Tag Archives: Water

Israel, Jordan, Middle East

Border Crossing Aqaba to Eilat

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After we had finished our Bedouin experience, we reunited with our German friend to taxi to the border crossing.   To cross from Jordan into Israel, we used the Wadi Araba border crossing from Aqaba to Eilat.  This is a pedestrian only crossing with about 100m of no man’s land to walk through to get to the custom’s office.  I can honestly say I’ve never a tank gun pointed in my direction before then!

Directions to Egypt and Jordan, Eilat Israel
Directions to Egypt and Jordan, Eilat Israel

Once through customs (which was a total breeze, our local airport is more stringent!) we made our way to the rental car company.  Renting a car in Israel was our first experience with driving abroad. So liberating!Car rental was not overly expensive, distances are not extreme given the size of the country–especially compared to Canada where driving for 10+ hours to get to somewhere in the next province isn’t unusual!

Eilat is a haven for bird watching being a crossroads for migratory birds from Asia, Africa and Europe.  It’s also a coveted site for SCUBA divers wishing to dive in the Red Sea.  You can even swim with  Whale Sharks!  We didn’t have time for either, not that you could pay me to do SCUBA.  FYI: The water of the Red Sea–not red!

The Red Sea
The Red Sea, Eilat Israel

Once we had the car, we realized we needed a quick pit-stop for continuing our journey.  We stopped at McDonald’s.  Yes, I know, roll your eyes!  But, it was different–kosher food laws and all, so we wanted to check it out. No bacon or cheese to be found on a burger anywhere!

Kosher food wasn’t the only shocking difference.  How about these fellows and their accessories?

Israeli McDonalds
Is this different from your local McDonalds?

That’s not something we see at the arches here!  Any thoughts?
~j

ps: We usually check out McDonald’s at least once while away.  There’s almost always something crazy on the menu that we’ve never seen before.  Sometimes the choices are HILARIOUS!

New Zealand, Oceania

Auckland: St Patrick’s Day

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Our last day in New Zealand was St Patrick’s Day.   It also coincided with the New Zealand port of call for the Volvo Ocean Race.  We spent a lot of time walking around the pier and checking out the pavilions.  There was live music, shopping, and loads of interactive activities for kids and adults alike.  It definitely wasn’t a bad way to spend our last night in the City of Sails.

Random events that happen during vacation always seem to make the trip even more memorable, don’t you think?
~j

 

New Zealand, Oceania

Why You Should Visit the Otago Peninsula

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Sea Lions, Otago Penninsula

The Otago Peninsula is one of the few places to see the endangered Yellow Eyed Penguins, and one of the only mainland Albatross habitats in the world.  This is probably one of my favorite vacation days in recent memory.  When we were looking for a company to visit the Otago Peninsula with, I was asked if I was a “twitcher” because I wanted the opportunity to see penguins.

twitch·er

ˈtwiCHər/
noun
noun: twitcher; plural noun: twitchers
  • a person or thing that twitches.
    British informal
  • a birdwatcher whose main aim is to collect sightings of rare birds.
No, I don’t think I would go that far! However, I’m not going to say no at the opportunity to see Royal Albatross and Yellow Eyed Penguins, Seals, Sea Lions, and tons of other birds!  That’s awesome.  We saw so many more birds than I could have even imagined.  The day wasn’t just about the birds; the Sea Lions were a definite hi-lite of the day.

To see the Albatross, we went to the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head on the Otago Penninsula.  The centre is the only mainland place in the world to view these enormous birds.

The teeny tiny Yellow Eyed Penguins were on the opposite end of the size spectrum.  They actually walk up from the beach (near the Sea Lions who very well could eat them!) up the sand bank into the longer grassy areas to nest.  It was quite the trek for these little waddling birds.

If you’re in New Zealand, and wondering whether to visit or not, take the opportunity.  It was fantastic.

~j

New Zealand, Oceania

Milford Sound

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Milford Sound MapTraveling  by bus from Queenstown to Milford Sound and back again made for a long day!  Not having our own transportation , we went with a day tour.  If you’re from a coastal rainforest area, Milford Sound might not be very impressive to you.  I found it worth the visit.  There were plenty of stops along the way that broke up the trip nicely.

Milford Sound, in Fjordland National Park, is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  This unique area receives more than 6.5m of rain annually.  (That’s about 21 feet of rain a year for all of you non-metric folks–more than three times your height unless you play for the NBA!)  Such high rainfall creates a layer of fresh water over the salt water sound.  Stained by tannins washed down from the forest, the fresh water layer restricts light to all but the top 40m.  This creates a rare opportunity for deep water eco-systems to be much closer to the surface than normal.   Milford Sound is a popular area for SCUBA for this reason.

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Though Milford Sound receives up to 180 days of rain annually, we had a beautiful sunny day for a cruise on the water.

Happy Travels,
~j

Asia, Thailand

Bangkok

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Street Sign, Bangkok Thailand
Street Sign, Bangkok Thailand

We’ve seen countless shows about how many scams there are in Bangkok.  It’s true!  Although it is an intriguing city, there are certainly some things to be wary of.  The scam we encountered was at The Grand Palace.  Note – The Grand Palace is open every day!

Grand Palace, Bangkok
WARNING: Do not trust wily strangers!

At the first entrance we encountered “wily strangers” who told us the temple was closed for the morning due to monks being on the premises. Only, we’d just seen a whole tour bus of tourists let in!  He said women weren’t allowed in at that time because it was too distracting to their prayer. The official-looking man tried to get us into a Tuk Tuk for other sight seeing. We didn’t go with it.

At the second entrance we encountered the same thing, only the story was slightly different, same Tuk Tuk scam though. Again, we didn’t go with it. Unfortunately there was no avoiding them and just walking through the entrance anyway as they are quite forceful and have great scam technique.   Luckily, at the third entrance we finally got into the Temple.   It really was a waste of time just trying to get into the Palace.

Phra Sumen Fort
Phra Sumen Fort

We stayed near Phra Sumen Fort which gave us the opportunity to explore on foot.  We were able to visit the impressive Buddhist temples of Wat Pho, Wat Saket, and Wat Arun.  While we were there Songkran festival, Buddhist New Year in Thailand, was taking place.

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From what we learned, there are several things to do as a Buddhist during Songkran festival.  Washing Buddha, and pressing gold leaf on to Him asks for forgiveness and fortune in the coming year.  Making sand “castles” in the temple also returns all of the dust carried out from the temple on the soles of the feet during the year.  There were offerings of colourful fabric, money and bells as well.

For a first look at Buddhist temples and practices, Bangkok was a great start.
~j
Asia, Cambodia

Sua s’dei Siem Riep

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Just about half way through the trip, we left Vietnam for Cambodia.  The flight out of HCMC was delayed, our gate was changed 3 times, and then the power went out to the entire airport–pitch black, power outage.  It. Was. Out.  After an hour or so, the power came back on, and our gate was changed back to the one we started at…seriously?!?!

Eventually we landed in Siem Reap.  We arranged to be picked up at the airport through the guest house we were staying at.  SO AWESOME!  Our tuk-tuk driver introduced himself as Batman, and we were off!The Siem Reap Garden Inn was a tiny little piece of paradise. (The pool is new since we were there.)  Everyone we dealt with seemed genuinely interested in making our experience the best possible which is not something found everyday.  The level of service was probably something we won’t see again.

Beng Mealea road signSiem Reap is one of the most welcoming places we’ve ever been to.  It is an oddly dichotomous place in that is a major tourist hub with a 100% tourist related enterprise as the main focus.  And, then there are obviously Cambodians going about their day to day business.  Kind of like Las Vegas – there’s the Las Vegas strip, which most people from Vegas would avoid like the plague, and then there’s normal Las Vegas where people live, work, go to school etc.   We were lucky enough to see both sides Siem Reap.

As we had limited time in Cambodia, we had a lot of ground to cover.  Our first day was spent with Ta from Peace of Angkor tours.  This has got to be one of the most memorable vacation days we’ll ever have.  He took us to Kompong Khleang and along the Tonle Sap.  We also visited Beng Mealea, and climbed along the walls of the ancient temple.  Ta was fortunate to be one of first people to “rediscover” the temple, and said at the time, there were actually tigers on the temple grounds.

As promised quite a while ago, here are some of the photos from our day with Ta.

Cashew fruit and nut
The kids were super excited to have their photos taken.  This grandmother wanted hers taken as well.  Just before she posed for the camera, she was hacking away at the edge of the bowl with a machete.  At 78 years old, she was still sharp as a tack.  We had a great time visiting Kompong Khleang.  The stilt houses were absolutely fascinating.  The residents were insanely hospitable to us.  Due to Ta’s kindness, we were invited inside a stilt house to roast cashew nuts picked right from the tree.

We were privileged to see a wedding, where they asked us in closer to take photos of the bride and groom.  And, we also saw/followed a funeral procession for a while.  Richard, a person we were with, said we almost had “hatches, matches and dispatches,” covered.

We had an extraordinary tour through one of the villages outside of Siem Reap, and we were fortunate enough to float on the Tonle Sap River (which in itself is a crazy thing–yep, I’m a nerd!).  None of this experience would have been logistically possible for us without our guide, Ta.  He really made the day one we’ll never forget.

The second half of the day we were at another UNESCO Site, Beng Mealea.  This temple has collapsed walls, and jungle-ish overgrowth that gives it an appeal unlike the other temples we saw in Cambodia.  We were able to climb on the walls and take pathways that would definitely not have been acceptable in the bubble wrapped North American tourism sector.  It was pretty fantastic.  See for yourself…

Asia, Vietnam

Mekong River Trip

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Mekong River
Mekong River
We decided to do the first trip on the Mekong to get away from the hustle of the Ho Chi Minh City for the day.  We booked a tour to take us to one of the floating markets.  Now, when I say floating market, I picture ladies with conical hats in boats selling flowers and pineapples etc…NOPE!  This was a HUGE out on the open water, with large boats, floating market.  It was like wholesale for the tiny markets–basically the Costco of the floating markets, and definitely not as visually appealing, but still cool to see.  Because there are so many boats, merchants display whatever they’re selling at the top of poles.  You see the veggie you like dangling way up in the air, and you know that’s the boat you want to see.  FYI: Buyers had to make some serious purchases of serious quantity.
Mekong River Boats

The tour also took us through the process of making puffed rice, rice paper/wraps, coconut candy, and fed us a bizarro lunch, complete with live traditional Vietnamese singing.   The fish looks kind of disturbing in the picture, but it was “crusted” with puffed rice, and was actually tasty.  The fresh Vietnamese spring rolls were not my favourite, but Jon ate them–cucumber, pineapple, fish and all!

Fish with popped rice “crust”
Making rice paper

Our Boat for the dayFor me, the most interesting part of the day were the stilt houses on the delta, and the different styles of housing, methods of fishing, and strategies for gardening we saw.

Seeing a different lifestyle, and how it all just falls together made the day trip worth doing, even if being on a tour was slightly cheesy.

 

Happy Travels,
~j

Asia, Vietnam

Ha Long Bay: Sung Sot Cave & Ti Top Island

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We signed up for a 2 day 1 night trip through Ha Long Bay. Getting to the Karst islands, we had to sail through shipping lanes of the South China Sea. I was not expecting to see massive freighters in wide open ocean, but we did. There were also several ships that were dredging silt from the sea floor (to be used in making concrete was the explanation received.) As we traveled, we checked out our cabins, and the deck areas, and enjoyed the company of our fellow passengers. Then, we were served a crazy lunch. Who eats 10 courses for lunch?!? I will make an entirely separate post for the food on board the junk.

Shipping Lane South China Sea
Ha Long Bay Symbol
Ha Long Bay Junk

 After lunch, we visited the Sung Sot caves, which seemed a little too touristy, but still interesting to see. The grottoes have walkways set out, and lights to feature all sorts of formations. The entrance to the caves is about 25m above the water. Just to give you a feel for the size of the cave, we probably walked about 1.5km throughout the site and didn’t see all of it. There were probably a few hundred people in the cave, and it was not crowded by any means.

Sung Sot Cave, Vietnam
Sung Sot Cave, Vietnam

We also climbed to the pagoda on top of Ti Top island. I wasn’t too keen on this little side adventure because I felt hideous from the drive still, but I did it anyway. The history of the island is kind of interesting if you’re into the nerdy stuff. On November 22, 1962, a Soviet Cosmonaut, Gherman Titov visited the island with Ho Chi Minh. In remembrance of the visit, Ho Chi Minh named the place Ti Top Island.

Top of Ti Top
View from Ti Top

The only thing missing from our Ha Long Bay adventure was blue skies for the photos. We had white washed out sky the entire time. The scenery was still amazing. We took a smaller boat through to a grotto. Apparently there are monkeys that live on the cliff walls, but we didn’t see any. We did see a little fishing village and some locals out on boats. All in all a good experience. Yay for crossing off another UNESCO site.

Bird Ha Long BayThroughout Vietnam, I felt like a dollar sign rather than a person, and I haven’t felt that way in any other country. But, I experienced that feeling a lot in Vietnam. It is indescribable the aggressive level of service shop keepers try to give in the hopes of making a sale because the competition is so fierce. If the neighbouring shop is selling the same thing, they have to capture every dollar they can. This deterred me from buying in the bigger cities, Hanoi and HCMC. There were a few negatives of the trip, and that was one them for sure.

The other negative was the exploitation of the environment–ie: fishing with electricity which just kills EVERYTHING, or fishing and not throwing anything back so that the juvenile fish cannot grow or reproduce, or fishing with explosives, or fishing with lights at night. (We saw almost all of those taking place, not the explosives method, but it happens.*) I did try to ask the guide, as he was fishing for tiny squid with a spot light at night, if there were limits or regulations, and he looked very puzzled that something like that could be in place.
I’m certain there has to be some sort of regulatory body, but clearly it isn’t followed. This also makes one think before booking with a company that uses these practices. We look for reputable, safe, eco-conscious companies to support, and this instance was not in line with those values. The guide caught 1 palm-sized squid that was eaten in its entirety by the crew.
*Aside from the spot light fishing, all of the other methods were observed while on the Mekong River–NOT in Ha Long Bay. And, the captain of our Mekong boat called out the people fishing with electricity, but they paid no mind.
Asia, Vietnam

Hanoi to Ha Long Bay

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Ha Long Bay was an amazing experience, and frightening as well. Let’s start with the trip from Hanoi to Ha Long…

Rice Field Vietnam
Rice Field Vietnam
I don’t think I have ever felt that carsick in my entire life. I don’t get carsick. I don’t get sea sick. I was carsick for 3 days. The drive was about 3 hours through idyllic rice fields. Imagine a stereotypical setting with green rice fields, a woman wearing a conical hat, she’s walking along the berm between sections, and there is a water buffalo wandering around. Seriously, we saw that. Then a few minutes of the skinniest row houses and businesses, and then back to idyllic movie scene Vietnam, then back to dust bowl village of skinny row houses.
Rice Field Vietnam
Vietnamese Row House
As we were driving, I noticed several tombs in the middle of the fields. The best explanation I received was that this was the burial custom. A deceased person is buried along side their home or field, with their possessions, and the alter is created to have that person ever present. As sort of an Ancestor Worship. Our driver said, “In your country, big big people with tiny grave site, in our country, tiny people with huge grave site!” He also said that all possessions of the dead person still belong to that person, so nothing is passed on to someone else lest the dead person come back and ask why you are using their stuff.
Tomb in Rice Field Vietnam
Tombs in Rice Field Vietnam

Once we arrived at the water, we met some of the people we were going to be onboard with. We met Pierre, an Australian traveling home from the UK via India and Asia. He was very interesting and passed along his Lonely Planet Vietnam to us. (We didn’t bring any guide books–too heavy! But, it was nice to have for the remainder of the trip. Just add it to the 50+ travel guides we already have.) We met a German physicist and his family, and a solo female traveler from Finland who we named Elsa, because she never did tell us her name.

You may wonder why I said the trip was frightening. A few weeks before we were set for our trip, one of the junks sank in Ha Long Bay. Passengers died because they couldn’t evacuate the boat properly in the middle of the night. New safety standards were put into place, and our room came equipped with a flashlight and a hammer to smash out the window if need be. We slept just fine aboard the boat. I don’t know the exact circumstance that caused the ship to sink, but the junk we were on appeared well maintained, and the weather and water were both calm for us.

Stay tuned for more photos from Ha Long Bay.
Happy Travels,
~j