Moshi, Tanzania

The last couple days of the safari were uneventful, as there were no more game drives. We were able to upgrade to lodges the last two nights, and so finished the safari in relative comfort.

Overall the safari was much what I had hoped for, my favourite game drive was the last morning in the Serengeti, the scale of the view just blew me away. The animals were very close to us, which was also really nice (for those of us without huge zooms on our cameras!). The group of people were really fun to be with, and our guides and cook were excellent. Overall two thumbs up!

I'm now in Moshi waiting to start the Kili climb tomorrow morning. I was dropped off by the safari at the Springlands Hotel yesterday early morning. Said goodbye to everyone on the safari, including Marissa who carried on back to Nairobi to fly home. Having traveled a bit, it wasn't that weird for me to become really close to people and then say goodbye, but I think for other people it would be odd. Usually this happens every couple of days when backpacking!

The Springlands Hotel is a resort-type place that you don't really need to leave. They did all my laundry at reasonable prices (60 cents for a pair of pants!), they sell water, have internet access, and will cash traveller's cheques. The hotel is on the outskirts of Moshi, and they have a shuttle to and from the town every 30 minutes.

I relaxed yesterday, catching up on my reading and keying in my safari blog entries.

This morning, JP arrived at the hotel (JP is my friend from Toronto, who is in east Africa at the same time, and we're doing the climb together). JP booked the trip over here, and thanks to the internet we were able to organize meeting etc, even though we were on separate safaris. That still amazes me.

This morning we booked a flight to Zanzibar, returning to Nairobi. It was also very painless to my surprise. We walked into the travel agency, and walked out 10 minutes later with tickets in hand!

Tomorrow JP and I start walking up Kili. We're doing the Marangu route, which has huts the whole way. If all goes well, I'll be at the top (5896m) on Friday night just before midnight Toronto-time. I'm not expecting internet access along the way, so this may be it for another week.

I was expecting more internet places to cut CDs from digital camera cards. However, I've only seen them in Nairobi. My card was full, and yesterday I walked all around Moshi looking for a place to cut a CD, but got only blank stares. However, JP rescued me because he was able to download my pics to his iPod, and lent me an extra 1GB card. Thank goodness, or else I would have had to delete some more pictures. I bought the largest card at the time (256MB) when I bought my camera, but I definitely need to upgrade that to a 1GB card.

Well, I'm off to have an afternoon nap!

Karatu, Tanzania

We were up and packed by 6:30am for breakfast, and headed into the crater by 7am. It was quite a drive to get to the bottom (almost an hour!) and looked nothing like I had envisioned. I had pictured jungles with barely enough room to drive the Land Rover, with trees all around us as in Lake Manyara NP. Instead it was mostly a big grassland plain, with occasional trees at the edges and salt pans. At first I thought we could see all the animals from the entry point. But as I found, there were little crevices and water holes where different animals hid or stayed. As well, the crater is 22km in diameter, so it's quite difficult to see animals across the entire crater.

I was disappointed near the end of the drive, because this was our last game drive and best opportunity to see a rhino, the last of the Big Five for me. But, as we were at the toilet facilities just near the exit drive from the crater, one of our guides spotted a rhino in the distance! It wasn't possible to take a picture at that distance, but still, it was a rhino!!!

Saw: Guinea fowl, Thomspon gazelle, ostrich, maribou, spotted hyena, buffalo, monkey, elephant, baboon, waterbuck, zebra, hartebeest, warthog, Grant's gazelle, blackstriped jackal, goldenbacked jackal, hippo, flamingo, cheetah, rhino

We also had stopped at a hippo pool where there were maybe 30 hippos, and got a picture of one yawning! As well, there were hundreds (maybe thousands?) of flamingos in one of the bigger salt lakes, and they were flying around in formation, turning pink or black or white depending on the angle they were flying.

We drove back to camp for lunch, packed the Land Rovers, and headed for our next campsite.

I forgot to mention, our guide had amazing eyesight, and was constantly impressing us with spotting animals. There were six tourists in the LandRover, and all we had to do was look for animals. He had to watch the road for potholes, watch the sides for overhanging acacia branches that might hit us on the roof, and look for animals. He still found most of the animals well before we did.

At this campsite (outside of Karatu), it was possible to upgrade to a lodge for $20 per person. Marissa and I did, and it was one of the nicer places we have stayed at so far, (not including the Kivu Sun!) I had a hot shower and shaved, and then caught up in my diary (I was keeping notes on paper, to be typed into my blog when I got access to the web), sitting at a nice wooden desk in the room.

I was surprised at how tanned my face was. This was the first time in six days that I'd seen myself in a mirror!

Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

We were on the road again by 6am for our 5th and last game drive in the Serengeti. We saw huge herds of zebra and wildebeest, with all sorts of other ungulates thrown in here and there. We were near the top of a giant sloping plain, and could see thousands of animals all about. We even saw a pride of lions, 7 in total, that looked like they were on a hunt, but just walked from tree shade to tree shade. It was a very relaxing ride, I just sat up on top of the Land Rover the whole time and enjoyed it. We didn't see any more animals to tick off our list, but it was very scenic.

Saw: giraffes, spotted hyenas, impalas, black-crested eagle, topi, gazelles, wildebeest, zebras, cheetah, lions, buffalos, guinea fowl, warthogs, hartebeest, ostrich, dik diks

Back to camp for brunch, and then we packed up and headed for the Ngorongoro crater. (I had washed my tshirt before brunch, and 45 minutes later, it was dry!) It was a bit of a drive (4 1/2 hours), although we did make a number of stops.

Saw a few more lions along the way, including a large male (we'd seen mostly female). Got to the campsite on the lip of the crater with about 30 minutes of daylight remaining. We quickly pitched our tents, and I took a (cold) shower at the camp facilities. (The Serengeti campsite also had showers, but no water at this time of year). We had stopped to pick up firewood along the drive, and again had a nice campfire. We had dinner by the fire, and then sat drinking wine until the fire burnt out (10pm).

Serengeti NP, Tanzania

This campsite was much more what I had thought the trip would be like. Right in the Serengeti, no fences around the perimeter... Up and on the road for the morning game drive by 6am. The Serengeti is pretty much a big plain, so there wasn't the same surprises as Lake Manyara NP.

Saw: giraffes, lions (male and female), cheetah, ground sqirrel, hyraxes, zebras, spotted hyenas, hippos, crocodiles, egyptian geese, maribou, egrets, vultures.

Back for breakfast, then back out for the mid-day game drive. Saw a leopard! (#4 of the Big 5 list), and a migration of zebra and wildebeest (which are led by zebras!). An ostrich appeared to lead at points as well. We spent about two hours in the one spot, watching the leopard on one side, and the migration on the other.

Saw: leopards, zebras, wildebeest, ostriches, springbok, bustard, red-backed deer, hippos, lilac-breasted roller.

Returned for lunch, then lounged about in the shade. The 3rd game drive started at 4pm. It started out innocuously enough, until a lone zebra keeled over as we drove by. Jennifer got all excited, asking Is it giving pregnant? which the rest of us heard as Is it getting pregnant which obviously it was not, all alone. It turned out it was giving birth! A few minutes later, out came a baby zebra! Luckily no predators were around. Another zebra, (we think the father), came in from the distance, said something and then took off. We watched the baby try to stand on its own, a few minutes later helped by the mother who was now back on her feet. Within 15 minutes the baby was standing! We left to continue on safari. On the way back (about an hour later), we saw the mother and baby zebra again. The baby had now learned how to nurse. A couple of jackals and a vulture circled around for the placenta and there was a brief tussle over it. Eventually the mother and baby zebra walked off, and left for camp.

Saw: starlets, guinea fowl, impalas, topi, buffalo, vervet monkeys, zebras, maribous, baboons, dik diks, wildebeest, ostrich, Thompson gazelles, secretary birds, silver-backed jackals, waterbucks

Earlier in the afternoon we had gathered up loose dead wood for a fire, and after dinner we had a nice camp fire in the Serengeti listening to the animals all around us.

Serengeti NP, Tanzania

Woke up at 5:45am to have a shower, pack up, and ready for breakfast by 7am. Long day of driving with many stops. I had been taking Tylenol 3-4 times a day for the last few days, and every time I stopped I felt worse. Felt progressively worse through the day. Stopped at viewpoint of Ngorongoro crater, (caused by volcano, not meteorite as I had always thought). It was also rather sparse, mostly grasslands, to my surprise. Made it to Serengeti NP by 4pm, and spent a bit of the drive to our campsite as a "game drive".

Saw: Thompson gazelles, Grant gazelles, topi, giraffes, widlebeest, zebras, elephants, lions.

I was pretty sick so decided to start taking antibiotics. Slept till dinner, ate, and then went straight back to bed.

Lake Manyara NP, Tanzania

Woke up at 6am feeling pretty good. Went to wash up and realized the showers were available, so back to the tent, grabbed soap/shampoo/towel, and showered. Not bad for a campsite. Breakfast was scrambled eggs & beans. I ate quite a bit, the most I've had in a few days. Packed up (actually the guides and cook did most of that). Lucky so far that it hasn't rained.

Drove to our next campsite just outside Lake Manyara NP. At first we looked like the only tourists, but then lots of overlanders showed up. Towards the evening we went on our first game drive. It was excellent -- saw all three of the Big 5 that were in this park (elephant, lion, buffalo), up really close! The safari trail was through big trees most of the time, occasionally at water holes.

Saw: lions, giraffes, elephants, baboons, buffalo, zebras, hyenas, jackals, guinea fowl, dik diks, impalas.

Back to the campsite, dinner, then saw a live performance. I bought a CD from them for $5.

Arusha, Tanzania

Our flight from Kigali arrived in Nairobi without any problems. We got our luggage, and cashed a bunch of travellers cheques to USD (losing about 10% in the process). (We needed $200 per person for the local payment for the safari tour (used for park fees etc), plus money for extras along the way). Went to a different hotel in Nairobi, to the hotel where the tour was starting the next morning.

Was up at 6am to be ready for the briefing at 7am in the hotel. It was rather dragging, an they had two different groups in the same meeting, so there was no sense in remembering names. There were 6 on our tour, and we joined up with 6 who had done the Kenyan safari first, and were now doing the Tanzanian safari. After much waiting and organizing, we were on our way by 9:30am. In our van were Carey (US), Jennifer (US), Emmeline & Paul (UK), and Marissa and I; in the other van were Yvonne & Vegar (Norway), Tom & Jean (US), Gary (UK) and Mariam (Australian).

It took us 2 1/2 hours to reach the border, and we went through the Kenyan exit and Tanzanian entry without much fanfare. I was disappointed with the lack of stamping by the Tanzanian official (just a single stamp over the visa), seeing as they requested three blank pages just to get the visa. We also transferred to our safari vehicles (Land Rovers), and met our guides/drivers (Revocatus) and cook (Alfa). Two hours to Arusha, then errand hopping (ATM, money exchange, grocery store -- bought 15L of water for myself). We were told we wouldn't have access to electricity (no recharging of camera batteries), no showers and no stores for six days! (This turned out to be incorrect).

Got to our campsite (Snake Park) on the outskirts of Arusha by 4pm, sorted out tents. I was feeling sick still, and a couple Tylenol fixed that (I'm whipping through my bottle...) Our group is mostly older, 30s - 40s. We went to a Snake Zoo, the irony of going all the way to Africa on safari and then going to a zoo was not lost on us.

There were five other large groups at the campsite in huge overlanders -- they looked like the big snow landers in the Empire Strikes Back. It made the campsite pretty crowded.

Dinner was at 7pm, beef and macaroni, and peppery soup. I still didn't have much of an appetite from being sick. After went to the bar so Marissa could charge her camera battery. Five Kili beers later, (500ml, 5%, 1500Tsh) called it a night.

Kigali, Rwanda

We're just about to catch our plane back to Nairobi, and tomorrow we'll start the GAP Adventure safari through Tanzania, so I may not be able to update my blog for a while.

I got a bit of a cold in Gisenyi, I think the same thing everyone had in Toronto before I left. I thought I had had it in Toronto too, and beaten it, but maybe the lack of sleep from the jetlag let it come back. Anyways, slept most of the last day in Gisenyi while Marissa hung out on the beach.

Yesterday we took a three-hour bus ride back to Kigali. We got here early enough to go see the Genocide Memorial. It was very well done, it's shocking how many people died, and how many people were complicit.

Last night was Friday night, and our hotel's bar is quite the hopping place on Fridays. They had live music, and lots of (mostly) men came by to have drinks. We think it's an upscale place because most people were drinking imported beer (Heineken). Marissa and I split a large Primus (the local beer) (the beer here comes in large bottles, shared the same way as pitchers in Canada) (72cl, 5%, $3US). Marissa had most of it, I just had a little bit so she wasn't drinking alone.

I crashed early, trying to sleep away this cold. I'm still not 100%, but should be okay for the safari.

We really liked Rwanda, the people here are really friendly. I don't think there's a flat spot in the country, there are hills everywhere. Because it's rainy season, everything is really green too. There aren't very many tourists here (I think because of the reputation leftover from the genocide), but that will probably change as more people hear about how nice it is now.

Gisenyi, Rwanda

Today is our first day to relax on the trip. I finally am over my jetlag and slept through the night, getting up in time for the buffet breakfast. It's off-season, so we have almost the whole resort to ourselves.

The bus ride from Ruhengeri to Gisenyi was quite interesting. First, we had to get a taxi ride from the Gorilla Nest resort to the bus station in Ruhengeri. As we were driving into town, the driver saw a bus (which are actually minivans converted to hold four rows of passengers, holding three people comfortably per row, or four if you squish in) on its way to Gisenyi. So he flagged it down, u-turned and dropped us off. The bus was already full, but the bus ticket guy (there's usually a driver and a money guy on each bus) reorganized all the passengers so that Marissa and I could sit together.

The other passengers on the bus spoke only Swahili, so our english and limited french weren't very good. The other passengers all talked to each other, even if they were strangers (it reminded me of taking the T in Boston, where random people would just start talking about how the Red Sox were doing). Sometimes they were talking about us and then the whole bus would laugh.

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There really isn't much to Gisenyi except for the beach. Marissa and I walked around this morning looking for bottled water (it's $2 in the resort for a 500ml bottle), and walked quite a bit before finally finding a little store ($1 for a 1.5L bottle). Otherwise the town is full of schools and offices. I think the only internet place is in the hotel too (at least it's cheap, $1 per hour).

We're just off to the beach...

Gisenyi, Rwanda

Today we saw the mountain gorillas, and it was pretty amazing! There's only 700 or so left in the world, between Uganda and Rwanda. The mountain gorillas are the main attraction in Rwanda, and the reason Marissa and I came here.

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Yesterday from Kigali, we took a short two-hour bus ride north to Ruhengeri. To my surprise, the bus left and arrived on time and only took on as many passengers as seats! (This is not normal in developing countries). I'd heard about a nice hotel called Mountain Gorillas Nest, not listed in the Lonely Planet, so we asked around. It turned out to be in a nearby town, Kinigi Village, about 10 km north. We took a taxi, but the road was one of the worst I've been on in all my travels, and it took about 45 minutes to get there! (I've been amazed over the last few trips at how paved roads to tourist destination are now the norm, compared to say 10 years ago).

Gorillas Nest is a beautiful resort. The rooms all had decks facing the wilderness, the grounds were really well-kept with flowers and birds all around. We booked a driver for the visit to the gorillas, and then took a nap (still slightly jetlagged).

Today we got up early, in order to be at the ORTPN office in Parque National Volcans by 7am. We checked in with the permits we had purchased in Kigali. We were then assigned into groups of 6 to 8 with the 20 other tourists seeing the gorillas, to see specific groups of gorillas.

We took an hour to drive over more bad roads to get to the starting point for the trek. The trek was really cool, through bamboo forests and then directly up a hill, at a 60* incline! I've never walked through such dense growth! We were accompanied by a guide, a lead (with a machete to clear the way), and two armed guards (in case of poachers). After 90 minutes, we were close to the group of gorillas. We were given more instructions on how to behave (no closer than 7 metres, no direct eye contact with the silverback (the head of the group), no pointing, no flash photography). Then we cut through more undergrowth, and the gorillas were right there! This particular group had 13 members, including an 8-month old that was recently named, although I forget the name. We spent an hour watching the group go about their normal life, eating bamboo shoots, playing, sitting around. The silverback was enormous, about 6' tall and 400 pounds.

I took a lot of pictures, and when I find an internet place where I can upload pictures I'll put some up.

Overall it was a pretty cool experience. It was pretty expensive (the permit itself is $375 US, plus the flight from Nairobi to Kigali put the side trip at about $1000), but worth it. Ranked against other side trips in the same price range, I'd say it's in 3rd, behind Easter Island and the Galapagos Island.

After the trek, we returned to the hotel, and then caught a bus to Gisenyi.

Gisenyi is a resort town on the beaches of Lake Kivu. We ended up in a very nice hotel, Kivu Sun, (again, not found in the Lonely Planet). We had dinner and then crashed, tired from the trek and the early start to the day.

We plan to stay here for 2-3 nights, just relaxing before heading back to Nairobi to begin the safari. There's also a free tour of the local brewery (Primus) nearby that we want to check out.

I've found Rwanda to be a very friendly country, without much of the hassling that is normal in poorer countries. Definitely my favourite country in Africa so far.

That's it for now!

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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

Chiang Mai, Thailand

It's been raining most of today, the first time that's it's rained on me this trip. Which was okay cause I have a bit of a cold and probably would have stayed in anyways.

Yesterday took a Thai cooking class. It was really good; there were 9 of us in the class, and we started by picking the 5 dishes each that we wanted to make. Next was a trip to the market to buy ingredients. One of the things I liked about this cooking school is that they give you various names for the ingredients, and suggest alternatives if you can't find something in your home country.

Coconut cream was part of everything we cooked -- and we bought it fresh here. You pick out the coconuts in the market, and then the flesh is scraped out, a bit of water is added, and then the cream is squeezed out. It looks a bit milky.

We all had our own woks to cook from. The teacher talked in a rather monotone voice, but he was really enthusiastic about us learning a bit of Thai culture.

Then as the teacher said, we cook, we eat, we cook, we eat, five times. I never thought about that part -- we ate 5 full meals in 8 hours. I was stuffed.

After went out drinking with some of the other people in the class, a Dutch guy and a Finnish girl. Some other people that they had met on treks joined us. We drank Archa beer, and watched the many hot air lanterns rise to the skies. There were many more last night -- at least ten in the sky at any one moment.

Hopefully the rain will stop for the end of the festival tonight. Tomorrow I'm on a train to Bangkok, and then I fly home on Monday.

Here's some of the dishes I cooked yesterday:

Shrimp soup


Green curry


Pad thai


Spring rolls -- check out the presentation!

Chiang Mai, Thailand

I lucked out that there's a festival in Chiang Mai, (an annual festival, based on the lunar calendar). As part of it, there's a huge street market for 3 days and it's by far the best market I've seen ever. The quality is amazing, and it stretches for kilometres. And unlike other markets, most of the stuff is unique and non-repetitive, and there's not much mass-produced junk. Most of the people shopping at the market are Thai -- there's not too many foreigners.

Last night Darren and I ended up at a bar where they had an open mike night -- but also if you just played an instrument, you could play with the band. So after a couple beers I went up and played a few songs. That was pretty cool (for me, I don't know if the rest of the bar appreciated it, although they did clap)

Tonight we went to the local night market (a different location than the festival market), for which Chiang Mai is known for. However, it turned out to be a fairly large tourist trap -- prices were ten times (ten times!) the prices at the festival market -- and when I tried to bargain saying that the price was cheaper at the other market, they grabbed the merchandise back and told me to go to the other market! So I did.

As part of the festival, there's these mini- hot air balloons that are launched. They're a cylinder made from tissue paper, about 2 feet in diameter, and 4 feet tall, and there's a wick mounted at the bottom. At any given moment there's one or two in the air. There's something uplifting about watching these rise to the heavens. The festival ends on Friday night, and we're hoping that there'll be a lot of balloons launched that night.

Tomorrow I've signed up for an all-day cooking class. We each get to choose five dishes to make, and start at the market buying ingredients. All day eating. Mmmm.

Some more pics:

AFW. (Another wat)


Just in case anyone doubted the ubiquitousness of western culture on the rest of the world...


Me with the band. Notice that they were careful not to place any mikes near me

Chiang Mai, Thailand

I've just survived 3 days without Internet access! Yes, the world is not yet fully on the web.

On Friday, Raoul, Mary, and I went on a day trip to Kuang Si Falls, about an hour outside of Luang Prabang. We picked up another Canadian along the way. The falls looked really beautiful, they're not the biggest or anything, but it was a nice setting. We had a swim in the bottom pool, which was really refreshing. The water was so clear, and it was a nice change from the salty sea water I was swimming in earlier on the trip.

I spent the next two days going upstream on the Mekong, on my way to the border of Thailand. There's two options, a fast boat, and a slow boat. The fast boat does the entire journey in about 8 hours; the slow boat takes two days and stops overnight in Pakbeng.

The slow boat was really nice, the Mekong is actually quite narrow (about 500m?) at points, so it has a really nice atmosphere. I've been on other rivers where you can barely see the other side, and it's just not the same feel.

There were about 30 people on the boat, an equal split of locals and backpackers. Almost all the backpackers were reading; it's a great place to read a book (or two or three). Opposite me was the Dan Brown reading club -- by coincidence, two people were reading The DaVinci Code, and another Digital Fortress. I had my eye on Digital Fortress for trading, and fortunately the girl finished it and traded with me :) It was good, although I liked TDVC better.

Pakbeng is a little riverside town in the middle of nowhere. And it has no Internet access.

I was debating taking the fast boat the next day, but then talked to some other backpackers who had been in accidents in the fast boats (hitting submerged logs or rocks). So decided on the slow boat.

Unfortunately the slow boat got into Huay Xai (the border town on the Lao side) just after the border closed, so we spent the night there.

Huay Xai is a little riverside town in the middle of nowhere. And it has no Internet access.

Met some interesting people on the boat. First there was a Japanese character. He was 63, and spoke just about every language in the region. He flitted about from group to group talking whatever language they were. He was sitting down for dinner with us, and uttered a line I definitely won't hear again sorry, I have to excuse myself, there's a group of Burmese hill tribe people at the next table, and I haven't spoken their dialect in 20 years. Yep.

There was also a group of 3 Texans. I repeat, a group of 3 Texans. I normally try to avoid stereotyping people, but it was very odd to see 3 Texans backpacking around Lao. Good for them.

You may have noticed I've been calling the country Lao. The proper name is Lao PDR, and somehow it got mixed up to Laos (the Lonely Planet blames the French) and that's what the rest of the world calls it now.

The next morning, traveling with Darren (an American who'd been on the slow boat with me), we crossed the border in Thailand, and spent a good part of the day on buses, eventually getting to Mae Sai, a town on the border with Myanmar. It's possible to enter Myanmar for the day without a visa (you just pay $5 USD, and leave your passport at the border). So we plunked down our $5 and spent 3 hours in Myanmar. Bought some souvenirs, a rather heavy (2.5 kg! My entire pack weighs less than 10 kg) gong, and a guitar case (for $4!!).

A five hour bus ride this morning brought me to Chiang Mai, where I'll relax before returning to Bangkok to fly home. I'm hoping to take some cooking classes here.

Some more pics:

On the Mekong. The boat in the foreground is similar to the boat we were on


Man fishing in the Mekong


Night out in Luang Prabang. Check out the cool bamboo straw. Mary's the hand model


Kuang Si Falls

Luang Prabang, Laos

Still in Luang Prabang. This is one of my favourite places that I've been to. Here's some more pics:

Men playing petanque


Wat in Luang Prabang


Monks walking by the Royal Palace


Flower fallen on the steps

Luang Prabang, Laos

After all the oppressive heat that I've experienced here, I nearly froze to death on the bus ride from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang. The bus goes up through the hillls/mountains (about 2000m I would guess) and it was a rainy day, but all the tourists and I were dressed for 35C and sun. After an hour of shivering, we all dug into our backpacks under the bus at the first pit stop for warmer clothes.

The drive was pretty windy (as you would expect in the hills), but it was paved the entire way. It's been a while since I've taken a long distance bus ride over dirt roads...

Left Dee behind in Vang Vieng, she has a bit more time than me and wanted to explore around a bit more. Met up with 3 other single travelers on the bus: Tommy (from Newfoundland), Raoul (a Dutch guy) and Mary (from Tasmania).

Mary is the first person I've met who's been to more countries than Gerry and I. Gerry is my friend that I traveled through Russia, Mongolia and China with about 7 years ago. In Russia, we met an english guy whose goal was to visit 100 countries in his lifetime. Gerry and I adopted his goal; but Gerry's always been ahead of me. Gerry is at 57 right now; Laos is number 55 for me. Mary's been to 59! and she's younger than me! For Gerry and me, it's a competition, Mary seemed somewhat disinterested in the number...

Got into Luang Prabang at dusk, so just had time to get guest houses and then meet for dinner. We ended up at different guest houses because the town's pretty full. Met for dinner and then drank the night away.

Finished the book I got from Dee, Adam and Eve and Pinch Me by Ruth Rendell. If anyone has read this book, can you please tell me how it ends? The copy I have (as warned by Dee) has the last two pages ripped out. I've just read that (and skip to the next paragraph if you don't want me to ruin it) Minty has knifed another person in her house, and then realized it wasn't a ghost.

Touristed around Luang Prabang today -- it's a beautiful little town, with a very European feel to it. It's a UNESCO protected site or whatever they do.

Anyways meeting up with the Tommy, Raoul and Mary in a few minutes for dinner, tomorrow we're going to rent motorbikes and see some of the sights around Luang Prabang. We've heard rumours that foreigners on bikes outside of town are stopped by police and fined (for riding bkies out of town), so we may end up just getting a tuktuk.

Vang Vieng, Laos

Took the bus this morning to Vang Viang, about 3 hours north of Vientiane. This place exists solely because of backpackers. On the menu for dinner, it listed a bunch of western food, and then under ethnic foods it listed LAO FOOD! Can you believe it?

Anyways only stopped here because I couldn't get a direct bus to Luang Prabang. Touristed around, saw the caves in the karst (the geographical name of the rock formations). The walk to the caves was pretty cool -- first it was about a 1km walk through rice paddies, then over a dried-up river bed, then through a forest, finally to the caves. The path's well-trodden (or is that well-trod?) so it's easy to follow.

Here's some pics:

That Luang, a temple in Vientiane (taken at sunset)



Karst surrounding Vang Vieng

Vientiane, Laos

I'm now in Vientiane, the sleepy capital of Laos. The city is preparing itself for the ASEAN Summit being held here at the end of the month, so it looks pretty spiffy. There are pretty severe travel restrictions starting next week (I think they want all the backpackers out of town, so there's room for all the summit people), so I'm lucky that I'm here now.

On Saturday, Dee (the Irish girl) and I rented motorbikes and toured around outside of Pakse. It's almost too easy to rent motorbikes -- all you need is $6 and a passport for a deposit (I used my expired Mastercard as the deposit -- at least I'm getting some use out of carrying it :) ).

Dee had only ridden a bike twice before, so she was the experienced rider between the two of us. Somehow we made it out of Pakse without running over anyone, and we headed along route 13 towards Tad Lo, a waterfall about 90 km north. The traffic doesn't go very fast here -- we rarely exceeded the speed limit of 40 km/h.

There were beautiful views of rural Laos along the way. We stopped at a couple roadside huts for refreshments -- said our Sabadee (Hello) then smiled a lot, out of vocabulary. The people are really friendly.

After two hours and only 50 km out of Pakse, we realized that we wouldn't reach the waterfall with any hope of getting back before dark. Decided that just touring around on bikes was cool enough, and so headed back to Pakse.

Met up with an english guy, Duncan, who was also staying at our guest house, and we headed out for dinner. I still can't believe how cheap everything is here -- I had a Lao noodle soup for dinner, a Pepsi (can't seem to find Coke here), and a large Lao beer -- for $1.80. Dee and I were beat after spending all day biking in the hot sun, so we took it easy on the drinking.

Yesterday caught the flight from Pakse to Vientiane, hopefully my last time leaving the ground on this trip. This is the most I've flown internally -- normally I prefer ground travel because you see more of the country, and meet more locals.

We checked into a really nice guesthouse -- there's a lounge on the 2nd floor overlooking the street, and it's a great place to meet other backpackers.

Had dinner along the banks of the Mekong. There's a whole string of vendors along the riverbank, serving dinner on tables lit by candlelight. It's a very cool setting.

There's a curfew of 10:30 here (which seems to come and go in Laos), so we didn't have much time to bar hop. All the bars kick you out promptly at 10:30 sorry, police come soon.

It's stinking hot here (high of 33C today), so most activity is in the morning and evening, with the mid-day hours reserved for napping and reading (and of course, surfing the web).

Here's some more pics (click on them for a larger image). Unfortunately I cut a CD with all my Angkor Wat pictures which Marissa took home with her, so the Angkor Wat pics will have to wait until I get back:

One of the wats in Vientiane




Inside the wat




A roadside "gas station" along route 13 outside Pakse




Roadside break from biking -- that's Dee with her back to the camera buying a snack

Pakse, Laos

Marissa left for Bangkok this morning, and I carried on to Pakse, in southeastern Laos.

The only reason I came here is because I couldn't get a plane ticket direct to Vientienne. However, this turned out to be a good thing, because not many backpackers stopover here, and it's quite a nice little town.

Met up with a girl from Ireland at the airport (getting the Laotian visa was no problem because I flew in) (although it's not as nice looking as the Cambodian visa) and tomorrow we're going to rent motorbikes and head to some of the nearby sites. There's a couple waterfalls that are supposed to be pretty cool.

Pakse itself is a small little town, about 60,000 people. The local people don't seem to mind tourists, in fact we're almost ignored which is quite a novelty.

We wandered around town in the heat today, and I ended up buying a guitar! for only $15! So now I have a guitar to lug around, but it's kinda cool in the guest houses, because it seems like almost everyone plays guitar.

Anyways it's quite expensive here for the internet so I'm off to drink. Apparently the local beer (Beer Lao) is the best in the world, and it's darned cheap. We just paid 4000 kip (about 50 cents) for a 668ml 5% beer! I think it tastes pretty good, but I'd like to have a side-by-side taste with a Keiths. (I like Keiths a lot).

Siem Reap, Cambodia

I've wanted to see Angkor Wat for a while, but I didn't realize until I got here that Angkor Wat is just one of the temples in a huge complex. The area is so large, you can buy a 7-day pass!

We arrived Monday night in Siem Reap, the town that neighbours the temples of Angkor Wat. We were fortunate that we were at the back of the prop plane from Bangkok, because we were first off the plane, and first in line at customs. We were duly processed, and then my bag was the first off the conveyor! The last passenger we think must have waited over an hour to get through immigration and customs, because they are rather methodical. But the visa is the nicest looking visa I've ever got, better even than the transit visa for Latvia or the full-page stamp from Mongolia.

Siem Reap is a bustling town, barely able to keep up with all the increasing number of tourists. In a few years I worry it will be like Koh Phi Phi :(

We booked a tuktuk driver through the hotel, and started out to see the temples. A tuktuk is a motorcycle with a 2-person cart attached to the back. For $10 a day, we had our own personal escort.

First we stopped off to buy a 3-day pass. It's a really nice looking pass (Cambodia seems to be good for official souvenirs).

The first temple was Bayon, which is quite overwhelming in size and detail. It's one of the top 3 temples, and was overrun by tourists. However, it was still my personal favourite.

Next we saw (I'm mostly listing these for my reference) Phimeanakas, Baphuon, Terrace of the Leper King, Terrace of the Elephants, and Prasats Suor Prat. It was stinking hot, and we were struggling just to move in the sun. We stopped for lunch at one of the stalls that are outside most of the ruins, we both had the chicken and ginger with rice which was excellent.

After lunch we saw the Victory Gate, Thommanom (Marissa's favourite), Chau Say Thevoda, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm, and finished at Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is huge, and the amount of detail is amazing. There's thousands of metres of bas relief images, they just go on forever.

We stayed there for the sunset, Angkor Wat looks really good in the dusk lighting. I was also lucky that two monks in bright orange robes decided to walk across the front in a perfect pose for my picture :)

Nine hours after starting, we returned back to the hotel, exhausted and in need of air conditioning.

The next day we planned out a bit better. The first day was rather slow; we covered the suggested 2nd and 3rd day itineraries into one day, which meant more frequent rides in the tuktuk which provided a breeze to cool us down. (The temples are about 3km apart).

We saw Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Sras Srang, Banteay Kdei, Prasat Kravan and saw the sunset from Phnom Bakheng.

Even though we covered the highlights on Day 1, the temples on Day 2 were still amazing. Every one had something different that made it interesting.

We ran into the French guy that we met in Hat Ton Sai at Ta Som! So we met up for dinner last night. He's really interesting, and we drank away the night, getting home around 3ish.

Today is an admin day -- buying souvenirs, sending emails, getting massages... and then tomorrow Marissa returns to Bangkok and I'm off to southern Laos.

I've kinda messed up my access to money. There are no ATMs in Cambodia or Laos, so you have to go into a bank to get a cash advance. Normally that's not a problem, except my Visa is so worn out, the signature panel says Void Void Void -- which ATMs don't care about, but officious bank people do. So I went to use my backup, my Mastercard. Except I haven't used that in years, and didn't realize it expired last year. So Marissa got some money out for me; and it has to last me until I get back to Thailand. It shouldn't be a problem though.

The internet connection speeds here are really slow so I'm not going to try to upload any pictures. I've taken a couple hundred though -- with digital I'm taking way more pictures.

That's it for now!

Phuket, Thailand

Phuket is pretty much just a jumping-off spot to get to Koh Phi Phi. Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok and then to Siem Reap in Cambodia, where Angkor Wat is. So we had a day to kill today, and went to the beach, our last chance to be in the ocean; the rest of the trip is inland.

We took a local bus, supposedly called a songthaew (don't ask me how to pronounce that, everyone here has called it "local bus"), to Nai Harn Beach, about 10 km outside of town. A songthaew is just a pickup truck, with two benches and a covering. It only cost us 30B each (about 75 cents).

Nai Harn Beach is a nice long beach, the sand isn't as fine as on Koh Phi Phi, but the water is amazingly clear and warm (about 30C). Had lunch (noodle soup, with chicken to which the locals add chilis, sugar, ground peanuts, and chili flakes. Marissa thought it was weird to add sugar to chicken noodle soup, I think she's too provincial. I had it with everything, including the sugar, it tasted really good).

Beach bummed for the day, and then caught another local bus back to town. The driver tried to con us into paying only 300B! fast! phhht! and showed us a "bus schedule" where the next songthaew wasn't for an hour. In reality, there are no schedules, the songthaews leave whenever there's enough passengers. So we waited only a couple minutes, and some other locals jumped on and so we were off, for 30B.

Yesterday went for dinner to an italian restaurant. I'm always leery of other types of food, because you never know what a Thai's impression of italian food is, but the owner was an italian expat, so I tried the pasta with clams in a white wine sauce, which was excellent. He even had an expresso machine, so I had one, just for the novelty of having an expresso in some small town in Thailand.

I found a solution to the problem of having all my pictures on my camera. (Cause if my camera gets stolen, so do all my pics). There's a lot of places that have card readers (e.g. my camera has an SD-RAM card), and they will cut a CD for you! So for 150B I now have my first week's worth of pictures on a CD.

It takes a while for me to upload pics cause the connection speed in internet places isn't that great, but here's a sampling. You should be able to click on the pics for a larger size if I did this right:

One of the islands we saw on the tour around Koh Phi Phi


West Railay Beach


The cabin we stayed in at Hat Ton Sai


Well Marissa's massage is about done so I have to go meet her for dinner. Later!

Koh Phi Phi, Thailand

Marissa and I arrived in Koh Phi Phi on Thursday and experienced culture shock. We went from the idyllic beaches of Hat Ton Sai, to here, which is something like Daytona Beach at Spring Break. This place is so overrun with tourists, I was tempted to jump on the next ferry out. However we stayed for a couple nights, and the island did redeem itself.

Yesterday we went on a day-long boat tour of the area. Koh Phi Phi is actually two islands, Phi Phi Don, where everyone stays, and Phi Phi Lei, which is a nature reserve and not populated. There's also a sprinkling of smaller islands all around.

The views of the beaches and coral and limestone cliffs are amazing. The boat tour stopped at about 7 sites, and we snorkelled at most of them. One of the stops was at Maya Bay, which is the beach setting for the movie The Beach. It was the only crowded stop, otherwise it felt like we were the only tourists. At one snorkeling site, Marissa and I saw a whale shark about 7 feet long!! That was pretty lucky of us (it was Marissa that saw it first). ...I took a million pictures, half of them of the limestone cliffs and emerald waters in the background with a long-tailed boat as the subject. We were lucky with the weather -- it was sunny with blue skies the whole day, and only rained in the evening. Every other day we've been here, there's been passing storms.

After the tour, we went for a Thai massage. Ate dinner at a more local spot, and then went to a bar that had a cover band. They were amazing, and had a pretty big repetoire, they even played Chop Suey by System of a Down! When I'm playing guitar, I usually only have 4-5 songs memorized at any time; when I learn a new one, the oldest one drops out of memory.

I'm going to try to take a cooking class while I'm here. I've seen them offered at a couple places -- they start by taking you to the market to show you what the ingredients look like!

Right now we're waiting for the ferry to take us back to the mainland, but to Phuket. We'll have a day there, and then fly to Siem Reap on Monday to see Angkor Wat.

ps. I've changed the settings on my blog to allow anonymous comments -- so you don't need to sign up for an account to leave a comment.

Krabi Town, Thailand

Yesterday went on a 3-dive trip in the area. It was my first time diving outside the Caribbean, so there was all kinds of new coral and fishies to see.

I caught a long-tailed boat pretty early (around 7:30ish), which met up with the larger diving boat. Then it was a 2-hour ride out near Koh Phi Phi, where we dove.

The first dive was a wreck dive, a 120-ft car ferry that sank on a trip between Krabi and Phuket. Gossip has it that it was an insurance job, because there were no cars on it when it sank. In any case, it makes a good diving wreck because it's made of steel, so it's lasting longer than the sunken wooden fishing boats.

It was pretty cool, except for the fact that it's a pretty popular dive location, and I spent half the time trying to avoid other divers. (And we're not even in the busy season yet!). The dive master said that on some days in the busy season, there's up to 200 divers in the water at the same time. Yikes!

The 2nd dive was even worse for divers, I could barely see because of all the bubbles.

After the 2nd dive we had fish with vegetables and rice, and it tasted amazing. Although diving always works up a hunger for me, and anything I've eaten after diving has always tasted great (like the crab cakes and baleadas in Honduras where I learned to dive, mmm).

On this dive trip were a French and El Salvadorian couple, who were dive instructors on vacation, an older German guy, and 3 German students on vacation.

The last dive was the best one, it was at the rock peak that the wreck had hit, and there were hardly any other divers there. There were beautiful blue coral that I don't know the name of, and we saw a whale shark, and a ray (again I don't know which type).

We got back to the resort around 5:00ish, and I met up with Marissa (who isn't certified, and so had spent the day on an elephant ride tour on the mainland). We went for dinner and then met up with the F/ES couple, had a few beers on a bar on the beach, and then crashed for the night.

Today we're making our way to Koh Phi Phi, we're just waiting for the ferry at 3:00pm. (Koh Phi Phi is the setting for the movie The Beach.)

Hat Ton Sai, Thailand

I'm in just about the most remote place you can get, and of course there's an internet cafe. I guess "remote" doesn't have the same meaning as it used to (cue up the Grumpy Old Man voice).

Marissa and I flew from Bangkok to Krabi, on the west coast of Thailand, for the princely sum of $40 US. (I found the cheap flight on the net, go figure). From the airport, we took a taxi to Krabi, and then a long-tailed boat to Hat Ton Sai.

Hat Ton Sai is a beach and a forest surrounded by 200m high limestone cliffs, which make it accessible only by water. We're staying in a pretty nice place, we have our own air conditioned cabin, for $14, including a huge breakfast. The place is carved right out of the trees, there's huge trees and all kinds of tropical plants all around. Plus the chef at the place is amazing, I had for lunch the best pad thai I've ever had. Yesterday I had a rice dish served in a half-pineapple. It's just before busy season, so we have the place pretty much to ourselves. The chef is really attentive, the first day Marissa asked for whole wheat bread, and ever since he's always made sure that her bread was whole wheat.

Just had a massage for 250B (about $6), and don't want to move because I'm all relaxed. I think we're going to come down here every day for a massage.

Because of the limestone cliffs, this place is a hangout for rock climbers. The diving around the area is supposedly one of the top 10 places in the world, and it's only about $15 US a tank! (Elsewhere the going rate is about $50). That's for tomorrow though.

I think we've gotten over our jetlag finally, although with all the opportunities to nap on an island resort, it's hard to tell.

Well, I'm off to plan my diving for tomorrow. I wonder if the US will have decided on who won the election by the time I check tomorrow?

Bangkok, Thailand

I'm in Thailand! After an uneventful, if rather long, journey from Toronto to Bangkok, Marissa and I arrived here just before midnight on Saturday night.

We left Toronto around 10am on Friday, a short flight to Chicago, then a l-o-n-g 13 hour flight to Tokyo, and a "medium" 7 hour flight to Bangkok. We were fortunate to get bumped up to Business Class on the long flight, and lived in the lap of luxury for the 13 hours. I swear there were more flight attendants than passengers, the food was excellent, in between meals there was a buffet table of fresh fruit and snacks. I was almost expecting a masseuse to be wandering around. But they did have stretching exercises on the video, to ward off the dreaded deep vein thrombosis.

The medium flight seemed longer cause I was stuck beside a rather large guy who half squished into my seat.

I was pretty impressed by the efficiency of the Bangkok airport. We were through immigration in about 5 minutes with a no-charge 30-day tourist visa, and shortly after the conveyor belt started spilling out luggage from our flight. Even the exit from the airport through the inevitable Taxi? throng was pretty tame.

We're staying at the Taewez Guest House, just outside the backpacker-crowd area, 400 baht for a double with airconditioning. It's pretty comfortable here, maybe 30C and a "dry" humidity (it feels humid but not stickly-so).

Today the plan is to relax and see if we're jetlagged. With all the haphazard sleep on the flights, my body has no idea what time it's supposed to be. Tomorrow we take off for the south, to Phuket (ph is a p sound), from there we'll explore some of the islands, dive, try rock climbing, and whatever else suits our fancy...

Toronto, Canada

On all my previous backpacking trips, my two most valuable possessions were my diary, and my exposed film.

This trip, I'll have neither of them.

This blog will replace my diary, and I'll have a digital camera. It'll be a bit strange. I can just see me in the hostels, talking with the kids in my best SNL's Grumpy Old Man voice, back when I was your age, we had diaries! we used pens and paper, and we liked it! ...they probably won't even know who Grumpy Old Man is *sigh*

I leave this Friday, flying in and out of Bangkok, returning on Nov 29. I'm traveling with a friend, Marissa, not to be confused with Marisa, my ex-girlfriend. Marissa & I will be traveling for 2 weeks, and then I'll be on my own for another 2 weeks after that.

The only plans are to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia (I have a ruin-thing, and this is one of the top ruins in the world to see), and Marissa wants to get to a beach in southern Thailand. Other than that there are no plans.

I've posted my email updates from previous trips on this blog, just to make it look like there's content on my blog.

You can reach me by leaving a comment on the blog (just click on the Comments link); or send me an email at eric_dsouza@hotmail.com. I have my Junk Mail filter set on exclusive, so I won't get your email unless you're in my Hotmail Address book.

Cuenca, Ecuador

So Marisa and I are now in Cuenca. This is a beautiful colonial town in the middle of the Andes at 2450m, with really nice architecture and a bit of culture. There´s a lot of restaurants and bars and people go out which is a nice change from some other towns we´ve been to.

Today we walked about the town and took a lot of pictures. It was a nice day (32C) but much less humid than the Galapagos so it felt very comfortable. The hostal we are staying in is one of the best ones I have ever seen, it´s in an old colonial house, which has about 12 or 16 rooms, hardwood floors throughout, completely re-done bathrooms, and our room has a little nook on a 2nd floor overlooking the rest of the room! All for $24 US, including a breakfast in the courtyard. We get a free half hour of internet access and here I am. Oh yeah, it also has cable tv, so yesterday watched CNN. There was a protest march here today which Marisa and I avoided just because I believe it´s generally not safe to be near protests. There were no problems but I prefer to be safe.

Before Cuenca we went to a small town near Riobamba called Quisapincha which I doubt gets many tourists. It´s known for its leather crafts. Marisa shopped while I watched this lady make the biggest pot of soup/stew ever. The pot was about 1m in diameter, and sat on an open fire just outside the restaurant on the sidewalk. She started with meat, water, and a bag of salt, and then later I watched her add green onions, the bunch was bigger than I could put my hands around! There was other stuff added as well. She stirred it with this big ladle that could have been a paddle. Unfortunately we left before it was ready to eat.

Tomorrow we head back up north, first stopping at the best Inca ruins in Ecuador, called Ingapirca. It´s not as spectacular as say Macchu Pichu but it still looks pretty good from the pictures I have seen.

Quito, Ecuador

So we made it through the Galapagos in one piece and are now back on the mainland, a couple days later.

The Galapagos trip was amazing. About half way through the 8 days, we finally got over whatever ailments we had and were able to enjoy the sights fully. Every day had a similar schedule but the sights were always different and I was amazed that it could be. I figured after the first few days, why would I want to get up early at 5:30 and leave an air conditioned room to go for a 2 hour walk before breakfast to see something I've already seen? But it was always worth it to get up, always something new. (Although one day it was to see the great frigate bird (as opposed to magnificent frigate bird which we saw quite frequently), but after a few days in Galapagos this somehow becomes important)

A typical day was a landing on an island from 6 - 8, back on board for a big breakfast (fresh fruit, eggs or french toast or banana pancakes, freshly squeezed juice, tea), then another landing at another location from 9:30 - 11:30, some snorkeling, back on board for lunch and a siesta, then another landing from 3 - 5 and some more snorkeling. Back on board for dinner, and usually we were so tired no-one could stay up past 8:30.

The species all had cool-sounding names, like the blue-footed booby, Galapagos land tortoise, great blue heron, magnificent frigate bird, and others. There was one island where I took a picture of 7 species of birds in one shot! I became quite the ornithologist (thank you very much), able to distinguish between several species of Darwin's finches, and identify the song of the yellow warbler. Maybe it will come in useful in a game of trivia some day... My favourite was the giant land tortoise which we saw in the wild (there are a whole bunch in the Charles Darwin Research Centre), some of them weighing 250 kg!

It was amazing how much was packed into the 8 days. The weather was also perfect, it only rained once (at night for an hour) and other than that it was sunny and hot (34C).

So now we are back on the mainland in much cooler temperatures (18C). We flew back to Quito and then left south for Riobamba where we are now. Tomorrow we are headed for Cuenca, which is a nice old colonial city. The odd part about being back on land is that both Marisa and I still feel like we're on a boat, and especially when we are tired we get dizzy like the land is swaying (and no we haven't been drinking).

Well I hope everthing is going well back home. We are so out of touch with the news, I don't even know what's going on with the Leafs (or Iraq for that matter).

Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

So Marisa and I are half way through the Galapagos trip and it's turned more into a survival trip than anything else. Between the heat and the sun and the boat motion and the cold I started with and passed to Marisa we have spent a lot of time just trying to keep ourselves in one piece!

Despite that we are having a great time. We are both feeling pretty good today. We have seen some of the islands in the south east and now looped back to the main island, some passengers got off and we get new ones today for the 2nd half of the trip. So we have an hour on the main island to kill and are spending it at a computer (!)

The weather has been fantastic. Sunny, hot, about 30C is my guess, and the water temperature is about 24C. A typical day is getting up at 5:30, having the first trek to an island around 7 - 9, then we go somewhere else, have lunch, snorkel a bit later on, then in the evening we have another landing on an island to see more wildlife. They plan it like that so we're not out trekking under the midday sun. The amount of wildlife is incredible. You have to be careful not to step on iguanas and the sea lions (or seals, I forget) are all over the beaches. The Lonely Planet has a nice little checklist and so I've been keeping track. So far we have seen about 40 species out of the 100 or so listed. My favourite so far is the blue-footed booby, a type of bird. (they sell tshirts here with 'I love boobies' on the front). Unfortunately the albatross are not here right now, and I hope to see a hammerhead shark during the snorkeling. Many many pictures.

The food has also been amazing. The crew on our boat (16 passengers, 7 crew + guide) are quite good. The cook is quite funny and has taken a liking to Marisa and he was quite disappointed that Marisa was sick earlier and not finishing all of his wonderful cooking! But yesterday she was better and now the cook is happy again. Yesterday he even baked and iced a cake!

It was very odd to come back to civilization last night. As well, we finally have sea legs so now we are getting dizzy on land!

Anyways I will write more later on but I have to catch a boat :)

Quito, Ecuador

Well Marisa and I made it no problems to Ecuador yesterday on the start of our trip to see the Galapagos Islands. Despite all the media announcements about 3 hour waits at the airport that made me worried about missing our flight out of Toronto (being the start of March break and the busiest travel day of the year) it took us about 20 minutes to get through everything.

The flights were okay and we got to Quito about 11:00 pm last night. I had called ahead to reserve a hostel and they also arranged for a taxi. So when we got out of the airport there was a nice lady holding a sign for 'Erick Dsousa' and we were whisked off to a nice old colonlial house in the centro. The weather is really nice, it's supposed to be the rainy season but it was clear and about 13C. Marisa and I were both pretty tired so we just went to bed.

This morning we got up to another nice day (sunny and about 18C), had breakfast on this cool little terrace inside the hotel. Today we just have some paper work to do to pay for the Galapagos trip, and then tomorrow morning we're off pretty early to fly there to begin a 8 day 7 night boat trip around the islands. Although I have been surprised at where internet cafes can now be found I doubt that they will have access on the boat. So the next time I email will be after the Galapagos trip.


ps to prevent my hotmail from filling up with spam I have turned on the maximum filter so I only get email from people in my Address Book. So on the off chance that you do reply from a different email address than what I've sent I won't get it.