WorldTravelJunky

It's been a while but I have some great excuses...

2009-01-28T13:46:00.003-05:00

So, as much as I would have liked to have updated the blog recently I have at least got some fairly creative excuses as to why it has been on hold. First, my laptop managed to contract a pretty nasty virus about a week and a half ago which kept it for the most part completely dysfunctional.

Then, once I finally got that straightened out I was sitting in a restaurant in Dahab going through my photos when a waiter decided it would be a good idea to spill mango juice on my laptop's keyboard. Needless to say that didn't go over all that well and now the computer works fine minus the "A", "F", "G", "L" and "2" keys. So, now I am going to be forced to write updates missing all of those letters (which might be more interesting than past updates...) or do the whole thing from Internet Cafe's which will definitely cut back on my flexibility.

In either case, I promise in the next couple of days to write something to update everyone on my recent travels to Oman, UAE, Egypt and my current locale of Lebanon.

Steven

Quick jaunt to Oman

2009-01-06T08:43:00.002-05:00

About halfway through my trip to Dubai I decided to take a brief detour and spend a week touring around Oman. I started out in the capital city of Muscat spending the better part of two days just walking around the city and enjoying the relaxed pace of life in this beautiful capital built directly into the mountains along the coast.

The only slight snafu in Muscat occurred when I tried to get some cash at a local ATM machine and the machine just ate my card without even giving me the opportunity to enter my PIN code. Prior to this my plan was to spend the next 4 days traveling around the south of the country but due to my ATM card having been eaten I wanted to make sure I was back in Muscat on a work-day to see if I could get it back which meant I could only spend two days down south. Because of this abridged timeline I signed-up for a two day pre-packaged tour of the south. When I called to book the trip I was told it would be no problem at all because four “western girls” had signed up for the same trip leaving on the same day and the Land Cruiser could seat five without any problems, so I was certainly not going to complain about that.

Unfortunately, when the car came to pick me up the next morning it became readily apparent that the tour-company didn’t account for luggage when they said five people would be no-problem, so I ended up having to squeeze in the back of the Land-Cruiser with five people’s stuff. After a significant amount of rearranging everyone's stuff I was able to make a big-enough space for me to sit during the five hour drive. One other up-side to the company was two of the girls were Swedes who were visiting Oman on vacation so I actually had the chance to practice my horrendously rusty Swedish.

On the first day of the trip we made a couple of stops at some old and abandoned towns as well as at two wadis which are riverbeds that have been carved into the surrounding mountains by the force of the water over thousands of years. The wadis where we stopped were particularly picturesque as the river was surrounded by date-palms all surrounded by giant red-cliffs on both sides. An additional bonus about one of these wadi’s was that we were able to take advantage of the beautiful weather on the Arabian Peninsula and had the chance to go swimming and relax in the sun for several hours before moving on to our next stop.

From the Wadis we headed into the desert where we were planning to stay at a “Bedouin-style” camp and where we could also take-part in some desert activities. When we got to the camp I realized that “Bedouin-style” was being used in a definitely generous manner since the accommodations were made out of concrete, each had its own bathroom with running water and they were all attached into fairly sizeable C shaped buildings. So much for camping…

Once we had checked into the “camp” we spent the next hour or so four-wheeling through the sand-dunes before stopping to watch the sunset and then eating a “traditional” Bedouin dinner at the campsite.

The next morning I decided to wake up at 5:30am so I could hike up to the top of a gigantic sand-dune near the camp to try and catch sunrise. A thick layer of fog prevented the sun from actually showing itself until around 8:00am but in the meantime I was able to take a number of really cool photos of the dunes.

The second day of the trip started off with breakfast with a mostly authentic Bedouin family and another hour or so of off-roading on the Sand-Dunes. After that we went on a tour of Sur, a port-city in the south of the country and then we convinced the driver to stop by another Wadi on our way back for some more time in the sun before our return to Muscat.

When I got back to Muscat I spent the next day killing time as the bank told me that they wouldn’t be able to get my card until after 3:30pm. Fortunately, it worked out and they were able to actually get me my card back which saved me some significant hassles. Finally, on my last day in Oman I snuck into the Intercontinental hotel and hung out at the pool taking it easy until I had to go catch my flight back to Dubai

Moving on to Dubai

2009-01-02T00:00:00.002-05:00

After almost a month in Tunisia it was time to move on to my next destination of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Rather than a destination where I was planning to see a bunch of sites my only goal in Dubai was to relax, hang out with some friends, enjoy the beach and take it easy. In fact, during the five days I was there I only took my camera out once when I toured the old part of the city.

Some more travel pics

2008-12-29T19:26:00.005-05:00

As I continue to try and update my blog with what I have been up to the past several weeks I figure at the very least I can put some photos up so anyone who is interested can at least see what I've been doing.

Trip to South Tunisia
More Tunisia photos

South Trip Part III

2008-12-28T08:37:00.002-05:00

The next morning we woke up at the insanely early hour of 5:45am (this is vacation after all) so we could see the sun rise over the Sand Dunes of the Sahara along with the remnants of the Mos Isley Spaceport (from Star Wars). The Mos Isley set was just that, a Hollywood set, but it was quite impressive that it has survived this long in the middle of the Sahara desert. It was also neat to see Hollywood magic at work since in the movie Mos Isley definitely seemed more futuristic and impressive than it is in real-life.

As an aside for any Star Wars fans, a lot of the locations from the original movie (Episode IV) were filmed on location in Tunisia and many of the sets are still standing today. More interesting though is not only did George Lucas use Tunisia for locations but a lot of the background and story for the series was stolen directly from Tunisian culture including the Sandman and Jawa outfits and even names of places like Tatouin which is a city in Southern Tunisia. Oh, and in case any of you were wondering, yes, I am a nerd...

After our sojourn into the desert we returned to the hotel to pick up the rest of the tour-group who were not interested enough in Star Wars to justify waking up that early and then we continued on ouur way. After a couple of smaller stops we got to the southern most city in Tunisia called Douz. Fortunately, our trip coincided with the annual Berber Camel festival where the local people celebrate their heritage through parades and skill demonstrations including horseback riding, camel racing, music and food which we got to enjoy.

In addition to the festival while in Douz we also went on a camel ride into the Sahara and ate lunch in a Bedouin tent.

The next morning was the last day of our trip south. We started early and headed to the Mos Isley Cantina (also from Star Wars) which George Lucas made from a converted Troglodyte residence and which is currently is a tourist hotel.

The Troglodytes are the local people in the South of Tunisia who rather than building homes above ground lived in caves that they carved directly into mountains. After visiting the Cantina we went to the home of an actual Troglodyte family who still live in the traditional style to see what their life was like.

After the Troglodyte visit we were back on the bus for the eight hour return trip to Tunis. On the return trip we had just one stop at El Jem, the best preserved and largest Roman ruin in all of Africa. El Jem is the third largest Roman amphitheater still standing and one of the 10 largest ever built.

From El Jem we returned to Tunis and I decided it was going to be several weeks before I set foot near a bus again!

South trip part II

2008-12-27T08:29:00.001-05:00

The next morning I woke up just in time to miss breakfast (which I heard later was probably for the best....) and soon after we were back on the bus for a 45 minute drive to get to a tourist train that was to take us around an area of the country with some nice landscapes. Despite the fact that we got to the train 45 minutes early it was already very full making it standing room only (although we did manage to get decent spots near some windows) and after only an hour and a half of waiting the train finally got underway. Later we learned that the delay was because several family members of Ben Ali (the semi-permanent President and somewhat authoritarian leader of Tunisia) decided to take the train and of course the train couldn't leave them behind despite their being so late. During the ride the train made a couple of stops at various panoramic views and on the way back a lot of our group managed to secure actual seats.

The train itself was quite nice having been built in the early part of the century for the French aristocracy and after Tunisian independence it was shoved into storage, only recently being revived for its current role of tourist train. Another interesting aspect of the train is it was still laid out in its original style so rather than regular bench seats, each car had its own style with a mixture of comfortable sofas and plush chairs. Even the light fixtures and details in the woodwork were quite artistic and still survived from the trains former glory days.

At the end of the train-ride our group split up into a number of Land Cruisers that were waiting for us at the station since the driving throughout the rest of the day involved going off-road. The first stop was at a beautiful hotel where we had lunch, although due to our earlier train-delays we didn't get there until 3:30pm so we were all starved by the time we sat down. By the time we left the restaurant it was 4:30pm and we still had three other stops planned and each of these stops were a decent distance from each other so obviously something had to give...

The first stop after lunch was the “Grand Canyon” of Tunisia. Despite its name this canyon was not nearly as Grand as you'd imagine but it was still a nice site where we spent about 15 minutes so we could at least attempt to see one of the other planned sites for the day.

The next stop was a vista overlooking the start of the Sahara from the top of some mountains. Unfortunately, since we got to the viewpoint 20 minutes after sunset we missed most of the view but even with just the afterglow of the sun it was still quite an impressive landscape (it was the same place that was used in the opening scenes of The English Patient). Since the sun had already set we didn't even bother trying to see the waterfall filled oasis which had been scheduled as our third stop for the day.

Trip to Southern Tunisia

2008-12-26T08:18:00.001-05:00

The day after Christmas I went on a four day trip to Southern Tunisia with a group of about 45 U.S. Embassy employees, families and friends. Unfortunately, Andrea found out just a few days prior to the trip that she had to work on the 29th making it impossible for her to join us. The trip started early in the morning on the 26th with a LOT of driving (7 painful hours to be specific), but on the bright-side we stopped every couple of hours at various sites which broke up the monotony quite a bit and the bus wasn't completely full which meant I could stretch out in two seats. Even better, the crowd from the embassy were a really nice and down-to-earth group of people that was fun to hang out with.

The first stop of the day was a town called Kairouan which is known as the "spiritual capital" of Tunisia. Kairouan has what is apparently the first mosque, and actually the first Arab building in all of Tunisia (and I believe North Africa). The Mosque was pretty cool as it was built with over 600 foraged roman columns that the Arabs had collected from all over the country making the mosque in essence also a museum of Roman columns.

Apart from that Mosque we made a few other stops in the city including a visit to the Medina which was kind of pathetic since its only claim to fame was a well in a small room where a very sad camel walks in a circle to get water that supposedly “comes from Mecca”.

The final stop in Kairouan was a Mausoleum for a famous Islamic historical figure (someone who was the Prophets barber and “best friend”). The mauseleum was built in the 18th century in Andalusian style and it was somewhat interesting but not nearly as nice as a lot of things in present day Andalusia.

After Kairouan we had lunch and then it was back in the bus for a few more hours of driving before we got to the ruins of the town of Sbeitla. The ruins were quite cool, and what was most impressive was how you could see the history behind the town's transformation from one religion to another over time based on the architectural remains. After about an hour or so at the site we were off again for the final stretch of two hours to our hotel.

Christmas Eve and more Roman ruins

2008-12-24T06:30:00.001-05:00

Since Andrea unfortunately had to work on Christmas Eve I joined up with some of her friend's (Matt and Laura) along with Matt's mom who was in town for the holidays for some more sight-seeing. The first stop for the day was a town on the east coast of Tunisia called Nabeul that is known for its handicrafts (pottery, baskets, etc.). The main reason for this stop was to visit a basket weavers workshop owned by the family member of one of Matt's Arabic teachers. Unfortunately, since road names, and road signs aren't really used or even seem to exist in Tunisia we spent a good hour wandering around looking for the shop unsuccessfully before we just gave up and had lunch.

After lunch we continued south to an ancient Roman city called Oudna and somehow, like every other Roman site in Tunisia we had the entire place to ourselves. We started the explorations by wandering through a Roman ampitheater where we had complete freedom to go everywhere including the catacombs underneath the structure (where the animals were kept prior to their release in gladiatorial contests).

Some of the other highlights of Oudna included the remnants of the old Roman Capital.

The remains of a Hammam that had been bombed during WWII but which we still managed to find our way down inside to the basement sections where light was pouring in and reflecting off the mosaics still intact on the floors and walls.

What made the visit even more striking was the incredible sunset that we witnessed at the end of our visit.

After finishing up at the main Oudna site we drove a couple more miles to get to an amazing set of aqueducts that during the Roman era was used to provide water for Tunis. We were able to actually climb up inside the aqueducts and walk for probably a quarter mile down the channel that used to be used for water. Amazing.

The one very sad thing from this site was the obvious disregard the Tunisians show for their Roman heritage. The aquaducts which at one point in time were probably 50 miles or longer (stretching from the mountains to present-day Tunis) had been dynamited repeatedly for convenience sake regardless of the impact on these impressive ruins. For example, at the section of the aqueducts which we crawled through it should have been possible to go 2 or 3 times further except that the a large section of this 2000+ year old monument was blown-up to make it easier for train tracks to pass through rather than just adjusting the tracks so the trains could pass through one of the aqueduct's arches.

I have finally made some posts

2008-12-22T09:30:00.005-05:00

I am now a little over two weeks into my trip and I am finally posting something to this blog. Actually, I have been writing regular posts which I have posted below but have had some serious challenges getting access to WiFi so I could upload them from my laptop to the site. I finally was able to connect at my friend Andrea's house so there are 5 or 6 new postings below this one.

As you can probably imagine from the posts below I am having a great time thus far on my trip. I have also uploaded some additional pictures to Picasa which you can find at the below links:

http://picasaweb.google.com/steven.holzer/BlogPhotosMorocco#
http://picasaweb.google.com/steven.holzer/BlogPhotosTunisia#

Trip to Dougga, or is that Bulla Regia...

2008-12-21T05:41:00.001-05:00

Since it was the weekend and Andrea still hadn't seen a lot of the nearby tourist attractions in Tunisia we decided to take off for Dougga, a site of Roman ruins located about two and a half hours from Tunis.

After a relatively late start on the day as we were trying to get things together (including tracking down some maps) we finally were on the road at around 11:30am. Unfortunately, not knowing the city at all, the route that I picked took us through downtown Tunis where we encountered horrible traffic. Eventually we gave up on the downtown route and tried to get out of the city on another highway but in the process we got very turned around and ended up getting quite lost. This didn't make Andrea particularly happy as we were driving around some marginal neighborhoods of Tunis in her car with foreign plates. Finally, through a combination of the GPS on my phone (which didn't have any Tunisian maps, just compass functionality), our maps and various road signs we found the highway that we needed.

After driving for another hour and a half we realized that somehow we missed the turnoff for Dougga but at the same time noticed that we were only 45 minutes away from Bulla Regia, (the main set of ruins we unsuccessfully tried to visit on the trip up North where we drowned the Jeep). So, after a minor change in itinerary and about 3.5 hours on the road we made it to Bulla Regia! The ruins at Bulla Regia were amazing and we were literally the only people on the entire site which further added to the experience.

Even better, since we were the only ones there we were able to wander around the ruins with Murphey (Andrea's Bernese Mountain Dog).

Right after we got to the site we were met by a tour guide who did a great job of giving us the history of the site as well as showing us the specific highlights and stories behind a lot of the buildings. The most remarkable aspect of the ruins was definitely the gigantic mosaics that are still in perfect condition on the floors of these houses from probably 1500 years ago.

We left Bulla Regia around after sunset in order to get back to Tunis at a reasonable hour. It was only after we got back to Andrea's and we checked our email that Andrea found a message from a friend of her's who we had invited to join us on the trip. In his message Andrea's friend indicated that he couldn't make it but would loved to have come since he had already tried unsuccessfully to go to Dougga on three separate occasions but failed each time since he never successfully managed to navigate his way out of Tunis. This definitely made me feel better about my navigation skills...

Back to Tunisia

2008-12-19T05:38:00.001-05:00

Once again it has been quite a while since I have posted some updates but for some reason I keep finding other things to do while traveling than sitting in front of my computer and writing. So, once more I will say that I'll try to update this a little more frequently in the future and who knows, maybe I'll succeed.

Anyways, after a little over a week in Morocco I came back to Tunis once more so I would be able to join Andrea at a formal event with the Tunisian American Chamber of Commerce. The event had in attendance all of the executives of just about every significant Tunisian and international company with operations in Tunisia. Unfortunately, with my lack of Arabic and French and no solid background on Tunisian business it wasn't the most exciting event out there (not to mention I am on vacation). Fortunately, Andrea introduced me to several of her colleagues so I spent most of the evening talking with them over the unbearably loud Traditional Tunisian band that was playing in the background while eating some extremely mediocre (read as bad) banquet food.

More of Morocco

2008-12-17T19:49:00.001-05:00

After spending a few days wandering around Casablanca and Rabat I headed over to Fez which is an absolutely amazing city. The town of Fez is dominated by the old Medina and it is basically a city out of the past. The transportation and shipping of goods around the town is accomplished with mules and you'd be lucky to find a building that was constructed within the past 500 years. In fact, the entire pace of life seems not to have changed in centuries and it was great spending several days just wandering around, exploring and taking photos.

After spending a lot of time in the old Medina, I decided on my last day in town to explore the Fez El-Jdid or new Fez, which is called “new” since it wasn't built until the 13th century unlike the “old Fez” which has been around since 800 AD. This Fez was actually built because the Sultan at the time was a bit paranoid and he decided he was better off building his own fortified city right next to the actual city of Fez and filling it with Syrian Mercenaries

One of the more interesting aspects of Fez El-Jdid's history is that the Sultan at the time had a penchant for jews so he encouraged thousands of jews to come to his new-town which developed into a thriving community or Mellah. So, in my search for the Mellah I must have seemed a little bit lost and a random Moroccan man asked me in Arabic if I needed help (at least I assume that is what he asked me), then again in French (which I also don't know), and finally in some broken English. We started talking for a while and he invited me into his very modest home for tea. Tea, eventually became breakfast and eventually he invited me back to join him and his wife Fatima, his 12 year old son Rachid and his 17 year old daughter Afaf for lunch later that afternoon.

After that pleasant distraction I continued my quest for the Mellah and once again I guess I looked lost, foreign, or both because someone asked me if I was looking for something. Coincidentally, the person unprompted mentioned he was a part of one of the 100 remaining jewish families in Fez and if I was interested he would give me a tour of the old Jewish quarter. I accepted and then had a quick tour of an incredibly run-down section of town including seeing the old Jewish cemetary and several synagogues. The most fascinating part was the huge differences in architectural styles between the Jewish and Arab buildings. Despite the fact that both sets of buildings were built at the same time, in the same place for the same purposes the Jewish buildings universally had windows and balconies that faced the streets outside while almost all of the Arab residences were built with an inner-courtyard which all of the rooms faced into. I'm not quite sure what the anthropological impacts of this are, but it seemed really interesting nonetheless.

After the tour was finished I continued exploring the rest of Fez El-Jdid before heading back to the family I met earlier to join them for lunch. Based on my request the family prepared couscous with chicken and I got back in time to get some very rudimentary Moroccan cooking lessons as well as a crash-course in how to eat when invited to a Moroccan's house. A couple of tips for anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation:

1) There are no plates, napkins, tablecloths, or concerns of hygiene
2) Everyone eats out of the common serving platter with a spoon and anything that you can't handle with a spoon should be eaten with your fingers
3) Any inedible things (bone, grissle, etc.) just place on the table in front of you
4) What do you need a napkin for when you've got bread that can sop up any grease off your fingers
5) Homemade food somehow is always better than at a restaurant

So, after a delicious meal I took off to pick up my bag at my hotel and went to catch a train to Meknes, another former capital of Morocco that doesn't have quite as much of a tourist pull as Fez, so I thought it would be fun to explore without having the dozens of street-touts bugging me that were present in Fez.

I got to Meknes around 4:00pm and checked into the Hotel Marok, which is definitely one of the bigger dumps I have stayed in during the course of my travels. In addition to having literally 10 people camped out in the room next to me, the hotel had no heat (and it was about 40 degrees outside at night), and not only no hot-water but no water at all! I guess, not all $10/night hotels are created equal...

After checking into the hotel I wandered around the Medina of Meknes exploring and enjoying the fact that I was one of the only tourists around. I eventually got dinner from a street vendor of a ground meat sandwich along with some pastries from a little bakery down the road. I finally got back to my room around 9:00pm and getting as bundled up as I could in my freezing room I started sorting through all the photos I had taken thus far until around 1:00am.

We made it to Marrakech

2008-12-12T19:39:00.001-05:00

After getting to Morocco we checked into a special type of hotel called a Riad, based on a suggestion from Sanaa. Riad's are traditional Arabic homes that are built around an inner-courtyard and are frequently decorated with ornate and beautiful designs and patterns, we decided to stay at the “Riad Dar Al Kounouz”. The Riad was great, it was beautiful, had great service and an amazing location in the heart of the old Medina.

After checking in we spent most of the day wandering around the Medina and visiting the main square of the city called Djemaa El-Fna. This square was quite cool as it is a jumble of everything from food vendors, to snake charmers, to traditional story-tellers, to acrobats all at the same time. A very unique place to say the least.

Since Andrea was only in country for two nights we decided to splurge and went to one of the fanciest restaurants in the city for dinner. The food was quite good, the building and ambiance was amazing and the traditional live music in the background just added to the atmosphere.

Maybe I should give up on driving...

2008-12-12T19:37:00.001-05:00

After a painfully early 7:00am flight to Casablanca that involved waking up at 4:30am (not the way to spend your vacation), we landed at around 9:30am. After we landed we spoke to Sanaa and based on her recommendation made a last minute change of plan to split the weekend up between Marrakech and Casablanca (instead of the whole weekend in Casablanca). In order to get this to work out we decided to rent a car right-away at the airport and drive the two-hours straight to Marrakech.

After spending 45 minutes haggling with National Rental Car over prices (which in Morocco unfortunately doesn't have a Booz & Co. Rate...) we ended up getting the most beat up POS car you can imagine called a Dacia Logan. The sheet of paper that they use to record pre-existing damage on the car wasn't particularly useful since by the time we had gone all the way around the vehicle there were more pen marks on the sheet than white-space. Finally, once the administrative hassles were out-of-the-way, the rental-car guy mentioned to us that we'd need to get gas immediately, and then we were off to Marrakech.

Or at least we thought we were off. The car made it as far as the opposite side of the airport traffic circle (maybe 1/4th of a mile) and the engine started stuttering, and within a few seconds it died altogether. On the bright side, since the car died so quickly we were only a 10 minute walk to the airport terminal. So, Andrea being the trooper that she is (and because she speaks French...) was off to try and remedy this situation (keep in mind she only has 2 days in Morocco).

About 20 minutes later Andrea returns and soon after that the rental-car people arrive in a van and another somehow even more beat-up Dacia Logan (which I didn't think was possible). Even more amazingly the gas tank on this “new car” was just as low as in the previous one! It was then that I realized that someone at the rental car agency has built himself a a nice side-business of draining the gas-tanks to empty when tourists return the cars above zero and selling the “extra” fuel on the black market. I also decided at this moment that I would outsmart them at their own game and return the car just as empty as when we got it! As you can probably imagine, Andrea wasn't particularly happy with this plan...

Now that we were off for the second time we insisted that the van follow us to the gas station to ensure we had enough fuel to make it, and despite the fact that we were cruising on fumes at the end we were able to fill up the car and hit-the-road down to Marrakech.

Change of Plans

2008-12-11T19:34:00.003-05:00

Just to keep everyone in the loop, there has been a slight change of plans with my travels. One of the main reasons I started my trip to North Africa/Middle East in Tunisia is because my friend Andrea lives in Tunis and she offered that I could use her place as a basecamp for different segments of my trip. Originally Andrea was planning to be in Tunis for a two year assignment but after about six months in-country she just found out that her role will be ending next month. This means that a lot of the traveling she was planning to do over the next year and a half has to be accelerated and as such she invited me along with her to Casablanca to visit Sanaa, a Moroccan friend of hers from Business School.

Since Andrea still has to actually go to work (unlike myself ;-) ) she can only visit Morocco for a long weekend while I can then hang out for another 5 days before returning to Tunis. The reason I have to head back that quickly is I already signed up for a couple of activities in Tunisia starting on the 19th including a black-tie dinner with the who's who of the Tunisian business world as well as a trip around the south of the country with a bunch of people from her work. Besides, if there is still a bunch of stuff I want to see in Morocco after I leave then I can always head back...

Tunisian Adventure Continued

2008-12-08T19:26:00.004-05:00

The next day we woke up early as we had still quite a few places we wanted to visit before heading back to Tunis. We hung out for a couple of hours in Tabarka spending most of our time exploring a cool fortress that is not normally open to the public (one of the people working on the renovation of it gave us a tour).

After that it was off to the main destination, the Roman ruins of Bulla Regia. At this point since the jeep had successfully navigated around 70 miles on a combination of very rough roads and later on a highway at high speeds we had assumed that it had made it through our little adventure unscathed. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

About an hour into our drive to the ruins (and about 10 miles from the Algerian border), the Jeep's transmission skipped. Soon after that as we were driving through the main road of a tiny one-road town called Babouche when we noticed smoke coming from the hood of the car. We immediately stopped both vehicles and when we opened the hood we saw flames shooting out from the engine of the car. Without a fire-extinguisher handy Matt and I just ran back and started dumping all of the bottles of water we had accrued during the trip onto the fire in the hopes it wasn't oil based (which it fortunately wasn't) until we had the fire out. After we no longer were worried about the immediate risk of the flaming car we then focused on the pool of pink fluid leaking from under the hood of the car which Matt correctly guessed to be transmission fluid.

Needless to say this flaming car caused quite a commotion and we were soon surrounded by half the town with everyone looking at and being quite amused by the silly Westerners. Fortunately, our entertainment value only lasted for a short while and after about an hour the crowds had dispersed.

At this point everyone basically decided that our adventures were over so we gave up and called to have the Jeep towed back to Tunis (3 hours away). During the 2 hours we were sitting around waiting for the tow-truck we cracked open a couple of bottles of wine which was a good thing for Katherine and Matt since it helped them sleep on the way back to Tunis while they were stuck in the cab of the tow truck, whose driver was happy to take twisting turns on precarious mountain passes in a fully-loaded tow-truck at much faster speeds than we were comfortable with in the lowly Isuzu.

At the end of the day we made it back to Matt and Laura's without any further incidents and we spent the evening eating enchiladas and reliving our little Tunisian adventure.

Trip to the North-West of Tunisia

2008-12-08T13:27:00.008-05:00

We woke up early to get a jumpstart on the day for our camping trip up to the North West of Tunisia (close to the Algerian border) with Andrea's friends Matt, Laura and Katherine. One of the main reasons why we decided to go camping was everyone had off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha, which is a holiday that is focused around every family buying a live sheep and then slaughtering it (frequently in their front yards). So, since Andrea and her friends had been hearing sheeps bleating pretty much continuously for the previous several days they decided that they wanted to be as far from civilization as possible when the entire population of Tunisia decided to become amateur butchers.

In addition to the five of us going on this trip we also brought along Murphey (Andrea's 75lb Bernese Mountain Dog), Keira (Matt and Laura's 80lb German Shepard) and Pepsi (Katherine's ~40lb dog). Since we had such a full-load of people and critters we decided to take both Matt and Laura's 15 year old Isuzu SUV and Katherine's brand new Jeep Wrangler

After about 2 hours of driving we made it to our first destination which was a town called Bizert. Once there we let the dogs run around and play a bit along the beach while we admired the views from the “Cape Bizert”. After we had enough of stretching our legs/paws we decided to continue on to the next stop, a secluded little fishing village called Cape Serrat that was located on what was supposedly an amazing beach. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of driving we kept finding ourselves right back in front of a massive prison compound that was about 15 minutes away from Cape Bizert (this prison hopefully is not foreshadowing later parts of my trip...). After our third loop around the prison we gave up and decided to get some lunch back in Bizert.

Back in town we found a great little hotel restaurant that had great Tunisian food and even better, they were willing to sell us some beer to take with us to drink at night while we were camping. Not only that but the proprietors of the restaurant were also able to set us up with good directions to Cape Serrat and we were finally on our way (and only 2 hours late). After two more hours of driving through some amazing landscapes of cork-trees and open fields we finally arrived. The entire place was deserted of tourists since tourist season ended in September and the only people around were a couple of locals who were somewhat perplexed to see a bunch of white people showing up in the middle of winter.

At this point we decided to drive down the beach a bit to find a good place to set up camp. The beach however had a channel carved down the middle of it parallel to the coast line from when the tide came up. The channel didn't look particularly deep and it appeared like crossing it would be the only way to get somewhere a little more private to set up our camp. Besides, Katherine had just bought her Wrangler and was itching to test-out its 4 wheel drive capabilities. So, Katherine and Andrea crossed the channel in the Jeep without any problem and started exploring the beach. The rest of us in the Isuzu weren't as comfortable with the river crossing though as the water went up quite deep on the Jeep and we were afraid the Isuzu's lower clearance might cause some problems.

Once Katherine came back from exploring the other side of the beach they decided to try crossing the channel at a different point that appeared to be shallower which would hopefully be an easier path for the Isuzu to follow. The Jeep went into the water and within seconds had submerged above the tires and all the way up to the hood! Katherine slammed it in reverse but the car was completely stuck and since the car had no snorkel it was in serious danger of the engine flooding and being completely stuck in the Mediterranean sea's salt-water. To make matters worse, night was fast approaching and since we were so far out in the middle of nowhere it would take hours for any sort of help to be able to reach us.

As soon as Matt and I realized what was happening we tried to jerry-rig some tow-straps to get the Jeep out of the Sea. Matt went over to the Jeep to try and see how bad the situation was while I ran over to some fishing boats to find some line that could be used to pull the car back to land. By the time I had found some pretty weak looking rope Matt was back and looking for carabiners which fortunately we had both brought along. We strapped up the cars and almost immediately after putting pressure on the rope, it snapped. By this time our little adventure had attracted the attention of the remnants of the town and we had a couple of people over trying to help us. A few minutes later I found a significantly thicker rope attached to a boat anchor. I removed the anchor and Matt hooked it up to the cars again and this time when we attempted the tow, the rope held.

Once the Jeep was out of the water we could see just how precarious the situation had been. The air-filter was completely soaked through and there is no way that it would have been able to permit air to flow to the engine for more than just a few more minutes. We also could see that the air intake was above the water level by less than an inch meaning any little bit of settling would have resulted in the engine flooding with salt-water. However, amazingly other than the soaked air filter a mostly detached piece of plastic undercarriage cover and the inside of the car being completely flooded with water, the Jeep was in amazingly good shape. Even more amazingly one of the guys who came over to watch/help us get the car out of the water was a mechanic who helped us make sure the Jeep was back in operable condition.

Needless to say that by this point in time it was getting dark, we hadn't started setting up camp, nor had we put together dinner. On the bright-side Matt, Laura and Katherine were all in Tunisia studying Arabic and Andrea spoke French so we were able to communicate at least on a fairly basic level with the locals. At first we were just extraordinarily grateful so we offered them the beer which we had purchased from the restaurant earlier (and they eagerly accepted). They then insisted on preparing our food for us (using the food we had brought for camping), and suggested we set-up our camp right out front of their hangout by the water.

Pretty quickly though we started to get quite nervous especially as several of them became uncomfortably “forward” with the women in our group. What made us further cautious is that Tunisia is a very family-centric culture, and it is not that common to have a group of six unmarried men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, especially considering that we were there in the middle of an important holiday which people would normally spend with their families. On top of that the locals brought out some moonshine and were very adamant that we take one of our cars 20 minutes away to buy more beer for them. Given the situation we we couldn't imagine that alcohol would improve things but we didn't have much choice. Lets just say we were all quite happy that we had brought along our own pack of fairly large dogs as company (particularly as Tunisians tend to be fearful of dogs).

Fortunately, Matt and Andrea made it back from the beer-run without any problems and soon after they returned our dinner was ready. The food was actually fairly decent and once we had finished eating we made it clear to our hosts that we would not be camping there that night. Apart from us having to pay a pretty hefty sum for dinner (which was made mostly with our food and which fed the 6 locals as well) there were no problems with our leaving and we took off to our next stop of Tabarka.

While everyone was happy with our decision to leave we were still in a rather awkward situation. Instead of staying in tents with the sketchy locals, we now had to drive 2 hours on pretty horrible roads, with a car that just came out of the sea, in pitch black with the hope of finding some hotel in a tourist town during the off-season who would be willing to take 5 random Americans and three large dogs (remember dogs aren't liked in Tunisia). Fortunately, other than one random suicidal cat that tried unsuccessfully to end things for himself (and us) by jumping out in front of the car while we were crossing a bridge, the drive to Tabarka went by without any problems.

The difficulties began though when we tried to find a place to stay. We drove by virtually every hotel (at least a dozen) that we could find and 2/3rds of them were closed for the season and the remaining ones wouldn't even let us leave the dogs in the cars in their parking lots much less take them up to the rooms. Finally, Andrea got through by phone to a hotel in the city-centre who said they would be able to help us out. The hotel turned out to be fairly nice and very well located (and the manager got quite a nice tip for hooking us up) so on just the second day of my vacation I was already well into quite an interesting adventure.

Arriving in Africa

2008-12-07T13:12:00.002-05:00

So, after too long in coming I finally started my travels around North Africa and the Middle-East. My flight went from JFK through London Gatwick to Tunis where I would be starting my trip. Amazingly enough, the first leg of my trip arrived in Gatwick at like 5:00am (over an hour early) and that plus my already pre-existing 2.5 hour layover meant that I had a long time in a really boring airport before my continuing flight to Tunis.

The flight to Tunis finally boarded and we left Gatwick on time and arrived in Tunis also on time at around 12:30pm. You'd think that 3.5 hours would be enough time for my backpack to make it onto the continuing flight but unfortunately with airlines operating the way they do that was not the case. So, after waiting for all the bags to finish being offloaded onto the carousel and realizing mine was not among them I went to the lost luggage person and somehow with my non-existent French and Arabic and the person's non-existent English I managed to find out that my bag decided to take a later flight and would be arriving after 8pm.

At that point I went out into the terminal where my friend Andrea was waiting to pick me up and from the airport we went straight to lunch at a good Lebanese restaurant close to Andrea's house (I hadn't eaten a real meal in more than 15 hours). From there we continued on to Andrea's gorgeous house in the “La Marsa” area of Tunis where I got settled in.

Once back at Andrea's I spent a couple of hours of catching up with her and re-acquainting myself with her great Bernese Mountain Dog Murphey and meeting her newly acquired Tunisian housecat Max, who had recently decided to adopt Andrea as his new owner.

From there Andrea and I took off to pick up her friends Matt and Laura for dinner at a local Indian restaurant to plan out a trip around the North West of the country for the next couple of day since they were all off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha. On the way to dinner we swung by the airport to pick up my luggage, but of course it still hadn't arrived. Fortunately, after dinner we made a my third trip to the airport of the day and this time my backpack was there safe and sound.

Old travelogues

2008-10-24T18:22:00.003-04:00

So, since I have decided to create a blog to update people on all of my forthcoming travels I figured it would make sense to go through some old emails and post some of my writings from previous trips.

My very first posting

2008-10-23T19:29:00.001-04:00

In an attempt to get ready for my travels around North Africa and the Middle East I have decided to start a blog!

South East Asia Trip Part 3

2006-01-04T00:00:00.001-05:00

As a way to start off the New Year on the right foot I have decided to finally send a very summarized conclusion to my Asia trip report (since it is now over 3 months late) and to update everyone on my life in New York.

So, for those of you that have been wondering; yes, I am still alive and have actually been back in the US since the end of September. In my previous trip report I had left off with my arrival to Laos. Unfortunately, I only stayed in Laos briefly because of the continuous torrential downpours (I guess they call it the rainy season for a reason). But I at least had a couple of days with reasonable weather in a really nice town up north called Luang Prabang as well as in the south at a series of islands in the Mekong river called Si Fan Don.

From Laos it was back to Thailand, this time to visit the south of the country and to get some sun and relaxation. I started on the East Coast of the country at Ko Pha Ngan island where I stayed in an incredible bungalow overlooking the sea. It's amazing what you can get for $5/night in some of these places. After a few nights at Ko Pha Ngan I headed over to the west coast to the island of Ko Phi Phi, an island that had been devastated during the tsunami. Coincidentally, this is the same island where The Beach was filmed. Anyways, my goal at Ko Phi Phi was to volunteer with the reef cleanup after the Tsunami, but unfortunately they stopped using SCUBA divers for that the week before I arrived so I ended up just enjoying some more sun and relaxation.

After Ko Phi Phi I spent a day in Krabi and then left for a 20 hour trip via 3 buses, two trains and a van ride to Northern Malaysia. This was one of the more exciting trips as there had been a surge in terrorist activity in Southern Thailand so there was a lot of armed military personnel everyone on the trains and other places. I also was the only non-Thai person on virtually all of the legs of the journey.

In Malaysia I went directly to the Perhentian islands to enjoy even more sun and most importantly SCUBA Diving. I also figured I'd be productive and in addition to just doing some fun dives I'd take a class so I signed up for a 3 day Rescue Diver course. The Perhentian's were great both above and below the water with a laid back atmosphere and some really fun people. Upon leaving the Perhentian's I went to the Cameron Highlands, the Taman Negara rainforest (the oldest in the world), and finally Kuala Lumpur.

From Malaysia I took a flight to Macau where I spent one day wandering around the former Portuguese colony. From there I took the Hydrofoil to Hong Kong which I also briefly explored for a few days. Finally from Hong-Kong it was off to Mainland China for the final part of my trip.

I arrived to Xi-an China and spent a few days in this city, although the main purpose of my visit there was to see the Terracotta Army, a group of more than 8,000 life size soldiers built out of clay that were buried with emperor Qin in 210 BC. The most amazing part of the army is that every single soldier is distinct with unique facial features and expressions.

After Xi-an it was off to Beijing where I spent several days exploring the ancient sites including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Tiananman Square, and most impressive of all the Great Wall. The final stop on the trip was Shanghai where in addition to seeing the city I got to hang out with my friend Hillary who has been working there as a teacher for the past year.

Anyways, I hope this summary wasn't too boring but I have heard from a lot of people asking what happened to my trip updates so I figured I might as well conclude them. Also, if you are interested I picked some of the better photos from my trip and posted them on line so feel free to take a look at them at:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2118707181

After returning from Asia I had about a month to get readapted to the real world and moved into my new apartment in New York before starting my new job with a big management consulting company. So far everything is going great. I love my apartment as it's in the middle of Greenwich Village, one of the most happening parts of town, and the job is also good although sometimes it involves some fairly excessive hours.

South East Asia Part 2

2005-08-10T00:00:00.001-04:00

My last day in Vietnam was spent visiting Ho Chi Minh, the former leader of the country. Uncle Ho as he is affectionately known in Vietnam is revered as a hero and the Vietnamese government went so far as to embalm him against his explicit wishes. So, following in the footsteps of those other communist leaders Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Uncle Ho is stuffed and visible in his giant mausoleum for the interested tourist (except of course for the 3 months of the year when he is shipped off to Russia for maintenance work).

Visiting Uncle Ho requires waking up early (he only sees visitors in the morning) and going to his massive mausoleum where you wait in line while dressed respectfully (clothes covering knees and shoulders, no hats, etc.) After about 45 minutes in line you make it to the mausoleum itself where speaking is not permitted and you are basically rushed past his body in about 20 seconds while surrounded by dozens of armed guards and security cameras. Overall, it was an interesting experience just to see the amount of pomp and circumstance associated with a corpse, although I would suggest his Russian maintainers take some lessons from Madam Tussad cause Uncle Ho isn't looking so good anymore...

After Vietnam my plan was to take a bus to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. Unfortunately, when I tried to book my ticket I learned that an ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) conference was taking place in Vientiene at the time and for the next 6 days no tourists would be allowed into the city. Since every mode of transport to Laos from Northern Vietnam goes to Vientiene I was required to make some changes to my itinerary. In the end I decided to fly to Bangkok and visit Northern Thailand before crossing the border into Northern Laos and then go south through the country until crossing back into Thailand to visit southern Thailand.

These changes actually worked out really well because in Laos there are no ATM machines and much to my chagrin I realized my ATM card was about to expire at the end of July. So, flying into Bangkok allowed me to take out some much needed cash to help tide me over for the rest of my trip. An additional benefit was at this same time my future roommate Aaron was planning on going to New York City to look for apartments and being in Bangkok made it a lot easier for us to coordinate things. In fact, I spent a total of probably 12 hours over a 3 day period on email, the phone and Messenger trying to figure everything out (which is nothing compared to the amount of time Aaron had to spend actually looking at places). In the end it worked out well cause we found a really nice place in Greenwich Village (at least that's what I've been told). For any of you that are interested my new apartment as of August 15 is 277 W. 10th Street. You can find a map of where the apartment is here: http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?addr=277+West+Tenth+Street&csz=New+york%2C+ny&country=us

Apart from trying to find an apartment in New York, I did manage to do a couple of other things while in Bangkok including getting a couple of custom tailored suits, visiting a few temples, doing a bunch of shopping, and eating some AWESOME food. Although probably the most fun thing that I did was watching an exhibition Soccer match between Real Madrid and the Thai National Team. The game was a blast despite some serious challenges I had getting to and leaving the stadium that was only 25km (15 miles) away (it took over two hours to get there and almost three hours to get back). Once I arrived to the stadium I bought a general seating ticket from some touts in front of the stadium and since I was 30 minutes late for the game the touts sold it to me for less than half of face value. Even better, after entering the stadium we found seats within 5 rows of the field! It would have been nearly impossible to have better seats. Not surprisingly Real Madrid won the game three to nothing.

After almost four days in Bangkok it was time to head north and my next stop was the old capital of Thailand called Sukhotai. Despite its former glory Sukhotai is currently a very small relaxed town that happens to have dozens of old temples and other ruins scattered throughout. I arrived to Sukhotai around 6:00am after taking a night train from Bangkok and once there I rented a bicycle and went all around the city admiring the 800 year old ruins. That same evening I was off again on another night train to Chang Mai. Unfortunately, during this leg of the journey I couldn't get a sleeper car and the train was the local (not express) train which meant that it stopped every 30 minutes or so. Of course since I was sitting in the aisle seat at every stop I was awoken by passengers getting on and off the train. All in all not a very relaxing train ride and when I arrived in Chang Mai at 5:00am the next day I was exhausted. The very first thing I did upon checking in at a guest house was sleep for another 5 hours.

Once I had recovered a bit from the journey I made my way down to the guesthouse common area and started talking to some Brits and Canadians who had signed up for a three day trek of the mountainous area around Chang Mai. I decided to join them and the next morning a group of 12 of us were on our way. The trek was awesome with some spectacular views and some surprisingly difficult terrain. The first day was particularly challenging because it was very uphill and an incessant light rain made the ground really slippery. After about five hours of hiking we made it to the local hill tribe village where we were staying the night. Unfortunately, we didn't get much of an "ethnic hill tribe" experience since it was fairly obvious that the villagers were used to receiving masses of tourists and the village was more of a tourist way station than an authentic tribal village. Despite the lack of the cultural experience the village was very picturesque and that evening from the terrace of the bamboo hut where we stayed the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen appeared in front of the verdant green hills in the background making for a spectacular landscape.

The next day we continued the trek with another 5 hours of hiking eventually stopping to stay the night in another bamboo hut next to some very impressive waterfalls. It was really nice being able to jump in the river and feel the waterfall pounding against you after a hard day of hiking. The third and final day of the trek involved a short hike (about 2 hours) until we met up with some elephants. We finished the trail section of the trek with an hour long elephant ride where I got to sit directly on the elephants neck which was a lot of fun (despite being hosed off with mud by the elephant next to me). After the elephant ride we went white water rafting for an hour and a half through some fun (and really long) class 3+ rapids. The most remarkable part of the white water rafting was the incompetence of our guides who were telling us to do the exact opposite of what you actually should be doing. Fortunately, everyone survived without incident and surprisingly enough nobody even fell out of the boats. The final stop on our journey was bamboo rafting where I got to steer a 8 meter (25ft) raft with 8 people on it down a river with a bamboo pole. Not as easy as it sounds. When we finished the bamboo rafting we ate lunch and then got back into the truck to return to Chang Mai.

After another day and a half in Chang Mai wandering around the night market and enjoying the Thai food it was time to continue on to Laos. I booked a trip that included a bus ride to the Thai border town of Chang Khong and then a two day slow boat journey from the Laos side of the border to Luang Prabang. The six hour bus ride to Chang Khong was uneventful but I met a bunch of really cool people including some Italians, Brits, and Israelis during the ride. After arriving in Chang Khong (a little one street border town) we had dinner and went to the only bar in town which happened to have a live band playing. The band was decent and it was particularly entertaining that the lead singer must have had at least 10 costume changes while we were there. The next morning we crossed the the river into Laos and found our way to the boat that was supposed to take us to Luang Prabang.

We arrived to the boat in the morning to find that it was already almost full, although much to our surprise more and more people kept getting on. In fact, we sat around for over an hour and a half as as additional passengers kept coming onboard. People were forced to sit on the roof in the rain and huddle up in the cabin next to the captain. Eventually we departed on what we thought was a cramped boat, but little did we know that the worst was yet to come as the boat proceeded to make another half dozen stops picking up even more people and goods at each one!

About two hours into the trip I noticed several of the crew members running back and forth with a panicked look in their eyes and at the same time the captain started making a beeline to the shore. Fortunately, we made it back to shallow water fairly quickly because as soon as we were next to the bank water started filling up the bottom of the boat. At this point half the people on the boat had to get out so the crew could start ripping out the floorboards with crowbars in order to access the leak to try and repair it. Watching the repair process was actually quite entertaining since fixing the hole involved a pair of pants, a t-shirt and a lot of rice (no joke). Needless to say the more than a hundred people on board weren't too trusting of the hasty repair work but eventually everyone was coaxed back on and we continued the journey. Surprisingly enough, the rice and pants did the trick six hours later we arrived safely in the tiny Laotian town of Pakbeng to stay the night.

Pakbeng is out in the middle of nowhere and therefore is rather underdeveloped. It actually reminded me of a town from a western movie both architecturally with its one dirt road, and in personality since it is in a somewhat lawless opium growing part of Laos known as the golden triangle. Electricity in Pakbeng is very sparse and where it exists it is on for only a few hours a day so the candlelit atmosphere added to to the city's charms. Definately an interesting place. The next morning I left to meet the boat for the second half of the journey and discovered that rather than using the hastily patched up boat from the day before we had been split up on two smaller boats to finish the journey. The rest of the trip passed uneventfully although the scenery was incredible and I arrived to Luang Prabang by mid afternoon.

That pretty much concludes this installment of my travelogue and as you've probably noticed I've decided to fill up your mailboxes even more this time by including a couple of visual aids to better demonstrate what I'm writing about. Hopefully it doesn't fill up your mailboxes too badly and if you're interested in seeing a few more pictures I posted some up on my Imagestation account at http://www.imagestation.com/album/pictures.html?id=2122504814&code=17638029&mode=invite&DCMP=isc-email-AlbumInvite.

Anyways, stay tuned for the next installment which will include Laos and maybe even Southern Thailand.

South East Asia Travels Part 1

2005-07-31T00:00:00.001-04:00

Hey Everyone,For those of you that don't already know, I graduated from Business School this past May and will be starting work as a Management Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton in New York in October. When I accepted the job I realized that this would probably be the last time for a long while when I could take some serious time off so I decided to take off for three months and travel around South East Asia. I am now a little more than a month into my trip and am having a great time.

The trip started with a really long but uneventful flight from Los Angeles to Bangkok where I arrived a little before midnight. I spent a couple of days in Bangkok trying to reacquaint myself to the noises and constant motion of being in large cities in developing countries while also seeing a couple of tourist attractions including the Royal Palace. After two days in Bangkok I was off to Angkor Wat in Cambodia via the most painful busride/scam.

The busride cost about $2 and in theory was supposed to be 10 hours long, leaving Bangkok at 7:00am and arriving in Siam Reap (outside Angkor Wat) at 5:00pm. In reality the whole route was designed to milk a bunch of tourists of as much money as possible during a 16 hour fiasco. The trip started with a 6 hour bus ride to the Cambodian border where our bus just barely outpaced the children that were on their bicycles outside waving to us (the trip should have taken about 4 hours). During that leg of the journey we made a forced lunch stop at an overpriced tourist trap restaurant and once we neared the Cambodian border it was time for another stop to get Cambodian visas. At this point, rather than taking us to the Cambodian consulate directly we instead got dropped off at another tourist trap near the Consulate so we would have to get our visa's through the bus company which just happened to add an extra 20% surcharge.

From there it was off to the hustle and bustle of the land border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia which is always fun. For those of you that have never crossed a land border between two developing countries it is amazing all of the things going on and how hectic a situation it is. After about a total of 2 hours between leaving Thailand and arriving in Cambodia we were on our way again. At least for a few minutes that is until we stopped at another place where we were coerced into changing money at a moneychanger affiliated with the bus company who offered really bad rates. After yet another hour of waiting we continued on the final leg of the journey to Siam Reap.

We finally arrived in Siam Reap at around 11:00pm and were taken to a hotel outside of the town where the hotel owner tried to force us to stay in a cockroach infested room that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a month. After a lot of arguing with the owner I along with a German guy and a French guy decided to just walk away and try and find some sort of transportation to a different hotel in town. After a few minutes we flagged down three moto drivers that took us to a Guesthouse that the French guy knew about. We arived to the guesthouse around midnight to find it locked up with no one in sight. Since our moto drivers already took off we decided to make a bunch of noise in the hope of waking the owner up. Eventually it worked and we were given a room at "Smiley's Guesthouse".

The next morning we went to Angkor Wat to see the ruins of the Khmer empire and within 5 minutes I realized that the hassle of the day before was well worth it. Angkor Wat is an area of Cambodia with dozens of temples that were constructed over a period of several hundred years by the Khmer people. The temples and palaces are some of the most incredibly massive and intricate buildings I have ever seen. It's mindblowing to imagine what some of the ruins must have looked like in their prime. Another remarkable aspect of the ruins was the way nature had started taking back what man had made with gigantic trees growing straight out of the walls of some of the temples. Without a doubt, Angkor Wat is one of the most impressive man made places I have ever seen.

After spending 3 days exploring the ruins of Angkor Wat I went to the Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia where I wandered around the town and saw a number of sites including several locations that pertained to Cambodia's recently very violent past including the killing fields and the S21 prison. S21 was a prison where basically any educated Cambodian was taken to be tortured and killed as the Khmer Rouge tried to eliminate any possibility of being overthrown. In fact, only 8 people in the course of around a decade of the prisons use made it out alive. Not the most uplifting of attractions but it was very fascinating to hear about such a dark chapter in humanities recent past.

From Phnom Penh it was off to Sihounakville to enjoy the beaches in the south of Cambodia but due to incessant rain (it is the rainy season after all) I only stayed one night before continuing on to Vietnam. One good thing about this stopover was in Sihounakville I met three British travelers (Gavin, Ellie and Tiggie) who were following a similar route to myself so we decided to join up for a while. The journey to Vietnam was via a slow boat on the Mekong river. The trip took a full day passing by really picturesque fishing villages and rice paddies before arriving in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. I spent a few days in the Mekong Delta before going up to Saigon.

Saigon was a lot of fun and it was really interesting to hear the other side of the story from the Vietnam war. It's amazing some of the atrocities commited by the US against both the people and the environment in Vietnam that are never really discussed in the US.

After Saigon I started north along the coast of Vietnam stopping in 5 different cities before arriving in Hanoi (Mui Ne, Dalat, Na Trang, Hoi An, Hue). In total I spent about 2 weeks during this part of the journey and during this time I saw some incredible places and did some really cool things. In Mui Ne I watched a flotilla of fisherman going out in what looked like wicker baskets for fishing at Dawn as well as wandered amongst some spectacular sand dunes. In Na Trang I enjoyed a beautiful beach and went SCUBA diving amongst some incredible coral reefs. In Dalat I wandered around a peaceful mountainous town and saw some really cool temples. In Hoi An I rented a moto and drove out to some ruins about 30 miles from the city past some of the most amazing landscapes imaginable. And in Hue I took a boat trip on the Perfume river visiting a number of cool temples and palaces.

The trip up the coast ended in Hanoi where I arrived 5 days ago. The next day I left for a 3 day boat trip to Halong Bay which was mindblowingly beautiful. Halong bay is made up of several thousand limestone islands and islets that makes the water an irridescent green color. That in contrast with the beautiful blue sky on the way out was remarkable and I can only hope that some of the photos I took can do it a little bit of justice. The delicious 8 course meals we were served on the boat throughout the trip weren't half bad either...

I arrived back to Hanoi yesterday and I spent the past two days exploring the city and the surrounding area. Tomorrow I will be going to take a look at Ho Chi Minh's preserved body and the former POW prison known in the US as the "Hanoi Hilton" and then on Wednesday I will be off to Bangkok to start the next part of my trip which will include Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and Singapore.

For those of you that actually made it to the end of this message I apologize that this email is so long but I have sort of been slacking and this is recapping a full month of my travels. I will try to be better at sending them off a little more frequently in the future so they will not be nearly as long.

Update on My Life

2003-05-23T00:00:00.000-04:00

Hey Everybody,

Sorry I have continued to be so bad about staying in touch, but it does not seem to be something that I am particularly good at. Anyways, I am writing this letter to update you all on what I have been up to during the past months and to share my plans for the near future.

As most of you probably know, for the past year or so I have been living and working in Madrid, Spain. Since returning, I have been living with my girlfriend Alicia in her incredible apartment in the very center of Madrid. For those of you that are familiar with the city, the apartment is about 100 yards from Puerta del Sol. As you can imagine, I have had a great time, and while I have not been as active socially as my first time in Madrid (less partying), I have made a number of friends, and for a change I have actually gotten somewhat settled.

Of course, when I say settled that does not mean stationary. Since arriving in Madrid I have managed to do some travelling within Spain including climbing the highest mountain in the Iberian peninsula (Mulhacen), visiting several small Spanish towns and villages including Toledo (as in Toledan Swords), Sigüenza, Jaca and Cuenca, and of course some larger cities as well such as Zaragoza (where Alicia is from), Barcelona, and Granada. I have also taken several trips internationally, of which the most interesting was definitely when I took a month off to travel around Tanzania, Kenya and Zanzibar over Christmas with my friend Parveen. The trip was great, and I got to test out a new camera and lens with around 50 rolls of film. You should be happy to know that at least some of those pictures turned out ;-> So if anyone feels masochistic, you are always welcome for a slideshow ...

Okay, now I know what you are all thinking, Steven just goes to random places, travels and never actually does any work. Well, contrary to the popular opinion this is not the case (I do have a job after all). When I first arrived in Spain in May of last year I was not really sure what I was going to do or where I was going to live (not even the continent). However, I got really lucky and the first day I was in the country I received an unsolicited offer with a small Spanish telecoms consultancy. Because instead of me going out begging for a job, the job came looking for me, I was in a much better position to negotiate and I managed to get a decent salary (although still fairly poor by US standards). Anyways, at the job I have had several projects, ranging from HORRIBLE where I was consistently working 80 hour weeks in an environment I hated and with people I did not particularly like to my current role where I am doing project management for some really neat projects for a great client.

So, since everything is going so well for me I figure "time for a change" and that leads me to the next part of this letter - what I will be doing in the near future. As many of you know, including some that may know in far more depth than they would like (thank you VERY much: Tom, Lynne, Parveen, Nisha and Jenjen), last year I spent a great deal of time and effort putting together some MBA applications at a number of schools. Well, I am pleased to report that surprisingly enough I was accepted at USC's Marshall School of Business (a top 20 business school for those of you that don't keep up with these kinds of things). Even more surprisingly, I managed to get a half tuition scholarship that should save me around $33000 over the course of the two year program!!! But, as you can imagine with a $33000 covering just half the tuition, the remaining tuition, other expenses and cost of living in LA without income will still make me a very poor student.

My current plans are to continue working in Spain till the end of May (yippee, less than two weeks!), then to stick around Spain for the month of June taking it easy and travelling a bit. Then in July I will head back to Maryland to visit friends and family and to start preparing for my move to LA. Finally, towards the end of July I will be moving out to LA in order to be ready for my first day of school on August 15.

There is however one small disclaimer that I would like to put out. These plans are quite likely to change. I actually just received a call from my boss yesterday and apparently they are so desperate to keep me on till they can find someone adequate to replace me (of course that's impossible ;-> ) that they are now starting to offer me all sorts of bribes and other incentives to extend my last day. But regardless, I will be starting school in August, so by mid-July at the latest I will be in Maryland.

I hope everything is going great with everyone, and I am looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible when I get back to the US.

South America Travels Part 3

2002-04-13T00:00:00.001-04:00

After keeping you all in suspense for such a long time, I figure it is about time to send out part three of my South American Travel updates. The last update I sent out included my travels through Brazil. This time to keep from boring you all too badly, I will only talk about my travels through Bolivia and I will save my peruvian adventures (where I am curently) for yet another email.

For those of you who heard something about my travel plans prior to my departure, you may be wondering where the idea of Bolivia came from. After all, originally I was just planning on visiting Brazil and Peru, two relatively prominent nations in Latin America. So why did I decide to visit the poorest most indigenous and one of the least talked about countries in South America? I guess the only answer to this is word of mouth. During my month travelling around Brazil I kept meeting other travellers who had nothing but great things to say about Bolivia, and who insisted that I really should spend some time there.

My original plan with regards to Bolivia was to get a plane ticket with a few stopovers in a couple prominent cities and then head over to Peru. I expected my total time in Bolivia to be about a week and a half. This estimate proved a little shy, as almost four weeks later I was still in wandering around the country. My first destination in Bolivia was a town called Cochabamba where I arrived by plane from Sao Paulo. The flight was supposed to take 6 hours, but after an unplanned 5 hour stopover in Santa Cruz the plane surprisingly enough was 'slightly' delayed. After arriving in Cochabamba much later than I originally expected, I basically checked into a hotel, grabbed some dinner and got to bed early in anticipation of a now rushed tour of the city (I had only given myself a day and a half to see the town without taking into account aircraft delays).

The next day I spent wandering around Cochabamba. I wandered up well over 1000 steps to see the largest Jesus statue in South America (bigger than the one in Rio), wandered around the streets and overall started getting acquainted to life in Bolivia. It was actually startling to see the differences in lifestyle not just between the US and Bolivia but even between Brazil and Bolivia. The average salary in some parts of Bolivia is something like $50/month, shopping is all done in open air street markets including in the major cities, and things like sanitation and hygiene certainly aren't given as much priority as in Western Countries. Despite this though, the people were all very friendly, and happy. Everyone was eager to talk and find out about the gringos and all in all it was a very welcoming place.

From Cochabamba I was scheduled to take a short 30 minute flight to Sucre. So after a mere 7 hours of delays the flight departed and I was on my way to Sucre with yet another day of vacation lost due to the wonders of Bolivian air transport. The one nice part of this delay was I met a group of travelers (two English, one Australian and two Scottsmen) in the airport who I ended up travelling with for the next part of my trip. Sucre is a beautiful colonial town which I spent some time wandering around. The most interesting thing I did while in sucre was to view the worlds largest dinosaur footprint collection. A cement factory while chopping up limestone discovered sets of tracks hundreds of meters long from dozens of different types of dinosaurs preserved vertically on limestone walls, and these are now available for public viewing. The sad thing though is the factory is still chopping up the limestone where the dinosaur tracks are preserved to make cement.

After Sucre my original plan was to fly to La Paz, but by this point I had become so disenfranchised with flying in Bolivia I decided to join the group I met in the Cochabamba airport and take a bus south to the mining town of Potosi. Potosi was one of the most interesting and tragic towns I have ever visited. During its heyday it was richer than New York and Paris. The majority of the spanish colonization was provided for by the mines in Potosi where veins of silver 2 meters wide existed and where more than 8 million Bolivian natives and african slaves were killed while mining the ore. The city is also the worlds highest at around 4500 Meters (14000ft). This originally caused me some problems with altitude sickness, but I quickly learned that a great natural remedy for this is Coca leaves (also used to produce cocaine).

While in Potosi I took a tour of the still operating mines, and got to see the conditions that the miners are working in today. The mines were basically used up by the Spaniards, and today the locals are barely able to scrape by on the ore that they can accumulate (average wage around $100/month). The mines are covered in natural asbestos and arsenic, and the miners have virtually no safety provisions. The entire mining process is done by hand without electricity, ventilation, or mechanization. Miners basically chisel out a hole with a hammer and chisel till they have created a gap big enough for a stick of dynamite. They then blow up the hole and carry out the rubble on their backs. The average life expectancy of the miner after they start working in the mine is around 10 to 15 years. However, the miners earn more than double what they would earn at other jobs available in Potosi.

From Potosi I left for the salt flats at Uyuni in the South of Bolivia. This consisted of a 4 day jeep tour driving around some of the most spectactular scenery I have ever seen. The first day we actually drove around the salt flats which covered the ground as far as the eye could see. A lot of the flats were covered with a thin layer of water which created the most incredible reflections of the landscape. Other highlights from the four day trip included active volcanoes, numerous geysers, exotic animal and bird life, a train cemetary and swimming in natural hot springs.

After Uyuni, the next stop was Bolivia's capital, La Paz. My first couple days in La Paz I mainly took it easy, saw the sights and had a great time bartering with the street vendors for random souvenirs and gifts. A couple of the more intersting sights I visited included the Coca Museum and the San Pedro Prison.

The San Pedro Prison is probably the most wacked out place I have visited in South America. Some of the more exceptional aspects to San Pedro include the fact that guards are not allowed inside the prison gates, and inmates have to buy their accomodations (cells), which can cost into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the nicest (5 star) accomodations include jacuzzis, satellite tv, and anything else you could want. It is in fact normal to bring your wife and kids in with you if you get sent to jail. The prison has a bunch of restaurants including Japanese, Italian, and German (of course the proprietors are of the respective nationalities). The prison has its own counterfitting operation where the inmates make fake student id's among other things. The prison even has its own orphanage and school system where they teach children up to the age of 12 or so important things to get by in life such as how to make cocaine! In fact, for those tourists that are so inclined in addition to a tour you can rent a room for the night which will include cocaine, marijuana, and a bottle of rum for a bargain price.

After a few days in La Paz I decided it was time to do something a little more active, so i signed up for a mountain bike ride to a nearby city called Corioco. Now this was not just any mountain bike ride as the road it follows descends nearly 4000 Meters (13000 feet) in just 80km (50 miles). The road is also considered by the UN as the worlds most dangerous road since 26 vehicles (or about one every 2 weeks) careens off the edge. But what makes up for this danger is the incredible scenery that you get to ride past. During the descent you pass through more than three different distinct climate systems, and see everything from the Andean highlands to tropical rainforest, the landscapes are just indescribable. An added benefit to this ride was at the end in Corioco I stayed in quite a nice resort hotel situated on the side of a mountain with a nice swimming pool, hammocks, beautiful day hikes, and overall quite a relaxing atmosphere. It definately was difficult to leave and head back to La Paz (especially considering I had to return by bus on that same most dangerous road).

The day after returning to La Paz I went on a day trip from the city to a place called Valle de La Luna or Valley of the Moon. While I was there I rented a quad bike and rode up and down trails for quite a while with a group of people from my hotel. The funny part was I had never ridden a quad bike or any sort of motorcyle before, I never showed them a drivers license, I never signed any sort of waiver or agreement, I just said i want to ride and they gave me the keys to a 300HP Quad and pointed to the woods. I thought they would get suspicious when I stalled out 2 or 3 times as i was getting used to the motorcyle style clutch, but no problems at all. So after having a blast on the quad bikes we went to the actual Valley of the Moon, which is an aptly named section of badlands that really look like they should be on the moon.

The next destination in Bolivia was a town situated in the Amazon basin in the north of the country called rurrenebeque (Rurre) that I was going to use as my base for tours of the Jungle and Pampas. I flew to Rurre on a Bolivian Air Force plane, which the air force uses to generate a bit of extra money for the armed forces. However, despite this change in carrier, the plane was still 3 hours late, and actually ended up landing at a city 1 hour away from Rurre. I suppose this was understandable though since the dirt air strip which is the Rurre airport was too muddy for the plane to make a safe landing.

The next morning I left for a tour of the pampas which is sort of marshlands that run next to the Amazon jungles in Bolivia. The nice thing about this areas is you can see lots of animal and particularly birdlife. During my 2 day tour I saw numerous types of monkeys, sloths, dozens of different birds, alligators, crocodiles, strange pig/anteater looking creatures and coolest of all pink river dolphins (which we also got to swim with). Unfortunately, we also ran into more than our fair share of Mosquitos, sandflies, Fire ants, and other nasty insects. After the two days in the Pampas we returned to Rurre for the night which happened to be Good Friday so I got to watch the locals celebrating and parading down the streets.

The following morning it was time for a two day jungle trip, we took a hollowed out canoe (with a huge outboard motor attached) up one of the amazon tributaries until we were well into the middle of nowhere. Once there we set up camp and started our jungle excursions. Some of the highlights of the trip included bushwacking through the jungle with machetes, drinking water from vines in the trees (a la Predator), taking the Heart of Palm from palm trees, finding and eating various edible fruits and nuts, making pan pipes from the bamboo in the forest, and seeing some more cool animal life including some gigantic and highly toxic spiders. After two days I returned to Rurre where I spent one final night before flying back with the Bolivian Air Force Plane to La Paz.

My final stop in Bolivia was Lake Titikaka which is considered one of the highest navigable lakes in the world. I arrived at a town on the Bolivian side of Titikaka called Copacabana and the following morning took a boat trip to the Isla del Sol or Island of the Sun. The island is supposed to have been the birthplace for the first Inca, and was a sacred place for the Inca people. I spent the better part of the day hiking around and visiting the inca ruins on the island, and spent the night in a fairly nice hotel on the island. The next morning I took a boat back to Copacabana where I caught a bus to Puno in Peru.

So, that catches everyone up on the Bolivian section of my travels. One other effect of all that time in Bolivia is in order to be able to see anything in Peru I had to extend my vacation a bit, so I will not return to the US until April 20. I hope everyone is well, and I apologize if I have not been very good at keeping up with personal emails while I have been travelling, but I will try and make up for it when I get back.

South America Trip Part 2

2002-03-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

Since I didn't get too much hatemail from my last update, I figure it is safe enough to send out another. As I mentioned before, from Sao Paulo I was going to go to the north of Brazil to scout out what were supposed to be some incredible beaches, and very culturally rich towns.

My first stop in the north was Natal. In Natal I had plans to stay at a Youth Hostel that I had heard about from some other tourists. The hostel was designed like a medievel castle, and of all things had a nightclub underneath of it with live music every night - this sounded to me like a great combination. Unfortunately, the public transport system in the north of Brazil is a little different. Rather than buses, vans drive around the city with someone screaming out the window the general vicinity to where the van is going. If one of the vans appears to be going in your direction, you wave it down, get in, and tell the driver where you want to go. This normally works very well, but when you speak relatively poor Portuguese, and don't really know where it is you are going it gets more complicated. Somehow though with a combination of luck, patience and three vans I arrived...

The hostel really was quite nice, and immediately after checking in I met a fellow Swedish consultant. He was actually someone in a very similiar situation to myself since he was taking an unpaid leave of absence from his company (BCG), to help them in their attempts to weather the economic downturn. The two of us ate dinner, and met up with a crazy Danish guy. Then we all went out, had some drinks and hung out till around 2:00am.

The next day I woke up for a buggy tour that I had signed up for when I arrived at the hostel. The tour was a trip to some of the beaches and places of interest near Natal. My buggy included a driver, an American girl, a Scottish girl, and a Brazilian guy (surprisingly enough). The entire thing was a lot of fun. We went to three different beaches, a few freshwater lakes, and took part in a number of activities including a rope swing, sandboarding, and some daredevil buggy driving through the sand dunes. At the end of the day I met up with the Swedish guy again, and we got some food and afterwords went to the disco underneath the youth hostel. It was a lot of fun with very good music.

From Natal it was then off to a small fishing village called Porto do Galinas (Port of Hens). So as usual, two buses and three vans later I finally arrived in town. In Porto do Galinas I met a friend and coworker from Sweden named Per. We relaxed and caught each other up on our vacations, then in the evening for entertainment we drank some beers while watching the local youths playing soccer on the beach. It was actually quite incredible how good they were. The next morning I woke up very early to go SCUBA diving. After diving I wanted to go kayaking with Per through a nearby Mangrove forest. After walking about 4 kilometers to get to the place with the kayaks we find out the guy who rents them is off working his other job and we should 'come back tomorrow'. The worst part of this is the day before Per had also tried to go kayaking, and they also said to 'come back tomorrow'.

The next stop was Recife, and Olinda. The two cities are right next to each other, but couldn't be more different. Recife is a modern town with a lot of businesses and a fairly good nightlife. Olinda on the other hand is a colonial town that hasn't changed that much since it was colonized. So the two together are really nice since you can do cultural stuff and enjoy the atmosphere of Olinda during the day, and then go out and party in Recife at night. Per and I spent two nights in Recife and I had a great time. We went out both nights till around 4 or 5 in the morning, and the only reason we left that early the second night was to catch a 6am plane to our next destination of Salvadore.

Salvadore was also a colonial town, and it is the third largest city in Brazil. Salvadore is also known as a cultural center of Brazil, and there is a lot of african influence from the slave trade that prospered there for so long. In fact, something like 80% of the people in Salvadore are of African descent, so it is a very different environment than most of Brazil.

After soaking up the atmosphere in Salvadore for several days, it was time to return to reality - at least temporarily. Okay, I'll explain. As some of you know, for the past several months I have been applying to MBA programs. While in Brazil I had heard back from one of the programs (Wharton at U-Penn), and they invited me to an interview. As all the interviews had to be completed before March 9, it was fortunate they were holding interviews in Sao Paulo on March 7 and 8 so I would be able to have one without cancelling my trip. As it was things were quite complicated since I obviously did not pack a suit and dress shoes for my trekking around South America, and I did not think they would appreciate it if I showed up for the interview in hiking boots and a t-shirt. Anyways, everything came together and the interview (actually interviews) went off without any major problems.

So now that that stressful part of my trip is over, it is time to continue with my vacation. I just bought a plane ticket today for Bolivia, and I will be leaving tomorrow morning...

That's it for now...

South America Trip Part 1

2002-02-25T00:00:00.001-05:00

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to drop a quick note to let you know what all I have been doing in these past two weeks here in South America. As you may already know, I arrived in Rio on February 12th. When I left from the US I was unsure if I would be able to find accomodations, because I was to arrive in Rio at when I though was the middle of Carnival. That did not turn out to be a problem though as Rio had its major carnival celebrations on February 10 and 11.

So, I missed much of the big carnival celebrations. But I at least had a bed to sleep in. Fortunately, the following Saturday was the Winners Parade, which is sort of a best of from the Carnival. I decided that since I missed the first part of Carnival, I had to at least stick around for this parade, and so I ended up staying in Rio for the next five days. During that time I did all the typical tourist things in rio, not to mention hanging out on some of the famous beaches (Copacabana, Ipanema, etc.). One of the coolest things I did though was hanggliding over the city.

Eventually Saturday came along and it was time for the Winners Parade. The parade started at around 8:00pm, and went until 4:00am. The entire time huge groups of people made their way down the Sambadrome, which is sort of a long stadium designed to accomodate these processions. The floats were immense, the costumes incredible, overall it was pretty mindblowing. The only real downside was it decided to pour down rain much of the evening, and by the time I got home I was completely soaking wet.

The next day, which was also my last day in Rio, I went to a soccer game in the Maracana stadium (one of the worlds largest), and watched the number one and two teams play each other. The following day it was off to Ilha Grande, a gorgeous tropical island off the coast of Brazil. Once I arrived, I checked into a small hotel on the water with its own private cove. The place was really tranquil and nice. I spent 4 days on the island visiting different beaches and just chilling out.

After that it was off to another beach town called Paraty, and a village outside of it called Trinidade. Both were also really nice, especially Trinidade which had an incredible natural pool with beautiful rock formations and crystal clear water. After the tropical paradise, it was time to re-enter the real world. Last night I took a bus to Sao Paulo where I am right now. I will only be staying here for one day though as I am going to catch a plane to the north of Brazil and visit Natal, Salvadore, and maybe some other cities in between.