Moving Back in with the Parents

Everyone always wants me to tell them what it's like living with my parents again.  I can tell you exactly what it's like:

SUID AFRIKA

January to March isn't that long of a hiatus right? Sorry for the long delay, but my commentator has been swamped at work and so he finally found a spare moment to catch up on some pics. I am determined to post the pics for all 15 countries!

Here is our pictures from our trip in South Africa. It was one of the most unique places we visited with a mixture of extreme wealth and extreme poverty right next to each other. The people were very friendly and welcoming, but the overt racism was palpable and ever-present.

The safari we went on was truly excellent. We stayed in a cottage in the national park and had the amazing opportunity to drive ourselves around and spot the animals. Overall we saw lots of cool stuff, though the white rhino remained elusive.

Our trip was a drive down the Garden Route from East London to Capetown and were able to see a lot of the countryside including the national parks (the Otter trail), the small coastal towns (Jeffrey's Bay and Cape St. Francis), the wine country of Stellenbosch and the city of Capetown.

Our adventure was joined by our friends Joe and Kim from San Francisco and great time was had by all.

Enjoy!

South Africa

Istanbul

It's only been nine months since the last trip update. We've put up some photos of the places we've been, but I haven't put up any stories since St. Petersburg. Millions of people conceived and bore a children in that time, and I couldn't get around to putting together a blog post. Life is so hard in the industrialized world sometimes.

Perhaps it is my Irish roots and the beers I've had, that this *finally* seems like the most appropriate time to work on these travelogues. I think mostly, that it has to do with callouses. After all the travel, I couldn't get it together to write up the fascinating events we'd lived through every day. Half-way through the trip, I could go 10-12 hours in museum and never get bored. But I couldn't get it together for a blog post. It was too hard.

We got back to the States, and I could do a 14-hour stint in an art museum with no problem. Getting a job though... 4 hours in, and I'm like, "Where do you people take naps?! People can't be forced to work like this! I need a hammock and two hour nap. NOW." The structure of work and having to get things done (GTD) all the time provides the scaffolding for writing up some memoirs. I'm born again hard.

The best story of our time in Istanbul is about Perin's best friend's dad's girlfriend and tour guide: Sevin. We needed to catch a taxi to get the Galata Tower above the city to see the beautiful sunset. The guy in shop we ate at said we needed to walk down the hill, take the subway one stop, then walk up some other hill. Sevin called bullshit on him, called a taxi and told the driver where we needed to be.

He hauled ass down the hill, going around corners with a high velocity. Sevin didn't put her seatbelt on, leaned forward and started yelling at the driver. He started yelling back and pointing and yelling vociferously at his meter. Back and forth they yelled as we sped through twisty cut-backs in heavily populated areas, honking and pushing pedestrians out of our way. We swiftly arrived at the tower, paid the driver, and Perin and I were sure that we had barely escaped death. Sevin then says to us, "That driver told me the funniest story! Some tourist couldn't find some address and spent hundreds of lira on taxis driving around looking for it. Then she found me (the taxi driver), and I used to live on that street with three houses, so I knew where it was! Even though the meter read four lira, she tipped me 200!"

Sevin took us to some amazing food places, shopping, and spice bazaars. It was some of the best food we ate the whole trip.

Ancient History

This weeks installment follows our journey through Egypt.

I thoroughly enjoy ancient history and was very excited to see the sights and history of Egypt, but many times during our planning and even while we were on our journey we had to contemplate if it was the safest place for us to visit considering the recent uprising and overthrowing of Mubarak.

In the end our timing couldn't have been more perfect. We were able to enjoy all the splendors, sights and culture that Egypt has to offer without any tourist lines. The protests that were going on while we were there were peaceful and the people we met where incredibly optimistic about the changes to come.

One of our longest albums, I just couldn't help but share so much of what we saw. Here are our photos!

Egypt

Jordan Rocks (pun intended)

Happy New Year everyone! Hope your holiday's were fabulous and filled with family and fun!

This week's pictures are from our death-defying day trip to Jordan. The ruins of Petra were spectacular but it was the drive to and from the Israeli border that made it feel like we were in an Indiana Jones movie. Our driver was a bit crazy, taking turns at sensationally high speeds, weaving around buses through fog on mountain cliffs, all-in-all it was a white knuckle experience!

The album of photo's is short and sweet, giving you a glimpse at the amazing architecture built into stone walls.

Enjoy!

Jordan

Israel

During our adventure we found that the best way to see any country was through a local lens. We were lucky to have that for most of our time in Israel. Through my cousin Aaron (who was there with us) and the network of my Uncle Marc and Aunt Sally we had amazing tour guides, local insight, fabulous places to see and eat and we learned an unbelievable amount about the history of Israel and the impact of all religions on the country.

Probably one of the coolest experiences was seeing the Jewish holiday of Purim in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We saw the crazy costumes and young adults dressed like an American Halloween (often scantily dressed ;-) in Tel Aviv and we saw the drunk orthodox of Jerusalem that had gone wild by changing out their large fur hats for turkish fez's. It was something you cannot experience anywhere else in the world!

Thanks again to the Tallahassee Gertz clan for making our time Israel so special!

Israel

Turkey

A cat as a hat in the grande bazaar
A taste of the delights of turkey with spices from near and afar
Istanbul is a beautiful city surrounded by water and history and lot of its past are still a mystery
In Cappadocia a hot air balloon ride over fairy chimneys and cities underground
Amazing food, drinks and great time all around

A special thanks to Sibel and Mutlu for sharing their family with us to show us a very special view of Istanbul.

Please enjoy our pictures from Turkey!

Turkey

Elbows Up!

Answering where our favorite country was to visit is very hard but, there is no question that Russia stood out more than anywhere. After four visits to the Russian Consulate in New Zealand for our visa's, our first introduction to Russian bureaucracy was not endearing us to our holiday. But after landing in Moscow and being there for only a few hours it was evident our time was going to be memorable forever. It was a combination of many things, but mostly it beat any expectation we had.

Our first night in Moscow was magical. Our hotel was in an incredible part of town and walking distance from Red Square. We immediately headed over and during a light snowfall, the lit-up romantic Red Square was practically empty and we had it all to ourselves.

A few days later after absorbing the pulse and feel of Moscow (and the amazing Kremlin museum) we took a top-notch overnight train and arrived in the whimsical St. Petersburg. It was a city filled with culture and history, combined with beautifully restored architecture and lovely bridges and canals.

A few key things we learned, mostly about drinking.

1) When you take a shot of vodka, you must raise your elbow to at least ear level
2) If you are late to a party (or an event where drinking takes place) you must play catch up and drink as many drinks that you missed

Nastrovia!

Russia

Cambodia in Review

While we were only in Cambodia for approximately 36 hours it was one of the more memorable places on our journey. My first time to a 3rd world country it was an eye opening, yet positive experience.

The people we encountered are filled with hope, are optimistic and thankful for all that they have. In addition, the beauty and incredible uniqueness of Siem Reap was truly a fantastic experience.

Please enjoy our photos.

Cambodia

Sweatiness, sweatshops and sweet food...

Our adventure was set only in Bangkok but that didn't limit our fun!

Enjoy our pictures from Thailand:

Thailand

Baby Pigeon Anyone?

Picture pages, picture pages, come along with picture pages, bring along your crayons and your pencils (or in this circumstances your eyes and attention).

This time a rather short album of Hong Kong. While we are very pleased we visited, when we look back upon all the countries we visited, this was probably the lowest on the list for return as a tourist. Not because it was bad, but because after three days you have done your exploring and are definitely over-shopped.

Though should the opportunity arise to do some work in Hong Kong, I would definitely jump on it!

Hong Kong

Next Pics Up: South Korea (with a hint of North)

South Korea was fantastic, not just for its culture, shopping and amazing food, but for the time we got to spend with some of our favorite people Teri (aka T-1000) and Sang-Tek (Saint).

Enjoy!

Korea

Picture Time

Perin's favorite: Picture time...

The world trip blog updates may have stopped in St. Petersburg but the pictures did not. And now its time to share them. Its taken some time, but I've sorted our 8000 photos into blocks of 100 or less per country. In order to not overwhelm anyone, I have decided to share about an album a week. For those who want a sneak peak, all photos have been uploaded to picasaweb, but only the albums on the blog have commentary added already.

And so to begin: JAPAN

Petersburg

The locals don't bother saying or writing the Saint in St. Petersburg, so neither will I. Petersburg was wonderful.  It's called the Venice of Russia because it was all designed by French and Italian designers and architects in the early 1700s, was Russia's capital for the last 200 years of czarist rule, and has many canals.

Those canals and the Neva River which runs through the middle of the city were all completely frozen when we arrived which was nice for commuters because they didn't have to walk all the way to the bridge - they just crossed wherever was most convenient.  We could tell it was spring time because fewer people walked on the ice and more people started using the bridges.

The city is quite magnificent and all the buildings that were neglected under Soviet rule have been well restored.  The Hermitage was one of the highlights - we stood around for about 45 minutes before the museum opened (based on advice from some other travelers) and that paid off - the line to get in was many hundreds of people long, all day long.  We spent a full day and could have spent even more time inside.  The picture posted with this blog entry was one of our favorites: Duel After a Masquerade Ball.

We saw more museums and palaces and our last day was set aside to see the Museum of Combat Engineers and Signal Troops after the Vodka Museum. The Vodka Museum wasn't open (even though it was supposed to be) so we walked over to the Field Artillery Museum (many Russian museums have more than one name, including this one).

We stood in line with about ten other people waiting for it to open, for over an hour. We could see people walking around inside, but Russia being a non-service-oriented society, no one ever approached us.  Additionally, I think the museum is staffed by military personnel, so they were extra unhelpful.

Some people just wandered off and then we and the remaining line members walked over to the employees' entrance to try and get in.  An old guy sitting in a booth made an "X" with his arms and some people with us translated saying the museum was closed that day.  The Russian-speaking people with us said the museum should have updated it's website, or at the very minimum, put up a closed sign on the front gate.  The old guard shrugged, lit a cigarette and went back to reading his newspaper.

So we wondered back to the vodka museum and it was open.  We got all kinds of interesting tidbits, but I think my favorite was how the czar got Dmitri Mendeleev (the inventor of the periodic table of elements) to spend a year of his life determining the best tasting water to alcohol ratio for the perfect vodka.  The answer is 37.5% alcohol, but most producers round it to 40%. Genius applied!

After a three shot tasting with traditional food pairings (pumpernickel bread with mustard and pork fat, pumpernickel bread with pickled herring, and dill pickles) we headed off to the airport, nicely buzzed. In case you're wondering, the pickles were the best.

Cold as, bru!

Sorry about the delay between postings. I got this one partially done in Moscow, then we went to Turkey, where blogspot.com is apparantly blocked for the entire nation. So that slowed down the momentum. Went on to Israel with the family and then there were four of us all fighting to use the computer everywhere we went, and that slowed the momentum even further. Anyway, it's time to start catching you all up:

It was pretty chilly in Moscow. I think the biggest thing we had to get used to (more than the alphabet/language issues) was that no one smiled. There were a couple people in Western-oriented service industries that could put on a forced smile if you smiled at them long enough, but in general no one ever smiles. No laughing and nodding along whenever someone spoke to us. Well, we'd laugh and smile and they'd repeat whatever they just said in Russian louder and with a concerned frown.

Except one night, there was a guy being escorted from a bar by the bouncer and his girlfriend. I saw him smile, but that was probably unintentional.

The night before we left Bangkok, we double-checked our flight times. We thought we were leaving at 5pm, but it turns out our plane left at 10am. Perin had just washed some clothes so she had to travel with wet clothes, which she wasn't pleased about. Additionally, we didn't get our winter coats we had custom made, in time (they'll be shipped to the States). And finally, the hotel wasted our time in the morning and we missed the train station check-in with the express train to airport. We had to take the slow train to the airport and stand in the regular check-in line at the airport. It all worked out though and we made it to Moscow with just enough clothing to keep us warm. Not nearly as fashionable as we would have liked, but warm enough.

As the plane landed, everyone on the plane put up a huge round of applause and cheering. We learned later, that Russians do this every time a plane lands successfully. It's kind of nice at the time, and kind of creepy upon further contemplation.

We did the major tourist attractions in Moscow. Some highlights include the Museum of Contemporary History (or Museum of the Revolution) which is total Soviet-era propaganda about how awesome the USSR was and its magnificent achievements. Example: "despite some flawed policy decisions by Stalin, the USSR became the world's largest manufacturer in under five years," and "despite 27 million people dying in the Great Patriotic War, the USSR was the world's largest wheat producer by 1948."

And then after all the Soviet stuff, they had a room filled with perestroika memorabilia and a podium that Yeltsin made a speech from. That led to an even sadder room filled with photographs of Russian athletes since 2000 and a Lukoil floating oil platform diorama framed by some generic Lukoil corporate posters. I understand that Lukoil probably financed the refurbishment of the museum, but any US company that did something similar would leverage the PR opportunity and really fluff themselves up.

I don't really like ballet and can say that the Bolshoi ballet was really good and a good time. The Red Square, the Kremlin, and St. Basil's Cathedral all lit up at night with a fresh layer of snow falling was really romantic. We saw many of the cathedrals they've fixed up since the USSR fell, and they've done a great job. Some of the underground Metro stations were really beautiful. I really enjoyed Moscow and would like to go back again soon.

And speaking of the Metro stations, everyone was reading Metro 2033. So many, that I can't wait to get back and read the English version upon its release.

On to Mother Motherland

Thailand has been an amazing shopping experience for Perin and I. We got some clothes made, bought some t-shirts from street vendors, and I stocked up on fire-breathing monkey lighters whose red eyes light up and flash. While monkey lighters were quite popular on my last visit here, three years later they were very difficult to find and negotiate.

All of our consumption will be shipped back to the States so we don't have to lug it around the world with us. With one exception: warrior-grade winter coats for Russia we had made. Last week's high was -18 degrees(C).

It's difficult to conceptualize that temperature when it's over 90 degrees(F) here with 70% humidity. Cambodia was even hotter and was also a positive shopping experience. After a day of flying and touring temples, I had to drag Perin around shopping during our one night there. For the stars to align and for Perin to have a weaker shopping endurance than I probably won't happen until well after Halley's Comet comes and goes again.

Enough superficiality. Seeing the temples (wats) in Bangkok was pretty cool, but Angkor Wat was magnificent. We arranged a tour guide and tuk tuk driver ahead of time and that had positive and negative aspects. The guide was very informative and shared all kinds of information with us we wouldn't have got from a guide book, but he'd also seen the ruins thousands of times and seemed to be pushing us along instead of letting us explore the grounds of every temple we stopped at.

Back to superficiality. I almost got a Lil Wayne shirt that's even better than the shirt Perin got with a giant octopus eating a man. Alas, I was too powerful.

Creepiness in Asian Internet Cafes

Seeing how the hotels in SE Asia haven't provided us with the free Internet/wifi we became used to in Japan/Korea, we've been spending more time in Internet cafes. Mostly they're pretty boring with tourists typing Facebook updates and sending email to loved ones. But once 11pm hits, the tourists head home and the Asian females roll in. Mostly they Skype with old, bald white dudes.

The girl sitting next to me last night kept opening links sent to her by the grey long-haired white dude(who was also an excellent specimen of male pattern baldness). The clips she kept opening featured non-nude Asian chicks dancing in bikinis. Looking up and seeing everyone else in the cafe being young Asian females Skyping with dudes encouraged me to finish typing my emails faster.

Then in Cambodia, the cafe was set up differently than any other I've been to. It had all the chairs against the walls facing in so no one could look over your shoulder at your screen. And every screen had locally-produced wicker blinders on each side so you the person next to you couldn't see your screen. They also had 50-cent beer cans there, so that made it totally non-creepy and highly enjoyable.

Too Powerful for Asia

From Seoul, we travelled to Hong Kong (more details below) and Bangkok to do some propper shopping. We've experienced the same thing in pretty much every place - very little fits us. They don't make shoes in our sizes and we don't have the same body-types as most Asians. We've chosen not to refer to ourselves as fat either. Instead of specific reasons as to why each article or piece doesn't fit well, we've resigned ourselves to the fact that we're too powerful. We're too powerful for Asia.

Anyway, after our spectacular time in Korea, we got to Hong Kong and had a great time. We did most of the touristy things but one of the highlights was the Wednesday night horse races. Perin and I had big plans to win enough money to upgrade ourselves to business class for the rest of the trip, but it wasn't meant to be. The horse Amazing Fortune did not win us any money. Neither did any of the other horses we bet on, but Amazing Fortune really got my hopes up.

We knew that Chinese food in America is way different to Chinese food in China. That proved to be true. We also expected Japanese food to be way different in Japan. That was not the case; Japanese food is nearly identical in both places, which suprised us.

And speaking food, it's not Korean BBQ like we think of in the States, but one of my favorite meals so far was the place Teri and Saint took us to where we cooked our own food at our table. Every single meal we had was really good in Korea, but that's because we had local guides. We were rather hit and miss in Hong Kong on our Chinese food selections. However, Thailand has come through on pretty much every meal too, and it's all quite spicy.

Hong Kong was an amazing experience and a really cool city. It's an interesting mix of high-wealth status, luxury, and power brokers, super high skyscrapers built onto incrediably steep hillside, and every Chinatown I've ever been to. Millions of densely packed people, dirty buildings with laundry hanging out the windows and the smells of rotting vegatables and dead sea life wafting through the air at times, interspersed with insence and the smells of delicious noodles and grilled meats wafting through the air at other times.

Perin and I are getting better and better every day at negotiating so we're getting ripped off by fewer and fewer orders of magnitude every time. The people of Bangkok have been super friendly and that's helped us out quite a bit. The best was when we got the Emerald Buddha, we discovered that it had closed 10 minutes before we got there at 1:40pm due to it being an Imperial Buddha Day in Thailand. Some tuk tuk driver wanted to extort us, but we walked down the block, got our map out and decided what else we wanted to do.

Some stranger walked up to us, expained about the Buddha Day, then got his pen out, circled everything we should see that afternoon on our map, in what order, flagged down another tuk tuk, told him to wait for us while we saw each thing, negotiated a price for us and it was cheaper than everything we've done since. It ended up with us taking a water taxi through the canals of the city to skip having to wait in traffic. That guy was SO helpful and it was a great experience! We wish we could have tipped him.

It's pretty hot and sweaty here so it's hard to try on clothing, but we're getting winter coats made for Russia so it'll be worth it when we get there and it's zero degrees outside. I've promised to get Perin some winter boots in Russia too so she'll be stylish and warm at the same time!

We're off to see Siem Reap tomorrow and will be back in Bangkok on the first of March. Maybe you'll get some pictures then. Maybe you'll continue to wait.

Welcome to Seoul

We flew to Seoul and took the bus to see our friend Teri (aka the T-1000) and her boyfriend Saint. It was my first time meeting him, so I was very interested to meet the man courting my best lady friend from university. I suppose I always pictured dudes named Saint to be ruthless, badass assassins (not actual saints for some reason) but it tuns out that Saint is super nice and he and Teri are really great together. I'm super happy for them.

They were perhaps the most gracious hosts of all time. Due to fortuitous working circumstances, they both were able to spend most of the four-day weekend with us and took us on a whirlwind tour of fine exotic dining, power shopping, and sightseeing, all while handling all negotiations and treating us like royalty.

The shopping highlight was buying Perin several pairs of designer sunglasses frames for super cheap, then taking us to the eye doctor, getting us free eye exams and brand new lenses for the glasses for super cheap. We got free fruit juice boxes too. Actually, the very best part was when the eye doctor told me I had the best vision he had ever seen (English was his second language so that's how I'll interpret it) and I didn't need any glasses. He warned that I need to always need to wear sunglasses when outside though, because I have "light eyes."

Needless to say, I instigated numerous "can you read that from here?" contests and won them all, which helps to prove that I'm also super modest.

We had so many delicious meals and went to so many cool places, but I think my favorite place was the bowling lanes. We didn't even get to bowl! First, I was sent in solo to get our names on the bowling list and see if we could get a table. Mission accomplished. Management filled my name in for me: "foreigner." We ordered some drinks and drank in the atmosphere - semi-creepy clown photographs and clown art everywhere, with loud techno music playing and several big screens showing a Victoria's Secret modeling show.

The lanes closed at 3am, and we were informed that the wait list was so long we wouldn't get to roll. That's okay though because we played a couple games of super volatile air hockey that shot our puck into standers-by multiple times.

In this chronologically incorrect detailing of events, we then went to Taco Bell and ordered numerous hardshell tacos. The line of people waiting to order was pretty ad hoc, and as such, when new people showed up they tried to cut in line. A constant, unblinking, semi-concerned stare from me for a minute or two pretty much sorted that out every time. Taco Bell was so delicious! How can that place ever lose money? I'm buying stock as soon as I get back.

We returned to the T-1000's baller crib to play a few games of Rumikub and finally went to bed at 4am. We beat that the next night rolling out to Korean karaoke where Perin impressed everyone by not needing the microphone.

In addition to making runs to the border, the other food item I missed tremendously was spectacular proper sandwiches. Teri came through and got us some super tasty melty cheese sandwiches and satisfied all remaining food cravings.

Hanging out with Teri again was great and I hope to get to do it again soon. I also hope to get to do some more male bonding with Saint - he seems super cool.

Japan Finale

Just like everyone has an asshole, I have an excuse as to why there are no pictures yet. Our last hotel in Osaka had a free laptop rental so we installed Picasa, uploaded all of our pictures, sorted, edited, typed up our comments and then before we uploaded them, the computer froze and we had to reboot. Unfortunately, the computer erases everything on itself every time it reboots and we lost everything. We still have originals of everything on the cameras. So once again, by the time we upload some pictures, you - the dear reader - will be overwhelmed by all of the pictures.

Overall, our last days in Osaka Japan were nice and relaxing. We'd been going hard in Japan and had seen Hiroshima and Himeji Castle each as a day trip from Kyoto. Himeji would have been magnificent I believe, had it not been closed for restoration (for the next five years). So we saw the Japanese countryside and got a steeply discounted tour of the grounds with our own English-speaking guide.

Hiroshima was a powerful experience for both Perin and I. Neither of could ever say that we were pro-nuclear weapons, but after seeing the complete devastation and the after-effects of the atomic bomb, there is definitely no need for those weapons on Earth.

Mostly in Osaka, Perin and I slept in, partook in culinary delights, took naps, and then went out to dinner. Osaka is known for its takoyaki (fried dough balls filled with octopus and cream sauce) however, they are an acquired taste that neither of us has acquired yet.

The most exciting moment was going out for sushi and ordering fugu. Fugu is a Japanese delicacy and is deadly if prepared incorrectly. We're still alive so it was a positive experience. As badass as we are though, we pussed out and got neither the horse meat nor any whale meat.

In the end though, we passed on Japanese food twice to eat Mexican food at El Torrito. Not the best ever, but super delicious and craving-satisfying. Plus we met a very nice waitress working on her English to become an English teacher and she was a lot of fun to talk to.