October 2010
2 posts
Next Stop: Trekking in Sapa and the Hill Tribes in...
After our return from Halong Bay - which I will write about in a later blog post - we took the night train from Hanoi to Sapa, a remote town in the mountains of Northern Vietnam between China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. The landscape around Sapa is breathtaking and makes it a great destination for trekking. In addition to that a lot of interesting ethnic minorities live there - different hill...
Next Stop: Phu Quoc
After the bike trip we were in the mood for a couple of days on the beach - and decided to head to an island called “Phu Quoc”, which was only a 1-hour flight from Saigon.
Fortunately booking airline tickets just the day before you want to fly is easy in Asia - and prices do not go up for last minute travel, which very much supports our spontaneous travel habits…
It was...
September 2010
5 posts
Next Stop: Mountain Biking through the Mekong...
Leaving Cambodia was surprisingly difficult for me - I had really fallen in love with that country and its people.
We decided to travel down the Mekong river by boat to the Vietnamese border, and then continue by bus to Saigon. This is the Saigon City Hall.
Crossing the border between the two countries on the river was quite interesting - in Cambodia you rarely see a street sign in the...
Next Stop: 2-day Elephant Trek through the jungle...
After a night in the Nature Lodge in Mondulkiri (the very mountainous Eastern part of Cambodia)…
…we set off for a 2-day elephant trek through the jungle which was absolutely awesome; this was our elephant:
We did roughly 5 hours of elephant riding that day - broken up by a short lunch - in order to reach a waterfall somewhere deep in the jungle. This is the village from which we...
Next Stop: Kratie and the Mekong River
Next we had planned to do a elephant trek in the jungle, and on the way to the Wild Wild East we had a stop-over in Kratie. Kratie is located on the Mekong river…
… and is famous for the endangered Irrawaddy river dolphins. Going to see the river dolphins by boat means walking a fine line. One the one hand, it is important to make sure the boatsman does not disturb the dolphins by...
Next Stop: Overland trip from Battambang to Kratie
We rented a car (which in Cambodia is only possible including a driver) to get from Battambang in the Northwest of Cambodia to Kratie in the middle of the country. Driving through Cambodia is never boring, with total chaos on the streets and a very beautiful landscape.
The land is completely flat, with emerald colored rice paddies everywhere, and sugar palms thrown in for good measure. The...
Next Stop: Battambang
We traveled to Battambang with a local bus, as we often do here, and everybody in the bus was watching some bloody ghost / murder / vampire movie on the TV in the front of the bus - including the bus driver…
But we wouldn’t dare to complain - especially as we were traveling obviously soooo much more comfortably than other people on the same route…
Every time the bus stops a...
August 2010
4 posts
Next Stop: Military standoff at Preah Vihear, a...
Two days ago I sat at a bamboo picnic table positioned right over a fortified standoff line with two soldiers from opposing armies - one Cambodian, one Thai - with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades on both sides.
How did it come to that?
We left Siem Reap - which by the way is a must-see in Cambodia, not only because of the famous temples of Angkor Wat - and headed for Anlong Veng in...
Next Stop: Northern Cambodia
We spent the last few days traveling through the Northern part of Cambodia - people there are very poor but extremely friendly - and there are almost no other tourists in those areas.
This is what the roads look like.
We can see demining activities going on in many places - as some of those areas have been heavily mined during the Khmer Rouge period.
Six people on one motorbike is a...
Khmer Rouge: Falling in love is a death sentence.
From a political viewpoint this is an interesting time to be in Cambodia - with “Duch” (pronounced “doik”) , the director of the largest Khmer Rouge interrogation and torture center “Tuol Sleng” or S21, finally having received a verdict - more than 30 years after the downfall of the Khmer Rouge regime. Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, and several other...
Next Stop: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Cambodia has completely overwhelmed me. In a very positive way. I was prepared to see a very poor country that is still recovering from years and years of civil war and the terror regime of the Khmer Rouge.
But I was not prepared for the incredible warmth and friendliness that embraces me wherever I go. I have been to several Asian countries before, but I have never seen people so quick to smile,...
July 2010
9 posts
Next Stop: Malaysia
In Malaysia we went to Kuala Lumpur…
… visited the temple of the Batu Caves…
…where we got attacked by a holy monkey…
… visited a pewter factory…
… went to a fish spa…
(these are NOT my legs….)
…visited a tea plantation…
…had a fun dinner with Phil and our Malaysian friends Yoon Kit and Ditesh (and I...
Next Stop: Seoul
Korean Air turned out to be a very pleasant surprise - good food, very attentive service, and the most ample entertainment system I have seen in economy class seats. But upon arrival at Seoul immigration, I was stopped, and asked to accompany the immigration officer to the border control office.
Nat was not allowed to come with me, and I have to admit I had a very nervous moment there. Or two....
WatchSeoul Airport: the airport of the future.
Next stop: West Virginia
Before finally leaving the weastern hemisphere for an undefined amount of time, headed for South-East Asia, we visited my awesome grandparents-in-law in their lovely home in West Virginia. My grandmother-in-law, whom we call Big Mommy, introduced me to their newly acquired pets: 3 little fish in a small outdoor pond. Then I learned their names - she proudly introduced the three of them as:...
“The most difficult subject can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he...”
– Leo Tolstoy, 1897, as quoted on the opening page of The Big Short by Michael Lewis, the book I was reading on the flight to Kuala Lumpur. Really good.
Once around the world
Start: New York City
I kicked off the trip with three days in New York where I just floated randomly through the city.
I was feeling mixed: excited about the year of travel that we had ahead of us, exhausted from the gargantuan project of moving out of our apartment in Munich, and unable to imagine that in a few days I would be on a flight to Seoul, en route to Kuala Lumpur!
New York is packed...
