Tim and Lara

Epilogue

2010-08-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

By David McCullough

Narrated by James Earl Jones

The great Greek poet Homer wrote a story about a man named Odysseus who traveled around the known world trying to get home. The story was so good that the word odyssey was named after Odysseus. The Comptons traveled around the known world in search of enlightenment and parties, perhaps someday a word will be given to them for their adventure.

Tim and Lara returned home to gallant crowds and ticker tape parades. 'Tim' and 'Lara' were the third and fourth most popular baby names in 2010, beaten only by 'Skyler' and 'Lindsay'. Heads of state requested their attendance and advice. They were offered high level teaching positions at the most reputable universities in the world and several ambassadorships, including to Atlantis, South Carolina and the B.F.E.

In the end, Tim and Lara decided to take a more domestic life and avoid the public spotlight. The pair gathered their goods and moved to Chicago, where they could enjoy beautiful sunsets over the mountains and cool ocean breezes. Tim landed a job at William Blair & Company as an Equity Research Associate covering digital media. Lara found a job at Vivaki, a subsidiary of Publicis, where she is the Product Marketing Manager for one of Vivaki's three products.

The couple achieved a lot in one year. They didn't fight three-headed monsters or be tempted by the Sirens like Odysseus did, but they definitely experienced an odyssey. A trip that, some day, people might call a compton.

The End

2010-01-04T08:23:00.001-08:00

Like an Oscar acceptance speech, before we can get emotional about this experience we need to thank everyone that made this possible. This wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for the support of all of our friends and families. Almost every one of you said how great this trip would be and how jealous you were. That really made a difference. If you told us that we were making a mistake by quiting our jobs and moving we might not have done this. A special thanks to Lara's parents who so graciously took in Azzie for the three months that we traveled. Clearly, Azzie loved it too (http://azzieantics.blogspot.com). If the Foresmans didn't take in Azzie we couldn't have done this. We also need to thank the travel gods. We had a slight hiccup in Xi'an, but 20 flights over 13 countries plus thousands of miles driving and taking trains and the occasional hike and we never lost a single thing.

I can attest that the three months that our adventure lasted were the quickest three months of our lives. They were also the best. In those three months I learned more about the world than 16 years of school. No textbook can tell you what it feels like to be in the Roman Colosseum or what a regular Indian thinks about the caste system. No TV special on China can accurately portray a whole country or people. And no parent can really warn you about the perils of traveling in India alone.

Besides learning about the world there were two thoughts that will stick with me forever; we (everyone on the planet) have far more in common then we could possibly imagine and I am so lucky to be an American. While partying it up during Oktoberfest I had a thought (alcohol induced probably); I'm here in Munich having the time of my life, partying with men and women from all around the world and we're all having a great time. I just shared a beer with a German, sang with an Italian and shared a story with a New Zealander, how can nations ever go to war with each other when you realize that people are all the same. That thought really resonated when you realize that Munich, Germany was the birthplace of Nazi Germany and the most oppressive regime in history. The idea that we're all the same kept repeating; our Muslim tour guide in Istanbul who only goes to the mosque when his parents make him, our Indian tour guides who just wanted to be treated equally with members of different castes, school kids in Shanghai who wanted to study English and Accounting so that they could get good jobs, possibly in America. When you start talking to someone you realize that although we might be separated by distance, language or religion, we are fundamentally the same people with the same goals and dreams.

The old saying that 'you don't know how good something is until it's gone' was absolutely true during our trip. Before this trip I had never thought much about what it meant to live in America and have the way of life that we enjoy. There are the obvious examples that you can't vote in China or have the same opportunities in third world countries, but there was so much more than that. I never appreciated the 'consumer opportunities' that we enjoy in America. There are no Mexican restaurants in Italy, laundromats in China, or much of anything in Cambodia. In America we have every type of food available, and if it isn't available it probably isn't good anyway. For most Americans, all of their basic consumer wants can be met by a quick trip into town or stop at a local Wal-Mart, all for relatively little. Because we have so many freedoms we have such a high standard of living.

When you start travelling through third world countries you really see how special America is. We enjoy a social safety net that is centuries ahead of other countries. In India we were approached multiple times by four year olds girls holding up infants and begging for change. I could never imagine that happening in America. In China the only entertainment available is either highly censored, propaganda, or illegal. The big TV movie that all the channels were showing while we were there was about the life of Chairman Mao and how great he was. While flipping channels one night I stumbled on the only English channel in China which was having a round table debate on whether President Obama was purposefully keeping the employment rate high so that people will want to join the military. And of course, while in China, I couldn't access my own blog.

The most dramatic occurrence that made me think how special America is occurred in Cambodia. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Cambodia is one of the most landmined countries in the world and there is evidence of it everywhere, from amputees to signs warning of landmines. While we were walking around one of the temple complexes in Cambodia I saw one of the signs warning of landmines in an open field. At that moment I realized that not only were individual rights and freedoms unique to America, but something as simple as walking through a field without fear of a landmine also makes America special. In the thousands of times that I walked onto a soccer field or gone hiking I never once thought about dying from a landmine, many people outside the US don't have that privilege.

All of this talk isn't to say I think America is perfect, far from it. There were so many great things outside the States that I wish we could have. Why can't I take a train from downtown San Francisco to downtown Los Angeles or to New York? Why don't Americans travel abroad like Australians? Why do we have the most complicated and expensive health care system and are no better off than other nations?

This trip has taught me so much and I am so grateful we did it.

Sydney, Australia (Part 3)

2009-12-21T07:29:00.000-08:00

The last full day of our great adventure.

The only remaining thing we had left to do was buy a didgeridoo and return our car. Returning the car didn't take long, especially since Hertz didn't notice all the scratches we got from offroading it in Dorrigo National Park. After this last errand we got back to exploring the great city of Sydney. We realized that in the three weeks in Australia we hadn't visited a religious building. In every other country, much less city, we visited over the past three months we stopped and toured a church (Europe), mosque (Turkey), synagogue (Prague), temple (India, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore) or monastery (Hong Kong). We only thought it was fitting that we stopped by a church in Sydney. The church was kind of cool and as you can see from the picture I still haven't equalized my ears.

After completing the religious requirement we checked out the Royal Botanic Gardens of Sydney. The gardens were cool, but the most impressive sight there were the 22,000 flying foxes. Flying foxes are huge bats with 5 foot wingspans and are really loud. All throughout the gardens were trees filled with these bats. It's an awesome sight. It's also an interesting dilemma for the city of Sydney. The 22,000 grey-headed flying foxes that have taken over the botanical gardens are endangered, but so are the trees in the botanical gardens, which the bats are killing. We're not sure how a species that has a colony of 22,000 in the most populous city on the continent can be endangered, but whatever. Apparently, this is the biggest ecological disaster since Bart Simpson left his pet bullfrog in Australia.

We kept walking around the area and found Mrs. MacQuarie's chair. This chair was used by Governor MacQuarie's wife to sit and watch the harbor back in the late 19th century. Lara felt that she should do Mrs. MacQuarie proud by being proper in her chair.

From the harbor we headed to the Rocks to check out a didgeridoo store and on the way we stumbled on a cool market. A little more upscale than most other markets we've visited, but very cool. The didgeridoo store in the Rocks didn't pan out so we staid on the didgeridoo hunt. The hunt took us to Bondi Beach where there was an Aboriginal store. As fate would have it, the last didgeridoo store that we would have a chance to visit turned out to be the best. After an hour of trying about a dozen didgeridoos and getting a lesson we found our didgeridoo. I should really say that it is my didgeridoo because Aboriginal culture says that only men are allowed to play the didgeridoo.

The last night of our adventure was spent in Bondi Beach. We got all dolled up and had a classy dinner at the Icebergs Dining Room overlooking Bondi Beach. The food was great, but the view was the star that night, both Lara and Bondi Beach.

At 5am we got up and watched our last sunrise. As a native Californian it was awkward watching the sun rise over the ocean, but on Bondi Beach, everything feels good. Following the sunrise we went for a jog along the ocean trail south of Bondi Beach. At a secluded area we buried our temporary travel rings. We didn't want to bring our real wedding rings with us on this trip so we got some inexpensive rings in Greece. Since our adventure was coming to a close we thought it fitting to bury our rings. Some day we'll go back to pick them up.

After our jog Lara did yoga on the beach at the Iceberg Club and I surfed Bondi Beach (attempted to surf really). At 11am the music started and we had to head out. One last crazy van ride later we were at the Sydney International Airport. Qantas flight QF073 was on time and we took off. Our great adventure had come to a close.

Manly Beach, Sydney, Australia

2009-12-20T05:19:00.000-08:00

Willie Nelson once wrote a song about being on the road again, I forget what it's called but it would probably apply to us. After the market in Bellingen we headed back on the road in our mighty Toyota Corolla Seca. Since Lara and I had been on the coastal road between Sydney and Port MacQuarie twice we wanted to avoid going on it a third time by taking the far inland road. That's why we left Bellingen and headed west for several hours to catch the New England Highway to Sydney. For the three hours from Bellingen until the New England Highway we drove along Australia 78, the Waterfall Way. The road is called Waterfall Way because of all the waterfalls along the road, or at least that's what the Lonely Planet - Australia said. Going from Bellingen westward we drove through several rainforests and saw a couple small waterfalls on the way. Since it was kind of early and we thought we had time we took a detour to Dorrigo National Park to go see another waterfall that our book recommended. Lonely Planet had a note about Dorrigo National Park that said, "It's well worth making the drive down to the Never Never rest area in the heart of the national park, from where you can walk to waterfalls or begin longer walks." We interpreted this to be the drive to the rest area from the main park area would take a little bit of time and from there it would be a short walk to some cool waterfalls, we decided to go for it. The rest area was only 10km (6 miles) from from the park area and it took us 45 minutes to get there! 1km past the visitor center the road turned into a dirt road that had been nearly completely taken over by the forest. Needless to say our Toyota Corolla wasn't built for this kind of driving. This was Lara's first experience driving in Australia and she wasn't too happy with it, but she did a great job. Once we got to the Never Never rest area the map there informed us that it was a 10km walk to the waterfall. We decided to walk around the forest but not make the big trek, since that would take us all day. We're pretty confident that the guys at Lonely Planet winged this write-up. Poor form.

Two hours after we started our detour to see a waterfall we were back on Waterfall Way. There were a couple cool little turn offs for waterfalls, but for the most part the waterfalls didn't live up to the hype. Continuing on the drive we stopped at a lavender farm that sold wine, go figure, and the Big Golden Guitar. Australians are serious about country music and we were in the heart of Australian country music. To honor their country music someone put up a big guitar. We didn't get it either.

We had hoped to get to the Hunter Valley in time to stop at a winery or two but we got in too late. We drove around the area but for the most part it was a dud. Hunter Valley is one of Australia's best and largest wine growing areas and we expected something similar to Napa, Sonoma, or even Livermore. There were a ton of wineries, but there was no town or interesting place to spend the night and try some local wines. Instead, we kept driving and got into Sydney around 8pm. We popped our tent and camped out near Manly Beach, where we spent some time our first night in Sydney.

Bellingen, Australia

2009-12-19T23:12:00.000-08:00

After our morning jog we got back on the Australian road. Our first destination was the fine town of Nimbin, Australia. Like some of our previous destinations Nimbin was recommended to us by Australians. Nimbin was described as a cool hippy town with a laid back feel. Nimbin turned out to be a town where old stoners go to die. The town itself is only a few blocks long with not much to it. We got there around lunch time and tried to find a place to grab a bite. The town is without a single restaurant. In place of restaurants, Nimbin has the Hemp Museum, Nimbin Hemp Embassy and a multitude of smoke shops. There were tons of young tourists in town, but all the residents appeared to be 60 or older. I've had a lot of interesting people offer me drugs in my life (fellow students, bosses, and the occasional unnamed relative), but having a 70 year old grandma offer me marijuana takes the (space)cake. Making the situation worse, 70 year olds who spend their whole adult life doing drugs and sitting in the Australian sun don't age too well. We didn't spend too much time in Nimbin.

We B-lined it back to the coast after our Nimbin experience. We drove along the coast making the occasional stop at a beach. At one point we were driving along a large sand dune to the left of us for miles. We thought the ocean was next to us so we pulled off and hiked (bushwalked) over the dune. On the other side of the dune was a great beach that ran for as far as the eye could see. And as far as the eye could was not a sole but the two of us. This incredible beach was completely vacant. It was incredible.

We got back on the road after a quick dip in the water and headed to Bellingen. Bellingen had a didgeridoo store that we wanted to stop at and perhaps buy a didgeridoo. We got into the mighty metropolis of Bellingen (population 2721) around 6:30pm, just in time for the store to close. While in the town we noticed that a band would be playing and the town looked kind of cool, so we decided to camp out there. We pitched our $50 beach tent and hit the town. For a tiny town, Bellingen knows how to rock. The bar next to our campsite was busy all night and the band that was playing across town was pretty good too. While we were out partying it rained about an inch. We got back to our tent to discover a huge puddle in it. We also had a large green visitor. Luckily, the Youth Hostel we were camping in had a room available.

The following morning we checked out the Bellingen Market. Again, for a tiny town Bellingen can put it together. This little town had a large craft and farmers' market that provided us with some nice Christmas presents. After a quick tour of the market we headed out of town. The didgeridoo store that we came to Bellingen for ended up being a dud, but the town of Bellingen was a great little stop.

Byron Bay, Australia

2009-12-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

During the past two months and change we have bumped into a lot of Australians and when ever we mentioned that we were going to go to Australia they would mention the Whitsundays and Byron Bay. Since we would be passing by Byron Bay on our way from Brisbane to Sydney we thought we had to spend some time there.

Since we were on the road at 7am after getting up at 5am and doing a nature hike, we drove from Lamington National Park to Surfers Paradise for breakfast. Surfers Paradise sounds like a small surfing town where the surf is perfect and people are laid back; I was expecting something like Santa Cruz, CA. Instead, Surfers Paradise is like Miami. High rise condominium towers everywhere with more going up every minute. Lots of high end shops and almost no charm. Lara wanted to stop in Surfers Paradise because it had a bungee jumping platform and Lara had, "Bungee jump in Australia" listed as one of her must dos on the trip. We got to the bungee jump platform and it was some guy who had a bungee setup off of his construction crane. This, and the fact that it didn't open for another 2 hours made us leave Surfers Paradise without much hesitation. The surf did look good, but it looks good all over Australia.

We kept heading south after Surfers Paradise driving right along the coast. The high rises and sprawl ended pretty quickly and the short (2 hour) drive to Byron Bay was really nice. Driving in Australia isn't as hard as people think it is. In Australia, like almost all other British Commonwealth countries, people drive on the left side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right. Driving on the left side of the road isn't hard at all. Driving on the right side of the car with all of the controls and mirrors reversed is kind of hard. The hardest part was actually the most humorous. Since the controls are reversed the turn signal and the windshield wipers are reversed compared to American cars. We can't count how many times I tried to signal a turn and the wipers started going off. It's better than plowing into an oncoming truck I guess.

We got into Byron Bay around noon and spent the remainder of the day there. Byron Bay is as good as the Australians make it out to be. The town is really laid back, with no high rises or high end stores. It's mostly small hotels and cool boutique shops. The beach on Byron is also fantastic, but so are most beaches in Australia. We spent the day walking around the town nursing a sunburn and in the evening we had a barbecue on the beach. Australians love their barbecues. They have nice gas powered barbecues at all beaches and parks. If you want to barbecue you just bring some meat and grill it. Awesome.

The following morning we got up and jogged around the Byron Bay Lighthouse and the eastern most point of Australia's mainland. After our jog we got back on the road.

Lamington National Park, Australia

2009-12-17T15:05:00.000-08:00

Good news - Road Trip! Bad news - it's the last week of our adventure.

Get up early and get going, the start of most of our blog entries. This time, get up early, go to the airport, get our rental car, and head out on our road trip. Our plan of attack for the final days of our trip was to rent a car in Brisbane and drive (slowly) from Brisbane to Sydney. The first stop on our road trip was the Australia Zoo, former home of Steve Irwin, just an hour north of Brisbane. We're not big zoo people but the Australia Zoo was written up in our Lonely Planet - Australia book so we thought we should visit it while in the area. The detour was definitely worth it. The Australia Zoo is a great zoo and different from any other we have been to. Since this was Steve Irwin's (the Crocodile Hunter) zoo you can easily guess what the star animal is at the zoo. There are no fewer than a dozen pens for crocodiles in the zoo plus the Crocoseum. The Crocoseum is a large arena where crocodiles and other animals are brought in and shown off. We got to catch a show in the Crocoseum and see a croc go to town on some chicken breasts. The crocodiles are huge, 12, 15, even 20 feet long and most were actually caught by Steve Irwin. The rest of the zoo is made up mostly of indigenous Australian animals: kangaroos, koalas, poisonous snakes, Tasmanian devils, dingos, etc. Not only were the animal exhibits cool but we got to touch some of the animals. The kangaroo exhibit is wide open, you can feed and touch the kangaroos. In another exhibit there are koalas just chilling out and they will even let you hold them. Definitely one of the coolest zoos we've been to.

After the zoo we meandered southward past Brisbane to Lamington National Park. To add to our adventure and cut down on costs we bought a little beach tent in Melbourne and we were going to camp with it on our road trip. We drove to Lamington National Park to both get some cheap lodging and see the Australian outdoors. Like most of our camping experiences we got to our campsite well past dusk and setup camp under the stars. After we setup camp and had a celebratory bottle of wine we took a short night walk. We stumbled upon a field filled with wallabies (a smaller relative of the kangaroo) that scrambled away when we got close. We turned around when we realized we really weren't going to see anything and the field was filled with wallaby poo.

The next morning we got up with the sun, 5am (Queensland, the state that we were in, doesn't do day light savings). Getting up at the crack of dawn has its privileges though as we took a walk through the rainforest seeing dozens of wallabies and stumbling on an awesome view. After the bushwalk (aka hike) we got back in our Toyota Corolla Seca and hit the road.

Brisbane, Australia

2009-12-16T09:06:00.000-08:00

We got into Brisbane late at night, it rained for a few hours during our only day in town, and we left first thing in the morning our second day in town. So we didn't see much of Brisbane, but it still made a good first impression. We didn't have any plans for Brisbane so we spent the day walking around the city trying to get a feel for it. The biggest impression we got from Brisbane is that it's really tropical. Monsoon rain, warm, humid, and lots of lizards, Brisbane is pretty tropical. Like most other Australian cities it has tons of large cool parks. At one park there is a quarter mile long cliff that is about 100 feet high and is the largest outdoor rock climbing gym, right across the river from downtown Brisbane. All around the city there is cool artwork and awesome outdoor activities.

While we were walking around a neighborhood we got caught in a monsoon downpour. We were close to a bar when it happened so we got to watch it pass as we tried some of Australia's finest beer.

We finished the day by going to XXXX Brewery, one of Australia's largest and best. Unfortunately we were 15 minutes late for the last tour. Fortunately, the bar tender at the tasting room felt bad and let us try 6 types of beer free of charge. Gotta love those Aussies.

Whitsunday Islands, Australia

2009-12-15T08:36:00.000-08:00

Everyone is told that when in Australia you have to go to the Great Barrier Reef. In addition, Australians will also say you have to go to the Whitsunday Islands since it has the best beaches in the world and it's absolutely beautiful. After spending some time on Australia's beaches (see Sydney P.2) I am willing to say that Australians know beaches and I was willing to listen to their beach advice. To knock out two birds with one stone, the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands, Lara and I decided to join a small boat cruise that goes to both. After a flight halfway across Australia, ferry ride, and hike across town we arrived at our boat in Airlie Beach. The boat was a large, 3 masted, sailboat with 20 passengers and 6 crew. We left the dock at 4pm and spent the remainder of the day boating to and around Hayman Island. The water everywhere was awesome. It's that crystal clear blue that you see in movies and you can see at least 20 feet deep. It's just like the San Francisco Bay...... The first night we dropped anchor in a bay inside of Hayman Island. Lara and I had never heard about it, but apparently Hayman Island is an ultra posh resort island that only the rich and famous can get into. Since we were only peons to these people we were confined to the water, but the back side of the island looks nice. We can't complain at all about spending the night on the boat instead of a super resort because that night we were treated to an incredible show by mother nature. After the sun set Lara and I laid on the deck of the boat and watched no fewer than eight shooting stars go by as we checked out the southern stars. Since we had never been south of the equator we had never seen most of the stars in the Australian sky. The star show was amazing. Not to be outdone, the fish put on an equally impressive show. As we were watching the stars we heard splashing almost non-stop. We got a flashlight and headlamp and shined it on the water. For about an hour we watched huge fish chase and eat medium sized fish as the medium sized fish chased and ate the small fish. There was one fish, two fish, red fish, and blue fish, but alas, the dog did not go. That night will definitely be one that we remember for a long time.

Our first full day on the boat our captain took us to the southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef to go snorkeling and scuba diving. Lara and I signed up to do scuba diving and it would be my first time and Lara's second, but first real dive. I think our dive instructor was Jacques Cousteau's lazy son. Our dive lesson was as follows (in a french accent), "Poot yure arms up like theece. Steek theece in yure mouth. Can you breathe? Gewd. Now off zee boat." Our dive lesson wasn't the best. We were told to equalize our ears when diving the night before but I wasn't sure how hard we were supposed to push and how painful it was supposed to be. Once we dove down Lara had ear problems and Jacques Jr. sent her back to the boat. I was having off and on ear problems and tried to equalize my ears several times but just gutted it out. When we finished the dive 1/2 an hour later I had a bloody nose/mouth and my ears were filled with fluid. Junior told me to just toss some water on my face to wash off the blood. Clearly, staying underwater with my ears in pain was the wrong decision since it's been almost three weeks and my left ear still isn't back to normal. Thanks frenchy. The dive was pretty cool though. It was just me, Jacques Junior, and a guy from Seattle, so very small. I saw a shark, crazy fish, and got to touch a jelly fish. The giant squid and mermaids were not in season I guess. The remainder of the day was spent lounging on the boat trying to pop my ears.

For day two of our boat adventure we were taken to Whitsunday Island for a bushwalk. We've come to realize that a bushwalk isn't some crazy Australian adventure that involves finding yourself and fighting off crocodiles with your bare hands. A bushwalk is simply the Australian name for hike or outdoor walk. Our bushwalk involved being dropped off on the island from the boat's inflatable raft, hiking 1/2 a mile and lounging on the beach for a few hours. The beach was absolutely beautiful and the sand on the beach was like powder sugar. It was like no place we had been before. Unfortunately, we couldn't go swimming in this paradise because of jelly fish and sting rays. That was fine with us because we got to watch the sting rays from the shore. The sting rays were huge, some as large as a trash can lid and they would bury themselves in the sand or just swim right along the coast. After spending some time on the beach we got back on the boat and went to a snorkeling spot. On the way we spotted some giant turtles and dolphins (the dolphins weren't giant). That night we were treated to a great sunset and meal (the cook on the boat was incredible).

The following morning we did another bushwalk to an aboriginal cave with interesting cave drawings. After the bushwalk we pulled up the anchor and made for port. Our experience in the Whitsundays and Great Barrier Reef was incredible, even with Jacques Junior.

Melbourne, Australia

2009-12-14T08:58:00.000-08:00

Where the heck are we? Four hours prior to landing in Melbourne Lara and I were on the beach in sunny 90' weather. When we got off the bus in Melbourne it was 60' and lightly raining. WTF?

As mentioned above, the weather in Melbourne wasn't the best when we started our first day. Overcast, slight drizzle, and kind of cold. We had always heard comparisons of Melbourne to San Francisco, this was more like Seattle. Since the weather wasn't cooperating for us to hit the town we headed out to one of Melbourne's many museums, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, aka a museum for Australia's movie history. You quickly realize the many contributions Australia has made to cinema, such as; Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee P. 2 - Mick's Revenge, and lots of material for making fun of Australians. One interesting fact, until the 1970's only Melbourne and Sydney had television and to this day Australia still does live commercials similar to the ones the US did in the 1950's.

After our museum trip Lara and I decided to have lunch at a normal restaurant. Up to this point we had kind of noticed that Australian portions of food were a little on the large side, but we hadn't thought much of it. At this particular restaurant (a non-chain restaurant similar to Chili's) I ordered a kangaroo burger and Lara ordered chicken parma. As you can tell from the picture, the portions at this particular restaurant were massive. We asked our server if she would expect a chicken parma to be as large in America as the one she gave us in Melbourne. Her reply, "I reckon so, but with less salad." This response as well as many similar ones gave us the impression that Australians think Americans are all fat and do nothing but watch the Simpsons and eat Super-sized Big Macs. Whatever. We go to Burger King too.

The following day the skies cleared and the two of us headed out to St. Kilda. St. Kilda is a beach neighborhood in Melbourne about 7 kilometers from the city center. We realized in Sydney that cities in Australia are really small and you can walk everywhere. For some reason the locals thought we were crazy for walking to St. Kilda since it was 2 miles away. But then again, Australians are almost as fat as Americans.

We walked around St. Kilda most the day and had a great time. St. Kilda is on the water and has a cool pier, boardwalk, beach, small amusement park, and neat downtown. On the pier we saw an endangered penguin and a bunch of jelly fish. We had a nice drink and some oysters on the boardwalk. And in the downtown we stopped in a few shops and got some rare records at Rare Records.

From St. Kilda we took Melbourne's overpriced tram to its botanical gardens. I'm not a big botanical gardens guy, but after walking through Melbourne's I could be. The gardens were huge (or maybe felt huge because we got lost) and were like walking through a very well kept rainforest. Since it was late in the day and near closing time Lara and I were the only ones around for most of our walk. We exited the botanical gardens into one of Melbourne's many great parks and the park was totally packed. Lara and I have been living in San Francisco for 5 years and have seen tons of marathon training sessions and packed San Francisco parks filled with yuppies like us. But Melbourne has this to a whole new level. Corporate fun runs filled with white collar 20 and 30-somethings. Boot camps. 35 year olds jogging with their young kids biking. Was this Melbourne or San Francisco's Fort Mason? On the way back to our hotel we walked along the river and were stopped by a group having a party in one of the riverside crew houses. The group was having their Chrissy Party (Australians shorten everything. Christmas is known as Chrissy) in a building along the river and invited us up to help finish off their leftover alcohol. We were more than happy to help and we made some friends in the process.

That night we hung out with some guys that we met the night before. Two of the guys are from the US and one was from Canada. The five of us bar hopped around one of Melbourne's many cool neighborhoods. As we were walking from one bar to the another we saw a car drive by and some people yelling from it. Then all of a sudden we heard a POP. We had a man down and I was hit too. It was a drive-by egging! One of the guys in our group took an egg to the neck and I got some of the ricochet. Luckily, a welt and some yoke was all that we ended up with.

In our third full day in Melbourne the two of us hit up Melbourne's Queen Victoria Market. The market was fantastic. Australia was the most expensive country we have visited and we hadn't been buying much because of it. The stuff at the market was cool and actually inexpensive. We loaded up on Chrissy presies (Christmas presents) for the family and had a great experience. Again, all the people we met were incredibly friendly and helpful. We finished the day by walking around another of Melbourne's great parks and spent the night hanging out with our new friends hopping around more bars.

We had a flight to the Whitsundays early the next morning. That night we had a dilemma, move to Melbourne or Sydney?

Homecoming Party in SF

2009-12-13T20:04:00.000-08:00

Alas, the end of our great adventure is in sight and we will be in San Francisco for one night before we head to Michigan. Please mark your calendars for December 22nd (day and night) and let us know if you would like to meet up. We sure would love to see all of our SF friends before the holidays. If necessary, we will select a central location (read bar) to catch up with everyone, celebrate the holidays and toast the New Year!!

Sydney, Australia (Part 2)

2009-12-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

After a night in Port MacQuarie and seeing a kangaroo somersault in front of us we got back to Sydney late on Saturday, December 5th. Lara and I had dinner with my parents and then bid them adieu so that the two of us could hit the town on a Saturday night. Since the two of us are travelling in backpacks for three months we packed kind of light and didn't include much in the way of nice clothes. We hit the town in jeans and nice dry-fit shirts. The rest of Sydney was in designer dresses and suits. We felt a little out of place. Instead of partying like Hong Kong rockstars we walked around the city and watched the night from the streets. We did find one bar where we kind of fit in. Moral of the story, bring your clothing A game when partying in Sydney.

In our last full day with my parents we decided to visit the Blue Mountains. The Blue Mountains are 2 hours out of Sydney and are, as the name says, blue (the oils from the eucalyptus trees refract the light differently than the normal air making the mountains look slightly blue). The Blue Mountains are very cool. There are canyons all around, rainforests, waterfalls, and spectacular views. We did the standard tourist itinerary; a couple quick hikes (or bushwalks as the locals call it), saw some big views, and went to the rainforest tourist trap. All of these activities were cool though. The rainforest tourist trap included a glass bottom gondola over the rainforest (not as cool as Hong Kong's glass bottom gondola though), a rainforest walk, and the world's steepest railroad. With our tourist checklist complete we headed back to Sydney.

The following morning was my parent's last day so we decided to see Bondi Beach before they left. After they took off Lara and I decided to spend the rest of they day on Bondi Beach ourselves. I don't want to jump to rash conclusions but Bondi Beach is the best beach in the entire world. Nice easy surf, powder sand, topless Australian women, spectacular views, great food, walking trails, dog park(beach), ocean fed pools, laid back atmosphere; Bondi has it all, and it's only 4 miles from downtown Sydney. By the end of the day Lara and I were not only ready to move to Bondi but were evaluating which ocean side elementary school would be the best fit for our unborn Australian children (Bondi Elementary by far. Smidwick Preparatory doesn't come close and its PTA is way overbearing). We also finished the day with some bad sunburns. But since we hadn't gotten much sun in the past 2 months we were okay with it. Besides, we were ready to be Australians and two out of three Australians get skin cancer by the age of 50 so we had some catching up to do.

Later that night Lara and I packed up, said bye to Sydney, and headed out to Melbourne.

Port MacQuarie, Australia

2009-12-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

Port MacQuarie is a big town by Australian standards (39,000 people) about 1/3 of the way up to Brisbane from Sydney. The reason we took this little endeavour up the coast was to see a koala hospital that is supposed to be fantastic as well as the great Australian scenery and possibly a winery or two. Our first day was at the koala hospital (it's more of a refuge). It was definitely cool. It was sad though seeing koalas that have been hit by cars or burned by wildfire. It was also hard seeing several koalas suffering from the effects of syphilis. Apparently, koalas aren't practicing safe sex and syphilis is a major problem in the population. To give the koalas a break though, I'm sure it's hard to put a condom on without opposable thumbs.

After the syphilis koalas we all went to downtown Port MacQuarie. There isn't much to Port MacQuarie except for some great views, a small downtown, and lots of painted rocks along the coast walkway. I guess it's a thing for tourists to come to Port MacQuarie and paint rocks. We left our paint stateside so we had to just look. In the evening the four of us stayed up on the deck of our hotel room and watched a storm come through, very cool. When the storm passed Lara and I went out clubbing in Port MacQuarie. The club scene in Port MacQuarie is made up of two people. 18 - 20 year olds who are in town to enjoy the beach during Spring Break and the local 40 somethings. Which made us wonder, how often has a kid come up here to party and bumped into his cougar mom on the dance floor. Ugh. We didn't stay out long.

We were only spending one night in Port MacQuarie so first thing in the morning we headed back to Sydney. We took a leisurely pace and decided to head to a winery first. The winery was off the beaten path and as we were driving in Lara noticed a small heard of kangaroos, about 6 - 12, 20 yards to the side. We slowed down to look at them and then one of them decided it needed to cross the road. It took a few hops and then tried to clear the wire fence. Unfortunately for the kangaroo it didn't see the top wire and it tumbled feet over pouch right in front of us. Fortunately for us, it was a great show. The kangaroo got right back up and hopped across the road. It was definitely the coolest wildlife experience in the previous 5 days. Although the winery was a great experience, it was kind of anitclimatic after the kangaroo incident.

Staying along the coast back to Sydney we stopped at an awesome dive restaurant along a small salt lake. While we waited for the food to come out Lara and I paddled around the lake in a paddle boat. The lake was crystal clear and we were the only people around. Best paddle-boat experience ever. The food was great at the restaurant, but as we have since found out, Australians don't know how to make milk shakes.

Sydney, Australia (Part 1)

2009-12-07T18:50:00.000-08:00

Sydney, Australia! Due to a delay we had in Darwin, Australia we got into Sydney a little after noon. From the airport we made our way to our hotel and met my parents. My parents were the fourth, and final, party to meet us on our trip. They were taking a two week vacation around Australia and were spending the final 5 days with us in the Sydney area. After we got settled in the hotel and caught up a little we headed out to the center of town to catch a ferry across Sydney Harbour to Manly Beach. The ferry was at dusk and it was definitely the best ferry experience of our trip. Seeing Sydney Harbour with the bridge and Opera House at night is spectacular. Manly Beach is a cool little area with lots of nice bars, shops, and restaurants, and one spectacular ocean beach. Since it was getting late (10pm) we had to get back to our hotel for my parents' bed time.

Our first day in Sydney we got up bright and early and climbed the beautiful Sydney Harbour Bridge. It took about 4 hours to climb the bridge and it was an incredible experience. We spent a lot of time preparing for our climb since there are a lot of instructions and you have to get in special jump suits. The climb itself was relatively easy. From the point that we left the prep area until we got back to it the views were incredible. Unfortunately, cameras aren't allowed on the climb for safety reasons (they don't want somebody dropping their camera onto moving traffic nor people taking their own pictures when the company is selling their own pictures for $25 a piece) so you'll just have to believe me when I say the view was great.

After the bridge climb the four of us regrouped and took a tour of the Sydney Opera House. I would never take a tour of an opera house, but for the Sydney Opera House I made an exception. The tour of the building was great. The building is beautiful inside and out. I have to say the Sydney Opera House is the best looking building I've ever seen. With our cultural fix in for the day we headed out to the Rocks, one of Sydney's many 'hip' neighborhoods. We caught some drinks and some great views of the city from a rooftop bar. After the rooftop bar we continued to Darling Harbour for dinner. Lara and I were amazed at Darling Harbour. It's a harbour area with lots of corporate offices and apartments that totally goes out for Thursday night happy hour I guess. There were dozens of bars and restaurants that lined the harbour and every one was filled with twenty and thirty-somethings dressed to impress. The women were all in nice dress or skirts and the men were all in nice business attire, some in suits and ties. It was weird being in a place where there wasn't a single pair of blue jeans. After dinner we took Sydney's monorail back to our hotel. Sydney's monorail is just like other monorails in Detroit, Seattle and Springfield. Pretty much useless and expensive. $5 to go 6 blocks.

The next morning we got up and headed out for Port MacQuarie to check out some koalas.

Singapore, Yawn

2009-12-01T22:12:00.000-08:00

Singapore is the most exciting place we've ever been to.....or not. We landed in Singapore, got on the immaculate train and went to the city. After we got settled we walked around, first stop, Little India. We had Indian food and saw a temple. Little India is a small neighborhood that looks exactly like the rest of Singapore's neighborhoods, but with lots of Indian people walking around and Indian restaurants everywhere. After Little India we walked down Orchard Road. Orchard Road is the main shopping street in Singapore. It has lots of malls and Christmas displays. We walked through a bunch of malls and saw Christmas displays. wow.

We started our only full day in Singapore by riding the Singapore Flyer. The Singapore Flyer is a 40 storey Ferris wheel that has views of the whole city. It was a cool experience. After the Flyer we were treated to a great buffet lunch by Jen's mom. Jen's mom was travelling in Asia and we met up with her in Singapore. After stuffing ourselves silly Lara and I went out to explore the city. Our first stop was the Merlion waterfountain at the entrance of the port. The Merlion was pretty lame, but taking funny pictures with the fountain was fun. Singapore is a city of about 7 million people and has a large central business area with high rises and a substantial financial district. We walked around the central business district and it was totally dead. This was at noon on a weekday. At noon on a weekday in San Francisco's Financial District it's super busy. In Singapore you could have heard a pin drop. Of course you actually wouldn't hear a pin drop because that would be littering and you could lose a finger for that. We quickly realized that the only thing to do in Singapore is shop in its many malls. Since we didn't feel like shopping we decided to walk the city and take pictures of all the ridiculous signs.

Since our flight out of Singapore wasn't until the evening we had most of the day to kill. I would compare killing time in Singapore to a baseball game, during a four hour rain delay. We decided to take the subway to the outskirts of town to see the Body World exhibit that was on display in the Singapore Science Center. It was a very cool exhibit that isn't for those with a weak stomach. The exhibit is made up of human bodies that have been 'plasticed' and are permanently frozen. These bodies show how the different systems in the body work and are the actual bodies and organs. After Body World we subwayed over to Chinatown. Singapore's Chinatown is similar to San Francisco's except smaller, cleaner, not as interesting, and nothing like San Francisco's Chinatown.

We left for the airport 3 hours early because we thought the airport would be more interesting; it wasn't.

Bangkok, Thailand

2009-11-29T02:05:00.000-08:00

The bus rides from Siem Reap to Bangkok took us 10 hours, including the time spent crossing the border. That was how the three of us spent our Thanksgiving Day, sound like fun?

We were outside our guesthouse ready to be picked up at 7am, but our bus was on Cambodian time and picked us up at 7:40. Three hours later, the bus dropped us off at a bus terminal in Puepet, Cambodia near the border. We waited 1/2 an hour for a shuttle bus to pick us up. The shuttle bus took us to the Thailand/Cambodia border a mile away. We weren't sure why the larger, original bus couldn't take us to the border, but whatever. At the border we waited in a very hot line for 1/2 hour to have a Cambodian border agent stamp our passport and take our departure form. Then we walked to Thailand. In Thailand we waited 1/2 an hour for a border agent to stamp our passport and take our arrival form. After the border crossing we had to find our bus to take us to Bangkok. There were about 30 buses scattered around the border area, none with names or signs and no organization at all. After an hour of looking we found our bus and got on. Our bus wasn't a bus, it was a 12 person van that became packed with 13 people and all of our luggage. Our van driver had a serious lead foot and on the mediocre roads of Thailand we did about 90mph the whole way. We stopped twice; once for the driver to do his grocery shopping and once for a bathroom break. We got to Bangkok at 5pm starving for our Thanksgiving Dinner.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Lara created a 'Must Do' list for things she wanted to do on our trip. Another item on the list was to get a Thai massage in Thailand. Since we were a little stressed from our travels we thought "What a good time to get that Thai massage?" So that night the three of us enjoyed a Thanksgiving Dinner in a Bangkok mall food court and Thai massages. We didn't have turkey or pumpkin pie, but the food was great and the massages made us forget about our travels.

Our first day in Bangkok we decided to explore the Bangkok area by taking a tour of the Floating Market. The Floating Market is a small area of a bunch of canals with souvenir and food salesmen on boats in the canals. We jumped on a boat and boated around the canals as well. It was a cool experience, but you can only make buying cheap souvenirs so much fun. To get to the Floating Market we had to take a motorboat and on the way we saw several Kumodo Dragons. That was extra cool.

We got back to Bangkok in the afternoon and toured the city a little bit, spending some extra time in Khao San Road. Khao San Road is a backpacker's Mecca. It's filled with cheap guesthouses and hostels, a street market with great cheap clothes, lots of bars, and tons of excitement. We bought some stuff along the way and were really close to buying some fake identification cards at one market. I was thinking about getting either a Harvard University student ID card or an Air France pilot's license. Both would have been pretty cool.

After Khao San Road we took off for Lumphini Boxing Stadium to catch some Muay Thai kickboxing. Muay Thai is the national sport of Thailand and the people love it. Lumphini Stadium is the biggest and best venue to watch Muay Thai and we were sitting front row for the fights. For three hours we watched 8 bouts of great kickboxing. $2 beers, guys getting beat up, screaming gamblers, Friday nights don't get much better. Before the headline fight there was an exhibition fight between two guys in a different martial art. These guys didn't wear any padding and there was no clock; just beat each other up until someone gets knocked out. And somebody did. Since we were in the VIP section we got to get our picture taken with the night's champion. The little guy might be the champion, but at 121 lbs, I think I could have taken him on. The experience in the stadium is incredible. In the lower section where we sat there are chairs and assigned seating. Outside of the lower section it is just bleachers and unassigned seating. Gambling is technically illegal, but everyone does it. Before each fight and before the 2nd round a whole cluster of gamblers just go bezercks screaming to make their bets. It looks similar to the stock exchange but with more screaming and beer. The stadium itself is also unique. I've been in high school gyms that are better than Lumphini. As you walk through the hall to enter or exit the stadium the fighters are changing and stretching because their lockers are in the hallway. Part of the stadium is indoors and part is outdoors. It's a total hoot. The city of Bangkok has really good infrastructure, but Lumphini could use a lot of work. When the entertainment was over the three of us headed back to our hostel and called it a night.

The following morning we got up early again to go on another tour, this time to the Bridge over the River Kwai and Tiger Temple. The Bridge over the River Kwai is a famous World War Two sight and we thought it could be entertaining to see. It's about an hour to get there and once you get there you realize it's just a wooden bridge over a river. yawn. There are some small museums and a cemetery, but the quality isn't that great. The cool part of the bridge is that you can walk across it and there are zero safety precautions. The bridge is a railroad bridge and doesn't have a walkway. You walk across and have to make sure you step on the railroad ties, otherwise you're going into the river 30 feet below. After the Bridge we went to Tiger Temple. Tiger Temple is a Buddhist temple that has been around for a decades. About 8 years ago an orphaned tiger cub wandered into the temple complex and the monks took it in. When people heard that the monks were taking in tiger cubs people brought over other abandoned tiger cubs. Since monks don't believe in altering nature's course these tigers have bread rapidly and the temple now has 47 tigers. All of these tigers have been raised by humans and they are as tame as a tiger can be. When we walked into the temple grounds there were tigers all around. There were probably 20 tigers in the area. All of them were on short chains to the ground with several handlers nearby. The three of us and all other tourists were free to walk around the area and pet the tigers, which we did. A little later on we all walked to a special covered where we had a tiger lay in our laps. It was definitely a unique experience, but kind of weird too. The reason the tigers are so tame is that they play for hours before the tourists arrive and they are given their food before hand as well, so they have to gorge. This makes the tigers super tired and they just lay around the rest of the day.

A couple hours later the tour bus dropped us off at our hotel and we hit the town for a night in Bangkok. Of course, when in Bangkok you have to walk down Patpong Road, the red light district. It was an experience to say the least. A friendly salesman tried to get us to watch a ping-pong show in his bar and although we said no thank you he continued to walk with us and give us a tour of the strip. We were shown the Japanese street where Japanese business men go to have massages. The salesman commented that the Japanese are known for "Big wallets, small dicks." The salesman also pointed out other fine establishments in the area. We decided that the most entertaining thing to do would be to go to a bar and just watch the action. We stopped at one bar and observed all the old white guys picking up their 'desserts'. To get by the language barrier all of the working women wear numbers on them. It makes it kind of like In-n-Out Burger ("I'll have a triple-triple, number 3, animal style"). The night was actually very tame. With the exception of me trying to converse with a hallo person nothing exceptional happened. The next morning we got up early, again, and headed out to the airport to go to Singapore.

Siem Reap, Cambodia

2009-11-26T01:46:00.000-08:00

Six hours of the worst bus ride in our lives later we arrived in Siem Reap. Siem Reap is about 150 miles north-west of Phnom Penh and in most countries that would be a 2.5 hour bus ride on smooth roads. Our ride to Siem Reap took 6 hours and was as smooth as .... I don't know what. But it wasn't smooth. It also wasn't quick. The road to Siem Reap was similar to India's roads, filled with potholes and shared with livestock. I do need to say that the countryside of Cambodia is beautiful. It is completely undeveloped. It is nothing but endless rice paddies with peasants working it with their bare hands. It's amazing, and sad, realizing that the people we were seeing were doing the same job that their ancestors had been doing for centuries.

The night that we arrived in Siem Reap we went out to a traditional Khmer (people of Cambodia) dinner and dance. Both the food and entertainment were good, not great, but very different. The guest house that we stayed in was both great and different. It wasn't so much a house as it was more like a motel. There were 30 rooms or so and on top of the office was an outdoor lounge area with a pool table, comfortable chairs, bar and an aura of complete laziness.

In our first day in Siem Reap we hit up the temples. Siem Reap is home to not only the world famous Angkor Wat temple, but also dozens of other incredible temples, some as large as a small town. We spent hours doing the Indiana Jones thing, literally climbing all over old temples and exploring inside. These temples were exactly the way they are portrayed in the movies "Tomb Raider" and "Indian Jones" (filmed in Siem Reap). The temples are covered with fauna, surrounded by moats, carved with interesting pictures, and simply amazing. We spent the entire day going from one temple to another. In the afternoon we visited Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is the largest temple in the world, about 1 square kilometer. It's surrounded by a moat and considering it's centuries old and barely maintained, it's in fantastic condition. Even though there were hundreds of tourists visiting the temple, since it was so large we were constantly finding ourselves alone in the temple's many rooms.

As the afternoon came to a close we tuck-tucked over to Phnom Bahkeng, a large temple built on top of a hill. We were told that Phnom Bahkeng is the place to be to watch a sunset in Siem Reap, and it definitely was. We climbed the hill and massive temple with a couple hundred of our closest friends and sat to watch the show. It didn't start off that great, but ended phenomenally.

At night we went to the Night Market in Siem Reap. The Night Market is awesome because it's filled with cool souvenirs and clothing for dirt cheap prices. We got some clothes and did some Christmas shopping for less than $10. Since we planned to get up early for the sunrise the next morning we didn't do any partying, just chilled.

4:30am our alarm clock went off and we headed out for Angkor Wat. We were told by many people and books that watching the sunrise at Angkor Wat is a must in Cambodia. The sunrise at Angkor Wat wasn't nearly as great as our sunset the night before, but it was OK. The great part about the sunrise at Angkor Wat though, was the fact that no one was there. It was an incredible feeling walking around the largest temple in the world with only the birds and bats around you.

After the sunrise we took a loooong tuck-tuck ride to see the Floating Village. The Floating Village is only a few miles outside of Siem Reap, but on a tuck-tuck powered by a lawn mower engine, with four people on it, on dirt roads, you don't go very fast, nor smooth (to get to the Floating Village we had to drive several miles to the boat launch and then take a boat another mile or so to the Floating Village). The boat ride to the Floating Village was a total hoot. Our driver was no older than 16 and on the one mile journey our boat stopped at least 5 times. Each time the driver would have to walk back and fix something with the engine. Not the most reassuring, but since we were in no hurry and the weather was perfect, what was the rush? The one mile boat ride took about 45 minutes and we finally arrived at the Floating Village. The Floating Village isn't named properly. It is a village, but it doesn't really float. The village is made up of a couple hundred huts on 15 foot stilts. The village is in a swamp that is about 4 feet deep with trees growing everywhere. There is absolutely no land anywhere but the villagers have a completely normal life. Everyone gets around on boat, some powered by paddles, a few by motors. It was funny seeing a boat full of school girls paddling to each other's huts to get dropped off. The Cambodian version of a school bus. The villagers even have livestock in their village. Many huts had pig pens below the house or in a tree near their house. The pigs that they kept spend their entire life in pens 4 feet above water and never see dry land their entire lives. We ate lunch at one of the houses and chilled out even more. From the house Lara and I hopped on a small boat (large canoe really) and one of the villagers paddled us around the jungle. The experience was absolutely incredible. We were being paddled around a jungle deep in the heart of Cambodia! When we got back to the house we boarded our larger boat and went back to dry land. The Floating Village definitely ranks as one of the most unusual places we've been to on this trip.

On the drive back to Siem Reap we saw a few more temples, but then threw in the towel. In two days in Siem Reap we probably saw close to 40 temples. There's only so much temple a person can handle. To relieve our templitis we hit up the bar scene in Siem Reap. For a small town in the middle of Cambodia, Siem Reap has a really good night life. We hit up a few bars, met some cool English people our age, then bumped into the same travelling bike group we met in Phnom Penh. Small world. Since we got up at 4:30 that morning we didn't really have the desire to keep the party going late, we crashed at 1am.

Our final day in Siem Reap we just checked out the town. There isn't much to the town, but that's what makes it great. Lots of little markets, guest houses, street food vendors, and nice restaurants and bars fill the town. We spent most of the day buying $1 souvenirs and relaxing. That night we stopped at some more bars and restaurants and really fell in love with Siem Reap. We left the following morning for Bangkok. Siem Reap will definitely be missed.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

2009-11-23T17:46:00.000-08:00

Holy cow! We're in Cambodia!

Our experience in Delhi seriously scarred us (see Baaaad Delhi). Lara and I were both freaked out that Phnom Penh would be similar to Delhi or maybe even worse. We were totally wrong. Phnom Penh is awesome!

On the way to Phnom Penh from Shanghai we met up with our friend Jen in the Hong Kong airport. Jen is a longtime follwer, first time participator in timandlaracompton.blogspot and was warmly welcomed. The flight from Shanghai to Phnom Penh was just another routine international flight and surprisingly, the visa/immigration process went really well. The three of us grabbed a tuck-tuck at the airport and went off to our hotel. 45 minutes into the 12km drive it was apparent our driver had no idea where our hotel was. We tried directing him using our Lonely Planet - Southeast Asia book. However, giving driving directions to a Cambodian cab driver who doesn't speak English, using a small map of a city which has a street numbering system going in 8 directions doesn't work too well. We thought we were close to our hotel so we just hopped out of the tuck-tuck. Turned out we weren't that close. Long story short, the 15 drive from the airport to the hotel took 2 hours.

When we got to our hotel we were greeted by the receptionist as well as an extremely talkative 25 year old British guy named Liam. Liam was biking around Cambodia with a charity group. He and his group were going out to a bar and he invited us to go with him. What the hell? We ended up being taken to a bar called Sharky's. The bar was similar to a normal American bar with some small exceptions. Beers were $2, pool was free, and there were Cambodian prostitutes everywhere. The three of us had a great time talking to the people in Liam's charity group and just experiencing the bar. As the night wore on the bar turned into Chris Hansen's dream. Chris Hansen is an anchor for Dateline and has a series called "To Catch a Predator" where he catches older men trying to have sex with underage girls. The bar became filled with middle-aged white men and much younger Asian prostitutes at their side. With the exception of their breasts, the prostitutes all looked to be over the age of 18 though. The night was fairly tame overall with nothing major to report.

For our first day in Phnom Penh we wanted to start on an upbeat note, so we headed to the Killing Fields. The Killing Fields are just that. It's an area about 10km outside of town that looks like a farm, but is actually filled with mass graves and a memorial to those who were killed. An estimated 17,000 were killed here during the Khmer Rouge regime. Some of the mass graves have been unearthed and their remains placed in a memorial stupa. Many other graves are completely untouched since they were made. The memorial stupa contains the skulls of 9000 people who were killed at this location. Seeing 9000 skulls, many of which bear the markings of how they were killed, is heart wrenching. We tagged along with a volunteer guide who told us about the Killing Field and stupa. Part of the stupa is open and our tour guide picked up two skulls to show us the bullet bole in one and the massive dent in the other that was made when that person was hit in the head with a garden hoe. Our guide toured us through the fields which still have bones and clothing littered about from the deceased. It was moving having our guide tell us how his family members were killed by the regime and the stench he remembers when he opened the graves 20 years ago.

Staying on the same note, we went to the Tuol Sleng Museum after the Killing Fields. The Tuol Sleng Museum was a high school turned detention facility that the Khmer Rouge used to torture and kill its opponents. The museum still has the wooden cells inside the buildings, each of which still has the water bowls that the prisoners used. The larger torture rooms still had the same metal cots that the prisoners would be chained to. Like the Killing Fields, the museum was heart wrenching.

Our tuck-tuck driver took us to the Independence Monument after the Tuol Sleng Museum. The monument was nothing spectacular, but it was very odd seeing a North Korean flag fly nearby in the North Korean embassy across the street. From the monument we started our city walk. First we walked to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. The Royal Palace is the home of the Cambodian King (he still lives there) and contains many beautiful pagodas and shrines. One of the pagodas is the Silver Pagoda, named after the 5000 silver tiles that are on the floor. Also in the Silver Pagoda is a 90kg gold statue of Buddha with diamonds covering it, one of which is 25 carats.

After our tour of the Palace we walked to the Foreign Correspondent Club for a drink. The Foreign Correspondent Club was the hotel used by the foreign correspondents when the country was at war. We didn't appreciate the history that much but from the third floor where we had our drinks we had a spectacular view of the Tonle Sap, Tonle Bassac, and Mekong Rivers. That will definitely be a view I'll remember for a long time.

We left the Foreign Correspondent Club to go check out the nightlife at the Boeng Kak lakeside. The Boeng Kak lakeside is a backpacker's paradise. It's filled with cheap guesthouses and bars that serve extremely cheap beer. The buildings on the lakeside are all on stilts over the lake. The bars/guesthouses on the lake have large patios with hammocks, tables, and pool tables to totally kick back. We savored some $0.75 beers and watched the sunset. Because we were so stressed out from watching the sunset we decided to get some $5 massages next door. These weren't regular massages and they weren't the irregular massages either. Our masseuses at this place were blind. The massages were really good. Too good actually, since they completely knocked us out and we decided to go crash at our hotel instead of go out.

Before we went to bed we grabbed dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. The restaurant's specialty, make your own soup. Each table has its own electric burner and you simply tell the waiter what raw ingredients you want in your soup, he brings them out, and you put it in. The soup was actually really good and we went to bed with some nice full bellies.

The next morning we got on a bus and headed to Siem Reap. I should really say how much I liked Phnom Penh. It might have a million or so people living in it, but it doesn't feel like it. The city itself is bustling but it has a great laid back feel to it. The city also felt incredibly safe. Although being white makes you stand out like a soar thumb, we were only solicited by tuck-tuck drivers and we were never bothered by anyone else. The weather was great too, 65 - 85' with clear skies and surprisingly no mosquitoes. I'll say it again, Phnom Penh is totally awesome.

China, Final Thoughts

2009-11-21T17:37:00.000-08:00

We spent over two weeks in China and saw its biggest cities and many of its cultural highlights. But, it still doesn't feel like we saw the real country. To me, China felt like the Wizard of Oz telling us to "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." In all of the major cities there were large cement walls next to the streets. If you aren't paying attention you wouldn't think twice about them. But if you are able to peak over them you notice that inside its filled with old, dilapidated houses or old houses being torn down. The biggest example of the government trying to white-wash everything is in Beijing. There is a tall building that is next to the CCTV (China's state owned and only TV company) building in the central business district of Beijing. You probably remember the CCTV building from the Olympics as it looks like a giant silver N. The tall building next to the CCTV building is completely burned out. The building was burned during Chinese New Year when, against the fire department's wishes, CCTV had a huge fireworks show. The fireworks started a fire in this tall building and it got completely destroyed. Because this is in the central business district of Beijing and very visible the government has put up massive billboard walls along the freeways and roads in the area to try to prevent people from seeing it.

We also had a hard time talking to our tour guides in China. Some of our guides were fairly open and you could tell they were very progressive. Others spoke just like the government would talk. One memorable scene happened with our first guide who was fairly liberal. On the bus she would speak on a microphone as she toured us. When we asked her questions she would respond on the microphone as well. Lara asked her a question related to how she felt about a government policy. Even though Lara was in the back of the bus our tour guide put the microphone down and told her how she felt. Clearly, our tour guide wasn't comfortable talking candidly. This was a rare exception of a guide speaking candidly, but her body language said even more.

It wasn't just the government censorship that made us feel like we weren't seeing all that we could. Our tour company never got off the beaten path. We only ate at tourist restaurants filled with white tourists. We only drove on the main roads. And we only went to the main tourist attractions. You would never see the real America if you only drove on the freeways, stopped at the big tourist attractions, and only ate at Chili's.

We're both so glad that we went to China, but the jury is still out on what to make of it.

Shanghai, China

2009-11-20T17:13:00.000-08:00

Shanghai, China! As we drove into Shanghai we immediately knew it was going to be much different than any other Chinese city. There were neon lights, skyscrapers, and elevated freeways everywhere. It's like a more densely packed, traffic clogged LA. After we got situated in the hotel, the four of us youngens tried to hit the town. Our hotel was just off of Nanjing Road, which is a long street through the heart of Shanghai and is known as the best shopping area. The street was cool and there is lots of shopping, but there is a complete lack of bars or clubs in the area. We ended up settling on buying some beers at a convenience store and going back to our hotel to drink and play cards (we purchased a $1 deck of Chairman Mao playing cards a few cities back. Chairman Mao says, "Work is Struggling.").

The first stop on our tour of Shanghai was the Shanghai Pearl TV Tower. The tower is one of the tallest TV towers in the world and has an observation deck near its peak. We walked around the observation deck for a while checking out the 360 views of Shanghai. The floor below the observation deck had a glass floor that looked down on a park 500 feet below. Not for the acrophobics for sure and very, very cool. After the tower we walked around the park that surrounds the tower and runs against the river. The park was filled with Chinese school kids there for a field trip or something. While we were walking around a girl started to talk to Lara. The girl was 11 and was with a group of friends. The girl spoke very little English but we all enjoyed talking. While we talked to them the girls would give us candy. Totally unexpected and really cool.

Like every day we were in a tour, we were taken to a tourist trap. This tourist trap was a silk factory & restaurant. The silk factory was interesting because we saw the whole production cycle from cocoon to cloth (they skipped the sweat shops and child labor stages though). We did end up getting a silk comforter, so the dog and pony show worked on us, so did the awesome price though.

Like Italy, I would like to go off on the food we had in China. When Lara and I were travelling solo in China (Beijing and Hong Kong) we had great food that was totally unique. The meals that we had with our tour group were all the same (except 2). All 20 meals! Every single meal (lunch and dinner) was steamed rice, tomato and egg soup, sweet and sour pork, spicy chicken and peanuts, pork and onions, steamed bok choy, beef and a vegetable, and finished off with sliced watermelon. The meals are all served family style on a lazy Susan, on a round table that seats 8 - 12 people. The restaurants were all large restaurants with dozens of other identical tables and occasionally our own room. The restaurants were never heated. So you can guess what our lunch was like at the silk factory.

After our unique lunch at the silk factory we were taken to China Town. I know it seems odd that there is a China Town in Shanghai, China, but there is. Since much of old Shanghai has been bulldozed to make way for condos, office buildings and KFCs there is very little 'old China' left. To rectify that the government has built a large area with shops and department stores all in the classical Chinese architecture. The town was kind of interesting and Lara and I bought some Chinese souvenirs that we hadn't purchased yet.

Following China Town we went to a traditional Chinese acrobatic show. The show started off with a bunch of guys juggling hats, followed by a 5th grade quality magic show, and concluded by motorcyclists riding in a large steel mesh ball. I'm belittling the performance actually. There were about a half-dozen acts, some were good, like a guy who climbed a tower of balanced chairs 40 feet high. Some acts were weak, like a pair of acrobats who swung in the air on a ribbon. It was great getting the experience though.

We finished the last night with our tour group at a dinner near our hotel. All twelve of us had a great time and at dinner we got to thank each other for making the two week experience so great. When we got back to the hotel Tim, Chloe, Lara and I convinced our tour guide to hang out with us and play cards. Because tour guides are strictly regulated by the Chinese government and they can loose their license for drinking I have to censor what happened. But, I can say the four of us had a good time getting to know our tour guide a little better. Late that night Tim, Chloe, Lara and I said our good-byes. Tim and Chloe were leaving early the next morning to go back to LA and Lara and I were staying in Shanghai for another day. Having Tim and Chloe on the trip with us was awesome and definitely made it a lot better.

The next morning we didn't get up too early, but we did manage to get up early enough for the hotel's complimentary breakfast. After breakfast we meandered through town. We started our walk along Nanjing Road and then detoured into some side areas. As we were walking we were approached by a trio of 20 somethings, two girls and a guy, all appeared to be locals. They had overheard us speaking English and immediately started talking English to us. The five of us hit it off really well and they invited us to a tea drinking lesson that they were going to. The one guy in the group lives in Shanghai as an engineer and was touring the two girls around the city since they are thinking about moving there. The two girls are college students and will be graduating soon. Part of the guy's tour was a traditional tea room. We knew that following them could end up being really good or really bad. We decided to brave it. We went to a tea room inside a shopping center and sampled 6 types of great tasting tea. We also learned the proper way of tasting tea. We were there for almost two hours and had a great time with the other three. There were lots of memorable 'cultural' exchanges. We also took pride in increasing their English vocabulary by teaching them the meaning of such useful words as; awesome, hella, and transgender. After the tea room the trio had to leave to catch up with some other people and Lara and I got back to seeing the city.

We walked a good 5 miles from the time we left the tea room until we got back to our hotel. We walked through lots of side alleys but we didn't encounter anything too crazy. Since we were no longer travelling in organized tours we had to start making arrangements for our upcoming travel to Southeast Asia. Since the hotel's secure wi-fi was no match for my hacking ability (username:admin password:admin) we spent 5 hours planning out the next two weeks. Not the way we wanted to spend our last night in Shanghai, but oh well.

Our final morning in Shanghai we got to experience Chinese public transportation. We rode the Shanghai subway and then the new Mag-Lev train to the airport. The subway was no Hong Kong subway, but it beats any American subway system, although it was packed. The mag-lev train was trippy. It covers 30 miles in about 8 minutes and at its peak it goes 430kph (~250mph). It was odd riding on a multi-billion dollar train going 250mph on tracks over shanty villages, but that's China.

Hangzhou, China

2009-11-17T16:58:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Hangzhou in the evening and as luck would have it our hotel had a massage parlour. Since Lara loved her foot massage so much she convinced six more of us to get a foot massage with her. Since massages are only $10 it's hard to say no. Lara, Tim, Chloe, Natalie, May Fong, Margaret and I all partook in a foot massage. This massage was actually comfortable compared to the beating I got a few days prior. We didn't inquire with our tour guide if the massage parlour was a regular massage parlour or if it gave irregular massages. But, considering all of the masseuses were 20 year old girls, there were beds in the private rooms, and my masseuse was silent but her eyes were saying "600 yuan for a special night", I'm reasonably confident there are some shady dealings in the massage parlor. We (Lara and I) went to bed after our massages and totally passed out.

First thing in the morning we went to the West Lake in Hangzhou. The West Lake is a beautiful lake in the city of Hangzhou. It is considered the most beautiful lake in China and is displayed on the 1 yuan bill. Our tour of the lake was on a medium sized, glass enclosed tour boat. Our guides gave us a short lecture on the boat prior to getting on and were quiet as we putted around the lake. A Chinese tour leader was not so quiet. Even though she was only leading 10 people, all of which were within 10 feet of her, she still felt she needed a loudspeaker to talk to all of them, for the entire 1 hour boat ride. We kindly asked our tour leader to ask the other tour leader to turn off the speaker. She kindly did not. Being the diplomatic statesman that I am, I thought it would only be nice if I stood in front of the window they were looking out and give them a tour. The Chinese group didn't appreciate my tour and she kept on talking. Whatever. The lake was very picturesque and despite the frigid weather we enjoyed the tour.

After the lake tour we were taken to a tea plantation. The tea plantation was the standard tourist dog and pony show. First we were shown how tea was dried, then we had a tea tasting, and when that was over we were offered to purchase tea. The show wasn't that great, especially since the room we were in wasn't heated and the thermometer inside read 13' C. But, the area was beautiful, especially since it had snowed the night before and the tops of the hills were dusted with snow. We stayed the obligatory one hour and then departed for the Yellow Dragon Cave.

I'm not really sure what to call the Yellow Dragon Cave. The Yellow Dragon Cave wasn't a cave at all, it was a complex of buildings all for art or astrological purposes. There were statues everywhere, all of which had some sort of fortune tied to them. At one end of the complex was a stage where a Chinese opera was being conducted. I've heard a few Chinese operas on my trip and I can attest that they aren't very good. They are a hybrid of a cat dieing and nails against a chalkboard. As we watched the opera though an older man approached Lara and asked her if she spoke English. The old man used to be an English teacher and wanted to speak English with Lara. The two of them talked for a few minutes and by the time we said good-bye a crowd had gathered to watch the conversation. Apparently, English speakers aren't too common around here. Also at the Yellow Dragon Cave are some neat bamboo gardens including some bamboo that is square shaped. We made a few wishes at a nearby wishing well and then departed the cave. Definitely a good stopping point.

The Yellow Dragon Cave was our last stop before our departure from Hangzhou. From the Yellow Dragon Cave the bus took us to Shanghai. The drive was 3 hours and pretty interesting. The road was new and fairly nice. Along the road the entire 200km or so is the construction of an elevated high speed train that will connect Hangzhou with Shanghai. The train will make the journey in 45 minutes instead of the 3 hours it took us. Also on the side of the road was lots and lots of poor villages. Some looked like they hadn't been touched in centuries and some were in the process of being torn down. The trip definitely showed us the state that China is in. In the evening we arrived in Shanghai.

Guangzhou, China

2009-11-16T16:52:00.000-08:00

We departed Hong Kong on a high speed ferry for Guangzhou, China. The sky had cleared up a little and on the ferry we got to see what Hong Kong actually looked like for the first time. The ferry to Guangzhou was a little under two hours. Guangzhou, as we learned is the third largest economy in China, after Shanghai and Beijing.

From the ferry terminal we took our bus to the Guangdong Folk Arts Museum and Chen's Ancestral Hall. The GFAMACAH is a walled complex with a bunch of pagodas and large rooms. Most of the rooms had artwork, some new some old. None of the rooms had heat. In one of the room was a painter who used only his hands and fingers to paint. Totally unique, we got one of his paintings. Another room had an embroidery exhibit with really neat artwork.

After the stop at the hall/folk art museum we went to the airport and headed out to Hangzhou. Kind of a weird day. We're still confused by our tour company's logistics.

Hong Kong, China

2009-11-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Hong Kong is totally awesome! We got into Hong Kong at night and because we were all so tired from the previous days' journeys we just crashed in our hotel room. However, the drive from the airport to our hotel was great. Hong Kong has a beautiful skyline and seeing it at night is really cool.

Our first, and only, toured day in Hong Kong started at Stanley Market. Stanley Market is the Caucasian district in Hong Kong. It has a neat little bazaar that we toured as well as nice parks and condo towers. On the drive from our hotel in the heart of Hong Kong to Stanley Market, on the side of Hong Kong Island, we passed by awesome looking buildings. It makes you wonder why we don't make buildings that nice in America.

After Stanley Market we were taken to the obligatory tourist shop. This time it was a jewellery store/factory. Like all the other tourist traps we've been taken to, this jewelry shop has the small factory that we tour followed by the massive showroom where we can buy all sorts of goods that are of "great quality and discounted prices". It was mildly interesting to see the factory floor and see how jewelry is made. I know the factory we saw is really just a model to make it look like we are buying it directly from the factory, but it was still interesting.

Following the jewelry shop tour we went to Victoria Peak. Victoria Peak is at the top of a mountain overlooking most of Hong Kong. Unfortunately, when we were there it was overcast and we couldn't see more than 2 miles, but the sight was still amazing. Our official Hong Kong tour ended at Victoria Peak at 1pm on our first day and we were free for the next day and a half. Our first matter of business after being set free was to get a different meal from the one we've been getting from our tour the past week. Tim, Chloe, Lara and I all grabbed a sandwich and took in the view from Victoria Peak one last time.

From Victoria Peak we took the cable car down to the center of Hong Kong. The cable car was another memorable experience. Hong Kong's cable car is a lot like Istanbul's funicular. It is just one car that goes up and down the track. Hong Kong's cable car, however, is on a much grander scale. The view on the cable car is great and the steepness is on par with San Francisco's cable cars. Very cool. From the center of Hong Kong we took the subway to Lantau Island. Hong Kong's subway is by far the best mass transit I've ever ridden; clean, quick, timely, very impressive.

At the subway station at Lantau Island we got on a gondola to go to the Tian Tan Buddha Statue. The Tian Tan Buddha Statue is a massive statue of Buddha that overlooks a huge area of Hong Kong. The best way to get to the statue, as we found out, is to take the gondola. The coolest part of the gondola, its glass bottom! For the entire length of the gondola, about 5 miles, we looked down on people hiking through the mountain and checking out the sweeping views. The weather was still really overcast, so we didn't get nearly as good of a view as we could have, but it was still great. Hong Kong is one of the best designed cities in my opinion. On Lantau Island for example the subway station is in the heart of a shopping mall and surrounded by a cluster of high rise condos. But outside of this little cluster is miles and miles of beautiful green hills. Nearly the entire length of our gondola ride was above a park with really nice walking trails.

We arrived at the peak and proceeded to freeze our asses off, or at least I did. The Buddha statue is very impressive. The statue is only 20 years old and they built really well. Like most of Hong Kong, it's clean and very well maintained. After the Buddha statue we got back on the gondola to the subway station on Lantau Island. Since we were starving we grabbed a bite in the mall attached to the subway station. We had a quick, cheap tepanyaki grilled meal; like Benihana, but simpler. It was great! Why can't we have this in malls in America?

Of course, one thing you have to do in Hong Kong is party like a rockstar. After making ourselves presentable the four of us hit up Lan Kwai Fong. When we got there (11pm 'ish) the place was hopping. The entire street was filled with people, the bars were overflowing, and the weather was perfect. There was also no police presence at all and everyone was completely enjoying themselves. We did a bar hop for an hour or so and then settled on a dance club somewhere. At 3am Lara and I threw in the towel. Tim and Chloe, the veteran partiers, stayed out until 5am. They reported back that when they left the bars were still hopping and people were still out in the street, although less than at 11pm.

It should go without saying that the next morning didn't start too early, 11:30 to be exact. The four of us had the whole day to explore Hong Kong. We breezed through one of Hong Kong's dozens of high end malls, stumbled on a motorcycle street show, rode through the SoHo district on the world's longest escalator, and took one of Hong Kong's unique double decker trams, all in the first two hours. Then we got on a ferry to Kowloon. I'd compare Kowloon to Brooklyn. It is still part of Hong Kong, but not nearly as big and nice. We walked around the major shopping streets in Kowloon and were amazed time and again at how much high-end shopping there is. We passed no fewer than three Tiffany's stores and we literally stumbled into four high-end shopping malls that day. One thing we hadn't done much of was sample street food. While walking down the main drag of Kowloon we saw a long line of people for a hole in the wall food place that was serving waffles. We tried a waffle and what appeared to be doughnut holes. The waffle was great. The doughnut holes turned out to be fishballs, they were not great.

As we walked along the main drag, Nathan Road, we stopped to look into a small tailor shop. We had heard that Hong Kong is a great place to buy suits so we decided to take a looksee. We walked out 2 hours later with 2 suits, 2 skirts, 2 shirts, and a tie, all custom fit. Tim and Chloe ended up getting 2 suits as well. The experience was memorable as well. The shop is no larger than 12' x 10' and is manned by a locally famous tailor and his wife. The tailor doesn't speak a word of English and his wife speaks OK English. So the communication of telling us to what to do and asking us how we would like our clothes to fit was kind of a struggle. It was also a little awkward when the tailor pointed out that my right arm is longer than my left. That awkwardness was nothing compared to getting flossed though. The clothes are being shipped to us right now, cross your fingers.

With our wallets MUCH lighter we decided to walk around the Night Market. The Night Market is a street bazaar in Kowloon that has really cheap goods. I bought 5 ties for $5 to complement my new suit. As the night went on the rain got heavier (it rained lightly most of the afternoon) and we decided to head back. The following morning we went straight to the ferry terminal to go to Guangzhou. Like so many other places we visited, we definitely did not get to spend enough time in Hong Kong. We'll come back to Hong Kong for sure.

Blocked by the Great Firewall!

2009-11-13T06:11:00.003-08:00

All, sorry for the long silence. Apparently, the Chinese government believes that Blogger is a threat to national security and has denied access to it from China. We are now in Hong Kong and free from the grasp of commie power. We will be posting all of our India adventures over the next few days that we're here.

Stay tuned!

Guilin, China

2009-11-12T06:51:00.000-08:00

What a difference a plane ride can make. We left Xi'an airport in 6 inches of snow, freezing temperatures, and roads that were horrible. We arrived in Guilin to low 60 degree temperatures, sunshine, and a laid back feeling. We got into Guilin late in the evening and didn't have anything planned. As many of us were stressed out from the previous days' events we decided to get some massages. Our local tour guide recommended a traditional Chinese massage parlour near our hotel and 6 of us (Lara, Tim, Chloe, Mark, Sharon, and myself) went off to check it out. The massage parlour was a regular massage parlour has our national tour guide, George, described, not an irregular massage parlour. George further described the massages as, "Men with tender hands that will make you scream." Seemed kind of contradictory, but hey, when in China. Traditional Chinese massage parlours offer two types of massages; foot massages and full body massages. This parlour offered both for the same price, a whopping $12 for one hour. Me, being the accountant, thought, "Why would you get a foot massage when for the same amount of money you can get a full body massage?" I decided on the full body massage, Lara decided on the foot massage. Big mistake on my part.

All massages I had received up to this one were done in a private room by a masseuse who seemed to be interested simply in massaging my muscles. What I received in Guilin was an assembly line beat down. The parlour has several large rooms with dozens of beds in each room. In our room there were several other people being massaged next to us. Four of us decided on the full body massage and we were all placed on beds next to each other. The masseuses, all small Asian women, then began their beating. First, my face and scalp were jabbed repeatedly by the masseuse's thumbs. Essentially, these were nuggies. She even took the time to jab her finger into my ears. Next came the arm death grip, self-explanatory. The thumb jabbing resumed over the rest of my body. Mixed into this was the high speed karate chop on different parts of my body. The beating lasted 45 minutes and the four of us all looked at each other afterwards and asked what the heck we just experienced. Lara came out of her room with Sharon and said her foot massage felt great.

Back to Guilin. Guilin is one of the most beautiful spots in China. It's home of the Li River and a picturesque river valley with towering mountains. The scenery is featured on the Chinese 20 yuan bill. The scenery was unlike any I have ever scene. The towering mountains are slim, limestone towers covered in lush forest.

Since our flight to Guilin was postponed for one day we only had a half day in Guilin. We got up early and headed to the river for our boat cruise of the Li River. The boat was a large pontoon boat with a couple dozen people on it. About 10 minutes into our drift downriver a group of men on bamboo floats approached our boat. We all thought these were farmers of some sort trying to avoid our boat. They were actually 'hallo people' who were trying to sell us stuff. They approach on their bamboo floats then tie a rope to our boat and are tugged along side our boat. They then open their bags and sell cheap souvenirs. It was actually really cool. It was so cool we ended up buying a fake jade dragon from one the guys for $4.

The boat ride was a great experience. It was extra nice because it was a complete departure from the Xi'an airport. Because our group had a private cabin in the top floor of the boat we all got to bond even more, but in a much nicer setting. We were served lunch and beverages on the boat. On the beverage menu, snake wine. Snake wine is wine that looks like watered down Jack Daniels and is kept in glass jugs with dead snakes in it. It didn't taste good. The cruise lasted 4 hours and we were dropped off downriver in a small town called Yangshou. The town was by far the smallest we visited in China and arguably the most beautiful. The town was surrounded by the towering limestone hills and had a really nice charm to it. We were supposed to spend the night in Yangshou, but because of our delay we only got to walk through a bazaar and drive through it. We piled back into our bus and headed to the Guilin airport, destination Hong Kong.

Xi'an International Airport, China (Execution of the Curse)

2009-11-10T11:38:00.000-08:00

We left downtown Xi'an at around 11am for the airport to catch our flight to Guilin. The weather remained what it had been all day, cloudy and very cold. We arrived at the airport and it was a mad scene. The check-in area was completely packed with no where for a group of 14 to stand. Our national guide, George, headed for the check-in booth while we stood around. George came back 15 minutes later and told us that there were flight delays due to weather in Beijing and our flight was delayed an hour. Since we couldn't check in and get our boarding passes we were stuck in the check-in area until then. We moved around the airport like a wagon train. We would occassionaly move around the airport to somewhere less smokey or warmer and then circle our carts like covered wagons.

We spent 5 hours waiting around the check-in area. Finally, the villagers became restless and demanded food from our guide. We were taken to the the lovely airport restaurant for dinner. At the end of dinner George came to us with a big smile and said our plane had left Beijing and was on its way to Xi'an. We quickly left our comfortable seats in the restaurant to go check-in. It took us over an hour to finally check-in due to one delay after another. Eventually, we checked in and headed through security. When we got to our gate it was a mad house. The terminal was very small, 5 gates, and was filled with angry people who had been stranded in Xi'an from anywhere to a couple hours to all day. At about the same time we got to our gate the skies opened up and it started snowing big time. We all knew that our flight might get delayed so we found a nice corner of the terminal to lay down and get comfortable. We listened to the PA system over the next few hours go from announcing delays of flights, to cancellations of flights, to the closure of the airport due to weather. We were now in the airport terminal with our luggage somewhere on the tarmac and no prospect of leaving. About an hour into this George told us we could pick up our bags at the belt and head back to the hotel. Again, we all left our somewhat comfortable seats to wait at the luggage courasal for our luggage. This took another 1/2 hour. At 12:40am we had our luggage and boarded our bus to go back to the hotel we had spent the previous two nights in. On the way back to the hotel our bus never drove in a straight line as it was fishtailing for 30 miles. We didn't go to bed until 1:45am.

The following morning we got up at 8am and headed for the airport. Since we had no idea when our flight would leave, we needed to be at the airport if a flight became available. The airport was the same as we left it, packed, cold, loud and very smokey. We did the same thing as before, made a circle with our carts and waited. And wait we did. We had the same crappy meal for the third time at the hotel's only restaurant. We tried to pass the time by making a betting pool on when the plane would actually leave, Superbowl Square style. At 1pm we were told that our plane was on its way and we could check our bags. We then waited for another 3 hours until we boarded.

The moment of triumph finally arrived at 4:30:34pm when we took off. We ended up being delayed for over a day and spent close to 16 hours in the Xi'an airport. The moral of the story is don't mess with the hallo people. They're pushy, smelly, and capable of putting 24 hour curses on you.

Xi'an, China (Placement of the Curse)

2009-11-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Xi'an and proceeded to freeze our asses off. Having spent two weeks in India where the temperature was 60 - 80 and sunny almost every day, to China where the temperature was 30 - 40 and cloudy everyday, we had some adjustment. We didn't have anything planned our first day in Xi'an so when we arrived at the hotel in the evening we were on our own. There really isn't much to do in Xi'an so we spent some time in the hotel's bar. It was entertaining as we got to watch a middle-aged man get drunk in the bar and watch the wait staff bend over backwards to make sure he didn't lose face. We also walked next door to our hotel to what appeared to be a large bar, but was actually a shady massage parlor. We walked inside and asked the girls at the front desk what the 600RMB massage was and they all looked at each other and started giggling. That told us enough.

Our first day in Xi'an we visited the Terracotta Warriors. The Terracotta Warriors are kept in a large museum/park area. Large buildings, similar to a hangar, have been built over the Terracotta sites. There are actually 3 separate pits with sites, each has its own building. The first building we toured was the largest and most interesting. The first building had exposed all of the trenches the warriors were in and had pieced the warriors together so it looked like it did originally. The other two buildings were not nearly as interesting. The Terracotta Warriors are an archaeological dig in process. The last two buildings we visited contained broken warriors or simply dirt with warriors supposedly underneath. Spending an hour in a large, unheated building looking at dirt isn't that interesting.

We got back to our hotel in the afternoon and almost the entire tour group, about 9 of us, went on a beer run in Xi'an. Picture this, 9 American tourists, all but two white, walking around the streets of a working class Chinese neighborhood asking anyone if they speak English or where we could find beer. We weren't very productive. After an hour we settled on something that looked like beer. Later that night we were treated to a traditional Chinese music and dance show. Luckily for us, we were able to smuggle in beer :) . The show was ok and the dinner was the same food we had for the previous 3 days, but we had a blast. When we got back to the hotel the four of us, Tim, Chloe, Lara and I played cards and drank until the early morning.

We woke up the next morning to a snowy landscape. It had snowed a little less than an inch and the city looked kind of pretty. We were toured around old town Xi'an which reminded us a lot of Lucca. The old town has a large wall and moat surrounding it, with towers every 100 yards or so. There were several cool pagodas and other neat sites. Lara and I split off from the rest of the group and walked around the Muslim area of town. The Muslim area wasn't Islamic, but it had a very cool neighborhood feel. There weren't any tourist chachky shops and the people were overwhelmingly happy to see us.

We met up with the rest of the group and we walked back to the bus. On the way to the bus we were harassed by a pushy 'hallo person'. 'Hallo people' are people who are trying to sell fake Rolexes, designer handbags, or cheap pieces of tourist junk. They are called 'Hallo people' because they always address you by saying "Hallo." This hallo person was a 60 something old lady who was trying to sell something we had seen a dozen times. I don't remember what I said or did, but suffice to say I probably wasn't too mature. I turned my back on the lady and she pushed me. She said some nasty words in Mandarin and then stuck her tongue out at me. She finished her display by sliding her hand over her throat like it was being sliced. Nobody was sure what her deal was, but we think a curse was placed.....

Beijing, China

2009-11-08T01:11:00.000-08:00

China, woo hoo! When we left India the Chennai Airport's computer system had crashed so the workers at the check-in counter in Chennai had to manually write the destination airport for our luggage. When you have all of your clothes and items you need for three months in your luggage and you are travelling from India to Beijing with a changover in Kuala Lumpur having the check-in worker scribble the destination airport isn't very comforting. So when our bags arrived in Beijing with us we were thrilled. The arrival of our bags also meant that we had officially survived India with everything intact.

Because we didn't know the language, culture, transportation, etc. and we wanted to see lots of sights in China we hired a tour company to take us around. We also booked our flights so that we arrived a day before the rest of the tour group and left a day after the tour group so that we could have an extra day to ourselves in Beijing and Shanghai. When we walked out of the Beijing Internaitional Airport (which is a great airport) we were immediatly greeted by our local guide Wen. Wen and the driver drove us to our hotel in downtown Beijing and got us setup. She also went off on the government owning all the cell phone companies and having high cell prices, so we knew she wasn't going to bull shit us like our Mumbai guide. Lara and I spent the rest of the evening walking around the mall that the hotel was attached to and the nearby streets.

The following day, our first full day in Beijing, we went on a laundry hunt. You might be wondering what exactly a laundry hunt is. Well, when you are backpacking around the world with only a week's worth of clothing doing your laundry becomes imperative. Unfortunately, most of the world has not caught up to the West in laundromat technology or prices. As I mentioned in an earlier post, laundry in India is done in rivers next to water buffalos or in mass laundry areas in Mumbai, we never saw where laundry was done in Turkey. The other option with laundry is to pay the hotel to do the laundry. The typical price for a hotel to do laundry in India was ~80 rupees an article. At 40 rupees to $1, the prospect of paying $50 for a load of laundry is a real possibility. Thus, when we arrived in Beijing we figured that in a city of 14 million people there has to be one laundromat. We did some searching and it appeared that a laundromat in Peking University was the only one in the city. So away to Peking University we went. As we discovered, most cab drivers don't know English, so when you tell them Peking Univesity, you don't go very far. Luckily, we were able to tell one cab driver where we wanted to go on a map. As we requested, he dropped us off in the area we requested, unfortunately, the map we had was in Chinese, all the signs are in Chinese, and all the people only speak Chinese, so we struggled a little bit. After asking a few dozen people where Peking University we arrived at our destination. Once on the campus of Peking University we were lost again. How do you find a small laundromat in a large, urban college campus with everything in Chinese? Our solution, ask the white people. We bumped into a nice British college student who guided us to our end destination.Next problem, how do you tell someone how to wash you clothes? You're starting to notice a trend I'm sure. In the end we were able to get our clothes washed.... but not dried. The dryer has yet to make it to China apparently.

What's Peking University like you ask? It's a lot like UC Berkeley, lots of Asians. The campus is as bland as a rice on noodles. All of the buildings look the same. There are very few postings on walls advertising furniture for sale, or tutoring services, or strippers needed like on American college campuses. We also didn't see anything related to sports or activities. We tried grabbing a bite to eat in the main congregation area, but you can only buy food on campus with a special debit card, so the all important food review could not be performed. When we got our clothes back, sopping, we grabbed another cab back to our hotel.

That night we explored more of the neighborhood our hotel is in. Beijing is a completely different city than any city I've been in. Nearly every building we saw was no more than 10 years old, the same could be said about the roads and infrastructure. The city is also designed differently. The streets are incredibly wide, 5 lanes in each direction in many places, and the buildings are very squat. Most of the buildings are huge, but very rarely more than 25 stories. We both thought it was odd that this huge metropolis wasn't building more skyscrapers. We also noticed that entire buildings were vacant. The visibility in the city was also horrible. We couldn't see more than 2 blocks away. The Chinese all called it fog. I'd like to think I know a little bit about fog since I lived in San Francisco for 5 years, but this wasn't like the fog I'm used to.

Our second full day in Beijing was our first day with our tour. We met the rest of the group in front of the hotel and we quickly realized this was going to be a good group. There were 10 other people besides us plus two guides. There was a good variety in ages as well. The first stop in our tour was the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was home of the emperor of China during the Summer (obviously). It's a large walled palace with a lake inside. There are pagodas galore at the Summer Palace. There is also the longest corridor in the world connecting many of the pagodas. On the lake is the world's largest marble boat. It doesn't float, but it looks cool. After traveling the world for a month and a half, we've seen a lot of palaces. The Summer Palace was the first 'Oriental' styled palace and very cool.

Following the Summer Palace we were taken to Tian'anmen Square and the Forbidden City. Tian'anmen Square actually wasn't as big as I was expecting, but it was very cool to be there. The square was very well guarded with metal detectors and x-ray screening. It goes without saying that there were lots of security personel there as well; police, security gaurds, and military. We were also told by our tour guide that there are lots of secret police in civilian clothes. Some of the guards are standing at attention in the square with fire extinguishers at their feet. We obviously thought it was weird, but our guide informed us that they do this because some protestors will burn themselves with gasoline in the square and the gaurds are there to prevent them. Totally crazy. We didn't get a chance to see Chairman Mao in his pickled state in the basement, but his oversized picture was very prominant.

That night Lara and I and two other people from the tour, Tim and Chloe, hit up the town. Tim and Chloe are our age, really cool, and like to party. Our tour guide gave us a suggestion on an area in Beijing with lots of bars, Hutong District. The bar scene in Beijing is different. The location looked cool, lots of music playing, lights shining and people everywhere. However, on closer inspection every bar is a karaoke type bar with a person or band singing. Of all the bars like this, probably 20, not a single person sang well. In fact, most sang horrendously. We spent most of our time finding a bar that didn't sound like it had a cat dying in it. Another thing different about the bars in Beijing is that you are supposed to negotiate the price of beers before you go in. At one location the promoter/bouncer decided negotiations had stalled so he dragged me into the bar, half joking.

For our third day in Beijing we toured the Great Wall, visited the Olympic sites, and took a bicycle rickshaw ride of the Hutong District. Seeing the Great Wall was awesome. But, in a reoccurring theme in China, it wasn't real. The wall we were taken to, just outside of Beijing, was reconstructed just one mile in each direction from the freeway. For most people it looks real and it's a great sight. However, if you climb it for the 1 mile or so, you come to the end. Apparently I ate something bad the day before and my stomach wasn't having any climbing the Great Wall, but Lara, Tim and Chloe climbed the wall. When I say climb, I really mean do mean climb. Each step was about 8 inches wide and 14 inches high, try doing that for 1 mile.

As I mentioned, I had a little upset stomach in Beijing. Having an upset stomach in China is absolutley horrible. Most of the bathrooms I visited weren't 'western', i.e. they were holes in the ground with no toilet paper, heat, or soap. The time I spent in the bathroom at the tourist restaurant near the Great Wall was the worst bathroom experience I've ever had, I'll leave it at that.

The Olympic area (Bird's Nest Stadium, Watercube, National Indoor Arena, and Fencing Stadium) is really cool. We all remember the great show that China put on in 2008. But get this, since the Olympics the Bird's Nest stadium has been used only twice. The Watercube is almost never used. And I can't imagine an arena used simply for fencing gets much use as well. Next to the Olympic venue is a series of high rises shaped like a dragon. I'm sure everyone saw them, one of the buildings has a huge screen in the middle of it. Almost all of the space inside the buildings looked empty. It really felt like China put on the most expensive and spectacular dog and ponny show in the world.

After the Olymipc venue we went back to the hotel. We got up early the next day and visited the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Unfortunately, the weather was anything but heavenly. About 10 minutes into our tour of the Temple it started to snow. It goes without saying that it was very, very cold. The Temple of Heaven is a large temple built centuries ago with a tower pagoda in the middle and large, cavernous buildings surrounding it. Not a single building had heat and all of them were freezing. We took some pictures of the Temple, saw everything there, and got out quick. Our final stop in Beijing was the Beijing Domestic Airport. We had a the staple Chinese lunch in the Beijing Airport, Kentucky Fried Chicken. I don't know why, but the Chinese love the Colonel. We saw more pictures of Colonel Sanders than we did Chairman Mao, currency aside. I also have to say, the Beijing Airport is the nicest airport I have ever been in, it was also well heated.

Xi'an, China......

India, Final Thoughts

2009-11-06T02:48:00.000-08:00

The previous posts from our two week experience in India has a lot of contradictions. We saw a lot of depressing sights, but also incredible wonders. We were pickpocketed and taken advantage of, but also had some of the best experiences of our trip in India. There is no easy way to sum up India. There's also no way to answer the question, "Would you recommend going to India?" India definitely isn't for everyone. For us, India was incredible and we are so glad we went.

Now it's off to China!

India, Cast of Characters

2009-11-05T02:22:00.000-08:00

For those of you following along at home I've created a quick reference guide for the characters we met along our tour of India. In order or appearance;

Colleen - Emergency room doctor in her second year of residency at a hospital in New Jersey. Colleen was part of our tour from Delhi to Pushkar. Colleen came to India to give a lecture on "The Thyroid Storm" at a medical conference.

Helene - Emergency room doctor (not related to Colleen, married to Mark) at a hospital in Chicago. Helene was part of our trip from Delhi to Pushkar and provided solid medical advice and acted as a proxy for our mothers.

Mark - Chief of Surgery at the University of Chicago's hospital (not related to Colleen, married to Helene). With us from Delhi to Pushkar. Mark is kind of like the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man. He's been to both the North and South Pole (the North by dog sled, the South by cross country skiing), been bitten by an anaconda in Central America, had a bug fly out of his shoulder while having the bug surgically removed and has run two marathons over the age of 50, both faster than me. Lesson learned from Mark: if you want to make a big purchase that your wife isn't keen on, buy her expensive jewellery before hand.

Kami - Tour guide from Delhi to Pushkar. Kami has a masters degree in history and definitely showed it. We learned a lot from Kami over the week we were with him. Kami had an educated answer for all of our questions, or he's an extremely good bull shitter.

Stuart - Brief but memorable appearances from Jaipur to Aurangabad. Stuart appears to be the love child of Mr. Burns from (the Simpsons) and Kramer (from Seinfeld). Divorce lawyer from New York. He is definitely his own best customer as he has been married and divorced 5 times. He currently has a girlfriend but that didn't stop him from trying to have sex with every female he saw. Of all the sleazy things he did over the time we were with him, the sleaziest thing he did was tell us to check out his daughter's sex scene and tell him what we thought. No joke. He has a daughter who is an actress and was in a sex scene in a movie, he simply wanted opinions.

Herb - 74 year old, semi-retired real estate professional from Santa Monica with strong resemblances to Mr. Magoo. Herb gets the sympathy card for this trip. He decided to do this trip because his beloved 10 year old German shepherd died and he thought this trip would take his mind off of it. A week into the trip his sister died as well. Herb mentioned these events in between bouts of complaining about everything else. We traveled with Herb from Pushkar to Aurangabad.

Maureen - 74 year old homemaker who is as sweet as she is immobile. You have to give her credit for going on a three week trip to India, but you also have to ask why a 74 year old who can barely get around would go on a 3 week trip to India?

Fran - 70 something widow and technophobe. At Jaipur Fran demanded a different hotel. The tour company obliged and sent her an email asking for her credit card info. Fran never responded and the day she was supposed to go to the different hotel our tour guide asked her why she hadn't responded. She yelled back at him that the tour company sent the email to her email in America, how could she possibly access her American email in India. Because you know, you can't access Hotmail in India. The tour of India cost several thousand dollars and was Fran's last big trip, she brought along two disposable cameras to remember it. Luckily, we were only with Fran from Pushkar to Udaipor.

Anna - 60 something from Texas. We were with Anna from Pushkar to Udaipor and she spent that entire time sleeping in the back seat of the bus or staying on a bench outside the site while we went in. Maybe Anna was a figment of our imagination...

Frank and Karen - 60 something couple from LA. Frank and Karen were taking a prviate tour with our tour company, which meant we saw them at all the sites and hotels, but we never travelled with them. Really nice couple that we enjoyed spending time with at dinner and the Mumbai airport. Favorite topics of conversation: Herbeen and the amazing sights we've seen on the tour.

Naji - Tour guide from Pushkar to Udaipor. You could definitely tell Naji was being pushed to his limits with the group he had (Herbeen, Fran and Anna). You could also tell that Naji liked us a lot because we were interested in the sights. At the end of our trip Naji gave us a nice little figurine.

Mumbai Tour Guide - Strong resemblance to pond scum. Neither one of us remember this guy's name, so "Mumbai Tour Guide" is the most civil name I can give him. The guy wasn't interested in showing us the sights or giving us information at all, he only cared about getting his cut from the sales.

Sanjay - Tour guide in Aurangabad. Another great tour guide. Taught us a lot about Aurangabad and India and showed us stunning sights. He's engaged to be married early next year and has met his fiance all of two times. We really felt bad for him for getting reamed by Herb for taking so long at the caves, even though we spent the exact amount of time that was specified in the itinerary.

Cameo appearances:

Anderson Cooper - Closeted TV news anchor travelling with his 'friend'. Cameo appearance at the Amber Fort in Jaipur and had a brief conversation with Lara (Lara: "Are you Anderson Cooper?!?!", Anderson: "Yes, I am", Lara: inaudible giggling)

That nice older couple with the guy who has a bad back - Nice older couple that was travelling solo with our tour company. We saw them at several locations. The guy had back surgery a month before the trip and couldn't carry anything.

Chennai, India

2009-11-04T15:49:00.000-08:00

Arangabad was our last official destination with our tour company. Although we had to drop some serious coin to get the tour we both feel we made the right decision. The things we saw and people we met were fantastic and we never would have had the kind of experience we did had we gone alone. The tour company dropped us off at the airport and we flew to Mumbai to catch our flight to Chennai. Unfortunately, the time between flights was about 6 hours, so we got to know the Mumbai Domestic Airport pretty well. On the airport note. All new Indian airports are the same. They are long, cavernous buildings that are divided in two, with departures on one side and arrivals on the other. Very rarely do these new airports have the gate extensions that connect to planes. Instead, all departures have a single gate on the ground level and when a plane is ready you simply catch a bus, or walk, to your plane. The reverse is true for arrivals. All arrivals come into one gate, on the ground level and you walk to the carousel to get your bags. At Udaipor and Jaipur the airports were brand spanking new and both had the connecting tunnels and what appeared to be nice second floors. Unfortunately, the tarmac area where the planes are supposed to park and connect to the gate is occupied by the old airport. It appears that at both airports, they can't use their new facilities because they haven't torn down the old facilities which are blocking the planes. Another case of India's clusterfuck bureaucracy. I would put a picture of an Indian airport up, but you aren't allowed to take pictures of airports in India for security reasons.

Back to Chennai. We arrived in Chennai in the evening and were back on our own. The flight and cab to our hotel went perfectly, but so did our trip to Delhi and look what happened. One thing we hadn't experienced in India was some nightlife. Lucky for us, there was a dance club in the basement of our hotel. After getting rejected from the club once for wearing a t-shirt we were able to get and see the scene. There wasn't a scene. There is a term called sausage-fest that is in the contemporary vernacular which means a party predominately made up of males. This was a classic nerd sausage-fest. 30 people in the club, 25 men, all either sitting at a table, the bar, or standing staring at the dance floor or each other. The 5 girls in the club were socializing with each other, all probably asking what they were doing there. We had one round of over priced drinks and left.

Chennai is on the Bay of Bengal, on India's East Coast. One thing that we both wanted to do during our limited time in Chennai was touch the Indian Ocean. Our hotel was about a mile from the ocean so we made the trek. Chennai was similar to Mumbai in that it is much more developed than any other parts of India that we visited. There were nice houses and neighborhoods sprinkled throughout the city. It is also significantly cleaner than most of of the other places we had visited. However, it's still India. When we got within a 1/4 mile of the ocean we were surrounded by goats, kids peeing on the streets, and women drying dead fish on the pavement. For all the San Franciscans reading this, don't ever complain about the cleanliness of Ocean Beach. The beach on Chennai was disgusting. There was litter of every shape, size, and putridness scattered along the entire beach. Not to mention the hundreds of tee-pees built on the beach. What do they say about building your house on sand? We walked several miles along the beach and saw some OK sites; a lighthouse, statue of Gandhi, and some old colonial buildings. When we satisfied our desire to see the beach we headed inland to the George Town area of the city. George Town is filled with narrow streets and shops. We hung around there for a while but it got old pretty quick. We hopped in a tuck-tuck and headed out to a yoga studio.

Lara made a "Must do" list before our trip of things we had to do. On that list was do yoga in India. On our way to the yoga studio the skies opened up and we were caught in a monsoon like we had never seen before. The streets were flooded and we got drenched. The yoga session lasted an hour and it definitely wasn't the best yoga session, nor anything special. When the session ended we walked around the neighborhood.

The nieghborhood was kind of cool with some nice clean shops and an office of KPMG, the smallest of the Big 4 Accounting firms and not nearly as good as EY. As we were walking the sky opened up again. The rain wasn't as bad this time, but the streets became flooded, Venice style. We tried to get to another shop but we were spending more time dodging cars, motorcycles and dangling power lines than actually walking to the shop. We threw in the towel and got a cab back to our hotel.

Since we had a late flight we had some spare time at the hotel. Lara found the hotel's pool and we took a dip. The hotel's pool was a pool experience I won't soon forget. The pool was on the hotel's roof and as we were swimming another monsoon came in, it was like we were in a waterfall. We left Chennai and India that night.

Aurangabad, India

2009-11-02T01:46:00.000-08:00

Although our tour guide was atrocious, Lara and I were sad to leave Mumbai so soon as it looked like a huge city with lots of sites to explore. We left Mumbai for Aurangabad first thing in the morning and we arrived in the small town around 9am. Aurangabad, at 900,000 people is a hamlet in India terms. It's a tourist destination because of its ancient Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist caves that are about 2000 years old, which we would be touring the two days we were in town. At the airport we were met by our local tour guide, Sanjay. We instantly knew Sanjay was going to be better than our last guide. He was a super nice guy that was telling us interesting information about Aurangabad, the caves, and the locals instantly. Sanjay's sexuality might be questionable, but his love of the caves certainly isn't.

Our first stop on the day's tour was the Ajanta caves. There are two groups of caves in Arangabad, the Ajanta and Ellora caves. We would be spending most of our first day at the Ajanta caves and most of our second day at the Ellora caves. From Mumbai up to our arrival at the Ajanta caves Herb continued to ask why we were going to a bunch of caves, even though he was given the itinerary months ago and could have reviewed it at any time. Lara and I had done our homework and knew the caves would be interesting and Sanjay was ecstatic that he was taking us to the caves. It definitely made for a long bus ride having Grumpy with us.

The Ajanta caves are a series of 31 caves that were dug out of the cliffside 2200 - 1400 years ago by Buddhist monks. The cliffside that the caves are dug into are high above a creek and the only way to get to them is to walk 1/4 mile uphill from the parking lot. As usual, Herb was his lovely self and Maureen insisted she couldn't make it. Luckily for all of us there are men who will carry tourists up to the entrance of the caves for a small fee. Lara and Sanjay arranged for Maureen to do it and everyone loved it. Once we got to the first cave Sanjay started telling us about the caves. Herb and Maureen were gone after 2 sentences. The first cave was amazing. It's a large hall carved out with small cells on the sides and a larger room in the back with a huge sitting Buddha. Seeing our first Buddha statue was really cool.

We continued to the second cave, by which time Herbeen had apparently left because they felt they had seen enough. We walked through all of the accessible caves over the course of the following 3 hours. Each cave was unique and some of the caves were simply spectacular. There was incredible artwork in so many caves and we had access to all of it. We would never had been allowed to access all that we did if these caves were in the West. The canyon that the caves are built into wraps around and the views are awesome. The final cave was the best because it has a 50 foot long statue of Buddha laying down. It doesn't sound like much, but if you see it you would definitely agree.

Like our itinerary said, we spent 4 hours at the caves. When we returned to the restaurant at the base of the caves we met up with Herbeen, who were not too happy. They made it clear they would be spending the following day in the hotel instead of the caves. We were happy.

The Ellora caves are made out to be the better of the two Arangabad caves. We weren't too sure why, but Sanjay was as gitty as a schoolgirl to take us. We started with some caves that were similar to the caves we saw the day before, which were cool, but kind of getting old (we had seen 30 caves in 24 hours at that point. Sanjay took us for a walk up a hill and mentioned that we were coming up to his favorite place in the world. 10 steps later we realized why. The Hindu 'cave' we walked up to was actually a massive (50 feet wide, 100 feet deep, 200 feet long) cut in the hillside. Inside of this 'cut' is a huge, intracitely cut Hindu temple. We approached the cliff and looked down on the dozens of tourists, students, and worshippors who were visiting the temple. Standing at the cliff was a moment I won't soon forget. We spent over an hour walking in and around the temple. It wasn't the best temple, but the size and fact that it's completely cut from one rock and almost hidden from view makes it one of the best religous sites we have been to. After the temple we finished up our Arangabad cave experience with a nice lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Ellora caves. Upon our request, Sanjay took us to some stores but the only thing we bought was some spices at an Indian supermarket. I have to say, the supermarket was one of our most interesting shopping experiences. Considering every person in the market stopped what they were doing and stared at us while we got some spices, makes me think they don't see white people very often.

That night we had a nice dinner with Frank and Karen and talked about how amazing the caves were. We don't know why the Aurangabad caves aren't better known, but we certainly won't complain about the lack of tourists there. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the caves become another major tourist destination.

Mumbai, India

2009-10-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

Up to Mumbai our two Indian tour guides had been phenomenal. They both made it clear they were from the warrior caste and aren't too fond of Muslims or the Indian version of affirmative action, but hearing their uncensored opinions on life added to the great tours we received. Our Mumbai tour guide was not only the worst tour guide we had, but a complete a-hole as well.

Upon arriving and meeting our guide, Herb made it clear he wanted to see the sights from "Slumdog Millionaire" and wasn't too concerned with anything else. The first stop we made on our tour was the laundry area which was part of the movie. The laundry area was cool and it also kept Herb quiet for a few hours after. The laundry area is a large area in the middle of Mumbai made up of hundreds of 3'x3' concrete cells, some filled with water, some not, used to do laundry. There were hundreds of people working in the laundry area doing everything from beating clothes against cement, hanging clothes, moving clothes, etc. Our next destination was a temple in 'the Beverly Hills' of Mumbai. The temple was another Jain temple, but not nearly as nice as the Ranakpur temple. We toured the temple while Maureen stayed outside. Maybe she didn't go in because the sign outside said, "Women who are menstruating are not allowed in the temple." Our second inclination that our tour guide wasn't very good occurred while we were in the temple. I asked him about a picture in the temple showing a shipwreck and a guy getting eaten by an alligator. He stopped, looked at it, looked at me like I was stupid, said, "It's a shipwreck," then walked away. Our first inclination that our tour guy wasn't very good happened when he first talked to us on the van and never took his eyes off Lara's breasts. Literally never.

We left the temple and proceeded to the hanging gardens of Mumbai. The hanging gardens are a mislabelled park. It's a large park in the middle of the city with nice walking trails, hedged bushes, and trash cans that look like penguins. When you're surrounded by nothing but city it's a really nice tranquil area. Our tour guide gave us 10 minutes to enjoy. Our tour guide made a point that he speaks English, Spanish, Russian, French, and Hindi, but I can't count how many times he said, "Come please." As Maureen is 74 and has a bad back she doesn't move too well. So when we were walking slow our tour guide would yell "Come please" when he felt we were too far back. We left the hanging gardens and the 'Beverly Hills' of Mumbai for the Gateway of India. I mentioned the Beverly Hills of Mumbai twice to give you a flavor of what it was like for us. Our lovely tour guide mentioned that we were in the Beverly Hills of Mumbai and pointed out the Manhattan of India well over a dozen times.

No more than one hour before we got to the Gateway of India I mentioned to Lara that I thought it was nice that we had been solicited by all sorts of sales people and beggars throughout India, but not once had I been offered to buy drugs. I was making my comparison to Cabo San Lucas when I couldn't walk 100 yards without being offered drugs. We arrived at the Gateway of India and 10 minutes into checking out the Gateway out a guy offered to sell me weed. I told the guy to go fuck himself. Lara wasn't too happy with that. Besides the drug dealer, the Gateway was a cool sight.

We both knew that tour guides took a cut of the sales from the shops that they took us to and our previous guide, Kami, was very upfront with it and told us that he takes 5%. Our guide in Mumbai informed us that he works for the government and would never take a cut. We found it very odd then, that whenever he took us to sights he would give a specific time limit, never more than 20 minutes at a sight, but when we were at the shops he took us to there was never a time limit. The first shop he took us to was a government shop that had fixed prices and had goods that were guaranteed. However, we noticed that the stuff in the store was the exact same as all the other stores we had been to but the prices on the goods was 2x - 5x more. But, if we asked about the price and said it was too much, they were willing to negotiate. Even Herb, who appeared to come to India strictly to shop, was annoyed by how much time we were spending shopping. At 2pm we were starving and asked our guide when lunch would be. He seemed surprised that we would want to stop the tour and pointed out a few restaurants that were within eye sight. We had a nice lunch at an Iranian restaurant, just the type of restaurant we were looking for to get our first taste of South Indian food.

The bad press that I have been giving to the tour guide shouldn't take away from our experience in Mumbai. Mumbai is a 'struggling' metropolis. The skyline is filled with skyscrapers and there are even more going up. Unlike all of the other cities that we visited in India, there were very few cows walking the streets, almost no animal pulled carts and some semblance of order. That isn't to say there isn't absolute poverty, there is plenty of that. Mumbai was also incredibly cleaner than the other cities we were in and we felt like we could walk safely in the city.

Our tour concluded at Gandhi's house and the home of a Rabi who was killed by terrorist. Gandhi's 'home' is actually the former home of one of his friends and it has been turned into a museum on Gandhi. The museum is filled with 50 or so dioramas and was kind of interesting. We made the stop at the rabbi's home at Herb's insistence. The home was attacked by terrorists when they attacked the hotels last year. The rabbi and a friend of his were killed. Herb was shocked and appalled that we hadn't heard of the rabbi's death. Whatever Herb.

Lara and I had the evening to ourselves. We had the best dinner of our India trip at the hotel and stuffed ourselves silly. After dinner we tried to walk around, but Mumbai at night isn't the safest looking city. The following morning we got up at 4am and headed for the airport for Aurangabad.

Udaipor, India

2009-10-30T16:05:00.000-07:00

Oh how things can change. Because Lara and I signed up for our Indian tour at the last minute the tour company accommodated us by putting us in one tour for the first half of our trip and a different tour for our second half. As mentioned before, the group that we were with in the first half could not have been better. The group in our second half left a lot to be desired. Our first day after Pushkar was a travel day. We drove from Pushkar to Udaipor. The drive was 8 hours on nothing but two lane roads with tractors and farm animals. Adding to our pain was Lara being sick with Delhi Belly. We made one tourist stop, Ranakpur Temple. Ranakpur Temple was the coolest temple I had seen in India. The temple is a Jain Temple and completely made out of marble. Supporting the multiple marble levels is 1,444 carved marble pillars, each one unique. Unlike the temple we toured in Pushkar, this temple was immaculate. Unfortunately, Lara was so sick that she just sat on the bench and didn't go in. However, Lara wasn't alone on the bench as our new tour group was apparently recruited from the AARP Complaints Department. The three other women on the tour with us were all tired of seeing temples and the only other guy in the group just wanted to take some pictures and go. They didn't think we would need more than 5 minutes. I spent 20 minutes inside taking pictures. I didn't feel bad at all, and Lara was glad I made them wait. We arrived in Udaipur in the evening and just crashed.

Starting our full day in Udaipor we toured the City Palace. As I mentioned previously, our new group wasn't the best to travel with. We had an entirely new group made up of Maureen and Herb (aka Maurb or Herbeen) a 74 year old married couple, Fran, a 70 something who's friends call her bitch, Anna, a quiet 60 something, and Naji, our new tour guide. When we arrived at the City Palace Lara and I took the tour with Naji and Herb tagged along (apparently thinking we would only be in there for 10 minutes). Maureen and Anna stayed at the entrance because they didn't feel like walking and Fran went to the gift shop. After one room Herb decided he had seen enough of the palace and walked out, leaving Lara and I with Naji for a private tour. Naji gave us a great one hour private tour of the palace which we really enjoyed. When we came out of the palace after an hour the rest of the group was waiting, except for Fran. As we waited for Fran outside the palace we had to listen to Herb and his complaints; it took 15 minutes just to get out of the palace, he lost his beloved hat while riding an elephant, Fran's a bitch, the camel ride made his ass sore, he overpaid for a marble table, Fran's a bitch...... We spent 45 minutes outside the palace waiting for Naji to find Fran. Fran was eventually discovered in the gift shop buying chachkies of a palace she didn't go in.

Udaipor is on a lake with two man-made palaces in the middle. One of the palaces was the palace used in the James Bond movie, "Octopussy". After the tour we took a boat to one of the island palaces, this was after we dropped Anna at her hotel because she didn't want to go. Before we boarded the boat Naji was bombarded with 'how long is this boat ride going to last?', 'what's on this island?', and 'can I stay here and just wait for you guys?'. The boat ride was just a simple cruise of a little lake on a pontoon boat, which was cool. At the island palace we stopped and had a drink. Following the boat cruise we took a tour of the city, stopping at a couple stores to acquiesce Herb.

Early the following morning we all went to Udaipor Airport. Herbeen, Lara and I were bound for Mumbai while Fran and Anna headed off somewhere else.

Pushkar, India

2009-10-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

Again, we all piled into the van and got back on the road, destination: Pushkar. The ride from Jaipur to Pushkar is amazing. It's raw India. Rugged mountains, small towns, ox drawn carriages, everything. Included in everything....STICKERS! You might be wondering why we care about stickers. Lara came up with the cool idea of putting a sticker from each country on our netbook. Up to India we had put six stickers on our computer (Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Vatican City, Greece, and Turkey, we forgot in Austria). We literally spent 4 hours looking for a Turkey sticker in Istanbul and we hadn't come across any place in India that had anything close to what we were looking for. So when we found a sticker of the Indian flag we were super excited.

We arrived at our camp in Pushkar a little after noon. The camp is a complex of really nice tents and huts. All of them have air conditioning, running water, clean bathrooms and nice beds. We weren't roughing it by any means. After we got situated we were taken by camel carts to the Pushkar fairgrounds. On the way to the fairgrounds we passed a gypsy camp. As the cart went by we were surrounded by little kids asking for rupees, shampoo, or chocolate. We could see the 'homes' that these kids came from and it's hard to imagine anyone having anything less than them. Spending five years in San Francisco with its plethora of homeless has definitely made me more immune to seeing homelessnes, but seeing little kids in it is still really hard. What's worse, is that you can't give the kids anything because it rarely makes it to the kids. If the kids receive something the parents or bosses in the beggar mafia take it from them. Besides the children, the ride to the Pushkar fairgrounds was amazing, in a good way. There were camels everywhere, literally. The Pushkar Camel Festival is many things: a holy pilgrimage to the local lake, a camel market, and a county fair. As we were coming in, so were dozens of camel owners with their herds for sale or trade. The landscape was also amazing, just rugged mountains as far as the eye can see.

Our cart dropped us off in the middle of the fair. I honestly believe you could walk a quarter mile in any direction, stepping only on camels. Besides camels, the fairground was filled with camel supply shops, food shops, a make shift movie theatre, arts and crafts, all of which were completely different than anything I've seen before. I know some of you are asking, "What could be in the camel supply store in Pushkar that isn't in my local camel store here in the US?" To ride a camel you need the right blankets, saddle and stirrups or sometimes just a rope. You also need colorful ribbons and ropes to pimp out your camel. And most important, you need nose 'nails' to go into your camel's nose. These nose nails are then connected to a rope and used to rein in the camel. Pretty crazy huh? We walked around the fair for a few hours taking it all in. The sun set as we walked around the fair and I had another one of those 'I'll never forget this' moments.

That night we were treated to some cool Pushkar entertainment at our camp. Dancers, a drum band, a fire breather, and a puppet show all entertained us. Adding to the entertainment was one of the other tourists staying at the camp, Stuart, who propositioned one of the dancers for 500 rupees (~$12). Classy.

We started our first full day in Pushkar with a camel ride to the camel arena in the middle of town. I use the word arena in the loosest sense. The arena was an enclosed arena with bleacher seats on two connecting sides, the other two sides simply had a wall. We rode into the arena on our camels and stayed on the camels as we watched the entertainment. First up on the entertainment ticket was the camel race. The camel race was argueably the most disorganized organized sporting event I've ever witnessed. One of the other tourists in our group had to get off of her camel because the camel was needed in the race. When the race actually started all the camels just started running everywhere. The best comparison I can make is it's like a vibrating football board game. At some point the race ended, everyone cheered and a small group of people ran up to one of the racers to applaud him. After the race was the camel dance performance, although it took 20 minutes for things to actually get organized. A small rink was made in the center of the arena and everyone gathered around. The camel dance performance was like a dance off for camels. The handler has the camel leashed up and he has the camel trot around. The coolest part was one of the camels got on its elbows and crawled on its front elbows. Beyond that, the camel dance was kind of lame. Going with the theme, there was no organization to the dance as well. Each individual dance would end when people started booing, there wasn't a clock or even what appeared to be official judges. When we had seen all of the camels a winner was declared and the horse dancing competition started. We were about to leave the horse dance competition before it started based off of the camel dance competition, but the horse dancing competition was really interesting. Like before, a handler would come out and would lead the horse around the circle. Two drummers would play as the horse was dancing. The horses actually appeared to dance to the beat of the drums. After a few minutes an assistant would bring out a tiered platform about 2 feet high and the horse would climb on top of it and dance as well. The handlers also got the horses to stand and walk on their back legs. We watched four or five of the horses strut their stuff and we were about to leave when the master horse dancer came out. Appearantly this guy is a local legend and has quite the following. This guy was dressed well and even had his own band. I have to admit, this guy was the real deal. His horse did everything I mentioned, but did it with style. The horse would not only get on its back legs, but it would walk circles on its back legs and then hop on just its back legs. The trainer had his drummers play under the horse while it walked on two legs. Everyone loved it. By the end of the performance the circle had shrunk in half because all the viewers were trying to get closer. We left a little bit afterwards once we realized no one would top the fan favorite.

We walked through the fairgrounds and checked out the town. The town has a lake and a temple which are revered by a group of Hindus. We toured the temple which was cool, but also the smelliest, most disguisting temple I've walked in. Think of an outdoor temple with several side rooms, all resembling a recycling center in smell and floor stickiness. Let's not forget that we had to take our shoes off and walk in our socks to go through the temple. As we walked into one of the side rooms I thought we were walking into an opium den. The lake that is thought to be highly spiritual by thousands of people has been completely drained. The lake is a huge dried lake bed with some man made pools for the believers to take dips in. Inside the lake is a tower with blinking christmas lights. The lake certainly wasn't impressive but the sights were.

With all of the Pushkar sights seen we headed back to our camp. That night we said our goodbyes with Mark, Helene and Colleen as they were all leaving the tour the next morning. Lara and I both agree that the Pushkar Camel Festival was one the coolest experiences we had ever seen.

Jaipur, India

2009-10-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

Road Trip! As I said in the previous post, after sunrise we hopped in the van and started our drive to Jaipur. The van was a nice 11 person van with comfortable seats and air conditioning. In the van was Lara, Colleen, Helene, Mark, Kami, our helper, the driver and myself. The six of us (all mentioned except the helper and driver) chatted the whole way as we watched the Indian country side go by. I take back what I said in an earlier post about Turks having the craziest drivers. Indians are the craziest drivers by far. Most of the roads in India are two lanes with no shoulder, and that's being generous. Using the road is every possible vehicle with wheels, plus people, and animal herds. Because there are so many objects on the road drivers simply use the other side of the road as the passing lane. When you're driving in the city and you go into the opposite direction at 20 mph it isn't a big deal, but when you dive into the other direction at 45 mph and there is a large truck coming at you going the same speed, it's a little different. For the first half hour on the road it was fairly disturbing. Our guide told us that just a few months ago the tour company used to put a curtain behind the driver so that the passengers in the back of the van couldn't see what was happening. Our guide also informed us that most drivers believe in destiny and if it is their time to go then it is their time to go and there is nothing they can do about it. Not very reassuring.

On the topic of Indian driving and road conditions. Indian roads are completely different than roads we've seen anywhere else. Although there are lots of cars, they are definitely a minority on the road. Most of the traffic on the roads is motorcycles, bikes, and 3-wheeled tuck-tucks. The tuck-tucks are just what you've seen in movies, they are 3 wheeled vehicles with a roof on them. Bikes and motorcycles are the same as anywhere else. The biggest exception is how many people fit in/on a vehicle. Anywhere else in the world a motorcycle is a one person vehicle, occasionally a two person vehicle. In India, if only one person is riding a motorcycle it's being underutilized. Two, three, four people on a motorcycle was the norm. Apparently, in India the motorcycle is the family vehicle. Some of you might be thinking 'how can four people fit on one motorcycle'? It's actually quite simple. The father gets on first and assumes the driving position. Then the oldest child gets in behind the father. The mother gets in next, behind the oldest child at the rear of the motorcycle. The youngest child, typically a baby, gets in last in front of the father, just behind the steering wheel. I can't tell you how many times we saw a toddler behind the handle bars of a moving motorcycle. As for helmets, they are very rare. Our guide informed us that a helmet law has just been implemented in India and people are starting to buy helmets. However, the merits of helmets aren't appreciated, simply the legality. So the only helmets that people buy, or are even available, are $1 helmets that provide as much protection, possibly less, as a turban. On top of that, it is more common for riders to have a helmet on the arm then on their head. On top of that, the helmet law is only applicable to men, women don't have to wear helmets because it might mess up their hair.

Continuing on the road subject, although when the road is wide enough for multiple lanes the lanes are marked, people never obey lane markings. Drivers simply go where ever there is less resistance. When they pass another vehicle they honk their horn. With so many vehicles on the road and all passing frequently, the road is very, very loud. Drivers are actually encouraged to use their horn. It is a law that all trucks have a sign posted on the back saying "Use horn." The trucks in India are very cool. I think most trucks are owned by the drivers. I say this because no two trucks in India are the same. They are all painted different and many with really cool paintings. Although we didn't see any truck nuts, we did see the Indian version of them.

Finishing the side note on India roads. Unlike most other countries, there are almost no overpasses in India. This does create more traffic, but it also means your truck can be as filled as you can make it as there are no height restrictions. We saw trucks that were filled 20 feet high, easily. Some trucks would be filled so much that their cargo would be hanging 5 feet out the bed and dragging on the ground. Crazy.

Back to our road trip. After a few dozen games of playing chicken with other Indian drivers we arrived at Fatehpur Sikri. Fatehpur Sikri is a deserted, red sandstone city built around 1570. The city was your standard Indian fort; a walled city with red brick buildings inside. It was pretty cool.

We got back on the road of death and headed for Jaipur. We arrived in Jaipur in the early evening. In our first morning in Jaipur we went to the Amber Fort and Palace. The fort is on the top of hill and the only way to get to the top of the hill is to take an elephant! Taking an elephant in Amber Fort is like taking a taxi anywhere else, you just hop on and your driver takes you to where you want to go. The elephant ride was very cool. Once we got to the fort we toured around. This fort was slightly different from the other forts in that it had Anderson Cooper in it. Yes, Anderson Cooper, host of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, was walking around the Amber Fort just like us. Although Lara was the one who spotted Anderson, our friend Colleen snagged the best photo of him completely by accident. She was trying to take a picture of some sexually explicit tiles that are in the Amber Fort when some guy came out the door and got in her picture, she later noticed that that guy was Anderson Cooper. For you celebrity buffs, Anderson was travelling with one other guy, which we have a picture of. We were waiting for them to hold to hands so we could sell that picture to TMZ. Anderson Cooper won't say he's gay, but he's ranked as the second most powerful gay man in America by Out magazine.

Once we got our fill of celebrity sightings we left the Amber Fort to check out the city of Jaipur. Inside the city of Jaipur is the City Palace, Jantar Mantar, and some good shopping. The City Palace is similar to other Indian palaces. This palace had a more English feel and it had an interesting armory museum with lots of crazy weapons. The Jantar Mantar was totally different. The Jantar Mantar is an Indian observatory made up of about two dozen sun dials. The sun dials are used primarily for astrological purposes. There is one sun dial for each zodiac sign, several sun dials to determine the zodiac sign, the world's largest sun dial, and the world's most precise sun dial.

The complex wasn't what we were expecting at all and it was a very cool surprise. We finished off our city tour by doing some shopping. We checked out a couple craft stores, an antique store, a jewelry store, and a textile store. The coolest purchase of the trip occurred at the antique store. Mark purchased a six foot tall wooden statue of Ganesha. The Ganesha will go well with the one ton Buddha statue that Mark bought in Cambodia and currently resides in his backyard. Helene expressed her reservations about where a six foot tall Ganesha statue would fit in their house, but after Mark bought her some nice diamond earrings at the jewelry store, her questioning subsided.

We finished the evening by having dinner with a royal family. One of the former princes of Rajasthan (the state that we were in) had a large home in the center or Jaipur that his family still maintains and lives in. The descendants of this royal family let us into their home and ate dinner with us. The entrance to the house is from the main street of Jaipur, which is loud, busy, and filled with beggars and homeless. The house is large, with several courtyards and an outdoor sitting area. The food was nothing special but it was fun interacting with a traditional Indian family. We also ate with other tourists who were travelling separately from us, but with the same company. All of them were over the age of 70 and would have absolutely nothing to do with the dinner and left after dinner was served. We knew we would be spending more time with them in a few days and were really excited.

The next morning we packed up and started on another road trip to Pushkar, for the Pushkar Camel Festival.

Agra, India

2009-10-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

At the ass-crack of dawn we got on the tourist special, Delhi to Agra train. Agra has several cool palaces and tombs, including the Taj Mahal. The train was a special tourist train and it was fairly nice, like a low-end European train. The train certainly wasn't the stereotypical Indian train with people packed like cattle and other people riding on the top, but we did pass by some of those trains. When we got off our train we headed for our van where a band was playing traditional Indian music and dancing. Kind of cool. The van took the eight of us to Itmad-Ud-Daulah's Tomb first. The tomb was a sprawling palace with great views of the Taj Mahal and we learned a lot about the place from Kami.

After the Itmad-Ud-Daulah Tomb we hit up Agra Fort. From the Itmad-Ud-Daulah Tomb to Agra Fort we had a virtual safari. We saw water buffalo being herded in the river wash, monkeys playing in the trees, goats walking the streets, horses pulling carriages, and of course, cows walking everywhere on the streets. Like other Indian forts, Agra Fort isn't a fort as much as it is a palace. It was a sprawling complex with rich history and some great sights.

A nice lunch followed the Agra Fort, which Mark and Helene (our adopted parents) graciously paid for. After lunch we visited the Taj Mahal. To protect the Taj Mahal's marble, vehicles are not permitted within two kilometers. So we were carried by a horse drawn cart to the entrance of the Taj Mahal. Very cool. The Taj Mahal isn't a single building. I would describe it as two complexes, with the well photographed white building having two smaller buildings on either sides and a separate, fort-like complex at the opposite side of the reflecting pool. All visitors enter the fort on one side and the path to the Taj Mahal is on the right side, about 50 yards away. From the fort, the path to the Taj Mahal has an entrance gate and it is only when you approach the entrance gate that you see the Taj Mahal. When you first see the Taj Mahal from the fort it is truly awesome. The walk from the entrance gate to the Taj Mahal is almost a quarter-mile of well kept gardens and the large reflecting pool. We slowly made the walk and got to the Taj Mahal. The line to get in the Taj Mahal was about 1000 people long and we waited for about an hour. I have to admit, waiting in line at the base of the Taj Mahal watching the sunset isn't the worst thing in the world.

Our wait in line was an hour, but it would have been a lot less if Indian tourists weren't as bad as first graders in terms of cutting. We quickly realized the strategy they all had. Send a little old lady who doesn't understand English, or at least acts like she doesn't understand English, right in front of a bunch of American tourists. Since most Americans aren't going to get upset about an old lady cutting in front of them they don't make any comments. After a few moments all the old lady's family members join her and in a matter of a few minutes 20 people have cut. This worked once on us. After the first time we weren't too kind to old Indian women. Helping our cause were the half-dozen Central Indian Security Forces personel with machine guns and whistles that would whistle and yell at people caught cutting.

Inside of the Taj Mahal is tomb of Emperor Shah Jahan's wife. It is a simple white marbled box about 2' x 2' x 5'. According to Islam, graves should be very simple, as they believe all people are created equal and a king's tomb should be the same as a pauper's tomb. Thus, the body of the Emperor's wife is actually in the dirt below the Taj Mahal and the box inside is just a symbol. Surrounding the tomb is a fine white marble lattice that prevents people from touching the tomb, but allows people to see it. What was amazing was that almost all the Indian tourists would push and pull their way to see the tomb and then walk out just as fast. Because the tomb is in the middle of the chamber you can easily walk around it. Lara and I walked to the other side of the tomb and we were practically the only people there. It was very odd but we enjoyed it. We explored some of the other rooms in the Taj Mahal and since all the Indian tourists were only interested in seeing the tomb and then leaving we were left alone to spend some quality time in the Taj Mahal. We left the Taj Mahal with dozens of great pictures and smiles on our faces.

The following morning we got up eary again to watch sun rise over the Taj Mahal. Our guide took us to the opposite side of the river from the Taj Mahal to watch the sun rist. Watching the sun rise against the Taj Mahal was another incredible moment. It was extra cool because that morning was a special festival for the local Hindus and there were lots of people on the river bank shooting off fireworks and playing music. When the sunrise colors were gone we left the Taj Mahal and headed for Jaipur.

Good Delhi

2009-10-24T04:41:00.000-07:00

At 9am sharp we had a guide waiting for us in the lobby of our hotel. He escorted us to the car and driver that were waiting for us and we were Chauffeured to the India Gate of Delhi where we met the rest of our tour group. The group that we joined could not have been any better. There were five tourists (including ourselves), an expert guide, a driver, and a helper. The other three tourists were a married couple, Mark and Helene, and a married woman traveling through India before her conference, Colleen. Helene is an emergency room doctor, Mark is the chief of surgery at a large hospital, and Colleen is also an emergency room doctor in her second year of residency. Our expert guide, Kami, has a master's degree in history and has been a guide for several years. Needless to say, we definitely felt we were in good hands.

Kami guided us around New Delhi, showing us India Gate as well as the other sites around New Delhi. After New Delhi, we were taken to the Qutab Minar complex. The Qutab Minar complex is home to several palaces and a 239 foot tower. It was all very interesting and we learned a lot.

We made our way to the Red Fort, which was built by the Moghul emperors in pre-British times and then was occupied by the British. It's a cool fort with great history and is packed with stuff inside of it. We walked out of the Red Fort and then hopped on bicycle rickshaws and we were taken through the bazaar in Chandni Chowk. The bazaar at Chandni Chowk is a packed outdoor market in Old Delhi with a multitude of different shops and incredible sights. The bicycle rickshaw ride was an experience neither one of us were expecting but something we will remember for a long time.

After the rickshaw ride our car was waiting and we were taken back to our hotel. The first day of our tour was fantastic and a complete reversal of what we had been experiencing in India. We decided to go out to dinner to a restaurant that had been recommended to us by some Canadian tourists in our hotel. We told the concierge at the hotel where we wanted to go and he waived down a bicycle rickshaw driver and told him where we wanted to go. We were told by the Canadian tourists that the restaurant was only two blocks away. After being biked around for eight blocks we told our driver to take us back to our hotel. Talking to our driver was about as productive as talking to a shovel. A security guard heard the conversation and attempted to translate for us, the driver said to the security guard he knew where to go and off we went. Four blocks later he stopped at a hotel that wasn't ours and said something. After lots of pointing he was able to figure out that we would just direct him. 5 minutes and one slum later we were back at our hotel. We had another dinner in the hotel's restaurant. At that point we both realized that signing up for the tour was the only way we could see India.

Baaaaad Delhi

2009-10-22T04:36:00.000-07:00

When we planned out our trip there were some places/activities that we really wanted to see/do. Oktoberfest in Munich and Pamukklae, Turkey are examples. We decided to spend almost two weeks in India because it is an incredible place that we hear lots about and also because Lara has a really good friend who lives there. Unfortunately, our friend wasn't able to join us due to a visa issue. Since we pretty much winged our European trip we thought we were now experienced travelers who could tackle anything. Wow, were we naive.

Since we received a 48 hour notice from our friend that he wouldn't be joining us, we were able to make hotel arrangements for two nights in Delhi. The hotel said they would pick us up at the airport (at 4am) and take us to the hotel. We arrived at Delhi Internation Airport and our hotel driver was no where to be found. We decided to take a cab to the hotel instead. As soon as we stepped out of the airport we knew we were in for an adventure. Entrance to the airport is restricted because there is litterally a mob outside of the airport trying to get in. Everything is different; the sights, sounds, and even the smells. Our driver took us to our hotel, dodging the cows, beggars, and stray dogs to get there. Our hotel was able to let us check in early and we slepped until noon.

When we got up we decided to explore the neighborhood, Karol Bagh. Like we expected, we saw poverty at its extreme. We made our way to the local Metro station to go to the center of New Delhi. Our Indian friend had said that we need to see Connaught Place and its underground bazaar. Our friend also said we should take the Delhi Metro to get there as its super cheap and 10x better than BART. The Metro is cheap..... overcrowded and smelly. I'll gladly pay $3 instead of $1 to ride BART instead of the Delhi Metro.

When we arrived in Connaught Place we explored the area. We literally could not go more than 20 yards without being stopped by someone trying to sell us something or strike up a conversation in hopes of selling something. Then we walked by one guy who walked along me and tried to talk to me. He then pulled out a piece of paper and tried to show me something. At the same time another guy walked towards us, in the opposite direction, on Lara's side. After the guy on Lara's side passed the other guy on my side walked away. When both had cleared us Lara told me that she had been pickpotted. Lara had a sweatshirt tied around her waist and the man walking in the opposite direction had reached into the sweatshirt pocket. Luckily, nothing was in it, before or after the incident.

We decided to tempt our fate again by checking out the underground bazaar. The underground bazaar is unequivacly the worst shopping experience I have ever had. It's an underground area with no natural light, or much unnatural light, with narrow walkways and shops on all sides. Although there are dozens, if not hundreds, of shops they are all the same; fake electronics (I-pad, I-fone, Compac computer, etc.), fake jewelry, fake jeans, etc., etc., etc. We tried to leave twice but we couldn't step over the people sleeping on the stairs.

We finally escaped the shit hole and tried to walk around. A nice guy approached us and struck up a conversation and said that he was headed to his shop and he would show us some sights on his way. Since he was 5' 3", 100lbs, and 50 years old we didn't feel too threatened and we proceeded to walk to a Hindu Temple. It was interesting. Then for some reason we all hopped in an auto-rickshaw and we went to another temple. Again, it was interesting. We went inside, saw some sights, eh. Again, we got into an auto-rickshaw with this guy and he took us to a 'credible tour company'. We went inside and we listened to a tour they had for a little over an hour. We tried to ditch our little friend but we were too nice and we couldn't shake him. We requested to be taken to the Government of India Tour Office. He obliged and we were taken to what we were told was the Government of India Tour Office. We sat down, were told this was the official Government of India Tour Office and we listened. 5 minutes in we realized that these guys were full of shit. When the tour company representative went to get us some tea we snuck out.

We were now lost in New Delhi with no one to contact and the sun was setting. We quickly asked some credible looking people where the Metro station was and we were directed in the right direction. We hoped onto the Metro (packed like sardines) and made it back to our hotel. We arrived at our hotel at 6pm and we never left that night.

We realized that we were fucked. I worked on the hotel's computer trying to make an itinerary in India (avoiding Delhi) while Lara looked for American tour companies that had India tours available. Luckily, Lara was able to find a reputable tour company and at 2am we booked our India tour. Unfortunately, our India trip went from being our least expensive to our most expensive.

You might notice that we don't have any pictures on this post. That's because we only took one picture while in Delhi that day and it wasn't even that good. We've been averaging ~100 pictures a day, but because we were so afraid of taking our camera out we only took one picture from our window while we ate lunch.

The next morning we were picked up by the tour company's car and things changed.

Istanbul - Delhi

2009-10-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

Istanbul to Delhi was truly the most memorable air trip I've ever made. After saying our good-byes with the Foresmans we headed to Atuturk International Airport in Turkey. Anything related to transportation in Turkey has incredible security. The hotel we stayed at, a Courtyard by Marriott, has guards at the driveway to the hotel which stop every car has it enters the driveway and check for bombs under the car. Then, once you get inside the hotel you have to go through a metal detector, similar to an airport. At Istanbul airport you have to go through a security line before you even enter the airport, metal detectors and x-rays. Once you receive your boarding pass and check your bags you go through a second round of metal detectors and x-rays. We had to go through the same security precautions in the Izmir airport. It really makes you appreciate how safe America is, even though we think it isn't.

We boarded the plane, Qatar Airways, and went off to Doha, our transfer airport. Qatar Airways hypes itself up in its commercials as 'the world's only five star airline' so we were both excited to try it out. The flight attendants were no Agean Air flight attendants and there was nothing special about the cabin, but the food was awesome. I sampled the lamb and Lara had the default chicken. The lamb was exquisite and the pairing with the Hunter Valley syrah was like Sunny and Cher.

Our flight path from Istanbul to Doha was also extraordinary. We flew the complete length of Iraq, flying over Mosul, Kirkuk and Baghdad. Unfortunately, the skies were overcast and we couldn't see much. As the plane left Iraq we got to see a great sunset over the Tigris River delta. Amazing. We approached Qatar at night. As we flew in we could see oil rigs and refineries as far as the eye could see. The refineries of Richmond, California can't shake a stick at Qatar. The flames from the refineries and oil rigs literally illuminated the ground over what looked like the entire country.

We eventually made it to Doha Airport. We were both stoked about going through Doha Airport because you always hear about the incredible wealth and amount of money spent on infrastructure in the gulf and we figured Doha Airport would show it. Wrong. The airport is a glorified bus terminal. Planes land 1/4 mile away and a bus takes you to and from the terminal. We decided to sample the Doha Airport food court at what appeared to be an A&W. With some leftover GBPs (British pounds) we purchased two root beer floats and some onion rings, which came out to about $20. Without a doubt, they were the worst onion rings and root beer float I've ever had. Helping its case to being one of the worst airports the Doha International makes public announcements in English and Arabic for everything, loudly, everywhere. For the entire 2.5 hours we spent in the airport we never had silence from the PA. Then we went to the gate....... and got a free upgrade to business class. SCORE!!!!!

Business class isn't that great..... HAH! I couldn't kick the seat in front of me if I wanted to. My first decisions on the plane were what kind of beverage to have first (Laurent-Perrier Champagne) and what vibration setting to make for my seat massager. We tried to act cool and make it look like we fly business class all the time but utterly failed due to all the laughing and picture taking. A little after we left Doha we flew over Dubai and could see the palm tree-shaped peninsula that Dubai has created in the Persian Gulf. Another amazing site.

The flight lasted only 2.5 hours and we knew we were in for a complete change once we got off the plane.

Istanbul, Turkey

2009-10-20T20:19:00.000-07:00

Turkey is a big country with mediocre roads, so we decided to fly from Izmir (near Pamukkale) to Istanbul. Nothing special about the flight or arrival at our hotel. Upon getting settled in our hotel we set about for a dinning experience which is exactly what we got. At the concierge's suggestion we went to a restaurant nearby which features belly dancers. We were seated near the dance floor with your blogger nearest the dance floor. I'm sure you already know where this is headed. The first belly dancer wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing (she was a butterface), but what she lacked in looks she made up for with stage presence. Towards the end of her routine she decided to get the audience participating so she pulls me up on stage. She told me to just follow her moves. Now I'll admit, I'm no Kevin Federline, but anyone that has been at a wedding with me knows that I have some killer moves; the shopping cart, sprinkler, modified worm and lawnmower to name a few. Unfortunately, these moves aren't traditional belly dance material so I was completely at her mercy. I was wiggling my belly pretty well and keeping up with her. Then she dropped to the floor over her knees, like in a limbo. I painfully followed suit. We got up and then she pinched my cheek, I followed her and pinched her cheek. Then she grabbed my butt, I grabbed her butt. Then she pinched my nipple, I pinched her nipple. Yes, I pinched a belly dancer's nipple in front of my wife and in-laws. The belly dancer acted surprised and then started more belly dancing, which I followed. The belly dancer then ended the performance by asking for a kiss on the cheek, which I obliged. Then the belly dancer asked for a kiss in between her breast. At that point I threw in the towel and said no. She thanked me and I walked off the stage to an applause. Lara and her parents all said I did well and they weren't upset that I pinched the belly dancer's nipple. But come on, what kind of in-laws would get upset seeing their son-in-law pinch a dancer's nipple in front of them?

The next morning we tackled Istanbul. We started by visiting Topkapi Palace. Topkapi Palace is a sprawling palace with great museums and views of the city. We explored the palace for a few hours and had a good time. We hit up the Grand Bazaar after Topkapi Palace. The Grand Bazaar is a massive, enclosed bazaar with hundreds of stores. Like most bazaars, there were hundreds of shops, but only a few different stores. Even with the repetition it was definitely an incredible experience.

In our second full day in Istanbul we hit up the big sites. First thing in the morning (11am) we headed for the Hagia Sophia. At the Hagia Sophia we hired a guide who gave us a great tour of the Hagie Sophia. It's definitely a place with deep history and we really enjoyed the tour. After the Hagia Sophia we walked across the courtyard to the Sultanahmet Mosque, aka the Blue Mosque. The Blus Mosque is Istabul's most notable landmark. It's a huge, blue covered mosque with tall Minarets. It's truly a sight.

With another check mark on the '1000 places to see before you die' list we headed back to the hotel. On the way back we walked along Istanbul's contemporary shopping street which was pretty cool. We used Istanbul's light-rail to get around as well as a funicular. Even though I've now been on two of Istanbul's funiculars I still don't know what they are.

Early the next morning the Foresmans left and we said our goodbyes. A few hours later we bid Turkey adieu and headed out for India.

Turkey, Bodrom - Pamukkale

2009-10-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

To go from Santorini to Turkey we decided to take a ferry. Our previous ferry experiences (insert derogatory gay joke here) was the Blue & Gold fleet in San Francisco Bay and some other small domestic ferries. What we got was a cruise ship like experience. The ride from Santorini to Kos, a Greek island close to Turkey, was only 3 hours but we (Lara and I) had our own cabin with bathroom and shower. In the common area of the ferry was a movie theatre and several bars including a nice outdoor sitting area. Since we had a long day ahead of us we decided to catch some sleep.

We arrived at Kos at 6am and we had made arrangements to take a ferry from Kos (Greece) to Bodrom (Turkey) at 4pm. Upon arriving in Bodrom we would rent a car and drive 3+ hours to Pamukkale. When we actually arrived in Kos we walked around the waterfront and realized there were 2 dozen boats that all advertised that they do Turkey excursions to Bodrom at 9am. We signed up for one of these guys and headed out at 9am.

The ride from Kos to Bodrom was definitely not the cruise ship like experience we had just had from Santorini to Kos. The boat was the ferry like experience we were expecting including high winds and rough waters. When we crossed the maritime border halfway in our trip the boat lowers the Greek flag and raises the Turkish flag. We're not sure why they do this, but we took a picture of us showing 7, the number of countries we had now visited on our journey.

The border crossing in Turkey went smoothly, but since we had made plans to arrive in Turkey at 5pm and we had arrived at 10am, we had to wait a bit until our rental car arrived. We waited for the car to arrive at the Bodrom marina. At 12pm sharp the call to prayer went out. Hearing the mosques all around us make the call to prayer was a quick reminder that we're in a Muslim country. It was also the first time any of us had witnessed a call to prayer. Of course it wasn't so much a call to prayer has just a guy chanting over a loud speaker. Nothing changed or occurred in this bustling town during or after the call.

The drive from Bodrom to Pamukkale was 4 hours of the craziest driving I had ever experienced. Lara's dad, Mike, was our driver and did a great job. The German Autobahn has nothing on Turkey's roads. The quality of the roads isn't that great and the drivers fly on them. 80km speed limit on a winding two lane mountain road, people were flying by us at 120km in a no passing lane. The drive was a little crazy, but totally amazing. This was the first time that we got away from cities and towns because we had been travelling via train exclusively. We were able to see small villages and stop at road side stores. Even going to the bathroom was an experience. Of course the worst experience was filling up the gas tank.... $135 to fill up a small SUV gas tank. Ouch.

The next morning we went to Pamukkale. Pamukkale is a small town in the southwest/south central area of Turkey. It has natural warm springs with a very high mineral content. Because of this, the hillsides of Pamukkale are white from the calcium deposits that have been built up over the millenia. Pamukkale was once a large Roman colony, built for the warm springs. The real reason we came here though is because Lara wrote a report on Turkey in grade school and ever since she has wanted to visit Pamukkale. Pamukkale is very cool. We zipped through the 'junkyard' of the old Roman colony and then went to the hot pools. There is a large pool that has been built around some Roman ruins so that you can swim in the Roman ruins. I passed it up, but Lara and her mom could no resist. I have to admit it looked very cool.

One thing we noticed upon arriving in Turkey was the near complete disappearance of American tourists. Taking the place of American tourists in Pamukkale were Russian tourists who absolutely loved the hot springs and took more glamor shots than Japanese tourists, amazing.

After the hot springs we ventured out and explored the white hillsides. From a short distance the hillsides appear to be covered in snow and ice. In reality they are just white from the calcium and are very smooth. The water that flows over the area is also very warm. It was a completely unique place.

Santorini, Greece

2009-10-15T18:34:00.000-07:00

This entire trip we've been extremely fortunate with weather. It hasn't rained a drop on us and with the exception of some partly cloudy weather here and there it's been almost completely sunny. Our weather in Oktoberfest was even described by some locals as the best in a century. Appearantly, the weather gods were taking a break when we arrived in Santorini. When we arrived in Santorini's airport it was cloudy and a little breazy. By the time we got to our hotel in the middle of town it felt like a full blown hurricane. As you can see in the picture, Lara isn't falling, she's just trying to fight the wind to get to our room. Since the weather wasn't being conducive for going to the beach the four of us explored the small town. We found the best gyro place ever, McDaniels. I think the owner was trying to play off of Jack Daniels as much as possible because Jack Daniel's face and logo were plastered everywhere but no the name 'Jack Daniels'. The secret to these awesome gyros, french fries. It adds about 500 calories and 20g of fat, but it tastes so good. It took us a few hours to explore the town and then the four of us went back to our hotel to ride out the storm. The reason we could see the town with the storm going on was because the town doesn't have any streets wider than 12 feet so we're protected from the wind almost the entire time.

Our hotel was awesome. Almost the entire hotel complex was in caves. Although our room didn't really have windows, the entry overlooked the cove of the island and our room totally felt like a cave. It was a cool cave though, Fred Flinstone would definitely be jealous.

The next day the sun started to come out and we decided to rent ATVs and explore the island. Checking out the island on ATVs was awesome. The island isn't very big so we were able to get from the center to the farthest part in less than 1/2 an hour. The four of us went to two beaches, stopping at a winery on the way. When the sun started to go down we set out for the opposite side of the island to watch the sunset. We caught the sunset from a rooftop restaurant as we ate a great dinner.

The weather was even better for our third day in Santorini. Since it was sunny and hot we decided to walk down to the old port of the island. The old port of Santorini is just that, it's the old port that is now used exclusively for small boats ferrying tourists to and from cruise ships and the nearby islands. The old port is also 588 steps down from the town and is serviced by a small gondola and pack mules. For the hike back up to town Lara and here mom, Maureen, decided to mule it. Your's truely acted as their personal photographer and was instructed to 'run up Tim and get a good picture' and 'you need to go faster to get a good picture'. Lara and Maureen had a great time riding the mules, I was a little winded.

To cool off we decided to ATV to the beach. The beach we found was great. The beach itself was good, but the food they served was one of the best lunches I've ever had. We thought we were ordering a mixed plate, instead we got a mixed seafood plate filled with local specialties and attractively displayed. We also had some cocktails. As you can see, we were definitely enjoying ourselves.

As the sun went away we headed back to town for our last few hours on Santorini. We had yet another great dinner in a rooftop restaurant. This one though, was on the crest of the island and allowed you to view both sides of this C-shaped island, very cool.

After dinner we gathered our stuff and headed to the ferry port of Santorini to catch our ferry to Bodrom, Turkey.....

Athens, Greece

2009-10-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

Lots of people told us that Rome was an incredibly beautiful city that you can't not love and it didn't live up to all of its hype. So when lots of people told us that Athens was just a dirty, busy city with not much to it we didn't know what to expect. After spending a few days in Athens I argue it's a beautiful city with a busy city life, deep history, and pocketed with quiet neighborhoods.

We left Rome in the evening on an Aegean Airlines flight (most attractive flight attendants I've ever seen) and got into Athens Airport at 11:30pm. After negotiating the great Athens public transportation system we arrived at our subway stop at 1:00am. What really surprised Lara and I was how many people were just leaving to go out at 1:00am. I'm not talking about club going 18 year olds, I'm talking about 50 somethings going out for a nice dinner. I think my parents have been up past 1am once in the past ten years and that was because I set their clocks 6 hours fast as a prank. When we got to the hotel we met up with the Foresmans (Lara's parents), who were joining us from Athens to Istanbul (12 days). They had arrived a few hours earlier and had discovered the roof pool/restaurant of our hotel. The four of us went upstairs for a glass of wine and to admire the incredible view.

No, not the view of Nielsen's Athens office which just happened to be across the street from the hotel.

This view. That's the Parthenon lit up just a mile away from our hotel.

In our first day in Athens we checked out the Parthenon and Acropolis. The Parthenon is the large columned building that everyone knows. The Acropolis is Greek for 'high city', which is where the Parthenon and several other temples are located. (The more you know). Between us and the Acropolis is a nice stretch of shops and restaurants with the brand new Acropolis Museum in the middle of the neighborhood. We grabbed a quick bite to eat, which turned into the best meal Lara and I had had in over a week, then set out for the Acropolis and other cool areas around it. We toured the Greek equivalent of the Roman Forum, a large area of ancient ruins, or as Lara put it, a junkyard. Without a guide the Greek Forum is pretty uninteresting and we ascented the Acropolis. From atop the Acropolis you have this incredible view of the city and then when you realize that you are in the shadow of these 2000 year old temples and walking in the footsteps of Plato and Socrates, you realize this is a special place. After the Acropolis we checked out the Acropolis Museum which was not only a great museum, but at 1Euro entrance and a nice lunch for only 6Euro, it's quite the price performer. With our legs and brains tired, the four of us had dinner on a rooftop terrace that was spectacular and then called it a night.

For our second day in Athens we decided to see ....... more ancient ruins! We started the day by walking through an ancient Greek archaeological area, which was ok. After the archaeological area we walked through the Greek National Garden to the parliament building (again, ok) and then we made it over to the Greek tomb of the unknown soldier. Guarding the tomb are two Greek soldiers dressed in traditional Hellenic attire. On the half hour they perform a patrol of the tomb which is crazy. The best way to describe it is it's like an ostrich mating dance. I think the crazy outfits say a little of what I'm talking about.

We finished our day just like the day before, having a great dinner overlooking the Acropolis. We left Athens early the next morning for Santorini. After visiting Athens for the first time, the four of us were all very impressed and think it's definitely a place to visit.

Still Alive, part II (Athens)

2009-10-11T12:55:00.000-07:00

Just like Rome, Lucca, and Cinque Terre, Athens has a lack of free wireless or even wired connections to hook up a laptop to the internet. That means we can't upload the hundreds of pictures we've taken the past week or the blog posts we've drafted. We'll post messages about Cinque Terre, Pisa, Lucca, and Rome as soon as possible.

Rome,Italy Days 2 & 3

2009-10-09T03:06:00.000-07:00

Like receiving a chemistry set from Santa one Christmas, our visit to Rome was kind of disappointing. My thought of Rome before our visit was one of a city with incredible beauty, history and food. After visiting Rome, I can say it has some cool history. As for the food and attractiveness.....

Our first day in Rome, as you can tell from the earlier post, went well. Our second day in Rome was OK. By our third day in Rome (and twelfth day in Italy) we were checking on getting an earlier flight to Athens.

What I haven't mentioned in my earlier posts on Italy is the complete lack of any non-Italian food in Italy. THERE IS NO OTHER FOOD IN ITALY BESIDES PIZZERIAS, GELATERIAS, CAFES, AND OSTERIAS. NONE. And Italian food isn't that good. We've eaten at a few nice restaurants, a few mid-priced restaurants, and lots of street vendors and mom-and-pop fast food joints. Lara and I both had a nice pasta dish at two separate nice restaurants. My dish was a spaghetti carbonara (very similar to a great dish my mom makes) and Lara's memorable dish was a pesto pasta dish in Riomagiore. Besides these two meals, not a single Italian meal has been memorable for a good reason. What we've found is that nice Italian restaurants will actually make your food. Mid to lower tier Italian restaurants reheat your food. This applies to pizza, pasta and focacia, the only meals you can find in Italy.

If you would like to try an authentic Italian pizza at home follow my recipe:

1) Call Dominoes Pizza and order a thin crust plain cheese pizza

2) When the pizza is delivered proceed to put it in the refrigerator

3) Let rest for 24 hours

4) Thaw pizza for 3 hours at room temperature

5) Place pizza in toaster oven for 5 minutes at 200'

6) Serve (but charge any guests $3 for a glass of water)

If you would like to make the pizza focacia style follow steps 1-4, fold pizza in half, then place in a George Foreman Grill on medium for 2 minutes.

I digress.

We decided to see the Roman Coliseum and Forum our second day in Rome as well as some other sights. When we arrived at the Coliseum we were approached by a man selling tours of the Coliseum and Roman Forum. Since we weren't too impressed by the audio guide in St. Peter's Basilica we decided to give the guide a try. We paid our $50 and waited for the tour to start. 40 minutes later we actually started. The guide of the Coliseum was a little lady who spoke into a megaphone and showed us pictures in a book. Her 'tour' was basically just reading the Lonely Planet - Italy's description on the Coliseum word-for-word. Very lame. The Colosseum is cool though. By the time our tour group organized again we were about to leave and go off on our own. Just as we were about to leave we got a new tour guide who gave us a bang-up tour of the Forum that lasted 2 hours. Overall, the tour guide was worth it, but it definitely started on a bad note.

After our Roman history lesson we walked to the Italy's tomb of the unknown soldier and huge monument to the Republic. At the monument we watched an Asian lady let her toddler sit and pee right in front of the tomb, awkward, but very entertaining.

We walked around Rome for the rest of the evening, struggling to find a good looking place to eat.

I also got in a height measuring contest with a Roman truck, I won.

We did find a pastry place that makes cannolies. Lara was in search of good cannolies and after 10 days in Italy we finally found a place. The lady at the shop made it right in front of us. We were later told that cannolies are actually Sicilian and Italians don't make them.

In our last day in Rome we took the subway straight to the Vatican so we could hike the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. On a side note, Rome's subway is efficient and timely, but dark, gross and everything is covered in graffiti. The dome was awesome. We hiked all 551 steps to the top where were treated to incredible views of the city. On the way to the top of the dome we walked around the catwalk inside the dome where we got to be up close to the frescoes in the ceiling. From the floor of the Basilica the pictures look like paintings but the dome is actually covered with small-tiled frescoes, amazing.

We walked back to our hostel from the Vatican stopping at a few sights. We stopped at Trevi Fountain and tossed our coins into the fountain (we both forgot to make wishes though). We spent some time at the Spanish Steps. One of the most annoying things in Italy which we haven't mentioned are the rose peddlers. These men, almost all Pakistani, Sri Lankan, or Bangledashi, walk around with roses and try to sell them to people. We were first approached in Venice when we were having a nice dinner (the scenery, not food). The rose seller approached us, asked us if we wanted a rose, and we said no. The rose seller then gave us the rose by putting it on the table, smiling, and walking away. We thought, 'what a nice gesture'. Wrong. The rose seller then stood 20 feet away and stared at me for 5 minutes until I gave him a euro to leave me alone. Since then, we've discovered that these rose sellers have a standard protocol which we watched on the Spanish Steps. They see a couple and offer to sell a rose to the couple. If the couple rejects it they will give the couple a rose and smile. They then follow the couple and make it well known that they want payment. If the couple doesn't pay the rose seller will walk over and grab the rose away. The worst trick they have is when a couple is taking a picture at a nice spot the rose seller will smile and offer to take a picture, using the couple's camera, of the couple. The rose seller will even give them a rose to hold for the picture. When the couple then asks for the camera back, the seller refuses to give it to them until he receives 5 euros for the rose they didn't ask for. It's truly disgusting when they do this, but from a distance it is entertaining watching their schemes.

We eventually got back to our hostel and made it over to the train station to get to the airport for our flight to Athens.

Parting thoughts on Rome. Tradition states that when you are at Trevi Fountain you are supposed to toss two coins over your left shoulder, like we did. One coin will grant a wish and the other coin means you will come back to the city. I wouldn't be disappointed if the tradition doesn't work out.

Rome, Italy Day 1

2009-10-07T13:51:00.000-07:00

Rome didn't make a good first impression on us. We arrived by train and from the first train station on the outskirts of town to our train station in heart of Rome all we could see from our seat was strip after strip of old, gritty apartments covered in graffiti. Our hostel, the Funny Palace, was located three blocks from the train station in the African district. Again, the walk from the train station to the hostel, was anything but a display of historical beauty. After getting situated in our hostel we headed out around the city, but since we left our Lonely Planet - Italy book in our room we felt completely lost and decided to just kick back in our hostel and check in with some incredibly worried parents.

The following morning, Wednesday, we were able to score tickets to the Papal Mass in St. Peter's Square. We headed straight for the Vatican, waited in line for a little bit and when they finally opened up the square we got an incredible seat. We sat in the front row of the second section right next to a Swiss Guard. We spent the next two hours sitting in the square taking it all in and talking with the Swiss Guard. As the ceremony started the Pope made his entrance. As you can see from the video and pictures we had kind of a good seat. :)

The Pope made not one, but two passes right in front of us. We were within spitting distance of the Pope, much less the Popemobile (although the Swiss Guards might not look like it, I'm confident they would have stopped any loogies had I attempted that were within spitting distance). For a non-Catholic I can attest it was very cool seeing the Pontiff drive by you.

The mass was definitely the best mass I've attended. I know that isn't saying much, but it was very cool. The Pope said some prayers in Latin then five bishops announced to the Pope what countries were attending from the bishops' languages (French, English, German, Italian and Russian). After announcing what country was being represented in attendance the people of that country would cheer, like a shout-out. By a huge margin the United States was the largest country in attendance. Easily four times larger than the second largest country in attendance (Italy). Each bishop would also name some large groups that were in attendance. The Italian bishop mentioned the Italian Military Academy, the American bishop mentioned a large convent in attendance, etc. When mass ended were very impressed and a little sunburned.

Since we were in Vatican City we decided to do all the sights there. We first hit St. Peter's Basilica. The Basilica is by far the largest church I've ever been in. It easily rivals the Astrodome-styled mega churches found in middle America. We took an audio guided tour of the basilica to better appreciate it. The artwork in the basilica is fantastic. There is a fantastic Michelangelo sculpture as you enter as well as dozens of other great paintings by other famous painters. The audio guide definitely helped us appreciate this church more than others. However, after hearing about 30 different popes and why busts were made of them, we were ready to leave. We realized that we only had 20 minutes to get to the Sistine Chapel before it closed so we ran around the Vatican to the Sistine Chapel and we were able to get in.

We had to walk half a mile through the halls and museums of the Vatican to finally get to the Sistine Chapel, but when we got there it did not disappoint. The chapel is absolutely beautiful. Since we were some of the last people into the chapel we were able to sit down on a bench and really enjoy the room. Lara was able to snag some really nice, illegal photos of the chapel as well ('Pull my Finger' on the left). We left the Vatican tired and very appreciative of the incredible experiences we just had.

We also left the Vatican very hungry and we set out to try to find a non-touristy area of Rome to eat dinner in. We kind of found that cool area in the Trastevere neighborhood. Trastevere is a cool little neighborhood with reasonably priced pizzerias and restaurants and cool shops. We found a cute little restaurant and I proceeded to eat like an Italian. I had a four course meal and completely gorged myself. We left Trastevere with our goals completed; we found a non-touristy area and fed ourselves.

We got back to the Funny Palace pretty happy with our first day in Rome.

Pisa & Lucca, Italy

2009-10-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

With the weather turning we made a meteoroligical decision to leave Cinque Terre and check out some other Italian towns. Our every trusty Lonely Planet - Italy book advised us that Lucca is a cool city that shouldn't be missed when visiting Tuscany (the Italian state we were in). To get to Lucca you have to transfer trains in Pisa, home of the Leaning Tower of course. When we got to Pisa we decided to take a detour and see the Leaning Tower. Let's just say the Leaning Tower isn't worth going to Pisa for.

After spending way too much time on Italian train platforms (inexperience, language, and train delays) we arrived in Lucca. Lonely Planet was right, yet again. Lucca is a neat town that was a cool visit. It has a 4k long wall surrounding the old town and inside is an area with some cool shops, restaurants, and, of course, old churches. We wanted to go to some Tuscan wineries, but we discovered that Italians don't really do wineries the way Americans do, wine tasting and all. So we decided to stop by a cool little wine bar on top of the wall.

One thing you didn't see included in that list, nightlife. When the sun sets and the shops and restaurants start to close the entire town shuts down. We had another night of going to bed at 9pm, lame.

We are still alive

2009-10-06T09:54:00.000-07:00

To all of our loyal followers and extremely worried parents, we are still alive. We've been in Cinque Terre and Lucca the past few days. Cinque Terre is a remote area on the west coast of Italy and Lucca is a little town in Tuscany. Neither places we stayed in had internet access. Our current hostel, the Funny Palace, has an internet cafe on the first floor so we'll update more.

Cinque Terre, Italy

2009-10-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

Vienna, Prague, Munich, Venice, Florence. City, city, city, city, city. We were ready for a break from the hustle and bustle of the city life and we got exactly that from Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is a county or group of five towns (cinque terre means 'five lands' in Italian) that are nestled in the Italian cliffside. From east to west the towns are Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterosso. Without any knowledge of what the towns were like we decided to stay at Riomaggiore. The train from Florence to Cinque Terre appeared to be over half American, with most of them college students taking a weekend in Cinque Terre while studying abroad. When we got 30 minutes away from our transfer station 50 screaming eight year old Italian kids and their teachers came onto our train and demanded our seats. Apparently, the school reserved the entire car for them to travel on. This quickly explained why the train car was packed with Americans, none of us could read the sign posted on the door to the train car saying, in Italian, 'car reserved'. Stupid Americans. After finishing the last 1/2 hour of our train ride in a 8 foot x 8 foot compartment with 20 Pepperdine college students we arrived at Riomaggiore.

When we got off the train we both looked at eachother and said that this was the best train station we've ever seen. The view from the station (on the right) shows why. We took the tunnel from the station to the town and again, were completely blown away by the beauty of this little town. The town was exactly what you would think a small Italian fishing village would be. Rowboats were constantly arriving with their day's catch, soon to be listed on the chalkboards of all the restaurants. The entire hillside, outside of the town, is terraced with grape and olive groves. It's kind of like Sonoma Valley on the ocean. The entire town is built into the hillside so there isn't a flat part of town. Although the office for our hostel is 100 yards from the marina in the town's only street, the home we were staying in was about a quarter mile away and about 100 yards up.

We spent the remainder of the day kayaking, swimming, making comments about Italian swim attire and just bumming around. The picture on the left is us kayaking in front of Riomaggiore.

The next morning we decided to do the famous seaside walk from Riomaggiore to the farthest terre, Monterosso. The first stretch of the trail, from Riomaggiore to Manarola is called Lovers' Lane. It's a gorgeous 1K walk that shouldn't be missed. Unfortunately, a Royal Caribean cruise ship felt the same way. The entire walk was packed with people and we were almost ready to turn around. Once we got to Manarola the pavement and crowds went away. For the remainder of the walk we stopped at each town and tried some wine while we rested. The trail between each town is a rugged path along the cliff that is constantly changing elevation. The sign to the right definitely says it right. Just before we got to Monterosso we took a turn and ended up at a cove all by ourselves. We dropped our stuff and went swimming in this fantastic cove without a sole in sight.

Monterosso was definitely the largest and most commercial town and we decided to head back to our terre, Riomaggiore, for dinner. To illustrate how small this community is we were guided to the right train by some college girls that ate dinner next to us the night before. On the train we sat next to the same annoying group of 'social scientists' as we did for the train ride from Florence to Cinque Terre. We got off the train at Manarola and bumped into a guy that we took a picture for on top of the Duomo in Florence. At a bar in between Manarola and Riomaggiore we stopped by and talked to the same English foursome that we chatted with at a bar two terres ago. And when we finally reached our terre and decided to stop at the cantina we sat next to our Australian housemates.

As luck would have it our housemates, Shannon and Ali, were super cool and the four of us, plus a Canadian couple at the cantina as well, knocked off about 5 bottles of wine and shut the cantina down. On our way back from the cantina to our house we stopped and split another two bottles of wine while the four of us talked and marvelled at the incredible view.

The next day the sun and our cool housemates went away and we spent the remainder of the day kicking back, resting, and exploring the last bits of town that we hadn't seen.

Cinque Terre was awesome and should definitely be on everyone's list of places to see if you are in Italy.

Florence, Italy

2009-10-01T07:26:00.001-07:00

After a day in Florence I have to say that it is the most beautiful city we've been in so far, and that says a lot. The trip from Venice to the Florence train station, to our hostel in downtown Florence was pleasantly uneventful. Once unpacked, we headed out to explore the city. We aimlessly walked around the city and ended up on the opposite side of the river from the main city and climbed a hill to eat our lunch. The view from the top was amazing (-->).

We watched the sun slowly set over the city from the top of the hill, then we walked down to the main bridge and river walk and again were amazed at the beauty of the city.

When we got back to the city center we checked out the Basilica di' Santa Croce. The Santa Croce is definitely the best old church we've seen, and we've seen our fair share of old churches. Not only is it stunning from the outside, but the history and art inside of it is equally amazing. The church has the tombs of Dante, Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and many other famous Italians. Pretty cool.

We finished our stroll by walking around the Piazza dell Signoria (that's Plaza of the Signoria for the non-Italian readers). The piazza is filled with ancient statues (albeit some are replicas) that are incredible. The shear volume of sculptures really surprised me. The statues of rape scenes and men getting their heads chopped off surprised Lara.

The following day (Thursday 10/1) was our 'Museum Day'. We followed the advice of our invaluable Lonely Planet - Italy book and purchased tickets to the Galleria dell' Academia (David) and Galleria Uffizi ahead of time to avoid the lines and set out. Our first stop was the Academia to see the Statue of David. The museum itself wasn't anything to blog home about, but the Statue of David was. Seeing this incredible piece of work really makes me wish I had paid more attention in my art history class. I think Lara's highlight of the trip to the Academia was sneaking a picture of David when we weren't supposed to (that's me to the left acting as an accomplice).

After David we headed to the Duomo (huge dome in the first picture). The Duomo wasn't as cool as the Santa Croce inside, but the climb to the top of the dome and the view from the top can't be beat. 463 tight, narrow steps to the top; not for the faint of heart.

With our cardio workout complete for the day, we headed to the Uffizi. The Uffizi is billed as the national art gallery of Italy. Inside, we saw works of art from Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, and Master Splinter. Like the plaza outside, the volume of pieces of work, especially from artists I've actually heard of, was incredible. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the museum made it painful. There are 55 rooms displaying thousands of paintings, sculptures, murals, and even globes. We spent 2.5 hours walking the museum, of which, 1.5 hours were spent walking by paintings of 'Madonna with Child'. I'm not joking.

To the Canals of Venice!

2009-09-30T05:32:00.001-07:00

After waking up from our nine-hour train ride, we were in Venice! We arrived just before sunrise (around 6:45am), so we were able to find a great spot to watch - a bridge over a canal of course! After the sunrise, we decided to find our hotel. Only problem... we didn't have the name or address of our hotel, so we started a 2.5-hour search for free Wi-fi or an open internet cafe. We finally found an internet cafe and then our hotel - Hotel Zecchini. Once our packs were secure, we were ready to wander the streets of Venice.

We saw the Grand Canal, the Rialto Bridge, San Marco, Santa Maria della Salute and many other amazing churches and buildings. Gelato, masks, pastries and restaurants were everywhere! While the sites were amazing, my favorite part was wandering all of the pedestrian-only streets (no vehicles of any kind allowed on Venice). The Vaporetto (water taxi) proved to be a great way to get back to our starting point once we walked the length of the Grand Canal. The sites and sounds of the city of Venice are spectacular.

Venice pics are up on Picasa now!!

Observations on Venice...

Bring lots of tissues and allergy medicine if you are allergic to mold.

The romantic allure of a gondola ride is off-set by the Vegas-like antics of the gondoliers trying to entice you to take a ride.

The masks in Venice are amazing, but look for a store where the person is actually making the masks if you want to bring one home.

Write down the name of your hotel and its address prior to getting to Venice because there is no Wi-Fi and internet shops don't open until after 10am.

Set aside your map and enjoy the streets... you will get to your destination eventually.

Venice is small...two days was plenty of time to feel the romantic charm of the city.

Oktoberfest (by Tim)

2009-09-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

We spent the entire day drinking, singing German songs, eating sausages, and watching incredibly gorgeous women walk around in drindels; it was a good day.

Like the professional partiers we are, we got to the Oktoberfest before it opened and went to one of the best tents, the Paulaner. We got a table that we split with a group of Italians and an American, Zack, who moved to Italy two years ago. Zack speaks no Italian and will travel to Kazakistan next month - awesome guy.

After two hours of being in the tent, we realized that Germans only know two songs, which I believe contain a total of 12 words, and they sing them every 10 minutes. Italians on the other hand, sing the same tune from a White Stripes song about every 10 minutes, usually in response to the Germans singing their drinking song. Another discovery we made is that the beer and pretzels at Oktoberfest are great, but although it looks good, dipping the pretzel in beer does not taste good; it's kind of like pickles and milk.

After a few hours at the Paulaner, we decided to try our luck at a different beer tent; this time we headed to the Hippodrom. After sneaking inside and then waiting in line for an hour, we finally got to resume our partying. Again, absolutely fantastic time. I can't overstate how incredible Oktoberfest is.

We capped the day by spending the evening at another beer tent drinking and trying to learn German. Parting thought: beer and the drindel are the greatest inventions to come out of Bavaria, if only you could combine them into one.....

- All of our Munich and Oktoberfest pictures can be seen here

Oktoberfest in Munich!

2009-09-28T05:21:00.000-07:00

What an amazing experience! We were told that each tent holds 10,000 people (I am not so sure that I believe that) and man is it fun to drink and sing with 10,000 of your closest German and Italian friends (it was Italian weekend)! The beer was actually really good, the chicken was amazing, but I think my favorite part was the pretzels! Huge, fresh and soft on the inside! Tim's favorite part was the Drindl outfits (you will see evidence of this by the pictures that he, Kenny and Josh took at the event). All I can say is bring on David!

The other best part about Oktoberfest... we were able to nab two beer steins from the tents!! One from the Hippodrom and one from the Hofbrauhaus! Prost!!

Btw... Kenny is our friend from San Francisco. He used to work with Tim at Ernst and Young, but he works for Cisco now out of Amsterdam. As some of you may remember, we visited Kenny for Queen's Day in Amsterdam earlier this year. Kenny brought his friend Josh to party it up with us at Oktoberfest.

We woke up Sunday morning and for some reason, Tim did not feel like drinking anymore, so we headed out to explore the city of Munich. Munich looks more like a typical US city than any of the European cities that I have been to before. A lot busier (paritally due to Oktoberfest), more businesses and chain stores, and more car traffic. It did have a number of gorgeous buildings and churches. The best part about Munich, besides Oktoberfest of course, was the English Garden - very similar to Golden Gate Park. We spent a couple hours there walking around and looking at the sites, as well as taking a break to listen to one of the many bands playing in the park.

After enjoying the park, we headed to a beer haus for weiners and kraut. Then, we headed to the train station for our nine-hour, overnight ride to Venice. The train was a sleeper train, so the chairs were removed and beds were in their place - three beds stacked on top of each other with six beds total in each room - sounds a little cramped, but it was actually quite comfy for me (Tim may have a different opinion).

View Oktoberfest pics here.

Observations on Munich...

Germans are a lot of fun and they can drink!! However, I never saw a drunk German... drunk Italians, drunk Americans, but no drunk Germans.

A drindl can make even an unattractive woman attractive... or maybe it was the beer.

Get to English Gardens early during Oktoberfest if you want to see naked Italians.

Munich, Germany

2009-09-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

We left Prague around noon for a Munich-bound train. Like every other 20 something in Europe we were going to Oktoberfest. The train was completely packed for the six-hour ride. By the time the train left the station not only was every seat taken, but every hallway, corridor and open area were filled with people as well.

Munich has a nice, modern train station and cops that don't swindle tourists out of $50. Compared to the crap-hole Prague Station with its crooked cops, Munich already had a leg up on Prague. After Lara and I checked into our hotel; bought a sim card; and spent 2 hours trying to get the sim card to work to call Kenny, we decided to go to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds. Oktoberfest is a lot like the Alameda County Fair (the best fair in the East Bay!), except way cooler, with beer and there's no livestock auction. We sat down at the Hacker beer tent and quickly hit it off with the group next to us. One of the guys in the group insisted I smoke one of his 'Domincan' cigars. Assured they were not Cuban, I tried the cigar... it turned out to be Cuban. As you can tell from the picture, it didn't go well.

The drinking did go well. By the time we all had to leave we were invited to next year's Oktoberfest, stay at our new friend's house in Munich and Lara could even borrow their daughter's drindel. Oktoberfest 2010!

Off to Prague...

2009-09-26T05:09:00.000-07:00

Our first Eurorail trip was a lot of fun. Seeing the countryside of both Austria and the Czech Republic was a cool experience. We sat in a 6-person cochette that was only occupied by four people (the other two people were a professor and a program director from University of Tenesse's accounting department - we ended up seeing them four more times in Prague!).

We arrived in Prague in the morning, eager and ready to explore the city...possibly a little too eager, as we got to the intra-city train platform and missed the sign to validate our ticket. A train cop witnessed this innocent mistake and decided that we were going to pay for our mistake... 700 krowns. After a long conversation and coming to the realization that 700 krowns equates to 30 Euro, we paid the man and left for our Prague journey.

We walked from the train station to our hotel, the lovely Hotel Athena Palace. From our hotel, we started our walk around Prague. We visited the National Museum, Mustek (like Market Street in San Francisco), Henry's Bell Tower, the Poweder Tower, Tyn Church and the Astronomical Clock. And, we ate Trdelnik, an amazing cinnamon-sugar doughnut-like thing, in Staromestske Namesti.

Day two in Prague, we walked through the Havelska Market, where we saw tons of handmade arts and crafts, vegetables and fruits for sale. Then, we headed to the Josefov neighborhood. Josefov is the Jewish area within Prague and houses six Synagogues. All six now contain museums that educate people on the lives of Jewish people in the Czech Republic with a particular focus on pre and post WWII life. One of the most amazing sights that I have seen so far on this trip was that of the 80,000 names of Jewish people from Prague who were murdered during WWII inscribed on the walls of the Pinkas Synagogue. You have no idea what 80,000 names looks like until you see them written on every wall in a Synagogue in size 14ish font. It is truly chilling.

From the Josefov neighborhood, we headed across Charles Bridge to St. Nicolaus Church, Prague Castle, St. Vitus Cathedral and Petrin Tower. During our visit to Prague Castle, we were able to witness the changing of the guards - not very dramatic, but they sure are cute!! We have seen a ton of churches on this trip so far, but the St. Vitus Cathedral has been the most amazing thus far. They are actually getting ready to receive the Pope this weekend in Prague and St. Vitus is one of his stops!

On our walk to the hotel, we came across a couple of interesting spots: the John Lennon Wall, a mill with hundreds of locks attached to the gate and an awesome microbrewery. Check out our pics of Prague!

View our pics of Prague here.

Observations on Prague...

The puppets here are amazing, especially the ones farther from the tourist areas - handmade, wooden, scary and adorable at the same time.

The Soviet influence on the Czech Republic is highly visible in the city's buildings, people and culture. The main attractions in the city are all pre-Soviet buildings.

Vienna Day Two

2009-09-24T04:56:00.000-07:00

Day two in Vienna was eventful as well (I think that all of our days on this journey will be eventful!). We decided to take a train from our hostel to the northern part of the city and then walk from there. After walking through the Vienna hospital for 20-minutes (don't worry Mom, no one was hurt), we were able to see the sights of Vienna: Hofburg Schloss, Stephansplatz, the Rathaus and more! We also toured the Albertina, a musuem that houses Impressionist and modern art. My favorite pieces were titled, "Peeing on someone's rug" and "Spit in someone's soup."

Vienna is known for its opera and we received an insiders tip on how to score cheap tickets. Although neither of us are fond of the opera, we decided to "go for the experience." Plus, at four Euro a piece for Madama Butterfly, you can't beat the price! It was a cool experience to have in Vienna.

Dinner on day two of Vienna, I will never forget. As most of you know, I am an adventerous, picky eater, but I promised Tim that I would try to try new meats on this trip. At the selected restaurant, the menus were all written in German, so I had no clue what to pick, so I suggested two meals to Tim and those were what we ordered. When my dish arrived, I thought, "hmmm this looks interesting..."

First bite, this tastes weird...

Second bite, this doesn't taste like meat...

Third bite, well, that was a potato...

Fourth bite, maybe its crushed lentils...

Our conversation at this point turned to our trip in Ireland when I unknowingly ate an Irish specialty called bread pudding (XX). And I said to Tim, sarcastically, wouldn't it be funny if this was some kind of blood dish...

Fifth bite, I really hope it is crushed lentils...

Sixth bite, I can't eat this any more...

I was done.

When I got back to our hostel, I looked up our dishes... Clotted blood and veal. Can't wait for Prague!!

A couple of observations on Vienna...

In Vienna, we rarely heard people speaking English (maybe five conversations max). However, everyone that we spoke to was either fluent in English or knew enough English to help us out. We overheard one woman saying that students in Vienna must take at least four years of English before they turn 14! I wish it was a requirement for Americans to have that amount of education in a second language by that age as well.

Vienna seemed to be a pretty homogenous city. Mostly caucasian with just a sprinkling of different races. Everyone seemed to act and dress the same. There were no alternative people at all; no rockers, no goths, no supermodels, no punks, no homeless, no elaborately dressed people - no one stood out from the crowd.

I also noticed strategically placed rainbow stickers on select restaurants and businesses throughout the city. I am not too sure if the rainbow stickers were to show gay pride or to say that the restaurant/business was a safe place for gay people to hang out. Any insights on the topic would be appreciated.

Vienna, Austria

2009-09-24T01:50:00.000-07:00

The first city in our trip!

Vienna is gorgeous! We arrived by plane (obviously), hopped on the train to the city and we were downtown in minutes. When we packed our bags we were most concerned about keeping the weight of our backpacks to under 45lbs to avoid the extra fees; however, we really should have worried more about making our bags as light and comfortable as possible, as the 5k walk from the station to our hostel was not very comfortable with 35lb bags that haven't been broken in yet. Once we got to our hostel (The Happy Hostel) we dropped off our bags and explored the city. We checked out the Schonobrunn first. The Schonobrunn is the Austrian response to the Versaille; a beautiful palace with well manicured gardens and parks. We took full advantage of the Schonobrunn gardens by laying in the park and catching up on some sleep.

Vienna has a really cool market along one of its main boulevards with shops and outdoor restaurants in the middle of it. We grabbed a nice meal there.

In our second day of Vienna we walked the whole city. We saw the huge old churches, concert halls, huge old churches, parliament, huge old churches, the Spanish Riding School, huge old churches, the national museum, and lots more. At night we saw the opera 'Madama Butterfly' at the Vienna Opera House. Even though I'm not an opera guy, it was cool to attend.

We capped the day in Vienna with some traditional Viennese food; Blunzengrostl and Kalbsrahmgulasch. Since the menu was completely in Austrian we ate our food blindly. When we got back to our hostel we checked out what we ate; clotted blood with potatoes and veal, yumm.

You can check out our full Picasa album here.

The First Stop!

2009-09-22T04:50:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Vienna around 9am, took a train from the airport to Vienna and then started walking to our very first hostel! What we thought was a one-mile walk turned into about a three-mile walk, which for us is generally no big deal; however, 35+ extra pounds on our back did not feel that great. I felt like I was on an episode of the Biggest Loser during one of the challenges! Despite the packs, the walk was amazing! The sites, sounds and smells of the city were amazing. Everywhere you turned there were gorgeous buildings, sculptures and parks. We walked through Stadtpark, by Karls Platz and around Naschmarkt.

When we got to Happy Hostel, I think Tim and I were both pretty nervous as neither of us have been in a hostel before. We were both shocked when we opened the door to our room and found it spotless. A comfy bed, nice bathroom and even a full kitchen were at our disposal for the next two days. Once we checked out our room and dumped our bags it was time to explore the city, so we headed to Schonbrunn Schloss (one of three castles in Vienna). We toured the inside of Schonbrunn and walked through the manicured gardens. As Tim mentioned, we even took a nap in the gardens! In the evening, we headed back to Naschmarkt for a great meal and people watching. Tim sampled the local beer, while I drank Sturm - a Vienna specialty.

Lara's First Post

2009-09-21T04:01:00.000-07:00

Today is my first entry on our blog. Before I get started, I would like to thank Tim for doing such a fabulous job creating our blog and keeping it maintained thus far. His posts have been insightful, humorous and timely! Moving forward, I hope to be a more active blogger, so look for posts from both Tim and me.

Although it is now day five of our trip and we are literally on the train from Prague to Munich, I would like to back-track a little bit to fill all of you in on my experiences to date (then I will move on to Prague).

First, I will start with our plane ride over. We had a lovely ride to the DTW airport with my parents and Azzie, complete with Champagne, chocolate covered strawberries and something called Turkish Delight (not so delightful). The champagne and strawberries were a great way to start off our trip. Lots of hugs, kisses and tears later, we hopped on our plane for an uneventful trip from Detroit to Washington D.C. The D.C. to Vienna flight proved to be another story...

Within thirty minutes of take-off, a stewardess dumped a glass of red wine on the shorts that Tim planned on wearing for the next three months!! After about an hour in the lavatory, Tim came out looking like he had wet his pants; however, the wine stains were gone! Two days later, he decided to test his stain removal mastery again when he dumped coffee down the front of the same shorts. Thankfully, Tim is a really good stain remover, so his shorts are stain-free for now...

Road Trip, Day 4

2009-09-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

St. Louis, MO - Ann Arbor, MI

[509 miles, boring level 7/10]

Arriving in Ann Arbor never felt so good. Although the drive was long and boring, the three of us had a great time, especially Azzie.

Road Trip, Day 3

2009-09-19T22:46:00.000-07:00

Amarillo, TX - St. Louis, MO

[756 miles, boring level 11/10]

We have decided to pay $5 to ferry across the Mississippi River but we must wait two turns. Tim is sick with dysentery.

Road Trip, Day 2

2009-09-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

Kingman, AZ - Amarillo, TX

[751 miles, boring level 8/10]

After a great night's sleep in the Day's Inn - Kingman, Arizona #2 we took off for a full day on I-40. One of the cool things about I-40 is that it parallels (or is) the old Route 66. We decided to grab breakfast at an old diner in Seligman, Arizona that's on a piece of Route 66. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who read the tour books. In this ghost town of 500 people there were no fewer than 6 tour buses filled with German and Japanese tourists, which was great because we were just starting to miss Pier 39. I was just waiting to see someone with an 'Alcatraz Psycho Ward Patient' t-shirt on.

Also in Seligman grabbing breakfast was the San Diego Mazda Miata Club doing a road trip of their own. 8 convertible Mazda Miatas driven by 50+ year olds with their wives, it was like a moving Viagra commercial.

Road Trip, Day 1

2009-09-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

Pleasanton - Kingman, AZ

[590 miles, boring level - 6/10]

After a final round of tearful good-byes we left P-Town at noon. We decided to take the southern route to Detroit because..... well, we still haven't figured that one out. But we're headed to Detroit via I-40. Today's route was along I-5 to Bakersfield, then east across the desert until I-40.

We spent the night in Kingman, AZ for one simple reason, it has the last In-n-Out, which we more than enjoyed.

Thanks SF!

2009-09-10T10:37:00.001-07:00

After 5 incredible years the day to leave San Francisco has finally come.

When we moved to the Bay Area we only had a few friends, we (Tim) were afraid of living in the big city, and we had mediocre jobs. As we leave we have more life-long friends than we thought anyone could have, we have great jobs and resumes, and we've come to love the City by the Bay and can't imagine why anyone would ever want to be a bridge-and-tunnel person.

We've effectively put all of our stuff into 980 cubic feet of storage space (right) and our car and we will be leaving SF Saturday morning. We'll start driving across the country Sunday, attend a wedding in Michigan the following weekend and then start our journey. When we get back to the States in December we'll be moving to Chicago to check out the Midwest and be closer to family.

Thanks to everyone for making the past 5 years so amazing!

Ready, Set, Oktoberfest!

2009-08-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Although we started planning this trip months ago, we were months late planning for our Oktoberfest adventure. As we found out, the weekend we are planning on visiting Munich and experiencing Oktoberfest is Italian Weekend, meaning every Italian between the ages of 18 and 24 converges on Munich and occupies every hotel, hostel, friend's apartment, and empty Fiat in Munich. After a hasty scrammble to find a place and a train to/from Munich we're all set.

The game plan; arrive in Munich on Friday 9/25, meet up with Kenny and his buddy. Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday morning: Oktoberfest like there's no tomorrow! Prost!

Suggestions?

2009-08-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

The extent of Lara and my international travels is a few trips to the border towns of Mexico and Canada and some short trips to London, Paris, Amsterdam, and Ireland so this trip is kind of new to us to say the least. With that said we could use some suggestions on what to see, where to stay, what not to eat, etc. on our trip. Here is a more detailed itinerary for people to check out and comment on. Comment away!!!

9/21/09, Vienna

9/23/09, Prague

9/25/09, Munich

9/27/09 - 10/10/09, Italy

10/10/09 - 10/21/09, Greece and Turkey

10/22/09 - 11/4/09, India

11/5/09 - 11/20/09 China

11/21/09 - 11/29/09, Cambodia and Thailand

11/29/09 - 12/1/09, Singapore

12/2/09 - 12/21/09, Australia

Booked!!!

2009-08-06T12:43:00.000-07:00

It's a wrap! We've booked our tickets around the world, given notice to our employers and started packing. Look out world!

We've created a google map of our route around the world and put it in this blog. We do need to recant a little of what we said above. There are some 'patches' in our route which we need to figure out. We arrive in Vienna and we plan on visiting Prague, Munich, most of Italy and depart Rome; we'll do this by train. We arrive in Delhi and somehow we need to get to Chennai a week and a half later, not really sure how we're going to do that. The same can be said about our time in Cambodia and Thailand, how do you get from Phnom Penh to Bangkok? We spend three weeks in Australia to close out the trip and that is another tbd trip.