is graciously curved and ornamented. There are heroic statues at every turn, a magnificent theatre, avenues with 12 lanes in each direction, and lively neighborhoods, each with a distinct character. Buenos Aires feels like an anomoly in South America, in that it's completely modern and European in structure and New World in attitude - it's basically New York on the cheap. I think I could live here.

We started our stay off with a dinner of steak and wine, because that's what you order in Argentina, and were satisfied (though not thrilled) with both - that's what you get at your neighborhood pub, I suppose. However, two nights later, we went for a proper steak dinner at a renowned restaurant across town, and we both had the best steak of our lives. It was absolutely incredible - a filet and a ribeye, sides, wine, dessert, etc... total bill: $35. Have I mentioned that I love Buenos Aires?

It has also been a fortunate turn of events that we chose a hostel in San Telmo, the tango neighborhood that most closely equates to the East Village - slightly scruffy but with a lot of art and character. We have loved walking around San Telmo, which happens to border a marshy ecological reserve with miles of running paths with distances marked - perfect! We've been running just about every day to make up for the steak and wine.

Our first major tourist stop was the Recoleta cemetery. Recoleta is the posh, wealthy area of BA where the upper crust live, and the cemetery is where they are buried. It's a fascinating city of the dead, with mausoleums towering up on either side of the walkways, topped with angels and sayings. It appears that each little "house" belongs to a family, and the caskets are all stored underground, except for the few that we could see through the doors on street level. Plaques are added as people are added, so some families have dozens of names, all laid to rest in the same place. It's an odd tourist attraction, but so interesting to see how dynamic a cemetery can be. Plus, Eva Peron is buried there, in her Duarte family mausoleum, so we had to pay her a visit.

Recoleta also has plenty of shopping, enabling us to spend a leisurely afternoon walking through shops and learning to tango in the street.

The next day we explored the parks and shopping of Palerma, which is the trendy, hip neighborhood. Palermo has a few enormous parks, including a zoo, botanical garden, and a Japanese garden, so we spent the morning paddling around the pond and strolling over the Japanese bridge.

Conveniently, Palermo is also known for shopping, and I have been keeping a keen eye out for Argentina's famous leather goods. We wandered the streets for a few hours, happening on a couple little shops, but nothing impressive. Finally, after the sun went down, I asked a shop girl where all the other shops were, and she handed me a Palermo shopping map! Turns out we had been a few blocks away from the good stuff the whole time, so we scrambled over and crammed a day's worth of (window) shopping into the last hour before closing. Then we had steak to make up for it.

San Telmo, our neighborhood, is known as the birthplace of tango, and there are still dozens of tango-related activities throughout the streets. We've seen one couple perform during dinner, and have listened to live music just about every night, including one tango-themed concert.

It's an absolutely amazing dance, so graceful and strong, and I am dying to take a lesson! Ben's next post will tell you whether or not I was successful in dragging him into one.

We still have a few more days in Argentina before moving on, but I already know this will not be my last visit here. Even as we turn for home, we are still very much in the moment and enjoying our last few adventures!

Chile today, hot tamale!

2009-09-20T21:24:00.006-04:00

We're back on the road again and are already drawing to the end of our time in Chile - the first of our South American stops. The flight from Auckland to Santiago was the longest we plan to take on this trip and despite the best efforts of LAN Chile (which may well have snuck the bamrtw favourite airline award away from BA), too many movies and glasses of red wine meant we arrived with our first serious case of jet lag. We found our hostel without too much difficulty but resigned ourselves to a very steady first afternoon which was just as well as the rest of the city seemed to have gone home in preparation for the upcoming independence day celebrations. Santiago is reputed to be one of the easiest Latin cities for travellers to get to grips with but when we eventually dragged ourselves up for a walk-around we decided that was travel-book speak for being a bit underwhelming. Our hostel was a beautiful converted villa and there were some other interesting buildings in our neighbourhood but much of the center could easily be any rundown US or UK city with its pedestrianized shopping precinct lined with McDonalds, banks and department stores. This hilly park was one of the most interesting features though the bland concrete tower blocks in the views are much more typical of the city at street level:

We slept in again the next day awaking at almost the exact time the rest of the city officially shut down for the holiday and only a few hours before we were due to attend a barbecue laid on by our hostel. We strolled the empty streets again and this time were rewarded with our first view of the astonishing Andes which surround the city but are generally obscured by the smog. We got a complete view a few days later from a bus but in some ways they seemed even more ethereal this time when completely divorced from the city scape below:

After the Andes and the tens of thousands of stray dogs the most notable thing about Santiago is the private bus system which runs gleaming modern coaches throughout the country incredibly frequently and reliably. The next day we spent $6 and 2 hours traveling to the port town of Valparaiso - Chile's 'cultural capital'. Arriving in the evening to yet more underlit, empty streets our first impressions were not very favourable. Our host assured us that there was a big fiesta at the other end of town but as we trekked in the direction she'd indicated we couldn't help but notice that most of the shops looked more locked-down than closed and that every surface was covered in graffiti. After almost an hour we finally began to hear the distant thump of traditional music and a short while later found ourselves looking down with relief on an enormous fun-fair! The main attractions were enclosed dancehalls where huge suited bands tried to outdo each other for customers keen to show off their merengue and salsa moves. For the uncoordinated westerners there were meat sticks, enormous beers and the usual range of impossible sideshows to lose money on:

Thankfully Valpariso by daylight had a much less sketchy atmosphere than the nightime version and the view from any of the hills that form the natual ampitheater on which the city is built was quite beautiful. One of the highlights of our exploration was the poet Pablo Neruda's house 'Floridita'. The building is filled with artifacts from the nobel prize winner's life and does a great job of conveying what an interesting man he must have been.

The graffiti - by day some of it was astonishing:

We started our final day in Valparaiso riding the famous furnicular 'ascensores' - rickety stairlifts for the town's commuters which had been installed when the town was at its economic peak at the start of the century. After a huge slap of chocolate cake as reward for all the stairs we'd just avoided we found a traditional dance performance in one of the town squares and whiled away a peaceful hour before we had to leave for Santiago.

We have friends who have spent months exploring Chile and knew when planning this trip that a brief visit like ours was unlikely to offer anything more than a gentle introduction to South America. Even with such modest expectations however I have to say that Santiago has been far from our favourite stop to date. The people are extremely friendly and the city is surprisingly modern, clean and prosperous though, if anything, it is a less interesting (and more expensive) destination as a result.

Kiwi Mix

2009-09-16T16:38:00.005-04:00

This post will be another short one, I'm afraid, as we have still done little more than sleep late, eat 5 meals a day, and stare at the computer, but we've continued to have a wonderful time in NZ despite our thus far unsuccessful search for jobs and an apartment. We did occasionally get out of the house, especially because the weather remained absolutely gorgeous, sunny, and unseasonably warm, perfect for a run through the Botanic Garden, a visit to a couple wineries, or a spin in a vintage Austin Healy.

As luck would have it, such a car lives in the garage, and Simon was kind enough to take me for a ride.

Ben and I also made time to join in a local "Self Transcendence" road race sponsored by the international Sri Chin Moy group. The route was dotted with oddly motivational signs telling us runners that success is achieved only through knowing yourself, or something like that, but they must have worked as Ben took home the prize for the half marathon (with a course record, to boot!) and I ran a respectable 10K. Ben is so far 2-0 in races on this trip, and feeling quite pleased. Too bad we'll just miss the NY Marathon when we get home!

We were fortunate enough to time our trip to coincide with the annual Christ's College Black and White Ball, which was a lovely event in appreciation of the school's board and parents. It was the first time I've ever name dropped my new last name to get an impressed reaction - the benefit of now being related to the headmaster! It's hilarious to me to think about the extremes of our trip - climbing through dirty jungles in Vietnam, attempting to sleep on a dusty, non-air-conditioned bus in India versus sitting at the head table and drinking champagne at a black tie event and gliding through Hong Kong harbor in a privately chartered boat, again sipping champagne. Luckily we're traveling with a versatile wardrobe. I knew those heels would get some use!

Another favorite sight has been the college itself, which Simon took the time to show us around. The beautiful Victorian stone campus buildings are impeccable, and all the boys heading to class in their suits were very well-behaved - impressive!

We did actually get out of Christchurch, once, in order to walk on Fox Glacier, about a 6-hour drive away. My abilities at driving on the left continue to improve, so we made the drive through an incredibly beautiful mountain pass and along the west coast without any problems.

The town of Fox Glacier consists of one bar, two cafes, and glacier-walking guides, but we were able to get a cheap motel room and a decent dinner. Our glacier walk the next morning was beautiful - another sunny day counteracted the chilly glacier breezes and although our actual time on the ice was rather short, the 4-hour hike to get there and back was a lot of fun. The glacier itself was quite impressive, a huge expanse of ice that pours down from a narrow valley into a wider plain and ends at an expanse of rocks and small ponds, left behind as the glacier has receded in recent years. Without the pressure of the ice, the sides of the valley are rather unstable, and we even saw some boulders come crashing down the hillside (a safe distance away!) which apparently happens every day. Once on the ice we were able to trudge around with crampons on our boots and get some beautiful views of blue ice and the valley below.

Sadly, we knew our comfy time with the family would have to come to an end, and we are now in the Auckland airport heading to Chile. Between Jane's amazing cooking and the general spoilage we've received, it actually is quite difficult to get back in the swing of things and haul our luggage around again. We've had such a fabulous time without an ounce of stress - truly a vacation from our vacation. Still, South American has always been #1 on my list of places to visit, and I'm so excited to finally be on our way. It feels like we're on the home stretch, with so many good things behind us, and even more ahead!

Make them eat cake

2009-09-08T16:38:00.007-04:00

It's apparently already been a week since Dad's post but as time at 16 Armagh Street is measured on the home baking calendar I can only confirm that it's been a lemon drizzle cake, a slab of raisin cake, a box of butter flapjack, several roast dinners, more bottles of wine than I can count and a Christmas cake (?!) since the last post. While we have both been lapping up the comforts of home (stocked refrigerator!, working plumbing!), we have also been steeling ourselves for our looming return to New York. Unfortunately while the great weather we've enjoyed throughout the trip has followed us across the Tasman as a beautiful early Spring that has meant spending a fair bit of our time deepening our hatred of Macs as we trawl the internet for jobs, apartments and cheap u-haul rentals.

On the days we have changed out of our pjs we have enjoyed exploring the spectacular scenery around Christchurch. The city itself is the biggest in the South Island and sprawls across the pancake flat Canterbury plain - bordered by the Port Hills to the South and an endless stretch of curved beach to the West.

The first time cabin fever forced us out of the house we drove the route of my favourite cycling route up through the Port Hills and all the way to the town of Akaroa. This (comparatively) old settlement is a former French colony and its history is still visible in the architecture and street names of the town center. The real highlight of the trip though is the drive itself - these are just a few of the views:

Littleton Harbour

A cow

Akaroa (4 seasons in 1 day was written about this country)

Our next trip was a carefully negotiated double header - if I agreed to entrust my life to a horse of guaranteed docility for two hours Megan would accompany me for an afternoon mountain bike around the beautiful Bottle Lake Forest Park. Although neither of us will admit it both trips had their charms but the scenery again stole the show:

No pedals

Mum Leese and Megan looking the part

When you turn on a PC in New Zealand this is what you see

Wow

No hay required

We emerged next for a quick jaunt out to the house of some friends of my parents who have redefined "work-life balance" by retiring (or semi-retiring) from legal careers in the US to pursue farming and beekeeping in rural Canterbury! After a delicious lunch we were walking around their fields when our host announced that we were just in time to witness the birth of their first ever baby goats!
"You're kidding!" I said,
"No she's kidding!" she replied:

For our most recent expedition we drove up to Hanmer Springs, finally making it into the foothills of the snowcapped mountains which have seemed to float above the Northern horizon since our arrival. The town markets itself as the South Island's Alpine village but I don't know anywhere in France where you can soak off a hard morning's mountain bike crashing in a 41 degree thermal hot tub:

Simon Says

2009-08-31T06:56:00.015-04:00

Aware that most of you are probably sick of hearing from Megan and me, for the latest installment of bamrtw we have, as promised, ceded the keyboard to our first guest writer...Dad Leese! [excited applause].

I am most honoured to be the first ‘guest blogger’ on the Ben and Megan odyssey, but having had to wait so patiently for them to arrive in Christchurch, it is the least they could do. They managed to pick a Jet Star flight which ran to schedule, and their (minimal) luggage improbably arrived with them – in all a good start. A biosecurity lapse enabled Ben’s running shoes to enter the country also, so what else was could be needed.

Safely installed ‘at home’, washing machine in action, and an acceptance that Jane had assumed they had not had a square meal in months, they have settled into a respite in Christchurch before the rigours of South America. Apparently objectives whilst here include finding jobs to go back to, ditto somewhere to live, and devise the plan for retrieving their material and canine possessions from the four corners of North America. That should keep them busy.

After a day’s R&R we all set off for Dunedin, with a four-hour run to the midday lunch booking at Fleur’s Place, Moraeki arriving minute perfect (you can do that in New Zealand).

The run down the country’s main arterial route (one lane each way and passing places at intervals) could hardly be regarded as stressful. A delightful couple of hours in the sunshine, and then off to book into The Brothers’ boutique B&B. The place used to be the home of the Brothers who staffed the Roman Catholic Cathedral adjacent to it. The happy couple found themselves in the unique ‘Chapel’ room, whilst we repaired to a dowdy garret elsewhere… En route, we caught up with Tom (currently laying firm foundations for a career in sales and marketing selling up-market car polish to anyone who strays too close and can’t handle his badinage). Then on to the national schools’ choral federation finale concert in the Town Hall, to see ‘my’ choirs outperform every other effort from all over the country. Inexplicably, three very high-powered judges allowed swine flu symptoms to get the better of them, and the top spot went elsewhere – but we took it well.

After a night’s diligent prayer in the Chapel, the happy couple enjoyed a run along the Dunedin peninsula to meet Simon Richardson, who is charged with the unenviable task of committing my visage to canvas, under commission by my Board. He tells me he can mix botox in with the pigment with splendid results. Ben found talking to his gorgeous wife whilst trying not to be distracted by her framed naked form on the walls something of a discipline, but all were very impressed by the part completed work.

Then on to the Albatross colony at the end of the peninsula – a fascinating insight into these amazing birds, most of whom weren’t there. Five days non stop flight time to Chile was just one amazing fact, along with pairs bonding for life of up forty years, but spending most of each two year breeding cycle apart and doing their own thing. Sounds perfect. (Most of the birds in this photo are shags, but there is one albatross visible as a white speck!)

Also on view was a WW2 Armstrong disappearing gun in restored condition, in its emplacement to defend Dunedin harbour. In the large circular gun chamber, the 360 degree aiming marks around the walls included a segment marked with a thick red line and the words ‘LIGHTHOUSE’. Worth a reminder, we thought…

On the way back to Christchurch we stopped off to look at the Moeraki Boulders, an extraordinary geological formation revered by Maori for their mystical significance. Ben, on the other hand, thought one of them looked like a breaking dinosaur egg and decided to hatch out.

Spring is springing in Christchurch, with cherry blossom and azaleas everywhere for the pair of them to run round. Far too much energy.

Flight of the Leeses

2009-08-27T17:51:00.026-04:00

After somewhat adjusting to the Australian winter chill, we have now arrived in New Zealand where the temps are even lower and people are still inexplicably strolling around in T-shirts! Clearly we are wimps, but I'm hoping we'll adjust soon enough as well. New Zealand is everything I've heard about - even from the plane, I couldn't believe how gorgeous the coastline and green hills were. Every view is spectacular and the towns all appear to be quite charming and full of hardy, outdoorsy, very friendly people. It has been a warm welcome, despite the weather! Unfortunately, our time in the North Island was very brief, as we (fortunately!) have my new in-laws awaiting us in Christchurch on the South Island, where we'll spend a few wonderful weeks being pampered and spending a lot of Internet time trying to arrange our lives back in New York. We did make the most of our North Island experience, though, by renting a tiny car and driving the length of it - again , with me driving on the left side, and this time I only pulled out into traffic on the right side of the road once!

We flew into Auckland and only spent one night there, as while it's a pleasant enough capital city, there isn't really much to see or do there when there's such gorgeous scenery throughout the rest of the country. We did however stay about a block off Parnell Road, which is lined with really cute restaurants, boutiques, and old Victorian houses turned into tea shops. Bright and early the next morning, we set out for Rotorua, well known for the lake that dominates the middle of the town (where I saw black swans for the first time!) and the crazy geothermal activity throughout the rest of it.

The town itself is pretty quiet, but the geothermal sights are amazing. We spent an afternoon walking through steaming lakes of bubbling mud and a cemetery filled with spooky tendrils of rotten-egg scented vapor - a great setting for a horror movie. Just outside of town is a sort of geothermal theme park, Wai-O-Tapu, with a large and very punctual geyser, visually stunning formations, and mineral-filled lakes and waterfalls. The whole area has that sulfur smell, but it doesn't matter when you're looking at springs naturally colored electric green and brilliant orange.

Rotorua is also known for its large indigenous Maori population, so we went to a "traditional" Maori village for an evening of traditionally cooked food (prepared in a hangi, an underground stone oven) and eye-rolling, tongue-waggling entertainment. The Maori were a very warlike, intimidating people, as appropriated by the national All Blacks rugby team - how would you like to oppose this on the playing field?:

and we learned about their war dances and weapons from the Maoris themselves. The whole evening was really fun and not nearly as menacing as it looks.

After our brief stay in Rotorua, we hit the road once again and headed for Taupo, also known for its huge lake. Rather than hot springs, Taupo instead features trout fishing, so we decided to give it a go. Unfortunately, once we got our fishing license and rented the equipment, Ben cast the spinner about 3 times before the rod separated into two pieces, the line broke, and we ended up with a 2-foot pole and only one lure left. The whole cheap endeavor resulted in our buying the shop a new rod and no fresh fish for our dinner, but we did have a great time on the gorgeous river.

Our last day on the North Island was dedicated to our driving straight down to Wellington to return the car and catch our flight to Christchurch, but the scenery along the drive was well worth the trip. For a solid hour, the most spectacular rainbow either of us had ever scene lingered just ahead of us, begging us to find the pot of gold - it occurred to us that such a find would preclude our having to look for jobs in New York, but we drove on instead. We passed over beautiful rolling green hills, by countless sheep, and under a sparkling sky.

I can't believe we have so much time to enjoy this country, especially from the comforts of a family home. The next few blog posts will probably be on the shorter side and involve lots of references to bottles of wine and sleeping in, but we do intend to explore the South Island and keep the updates going. Also, rumor has it a guest blogger may make an appearance, so stay tuned!

The Bill and Ben

2009-08-24T03:14:00.008-04:00

As we waited for the greyhound from Coffs Harbour to our next stop of Byron Bay we had a pint at the local inn and soon found ourselves talking to a group of old guys who, in between offering to drive us round the area, assured us that Byron was "the worst dump on the coast - and that's fair dinkum mate!" (they actually did say that). We can only assume that they were not fans of beautiful, walkable towns with sensational beaches and great ice cream because after three days we certainly had no complaints. While continuing the "out of season holiday town" theme we've established on this trip we had a very relaxing stay (for the most part), and with the drive north providing a crucial couple of extra degrees we got to spend a lot of time lounging on the beach.

Megan as Ursula Andress:

Me and a yoghurt pot reconnecting with my inner 8 year old:

The only incident of real note occurred on our first full day shortly after we parted ways on a run around the iconic local lighthouse. As Megan headed home to our hostel I turned back for another lap of the hill - this time to include the steep path which takes you right out into the water at the very tip of the headland on which the lighthouse sits. A short while later I arrived at what is officially Australia's most Easterly point just as the sun began to set over the sea and the long wintery shadows it cast on the afternoon waves were absolutely spectacular. June to November is peak whale and dolphin season and I had just begun to see if I could spot any of the tell-tale plumes when I realized that... I was standing in one of several piles of human sick! The moment immediately spoiled I looked around for a possible author and sure enough, just a few feet away, were sprawled a guy and two girls (English of course), who seemed much less concerned about their various regurgitations than I was. Annoyed, and somehow believing that in my running gear I cut some sort of imposing figure, I told the guy that he was doing the reputation of Queen and country no favours. By way of response my compatriot, who despite his state seemed to have made a much better appraisal than I of our disparate sizes, punched me on the nose. Four times.

I don't think I've ever been punched in the face before which, while an odd realization for a 29 year old guy, may explain my reaction. The interval between punches one to two was spent being pleasently suprised at how little it actually hurt, two to three was spent wondering if I should be trying to "duck and weave" (and how I might go about doing this), and three to four was wasted appealing to two nearby fisherman who clearly regarded one Englishman punching another as saving them a job. With my fight response clearly on holiday I eventually got around to flighting and made my way back up the hill wondering what else I should have done. On my way back though the sensible option presented itself and I ducked into the local police station for what I assumed would be the usual lengthy wait followed by a round of form filling in. To my surprise however, as soon as I mentioned the words "drunk Englishman," four burly examples of New South Wales' finest appeared out of a back room, dove into a van and charged back up the hill with me in tow. Sure enough my friends hadn't moved and after a brief comparison of accounts he was led away to what I was told would be a $350 fine and a permanent file leading to some awkward questions should he ever apply for an Australian visa again - they don't mess around Down Under.

A crimewatch reconstruction:

In case anyone's worried that having survived India and south east Asia we are somehow attempting to engineer some drama for the blog I can assure you that the rest of our sojourn in Australia passed very pleasantly and without police involvement. In fact we've become quite domestic and, having kitchens at our disposal for the first time in several months, have taken the opportunity to cook up some of our specialities:

Despite being a decade older than many of the guests we also took full advantage of our hostel's free Sangria night and as well as mild hangovers the event provided the first of what was to become a series of encounters with slightly odd Australian raconteurs. I forget why we first spoke to Damian but we spent much of the evening being regaled with stories of how he had spent many years earning a living crafting fairy stars from cardboard and glitter (so far so normal for a hippie town like Byron Bay), how he owned the largest collection of Charlie Chaplin paraphenalia in the world, how he had managed to acquire the only case of Don Bradman commemorative beer to have avoided being smashed by the teetotaller's lawyers and how Damian Marley was named after him (we were as skeptical as you until he produced a fistful of photos of a younger himself and Bob). We finally escaped as he began to tell us about the flying saucer he was building utilizing secret government plans but he was an entertaining guy and as an interaction it was definitely an improvement on the day before.

From Byron Bay we took the Greyhound north once again along the Gold Coast and through my old home town of Surfer's Paradise. While another sun-drenched evening made the coastal drive an enjoyable trip down memory lane it was with some trepidation that we approached our final stop of Brisbane - our guidebook had described the Queensland capital as "excelling only in mediocrity, lethargy and unreliable public transport"(!) While it's certainly true that Brisbane lacks an Opera House and for some inexplicable reason any real beaches, it was actually a great stay though we didn't get far beyond sightseeing from the river and strolling the beautifully landscaped South Bank area. We also owe a huge debt of gratitude to Steve, our couch-surfing host for all three days, who looked after us very well and gamely put up with hosting a Brit for the first three days of a very promising Ashes decider.

For our final night before heading to Middle Earth we had decided to experience that most Australian of obsessions - live sport! For a truly cultural evening we decided that the accompaniment to our pies and chips would be the end-of-season Aussie rules football clash between the Brisbane Lions and the Port Adelaide Power. The game is hard to explain but seems to involve huge numbers of sleeveless Aussies chasing each other and/or a rugby ball around a cricket field for an amazingly long time. Sometimes they punch the ball, sometimes they kick it and most often they fumble for it as it bounces around their feet before getting jumped on by members of the other team. I'm told the game was a very exciting one and Brisbane certainly came back from a long way down though we might not have thought their situation so hopeless if we had realized before trying to leave at halftime that they play for four quarters.

And with that we are already at the end of our time in Australia. When we made the decision to stay longer in India we knew it would be at the expense of this spectacular island but I don't think either of us regrets the decision. Australia is definitely a country we could come back to and its popularity as a holiday destination is easily understood given its spectcaular scenery and laid-back lifestyle. That said, after the sensory overload of our first three months, living in a country that is so familiar has itself been a little disorientating and the feeling that there is a temple somewhere we should be exploring or a unique food we need to sample (four and twenty pies do not count), has been hard to shake.

The Land Down Under

2009-08-18T21:54:00.002-04:00

We've been in Australia about a week, and we're still startled by what a change it is from the earlier stops on our trip. We're no longer uncomfortably hot and sweaty, this being their winter, and it's just so easy to do everything. Being in an English-speaking first world country is a shock to the senses after the places we've been lately, and we feel like we don't really know what to do with ourselves without cultural artifacts and unusual customs to learn about. Still, we're getting by with plenty of time on the beach (between chilly breezes), long walks in national parks, and 30 Rock DVDs on our laptop (we bought copies of all 3 seasons in Thailand and we're catching up on everything we've ever missed! It's awesome!). We've also been graciously hosted by a friend of Ben's in Sydney (in her gorgeous apartment with Opera House views!), and then by Leese family friends outside of Sydney in their beautiful home, so the days of roughing it are feeling somewhat distant.

I really loved Sydney and can see why so many people enjoy living there - it's one of the most naturally beautiful and laid-back major cities I've been to. The Botanic Gardens fill the middle of the city, water is everywhere, and the Opera House and Harbour Bridge are visible from hundreds of vantage points, so the entire city looks like a postcard. We were struck by how quiet it is - everywhere we walked, we were alone on every block, except for the dozens of runners in the Botanic Garden. It felt like everyone was on holiday and didn't tell us, but after speaking with a few locals, it turns out Sydney is always naturally this quiet. It took a little getting used to after being in crazy Asian cities, not to mention New York, so instead of people-watching, we strolled around and looked at buildings and views instead. Another quirk we've noticed here is the light - maybe it has to do with being below the equator, or maybe it's the clean air, but the light is gorgeous here. Sunsets seem to last a few hours, so everything takes on an orangey glow all afternoon - it's a photographer's dream!

During our second morning in Sydney, it was pouring rain, so we took refuge inside the Museum of Sydney and learned about the arrival of the English to the "undiscovered" island filled with Aborigines. Australia is quite young, its founding even more recent than that of the US, so all the historical accounts felt quite vivid and new. The museum appeared to be making an effort to pay special attention to Aboriginal history, which I found interesting. It seems like the US still doesn't know what to do with its displaced Native Americans.

One of the highlights of our Sydney visit was an architecture walk, which we did the next day. We ambled around with an architect who happened to be a capable lecturer, and learned about the Opera House and its counterpoint, a skyline-dominating office building designed by Renzo Piano. I've never really understood the intellectual side of architecture, but the guy did a good job explaining the relationship and symbolism of the two buildings. The Opera House really is one of the most dynamic and spectacular buildings I've ever seen, its base supposedly representing the sandstone cliffs of Australia, and the white shells representing clouds, all within a perfectly symmetrical whole structure. It really is a gorgeous symbol for Sydney.

While in town we also managed to take a stroll through the very chilly Manly Beach, filled with gorgeous sunshine and brave surfers, and see the excellent Sydney Zoo! It might be the only way I get to see a koala, duckbilled platypus, and kangaroo, so we took advantage and had a great time. Like everywhere else in Sydney, the zoo has great city views, so it was really amazing to see the fantastic animals and exhibits in such a beautiful setting.

Thanks to Ben's family friends who hosted us in Parramatta, just a few miles down the river, we got to head out west for a couple days and take in the Blue Mountains, so called because the eucalyptus and tea trees give off a visible blue haze. We hiked through the mountains for an entire day, saw the famous Three Sisters cliffs, and didn't get lost or stranded once on the trails, so we're hoping those days are behind us. The mountains and views were gorgeous, and we loved the little repurposed coal-mining train that shot us vertically up the mountainside, saving our feet the 200 or so steps.

Once we finally decided we'd thoroughly taken advantage of Sydney and environs, we hopped on a Greyhound bus (which has turned out to be a great way to get around Oz cheaply!) and headed for the beach! The next few days were spent at Coff's Harbour, a rather sleepy beach town with absolutely amazing waves. We discovered that, if you ignore the ocean, smaller-town Australia is startlingly similar to smaller-town Texas, which perhaps explains why I feel so at home here. Once we got to Coff's, we traipsed for miles with our bags, trying to find our hotel, and we realized that there were no buses, trains, or taxis, and everything was really sprawling and spread-out, because everyone has their own SUV or pickup - much like Texas! The fast food and chain stores all looked very familiar, as did the scrubby green/brown trees and grasses. Everyone we met was extremely friendly and helpful, there is a strong Christian community, and the food portions are impossibly huge. It's uncanny - like a Bizarro Abilene on the beach.

Try as we might, it was just too cold to lie on the beach our first day, so we explored it on foot and stumbled upon a surfing competition! I'd hoped to see some good surfing here, since I've never really been around big waves before, and was not disappointed. The competitors were amazing! I intend to try surfing for myself while we're here, and I hope I'm at least able to stand up. These guys made it look so easy! We sat in the sun for hours watching the surfing before getting some fast food for dinner - our only option since everything in town closed at 6pm (another Australian quirk we've noticed. Everything closes so early! What do people do at night?!).

Other highlights in Coff's included the very cute weekend market, lined with local vendors with their handmade soaps and wood carvings, whale-watching on Muttonbird Island (sadly, no whales appeared for us), and the awesome Pet Porpoise Pool! It's sort of like a mini Sea World, but we were able to get up close and personal with some dolphins and sea lions, who were very affectionate.

Soon enough, it became time for us to leave Coff's and move on up the east coast, so we made the long walk back to the Greyhound stop, carrying our luggage and wishing we had a Texas-sized vehicle of our own...

Un-Thaid

2009-08-14T19:07:00.016-04:00

As this trip has progressed our early ports of call have begun to feel an age away while at other times we can't believe that three months have already flown by. Whether we like it or not however this post (albeit rather short and photo-light), marks the halfway point for bamrtw and we can't help but feel it's downhill from here. After twelve weeks in hot, polluted Asian cities we head next to beautiful Sydney for the middle of the Australian winter. For the first time on the trip we will fly south of the Equator and, having just about gotten used to being an object of curiosity and/or a mark wherever we go, are looking forward to the anonymity of countries which, while further from the US than ever, will be more familiar than anything we have seen to date.

Before heading down under though there's time for this last missive from Thailand - the so-called "Land of Smiles."

We flew back into Bangkok, still glowing from our fantastic experience in Vietnam, quite late at night and postponed our arrival into the city proper when our unsuccessful attempt to avoid an expensive cab ride saw us spend the early hours of our first day circling the airport complex on a baggage handlers' shuttle bus. As we felt we knew the city fairly well after our first two visits when we finally arrived we headed to our usual hotel only to find that it was full. This was the first time this had happened to us and given the number of places in the vicinity we weren't too worried - at least until we'd woken up another four receptionists to be grumpily informed that they too were out of space. Wondering if there was some sort of holiday on that we didn't know about I volunteered to leave my bag with Megan at our most recent strike-out and see if I could find anything else down one of the narrow, underlit alleyways nearby.

Since our first day in Thailand we had joked about the policemen who, while numerous and visible, seemed to share an obsession with having every spare milimeter of fabric tailored out of their clothes. The result is that most of them look more like male strippers in 'police uniforms' than the cops we are more used to seeing and up until that night we had found them far from intimidating. There's something about 2a.m. and a lack of streetlights though which meant there was nothing funny about the two policemen who suddenly appeared out of the darkness and demanded I freeze! The sad fact is that bagless Brits stumbling around Bangkok that early in the morning are usually probably up to no good but after a quick frisk down my new friends decided I didn't pose an immediate threat and let me go. No longer in the mood to be picky we found a room a street away from Khao San a short while later and crashed.

A Thai policeman - a serious threat to lost Englishmen and weak seams:

Khao San road, if you've seen "The Beach," is where Robert Carlyle first accosts Leo DiCaprio and for better or worse has been the hub around which most backpackers have based their Indochinese adventures for 25 years. Although this was our first visit it was obvious that the area was gentrifying very fast; boutique hotels outnumber the true flophouses, everyone speaks English and there's even a Starbucks nestling in next to the pad thai and fake DVD sellers! We felt a little out of place amongst the western crowd which seemed to be a three-way mix of middle-aged hippies back with their teenage children, college students in search of cheap drinks and full-moon parties and the 'real travellers' doing their best to make clear they're only there briefly en route to Cambodia or Laos. Unfortunately however our gastronomic excesses in Hanoi had given Megan our first bout of traveller's tummy so we decided to make the best of it, relax and start thinking about Australia.

In between regular infusions of street food and fantasizing about the imminent cold weather we did manage to knock off two of the major Bangkok sights which had eluded us on previous visits. On our second day we visited the sprawling Grand Palace complex which featured more of the spectacular architecture we'd seen at Wat Pho but on an even more impressive scale. One of the highlights was the emerald Buddha (made of jade), which is Thailand's most revered relic. We also saw (but were not allowed to photograph), several of the cermonial thrones which are used in Thai coronations and state celebrations.

The next day we braved the weekend market which features over 10,000 stalls and is apparently the largest open air market in the world. Open air is probably misleading as most of the stalls were arranged along tiny roofed alleyways which we had a lot of fun exploring. Highlights were definitely the puppy market, finally finding a reasonably priced second hand bookseller and stumbling across a stall run by the Blue Mountain Boys - surely Thailand's only Western Bluegrass band.

So that's it!

we're halfway through, have caught 11 flights without a delay and, shockingly, we've only lost 2 books, a T-shirt and a fleece between us
despite lofty ambitions and six-months off work we still haven't read any of the classics
we've developed a deep aversion to jungles
we've found that cheap countries are not as cheap as they are supposed to be but this can be offset if you are the only one of your friends to have given up their well-placed apartment
we've so far travelled over 29,000 miles and visited 9 countries (one of them communist) but by far the most stressful and maddeningly illogical government agency we've encountered was US customs
we have learnt that the word for "bottle" in Vietnam is the same as the word for "man" so until you have the accent sorted it is important to take stock of where you are before ordering
we have eaten every variety of dodgy street food we could find across three different continents and the only time either of us gotten ill was the day after we tried cooking for ourselves
we're having the time of our lives and we're still married!

P.S. in a hopeless attempt to delay our return to work we have allowed google to 'monetize' this site which explains the ads you will not have noticed at the very bottom of the blog. These ads appear to change depending on where we log on from - presumably in an attempt to tailor themselves to the readership. We just wanted to make it clear that we did not condone or approve this message:

Sapa Valley

2009-08-07T06:50:00.007-04:00

We were so pleased with ourselves when we bought such cheap train tickets - who needs travel agents! We just marched to the train station and got them ourselves! - until we arrived at the overnight train and realized we'd booked upright seats instead of sleeper berths. We thought there surely must be some mistake, but were assured by the conductor that those were in fact our seats. So we spent the next 8 hours in the presence of loud Vietnamese children and bright lights while trying to sleep in our chairs - not the best start.

However, when we arrived in Sapa (via an hour and a half bus ride after departing the train), all was forgotten, as the sun was just rising over one of the most beautiful mountain towns I've ever seen.

We checked into our hostel, had some pho, slept, and then wandered through the steeply pitched streets among H'mong and Dzou tribal women trying to sell us bags, blankets, skewers of meat, and sticky rice in banana leaves. The most aggressive hawkers were the kids, but they were too pretty to be annoying.

After a while of taking in the views, we sat down for dinner and noticed all the groups of Vietnamese diners gathered round communal hot pots. They piled tons of uncooked meats, vegetables, and noodles into bubbling broth filled with mushrooms and spices, and the whole thing looked amazing and delicious. We tried not to stare as we lamented not having any friends in Sapa, as two people was clearly not enough to justify ordering a huge hot pot. After cheering ourselves up with a couple of bia hoi, we headed home.

The next day we hopped out of bed to start a mountain trek, the main activity for visitors to Sapa. It began as a steep downhill paved sidewalk to the village of Cat Cat where more tribal people tried to sell us their wares and we saw demonstrations of looms and water powered rice mills. The views were absolutely spectacular, with the brilliant green rice paddies carved into vertical mountainsides and several small waterfalls and streams , so we decided to continue the trek. The next village, Sin Chai, was an easy walk away, and with the tourist hordes completely thinned out, we decided to press on. Of course, the next thing we knew, we were hopelessly lost. After our jungle hike in Thailand, we'd promised ourselves we wouldn't do it again, but here we were, in the pouring rain, peering into another dense jungle with no sign of a trail in any direction.

We trudged for hours through chokingly thick underbrush and steep riverbeds, regularly stepping into 8-inch thick mud holes and encountering a total of 3 houses. The H'mong villagers we met didn't try to sell us anything and instead stared and giggled when we tried to ask for directions to a road (any road!) - both sure signs that we were well off the beaten path. As difficult as the going was, we saw some gorgeous waterfall and forest views that most travelers don't get to see, as well as dozens of piglets, puppies, chicks, and water buffalo, all of which in retrospect made for a rewarding experience, but at the time we were just both afraid we'd have to sleep in the woods!

Finally, after clinging to rocks and crossing a couple steep waterfalls, we saw a clearing overhead and scrambled up the wet rocks - literally climbing up and out of a waterfall - to a road! Construction workers about 20 yards away witnessed the whole thing, drop-jawed - I doubt they'd ever seen a couple of white people emerge soaking wet from the rain forest in that location before. We smiled and started the long walk home, when after about 15 minutes, we came across a minibus full of tourists that had pulled over for a photo op. After a few minutes of pleading with the driver, we had a free ride home! We were wet, freezing, and very dirty, but so happy to see civilization again.

Once we'd cleaned up and gotten warm, we rewarded ourselves with a nice dinner, seated by the window so we could watch the world go by, and again gazed with envy at the locals enjoying their hot pots. Next things we knew, there was a knock at the window, and we looked up to see our German friends from the Halong Bay boat! They were meeting up with the English couple from the boat (who also happened to be in Sapa) for drinks, and invited us to join. What a great surprise! We joined them after dinner at a pub filled with H'mong girls, in their traditional clothes, playing pool and checking their email - quite a sight - and had a lovely evening. Even better, we made plans to meet up the next night for a big hot pot dinner. Score!

Apparently deciding our jungle hike wasn't enough adventure, we opted for a motorbike the next day and hit the open road to see a bit more countryside. Ben proved to be a quick study on the scooter and before long we were zooming along the Tram Ton Pass and taking in even more stunning views than we'd seen before! I'm pleased to have no particularly stressful events to report from the ride - it was a gorgeous sunny day and the ride was absolutely perfect! We went out 40 km to the town of Lai Chao, had a bowl of pho, and went straight back, reluctant to press our luck.

By this point we'd gotten in touch with our other Halong Bay friend, the Berkeley PhD student, by some fluke also in Sapa, and entire group successfully reassembled, set about on our hot pot dinner. It was all we'd hoped, chicken, beef, fish, tofu, greens, noodles, and other goodies all dumped in by us at intervals and then fished out into steaming bowls of soup - absolutely amazing and just a really fun way to have dinner. The rice wine and bia hoi were a perfect complement to a great evening.

Our last day in Sapa we felt the need to take in even more views, so we climbed a landscaped paved mountain trail lined with gardens and exhibits - much more civilized than our previous rainforest expedition. Again, the scenery was stunning, and we had a lot of fun taking in the sights, which included an ostrich pen! Unfortunately, this hike was rather short, as we had to catch our bus to the train station which would return us to Hanoi.

This time at the train station, we were relieved to discover that our tickets were for a sleeper, so at least half our ticket-buying efforts had been successful! We got settled in and washed up for the overnight ride, when our two companions joined us in our 4-bed cabin. One was a waitress we recognized from the H'mong pub in Sapa, who was happy to see us, and the other was a Vietnamese artist and photographer who had a cowboy obsession. When he learned I was from Texas, he got so excited and in his very minimal English, expounded the virtues of Clint Eastwood and country music. We cracked up when his cell phone rang with the Lonesome Dove tune, backdrop to every B-western shootout scene, as his ringtone. He was a devoted fan! When the porter came by our cabin with drinks, he insisted on buying us tea, and then for a couple hours he entertained us with a mix of country music and Louis Armstrong, played on his phone. It was such a bizarre and uniquely Vietnamese experience, us with our traveling companions, neither of whom spoke much English, but who were unfailingly generous and open, thrilled to share their lives and interests with us. We can't get over the friendliness of the place.

Back in Hanoi, we had an extremely food-filled final 48 hours in Vietnam. Reluctant to miss out on anything, we had lunch at the well-known Highway 4 restaurant, home of the famous catfish spring rolls which we will definitely attempt to recreate at home, and then headed straight to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. Unfortunately, we hadn't realized the tomb is only open for 3 hours in the morning, so we missed our chance to see Uncle Ho, and opted instead for the nearby Ho Chi Minh Museum. It is definitely the strangest museum in the world. We saw the usual and expected collection of photos and letters, but then there are the symbolic exhibits that attempt to convey grand themes of humanity with representative objects, such as giant fruit and a life-size model Ford Edsel crashing through a wall. Few captions were in English, so we were left to interpret for ourselves the meaning of a brick-and-streamer volcano and a documentary with the Carpenters' "I Know I Need to Be in Love" as background music.

That evening we treated ourselves to what has become a monthly fancy dinner, this time at the Green Tangerine, situated in a beautiful 1929 French colonial home and home to absolutely amazing French Vietnamese fusion deliciousness. We had an incredible meal, and I arranged to have candles and singing accompany our dessert in celebration of Ben's birthday the next day! The waiters went all out, turning off the lights and the fan so as not to blow out the candles, but Ben thought they were closing down and was about to complain to one of them when I had to remind him that someone had a special day coming up and should just wait to see what was coming. He was convincingly surprised and pleased with the birthday cheesecake.

Our final day in Vietnam contained one of the biggest highlights for me - we had a cooking class! I've been looking forward to a cooking class for the entire trip, so we finally made it happen at Old Hanoi restaurant, and it was absolutely perfect. We had signed up for a group lesson, but it turned out no one else had, so we received a private lesson with alovely 20-year-old chef named Phu, who is the tiniest person I have ever seen. She took us to the market and explained which kinds of rice paper were for different kinds of spring rolls, showed us new herbs and spices, and then walked us back to the restaurant. The whole class was in the restaurant courtyard at an outdoor table, away from the heat of the kitchen, which gave the class a very relaxed atmosphere and really enhanced our experience. We chopped our own herbs and stirred our own sautees on the hot plate, and eventually produced our own spring rolls, royal rice, marinated grilled white fish, and ginger and sweet potato pudding. I really feel like I learned some new techniques and ideas, while having so much fun, for which I am so grateful to our incredible teacher!

We had to leave Hanoi that evening, and have since been in Bangkok, preparing to leave Southeast Asia and the first half of our trip. Our experience in Vietnam was absolutely stunning, eye-opening, and overwhelmingly positive. I would have to say it's been my favorite country so far, and the one to which I can't wait to return. I'm so grateful that someone of my generation can feel so warmly toward a country that was an enemy not long ago, and it has made me think about how the world will change for the next generation. I can only hope the changes continue to be so dramatic and positive.

So long Halong!

2009-08-04T06:22:00.003-04:00

After the sensory overload of Hanoi we decided to take a break and head for what is probably Vietnam's most reknowned tourist attraction - the spectacular limestome formations of Halong Bay. While we generally prefer to try and explore places on our own we knew this would be difficult in this case (we are carrying everything except a boat), and so we booked ourselves onto a two-day junk tour. For $58 each this would turn out to be spectacular value and one of the best decisions of our trip so far.

Our trip began with an air conditioned bus ride through the rice paddies to the south of Hanoi to Halong city where we checked in at an enormous dock full of junks and picked our way through the porters and supply canoes to find our boat.

On board we were very pleasantly surprised with the quality of the accomodation with our private cabin boasting a nice ensuite which rivalled most of the hotel bathrooms we've seen so far. With so many boats belching diesel fumes we were initially a little worried about how crowded the harbor itself would be but as soon as we pulled away we found ourself in open water and began to relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Lunch was the second very pleasant surprise of the cruise and set the bar for the next 4 meals all of which included several beautifully prepared seafood dishes and as much rice, bread, coffee and fruit as we could eat.

The only slight disappointment of the trip was the weather though the steady drizzle did mean that we got to visit two enormous limestone caves and a floating fish farm which I think most people would have opted for over the scheduled swimming (jellyfish dodging) and sea kayaking anyway.

After cruising away the rest of the afternoon and circling through the remarkable islands we put the anchors down and settled in for a great evening of seafood and local wine with our fellow passengers including 2 very interesting German guys, an American girl about to start her PhD at Berkeley and a young English couple who got married just a fortnight before us.

The second day was more of the same though this time we did break out the sea kayaks and, once we found a jellyfish free area, had a quick dip.

From Halong city we headed back to Hanoi for a break before our next expedition. We used our first afternoon to get our final suit fittings and headed out in the evening in search of some short ribs which had been recommended by our new German friends. Fortunately the restaurant also served copious amounts of our beloved Bia Hoi and when we'd finished dinner we found ourselves drinking next to three local guys - a train conductor, a younger chap who worked for LG electronics and a guy whose main roles seemed to be to grin widely, shake my hand every ten minutes or so and ensure that no-one was ever, ever without a beer. The language barrier was difficult to surmount and while occasionally frustrating it also worked to our advantage when we mistook the frequent toasts to sainted national hero "Uncle Ho" as being to "Alcohol!" and responded enthusiatically in kind. We ended up talking and gesticulating long into the night and learnt that the younger guys' dad fought and lost a leg in the war. As Megan mentioned though it was clear to us though that not only were they not upset to meet Americans (or American residents) in their country, they were grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate that, whatever lingering resentments older generations may harbour, younger Vietnamese care only about the future.

By the time our new friends finally had to weave away on their scooters we had run up a sizable bill but to our amazement they insisted on paying for everything including our blow-out dinner which we'd finished before we even met them. Not wanting to offend them by refusing their generosity we felt we had no option but to thank them profusely and hope that an opportunity presents itself to pay their kindness forward.

Unfortunately the next day was to be the hottest and muggiest of our two stays in Hanoi but, determined to press on, we dragged ourselves off to the Museum of Ethnology via the mercifully air-conditioned and very cheap local bus system. We thought that as we had decided to head to Sapa in the far north of the country next, this would be a good introduction to the 'minority peoples' (the Vietnamese PC term) that make up much of that area's population. While the exhaustive (and in the heat, exhausting) exhibits contained too much information to process in one visit they made clear what an incredible patchwork of ethnicities, languages and ways of life we had to look forward to. It also served as a reminder of just how many modern national boundaries are Western constructs with little impact on the groups of people they are supposed to divide. While some of the tribes highlighted number only a few thousand, others can apparently be found, with their distinct traditions and cultures, throughout Indochina. Our favorite exhibits were the 'romantic' wood carvings (life size versions are on flickr if you're into that kind of thing) and the reconstructed houses showing the diversity of not-only construction techniques but also social organization.

By the time we left I was a sweaty mess and with a long trek to the train station ahead of us and no shower in sight we began to fantasize about the air conditioned sleeper cabin on our overnight train. Would we have it to ourselves? Would there be a basin where we could sponge off and change clothes? Would we be able to get a good night's sleep and arrive in Sapa bright-eyed and refreshed? Sadly, the answer was no on all counts - but that is another story....

Good Morning, Vietnam!

2009-07-31T06:25:00.007-04:00

We arrived in Hanoi not knowing exactly what to expect, what with the American history there, the current Communist government, and its reputation for incessant tourist hassling. However, we have been thrilled to discover Vietnam, and it's turning out to be one of our favorite spots on the trip so far. There is so much to love here - the people are extremely friendly and helpful, the food is absolutely amazing, and everything is dirt cheap! It has been one of the easiest places to visit, from the organized streets to the efficient transportation to the free Wi-Fi everywhere - we will definitely be returning someday soon.

Old Hanoi is a pleasure to stroll around, so that is what we have done with most of our time. The streets are completely clogged with motorbikes and scooters, as are the sidewalks, so walking is a little hazardous, but there is so much to see. Every shop is selling silk clothing, household shrines, or the cheapest beer in the world, and there are green spaces and lakes frequently dotting the landscape. We have visited markets specializing in frogs, fish, herbs, fabric, counterfeit money (for burning in Buddhist shrines, not to spend!), and custom-made suits, which we have both taken advantage of. Hanoi contains everything I love about Asian cities, with its overwhelmingly young, vibrant crowd and slightly dirty but always interesting sidewalk shops, with a few important additions: amazing bread, perfectly brewed coffee, and cheese! These leftovers from French colonialism set Hanoi apart from anywhere else I've ever been, and I love it.

If I didn't know Vietnam were Communist, I would never have guessed from spending time here. Ben and I have both been to Cuba, and with my trip to Beijing last year, I felt like I was beginning to recognize a pattern in Communist countries, but Vietnam defies every stereotype. Everything is available and for sale, there are no policemen or soldiers in the streets, and the Internet is everywhere and seemingly without restrictions. I'm motivated to do more reading about modern Vietnam, because everything I've learned so far just raises more questions for me.

The other surprise to me was the Vietnamese attitude toward Americans, or at least toward me. I have honestly answered every time I'm asked where I'm from, and have repeatedly received a smile and a welcome in return. It's remarkable how eager people are to look forward to the future and either forgive or forget all the troubles in the past.

But back to the food. In New York, I fell in love with banh mi (banh my on the signs here), baguette sandwiches loaded with pork, paté, cheese, and pickled vegetables, and I have not been disappointed in the real thing. We have also had Pho (noodle soup) for several meals, delicious pastries, lightly fried spring rolls, an amazingly thick creamy soup called chao quai (apologies, I can't spell anything in Vietnamese) topped with croutons, and strange fruity drinks with bits of jelly and tapioca. Everything is served on tiny plastic tables right on the sidewalk, where we sit on even smaller stools and slurp everything down. It's amazing. One of our best revalations has been Bia Hoi - the famously cheap beer. If you go out with $10 in your pocket, you can buy about 100 beers, so we have made a lot of friends among the Vietnamese. Even better, the beer is absolutely delicious, brewed every day without preservatives, so it's fresh and light. We are very pleased with this discovery. Unfortunately, there are some scary eating habits in Vietnam, but we have successfully avoided duck embryo and dog so far.

We have met so many friendly, smiling people here, beginning with our first night. It was gently raining, and we stopped at a sidewalk Pho cafe to eat noodles under the awning. A Vietnamese guy eating alone invited us to join him, and immediately produced a bottle of rice wine (aka homemade whisky) from his pocket and poured us repeated shots until we made him stop. Suddenly the sky opened up and the rain started dumping on the awning, so he directed us to the hotel where he worked next door so we could eat in the lobby. About 2 seconds after we made the move, the awning collapsed under the weight of the rain - perfect timing! Ben helped the cafe ladies replace it, and then we spent the evening chatting with our new friend about Vietnam, family, and rice wine. It was lovely.

Vietnam is so interesting culturally, and one of the aspects that fascinates me is its multitude of religions, which frequently blend Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, ancestor worship, and local folk beliefs into a hybrid called Tam Giao. Most Vietnamese ascribe to one or all of these faiths in their own personal blend, which strikes me as so open and unique. There are also millions of Christians and some Hindus and Muslims, illustrating the complete plurality and freedom of religion here, another surprise to me. We've been to a couple temples, including the very small and peaceful Ngoc Son in the middle of a lake, which is dedicated to a scholar, a general, and the patron saint of physicians; and the Temple of Literature, dedicated to Confucianism in order to honor scholars and men of literary accomplishment. Very different from the strictly Buddhist temples we've seen everywhere else in Asia!

The other cultural highlight was a water puppet show. Rural northern Vietnamese hill tribes have for over 1000 years had a tradition of staging puppet shows in ponds and flooded fields, with puppeteers behind screens operating the wooden people and animals from below the water with poles and strings. The effect really is quite impressive, and the ancient legends and agricultural stories were very simple to follow, even though all the narration was in Vietnamese. The people, dragons, foxes, and fish splashed around and "walked" on water and were generally very cute.

The most sobering sight so far was the Hoa Lo Prison, aka Maison Centrale, better known as the Hanoi Hilton. We toured the prison where John McCain and other American pilots were imprisoned after being shot down in Vietnam, which had actually been built centuries earlier by the French to imprison Vietnamese revolutionaries. As we learned before in Ireland, visiting a prison is always quite sad and shocking, with the bleak, tiny cells and instruments of torture. This prison was the same, but an interesting piece of propaganda as well - according to the displays, the French were horribly cruel to the Vietnamese Freedom Fighters, but the Vietnamese in turn treated the Americans with kindness and love. It's a bit laughable - photos of Americans playing volleyball, decorating the prison for Christmas, enjoying their "rooms," as the cells were renamed. Knowing what I've read about McCain's imprisonment, this is such a clearly dishonest representation, and evidence of the Vietnamese desire to either look forward or just completely gloss over the past. The most striking display to me was a piece of a B-52 that had been shot down in Vietnam, as that's the exact plane my dad flew in that exact war - I'm just glad he'd never ended up in the Hanoi Hilton.

Altogether, we are off to a great start here, with visits to Halong Bay and Sapa to come, so there's still a lot more Vietnam to enjoy!

Message from a bottle

2009-07-27T06:47:00.014-04:00

This has the potential to be the shortest entry of our trip as despite staying on Hat Khua (a.k.a Bottle Beach on the north coast of Ko Pha-ngan), for longer than we have stayed at any other location on this trip we stuck to the plan and did very little for 7 straight days.

Even if we had been tempted to get out of our hammocks the beach could have been designed to dissuade us. A few hundred meters long, the beautiful sandy shore was surrounded by thick jungle (of which more later) which put paid to any ideas we may have had about running. Even the turqouise sea, while perfect for paddling or the occasional game of frisbee, was full of "sea lice" whose role seemed to be to attack anyone who strayed too close to actual swimming. Happily admitting defeat we slipped into a very comfortable routine of a reading, napping, eating and hanging out at the restaurant while enjoying plenty of the local rum.

While the weather spoilt us for much of the week our first couple of days were a different story as the long-tail boat which brought us to the beach just beat a huge storm which we watched blow in from the sea. It was strong enough to make our tiny bungalow feel very vulnerable and ripped parts of the roof clean off the main building!

The rain returned on our final day but the intervening days were stunning and exactly the kind of quiet, relaxing break we'd hoped for.

We planned to leave the beach 'tomorrow' for at least the last three days and unfortunately this meant that our ever growing rum and green curry tab kept outpacing our supply of cash and we needed to make two trips back to town to use an ATM. Rather than take the convenient, fast and reasonably priced long-tail boats, the first time this occurred we decided that we would hire a sea kayak and paddle the 5km into a headwind instead. While we eventually made it safe and sound, trying to paddle in tandem while keeping a plastic kayak straight on open water for an hour and a half was a 'bonding'experience.

That little adventure was just a warm-up for our second trip when we opted for a hike through the jungle instead. There was supposed to be a trail we could follow marked by plastic bottles but this was more of a suggestion as to where the undergrowth might be less dense and the occasional rock faces less deadly, than a trail in any recognizable sense. Sure enough after about 2 hours, just after the point when we decided we absolutely couldn't turn back, we got lost. With our shoes full of decaying leaf mulch and heavy rain soaking us to the bone we tried to laugh it off which worked well until we stumbled into one creek bed only to find that every surface was covered in biting red ants! 3 and a half traumatic hours later we stumbled into town and immediately ordered the biggest serving of chocolate pancakes we could find.

Aside from our ill-fated trips back to civilization the main sources of amusement were the beach's collection of animals. One evening we took a stroll to find the local stray dog digging frantically in the sand.

After about ten minutes he finally flushed out a decent sized crab which led to a hilarious stand-off - how many pinches on the nose is dinner worth?

In case any cat fans planned to take this as proof of canine stupidity we woke up (mid-afternoon) the next day to find our friend Kate screaming and clinging to the post of her bungalow:

The cause? One of the camp's cats was trying to swat a four foot long King Cobra which had crept in from the jungle. One of those times you don't want to consider exactly how long it would take to get to the nearest hospital.

When we finally dragged ourselves from the beach we were thrust quickly back into the realities of Asian travel and got to spend the evening in a mosquito ridden depot while our bus to Bangkok was coaxed back to life. We made it eventually around 5 the next morning and having learnt that Bangkok is a great city as long as you do not try to do anything or go anywhere we spent a very relaxing 24 hours before our flight to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

My Thai

2009-07-22T03:31:00.021-04:00

We arrived safe and sound in Bangkok a few days ago and have been thoroughly enjoying Thai hospitality ever since. The people here are so friendly and open, it’s easy to see why so many foreigners decide to settle here and live out their years on the beach. We spent our first few days in Bangkok, which is a huge, sprawling city, and rather difficult to navigate owing to the impossible traffic and indistinct neighborhoods. We finally got the hang of it right as we were leaving, so perhaps the next time we pass through we’ll feel like experts.

Once we’d arrived at our hostel, we decided to get online and check email. Literally one second after I clicked on the free wi-fi network detected by our laptop, the screen shuttered, a red skull appeared as the desktop, and a message popped up requesting that we reload Windows from a CD. What the hell?!? A red skull. It was such a cliché, our computer instantly hacked and destroyed by a laughing red skull, just like in a cheesy movie scene.

We both had a momentary panic, and then Ben, who had had the foresight to actually bring along the backup CDs that no one ever thinks they’ll need, pulled them out and started reloading our computer’s entire brain. It took hours, but piece by piece we overwrote the hard drive and reinstalled everything we’d had on it. Luckily we hadn’t been storing photos on the computer, so we didn’t lose anything important except for an afternoon in Bangkok.

Once we’d recovered from the stress of nursing our precious laptop back to health, we set out to look for dinner and explore Khao San, well known as the backpacker ghetto. The one strip teems with tanned westerners, tattoo parlors, Pad Thai street carts, used book shops, and bars, one of which was showing the Tour de France live, so at Ben’s insistence we stopped there and had a drink. The street food in Bangkok is absolutely amazing in its variety and quality, and we’ve restricted most of our meals to what can be found cooking on the sidewalk for about $0.30. After dinner, we found a blues bar playing decent live music, had a couple glasses of wine, and headed to bed.

The next day we went to the train station to try to figure out how to get to the beaches down south. Trying to save money, we tried taking the bus, which of course we boarded in the wrong direction, depending on the non-English-speaking onboard fare collector to sort us out. The correct bus eventually got us there, and once we’d arrived at the train station, in typical Thai fashion, an extremely friendly woman helped us immediately, explaining the train schedule and prices and connecting us with a tourist office that did all the work for us, seemingly for no commission! Oh, if only we’d had such help in India! We got ourselves booked in for the next day, and then explored a bit of New Bangkok, full of traffic, shiny shopping malls, and the ubiquitous street food. One thing I’ve fallen in love with is Thai writing - I can’t decipher a word, of course, but the loops and curls of the alphabet are so beautiful, I just love looking at all the signs.

While in the area, we stopped by the Jim Thompson house, now a museum but formerly the home of an American CIA agent who became a champion of Thai silk and disappeared mysteriously in Malaysia in 1967. The house is known to be an example of Thai architecture, all dark teak wood and steeply pitched roofs, and it contains Thompson’s collection of Asian art, including dozens of Buddhas. I learned that Buddha can never be depicted showing any evidence of muscle or bone, presumably to portray him as more divine than human, which explained to me while he always looks a bit pudgy. Also on the compound is a spirit house, one of which appears outside almost every home in Thailand, a mini house where the spirits get stopped before they can enter the actual home and where Thais leave offerings of food, water, and flowers to keep the spirits happy. I find the style of Buddhism here so interesting, combining textbook, Chinese-style Buddhism with ancient Thai traditional beliefs involving spirits, amulets, and astrology. We explored the several rooms and lush gardens of the Thompson house, browsed the gorgeous silk accessories at the luxury gift shop, and took off.

For our evening’s entertainment, I decided a trip to Bangkok’s Red Light District would be a must - it’s what Bangkok is famous for, after all. The Patpong area has the reputation of containing the most interesting debauchery, so we asked a cab to take us there. About an hour later, the taxi dropped us off on a very dark street and told us we had arrived. It didn’t look right, but we believed him, hopped out, and began to wander through a sleepy residential neighborhood. We walked around in circles and asked the few open shopkeepers for directions, which they tried to give us but we clearly failed to comprehend. We passed by armed guards protecting some kind of military installation, and when they unbelievably let us pass through we continued through the silent streets, cursing our cab driver and certain we were nowhere near the red lights and sex shows. Finally we reached civilization in the form of a strip mall and gas station, and found another cab who agreed to take us to our destination. We have no idea where we’d been exploring for the previous hour, but at the end of the second ride we were unmistakably in Hookerville.

Unfortunately, our Red Light adventures didn’t turn out to be as exciting as we’d hoped. Rather than flamboyant lady-boys wandering the streets, there were instead a bunch of Western families(!) and groups of bored-looking prostitutes lining the walkways. We browsed the counterfeit branded accessories and Bangkok T-shirts while hawkers tried to convince us to go to a “show“. Finally, we realized that despite Ben’s having lived in Amsterdam for 6 months and my having been to several Mexican border towns over the years, neither one of us had ever been to such a show and maybe it was time to remedy that. We relented to one of the hawkers and lasted about 5 minutes inside the nightclub before deciding it was definitely not our scene, although we were impressed by the balloon popping abilities of the girl onstage. Rather than calling the night a total loss we watched a truly terrible band sing out of tune dance hits before heading home.

In an effort to sneak in some culture that didn’t involve the sex trade, the next morning we got up and walked straight to Wat Pho, a Buddhist Temple famous for its huge reclining Buddha. The temple buildings were gorgeous, topped with steeply tapered spires covered with painted tiles and gold plating. There are several small buildings that comprise the temple, the main central one containing an enormous gilt shrine covered in Buddhas large and small and ringed with flower garlands. We took in the sight and scents and wandered around the gardens for a little while, donating a few Baht and signing a tile that will be used in renovations, forever leaving our stamp on Wat Pho. Then we finished up our tour at the reclining Buddha, a massive gold figure lying serenely on his side, with mother of pearl swirling designs on the bottoms of his feet. The sculpture is 43 meters from head to toe, dwarfing all who come to see him, and yet his reclined position makes the figure familiar and comforting, rather than imposing. It’s a beautiful, peaceful religious sight.

That evening, it was time to leave Bangkok, so we began the journey to our beach paradise, which involved:

1) A cab to the train station
2) An overnight train to Surat Thani
3) A bus to Don Sak
4) A ferry to Thong Sala pier on Ko Pha-Ngan
5) A sawngthaew (a kind of pick-up truck taxi) to Ao Chalok Lam
6) A long tail boat to Hat Khuat, a.k.a Bottle Beach…

where we are now. 19 hours total, but well worth the trip! Traffic and bars have been replaced with sand and palm trees, and as Ben will post about next, we have finally learned how to relax. Ahhhhh.

Tie one on, in the Fong, Hong Kong

2009-07-17T05:24:00.015-04:00

Rarely will our strategy of interspersing the more difficult countries with more familiar surroundings pay off better than it did when we arrived in Hong Kong last Wednesday. After the dust and dirt of

India

, Hong Kong’s gleaming new airport and futuristic shuttle train were as refreshing as a cold shower and the difference between the two countries belied our short flight. Yet again we were to be spoilt by the weather during our time in Hong Kong and while residents would tell us the city is often shrouded in a dense fog we enjoyed blue skies from the moment we touched down. As we sped into town we marveled at the busy waterways and high rise buildings clustered into the foothills of the mountains which rose up on all sides.

We were lucky enough to be hosted in Hong Kong by our very good friend Kate who many of you will remember from our wedding. Her apartment building was right on the waterfront with views of Victoria harbor but a short distance to the west of the ‘Central district’ where many expats live and work. We both noticed on the drive across town that the buildings in the surrounding area (while still exclusively high-rise), were much more varied than in other parts of the city and, although it shouldn’t have surprised us, at street level reflected the island’s overwhelmingly Chinese population. The pungent smell of dried seafood was strong even in the taxi and we saw groups of men playing cards on every corner.

Hong Kong allegedly has a fairly serious air pollution problem but after running through the downtown gridlock of Mumbai the humid air felt cool and fresh and so, after a short stroll around the area to get our bearings, I decided to try a run up through town towards Victoria Peak. It soon became apparent however, that after the first couple of blocks the thin strip of built up land that borders the harbor is dizzyingly vertical - often the sidewalks were abandoned in favor of concrete staircases and roads were built as tight hairpins to give cars any chance of making progress. For 25 minutes or so I shuffled up and down trying to find my way through to the park which always seemed to begin the other side of a last impenetrable line of tower blocks but eventually, with the help of a clearly amused security guard, I found a path and began climbing through the dense forest.

I have run, off and on, for 18 years now and as Megan will testify am prone to get stroppy if I’m unable to get out on the road for more than a couple of days at the most. In all the tens of thousands of miles that that time equates to there are only a handful of runs which I still remember distinctly. For the beauty of the scenery I’ll never forget the Tour des Dents de Midi in Switzerland or the Motatapu Icebreaker in New Zealand. For other reasons I’ll always have a soft spot for the Sodbury Slog, the Col d’Aubisque and perhaps a few more. To that short list I can now add that first run up Victoria Peak. From the moment I entered the park the sounds of the city, already little more than a murmur, died away completely and the only sounds were of my breathing and the occasional trickle of a nearby stream. Although there was no respite from the gradient, any suggestion of heading back was hushed by occasional but spectacular views of the island’s coast through breaks in the foliage.

These were just preludes however for the panorama from the peak itself which to my endorphin soaked brain was startlingly beautiful. From the plaza which marks the top of the famous cable car run, the whole of Hong Kong from the Center over Victoria Harbor to the most distant areas of Kowloon on the mainland was laid out like a scale model with the silent progress of ferries and container vessels the only visible sign of life. As if to put on a show for me the waning sun, which had disappeared behind a headland, cast the entire city in a vivid orange light with the last direct rays just catching the tops of the city’s many famous skyscrapers. Needless to say I didn’t have the camera with me but we hiked up together the next evening and caught the cable car back down to town:

Thanks to Kate we got to spend that second evening enjoying the quintessential Hong Kong experience - touring Victoria Harbor on a junk. Much as in Dubai we quickly forgot that we were supposed to be backpackers as the huge wooden boat and two staff arrived to ferry the three of us and a bottle of champagne around for the whole evening! Relaxing on the deck beds we took in the lights of the harbor and then spent an hour negotiating our way through the wakes of enormous container vessels to make it to a nearby island for a seafood dinner. While we are used to seeing ‘live’ crabs and lobsters sullenly blowing bubbles from the bottom of their tanks at restaurants in New York, the displays here were something else. Enormous shrimp fought to climb over the edge of their baskets, crabs snapped angrily at waiters as they tried to tie them up and even the cockles and mussels were trying to slime their way to freedom.

We did some more island hopping the next day and visited a Buddhist monastery overseen by the biggest (counting the lotus mount), seated, brass Buddha in Asia. Despite the somewhat specific distinction the complex and particularly the mountaintop setting was very serene and quite beautiful.

After getting our cultural fix we devoted most of the rest of our stay to the more traditional expat activities of eating and drinking in which we were assisted by the happy coincidence that Kate’s birthday and the annual Fong district beer festival both fell on our penultimate night. For the second time on this trip we ended up partying to the early hours to the sounds of a Filipino covers band though sadly didn’t quite make it through till the 5am putine stop.

Dim sum seemed the perfect antidote to the next day’s grogginess so we headed to the former City Hall for a huge buffet. On the way we were amazed to see thousands of the city’s Filipino housemaids enjoying their weekly day off by congregating under the downtown flyovers for communal picnics. While having a maid is common in Hong Kong as it was in Dubai it was startlingly to see just how many people are actually employed this way.

The infusion of dumplings and diet coke was so restorative that we decided to take the star ferry over to Kowloon for our final afternoon and explore some of the traditional Chinese markets. The atmosphere on this side of the water was very different from Hong Kong island with most of the less formal markets offering fake versions of the goods available for many times the price in the luxury stores only a short distance away. We also noticed that most of the hotels proudly advertised nightly and hourly rates lending the area a slightly seedy but more interesting feel. Eventually however the heat and the effects of the night before took their toll and not even tentacles on sticks could keep us from a well-earned DVD night before our morning flight to Bangkok.

Mum-Bye!

2009-07-14T04:38:00.006-04:00

Approaching the end of our time in India, we realized that we were beginning to miss it, and so we wanted to wring the most out of our final two days. We had only spent a day and a half in Mumbai at the beginning of our Indian adventure, so we tried to see as much of the city as possible before flying away.

Once our overnight train from Aurangabad brought us back into Mumbai, we settled in and started strolling the bazaars. There are three major bazaars strung together in the middle of the city, the first of which is the Chor Bazaar, which is best known for its antiques. We enjoyed poking among the dusty curios, but caught on to the fact that the second best feature of the bazaar is metal working goods, which proved far more interesting. Every kind of tool, screw, and piece necessary to build a car or house can be found in those streets, making a 10-block hardware store out of the stroll, which Ben really loved.

The next bazaar, beginning a few blocks south, is the Zaveri, home exclusively to jewelry, much more fun for me! The Indians tend toward shiny gold and huge, ornate, bib-like necklaces, so I didn’t find anything to bring home, but I loved looking around. The final bazaar is the huge, covered Crawford Market, which began years ago in a beautiful European building with workers’ scenes covering the doorways, and now sprawls through several blocks in every direction. The stalls contain all kinds of household goods from vegetables to fly-covered hunks of meat to cleaning fluid to pets (puppies!). We spent a lot of time looking everything over, especially the puppies, before heading out to dinner.

Most casual restaurants in India don’t serve alcohol, so after dinner we decided to stop by a slightly nicer place to have a couple drinks. It cracked us up as the waiters brought about six different food courses to be enjoyed with our beers, all free - the Indian hospitality at its finest. We could have skipped dinner altogether and had the freebies instead, but it just showed us another cultural quirk unique to India, or perhaps Mumbai.

The next morning, after we hopped into a cab, I commented that I was surprised that we hadn’t yet been involved in an accident, since traffic in India is so fast, crowded, and chaotic. Of course, about 2 minutes later, we were rear-ended by another taxi and I was cursing myself for saying anything about it. It turned out to be a minor fender-bender, and a reminder to keep such thoughts to myself!

Our cab was taking us to a tour of the Dharavi slum, something we had been reluctant to undertake for fear of exploiting the residents and treating them like zoo animals. However, under the reassurance of some other travelers, we decided to join a nonprofit tour group and give it a shot. The organization that arranges the tours runs a slum school with the proceeds, and forbids photography (these photos are from their website), which made us feel a bit more optimistic about the whole experience, and it turned out the be the right decision. We were absolutely amazed at the amount of industry contained in the slum, and the optimistic pride in the residents. Dharavi is home to one million people, and its industries earn over $665 million per year. In Mumbai, 55% of the residents live in slums, taking up only about 7% of the land, so the kind of life we saw is a simple fact for so many people. The homes were very simple, tiny concrete huts, and the lanes were dirty and only about the width of Ben’s shoulders - we would never have found our way through without the guides. People live and work within the small spaces, recycling plastic and aluminum bottles and cans, making mud pottery for transporting water, sewing T-shirts and working with leather. The next time I see “Made in India” on one of my shirts, I will think of Dharavi slum! It’s easy to feel sorry for people living in such a cramped, ramshackle place, but the impressions I got were the opposite - the residents we met were happy, and proud to be neither homeless nor unemployed. There are many definitions of poverty, and these people didn’t seem interested in applying one to themselves. They were too busy working hard and getting on with their lives. Of course, for all the inspiring spirit, we saw a man walking through a horrible, sewage-filled river collecting bottles to recycle, and I was reminded that this still isn’t a dream job for most people. Altogether, the tour was an absolutely fascinating window into Mumbai life.

To cap off our time in India, we ended up at a beautiful, fancy dinner to get a taste of high-end Indian food. It was absolutely amazing! We had followed a vegetarian diet for the preceding three weeks, on the advice of our guidebook and other travelers who blame meat from cheap (dirty) restaurants as the most common reason people get sick in India - avoiding it could be why we stayed healthy, but we can’t be sure. Anyway, at Khyber, we indulged in delicious meat and fish, and had about 5 servers just for our table. It was such a treat, and a glimpse into how the Indians not from Dharavi slum live.

Our experience in India was so fascinating and interesting, and something I will never forget. We have since moved on to Hong Kong and Bangkok (sorry we are falling behind with the blogging!) and are still having an amazing time, but India has stayed in my thoughts, as I’m sure it will continue to.

Train ing Day

2009-07-05T08:12:00.035-04:00

Despite our wait on the Agra platform by the time we reached Delhi we had come to look forward to our train journeys. While the general sleeper and seated classes are the famously chaotic scrums of passengers, baggage, chai wallahs and snack sellers, the air conditioned classes had been cool oases of calm after the bustle and heat of the cities. Unfortunately the trip to our next stop, Amritsar, was to see us experience the other side of the system as we pushed our luck with the waiting lists and were left without reserved seats. With no other options we hauled our ever-growing mountain of luggage to Delhi Central station and threw ourselves on the mercy of an attendant who explained that the only way to get to Amritsar that night would be to cancel our tickets and exchange them for the dreaded sleeper class.

Reluctantly we agreed and headed to the platform where we sat on our bags and waited. For four hours. More seasoned travellers had brought bed rolls and picnics and even late in the evening the platform resembled a huge campsite strewn with sleeping old ladies, crawling toddlers, piles of freight and roving packs of monkeys.

When the train finally arrived just shy of midnight we took a deep breath and fought our way through the sweltering carriage to find our alotted cubicle, designed to sleep 6, already boasting a huge pile of bags, a group of eight friends and an overweight half-naked holy man snoring loudly in Megan's berth. The glassless windows provided plenty of grimy dust but did nothing to cool the carriage so sleep would be almost impossible but, after much comparing of tickets, we did manage to get seated and tried to doze.

We eventually reached Amritsar, the Sikh holy city and site of the famous Golden Temple, the next morning. One of the most endearing qualities of the Sikh faith (and we were to learn there are many) is the hospitality they show to strangers. At the Golden Temple this extends to providing free accommodation to anyone who wants it be they Indian pilgrims or curious backpackers. Sure enough, no sooner had we approached the Golden Temple looking a little lost and dishevelled, than we were cheerfully shepherded towards a hostel and given two beds that were ours for up to three nights completely free of charge! Unfortunately the room was stifling and when we realized the beds were just hard boards with a blanket spread across them we guiltily decided to "give the spaces to someone who really needed them" and, leaving a healthy donation to the temple, retreated to a nearby hotel.

We spent much of the next two days exploring the enormous white marble complex which surrounds the temple and houses a museum, a kitchen, offices and accommodation. With pilgrims arriving every day from all over India and the rest of the world the atmosphere is constantly festive and noisy to the point that it's hard to believe we were not witnessing an important celebration. Magnificently bearded old men wandered around with spears to keep the peace, youngsters bathed in the waters and families took part in complicated offering ceremonies or queued to walk out to the spectacularly ornate temple itself. An important tenet of the Sikh religion is equal treatment regardless of sex, caste or, for that matter, religion. Accordingly almost every aspect of the temple is open to anyone with an interest and it is all free; we ate a delicious meal in the huge communal dining hall, swam in the holy lake, explored the Sikhs' bloody history in the museum, posed for hundreds of family photos and generally had a great time.

The most enjoyable part of our visit however was the clear pride everyone took in explaining their culture to us. Everywhere we were went someone would offer to show us some new aspect of the complex and one particularly enthusiastic gentleman took us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the vast volunteer-run dining halls where we had previously eaten. Even in low season the kitchens make and serve 150,000 meals a day and the enormous chappatti machines and cauldrons of daal were an amazing sight.

On our second evening we crammed ourselves into a tiny van for the drive to Amritsar's other main draw - the Attari border crossing with Pakistan. I've no idea when or why the decision was made to turn the simple daily chore of closing a gate into a spectator sport, but the modest guard huts on both sides are now surrounded by huge grandstands which host a patriotic nightly carnival. The festivities began with groups of children and old ladies from the crowd taking it in turns to run or hobble up the short road to the border and back brandishing the Indian flag. After a while they were replaced by an inpromptu dance party soundtracked by Bollywood music blasting from hidden speakers and whoops of encouragement from the crowd. Throughout all of this we were glad to see (because you have to pick sides at things like this) the Pakistan side of the wall looked comparatively somber and while the two sets of guards shared similarly elaborate costumes the Pakistanis had conveniently chosen the "baddie palette" of black with red piping. After much shouting and frog marching from the guards (and a very quaint final handshake accross the border) the Indians appeared to have things sewn up but then, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, their captain got a little overenthusiastic in his pirouetting turns and ended up flat on his back covered in the flag!

All our rail tribulations to date threatened to pale into insignificance in the face of our next trip which needed to take us all the way back from Amritsar in the North to Aurangabad level with Mumbai. In other words 32 scheduled hours on a train. Thankfully there is little more to say about the trip as the surprisingly drab scenery lulled us into a stupor and the time passed relatively quickly. I'm not sure how much longer we could have stomached deep fried bread and mango juice but we're still healthy after three weeks so have no complaints.

We decided to make Aurangabad our penultimate stop primarily to explore the famous caves at Ajanta and Ellora. Constructed over a 900 year period beginning around 200 B.C. the two enormous complexes comprise temples, monasteries, meeting rooms and walkways and were all carved from the solid rock of two cliff faces by groups of travelling monks. They trace the whole history of Indian religious thought from Buddhism through Hinduism and Jainism and most are covered in spectacular carvings or paintings despicting the many gods and goddesses of those religions.

Probably the highlight of our two trips was the Kaisala complex or "cave 16" at Ellora. This astonishing temple was constructed by removing 3 million cubic feet of rock from the hillside to create a huge pit around an enormous block of rock. This was then carved into the world's largest monolithic structure - the temple itself. The amount of work that must have gone into the construction was awe inspiring and the legend is that it took ten generations of monks to complete the plans.

As we had a little time in Aurangabad and there was very little to do in the town itself we took advantage of the cooler post-monsoon afternoons to visit the area's only two other points of interest; the "mini Taj" and the Daulatabad fort. The mini-Taj, which our guidebook had described as "demonstrating the decline in Moghul architecture," was fascinating in how closely but completely it missed the mark when compared to the original in Agra. Awkwardly tall and lacking the symmetry of the real thing the whole effect is a little sad and you can only imagine that the queen in whose memory this was built would not have been best pleased - especially when they ran out of marble 4 feet of the ground and were forced to finish the rest in plaster!

The fort was much better and in contrast to the other forts we've visited which were really palace compounds, this felt like a proper medieval stronghold built on a vertiginous hillside and surrounded by defensive ramparts and moats. By far the biggest deterrent from Megan's point of view was climbing through several bat filled caves but we made it to the top and were rewarded with spectacular views of the area and the swirling monsoon clouds.

From here we head back to Mumbai for our flight to Hong Kong. We've been looking forward to returning to Mumbai for a while due in no small part to the fantastic book "Shantaram" which we're both working our way through. It's set in many of the places we visited last time but the author, a former armed robber and sometime member of Bombay's mafia has certainly given us a new way to look at them. Accordingly this is likely to be my last post from India and while there are certain things I won't be sorry to take a break from (curry and incessant requests for "one photosnap with me please?" being two that spring immediately to mind), there are many things which I will miss and more which we haven't even touched on this trip. For example we really haven't had the time to wrap our arms around the enormous economic changes that are transforming India even though evidence of the speed of this change is everywhere. In the US every second advert seems to be for car or life insurance but here they are all for broadband internet, mobile phones or higher education institutions - most including the promise of study or employment abroad. Whenever we have spoken with young middle class Indians they have invariably asked "how many days a week do you work?" or "how much do you earn?" with honest curiosity.

As much as it may be changing the country's history is also visible everywhere you look. The temples, forts and buildings from the Raj-era are of course very visible but there are less obvious legacies too. The local news and conversations with taxi drivers reveal that what at first glance would seem to be the happy secular melting pot intended by the retreating British is still understrung with religious tensions while the country's politics seems split between truly national parties and regional forces representing specific ethnic groups. On a lighter note the other British legacy, the English language, is still spoken everywhere though often in a comically formal way which would be more familiar to Victorians than it is to us. Signs in every station admonish passengers not to spit on the station "because it is a very bad habit" while drivers in Delhi are asked not to run red lights on pain of "suffering ambarassment"!

Even if we don't manage to spend three weeks again here for a while I am certain this will not be our last visit to this fascinating country.

Agra-Cadabra!

2009-06-28T06:41:00.026-04:00

As we had feared, Agra lived up to its reputation of being oven-hot and a bit dirtier than the other towns we've seen, although at this point we've become a bit immune to the dirt factor and accept as normal life a river of waste water running on either side of the street and large landfills every few blocks being picked through by young boys looking for recyclable bottles. The heat proved a bit harder to live with - once we arrived via air-conditioned train at about 10pm, the overwhelming heat hit us in the face like a burning coal. It was absolutely shocking, and slowed us down considerably during the daylight hours. However, we weren't to be distracted from the reason for our being in Agra in the first place...

Taj Mahal Day!

The next morning we arose at 5am to catch sunrise at the Taj, which happens to showcase the marble at its most beautiful while also being the coolest and least crowded time to walk around - all according to our guidebook but luckily it all turned out to be true. I know we've all heard the words that describe the Taj Mahal: glowing, beautiful, romantic, majestic, peaceful, blah blah blah, but I must say it's all accurate and the building can't really be captured in words. It's everything you've heard about, and did not disappoint in the slightest. The fact that its backstory involves true love and loss is basically a dramatic bonus, but the building itself is just a marvel. The color is such pure white, and the gardens that precede it are completely lovely, while setting the viewer a ways back from the Taj in order to give the best view. It's all very well planned, astonishingly symmetrical, and so quiet and calming. Up close, the Taj is covered with delicate carving and marble inlay, while the tomb inside is surrounded by an intricately carved octagonal marble screen, which we learned was done from a single block of marble. The kind of work that must have gone into the place with little room for error is mind boggling.

We spent a little while taking in all the beauty, and once we decided we'd had our fill headed back to the hostel to catch up on much needed sleep and cool air. Once awake we headed to a reputable marble inlay shop to see the Taj Mahal process up close. The workshop itself was quite simple but it was incredible to see this process done completely by hand - each tiny stone is cut to its specified shape, while the identical shape is carved into the very hard Indian marble until the two fit perfectly with an imperceptible dab of glue. I loved seeing an ancient art still practiced with such gorgeous results - the shop was filled with masterpieces, most of which were not for sale but are truly breathtaking. Many tabletops featured over 100 flowers, each composed of over 50 individual stones, aside from all the borders and latticework. We enjoyed looking at the myriad vases, boxes, and tabletops that were for sale and then headed out into the cruel heat of the afternoon.

Taking advantage of our only day in Agra, we went straight to the Agra Fort, which was a bit bigger and fancier than the two forts we saw in Jaipur and a bit more imposing owing to the angry red color of the sandstone. The fortified palace was built by three generations of Moghul rulers, each of whom destroyed and replaced a bit of his father's work so that the fort is a mix of architecture and taste. It was easy to spot the changes made by Shah Jahan (builder of the Tah Mahal), for those sections glowed with white marble rather than red stone. More excitingly, there were a lot more monkeys!

The next day took us to Delhi via our first late train on the Indian Rail - we had been so impressed! This time we waited all afternoon at the Agra station in worse heat than I ever experienced at Cross Country workout in Abilene, leaving us pretty sweaty and gross by the time our train arrived 3 hours late. Still, once we arrived in Delhi (where it's maybe 3 degrees cooler!), we quickly found a hostel and gratefully cleaned up pretty quickly.

Delhi reminds us of Mumbai, obviously since both are giant cities with millions of people. Delhi seems to be more segregated and sectioned off - Mumbai has a real mix of people in the streets, while Delhi is divided into Old Delhi (dirty, crowded, poor), New Delhi (leafy, wealthy, businesslike), and the middle, which is quite clean and green, and less crowded than the other two. One discovery has been the Metro system, which works surprisingly well and is really clean and nice, while costing about $0.16 per ride (and incidentally, "Mind the Gap" is also on rotation here)! However, we still have used rickshaws to get around most of the time, as the Metro isn't too extensive and walking to a station in the heat is unthinkable.

In Delhi we have tried to be industrious tourists despite the relentless sun, and I feel we've mostly succeeded. Our first day was spent touring Humayun's Tomb, another striking Moghul building that many people equate to the Taj Mahal, except composed of red sandstone. It does have a similar shape and is set back from a long garden, and the carving is very impressive, but it doesn't quite match up to its cousin in Agra. Still, it was beautiful to see.

From there we visited the Gandhi Smitri, the home where Gandhi spent his final months and was eventually assassinated. The museum was really touching and very educational, indicative of my not knowing much about Gandhi to begin with. There were placards lining the walls with a detailed biography and many importants quotations of his, as well as a display of his 11 earthly possessions at the time of his death, the location of which is marked with an eternal flame. We were impressed with the respectful display, and I am now quite interested in reading more about his life and works.

Our long, hot afternoon was capped with a visit to the India Gate monument and a trudge up the road to see the capital the British built in Delhi during their rule, composed of a number of large, stately buildings in a very unsurprisingly British style.

We were a bit less ambitious the next day, wresting ourselves from the air conditioned hotel room to explore a bit more of Old Delhi, a maze of market-lined streets that smelled so strongly of hot chili peppers and curry spices that our eyes teared up.

We reached the famed Red Fort, but felt a bit fort-ed out after having seen three huge ones already, so we opted for the equally enormous Jama Masjid Mosque instead, only to find it closed for prayer time. After a few gallons of water and a brief nap, we headed back to the mosque just in time for it to be closed for prayer again, but begged our way into a quick picture-taking tour around before being rushed out.

The rest of our day was rounded out by visits to the quirky Charity Bird Hospital, where they specialize, clearly, in treating wild birds and rabbits and exist solely on donations, which they request rather forcefully.

As we're on our way out of Delhi tonight, we haven't had too much time to run around but did manage a trip to the National Museum this morning. It's a bit dingy and disorganized, as we've come to expect, but the displays of Buddhist and Hindu art, miniature paintings, and Harappan settlements (from almost 4,000 BC!) were really well done and kept our interest for a long time.

Some of our highlights in India have been our conversations with the locals. Everyone asks us where we're from (to our reply: "Obama!" said with a smile) and whether we're traveling as friends (to our reply: "Where is the baby?!"), but we've had more in-depth interaction with a few. A teenaged guy who worked at our Jaipur hostel asked me whether ours was a "love marriage" or arranged marriage, and when I told him it was a love marriage, he was so shocked and seemingly happily surprised. Then he worked his way through the marriages of both our families, asking which type each was. When I replied with love marriage every time, he showed increasing disbelief. I wonder what kind of marriage lies ahead for him.

In Delhi one of our rickshaw drivers was a very friendly Sikh man with impeccable English who liked to talk about marriage, sex, and children, a lot. He had strong opinions about the number of children a couple should have and the importance of birth control once that number has been reached (he has plans for a vasectomy next year, in case you're curious.). At one stop light a very unconvincing Indian transvestite (the first we'd seen) approached the cab for money, and once we'd waved him/her off, our cabbie said very frankly, "That is not a man and not a woman. Is in the middle," which I found very simple and kind of funny.

The children have all been really sweet, the not-so-shy ones running up and saying hello, and grinning when I say hello back with a smile. One group of girls asked my name, and once I'd exchanged a few lines and started to walk away one piped up with, "You're so nice!" When I said, "You're nice, too!" a chorus of "Thank you thank you!" followed us up the hill. I wonder how much exposure to Westerners the kids in smaller cities have, but most of them seem genuinely excited to meet us. We've posed with Indian families in dozens of their photos, something that I got used to in Beijing with Emily, but which caught Ben extremely off guard.

India and the Indians are still being kind to us, and we look forward to more in Amritsar!

Je na dekhyo Jaipario, To kal men akar kya kario?*

2009-06-22T23:12:00.014-04:00

One of the downsides (or I suppose advantages if you're a proper backpacker) of travelling independently, is that to work your way through any sort of itinerary you need to learn to navigate the public transport system of the country you're visiting. Unfortunately, in a country as vast and as addicted to beurocracy as India something as simple as buying a train ticket can easily become a whole-day odyssey. Back in Mumbai we tried in vain to buy a ticket to our next stop of Jaipur but were defeated by a system that, if we understood it correctly, involved: 1). queuing at one window to find out the number of the train you may wish to travel on, 2). queuing at a second window for a card to be taken away and completed with the train number, a mini biography of all passengers and full details of where you were staying at your destination, 3). queuing at a third window where, in the unlikely event you had filled out your card to the attendant's satisfaction, he would issue you a number for, 4). a fourth window where, if they weren't on break, someone may be willing to book you a ticket assuming, of course, you knew which of six classes you wanted and also understood the finer points of reserving against cancellation, waiting lists, the taktal quota and the tourist quota.

Thoroughly confused we eventually had to fall back on a very jolly travel agent who, for a mere 50% commission, booked us in with great confidence in about five minutes. Despite all of his assurances we were still surprised and relieved when we finally arrived at Udaipur station to find our names taped to the side of the third class AC car - 48 hours and 1000 miles from the tin hut where we had booked the tickets.

For all its complexity India's train system is reknowned for its efficiency and pulling away a short while later we began to appreciate just why the system is so treasured by the people who rely on it. Our third class ticket entitled us to two comfortable, air conditioned sleeper berths with all bedding provided and, once we had tucked our bags away and one of our fellow passengers had ended his mobile phone karaoke session, we slept very well.

Knowing we would stay in Jaipur for a few days we spent a little more than usual on our room (a hefty $19!) but secured our travelling holy trinity of a spacious air conditioned room, a clean bathroom with western toilet and decent wi-fi. The hotel itself is a grand old colonial building slightly out from the city center but a short tuk-tuk ride takes you quickly into the old "pink city" that is still the commercial and cultural heart of town.

Even limiting ourselves to around 5 hours a day due to the heat we've still managed to see a lot. We spent our first day walking the streets and getting our bearings but did stop in to visit Hawa Mehal or "the palace of the winds." The entire purpose of this beautiful structure was to allow the royal women to survey life in the city from behind a cool screen - the top three floors are just one room thick and honeycombed to allow breezes to pass through.

The second day we were a little more adventurous and took a tuk-tuk to the local monkey temple where a colony of monkeys try to steal your camera while you watch young locals dive into a murky pool. The water is supposed to be spiritually linked to the Ganges but we weren't tempted.

We spent that evening at a government run "cultural village" where for a six dollar entrance fee we enjoyed a huge buffet dinner and took part in all manner of Rajasthani cultural activites like riding a camel (finally!), shooting things with a bow and arrow and riding a human-powered ferris wheel.

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan; a fairly recent amalgamation of 22 separate states ruled by dynasties of Hindu warrior-princes each with their own proud military traditions and legendary heroes. After centuries of resisting Moghul invasions they didn't seem to mind the British (who paid them off with riflles and introduced polo) and as a result many of the Rajputs ended up fighting for the Raj against independence. All of which is a round about way of explaining why the city is pink - they painted all 13 square kilometers of it in honour of a visit from Prince Albert in 1883! The other main legacy of Jaipur's warring past is the majestic hill-top forts which surround it on all sides. We hired a tuk-tuk to visit two of the most famous (Jaighar Fort and Amer Fort) on our third day in town and at Jaighar got to see the world's biggest cannon!

As Megan mentioned the food in India has been one of the highlights of the trip so far with even the simplest meal seeming to involve a huge range of herbs, spices, sauces and dressings. Staying away from fresh fruits and vegetables is proving quite hard though and while a day or two of deep-fried something for breakfast and lunch followed by curry for dinner can be great fun, three weeks may be close to my limit. Similarly, while many of the ingredients are quite alien to us there is no missing the huge quantities of vegetable oil and ghee (clarified butter) with which everything is cooked. At the buffet mentioned above Megan asked for a roti (round piece of bread) but before the server would present it to her he immersed it completely in a vat of hot fat! Ordinarily we would both consider this an improvement but right now I could eat cobb salad for a month.

The only other minor niggle we're suffering from is continuous low level headaches which we've decided is either caffeine withdrawal or the result of spending far too much time sitting in open tuk-tuks. These contraptions aren't much more than a lawnmower engine strapped to a bicycle surrounded with a dustbin and feel so precarious we are glad the roads are too crowded to get up any speed. The downside to traffic however is being stuck listening to an endless barrage of car horns and sitting in a fog of two-stroke exhaust fumes thick enough to leave black creases in our elbows every evening.

Apart from that everything is still going very well but we expect our next stop, Agra, to be a challenge. Reknowned as the dirtiest and hottest city in India there would be no good reason to visit ... were it not the staging post for trips to the Taj Mahal.

* "What have I accomplished in my life if I have not seen Jaipur?" - Rajasthani proverb

Namaste, India!

2009-06-19T05:25:00.014-04:00

We left the comforts of Dubai a tiny bit nervous about our next stop, having heard from friends and other travelers about the dirt, crowds, heat, and general discomfort of India. We'll never know whether or not this is a positive case of lowered expectations, but we have found ourselves loving the country almost from the moment we arrived! Not many people have reported the same experience, especially considering we arrived in the bustling port/slum city of Mumbai, but everywhere we turn, there is some colorful sight or amazing smell to keep us interested and we are optimistic about our long stay here.

The food has been one of the highlights, and while we are certain this won't last forever, we are taking our lack of stomach issues as a sign that we should continue our street food diet. Nothing we have eaten so far has appeared on an Indian menu in London or New York so we are taking advantage of the opportunities. From spicy little omelettes in buns for breakfast to lentil/potato mix with countless spices to the rich and fragrant chai, this is Indian food we'd like to bring home with us. Still, I for one am avoiding the water and trying to continue eating relatively safe things in hopes my good health will continue.

It is true that India is quite poor, and this was evident from our initial 3am ride from the airport to our hostel when we saw thousands of people sleeping on the sidewalks, whole families side by side with cows and dogs, tuning out the noise of the traffic and crowds (even at that time in the night). It was startling to see so many homeless, even though I knew to expect it. This same taxi ride took twice as long as it should have, since the driver had no idea where our hotel was and stopped every 10 yards or so to ask someone new for directions. We were so delirious from our flight and the late hour that we could only laugh as the cab inched along, the cabbie asking for directions to the next corner and then asking again.

Once we'd rested up and showered, we set out for the tourist-friendly Colaba neighborhood and poked around shops and sidewalk vendors, stopping for views of the Gateway to India (built to honor the British when they arrived, and through which the British retreated upon their final exit), Victoria Terminus train station, and Flora Fountain. However, the colonial-era monuments, while beautiful, didn't hold our attention as much as the scenes on the street. There is just so much to look at in Mumbai! Every sari is the most brilliant color I've ever seen, adorned with bangles and embroidery and kept flawlessly clean and bright. The commercial trucks are painted bright colors and adorned with trinkets, including the horns which play little tunes instead of just beeping. The seaside is lined with fishing boats and fishermen in turbans, and most of the women carry large loads on their heads. I loved looking at the people, as well as the livestock - dozens of cows and goats sharing sidewalk space with the 20 million human residents.

We also happened to walk right by the Taj and Oberoi hotels - both of which were struck by terrorists last November. It was easy enough to imagine it had never happened - the Taj is still closed, but looked completely intact and beautiful from the street. We walked into the Oberoi on accident, thinking it was a mall when we were desperate for air conditioning, but the extremely heavy security we faced upon entering hinted at something else. Once we got inside and saw a memorial plaque, it was clear where we were. It's difficult to imagine such terrible things happening in Mumbai. Despite India's reputation for theft and general dodginess, so far we feel very safe, although we're being quite cautious at the same time. The people are startlingly friendly and sociable, which caught us off-guard at first, but we've become more comfortable chatting with people without assuming they're out for money - a cultural hangover from our Egypt trip.

After our stroll and an evening rest, we decided to go for the hottest, most humid run of all time, along the lively Chowpatty Beach, where we could smell the sea salt mixed with street food aromas. Vacationing with Ben has been good for me - I've done more running on this trip than probably during my whole last year in New York. The air in Mumbai is so thick and wet it made for a very tough run, even though the sun had gone down already, but we made it, cleaned up, and dined on street food as a reward.

The other sights in Mumbai that we had the chance to see include the fish market and a dhobi ghat. The fish market was intimidatingly crowded and smelly, but still swirling and fascinating. Photos weren't allowed inside, which was disappointing, but we were able to view the docks at sunrise while avoiding workers carting huge loads of ice and enormous fish, while the women sat with with racks of drying Bombay Duck (a kind of fish unique to the area). Nearby, the dhobi ghat is a huge block of concrete cubicles where washermen pound T-shirts and jeans clean over bins of soapy water - work that looked very physical and difficult, but the hanging clothes looked very white and clean!

In the afternoon we caught a sleeper bus bound for Udaipur, which ended up being a 19-hour ride. 19 hours. In a bus. The next time you're annoyed about taking a 6-hour flight, think about our 19-hour bus ride. In all seriousness, it wasn't that bad... we had a little cubby to ourselves just big enough to lie down in with our valuables, and luckily our section was air conditioned (some were not! The horror!), so the worst part of it ended up being the boredom once we couldn't sleep or read any more. However, once we arrived in Udaipur, we could see that the trip was worth it. Udaipur is a charming valley town with steeply pitched streets, dozens of small Hindu temples, and two huge lakes that with their floating palaces are billed as the most romantic walks and views in India.

As you can see, the lakes are dry, somewhat dampening the romance factor, but the palaces are still amazing. The Bond film Octopussy was filmed at the one above (these days, Bond wouldn't need an alligator costume to infiltrate), and the City Palace (part of which is still occupied by the current maharana!) has a maze of rooms containing 16th century artifacts and artwork pertaining to the history or Rajasthan. We spent our day perusing the many locally made handicrafts available here, getting a ride on an elephant, and getting stuck in an elevator after having tea in a rooftop restaurant. Apparently, rolling blackouts are quite common in small Indian towns. Lesson learned: Take the stairs.

In the evening, we went to a showcase of cultural music and dance at Bagore ki Haveli - another old mansion with dozens of rooms. The show was beautiful and very different from anything I'd seen before - gorgeous saris swirling, a girl dancing with a pot of fire on her head, and another woman who balanced 6 pots on her head while dancing on glass! We were given the background for each dance, which were all symbolic of different things - thanks for a successful harvest, celebration of a girl's wedding, or marking religious holidays.

Tonight we carry on from here to the pink city of Jaipur on another overnight trip, this time via train. Wish us luck!

Sheikh your booty!

2009-06-17T03:24:00.011-04:00

While Megan may have chosen to bow out gracefully with cucumber sandwiches at the Burj you won't be surprised to hear that things did not remain classy for long. In fact by the time we'd polished off a third tray of petit fours it was time to head off to the trade center to meet some ex-pats for what, for everyone else, was post-work drinks. From there we headed to a house party kindly hosted by one of Ahmed's work colleagues where we met Ahmed's wonderful girlfriend Maaria, drowned dreams of airlifting Dubai apartments into the West Village with hearty gin and tonics and gradually warmed up for the night ahead.

I've no idea who suggested the night's final venue but when the time came to leave the party (i.e. when Megan and I had eaten all the cheese), we took yet another taxi with Ahmed and Maaria to a subterranean and, apart from us, exclusively Fillipino nightclub. If being a foot taller than all the other customers and dressed in suits didn't mark us out adequately we immediately charged the dancefloor for a vintage display of our spin, spin, trip, catch yourself, pretend you meant it and spin again dance that is still the talk of Solihull. When the dancefloor cleared we took this as a sign of encouragement and continued to flail around as if we might never hear Brian Adams again. In retrospect the applause this seemed to generate may have been for the troupe of show girls who eventually forced us to sit down rather than our dazzling footwork but fortunately this was the first day on the trip we forgot to bring out the camera so the story is that we were awesome. And I'm sticking to it.

I would say the next morning wasn't pretty but that would be conjecture as we didn't see it. We know for sure the early afternoon was sub-par but if there's one thing a bad hangover needs when it's 48 degrees C outside it's unlimited walnut and pomegranite paste, spinach and plum stew, kebab meat by the pound and hot yoghurt soup. That's normally a tall order but Ahmed, as ever, was up to it and so we found ourselves nursing our injuries at the Iranian Social Club for their weekly buffet brunch and one of the more surreal experiences of our trip so far. As beautifully dressed Iranian women and their extended families picked at plates of dates and olives and the men gathered in front of a huge TV for the preliminary results of the election we restored ourselves with round after round of the most unusual and delicious stodge I can remember.

With the exception of a morning at the Wild Wadi waterpark we spent the remainder of our time in a comfortable routine of hiding out from the heat on our wonderful host Michelle's couch until lunchtime, window shopping and watching people ski(!) at the mall till late afternoon and heading out in the evening to a seemingly endless cycle of swanky bars and fantastic restaurants of which the highlight was probably Ravi's (a local Indian restaurant) followed by Palestinian desserts (while a three inch thick plate of melted cheese may not sound appetizing don't knock it till you've tried it covered in nuts and spun sugar and drowned in syrup...)

When the time finally came to leave Dubai I will confess to having some mixed feelings about the city. Thanks to Ahmed and Michelle we had a truly incredible time and I can easily imagine that especially in the "winter" months it is a fantastic getaway for shopping, relaxing on the beach and eating very, very well. And of course you can ski. With the huge caveat though that a week isn't close to enough time to really understand a place, this professional pedestrian and sometime cyclist will not miss the hours we spent every day flying up and down the Sheikh Zayed highway (14 lanes - still gets jammed) nor the feeling that the heat, the labyrinthine highway system and the city's huge sprawl are conspiring to stop you from ever really getting your arms around the place. Many of the cities we have visited so far and hope to visit on the remainder of our trip invite you to explore them and discover their secrets on your own but on our last day, as the wind began to blow a lot of sand up into the air and the clumps of skyscrapers to the distant East and West of Michelle's apartment began to blend into the sky, I couldn't help but feel Dubai does the opposite.

That being said it is a fascinating place and one which I would love to know more about. As I walk around New York or Cairo the ratio of shops to homes to businesses to rich people to poor people seems to make sense whereas Dubai remains a complete mystery. How does some oil wealth, a few small enclaves of white collar professionals and a booming construction industry generate so much trickle down wealth that a city of 1.2 million people requires at least 20 enormous luxury malls and city employees can retire on 75% pay after 20 years? Who is going to live in the thousands of luxury condos that billboards proudly announce will be delivered this year and next and who on earth will ride the metro system when no-one will walk more than five minutes outside and no-one lives near the stations? What was clear is that someone knows what they're doing as for all the lurid reporting of the impact of the credit crunch in the region we saw precious little evidence of a slow down during our stay and have no doubt that Dubai will keep on defying superlatives for a while yet.

Seven Arabian Nights

2009-06-14T05:01:00.012-04:00

We are sadly coming to the end of our stay in Dubai, which has been full of food, drinks, sand, and relentlessly scorching heat. It has actually been quite educational to see a place that was built on top of a desert and designed solely for entertainment, a place where no one pays taxes, and every building, road, and island is brand new and squeaky clean.

We owe the success of our stay to our friend Salty (AKA Ahmed, Subhi, or Ahmed Subhi Hussein Ahmed - he is a man of many passports and many names), whom Ben has known since college. He's a native of the UAE and the best host ever, showing us around and taking us out literally the entire week. Without him, we would have scratched the surface of Dubai and probably still enjoyed ourselves, but with his help we've really had a full experience.

Dubai has over 20 shopping malls (including the Dubai Mall, the biggest one in the world), hundreds of skyscrapers (the tallest in the world, the Burj Dubai, is nearing completion here), and dozens of man-made islands that have been built along the coast, the better to build even more luxury hotels with Arabian Sea views.

There is so much over the top-ness here that I can't even begin to describe - the next big venture in the works is air-conditioned sand on the beaches. Air conditioned sand. Nice cool sand so you don't burn your feet when it's 112 degrees F. Craziness.

Anyway, we're loving it, and we're soaking it all up before we descend into Mumbai soon which will surely be another complete shock. Our first two nights here we stayed in a budget hotel, and then we moved into the home of Michelle, our lovely and extremely generous host that we found via couchsurfing.com. This is our first experience with Couchsurfing, and it has turned out to be everything our new friends in Egypt told us it would be. Michelle opened up her home, offered to show us around, and handed us a key, all because we met her on the Internet and told her we're not crazy. We are so grateful, and look forward to hosting visitors in NY when we're able.

Our first day in Dubai, we made the mistake of trying to walk to the souks which appeared to be very close to our hotel on the map. We learned two things: Dubai is much bigger than you would guess from a map, and no one walks anywhere. The sun beat down on us with such ferocity that a mere 3 blocks from the hotel we dove into the first cab we saw, and we have taken cabs ever since. There's not really any public transportation here (although 2 years ago they decided to build a subway system and it will be finished in September - very impressive. New York, take note.), and it's too hot to try anyway. The souks ended up being much smaller than the markets in Egypt, and so new and shiny that they were a little less interesting, although we did enjoy the huge diamonds and gleaming jewelry in the Gold Souk.

We also tried to get a little culture and history in by visiting the former home of Sheik Saeed, who ruled for over 30 years. The home is now a museum and features a lot of photographs of Dubai's development, along with a few artifacts. It was interesting, but we learned quickly that museums and history are not the strong suit of Dubai tourism. People come to shop, eat, and sunbathe.

So we changed course and went to the Dubai Mall, mainly to take advantage of the air conditioning, but once we got there we had a great time! There are over 1200 stores, an ice rink, a multi-story waterfall, and a top notch aquarium where we spent a couple hours getting nose-to-nose with sharks and staring at other strange sea creatures.

Right outside the mall is the Burj Dubai, so we took in the view of all 160+ stories of it. It's such a slender, elegant building that it doesn't look as tall as it is, but up close, we could get a sense of its proportions. It's an absolute giant, but really quite beautiful at the same time.

Right outside is a plaza featuring dancing fountains (of course, 3 times bigger than the one at the Bellagio in Vegas) so we enjoyed the show and headed home.

The best parts of our stay have been the evenings out with Salty. Our first evening, we had a terrific Arabic dinner of meze and kebabs (read: mountains and mountains of meat. Even this Texan was a little intimidated.) and then headed out to Mina A'Salam, which can only be described as Arab Disney. It's a huge multi-hotel complex with a souk and a few canals a la Venice winding throughout (stocked with multicolored fish and giant turtles!), all decorated with beautiful Moorish details. Every ceiling and surface is covered with Arabic decorations, the lanterns are all traditional copper cut-outs, and the arched architecture is very Middle Eastern, but everything is so new and perfect that I felt like an extra on "Aladdin." From one of the hotel bar balconies there is a perfect view of the Burj Al Arab, which glows in different colors at night, so we had a drink and took in the amazing view.

On our second evening, Salt took us to a "dive" bar, which was a beautiful garden courtyard within another hotel complex. We had another relaxing drink outside while other patrons smoked huge sheesha pipes, allowing us to take in the wonderful scent of apple tobacco to go with our cocktails.

The third night, however, takes the cake. As an amazing wedding/welcome to Dubai gift, Salt treated us to High Tea at the Burj Al Arab - the singular Dubai experience. We got all dressed up and headed to the Burj, situated of course on a man-made island in the Red Sea and glowing against the sunset. The building itself is spectacular, and the inside is spectacularly gaudy, all red and gilt and over the top. We took the glass elevator with Sea views to the Sky Lounge and for 2 hours feasted on delicious tiny sandwiches, delicate pastries and champagne. Moments like these, we don't exactly feel like backpackers.

Ben will take it from here - stay tuned!

Hot Britannia

2009-06-04T13:49:00.030-04:00

Apologies in advance for another long and photo-heavy post but we have been keeping up a crazy pace here in the UK and, spoilt by some incredible weather, we've packed an enormous amount into the last week or so.

Picking up where Megan left off, we had a great train ride up to Edinburgh with the sunshine making the always-impressive views really spectacular. Once we'd arrived and got settled we spent the rest of our first day in Scotland walking the streets and climbing the dizzying Scott monument for views:

We got to spend that night in a lovely hotel courtesy of a surprise wedding gift from Sula and Andrew, two of my old running teammates, but early the next morning we checked out and got a lift to a local highland games tournament where we engaged in traditional Scottish activities like pretending to like the sound of bagpipes, washing down fried food with Ironbru and watching enormous men throw very heavy things:

The focus of our day though was the fell race and at half past two we set off for a mad 8.5km dash up and down the nearest hill. Suffering through the heat of Eygpt turned out to be surprisingly excellent preparation for our first race in months and we acquitted ourselves well although Andy getting stuck in the bathroom queue as the race started flattered us both.

Someone obviously knew I was visiting because we arrived back in town to find the Grassmarket area of town taken over for an evening of bike racing across the cobbles culminating in a pro level criterium won by controversial local hero and sometime Tour de France star David Millar:

For our last two nights north of the border we were lucky enough to be hosted by Sula's father and his wife in their beautiful house in Lasswaith which was a perfect place to relax but inevitably, as always seems to be the case when I'm reunited with members of UBCCC, sunbathing was a distant second priority behind eating, more spectacular running, the occasional swim and lots of real ale appreciation:

When the time finally came to leave sunny Scotland we hitched a lift with Sarah, another good running friend from Bristol, to her new home in Yorkshire stopping off en route to join Sarah's fiance Gareth for what I may have sold to Megan as 'a nice stroll in the Lake District.' 'An arduous 5 hour trek up the second-highest peak in England including a terrifying scramble along the infamous Strider's Edge' may have been a more accurate description but the views from the top were amazing:

From Yorkshire we continued south to my old home town of Loughborough which I had not been back to in 5 years. We stayed with Frankie and Alan, my old next door neighbours in the tiny village of Old Woodhouse and while their legendary hospitality nearly derailed our plans entirely we did manage to walk into town for a nose around my old school and the town market. Very little has changed although the town has sprouted a couple of new housing estates which meant I actually got to say "Ahh, I remember when it was all fields around here."

From Loughborough we took another train (or rather 3 trains and a walk - the joys of National Rail), to nearby Solihull for a quick catch-up with yet another ex-Bristolian Matt and his wife Penny and then the wedding of our very good friends Simon and Amy. I've been looking forward to their big day since meeting them many years ago and even the inevitable end of the heat-wave couldn't spoil a really beautiful day and a fantastic reunion.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

2009-05-29T05:42:00.021-04:00

We've now been in the UK for a few very peaceful, hassle-free days and are now on a train en route to Edinburgh, Scotland (hooray for Wi-Fi on trains!), but I realize we have some catching up to do! Our last week has been pretty busy, with us moving ourselves and our bags around to several different spots in order to see everyone we wanted to see (thanks for the couches, Rebecca, Andy and Helen!), so this is a good opportunity for me to catch my breath.

Back in Egypt, we spent our last full day in Luxor in a very Western style restaurant called "Snak Time," which offered air conditioning and free Wi-Fi, not to mention overpriced ice cream and coffee drinks that were delicious, so since we couldn't easily return to our hostel and the site of the argument, we embarassingly spent a few hours there despite the wealth of archaeological treasures around us. We really had seen all we wanted to in Luxor, and it was nice to catch up on a few things and stay out of the oppressive heat for a while. Once we decided to venture out, we grabbed a few falafel pockets for dinner and walked with our bags up to the train station to catch the 9pm to Cairo.

This being Egypt, of course the train arrived closer to 11pm, but we were grateful that it came at all, and as described. We had booked First Class, which is only available to tourists, so it turned out we had an entire carriage to ourselves and the 3 other travellers that we had befriended on the platform. We didn't see anyone else for the entire 10 hour ride, which while being quiet and relaxing, was a little bit strange given how crowded the rest of the train was. Much of the country operates this way. In our conversations with the Egyptians we met, we learned that if an Egyptian is seen walking around with tourists (interpreted as white people), he can be questioned and fined if he doesn't have a tour guide permit, even if all parties insist they are all friends. There is a specially dedicated Tourist Police force, and they are everywhere and very visible in white uniforms, enforcing this and other laws. Certain areas, like popular markets and dining areas, require Egyptians to pass through metal detectors and have their bags searched, while Ben and I waltzed in without a word every time. It felt strange to be separated by law from the people that walked around us. Despite the harrassment, we always felt physically very safe in Egypt, and while I'm sure this is due to the heavy police presence, I did feel more than a little guilty about having more rights than the Egyptian citizens.

Our train arrived as promised in Cairo in the early morning, and we walked directly to the hostel where we'd stayed before, dropped off our bags, and took off to see the Citadel, which had been closed the last time we tried to see it. It's really an enormous compound composed mostly of 12th century fortifications and the extremely impressive 19th century Mohammed Ali Mosque.

We wandered around a bit and poked into the Police Museum, which contains a very interesting collection of old weapons, counterfeit money, and evidence from past political assassinations.

After stopping for a quick tea at the historic Feshawi's coffee house, we headed back to the hostel to nap and get our things together for the next day's flight to London. Once dinner time rolled around, we decided to forgo our guide book and intuition, and followed the Egyptians instead. The most crowded restaurant in our neighborhood was a pizza place, completely packed with families, so we tucked into a very good pizza, followed by an incredible dessert of Egyptian pancakes - very thin baked dough covered in honey, sugar, nuts, and cream. It was our best meal in Egypt and a lesson learned: Follow the locals.

Once back in the UK, we settled into a pattern of drinks with friends, outdoor strolls, and crashing on couches. It has been a wonderful break from the Egyptian culture shock. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous, so we've spent most of our time outside: playing softball with Rebecca and her friends in Regent Park, running along the canals in Camden, and exploring all the colleges in Oxford.

One highlight has been visiting Ben's grandma in Chard, Somerset, as I hadn't met her before and was also eager to see some English countryside. She was completely charming and sweet, an impressively active and vibrant octogenarian who cooked us delicious meals and drove us around the county. Her local church, in which she's a very active member, still uses a chalice from 1574, which she showed me, along with family photos and old birth certificates. Her memory is amazing, and I loved meeting her. In Chard, the best known local site is the Forde Abbey, a gracious estate still in use as the owners' home and doubling as a museum of tapestries and antique furniture. The gardens there are spectacular, and it turns out the tallest powered fountain in England is in their pond. Fun and very British.

The day trip to Oxford was also really interesting and a lot of fun. The town itself is quite old (although I should be more careful throwing that word around now, having been to Egypt) and very medieval looking, with church spires and university halls lining every street. The gardens of Christ Church College are gorgeous, and our climb up Carfax Tower rewarded us with impressive views. We wandered around the old walls and green fields, enjoying looking at gargoyles and rowboats, before entertaining ourselves at a couple markets and heading back to London.

We are still happy and rested despite all our running around, and we wish we could intersperse England between all our future stops on the trip in order to do laundry and eat a variety of familiar foods. However, once we've left the UK next week we'll be officially in foreign territory for the next 5 months, so we remain excited if a little nervous at the prospect. At the moment, rolling along to Scotland, things couldn't be better.

In de Nile - Hurghada to Luxor

2009-05-22T08:41:00.024-04:00

...or rather we sat and waited in the fly-blown local bus station for the long hot bus to Luxor which finally pulled in from Suez about two hours late. This coach was definitely not "VIP" but at least the stereo was among the long list of components (A/C, door, brakes...) that did not appear to work allowing us to swelter in silence but for the tuts of the old ladies unimpressed with our sitting together.

We followed the Red Sea south for a while but then turned west and the change in scenery was immediate. As far as we could see the landscape comprised nothing but hills, valleys and endless plains of dusty yellow rock devoid of any vegetation whatsoever, the monotony only broken by the occasional military checkpoint. When we finally hit the Nile Valley a couple of hours later the change was even more dramatic with 50 yards separating desert from lush farmland divided into small fields and fringed with palm trees and bright flowers. We'd made arrangements at the New Everest hostel in Luxor as it was run by a friend of a guy we'd met in Hurghada but we were still pleasantly surprised when we reached the bus station to find our host stood, car waiting, with my name spelled correctly on a waiting card! Half an hour later we were showered and stood in front of a working air conditioner with the grubby 50 degree bus a fading memory.

Our slick arrival set the tone for a great few days in Luxor which is very manageable compared to Cairo but without the generic tourist friendly trimmings of parts of Hurghada. The main draw of the area is the huge variety of pharaonic temples and tombs both in Luxor itself and over the Nile in Thebes so with only two full days in town we were keen to hit the ground running.

The next morning we walked up to the sprawling Temple of Karnak to the north of town which was built over a 1300 year period by successive dynasties and for the variety of styles it contains is considered one of the most important sites in Egypt. Completely buried until the mid 19th century the mammoth task of excavating and rebuilding the temple continues but the current structures, coverned in hieroglyphics and with much of the original paint intact, are more than enough to convey what an awe-inspiring place this much once have been:

The temple is so huge they have installed tele-porters to help you get around:

After a siesta and dinner in a local restaurant we allowed a local guy to show us around the ancient Abu al-Haggag mosque built within the ruins of Luxor Temple in the center of town. From the top of the incredibly narrow and supposedly off-limits-to-tourists minaret we got some fantastic views of the ruins and the town:

This being Eygpt, and despite the fact mosques are supposed to be open to curious visitors, our inability to shake off our guide meant that when we finally made it back down we were in for some more baksheesh and another argument. Tips are a way of life for as many people in New York as Eygpt but whereas the US conventions are quickly learned and tips generally graciously received, here the only rule seems to be that whatever you just gave was insultingly inadequate and the only thanks you are likely to get is a moan of indignation and an aggressive demand that you try again (with US$ this time). Alongside the lack of respect shown towards Western women (which having spoken to some other couples we now know is a universal experience), the fact that we are clearly viewed as walking cash machines has been our biggest disappointment in Egypt. The mistaken impression that all Westeners have money to burn is not endemic to Egypt but any romantic ideas that we may have had about spending leisurely afternoons haggling in souks, or befriending trustworthy locals (of which more later), have been thoroughly disabused.

On our second day we wanted to cross the river and explore Thebes and, while I know this is becoming a theme in my posts, we decided to forego expensive air conditioned vans and, you guessed it, rent bikes. Before we could start pedalling we had to contend with our hotel staff trying to sell us fake ISIC cards (guaranteed to halve all our entrance fees), concerned tour guides and taxi drivers assuring us we'd be unable to complete such an arduous journey and motorboat owners telling us the local ferry wouldn't take bikes and/or wasn't running. Fortunately we can both be pretty bloody-minded when we want to be and undeterred we set off on what proved to be a very pleasent ride across the Delta.

First stop was the Colossi of Memnon which were impressively colossal:

Followed by Medinat Habu which we visited on the recommendation of one of the guys from our hostel and which we had almost to ourselves:

From there we rode around the foothills of the Western mountains to Hatshepsut's Temple which is most famous for its spectacular facade set into a sheer limestone cliff. As we didn't actually want to go into the temple we didn't buy tickets knowing (correctly) that they were not required until we were half a mile closer in. Unfortunately we ran into an extremely irate member of staff who claimed we were not allowed to take photos from the car park before we'd paid and then as we did so threatened to have us expelled from the country! We almost felt sorry for him as he kept appealing to the tourist police who are a constant presence throughout Egypt but who could not have been less interested. The poor chap was reduced to shouting "You Stupid Man! You Stupid Man!" as we then decided we'd get to our final stop, the famous Valley of the Kings, by hiking up a narrow flinty path over the intervening mountain.

The steep path and heat combined to make it a pretty tough climb but we did not seriously consider whether we'd made a mistake until we reached the top and realized we didn't actually know what the Valley of the Kings looked like:

Fortunately we saw the top of a tour bus glinting in the distance and so scrambled down in that general direction.

The tombs in the valley (and in the nearby Valley of the Queens) were built after the pyramids in an attempt to prevent the treasures they contained being stolen by grave robbers. Despite their hidden location and entrances they were generally unsuccessful (Tutankhamun being the famous exception) but protected from the elements the wall paintings and hieroglyphics look as though they were completed yesterday and are a dazzling sight. Unfortunately photography is not allowed in the tombs but here are a couple of images from the four tombs we visited (Ramses IV, Queen Tawsert/Sethnakht, Tuthmosis III and Ramses I):

When we'd finally hiked back over the mountain and ridden back to town we were exhausted and so took a three hour sunset cruise on a felucca with a lovely couple we'd met at the hostel called John and Christina (Christina's blog will be appearing on the right very soon). Other than a bizarre detour to "Banana Island" the only interruption was when a local girl, maybe seven or eight, started chasing us in a row boat and shattered the peaceful evening by screaming at the top of her lungs; "GUUUUYS, GIVE ME MONNEEEEY!" Fortunately we caught a breeze and were able to escape but I had to admire her ingenuity.

Having decided to catch the night train back to Cairo we had very little to do on our third day and exhausted from our adventures had a loose plan to check out, park our bags and wile away the day strolling around town and catching up on email. Sadly, as we hung out with John and Christina in the hostel lobby, things began to unravel. One of the hotel staff appeared with two new guests and sat them down in a far corner for a version of the spiel we had all been given on arrival about how impossible it is to do any of the things you might want to do in Luxor unless they are prebooked with friends of the hostel (who of course pay commission to the referee). The four of us rolled our eyes at each other and when the guy finally finished John and Christina introduced themselves in order to quietly correct a few of the most egregious lies we'd overheard. Unfortunately this did not go unnoticed by the other staff members and when we left to walk into town the guy who had brought the new arrivals in confronted us and began to scream and shout about how we were damaging his business. He was sufficiently threatening that we decided to turn around and pick up our bags immediately but we couldn't escape an ugly argument with the other staff which was a very unfortunate way to end what had been a decent stay.

For all the hassles Egypt has been a wonderful stop and given us both some incredible memories. There is nowhere else in the world where you can see the pyramids (except Vegas and they only have one), nowhere else you can walk though chambers carved and painted by a 5,000 year old civilization and very few places where there are streets, alleyways, doors and windows which have been in continual use by everyday people since before the Crusades. The culture shock has not been insignificant but is in a sense why we're travelling.

Suddenly I Sea

2009-05-18T15:53:00.010-04:00

Looking for a change from Cairo, we decided to head south. Luxor is known for more fantastic tombs and ruins, but we wanted a sunny, beachy part of our Egyptian adventure, and with the Sinai too far out of the way, we settled on taking a bus to Hurghada with the intention of continuing on to Luxor. The overnight "VIP bus" seemed like the best choice and while being comfortable enough, it was difficult to sleep during the Islamic prayers being blasted throughout the bus for the first two hours of the drive (which began at 1am - nice). Once we arrived at 7, we showed up exhausted at a hotel that we knew from our guide book, but had not yet contacted. Luckily they had a room for us at a reasonable rate, so we began calling the 4 Seasons Hotel (no, not that Four Seasons) home.

Hurghada is a Red Sea resort city strung along the east coast of Egypt, near fantastic coral reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving. One of the first things we noticed as we rolled into town was all the Russian. All the shop signs and restaurant menus are in Russian, and we heard it spoken almost exclusively in the streets and on the beaches, a language that we agreed sounds like a record being played backwards. It turns out Hurghada is a quick, cheap flight from Moscow, making it a prime destination for Russian beachgoers. The biggest benefit to us was the fact that the street vendors hassled us in Russian rather than English, making them easier to ignore. At the same time, the Russians weren't always pleasant to vacation around. More than once we saw them display the most appallingly rude, hostile behavior toward waitstaff over really trivial issues. I hate to make such a sweeping generalization (apologies to the many Russian fans of the blog!), but we were a little scared.

The other defining features in town are the blocks and blocks of unfinished hotel and condo construction projects, with staircases leading to nowhere and naked pillars reaching upward, awaiting the next floor. The whole effect is kind of spooky, like everyone left the city in a hurry. In fact, that's close to the truth - our snorkeling guide whom we befriended told us tourism to the area has been cut in half, owing to the recession, so all construction has been halted for the time being. The builders literally stopped where they stood and haven't returned to work since. It's strange to see the state of the world economy illustrated in such a tangible, visible way.

Despite these idiosyncracies, Hurghada remains a cute beach city with a lot to do, although I have to admit we didn't do much. For a complete switch from bustling, noisy Cairo, we chose to slow way down in Hurghada, spending 3 full days on the beach and the 4th day snorkeling. We learned that Hurghada is very much a clubbing town - the Egyptian spring break destination - but since that's not really our scene, we slept late, brought a picnic lunch to the beach, read our books, and enjoyed seafood dinners. Ahhhhh. We've got sunburns on our sunburns but it has been really nice.

The snorkeling on the Red Sea reefs is spectacular, and if we'd had more time I would have been interested in getting scuba certified. The water is crystalline and so many shades of blue, and the reefs appear to be pretty healthy. We made two stops on our snorkeling trip, and at both saw hundreds of different kinds of fish, urchins, anemones, and some other weird things we couldn't name. Our last stop was on Gifton Island, just off the coast of Hurghada, where everyone else sunbathed but where our sunburns forced us into shade - we're still at the beginning of the trip and learning to moderate our sun exposure!

Hurghada was gorgeous and relaxing, but our time in Egypt keeps ticking away, so we couldn't stay on the beach forever. Once we'd had our fill, we boarded another bus for the long, hot trip to Luxor...

Walk like a Brit

2009-05-15T10:20:00.020-04:00

This update covers Cairo part 2 and, while we became somewhat accustomed to the place, most of our favorite things (and the minor irritations) remain as Megan described them. Fortunately though this post should be saved the usual fate of sequels, at least as far as photos go, because Tuesday was PYRAMIDS DAY!

We took a taxi bright and early and for 45 minutes sped through the sprawling Cairo suburbs on our way to the Giza plateau. From the elevated roadway we could see mile after mile of rough concrete and mud brick apartment towers but it was not until we were close to Giza that we finally saw the great pyramid in the gaps between the modern construction. Not even our taxi driver's love of the Vengaboys could take away from the shock of seeing such an iconic structure for the first time and the size and stillness of the pyramid was an amazing contrast to the teeming streets below.

The plateau itself is higher than Giza and while it's an enormous area it is heavily secured and joins the desert in every direction other than north east. As a result, once we'd escaped the tour buses and eluded the trinket sellers and camel ride touts, it was actually very peaceful and at some of the less well marked areas including some fascinating tombs we were completely alone - which may not have been a good thing:

While it's not always the case it was possible to go into all three pyramids when we visited and we chose to visit the second (built by Khafre the son of Khufu who built the great pyramid) which, while slightly smaller, actually appears much bigger by virtue of being on higher ground and having a small part of its limestone case still in place. There isn't much to explore inside any of the pyramids as a tourist or otherwise and your entrance fee now gets you a stifling and extremely tight clamber down into the burial chamber and back up which even for the non-claustophobic would not take more than ten minutes. Despite most of the treasure now being in various world museums or lost to grave robbers the experience is still worth it to imagine what it must have been like for the early explorers - venturing into these same tunnels without the benefit of electic lights or climbing boards.

The other big draw on the plateau is the Sphinx which is best viewed from within the ruins of the temple built to hold Khafre's body prior to its final journey along a massive causeway to his pyramid. The temple was overrun with dancing camel and alabaster pyramid sellers but they didn't take much away from the extraordinary view - it's mind boggling to think that only last week I was marvelling at the craftsmanship of a 10 foot long 1200 year old church in Dingle while the Eygptians were building these structures 5000 years ago. My favorite guidebook statistic is that the 230m long sides of the great pyramid are aparently within 4cm of equal length at every point!

Baksheesh?

After taking it very easy for the rest of Tuesday we woke up with big ambitions of rounding of our time in Cairo with a trip to the Citadel - a walled city within the city founded by Saladin (of fighting the Crusaders fame) in 1176 AD following his defeat of the Fatimids. We had originally planned to visit on Monday only to find the whole area shut for a visiting dignitary and unfortunately the fortifications were to prove impenetrable once again though this time it was entirely our fault. Sidetracked when we woke up by the arrival of our wedding photos (some of you will have got an email already otherwise there's a link below if you're interested) we got a very late start and by the time we'd meandered through Islamic Cairo yet again and arrived at the ramparts it was close to 2pm. Spoilt by New York's ATM obsession we keep forgetting to stock up on cash and realizing yet again we didn't have enough to pay the entrance fee we set off on a bank hunt that took us almost back where we started. Sweaty and disheartened we finally got back to the ramparts around 4pm only to find that our "guide"book's dot for the citadel, while technically within its boundaries, was a good 4 uphill kilometers from the actual entrance which we proceded to hike just in time to see it shut.

Facing the prospect of a complete strike out we consoled ourselves with a relaxing cup of tea, a bit of souvenir shopping in one of the more relaxed areas of town and the thought that even the bad days are 'good blog material'. Little did we know however that the evening was about to provide the highlight of our trip so far.

Chastened by our earlier failure we made our way to the wikala of the Al-Ghouri Complex well in advance for that night's performance by a Mawlaiyya sect of the Sufis - more commonly known as the whirling dervishes. Megan and I had both seen low key performances of this type before in Turkey and while we'd found the dances entertaining we both wondered how the performers would fill the announced 90 minutes running time. Things started gently with a line of musicians playing traditional instruments warming the crowd up before building to a riotous crescendo which dispelled any misgivings we might have had. Soon afterwards the first of the true dancers appeared and spun for 45 enthralling minutes with his bright woolen skirts creating hypnotic, kaleidoscopic patterns which left the whole audience dumbstruck. After a brief musical respite three more dancers took the stage and I'm not sure we blinked for the next half hour! Photos will never be able to do the performance justice suffice to say we left the venue in stunned silence unable to digest what we'd just seen:

Having rescued the day we found a decent restaurant for a delicious koshari-free meal before heading back to our hotel for our bags in time for our night bus to Hurghada.

Wedding Photos:

http://www.laurenslusher.com/darkroom/proof/#name=&state=&index

The password is Megan's maiden name followed by her new name, no spaces and capitalisation counts

Walk Like an American

2009-05-12T15:58:00.023-04:00

We have spent 3 full days in Cairo and have so far learned that walking like an Egyptian entails slowly meandering across 5 lanes of quickly-moving traffic, being harassed by Egyptian men of all ages despite being accompanied by my husband, and turning down 9 out of 10 taxi offers. Still, Cairo is an exhilirating city and we are loving all the dizzying detail everywhere we look. It's not as hot as we had feared, even though today I got the first (and surely not the last) serious sunburn of the trip, nor is it as crowded as Manhattan at rush hour, but the rest of the rumors are true: it's crowded, dusty, and OLD!

We started off Sunday with a visit to the Egyptian Museum, which was really wonderful for placing monuments and buildings in historical context, which came entirely from our guidebook as the museum annoyingly doesn't label any of its items. The things we saw were staggeringly old and beautifully preserved, including intricate heiroglyphic carvings from 4,000 B.C. and the original mask and two caskets of the one and only King Tut. The Tutankhamun items were really amazing - such brilliant gold and gorgeous jewel inlay. Unfortunately, cameras aren't allowed at all inside the museum, so you'll have to Wikipedia everything for yourself. Another great feature of the museum is the Mummy Room - as creepy as you'd imagine but extremely cool at the same time to see the actual bodies - teeth, hair, and all - of the famous pharaohs that I barely remember learning about in school. I now have a renewed interest in brushing up on my world history.

We ended up at the Cairo Tower for the evening - a fairly new tower that's basically empty except for a rotating restaurant and viewing platform at the top. The views were excellent, but the smog prevented us from seeing all the way to the Giza pyramids.

After descending from the tower we searched, and searched, and searched for somewhere to have dinner, discovering that Cairo is not really known for its cuisine... there's this dish called koshari that involves macaroni, lentils, and tomato sauce, and that's basically all we could find for about 5 miles. Once we finally settled for some decent koshari, we swore to never again leave the hotel without our guidebook for suggestions.

We decided to spend Monday in Islamic Cairo, known for its old buildings, elaborate mosques, and sprawling markets. The Khan al-Khalili market really is amazingly dense, crowded, and huge, but there was really nothing there that we cared to buy, which did not take us long to discover.

It appeared to be a better idea to tour mosques instead, which turned out to be fantastic. They're such peaceful structures, designed to drown out the busy city. I loved the graceful archways and lanterns, and the ornate curls in all the Arabic design. I covered my head upon entrance, and was also given a smock and slippers to wear - pretty cute.

The best views in town were those from atop Bab Zuweila - miles of mud-colored apartment buildings and a thousand mosque minarets spread out before us. We stuck around up there for a while, and then dove back in to the amazing marketplace below.

The informal markets that line every street in the Islamic part of town are really spectacular. Every inch is crammed with women in burkas, goats, strange foods on carts, children, feral dogs and cats, you name it. There is so much to look at, smell, and absorb. Unfortunately this also means being looked at, which we were, a lot. This isn't an inherently terrible thing, but the Egyptian men aren't in the habit of keeping their thoughts to themselves, and they tried out their entire vocabularies of dirty English words as I walked by. It was all very non-threatening, but after a while the incessant "Lucky man, how many camels? Very beautiful I love you. (Lots more stuff I won't print here)" just became difficult to ignore gracefully. We managed as best we could, but Ben told a few guys off and overall it ended up taking away from the experience a little bit. A shame, because the markets really are so interesting.

After hours and hours of walking, we looked for a little relaxation, so we headed to the banks of the Nile and booked a felucca sailboat for an hour. Best Decison Ever. It was really such a wonderful hour. We cracked open the beers we'd quietly brought from around the corner and glided over the water at sunset, without a taxi offer, obscenity, or honking horn to be heard. At that moment, I think we'd have chosen to spend the rest of our six months on a felucca, if we could.

But there is no dinner on a felucca, so we went in search once more. This time, we followed the guidebook to a place featuring a "good and varied vegetarian menu, along with traditional Egyptian and international meat dishes." Sounded delicious! However, once we got there, we were given the choice between koshari with meat and koshari without - I am not making this up. 2 options.

In Egypt, we continue to live and learn. But we're having a fabulous time!

The Dingle Peninsula - no good song lyrics for this one so...

2009-05-08T11:03:00.020-04:00

...here are the Pogues performing Dingle Regatta to set the mood:

I'm writing this from Dublin airport after returning to the capital late yesterday from the beautiful Dingle peninsula in the far south west. We set off early Tuesday morning for the long drive which, compared to moving day was pretty uneventful. There were some nearside curbs which won't remember us fondly and the combination of winding 10ft wide roads and 100km/hr speed limits seems to have satisfied Megan's driving urges for the time being but the scenery was often spectacular and we arrived safely around lunchtime.

We spent our first afternoon hiking out to a lighthouse near the mouth of Dingle Harbor and saw the local celebrity dolphin frolicking in the bay - he's apparently been there for the last 26 years and for reasons lost to everyone is known as Fungie.

According to our guidebook Ireland is now the EU's most expensive country after Norway and with our bank account firmly in agreement after Dublin decided to rein things in in Dingle. Foregoing the local hotels we therefore decided to stay at a local "hostel" (we were the only guests) run by a woman most easily described to UK readers as the long lost sister of Father Ted's Mrs. Doyle. Unfortunately her price didn't seem to cover heating the house so we took refuge for the evening in a local pub which featured some great traditional music.

The next day (and I promise this was Megan's idea), we rented bikes to ride a 45km loop around the tip of the peninsula. Following the coastal road for the first half was the perfect way to experience Ireland's famed forty shades of gray and while the weather held off for most of the way the heavens opened on the way home and we were pretty soggy by the time we made it home.

Seeing the peninsula off-season we got the clear impression that the area hadn't really woken up for the summer yet though if anything the cold weather and sleepy streets made it much easier to appreciate the culture of the place which would have been lost at the hight of summer. Dingle is one of a number of areas in Ireland where the government has actively tried to preserve all things Gaelic and as a result Irish is still most people in the town's first language, there are no translations on the roadsigns and gaelic football is still shown in all the bars (though sadly we couldn't excape the Champions League semi-finals). The sense of history is equally striking as every one of the thousands of tiny dry stone walled fields that make up the patchwork landscape seemed to contain a historic pile of rocks which might once have been a celtic church, fairy fort or pile of rocks depending on how entrepeneurial the farmer happened to be. Even the few examples that have been preserved are an incredibly tangible link to the peoples who have inhabited this area for the last 6,000 years - below is one of the earliest Christain churches in Ireland, built without mortar and still watertight after approximately 1200 years.

That's it for now but if you are desperate to see the thousands of photos that aren't quite as good as the ones we're posting there is now a link to our photostream on the right.

p.s. Ben posted this despite what it says below!

The Emerald Isle

2009-05-04T16:35:00.009-04:00

Our first few days in Ireland have treated us far better than our last few in New York. We landed Saturday morning to sunshine, green trees, and hordes of drunken rugby fans in town for the very important Heineken Cup Semi-Final. We've been struck by the chilly damp air and the streets that actually smell like Guinness, but have really enjoyed learning about Ireland's political history.

Our activities haven't strayed too far from the Tourist path, but everything has been excellent from the Book of Kells at Trinity College

to the Kilmainham Gaol (an old jail that closed in 1924 with a fascinating history)

to the Guinness Storehouse (a really fun tour in a very well-designed building, although I found the making of beer to be less exciting than the Guinness people obviously do!).

We've really enjoyed the pubs, where we saw Leinster defeat Muenster in the aforementioned rugby match and I've discovered pear cider, which will now replace champagne at all my future parties if I can find it in the US.

Including a run through St. Stephen's Green and a walk through Christ Church Cathedral,

our stay has been really comfortable, and we feel pretty well oriented in the streets of Dublin.

So we're going to test our mettle in the streets of Greater Ireland and rent a car to the West Coast tomorrow - driving on the left - fingers crossed!

"Leavin' New York's never easy" (R.E.M.)

2009-05-02T14:21:00.035-04:00

When we decided to create this blog I promised that it would not just be a recitation of our amusing foreign misadventures as most of you know that Megan and I have had getting into trouble in distant countries down for a long time. Some of you, however, may not have been around for our respective dealings the the Cuban police, know exactly why Megan's on her fifth version of the same camera or understand why we will forever be cautious of unmarked bars in Istanbul so, on the technicality that this post only covers our last few days in the U.S., I hope you'll indulge me (Sorry Karen!).

Where to start? For brevity I'll skip over our building's super demanding a check for $1000 before he'd let us move out (resolved only when we found our check stubs from 2004) and barely mention that same super announcing 48 hours before our final day that 2 years ago he'd thrown out the pile of my landlord's furniture that I'd entrusted to him on pain of my security deposit. Instead, I'll start on Thursday which began bright and early with a 6.45am trip to Long Island City to pick up our rental van (Actually it began midway through a good effort to finish all the beer left over from our wedding with Jimmy Katzman and took a brief break around 1.30am but that's not important). "Rental van" probably doesn't do justice to the rattling behemoth we (Megan) drove away that morning which could probably have moved 5 apartments like ours, came complete with a huge hydraulic loading riser and, crucially, a cargo unit that was a couple of feet wider than the cab.

A terrifying ride over the 59th Street Bridge later at rush hour and against the odds we were safely parked outside our building and ready to start.

Buoyed by our early success we decided two hours would be enough time to get loaded, dutifully fed $4 into the meter (being 2 x $2 which was the hourly rate), displayed our receipt, and set to throwing everything we owned into the truck as quickly as possible. One hour one minute later we brought a load down to the sight of a parking attendant writing us up. Anyone who's ever been in this situation will know there is something unique about traffic attendants that inspire even quiet, polite people to instantaneous fits of rage and this was no exception:

"What are you doing?!"

"I'm sorry your ticket has expired sir"

"What the hell do you mean?! It's $2 an hour we paid for $4 we're good for another hour!
"I can only go by the time sir which has expired - instructions for disputing the ticket are on the reverse"

"I don't care what the time says the machine must be broken! It says $4 right there in black and white - can't you use some common sense?! Are you giving everyone on the street a ticket? Seriously, what kind of ridiculolus job doesn't allow you any discretion even when the machine's clearly broken - you're job sucks...

"I'm sor...

"You're job sucks and you suck, I don't know how you sleep..." [I'll stop there and wish we had but the poor guy endured a few more minutes of this before walking off.]

Still fuming we decided to take a series of of photos as evidence for the upcoming lawsuit:

$65 dollars and 40 minutes later and we were off to Cold Spring! Apart from temporarily losing my new wedding ring in the grass there wasn't much funny about the next few hours of back breaking labour (I get to use "u"s again now) so triumphant photo aside I'll skip to the trip back which was going very well until...

...we got to Tarrytown. The exact details of what happened in Tarrytown are between us, the police and our insurance companies suffice to say the width of our truck proved unacceptable to the rear two panels of an SUV belonging to the biggest man I HAVE EVER SEEN. Fortunately everyone was pretty relaxed about things apart from the attending police officer who made a conspicuous show of doing up his bullet proof vest before getting within of 50ft of Megan and me (did he know the traffic attendant?) and proceeded to complicate things by suggesting that we might just want to give the guy a pile of money in "restitution" so he wouldn't have to file a report. We finally managed to explain why that wasn't going to happen and got away after about an hour and a half making it back to Long Island City a round 12 hours after we set off.

That left me just enough time to shift a bed and a dresser for Megan, sort of shower and finally make it to my own work leaving drinks at the Croton Tavern. With the six months we have in front of us I'd struggle to say I had any big regrets at this stage but it was touching to see so many friendly faces and I know that in time I'll miss everyone from the office.

I'm actually writing this from the comfort of a very nice Dublin hotel room so am pleased to say things have gotten easier but Megan will let you know all about our first couple of days in due course.

And Away We Go!

2009-04-23T13:45:00.005-04:00

The time has come!

With the wedding behind us and 15 countries ahead of us, we are officially kicking off the blog! We hope to update frequently enough to keep you posted on our whereabouts, so visit early and often - BaMRtW is live.

We fly out in 8 days, and between now and then must back up all our belongings, move them to upstate storage, pick up my wedding dress from the cleaners, buy a mosquito net, and try to concentrate on work while actually working this last week.

While we're gone, please keep us posted on life back in the USA and UK! We'll be keeping up with email, blog comments, and skype - you'll hardly miss us.