Travel
There are 42 entries for the tag
Travel
In September me and a couple of mates went to Prague for a weekend. In general, we try to find a short-haul destination that’s got something interesting to see or do during the day and has great bars and nightlife in the evening.
Unfortunately for me, that weekend I was still getting over some random bug I had caught from the kids so I drugged myself up and persevered.
We got there flying Easyjet out of Gatwick and stayed in the Hotel Orion which I booked via laterooms.com. Turned out to be a great hotel choice. We had a huge two bedroom...
In June, a friend and I drove down to Le Mans in his Audi TT and camped at the Le Mans 24hr race. I've wanted to do this trip for a long time. It is rather bizarre to see a campground full of sports cars. The Friday night was one long party. It did get a bit frustrating when you want to finally get some sleep but the neighbours don't. Ear plugs are well worth it. Many people also stayed up all of Saturday night but it isn't nearly as raucous. The Stranglers played a concert that evening. ...
Jenny and I went for one last diving trip before the end of our travels. We flew to Kota Kinabaloo, met up with Jenny’s brother who flew in from Singapore and the next day we all flew out together. Pulau Layang Layang or Swallow’s Reef lies 300km northeast off the coast of Sabah. It’s part of the Spratly Islands which are militarised for various territorial claims.
The plane we flew in was tiny. It held 15 passengers, two pilots and our bags and supplies piled up in the back. Just behind the pilot was a box marked as the life raft. It...
We’ve been back home in the UK for two weeks now. After being away for seven months, it felt pretty strange coming home. Everything is very familiar but new at the same time. It’s very clean and green. Plenty of open spaces and it’s not crowded. It’s great going outside without the energy-sucking sweltering heat sapping your motivation. Skin isn’t sticky. Traffic is orderly. No ants or mossies. Of course, prices are outrageous.
Best of all, it sure is nice sleeping in one’s own bed and being surrounded by one’s own stuff.
We’ve got dozens of projects keeping us busy. I need...
We got back to Malaysia at the end of April and had one more month left before our flight home. We decided to take the kids on a beach holiday and I also wanted to fit in one more diving trip.
Pulau Redang is an archipelago of 9 islands 12 miles off the east coast of Malaysia. The entire place is a marine park and it’s famous locally for fine beaches, clear water and excellent snorkelling. It’s not really on the international tourist circuit and is mainly visited by local tourists. There’s around a dozen resorts catering to different budget levels. There’s no...
More catching up. After Tokyo, we spent a week in Beijing. I haven’t found Chinese cities to be very pleasant places and Beijing is fine example of an ugly city. It’s built on a flat featureless plain and smothered by air pollution. The worse air pollution I’ve ever seen. It’s hazy just two blocks away! Beijing has massive multilane roads clogged with traffic and is not at all pedestrian friendly.
Luckily, the buses and subway work well and taxi’s are plentiful and cheap. It wasn’t hard to get around. We dropped the idea of riding bikes as it would put K* in...
I love Tokyo. It's such a great hive of activity and concentrated Japanese culture. We took the kids around some of the main districts and mostly spent our days wandering and shopping.
Our first stop was Akihabara ("Electric Town") to check out all the electronics. The kids loved it. Lots of stuff but nothing particularly cheap. I picked up a new pair of earphones. I also had to witness this trend of waitresses dressed in french maid uniforms. Indeed it's true. There's even manga all about maid power! We also wandered around Shinjuku the same evening just enjoying all the neon.
We...
Got a lot of catching up to do. We left Kyoto by Shinkansen and spent one day on the Izu Peninsula before heading into Tokyo. The Izu Peninsula isn't far from Tokyo and is reknown for it's hot spa's. Plenty of things to do if you can spend the time there. The hope was to get a view of Mt Fuji but the weather simply didn't co-operate. Lots of rain and no views.We stayed at the Nanzanou in a small town called Izu Nagaoka. We had an absolutely fabulous room. It was the sakura suite. It was about thirty tatami...
After mulling over our options, we decided to hire a 4x4 and driver and explore northern Sichuan rather than fly somewhere else in China.
Domestic tourism is massive in China. With growing wealth, the Chinese must be travelling more and more so all the standard tourist sites are very busy even in low season. I would hate to see these places in high season. By getting our own wheels, we hoped to get away from standard tour routes and see the countryside.
Our driver and guide was a friendly Tibetan fellow by the name of Gonpo. It was great to get his...
We're been in Chengdu for a few days now. Right from the trip in from the airport, it's obvious that Chengdu is a richer city than Xi'an. There are forests of new apartment blocks sprouting everywhere. Construction appears frantic here. There's also landscaping and attempts to make the place look nice which lacked in Xi'an. The downtown core is larger and more modern. There are poorer neighbourhoods and places we were told to avoid.
We were greeted at the airport by our driver and guide as the first four days of our trip was a private tour. They took us to...
Made it to China. We almost missed our connection to Xi'an due to the massive queue/scrum for the domestic flights airport security check taking over an hour to get through. Great introduction to China - especially all the shouting and scuffles with security guards. And then they kept changing the departure gate for the flight!
I can't believe how terrible the air pollution was in Xi'an. Caught myself trying to take very shallow breaths just to avoid breathing it. It's so bad, you can barely see any blue sky. You have to look straight above you.
We stayed at the Bell And...
Tonight we’re catching a red-eye flight to China. Our first stop is Xi’an. Then we fly to Chengdu in Sichuan for a short local tour but we have about ten days to do whatever we want. Not sure yet whether we’ll go south or east or we could even try going to Tibet. We’re going to make it up as we go. By April 6th we have to be in Beijing in order to catch our flight to Osaka. We’re hoping to be in Kyoto in time to see the cherry blossoms but according to current predictions, we’re going to...
At the top of my list of things to do while in Malaysia this time around was to dive the island of Sipadan. Sipadan is considered one of the best dives site in the world.
So I booked us on a 6 day/5 night package at Borneo Divers Mabul Resort. Mabul is the island next to Sipadan. You can’t actually stay on Sipadan as it’s now protected and visitor numbers are limited.
There are four other places you can stay. The Sipadan Mabul Resort (SMART) runs a high end Water Village as well as some value-oriented beach bungalows. There’s another water...
After Uluru, we returned to Melbourne for a few more days before flying back to Malaysia.
According to latest survey by The Economist, Melbourne is the 2nd most liveable city in the world (Vancouver is #1). I can believe it. It’s an easy grid-based city with plenty of green area’s and lots to do. It’s big enough to be interesting but not so big as to be overwhelming. Southeast from Melbourne is the Mornington Peninsual which has some lovely scenic areas and quaint towns. The Dandenong Ranges National Park was a nice place to hike. We also went down to Authurs Seat...
We’re back in Malaysia but I still need to finish up blogging about Australia. I’m also trying out BlogJet as a way of writing these posts.
From Melbourne we flew to Ayer’s Rock to visit Uluru. In some ways, I had been dreading this part of the trip as it’s the middle of summer and I expected some terrible heat. And, after all, it’s a lot of money to go see a big rock. I couldn’t convince Jenny to drop this part of the trip as she really wanted to see this icon of Australia.
While flying there, you get to appreciate the...
From Brisbane we flew to Adelaide and picked up our 6-berth campervan so we could meandre our way to Melbourne. This was our first go at a campervan holiday with the kids. We had six days and 1000km to cover.
With all the little detours, we actually covered over 1500km. Dozen's of national parks, dozy little towns and everchanging scenery. Huge streches of beaches with pounding surf. Highlights for me were the bat caves at Naracoorte and the Tower Hill reserve where we spotted wild koala bears and kangaroo's. The Great Ocean Rd scenergy was nice but I think it's rather...
We took the train from Sydney to Armidale and visited a friend there. It's a small university town in the middle of a ranching region. Nice cool climate as it's up on a plateau. It's also very white which was very noticeable. There's lots of Asian's in the more urban area's of Australia. Unfortunately, there was too much pollen in the air so I was overwhelmed by an allergy attack.
From there we took a scenic drive down to Coff's Harbour. It's a nice windy drive through an area reknowned for a great many waterfalls. I discovered there were such a...
We're now in Australia for five weeks spending the first ten days in Sydney. I am dead happy to be back in a meat and potatoes country - a land of beer and BBQ's!
I've heard plenty about Sydney beforehand so I had some pretty set expectations. Sure enough, it was everything that I had heard. It's a city that I knew I would like.
Physically, it really is quite similiar to Vancouver but with a warmer climate. Vancouver has a more dramatic setting with the backdrop of mountains while Sydney is quite flat. Sydney harbour has a much longer shoreline with...
We were lucky enough to spend a day volunteering at Prechrouk School while we were in Cambodia. Normally volunteers would spend at least two weeks teaching at the school but the Sage Foundation kindly let us volunteer for only a day as one of the Cambodian teachers, Vanak, was happy to have us help him teach English to the Year 8's and 9's.
The school is about an hours drive West of Siem Reap in a rural area not visited by tourists. The road isn't completely paved and the school has no water or electricity. There's no playing field or playground equipment....
It's often a struggle to book a holiday. One option is to use a tour agent in your home country but I always feel you pay way too much for what you get. Essentially you're paying for a lot of marketing and sales overhead for a bulk travel product. You can also do it all yourself but it takes a lot of time and research and it's hard to get the itinerary all lined up nicely. You can easily end up paying rack rates and wasting a lot of time.
So an alternative is to find a local travel agency in...
The modernity of Bangkok was a relief after Cambodia. We stayed at the Vengtai Hotel not far from the Khao San Road. Not very luxurious but clean and comfortable.
Unfortunately, my daughter came down with a high fever on arrival. I still had a bad cough and an on-again, off-again low grade fever. The two of us spent the whole of our time in Bangkok holed up in the hotel. Very boring.
Jenny and K* managed to cover lots of sights and get in some shopping. Luckily, they avoided catching what we had. R*'s fever finally broke before we were due to...
While Siem Reap is a small provincial town with rural sensibilities, Phnom Penh is very much a big city. It's crowded and the people aren't as friendly. The girls often dress with a sense of fashion and there's plenty of flash cars to prove that some Cambodians are wealthy.
Cambodia has a reputation as a very corrupt country. We we're never directly affected by corruption but we heard lots of stories. For example, the terrible road between Siem Reap and the Thai boarder never gets fixed because its alleged that Thai Airways pays a bribe to keep it that way. The guides we had...
We've had a really good week here in Siem Reap. First, its a bit of a luxury trip for us. We're in a decent four star hotel rather than our usual three star or less. It's called the Angkor Holiday Hotel. It's a rather soulless design catering to tour groups but it's very clean and comfortable with aircon, a pool, a good breakfast buffet and our own safe in the room. The place is only two years old. The service from the staff is outstanding - friendly, prompt and eager.After a week here, one of my strongest impressions is just...
Tomorrow we're on the road again. We have a two week tour of Cambodia that I arranged with Sage Insights (update: Sage Insights is now called AboutAsia Travel). This is a complete change as usually we do everything ourselves but Sage put together a compelling itinerary for a reasonable price and the profits go to a good cause. One of the highlights of the trip will be volunteering as a family at a local primary school. It should be a great eye-opener for the kids (and us!). We're also spending four days in Bangkok since Jenny's never been there. It was a...
Recently got back from ten days in Bali with Jenny and her brother John. It's the least I've ever been prepared for a trip. I didn't even have a guidebook or a map! But my focus was on diving rather than culture so my only preparation was reading about the various diving locations.
We arrived and immediately jumped into a taxi for a two hour drive up to Amed. Along the way, I realised to my horror that I had left my Samsung T9 MP3 player on the airplane. Doh! I'm pretty good at losing small things and now tend to...
So we learned a few things doing this last trip.
Our kids, at this age, do not do scenery. I doubt many kids care about scenery. We spent a bit too much time driving around beautiful places and would plan for less of it next time. Driving with bored kids is never fun . Audio books are the best way we know to pass the time in the car.
It's better to book accommodation in advance. While booking at the last minute offers a lot of flexibility, it also wastes a lot of time and finding room for a family of four is harder...
Our last day back in Rome was a wash out. We spent ages tracking down places to stay and being Monday, the places we wanted to go were closed. Doh! Bad timing. We had hoped to either go to Tivoli, Hadrian's Villa or Ostia Antica. Instead, we just did a little wandering around Frascati. Bit of a waste really.
If you're ever flying out of Ciampino airport (eg with Easyjet) and need to stay nearby, I can highly recommend a hotel called Hotel Dei Consoli.
There was ugly traffic getting the airport and the flight was delayed by almost an hour but...
For the last three days of our trip, we rented a car in Sorrento drove back to Rome.
Driving is a bit of a nightmare in Italy but you just learn to keep cool, expect the unexpected and make slow deliberate maneuvers. And you don't expect anyone to stick to any rules. You don't even get lines on motorways sometimes!
But I really wanted to drive the Amalfi coast myself. It's just one of those things. In fact, I'm starting to hatch an ambition to drive all the famous roads I can think of.
By the time I managed to drive from the...
I'm back in the UK catching up on these blog posts.
The train from Rome to Naples went smoothly. We had bought the ticket the day before which was a bit tedious. Whenever possible, we learned to avoid any kind of Italian bureacracy and queuing. It's very slow with tellers not working particularly hard and its easy to get in the wrong line and get sent to the back of another one.
From the station, it was easy to catch the Circumvesuviana train over to Sorrento. Public infrastructure in Italy attracts a great deal of graffiti and it seems to intensify the...
Finally got to an Internet cafe here in Sorrento and got some time to catch up.
The train from Milan to Rome was excellent - a fast Eurostar. We were worried about buying the tickets on the day we were travelling but it turned out that wasn't a problem. The ride was smooth with plenty of leg room. Much better than flying.
From the train station in Rome, it was't far to our apartment near the Spanish Steps. I was very pleasantly surprised when we got there. I usually brace myself for disappointment when we arrive at any apartment. Picture and descriptions...
So out of Munich we made our way to Neuschwanstein to see the famous fairytale castle of King Ludwig II. It was still pouring with rain when we got there so we voted not to visit and just take a couple of photo`s from the road. It is surrounded by autumn colours and would have be beautiful if there had been sunshine.
We stayed the night in Lindau. We arrived late and left early so we didn't see anything. I'm sure its a nice place in the summer.
Next day, the kids were curious about the tiny country of Leichenstein which was...
So we did make it back to Oktoberfest in the evening and saw the lights from the top of the ferris wheel. However, it was raining quite heavy.
And it was still raining the next morning. We left Munich and dropped by the Dachau memorial on the way out. Dachau was the first concentration camp created by the Nazi's and was used for the whole 12 years the Nazi's were in power. It wasn't an extermination camp but rather a camp for political prisoners but it was horrendous nonetheless.
The museum is excellent and most text is in German and English. It...
We've been in Munich two days now. The first day was warm and sunny so I couldn't resist going to the Oktoberfest right away. The kids loved the funfair and R* even tried a serious rollercoaster (Olympia Looping) and loved it. We managed to have lunch in a beer tent and soak in the atmosphere.Late in the afternoon we wandered around the old centre of Munich and Jenny got in some shopping. It really is a pleasant city.Today the weather has turned. It's our first day of rain and it's much colder. We spent the morning catching up with laundry...
On the way up to Munich, we drove through Obersalzburg. Well, the satnav took me to the new Hotel Turkin which used to be next door to Hitler's Bergenhoff. We soon found our way to the car park and bus station from where you get tickets to visit Hitler's Eagles Nest.This whole area is where members of the Third Reich had their homes. Their homes no longer exist but the network of bunkers are still there to be visited. We went into the Obersalzburg Museum but unfortunately, the displays were all in German. I tried explaining some of the imagery...
It took four hours to drive up to Salzburg from Venice yesterday. The trip went quickly listening to some stories, practising math and playing some games. The flat plains around Venice quickly erupt into the alps. It's a very pleasant drive on good motorways. My only complaint is that the tolls are not cheap.
As soon as we got into Austria, I bought a vignette (tax disc) so we could drive on the Austrian roads. It's only about 8 euros for a month.
Before reaching Salzburg, we made a detour to visit the salt mine at Bad Durrenburg. Salt has been mined...
On the way to Venice, we stopped by Verona to check out the Roman arena where those famous opera´s are held. Not as big as we expected but still, it looks great for a place that's a couple of thousand years old!
We had a difficult time finding a place to stay near Venice. Don't bother going down to Fusina even though you can catch a ferry from there. However, the area along the river Brenta around Dolo and Mira turned out to be quite nice and we eventually stumbed upon a gem of a place called Villa Ducale.
It the...
I'm in a dreaded Eurocamp late at night in an Internet kiosk. It's not easy to find Internet access. Wish I had brought a laptop now as wifi access is everywhere.
The Italian lakes live up to my expectations. Very beautiful. We stayed in Benova which is north of Stresa on Lake Maggiore. We visited Isola Bella which is an island with a fabulous villa and garden on it. Next we wound our way over to Lake Como which is even better. Much more dramatic landscape with very steep hills all around it. The lakes are supremely picturesque but rather boring...
No, I definitely wouldn't want to live in Milan. The Science and Technology Museum was very good. We went there to see models of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions. The man was brilliant and we've been talking about him quite a bit with the kids. That was the highlight of the day for me. Well, maybe it was the ice cream. Jenny and R* are at La Scala seeing Don Quixote so I'm sure that will be their highlight. Neither K* or I wanted to see it. We just spent some time in the park instead.
Looking forward to getting our rental...
It's the morning of our second day in Milan. I'm sitting at an ancient Windows 98 computer in the hotel lobby. I'm really not sure this post will work as I'm getting lots of errors popping up. A friend who lived in Milan for a couple of years described it as a sh*thole. I wouldn't condemn it that badly but I'm not that impressed after one day of wandering around.
The Duomo and glass covered gallery are amazing of course. We also went and saw Leonardo's "The Last Supper" at the Santa Maria del Grazie (or however you spell it). That...
We've been in Paris for almost a week and I finally got access to the Internet. I'm sitting at a small Internet cafe is St Germain while K* plays on his Nintendo DS. The meter is ticking.
We have a great apartment. Small but clean, comfortable and well kitted out. It's only one block from the St. Germain metro so it's easy to get about. Even the shower is good! Definitely a luxury.
We've done most of the classic sights around Paris: Notre Dame, Sacre Couer, d'Orsay, Pompidou, Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower. The top of the Arc de Triomphe at...
As you can tell from the previous posts, we have just got back from three weeks in British Columbia. We were there to celebrate my parent's 50th wedding anniversary which went very well. We tried to get around to seeing as many friends as possible but unfortunately, we never can fit everyone in. We also tried to get out and do some summer activities with the kids as we usually visit in the winter in order to get some skiing in. Luckily we had some great weather. We rambled around Lynn Valley and some beaches, rode bikes around Stanley park and went sea kayaking a...
We managed to do some sea kayaking while back in British Columbia. First we made a trip to Pender Island and did a three hour guided tour with Kayak Pender Island. It's a nice little outfit and easy to get to; there's a direct ferry from Swartz Bay. On the other side, you can just walk there from the ferry terminal. The highlight of the paddle was going past a small rocky outcrop that was home to several harbour seals and their pups.
About a week later, we went kayaking with a friend in Deep Cove, Vancouver (thanks Willy!). That's where we are...