Kigali, Rwanda

We've spent the last 48 hours or so mostly in airports and on planes. First was a seven-hour flight to Amsterdam, and shortly after an eight-hour flight to Nairobi, on KLM. We arrived around 8pm in Nairobi (seven hours ahead of Toronto), and quickly made our way through customs and immigration and to a hotel near the centre.

We had to be back at the airport at 8am for our flight to Kigali the next morning, so this Nairobi experience was rather brief -- a taxi ride, dinner, a night in the hotel and then a taxi ride back to the airport.

I remembered this time to take a large empty suitcase to pack souvenirs for the return trip. Every time I travel, I end up buying a large cheap suitcase for this purpose, and I now have more cheap suitcases than one person needs. I left the suitcase in the hotel in Nairobi, and I'll pick it up on my last day before returning home.

(The Kenyan passport control people asked Marissa Did you enjoy your stay?, out of habit, which Marissa found funny).

The flight to Kigali was short (only 75 minutes), but we still got served breakfast! That was surprising. We had good views of Lake Victoria as we flew over it, the source of the Nile. There were no problems through customs, and Canadians receive visas free-of-charge in Rwanda!

Our only objective today was to pick up the permits at the ORTPN office to see the gorillas (Office Rwanda of Tourism and Park National, which grammatically makes more sense in french). The gorilla tourism is strictly regulated, in order to control human exposure. Only a limited number of people (40?) are allowed to see the gorillas every day, so I had called a couple weeks ago to reserve the permit.

Permits in hand, we thought about seeing some of Kigali, but jetlag took over and we napped away the rest of the afternoon. There is a memorial to the genocide here that I would like to see.

Kigali itself is in a contruction boom. The Lonely Planet says that's due to the rest of the world feeling guiltly about not intervening in the genocide, and has thrown plenty of aid money at the country. Oddly, I don't feel a sense in people here, say compared to the sense I got in San Salvador or Siem Reap, of a sadness in people's faces. Although we've only been here less than a day.

The weather has been very temperate. Mid 20s in the day, and cool at night, (Nairobi and Kigali are both at a slight altitude, around 1500m) I probably won't get hot and humid weather until I get to Zanzibar. Thank goodness!

Anyways Marissa and I are off to have dinner and a local beer or two.

Toronto, Canada

As you can see from the nifty little sidebar, this trip is to east Africa. I'll be crossing a couple items off my list: climbing Mt Kilimanjaro, and going on safari through the Serengeti. Usually I try to have only one goal per trip, and spend the rest winging it; however, everything is pretty close and this trip has four (Mt Kilimanajaro and the safari, plus seeing the gorillas and diving off Zanzibar Island).

According to the Lonely Planet, there's plenty of internet cafes in east Africa, so I should be able to post updates frequently (except of course when I'm on safari or half way up Mt Kilimanjaro).

Oslo, Norway

I'm back in Oslo, tomorrow morning I get on the flight back to Toronto.

It was a crappy morning in Bergen when I got on the train for the seven-hour ride back to Oslo. But after crossing the mountains, (and somewhere during a long nap), the cold and rain disappeared and it turned into a pretty nice day when we got to Oslo.

Found a cheap hotel near the train station (cheap is relative in Norway; one night here costs the same as two weeks in Nepal), and went out for dinner. It's still bright now at 11pm, my last night here. It'll seem strange back in Toronto with the sun setting *early* at 9pm.

So the jazz concert last night was pretty cool. The performance was at an old sardine factory. There were four different rooms with different bands, starting at 9pm. They were okay. The main draw was Meshell Ndegeocello, she came on after midnight on one of the larger stages (about 500? people). Me and the Washington Post folks left the other performances early to get front-row centre for her. It was really cool, I've never been that close for a live event before.

There's more pictures up at kodakgallery.com.

Bergen, Norway

Bergen's a nice little town to spend a weekend. On Friday touristed around with Tanya, and took a million pictures. A lot of places within town are UNESCO World Heritage sites, and very photogenic. Took the funicular up one of the hills surrounding the town. There's seven hills (ranging from 200m - 300m) about the town, and a couple weekends from now there's a traditional walk of the seven peaks that takes all day, that most of the townspeople participate in. It was also a rather nice day yesterday, one of the sunniest we've had so far.

Went out to an italian restaurant to celebrate Tanya's birthday and also the last night before she took off back for home. Funny thing is, the prices for dinner seem to always be the same whether we eat at a nice restaurant or a cheap one or McDonald's (though we haven't eaten dinner there). Had a few drinks at fusion kaffe&bar, which had a DJ playing old-school New York lounge music.

This morning Tanya took off for the "Norway-in-a-nutshell" tour back to Oslo. I've met up with a couple of people from the Washington Post (Stacey and Michael), and I'm hanging out with them until I leave. Tonight we're going to see Meshell Ndegeocello, one of the shows in the NightJazz festival taking place right now in Bergen.

It was very easy to get tickets. Reserved them over the web, and then went to the post office to pick them up. Yep, the post office. The post office here has reinvented themselves as, amongst other things, the last-mile provider. The last-mile is a common problem of purchasing over the web, how to get the product to the consumer. Well here you go to the post office to pick up your stuff. Which makes sense, the post office has the infrastructure for distribution and physical sites in central locations. Very easy.

Touristed some more around town this afternoon, I am surprised how much there is to see here.

Oh yah, last night I got ID'd when Tanya and I were out bar hopping. The drinking age is 18, which meant they thought I was 17?!? Anyways I don't normally carry photo ID when I'm travelling, but Tanya showed her passport and the guy was surprised at our age and let us in. The show we're seeing tonight is 18+ (I guess because they'll be serving alocohol) so I think I will take my passport just in case.

Bergen, Norway

Took the train from Oslo and now I'm in Bergen. The seven hour train ride passes through the mountains (about 1200 metres) and it's still completely snowed under there. There's a million tunnels here, on the buses and trains it seems like you're in a tunnel half the time. My train had problems, and for the first time in Norway I experienced a train/boat/bus that didn't leave or arrive exactly on schedule. The restaurant car had problems with its brakes, and so it was disconnected from the middle of the train and then we carried on, two hours late.

There were some great views from the train but they wouldn't come out in pictures, partly because the view is so big, and also because the train window was all spotty from the rain and snow.

Bergen's a nice little city. There are a lot of tourists, (it's part of the "Norway in a nutshell" tour that you can do in a weekend), and a lot of people from the CCI Users Conference are doing it. Already ran into a couple people from the conference.

I've adjusted to the high prices here. I just had fresh shrimp at the harbour market, and bought a fresh bun at the bakery for *only* NOK 9, and a coke for *only* 23. That works out to $2 for the bun and almost $5 for the coke, but any time you spend less than NOK 50 for something, it feels like a deal. (There's cheap internet here, only NOK 15 for 15 minutes!)

Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool

"You'll never walk alone" ...and so rang the chants of Liverpool football fans, in just about every bar in downtown Oslo this evening. It was the UEFA Champions League final, with Liverpool FC winning against AC Milan. The entire city was cheering for Liverpool, partly because they're the traditional favourite (aka the Leafs or Canadiens in that league I don't watch anymore), and also because there's a Norwegian playing on Liverpool.



I walked out of a restaurant after dinner this evening, and AC Milan was up 3-0. That's like a team being up 49-0 in the NFL or 1-0 in the (clutch-and-grab) NHL. But as we were walking back to the hotel, we passed by open-air bars packed with fans in Liverpool red and saw/heard the score go from 3-0 to 3-1 then to 3-2 so I figured I would join some other conference people at the sports bar across from the hotel.

Just after I got there, Liverpool scored to tie, and then it remained that way through the 90 minutes and the extra 30 minutes. There was a small group of AC Milan fans in the bar, and it was fun watching the two groups go back and forth (friendly-like). It went to spot kicks (aka penalty kicks, leave me in europe for a week and I'll figure out the lingo), and Liverpool won.

...

So the conference has been pretty good so far. Had my presentation today, and that went over okay. A number of people asked questions (which is what I was hoping for, keeping the discussion going for the full hour that I had).

I was expecting to have wireless access at the conference, but there wasn't, so I've been having to buy access through my hotel to check my work emails, which is pretty expensive.

Hobnobbed around, made a lot of good contacts, found out the answers to most of the questions I had going into the conference, so well worth the time to come here.

...

Tanya ended up going to Stockholm over the last couple days, while the conference was going on. She's meeting me in Bergen. I just booked the hotel in Bergen for the weekend; it's pretty busy there because there's a jazz festival and some other festival going on, and the city is mostly booked up.

...

Last night CCI took us out for their traditional dinner, which is always one of the highlights of the conference. It was at the Norwegian Maritime Museum, and they had a sommelier announce the four-course dinner and the various wines he had chosen for each course and why they matched. It was an excellent meal as usual. My favourite course was the seafood:



The guy did a really good job of matching wines, it was a vicious circle of eating a mouthful, drinking some wine, eating another bite...

Anyways I'm off to bed.

Oslo, Norway

I had six days above the Arctic Circle, six chances to see the midnight sun, and finally on the last day in Tromso, we got a cloudless night and the sun! We thought we weren't going to see it because the forecast had called for rain the entire weekend, but we got a beautiful day on Saturday, and the clouds held off until 3am or so, long enough for us to see that the sun indeed did not set.

Saturday afternoon we took the cable car up Storsteimen, a hill overlooking Tromso. The views were amazing, and there were paragliders launching from the hill that conveniently positioned themselves as subjects in our photos. We stayed up top for a couple hours, the first view of the sun we had had in a while.

Tanya went back up the cable car for the midnight sun, (the city of Tromso is on the south side of a hill, so there's no direct sunlight at midnight); I stayed in town because I wanted different pictures. We met back up around 1:30ish, and had the odd feeling of going out in broad daylight for the start of a *night* out. Bar hopped again. The Lonely Planet says that at any given moment, 50% of the population of Tromso is out having a drink, and from what we saw, that's probably true. We've adjusted to the sticker shock, and NOK 150 seemed normal for a round (pint of Mack beer and a vodka cooler). (But if you do the math, that's $30 CDN).

Sunday we had the day to kill waiting for our flight back to Oslo at 9pm. It was a crappy weather day again (we've only had about 10 hours of sunlight on this trip, but we've got all the pictures we wanted, so it's no so bad. But anyone looking at the pics will assume we had great weather the whole time!) So we went to a couple museums, the Polar Museum and Polaria. We hadn't planned to go the Polar Museum, but Tanya got confused with the names and so we saw the Polar Museum before realizing it wasn't Polaria. The Polar Museum was all about Roald Amundsen, the first person to reach the south pole (also happened to be Norwegian). However most of the descriptions were non-English (there was more in Norwegian, German, and French).

Polaria was pretty cool, they have a lot of marine life and feeding time for the seals is especially popular with tourists.

Had dinner at Steakers (a steak house), and then caught the flight back to Oslo. The airports are frighteningly efficient here. From hotel door to boarding gate took us 35 minutes, and we even took a public bus to get to the airport. The e-ticket is extended all the way to the boarding gate; you self-check in and get luggage tags, give your bags over, and then at the gate, run your choice of id through a card reader (I used my Visa card) and up pops up a boarding pass, just before you board. So there's no chance to lose the ticket! Very cool.

It's just as well we haven't had great weather the whole time, because I nearly used up my 256 MB memory card on my camera. Only had room for nine more pictures! I've downloaded them to my Powerbook (which I had left at the hotel) so I have room again.

Over the next few days, Tanya's heading off either to the south, or to Stockholm to visit a friend, while I schmooze at the conference here in Oslo.

Oslo, Norway

Pictures are up at Kodakgallery.com.

The kodak website asks you to sign in -- but you don't need to, just click on the first picture (of my Boarding Pass) to see the album.

Tromsø, Norway

We came by land back down to Tromsø, and the bad weather has followed us around. It's been raining on-and-off for at least the last two days, and cold (5C) for this time of year.

The bus ride from Alta to here was pretty cool, the bus went on two ferries along the six hour trip. For me the journey is just as fun as being in places. I was sitting up on deck on the ferry, looking at the sides of the fjords and the low-hanging clouds, with the red-painted houses on the shore, and for some reason, it didn't feel like Norway. For example, when I was on a boat going down the Mekong, it felt like I was on a boat going down the Mekong. But here I had to think about where I actually was. Maybe it's because I didn't have a stereotypical image of Norway? Anyways it was a weird feeling.

We stopped in Tromsø on the coastal steamer ride on our way up, and so we were already familiar with the town. There's quite a bit to do here, hopefully the weather will co-operate!

We were pretty bored in Alta, mostly because of the weather, and we were only there for 24 hours. We saw the rock paintings (the main highlight of Alta), but that only took a couple hours. We meant to climb a hill for a cool view of the town, but the hilltop was hidden in a cloud so we wouldn't have seen anything. Then it started raining which turned to snow, and so we just stayed indoors. Unfortunately there's no indoor stuff to do in Alta. So we spent most of the time watching HBO and CNN.

According to the Lonely Planet, Tromsø is a party town, with the highest per-capita of pubs in Norway. We're going to check it out later on, people don't start going out until midnight.

Alta, Norway

I left my camera/PC cable with my "work" luggage stored in Oslo -- so here's a couple pics from Tanya:

The Richard With


We spent 48 hours on the Richard With, one of eleven coastal steamers of the Hurtigruten fleet. Captain Richard With was one of the first to prove that the route was economically feasible, in 1891.


Rock paintings in Alta


The paintings have been highlighted with ochre. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site.


When I get to Oslo I'll put up an album on ofoto.com.

Alta, Norway

This has been an atypical backpacking trip, especially in regards to accommodation. The main tourist season doesn't start up until mid-June, and many of the hostels and bed&breakfasts aren't open yet. So we've been staying in hotels, at around NOK 1000 a night. Fortunately that's split between the two of us.

At the Park Hotell (in Alta where we're staying), the price includes breakfast, a light dinner, and best of all, FREE internet!! So this will be the first non-rushed entry for this trip :)

Last night we splurged on dinner and had reindeer. It was really good, served medium rare with slices of orange and a cranberry sauce. It did not taste like chicken. More like beef.

We also went to the northern-most brewery in the world (hopefully as we get further south we'll see less of the claim of being the northern-most whatever). Had a couple pints at the Bryggen.

The weather here is Alta is surprisingly warm -- it's about 14C and mostly sunny. I just checked the forecast for Tromso and Oslo, and this may be the nicest day we get for while. We've been hoping to see the midnight sun, but so far it's been cloudy every day. (When we had the clear night on the Hurtigruten, the tall hills on the sides of the fjords blocked us from actually seeing the sun on the horizon). There is a lookout point near the centre of Alta that we are planning to climb tonight to hopefully see the sun.

Alta is also known for rock paintings circa 4500 years old, which we're off to see just now. There's also a USB port accessible on this computer so we may try to upload some pics later on too.

Honningsvåg, Norway

So I've now been to the *official* northernmost point in Europe. We took a tour bus to Nordkapp, at 71*10'21" N. There's another peninsula that juts out about 1.7 km further north; but as the tour guide explained, Nordkapp is more convenient because of the roads, and the ticket booth. Ah yes, the convenient ticket booth. Just as convenient as the turnstiles and souvenir booth. It cost NOK190 to enter, about $40 CAD. It's not even the northern-most part of mainland Europe (we're on an island right now), and Svalbard is even further north, so how this is called the official northern-most point in Europe I don't know.

The first night on the coastal steamer that Tanya and I stayed up for, turned out to be the best weather so far. Yesterday it was rainy and overcast the whole day. But I already had my pictures so I didn't mind.

It seems like Norway has been closed since we got here. Monday was the religious holiday Pinsa; (Sunday was Pinsa Eve); Tuesday was the national holiday... at least today stores and information booths are open!

Internet is still expensive (NOK 1 per minute). Tomorrow we head back south to Alta.

Tromsø, Norway

Well we're on a shore leave from the Hurtigruten, four hours in Tromsø. It's the national holiday today (May 17) and almost the entire town of 26,000 people is in the streets in traditional clothing, for a parade. It's difficult to tell who's in the parade and who's watching it!

Last night Tanya and I stayed up till 5am, and saw the best parts of the boat trip so far. The clouds cleared around 1am, and there was amazing scenery of snow-capped peaks and fjords. The sun didn't actually make an appearance until 3ish, because it was hidden behind the hills. (The four-finger rule doesn't apply at this latitude!) The water was amazingly still as well, with almost perfect reflections of the scenery.

We ended up sleeping from 6am to noon, which by my calculations is the same as my sleep schedule in EST. So much for trying to adjust from jet lag! I'll be just as tired at the conference as if I flew in the same day :)

I have been mispronouncing the name of the steamer (Hurtigruten) as Hurtee-grooten which Tanya then knowlingly mispronounced as Hurtee-gurtee like she was the Swedish Chef; the correct pronounciation is Hurtee-ruta.

We've been mistaken for Norwegians twice, and have been asked if we wanted the student rate a number of times as well! We haven't told anyone about the pictures we keep in our attic.

We're looking at maybe going to Svalbard, which is REALLY north, just short of 80 degrees. The Lonely Planet claims we can get flights for about $340 CAD but a quick search on the net didn't turn up anything. So we may settle for going to Nordkapp as our northernmost point (which is further north than my previous best, Murmansk, Russia).

Bodø, Norway

We're in Bodø. Paying 60 cents a minute. Typed in my nice blog and then logged in to post it; but that wiped out the notepad document that I had it typed into.

So quick update.

We're just going to get on the boat to go through the fjords.

The weather in Bodø has been not-so-nice; rain / hail / snow. But not too cold - above zero.

Hopefully we'll find cheaper access later on and I'll type more.

Oslo, Norway

Tanya and I had a pretty full day for our first day in Oslo. We arrived around noon, got an express train from the airport to the city, found a hotel, took my work suitcase to the *expensive* hotel that I'm staying at for the conference duration; and then checked out Oslo.

Walked around the downtown core; like most other cities (except Toronto) there are major pedestrian-only areas which are very busy and nice to walk through. Got a europe-backpacker lunch of bread, cheese and cold cuts from a grocery store; except here it cost the equivalent of 16 dollars (I can't find the dollar sign on this keyboard) for the two of us.

Went to the National Gallery and saw (amongst other paintings) The Scream; there was also an untitled large painting of a brown rectangle. I could have painted that with some a short visit to Home Depot. And I could have given it a title.

Walked around and took many pictures (the lighting is optimal here most of the time, with the sun low in the horizon). Had a two-hour nap; then headed out to see Oslo at night (although still lit by the sun).

Stumbled across a bar that was filled with Swedish expats watching the Swedish-Czech hockey game. At first we thought all of Norway was cheering for Sweden, but after talking to a few people realized that it was Swedes cheering. Unfortunately Sweden lost in OT; otherwise they would have faced Canada in the final and that would have been interesting to see here.

After went to another bar in the university area. They were playing cool music, although I mistook Black Sabbath for ACDC (it's all the same to me). Around 1:00ish the bar got really busy. We are catching a plane to Bødo tomorrow so took it easy and went home earlyish.

Oslo, Norway

Quick update just to say Tanya and I arrived safely in Oslo. We´re both more awake than we should be. The weather here is perfect, about 17C and sunny. We're going to head to the National Gallery to see Munch's The Scream and then sightsee around the town.

Toronto, Canada

I'm packing for Norway and I just found 30,000 of some currency from my last trip in my backpack. All the writing on the bills is in a non-roman script. Thought it might be Thai baht cause that was the last country I was in; but xe.com says that's worth almost $1,000 CAD. So it must be Lao kip; worth $3.47 CAD.

It's like I'm packing for two trips; first I'll be backpacking around Norway for a week on the cheap; then I'll be at the CCI Users' Conference in Oslo the following week, which is casual business.

Gotta go finish packing.

Toronto, Canada

I finished putting my pictures up on ofoto.com. You can check them out by clicking here.

They include pictures from Angkor Wat which I hadn't posted before.

My favourite


See the route on Atlas.

Bangkok, Thailand

Well I'm at the airport using up the remaining minutes on my Internet card. Was up at 3:15 am! may have well as not have even gone to sleep.

Read in the Bangkok Times that the Argos won the Grey Cup! Yes, the CFL is considered newsworthy here in Thailand. Wonder if it even made the front page of the Star?

So I liked the idea of keeping a blog instead of a diary, although there were occasions where it would have been nice to have a diary, like on the slow boat up the Mekong. I met some people who kept notes and then typed them in when they had web access. Seemed like too much work though.

I found the digital camera way more convenient than film; I took 2 or 3 times as many pictures, and it was very easy to download or get CDs cut.

Thanks to everyone who made comments!

Learnt a bit on this trip, although it's easy to learn when you're forced into the situation. As my friend Kirk said, the trick is to keep on learning when you're back at home and not forced into it.

Anyways, see all the Toronto folk soon!

Bangkok, Thailand

So I've still got a bit of a cold. So sucks. Took the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok yesterday, and I don't think the guy beside me was too impressed that I was coughing and sniffling the whole way down for 12 hours.

Splurged on a nice hotel for the last two nights. Actually, I was kinda forced into it because I couldn't find a guest house that had a room available. It's now the really busy season for tourism in Thailand, so I was trying to book a room while I was still in Chiang Mai. After about 7 or 8 phone calls, I gave up and went to a travel agent, who booked me into this hotel.

I'm on the 18th floor of the Suriwongse Tower Inn, and for $30 I get a 3-star equivalent hotel room. Not your average backpacker place -- there's hot water in the sink (normally there's only been hot water in the shower), a kitchen & fridge, an american breakfast included, clean sheets and towels every day...

The last night in Chiang Mai I was too sick to see the end of the festival. It continued to rain all evening, which put a bit of a damper on things. It was fun hanging out with the Dutch guy and Finnish girl though -- the night before me and the Dutch guy won Chang Beer tshirts, you had to score more than 80 in 3 darts. We just had fun counting in Thai. (Counting is pretty easy, once you know 1 to 10, then e.g. 11 is just ten-one, 34 is three-ten-four.) And for some reason we switched to speaking in spanish for the rest of the night. Which was very odd to me (although I'm sure the alcohol had something to do with it).

Took the BTS Skytrain from my hotel to the very large Chatuchak weekend market this morning. The Skytrain is pretty efficient, and there's plenty of english signage. Also at the interchange, they actually swap the lines for changing. So for example the eastbound and northbound are on the same platform, and the westbound and southbound are another platform. Which makes more sense then what we have in Toronto, where the east- and westbound are on the same platform -- how often do you switch from east to west? At least this way 50% of the time you don't need to switch platforms. It was also really clean, and only 40 baht for the ride from my hotel to the market (it's zoned pricing).

The Lonely Planet claims the Chatuchak market has over 15,000 stalls. I spent about 3 hours wandering around, and saw maybe 20% of it. It was jam packed with people. The prices were pretty good -- not as cheap as the festival market in Chiang Mai, but close enough. Now I just have to figure out how to get all this stuff home. Dang these large souvenirs.

Hope to get in one last massage this evening, and then it's a long 19 hour flight to Chicago tomorrow...