girls gone WORLD!

We are keeping that promise!!

2010-08-19T11:18:00.015-04:00

Wow, sorry it's been over a year since our promise- better late than never huh?
So...Morocco. For starters, we advise you to visit beautiful Morocco during any month other than July- when the heat index is that of...well, unbearable. Similar to India in May, but without breezy McLeod Ganj to seek refuge in. Anyway, go to Morocco- just NOT during July. The sights, smells, culture and action will keep you entertained from sunrise to sunset!
And now, a brief recap of our month in Morocco, where we experienced:
our last visitors of our 10 month journey- M&G!, a chain fight in Casablanca, the exclusive upper class clubs of Casablanca, an impromptu home stay, a non-first class train ride which lacks A/C and the ability to open windows (ugh!), the heat of the edge of the desert in Taroudant & the smells of its tannery in July.
Did I mention scorching heat yet? OK, back to the list:
goats climbing trees! the scenic drive through the Tizi-n-Test pass of the Atlas Mountains, Gail's fear of heights (while driving in a car over the Atlas), the whipping winds of Essaouira, techniques in purchasing a used cell phone off a passerby on the street, souqs & medinas, night life of Djemaa el Fna in Marrakesh, Berber traditions, a beautiful riad stay, getting lost in Marrakesh, getting lost in Fes, taking P to a medical clinic, the cafe culture, camel burgers, mounds of olives, mint tea, couscous, tagine, brouchette, daily fresh bread-avocado & laughing cow cheese sandwiches, taking P to an "English speaking" doctor, an attempted robbery on a 10 hour long night train, beach time in Assilah, women swimming & sunbathing in full jelaba, artists' studios in Assilah, the relaxing hue of Chefchaouen, the not so relaxing game of bargaining, cat calls in Tangier, and last but not least the five times a day call to prayer- what a powerful event!
Our exciting time in Morocco came to an end as our emotions bubbled over the fact that our entire journey was coming to a close.
We hope to return to Morocco one day, just not during July!...Insha' allah.

Our Promise

2009-08-26T16:30:00.004-04:00

Hey! Just taking a moment to let you all know that we will be completing the blog with the last month of our trip, we promise! We're back in the States and still trying to settle back into our NYC lifestyles, but we haven't forgotten about our Moroccan adventures & our last few crazy nights in Madrid so stay tuned for more tales from M&P!

hasta luego

Vale!

2009-07-27T16:23:00.006-04:00

We arrived in Madrid with a buzzing excitement to touch up on our Spanish...little did we know our "Mexican Spanish" wouldn't cut it in Spain (it's Ecuadorian Spanish, ok). After landing and realizing we didn't need an entry stamp (M was thrilled since she has ONE page left in her passport!) since we were coming from an EU member nation, we made our way over to the neighborhood called La Latina to meet up with our friend, Sheila, whos place we'd be staying at for the week. Upon overcoming the inital shock of the size of the apartment the 3 of us would be sharing for a week, Sheila showed us a proper Madrileno time: a few copas of vino and tinto de verano and a lazy stroll through Plaza Mayor as well us discussing the Madrileno way to say everything we knew how to say "the mexican way" as we were told. Our week in Madrid flew by quickly as we explored each neighborhood of the city, poked into some art museums and of course doing the obligatory tapas bar stops. We visited the famed Prado museum and the more modern Reina Sofia. The Reina Sofia was great and we widdled away many hours there. We spent a good chunk of time staring at some famous Picasso and funky Dali pieces and amazingly, M held up very well. The Prado was interesting as well, but we certainly preferred Reina Sofia since the Prado was filled from floor to ceiling with religious art, some of which was quite interesting no doubt, but the Reina Sofia suited us better. We also happened to be in Madrid for the gay pride parade so, of course, we attended in style. We also had a chance to experience an authentic "Spanish Sunday" as Sheila's Madrileno crowd threw a paella party on our last day in town, which proved to be a great last night as plenty of wine was shared over some great food.

Gracias a todos!! (we're thinking of adopting this Sunday routine)

Ten days flew by faster than ever and we didn't get a satisfying fill of Madrid, but luckily we'll be back for the last 3 nights of our journey!

European Tarantulas...

2009-07-18T17:57:00.005-04:00

are really, really scary.

For the past 9+ months (it's actually been for the past 5+ years, but who's counting), M has assumed the role of "taking care" of any scary, gross or otherwise questionable critter situations that we've come across. Usually these situations come and go and barely phase M...this was NOT the case when we encountered a tarantula in the shower of the old home we were staying in! The sight of this beast had us both screaming and shaking for a while before we calmed to decide what to do. Details of this encounter are better off told in person, so do ask when you see us next. Oh and if you're really lucky you can "watch" the video footage* of M "taking care" of this monster.

*= video footage is actually a 3 minute ordeal of M&P screaming obscenities while all you actually see on film is shaky, blurry concrete since P was too shaken up to focus on the subject.

Athens

2009-07-18T17:21:00.003-04:00

After tearfilled goodbyes with the fam at the Larnaca airport, a late night flight brought us back to Athens where we were just 3 weeks ago, though it felt like it had been months. Even after 3 weeks in Cyprus, we still felt crazy culture shocked by the developed world. Mainly, people were ultra fashionable and we didn't attract the stares and glares we had become accustomed to. We did a fair job of shopping in Cyprus, but it's rather iffy if Cyprus is really as developed as the west we know. So, when in Rome...We went shopping. We got a little western world happy and stocked up with some none third world clothing and may I say we look mighty fine. We also spent a day or two relaxing at the many western cafes in town, drinking coffee, eating Greek sweets, and doing a mean job of people watching. We had revelled in the west enough and decided it was time to hit the archaeological sites. We eased our way into archaeology by spending the first day at the brand spankin new Acropolis Museum. M held it together very well and even let us check out all of the floors before she got antsy. If you don't know this about M, she has a tough time at museums. Kind of like the beach. Maybe it's the Greek in her, but she seemed thoroughly interested for quite some time before we saw the "It's time to go" face. Wandering the narrow, windy streets of Monastiraki and taking in the countless hours of daylight kept us out and about later than we had expected.

The next day, we really decided it was time to brave the heat and head out to the sites. We made our way up the hill to the Acropolis with loads of other tourists, mainly Americans which struck us as strange after seeing barely any for practically our entire trip. The Acropolis was fantastic and the site of many self timed photos. Even though the Parthenon was entirely covered in scaffolding, (since 1982 it seems according to the signs), the remaining sites made up for it. The theaters built entirely of stone were majestic as they looked both ancient and modern all at once. We didn't have the opportunity to check out a show at one of the theaters, but we hear they are well worth the time so check one out if you find yourself in Athens. Our week in Athens quickly came to an end as we packed our bags for the last of our super early flights.

Off to Spain!

"Ah! Sotira!"

2009-07-16T16:56:00.005-04:00

I knew returning to Athienou after 12 years was going to be tough since it'd be my first visit without my dear Yiayia around, but we were greeted by enough family to ease the pain and put a smile on our faces...side note- My grandma is one of 16 children, 12 of which lived to marry and reproduce, so my mom has what seems like a million cousins and aunts, most of which live in Athienou. It also doesn't help that Athienou is a fairly small town and my dear mom is pretty well known by just about everyone in town. Oh and apparently, I look, sound and act EXACTLY like my mother so everywhere P and I went, a voice would exclaim "Ah! Etin Sotira! Irte ei Sotira!" (Ah! There's Sotira, Sotira is in town!") and often time there'd be a shout from around a nearby corner in response "Poon tin Sotira?! Ma irte che then mas ipe?!" (Where's Sotira? She came and didn't tell us?!") Which was fun at first, but after the 5th day, it just hindered our daily plans- it'd take over an hour to go to the market to pick up milk!
Now, being stuck in Athienou without wheels is like being stuck in Goshen without a car, makes for tough living. So cousin Irini saved the day by lending us her car for the month (we love you Irini!). After a few test drives around Athienou's windy, narrow maze-like streets, driving standard on the left side of the street was no biggie and we were off to explore Cyprus.
There was much of the island that I had never seen before since going to Cyprus in the past meant hanging with Yiayia, strolling the sleepy streets of Athienou and hitting up the beach. This time around P and I explored a different town or village a few times a week, visited ancient sites, old churches, old family, young family and managed to fit in plenty of beach time before returning to my great grandma's ancient home in Athienou for each night's rest.
Tourism has taken over Cyprus in a way I hadn't imagined, massive hotels have developed almost every inch of the island's coastline, restaurants catering to tourists are everywhere you look and every other car you see on the road is a red plated tourist rental. Though Athienou has not changed too much, the rest of the island barely looked familiar!
The small city of Larnaca was our stop for shopping to replace our cheesecloth third world clothing- we had to stroll in style now that we were back in the western world! The capital of Lefkosia was our history lesson of how Turkish Occupied Cyprus (TOC) came to be- as a divided capital city, there's a lot to be said. Taking the lift to the top of Shakolas Tower gave us a glimpse of TOC and had photo explanations of historical landmarks (one of the more interesting museum spaces we've seen along this trip, and I'm not being biased!). Paphos has become the city of tourists, though there are hidden gems if you stray inland from the pier and the archeological site just a few steps from the Paphos castle holds some of the more interesting ruins on the island. Lemesos seemed like a long strip of beach resorts, hotels and tacky restaurants so we didn't spend much time there. We thought we'd head to my mom's favorite spot in Protaras... I guess the deep blue yet crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean sea allows you to overlook the hideous concrete hotels and resorts which have taken over much of the sand along this beach. We did manage to find a pretty quiet and beautiful strip of Protaras, which we returned to several times. BUT thanks to P's convincing, our attempt to find a deserted, undeveloped, pristine strip of sand on Cyprus was successful! We found a great spot,(which we'll keep a secret) where there were no other tourists in site, nor a hotel or resort, just some olive trees to provide shade, deep white sand and crystal clear water. Oh and not too far away(but far enough) back on the road, we found a great little seafood restaurant where we watched the catch come in fresh as we placed our orders to complete the experience.
So, after all, Cyprus isn't completely doomed with development after all, if you look hard enough, you can find a peaceful, undisturbed sandy spot to claim as your own for your time on the island...just be sure to stay away from ours!

* Also of special note is P breaking out of her veggie role for a few tastes of Octopus. After chewing she decided she didnt like it because "It tastes like fish!" Back to veg I suppose.

It's all Greek to me!

2009-07-01T08:57:00.003-04:00

Well not to M of course. But P for sure. After a much awaited flight from Mumbai to Doha, Qatar (best airport EVER) with a loooong layover to Athens, then a flight to Cyprus, we were greeted with cheerful faces of M's Nouna, Nouno, a Great Aunt and a Great Uncle. Many hugs and kisses and we were whisked away to begin the tour with the oldies. Our first day was spent sitting around houses, being fed more than we could digest, being hugged and kissed like mad, and then finally dropped off at M's Great Grandma's house where we would live for our time in Cyprus. P of course understood nothing of the conversations, but M played translator and did a mighty fine job. The first few days of Cyprus were a bit stressful as we were driven around to just about everyone's house in town to announce that we had arrived and needed to be fed. With some longering stomach issues, this did not make things easy. We were anxiously awaiting the arrival of our next visitor, Craig, while lazing the days away with M's family which basically includes the whole town of Athienou. We were able to borrow a car for the month from M's genorous family giving us the freedom to explore. With wheels and a house to our name, we felt like locals as we wathed one too many lemons fall from the tree in our courtyard. Our first beach day was oh so exciting in the gorgeous Mediterranean, but the smoke stacks in the distance fueled the search for the ultimate beach in Cyprus. The water in the Mediterranean was like nothing we had seen in the recent past so it was a very nice change from what we had become used to, The color of the water was a fabulous clear deep blue. Is that possible? We could walk out 100 meters into the sea and still be knee deep in warm water. It was pretty crazy. And perhaps boring as well as P has finally taught M the joy of jumping waves. But M has also learned the joy of relaxing and people watching on the beach, so the lack of waves was no big deal.
Let me tell you, M has got one big fat greek family! And boy do they know how to entertain! M's 28th turned into a huge party with 30+ family members she may or may not have known. It was loud, it was big, it was crazy, it was Greek! Check the photos and see the wild time. 2 days later, we headed to the airport for Craigs arrival, and brought him straight to a cousins engagement party including an obligatory session of getting lost in Athienou driving standard on the left side of the road. Seemed to be a theme of Craigs visit now that I think about it.

A word on India...

2009-07-01T08:36:00.003-04:00

Asian Patience is a must, especially when one visits India. As M said, alot of patience is needed when one spends great time in Asia, or in the developing world in general. We are white women, and to many people the color of our skin defines the money in our pockets. And in many cases this is true. Yes, we felt annoyed and even violated. Yes, we missed the comfort and privacy of our everyday lives. And yes we shared these complaints with you, our dear readers, on this blog. But India is not something to miss. It was tough, one of the toughest places we have ever visited, but equally, India is important and I am so happy that we found enough patience to visit. It is important to find yourself out of your comfort zone and see how the world lives, not just your world. It puts some perspective into your life and changes you. There are a billion people in a land 1/3 the size of the US sharing their space and their lives. There are more people that watch Bollywood flicks than Hollywood flicks. Think about that for a second. India is beautiful and incredible. But it is poor and filthy and hot and stinky. India really makes you think and for that reason alone, it is worth all of the hassle and uncomfort to glimpse into the lives of those that don't have as much as you but somehow have enough to put a smile on their face, give a wobble of the head, and ask for baksheesh. Incredible India!

Mumbai...India gets her last licks on M

2009-07-01T08:07:00.001-04:00

We were thrilled to be touching down, by air, in Mumbai...M especially since this meant just one more day of India before she sees Greece and Cyprus again after 12 long years. After that whole Amritsar fiasco, we were left with no choice but to purchase a last minute flight to Mumbai to ensure we'd be there for our departure flight from India. We arrived late and figured we'd splurge a bit and stay in a hotel that was a few steps up for us which was conveniently located within close proximity to the airport, making it easy for us since we had a 5AM departure flight to catch. Though we knew we'd venture into the city center, where the glaring and staring disappeared, where the architecture was stunning AND where people stopped to help two lost tourists out of the kindness of their heart, we thought spending the night near the airport was a wise decision...until...

M wakes up numerous times to announce that there are bedbugs in "this f-ing place!" P says she hasn't noticed anything and doesn't feel "creepy crawly" as M states she's feeling, so back to sleep we go. A while later P's awoken by M shouting that there are bedbugs in "this f-ing place!" and again, P tries her persuasion techniques, until a critter is spotted.

Bedbugs they were and bedbugs we had. Lucky for P, she sleeps in her sleepsack liner just about everynight, while M can't stand to be wrapped up like a cacoon and so refused to get into her sleepsack. So P finds herself in the lobby explaining to the not so nice manager that there are bedbugs in room 5 and we need to be moved ASAP before M starts kickin' ass and takin' names (ha). M managed to have everything packed before P made it back upstairs and we were moved to a MUCH nicer room, free of bedbug signs. We got a few hours of shuteye then ventured out to see some of Mumbai before our early morning flight.

We strolled the streets of Mumbai on LP's walking tour as we: took in the great architecture, enjoyed being left to walk down a sidewalk without the constant hum of "hello madames... buy something!" got crazy excited over the simple act of not one, but TWO LADIES stopping to help us when we had our face in the LP to check our path, escaped the heat browsing FabIndia's great collection of goods, got some quality people watching time in as the crowds enjoyed a night out at the gate of India and caught a glimpse of the stunning nighttime view of the Taj Palace before stopping for some ointment for M's bitten up body and making our way back to grab our packs and head to the airport.

Though we wished for more time in Mumbai, we were so thrilled to have completed our time in India, we embraced in a 5 minute long hug at the check-in gate at the airport repeating over and over "We did it! we did it! we did it!" attracting many last stares from the locals. Yes, we've been traveling since October, yes we know what we're doing, yes we've been annoyed and harassed by tons of people along the way, but we truly had a tough time in India. We've come up with this explanation:

we left India to be our last stop in Asia, where, aside from Japan, we heard the phrase "Madame, hallo, madame, buy something!" over and over again and everywhere we went, it was a task in itself to find some quiet time away from it all. The truth of the matter is that our "Asia Patience," as we've dubbed it, was on it's last leg and India surely depleted it and drained it rather quickly.

And so are even entertaining the thought of making another trip back to Incredible India! to see some of the southern part of the country...but not for a few years of course, we need to build up some of that valuable "Asia Patience" before we venture back into it all.

Amritsar...not where we would have picked to get stuck

2009-07-01T07:53:00.004-04:00

Though Amritsar's Golden Sikh Temple was stunning, reflecting off the surrounding pools and being visited by thousands upon thousand of devout pilgrims on a daily basis, Amritsar itself was nothing to write home about it. We visited the temple at a couple of different times during the day to glimpse how the sunlight changes it's appearance and decided one day in Amritsar was enough...so we thought.

As we visited the holy temple, there was some trouble in Austria, where a Sikh guru from Amritsar was shot and killed. Apparently the logical response to this is to begin an uproar in and around Amritsar where riots broke out bringing all public transportation into and out of the state of Punjab to a halt...fun. We were stuck.

OK, let's back up a bit...we didn't actually know we were stuck due to the situation just explained. We initially didn't get on our morning train (which turned out to be canceled due to the aforementioned incident) due to the violent illness that put both of us in the hotel bathroom for hours upon hours. M awoke around 6AM to begin her puke rally while P slept in 'til about 8AM before she began hers. After taking turns staring down the face of our porcelain friend for a few hours, it dawned on us that we can get our tickets refunded and book the next day's train outta Amritsar. P was finally stable enough to walk outside to bring back water for our dehydrated selves when she noticed not a soul on the streets (VERY odd for India). We later hear the state of Punjab is basically under strict orders to shut down between the hours of 12 and 5PM due to riots. RIOTS?! And here we thought our worst problem was our need to be within 5ft of a bathroom at all times. We learned that our train was cancelled and an automatic refund would be credited to our account, but as for the connection we were going to catch in Delhi onwards to Udaipur, that would be up to us to visit the "station supervisor" to arrange a refund.

To make a long story short, the next day, we felt OK to venture away from a bathroom, so we visited the "station supervisor," who proceeded to shout at us about "our problem" and how a refund cannot be granted because we didn't risk the dangerous streets of Amritsar and get to the train station at the time of our train to ask for a refund. SO...because of that, we have to file for god knows what and trust this man on his word that our money would be delivered to our address in NYC in 3 to 5 months...hahaha, yea ok. Why an urge to vomit all over this man and his 6 man posse didn't overtake M's body, we're not sure, but we were surely ready to rip him to pieces. Fortunately, P, the calm, composed one of us 2 managed to re-explain our situation multiple times in hopes for a different answer from this evil man, while M sat back turning different shades of red as she held it all in. We finally gave up and signed our ticket over and kissed our money goodbye, but who knows...maybe we'll get a check in the mail from India Rail around December and this excititing story can be retold over Christmas and Hannukah dinner!

After 5 days of hanging out at the hotel, which luckily had cable TV and English channels (whoo!!) we were free from the state of Punjab. Now our only dilemma was how we'd make it to Mumbai in one and a half days instead of the 4 we alotted...

McLeod Gang, home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama

2009-07-01T06:48:00.006-04:00

If you're looking for some peace and lots of quiet while in India, head to McLeod Ganj. Granted the bus ride to the small mountain town is nothing short of insanity, but you'll see that it was worth every second upon arrival.
We boarded a local, overnight bus out of Shimla to Dharamasala then took a minivan to McLeod Ganj. The first hour of the bus ride was insane. The bus filled to the max before we left Shimla's station, all men of course and all on top of one another, packed in like sardines, smushed up against those of us who paid for a seat and hanging out the door with one foot in the bus just to get to where they need to be. The bus would stop, 10 people would get off and 15 would get on, wonderful. Having the very front seats by the door proved to be a great annoyance, but quite the experience as men glared and stared at the two white girls while more men packed in to any available slice of space. P won many staring contests during this time. Finally after about an hour of this chaos, the bus aisle cleared and we were off along the long, winding dirt road into the hills for Dharamasala.
McLeod Gang, is home to HH the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan government in exile and countless Tibetan refugees...oh and the best museum in India, the Tibet Museum. M took advantage of every opportunity to stop at any of the numerous roadside MoMo stands and P enoyed taking endless photos of the amazing, snow capped Himalayas and passing maroon robed monks. Our evenings consisted of catching a free film at one of the local restaurants around town and taking in the fresh mountain air. MoMos weren't the only thing M wanted to stay for, there were tons of workshops where she could work on her secret passion of being a silversmith around town. The Tibet Museum was another highlight of McLeod, a definite must see for anyone in town. The museum chronicles Tibetan history and China's invasion as well as testimonials of the refugees who currently reside in McLeod and put the museum together. It's truly a moving experience, go see it.
Strolling through the town where the smiles on people's faces are contagious and the "Namaste" greeting is rarely followed by "buy something," made us want to stay forever. Unfortunately, we had a flight to catch out of Mumbai, so staying forever wasn't an option...guess we'll just have to come back!

Chandigarh & Shimla

2009-07-01T05:10:00.003-04:00

Not much to report on regarding Chandigarh, the city that prides itself on it's "amazing city layout." OK, it's a grid people...a grid layout! But let's not piss on their bonfire, they have an entire museum about the planning and construction of the city, they are damn proud and anyone you meet will mention how you "are so lucky to have visited the amazing city of Chandigarh." Amazing is an overstatment, but we did enjoy our time in Chandigarh and it is where were were introduced to FabIndia, which deserves the title of an "amazing" store. Another highlight of the amazing Chandigarh, for P at least, was the Fantasy Rock Garden. The garden takes you on a maze like walk through tiny doorways as you take in all the structures built up around you, all made of recycled garbage from a building that collapsed on the site. The last highlight of Chandigarh was Narinder Singh. Anyone with a stopover in Chandigarh, will, without a doubt, meet the ever so friendly, Narinder Singh. We're not quite sure how he does it, but he manages to meet all the backpackers that travel through the city. We took photos of him presenting us with a city map and then a scarf. Not sure where he gets these things from, but he was such a pleasant man to meet and gave us a great feel for Chandigarh. But even Narinder Singh couldn't make the museums less boring. So, we left.

Onto Shimla. Shimla was a cute city set on a gorgeous cliff. Our LP didn't seem to have much good info on lodging, so I asked the girl next to me on the bus if she could make a suggestion. She told me her dad was coming to pick her up from the bus stop and would drop us off at the passenger lift [ie: elevator that you pay to take you from the lower part of the steep city to the upper] and we could find a place easily on the top of the hill. The moment we get in the car and meet her dad, they insisted that we accept their invite as their houseguests for the night. How could we resist the chance for an impromptu homestay? So we gladly took the offer. The girl we met, Sheena, was 24 and just finished her MBA in Delhi and was coming home for a bit before her interviews began. Her Englsih was flawless, but though she claimed her parents understood English as well, we doubt that. Mom certainly understood nothing but wagged and wobbled her head along with the convo anyway. Dad's understanding was very selctive for what he was interested in talking about. No matter what the conversation was about, he would cut in at any moment and tell Sheena to translate for him as he talked about the orchard the family owned a few hours from Shimla. He was very proud of the orchard and was so cute as he just couldn't stop talking about it. After a delicious home cooked meal, Sheena suggested we go for a stroll. So we went upstairs to the roof of the building, walked in one direction for 30 feet, then turned around and walked the opposite way for 30 feet, etc etc. We paced back and forth chatting about arranged marriages. Sheena's folks say she's at prime marrying age, but Sheena has a different agenda in mind, which includes entering the professional world and becoming a successful working woman. She told us that her parents are already bringing suitable bachelors over the house to meet her, but she'll continue to turn them all down until she's ready. Go Sheena! However, since Sheena's family means everything to her and disappointing her parents is the last thing she wants to do, she'll eventually select a suitable husband from her cast and have the blow out wedding...to which we are invited to attend! Finally over an hour into our stroll, and after countless family photos on the rooftop, M admitted to feeling dizzy and we retreated indoors. We were awoken for a second delicious home cooked meal, stuffed parathas, homemade jam, fresh cream & chai, yum! We hung out a while, then packed up, exchanged hugs and contact info and headed to the lift to find the guesthouse Sheena's dad booked for us. We enjoyed every moment with Sheena's family and feel so lucky to have had the experience of a true homestay.
THANK YOU SHARWA FAMILY!!

Rishikesh

2009-06-26T11:39:00.004-04:00

One more early morning rickshaw driver without a clue though insistant that we he had quite the clue and we wound up at in a little area called Highbank. And then, we found peace. Unfortunately, we also found stomach bugs. Ugh. Beth and Crystal spent the last of their days with us in Rishikesh and M and I enjoyed it so much we stayed a week longer. Rishikesh doesn't feel much like India. Or perhaps it does, but more like India on a tranquilizer. Its a great place to iniate yourself to India, or a great place to get away from India after you've been initiated and want out. Either way, we enjoyed it thoroughly. But little did we know this would be the start of month long stomach problems, doses and doses of antibiotics, and weight loss. Ugh. We did nothing but relax in Rishikesh. The town was split into 2 areas on either side of the Ganges which was a gorgeous shade of turguoise, though you couldn't pay us to step foot in there. It is the Ganges after all. Our days were spent lazily milking our stomach aches, though it seemed that Beth took the worst beating of all at first. M and I quickly caught up after the girls had left. Rishikesh is called the yoga capital of the world and we certainly talked about doing yoga alot. But the thought of being more than 20 feet from a bathroom at any given moment only allowed us to partake in one early morning session. We summoned enough strength and antibiotics to make it to the other side of the river for some photo shoots of magnificent temples and ashrams. We spent the evening at the ashram where the Beatles reportedly wrote most of the White Album.
The nightly evening riverside ceremony was something we will never forget. The singing, chanting, colors, and spirit of the event were very moving. We spent hours enthralled by the ceremony before the offerings were delicately placed into the river and floated away downstream. We also begrudgingly made our way to check out some unimpressive waterfalls as we all felt a bit quesy but insistant upon doing something. With no swimming costumes in hand and hordes of 40-something Indian men, we hid away in a crevice by one of the falls for a photo shoot before hitching our way back to town. No worries B. The ladies caught an early morning taxi to a hellish bus ride back to Delhi to catch their plane back to the US and so their "charatcer building vacation" had come to an end:( And M and I were alone, with no plan but a ton of time. And so the week of sitting around in Rishikesh began. We finally came up with a plan, figured out the corrupt system of buying train tickets and made our way to Chandigarh.

Jaipur

2009-06-26T10:35:00.004-04:00

Jaipur was beautiful, chaotic, infuriating, hot as a god damn furnace and as smelly as a porto-potty. That's a pretty good summary. But beautiful stands out most in my mind. Our obnoxious driver dropped us at the entrance to the Pink City in the morning and we spent the day shmoozing our way around. We started by climbing a steep hill to an unimpressive "Monkey Temple", thankfully none jumped on my lap this time! We got followed by some young boys who couldn't resist tagging along with us all the way back down the hill, and of course, posed for some photos with them. Then a 5 year old slapped my ass. We spent the rest of the day within the beautiful City Palace painted entirely pink to welcome the Prince of Wales in 1853. Talk about a welcoming! We were lucky enough to have an audio tour which entertained most of us quite well (echem, M) for the day. We got trapped in a crazy rain storm which is very atypical for the dry season and one of the few times M and I had seen rain in a while so we delighted to have it cool things off. And the after-rain photos are superb if I say so myself. After the City Palace was when things got frustrating. Again, 4 white women, one tall and blonde, walking down the road in India, especially in Rajastan, attracts A LOT of attention. We tried shopping, and we succeeded, but were hassled way more than we had bargained for. At one point, it actually got so bad, that we decided it was time for a group hug to escape the "Madame, you buy," "Miss, come in my store. Misssssss" for just one minute. With our renewed strength, we headed straight to the silver district, pretended we spoke no English, and got our shopping done. The most impressive part of all the touts however are their abilitites with foreign language. Normally we speak Spanish to eachother to talk when we are being hassled. In Jaipur, no es possible porque todos hablan en Espanol! Not only do all the touts speak Spanish, they can whip out Japanese, Mandarin, French, Russian, German, etc etc. It is amazing what people in India will do for a buck. We finally found some peace over delicious dinner, played some cards into the wee hours of night and crashed.
Our second day in Jaipur was spent at the Ahmer Fort and the Water Palace before heading back to to Delhi. The Water Palace was nothing to write home about but the Fort was pretty gorgeous. Flanked by a bright blue sky, the huge fort climbed up rocky hills and was a great way to spend a few HOT hours. Finally got back in the car with obnoxious driver and made our way back to Delhi. Of course not before him stopping at an overpriced tourist restaurant so he could sneak in the back and eat for free with the drivers. We refused to eat there and he refused to take us elsewhere. And this guy had the nerve to ask for baksheesh. Asshole. Back to Delhi, ditched the driver, got some food, got ridiculously lost from eachother trying to head to the bus stop in 2 separate rickshaws, had 4 heart attackes (one each) and got on the coldest, most uncomfortable overnight bus we have ever taken to Rishikish. Woke up at 6 AM in a garbage dump, I mean bus station. What a welcoming.

This is why our blog is not up to date...

2009-06-22T10:58:00.002-04:00

Flat Tires

2009-06-16T16:01:00.006-04:00

There is an "s"after flat tire because we had 3 of them. 3 flat tires on a 6 hour journey. Crazy! But imagine driving on a road in Indian heat and the friction of the tire against the "road"and it seems to make much more sense. First flat tire and our driver took off with the spare that was also flat. We thought he might've left us for good as he was gone for nearly 2 hours. Let me tell you, 4 white girls standing on the side of the road sure causes some commotion in the middle o'nowhere, India. We stopped counting the number of cars that stalled as they drove so slowly past us. 2 men parked their motos, jumped off, stuck their cameras in our faces and snapped away. No "May I take your photo," No nothing. Why must we practice these rules of respect that Lonely Planet is insistent upon when it doesn't go both ways? Ok sure, different culture, blah blah, we don't need to hear about culture, I think we know all about it now, but it's just plain weird. And not weird in that "Japanese snapping photos of white people" way either. When you can't beat ém, snap their photos too. So we did. A few ladies walked over from the local village, stood a few feet away from us and giggled. Not in a creepy way but showing us that they were interested in making some contact but didn't know how. Finally one of them got the courage to come a few feet closer and ramble on in Hindi. After 2 days in India, our Hindi went as far as "Hello"and "Thank you"so we tried that a few times. Then we made out the word "chai"so we placed our hands together like we were preying to say yes please as is done in Asia. The ladies hurried away and we were ecstaic that A) the first women in India had spoken to us and B) they weren't single creepy men taking our photos. We tried hard to imagine the conversation that must've gone down when they went back to their village to let them know that they had spoken to the white girls AND we're going to drink chai together. Promptly, half the village sneaked out of hiding and was amazed by us standing on the side of the road. It is pretty amazing afterall. Our obnoxious driver returns in the interim and instructs us to get back in the car. We let him know that some lovely ladies were bringing us chai and he brushed it off like it ain't no thang. Since we felt that it was quite a thang, especially after him telling us a woman's place is in the home, we adamantly waited for our new friends to return. A few cups of chai, many smiles, "hellos" and "thank yous"later, we got back in the car. 20 minutes down the road, puncture #2. This went much more smoothly. We munched on some Western snacks (thanks girls!) chit chatted the time away and didn't feel bothered by the delay. Many hours later, we arrived (with a flat tire!) in Jaipur, stepped out into the furnace and played the "find a hotel at 10PM not having eaten dinner game." Naturally, a lot of fun. Finally some Kingfishers and dahl and chapatis later, we headed to bed with the excitement of Jaipur awaiting the next day.

Taj Mahal

2009-05-21T11:40:00.002-04:00

Alright alright, so Delhi didn't make us happy. Actually Delhi made us annoyed as hell and we couldn't wait to get out of there. M and I have been playing this game for quite some time now and were thrown off our gaurd and spun around until we realized we had entered a new world. Welcome to India. So, we hid out in our room and caught up a bit on our different lives for the last 7ish months. We got picked up bright and early by our driver to head to Agra to see the Taj. After a 6 hour ride we were told would take 3 and many obnoxious comments by our obnoxious driver, we arrived at one of the most beautiful places we have ever seen. Welcome to the Taj Mahal. It was a good 100 + degrees and we were ready to tackle the monument of love. The tough was a tough place to visit. Thpush beautiful as anything, 4 white women, one of which is tall and blonde, parading around the the Taj was a hard feat to conquer. We attracted wayyyyy more unwanted attention that we could have imagined leaving us feeling a bit violated. We figured if you can't beat them, join them and started snapping photos of people snapping photos of us. Needless to say, we have quite a nice photo album from Agra. Seriously though, it was hard to find peace at the Taj because of all the men (Read: Single, creepy, slyly taking photos, will likely wind up on mantles or photoshopped on naked bods) so we did a lap, took it all in and bolted out of there. It is hard to comprehend that the Taj is nothing more than a monument for a man's wife after she died during childbirth. Seems a bit over the top, but I am thankful for the amazing monument we are left to gaze longingly at. Now that is true love. M even said she'd build me one too <3

The moment we left to head back to the car, we were attacked by touts offering everything and anything, inclduing camel rides to the gate. We thought it was a bit over the top but we did notice lots of crowds inching along on a rickshaw-cum- camel ride. Crystal finally got suckered (or maybe just annoyed enough) to give in and trade her carabeener for a a dinky Taj snow globe key chain. Awesome. Made one kid go away, thats for sure. But we do know enough not to give into kids banterings and pleas as the money únfortunately winds up in the wrong places and only encourages more begging. We have all seen Slumdog Millionaire havent we? All the tout commotion made us lose our way and we had to backtrack to figure out where we wound up. Back to the car, back to the oboxious driver, 6 more hours to Jaipur.

"Most Welcome to India"

2009-05-18T07:40:00.003-04:00

So we learned the hard way that you pretty much can't trust anyone who approaches you in Delhi, even the ones that approach with a warm smile and sweet, gentle voice. We hadn't made a stupid tourist mistake in quite a while, so I guess we were due for a big one...and boy did we fall into quite a trap. Leaving the LP behind in the guesthouse was our first major mistake of the day (strike 1). After avoiding tons of shouting touts and finally making our way through the tourist ghetto of Paharganj to the New Delhi railway station, we were approached by what we thought to be a kind, gentle and trustworthy security worker who directed us to "tourist information" in Connaught Place (strike 2). We arrive at "tourist info" where a man behind a desk claims he is a government employee and we were in fact at the government tourist office...NOT. After listening to his sales pitch for flights to a north Indian city and talking amongst ourselves that we were in the wrong place, we were abruptly escorted out by the "government employee" as he cursed us and our good ol' U.S of A. Lovely. When he got in M's face and shouted, she may have lost her temper and may have used physical force against him, guess you had to be there to know the extent of this altercation. So, strike 3, but not out yet...

We (ah hem, M) managed to settle our (her) tempers and move on to another travel agent to ask some questions. After numerous confusing head wobbles and some alone time to make a decision, we agree to get ripped off and hire a driver for 3 days of adventure through the "Golden Triangle" of India. What were we thinking?! (strike 4?)

OK, it was hot...very, very hot and we had just walked away from what could have become a very ugly interaction with several Indian men and Beth & Crystal were only here for 10 days, oh and did I mention that it was HOT...we fell into a trap and definitely struck out big time.

Oh and the REAL government tourist info office turned out to be closed anyway (this makes us feel a little better).

So, it was set- our driver would pick us up at 7am so the fun could start, yay!

Stay tuned for more exciting stories from "Incredible India!"

Hindia Shmindia!

2009-05-12T12:26:00.001-04:00

Why do tuk tuk, rickshaw, autoriskshaw, and taxi drivers, exclaim they know exactly where you are going, drive around in circles asking anyone they see for directions, bring you to your destination after much hassle and frustration, and then have the nerve to ask for extra money because it took so long?! Sheesh.

Getting to the Motherland...

2009-05-12T08:03:00.003-04:00

proved to be more difficult than we imagined.
A few factors played a part in this...

Numero Uno: The Terai region of Nepal was striking against the government for not fulfilling their demands. This basically meant that buses to the Indian border may or may not be able to get through the strike zone, food items grown and produced in the region were not transported to the rest of Nepal and gas prices were rising for the little fuel that was left in the country OH and travellers headed to India were stuck. We got advice to "go ahead, no problem, buy tickets, tourist bus no problem madames" and we heard the opposite, "no madames, cannot possible, you go to India maybe next week or the next week...when strike end, OK?"

Umm, no not OK, we have 2 friends flying all the way from NYC to meet us in Delhi to spend time with us and to see what they can of India in the 10 days that they were able to take off of work!
and
Numero Dos: M was on day 3 of vomitting nonstop and not being able to keep anything in her stomach, FUN!
"what to do, what to do"
So, we made the decision to hit up this fancy airport, as seen in this photo to fly to Kathmandu to catch a connection to New Delhi. This would land us in New Delhi approximately 8 hours before Beth and Crystal were due to arrive. M held it together for the flights only to continue the vomit rally on arrival in "Incredible India." On a positive note, we got out of Nepal just in time as the strike situation got worse and citizens of Kathmandu started their demonstrations, which would have kept us in Nepal indefinitely.
So, we land in India, have a quick health check for swine flu...we're still not sure how M passed, but alas, they let us both in without delay. After checking out a Tibetan colony for a quiet place to stay and finding nothing under 25 US dollars, we hopped in an autorickshaw and headed to the tourist ghetto of Paharganj. It was hot...not as hot as we expected, but it was hot. So after checking a couple of filthy places, we dumped our packs at a cafe and split up. P took over searching for a place while M relaxed, nibbled on some plain bread and focused on not puking. After checking in to a guesthouse, jumping under some cold water and relaxing for a few, we headed back to the airport to collect our visitors! Hours after their expected landing time and many shot nerves later, we learned that their flight would be the last one out due the swine flu screening process. Phew! We thought we missed them while we argued with our cabbie about paying a parking fee. So the girls were in fact in the airport and not out braving New Delhi alone.
We spotted the ladies coming from baggage claim and were so excited to share a happy airport meeting with two familiar faces, we embraced until a guard waved us along with his baton. Back at the guesthouse, we stayed up way too late catching up, sharing stories and stuffing our faces with all the Trader Joe's snacks we could dream of!
After many detours & delays we made it to India AND found our friends, we were happy as can be!
until...(stay tuned for our first few experiences in "incredible india")

Trekking

2009-05-11T04:49:00.007-04:00

M & I decided that while in Nepal...do what the Nepalese do...trek through the "hills." We signed up for a short-ish trek out of Pokhara taking us through an area with spectacular views of the Annapurna Himalaya Range. We boarded a bus out of Kathmandu and suited up with much anticipation for the first day. We were joined by a Canadian trekker, our "guide" and porter. It started with a 2 hour local bus trip to the start of the trek. 60km in 2 hours. Yes, that is normal in Nepal. We hiked for about 6 hours the first day, mostly through mountain villages and up hundreds of stone steps. We were thoroughly exhausted when we made it to the tea house in Tikhedhunga, we dropped our bags, tossed our shoes aside and took in the fresh mountain air. After some refreshingly cold showers, we ate some food that may or may not have later made us very sick, then retired for the night by 9 PM. Early the second morning the steep climb to Ghorepani began. The steep climb consisted of endless, uneven stone steps. Hours later the steps continued and continued. And just when we thought we were as high as we could climb, they continued even more.

Read: Walking up and down uneven, sloped, steep steps for 5 days = buns of steel!

We finally made it to our second tea house at the base of Poon Hill with wobbly, jello legs. We were extra early to bed and up at 4AM the next morning to catch a beautiful sunrise on Poon Hill. The quick ascent caused M some early morning altitude problems, but we did succeed in catching the sunrise just in time to see the sun glittering on the summit of South Annapurna and Machhapuchhre. We had jaw dropping views across a valley where we could see Mt. Dhaulagiri (8167m.), Tukuche Peak (6920m.), Nilgiri (6940m.), Varaha Shikhar (7847m.), Mt. Annapurna I (8091m.), Annapurna South (7219m.), Annapurna III (7855m.), Machhapuchhre (6993m.), Annapurna IV (7525m.), Annapurna II (7937m.), Lamjung Himal (6931m.) and other numerous snowcapped mountain peaks.
Being just above 3000 meters with only one layer of long sleeves set quite a chill in our bones. We began the descent back to Ghorepani town for a warm breakfast and some relaxation by the wood stove. A few hours later, we were back at it, day 3's goal was to make it to Tadapani village. This walk entailed walking down thousands of uneven steps to cross a roaring river, just to climb back up the other side to reach the top where our tea house was situated. After some warm Masala tea and a pasta dinner, all we wanted to do was snuggle up for warmth until we fell asleep...This proved to be a problem thanks to the GIANT, red, 100+ legged insects crawling and buzzing around our room. We pretended that if we hosed down the beg in bug spray and slept with the lights on they wouldn't come and attack us. M is the hero and warded off 2 during the night. Needless to say we got very little sleep. Our guide ensured us not to worry since the days' walk would be "easy"- OK we admit that there were way fewer steps that day, but "easy" is not the correct adjective! It may been the lack of sleep causing us to be delirious, but this day proved to be the most fun as we took our time, making a supposed 4 hour walk into a 6.5 hour stroll. We found ourselves surrounded by goats many times, talking to roaming buffs from time to time, stopping for many photo ops and picking wildberries along the way. Hours later we reached the village of Landruk and caught sight of our porter and guide as they relaxed at our tea house, which somehow clung on to a cliffside overlooking a rather deep river gorge- the Nepalese defy the law's of nature in many, many ways! We settled in at the tea house and took a risk ordering pizza off the menu- now it was no Grandpa's, but this pizza was the best we've had since leaving NYC, you can only imagine our excitement!
Up extra early on our last day, we headed down into the river gorge to relax our muscles in some natural hot springs- they were no match for Japan's onsens, but we were glad to be relaxing as the hot water soothed our aching muscles. After drying off, we laced up again for what turned out to be a very, very long, sweaty day. P was feeling a bit under the weather, so we took it extra slow through mountain villages and past hordes of kids dressed in crisp school uniforms shouting "Namaste!" in our direction. Finally at around 6pm, covered in a layer of dirt and soaked through in sweat, we completed our 5 day trek. We rewarded ourselves with two bottles of ice cold Coca Cola and awaited our 2 hour ride back to the guesthouse in Pokhara.

Although 5 days sounds short, it was challenging...more challenging than we expected, but we are glad we did it!

So some advice:

-don't hire a guide- trekking in Nepal is straightforward, safe and definitely more fun done on your own

-don't hire a porter- M wore the same outfit everyday, washing it at each teahouse of course, so a daypack will do.
-invest in boots with ankle support, your joints will thank you after 5 days of steps
-get water purification tablets, the higher you go, the higher the price of water goes (and everything else for that matter!)
And as they say in Ecuador- "walk slowly, drink a lot of water & sleep alone!"
OK- the sleep alone part isn't necessary ;)

Royal Chitwan National Park

2009-05-07T10:54:00.005-04:00

Killing time waiting for the visas meant a good chance for a side trip to the Terai region of Nepal. Thankfully the strikes were halted and travel was readily available and safe. Perhaps a good week of negotiations between the Maoists and the gov? We get on this old decrepit bus and wind up in Chitwan 7 sweaty hours later. It was hard to choose a place as we were horded by touts at the bus station and since all hotels contain these 3 words: Jungle, Adventure, and Lodge. We wound up at a place right next to the river with excellent views of the elephants walking by. On our first day at Chitwan, we decided to rent bikes and check out the elephant breeding center. We will post photos but I will have you know that the 5 month old twins were to die for. After a painful and bumpy ride down a stone road back to town, we waited for dinner with some thoroughly sore asses. And by wait for dinner I mean go through 3 drinks, leave the restaurant, get snacks at the bakery, eat them, play a card game or 2, then eat dinner. Not sure of the reason but Chitwan had the slowest service EVER. We called it a night and got up bright and early for an elephant safari. We show up and see that all of the elephants are standing in a straight line with their mahouts and find out that they are on strike. One of the mahouts got in a fight with his boss so the boss decided it was appropriate to hit him. The president of the elephant association showed up and apologized at which point the strike had ended. We jumped onto our elephant and were off for a 2 hour safari adventure. Because we were on elephant back, other animals were very tolerant giving us the chance to come within feet of Indian one-horned Rhinos. Unfortunately, we were the perfect height to get smacked in the face by all the diseased tree branches we were walking through. Yuck. Photos are not updated but check back soon for the great rhino pics.

We got back into town and decided to head to the river to help "bathe" the elephants, and by bathe I mean sit on an elephants back while getting splashed with water from their trunks. I believe this is the best part of the day for both elephant and mahout...they get to drench those crazy enough to accept the offer to climb atop the elephant in the river. After countless shouts of "Chooooppppp!" and getting completely drenched in a mixture of river water and elephant spit, the mahout orders the gentle giant to lay down in the river leaving us to swim our way to safety. M was gung ho on helping to bathe an elephant, but her inquiries resulted in confused mahouts. There clearly was no bathing going on, but it was good fun. In the afternoon we went on a Jeep safari so we could get further into the various habitats of the national park for some good wildlife spotting. We saw too many rhinos to count as well as peacocks, mugger crocodiles, various species of deer, tons of waterfowl, storks, kingfishers, wild buffalo, wild elephants and wild boars. The heat sweeping across the plains of southern Nepal got us itching to leave and after another SLOW dinner and buggy night in Chitwan, we headed back onto the sweaty bus for the ride back to Kathmandu.

Indian Embassy

2009-05-07T10:27:00.005-04:00

After a week of relaxing in the Kathmandu Valley, we decided it was about time to brave the beaurocratic nonsense of attaining an India visa. We had no idea what we were about to get ourselves into! And boy we could never have guessed how ridiculous the process was. We showed up at the embassy about 30 minutes before the paper needed to be filed. 30 minutes to write your name on a sheet of paper, no problem right? Wrong, BIG problem apparently. There were hundreds of people waiting and the embassy workers laughed when we thought we could get it done in one day. They accept applications for the application (hello?!) for only 2.5 hours a day. Then the office closes. So we had to come back 2 days later as the next day was the New Year. We show up on Thursday, wait a few hours, hand in our application for our application, are told to come back in 7 days. We had planned on leaving Kathmandu to get to Pokhara but it takes 7 days to get done what most countries do on arrival in 7 minutes. Weird. So we headed to the Royal Chitwan National Park in the Terai region of Nepal for some safaris and then came back to Kathmandu to pick up the visas. We heard the earlier you arrive the better to get a good number to hand in the application. We queued at 7 AM and thankfully got called just before noon to hand in the application. Then we had to come back at 4:30PM so they could whisper our names quietly from behind a glass window at 6 PM to receive our passports back with visas inside. 10 days after our first inquiry, we had our visas in hand and were ready to head to the motherland. What a process!

Kathmandu

2009-04-19T04:53:00.003-04:00

Apologies for not updating the blog. Internet in Nepal was quite expensive for our liking, so the updates have been delayed. But we are back in touch with the world and will fill all you fans in on our travels.

We made it the Kathmandu airport painlessly, but getting into the country with a visa was another story! As we haven't been in the US for quite some time, clearly we have no US dollars. Normally when one arrives at a country that gives visas on arrival, there is an ATM to take out some cash to pay for the visa. Well, there was an ATM at the Kathmandu airport, only it was outside! How does one get outside to get money with no visa you ask? Apparently this is very difficult. An hour-ish later, M made it back to the visa counter, Nepalese rupees in hand. But wait, Nepal doesn't accept Nepalese rupees (yes, that is their own currency) to pay for a visa. And alas, the money exchange before the visa counter doesn't either. After much frustration, M convinced them to change the rupees to dollars and we made it into the country. Phew. We got rushed off in a "cab" and eventually found a crash pad that was acceptable. After so much hussle and bustle during our 2.5 months in SE Asia, we decided to take it easy and relax for a bit in Kathmandu before we got a move on. Of course this lasted a week or so. We followed Lonely Planets advice and visited a number of neighborhoods in the Kathmandu Valley. Boudha was clearly our favorite.
Boudha is an area in the valley with a strong Tibetan influence as many refugees live here. There is a giant stupa in the center of the circle and hordes of Buddhists circling the stupa for hours. The stupa was incredible, draped in prayer flags and decorated with the third eye facing each cardinal direction. We joined in and did laps until we were dizzy. Though neither of us practice Buddhism, we felt very special and blessed to be surrounded by so many people with such deep convictions to their beliefs. On April 14th we celebrated Nepalese New Year 2066 with a bang. We partied in the backpacker district, Thamel, with new friends from around the world to ring in the new year. We also spent a great deal of time wandering the streets of Kathmandu avoiding endless touts, glue sniffing street kids, and Sadhu impersonators and discovering 1000 year old monuments that should be part of a museum but instead are used as seats or a place to hang laundry. Crazy! There are many great charities based around Kathmandu to enable street kids so keep your eyes open when we get back for a fund raiser.

Toilets

2009-04-10T12:56:00.006-04:00

There are Western toilets. There are "third-world" toilets. And then there are Japanese toilets. No need to describe the Western variety, so let's dive right into the third world kind. Let's just say these toilets are more like holes in the ground, decorated with a nice ceramic hood to catch the pee. We call them squatters. Though they are fairly inventive, they certainly don't do a good job. These toilets, without fail, stink. The floors is always soaking wet, either because people can't aim or because of the hose used for cleaning your butt. Also, they normally do not have a flush, so a bucket of water with a scoop is supplied to flush down your business. And all this escalated of course by the open garbage can of used toilet paper you are squatting over because in no way can this be flushed. This makes for a lovely time in flip flops!
But then, well then there are Japanese toilets. They truly deserve a word better than toilet because they are worlds away from what you think. They are sparkling clean ceramic machines equipped with more buttons than one knows what to do with. The moment you enter the stall, you can avoid the embarrassing sound of peeing by pressing the music button, which starts the fake flushing sound and will continue through the duration of your bathroom visit.And have no worry, you can always control the volume. God, what if someone hears you pee! No need for toilet paper as there are a variety of controls for cleaning. And of course there are different settings for males and females. You can choose the single spray or the shower spray. A number of buttons will also control the pressure of water as well as the temperature. Have no fear, as if the toilet seat wouldn't be heated!

Travel

2009-04-07T07:02:00.003-04:00

Travel. It's funny sometimes. You show up in a place with all these expectations, and a place can either blow you away or bore you to tears. Sometimes you get somewhere and there's no tourist attractions per say, nothing to see but people living their lives, as that is what people do. And that is when the real travel happens. In the dinky towns with nothing to see but smiling faces and curious children. That is when you see the true spirit of a nation and its' people. After all, two women with white skin is somewhat of an anomaly in some places. You get offered crazy foods, invited into personal studios, use a bathroom inside of an old indigenous ladies home without one word being passed, get your photo taken, get asked to take the photos of strangers on your camera. And sometimes the real travel is on the road, and I do believe many will attest to this. Whether it is live goats traveling on the roof of a bus, sharing a seat with way too many people, babies being passed off to neighbors for more room on the mother's lap, music blaring so damn loudly, bus karaoke, chickens in bags on passengers' laps, anything, and I do mean anything being sold through the windows, etc., the road is always bound to be a memorable journey. Of course you could opt for the tourist buses which will arrive at your destination in shorter time with little excitement. But why would you choose that option really?

Then there are other times when travel is out of this world- blow your mind--does this really exist-where the hell am I-what the hell is going on- fantastic. And that's when the fun begins. Speaking with locals in Ecuador, hiking in Peru, sun bathing in Chile, tango in Argentina, being among the Japanese, haggling in Thailand, wildlife spotting in Malaysia, discovering hidden nooks in Indonesia, finding Nirvana in Cambodia, praying to survive moto rides in Vietnam. That's the real fun. Those are the things that make us never want to come home. (don't worry M&G). All the craziness and all of these experiences make us realize this is the best thing we could possibly be doing with our lives right now and we are so, so grateful that we have this opportunity.

oh what fun!

2009-04-06T12:27:00.003-04:00

it is to ride on a trishaw in Vietnam!
yay!

Nihn Bihn and Halong Bay, Vietnam

2009-04-06T11:35:00.005-04:00

Another overnight bus landed us on the side of the road with no map at 6:00 AM in the rain in Nihn Bihn. Fun. We followed some other tourists to a hotel who gave us a room despite the early hour and then crashed until noon. We awoke to hunger like no other, hit the streets to find a restaurant, and were dumbfounded with the lack of food. SE Asia is all about food you see. You can't walk a block without seeing a dozen hole in the wall places offering up delicious meals. But not in Nihn Bihn. We eventually found a hotel restaurant with a sleeping waiter, overpriced food, and tiny coffees. After the grub, we had the option of renting a manual motorbike, so we quickly hired the first drivers we could find to take us to Tam Coc. Tam Coc is Halong Bay but set in brilliant green rice paddies with a river running through. We hired a boat and had 2 Vietnamese ladies row us around for 2 hours for a whopping $4. They tried too hard to sell us embroidered crap and annoyingly wouldn't take no for an answer. They got the hint eventually but persistently tapped M on the leg asking for a tip. Weird. (A note on Vietnam: The people are lovely, the sights are beautiful, the food is good, but everyone, and I do mean everyone, is out to make a buck and will lie and plea through their teeth in order to do it.) We ignored the ladies and thoroughly enjoyed being rowed under crazy limestone caves. The limestone juts straight out of the rice paddies sticking up like a sore thumb. They are a sight to see! Back in town, the rain started and we rushed back to the hotel for some quality English TV time. We caught gross dinner in our hotel restaurant and then called it a night.

LP tells us you can head to Haiphong or Halong City to arrange trips to Halong Bay. Since Haiphong was closer, we caught the local bus there. This was our first Vietnamese local bus and it was quite the trip. We either drove 1,000km or 20 km an hour the entire way and once we had crammed so many people into the bus that people were literally sitting on my feet, we stopped to pick up more. Again, dumped at some unknown location and instantly swarmed by tuk tuk drivers. Unfortunately, people don't speak English in Haiphong, and clearly we speak no Vietnamese. Arranging a boat trip of the bay was next to impossible. Many moto rides and frustrating hours later, we retreated to the bus station for a bus to Halong City, confusingly also referred to as Halong Bay(it's a city, not the bay). Again, dumpage on the side of the road, hop onto the backs of some motos and arrive at a strip of hotels. And by a strip I mean hundreds of hotels with very few tourists. Perhaps it is the low season, but there were no tourists in Halong City. Certainly not enough to fuel the rampant tourism industry and concrete buildings that make up the town. I believe this is what causes lying hotel touts offering us ridiculously overpriced bay tours. We knew enough to head straight to the harbor to catch the boats and not hire a boat for a private tour. Even so, we got followed to the harbor and lied to repeatedly about prices of trips. One scammer went as far as opening the tourist information booth, sitting us down with a piece of paper and writing out prices for us pretending as though he worked there. Of course he fell silent when asked for his identification. Beware of this if you visit Halong Bay. We did of course arrange a boat through the tourist info booth the next morning ($4, NOT $45) and had a lovely 3 hour tour of the limestone and one of the amazing caves.
Even though the caves were lit up like Disney World (weird!), and a non-English speaking local insisting on being our photographer and making us pose for a million awful photos as we cruised through the bay (see inserted photo), it was still quite a sight to see. M and I must admit though that after so much effort in getting to Halong Bay, we were not impressed. Perhaps we are jaded by the (more) gorgeous Tam Coc, or by all of the other amazing sights we have seen on this trip, but we suggest you head to Tam Coc instead for a more authentic experience.

Fun times

2009-04-01T12:56:00.001-04:00

How do we survive all these overnight buses you ask?
Well, well, well...bus karaoke of course!

What do you need to travel around the world?

2009-04-01T12:54:00.003-04:00

Apparently, this is all.

Hoi An, Vietnam

2009-04-01T12:11:00.003-04:00

is where one goes for custom made jewelry, clothing, shoes, etc. We went for the shoes, yes, exactly what we need to be carrying around until August, extra pairs of shoes!

We arrived in Hoi An after another long, rocky overnight bus ride and decided this was the town we'd actually get some rest and relaxation time in. The overnight buses were causing serious sleep issues, not to mention ugly bags under the eyes. We stumbled upon the perfect hotel (air con, breakfast buffet included, free internet, a pool!) and spent a few hours playing catch up on the sleep situation. Once we felt energized, we rented bicycles and headed out to explore the charming town of Hoi An. It didn't take long before we were stopped at a shoe shop where P got some non-leather boots made as well as a pair of sneakers and M got 2 pairs made herself. It's just crazy! You walk in, show a photo of what you'd like (i.e.- a pair of $300 Campers) and they make them for you in 24 hours for under $20! We really couldn't pass this up. So we got the shopping urge overwith and moved on with ourselves.
Hoi An was preparing for the evening's festivities to observe Earth Hour 2009. Floating lanterns were situated on the river running through town, locals were setting up streetside stands to sell floating candles and everything imaginable that glows in the dark. Meanwhile, huge speakers began the countdown to Earth Hour early in the day, hours before lights were to be turned off...let's just say people were overly excited. And finally, the lights went out, the locals were loving it and the few tourists around seemed confused- why was everyone so excited to turn lights off? The river scene was enjoyable- floating lanters gliding past tiny traditional boats full of happy Vietnamese playing guitars, harmonicas, flutes and singing their songs.
All the moving about since landing in SE Asia really caught up to us in Hoi An- we slept in, spent countless hours lounging, shmoozing, slowly riding bikes, sipping coffee, people watching and playing cards. We really weren't used to this fast paced schedule, thankfully Hoi An was the perfect place to relax and recharge.
Our next stop was the old city of Hue. We were told it was much like Hoi An, but bigger, so we sqeezed it in and alotted a day to check it out. There were quite a few sights to explore in and around Hue, but lack of time and torrential downpours restricted us to one- The Ancient Citadel, where we explored some interesting buildings & temples, but overall weren't all that impressed. Perhaps hiring a guide would have made a difference here. From there we jumped on a trishaw to get a quick peek in at the local market before boarding yet another overnight bus. A tip for those thinking of visiting Hue- give yourself more than a day, there are many sights to see ranging from Perfume river cruises, to ancient tombs, pagodas and even natural springs.
and off we went, on another overnight...next stop Nihn Bihn!

Ho Chi Min City & Nha Trang, Vietnam

2009-04-01T10:26:00.004-04:00

or HCMC or Saigon (pick your fave) was a blast. We got dropped off on the side of the road at night (what else is new?) and were quickly rushed off by a polite bus tout to a guesthouse a few blocks and alleys away. We felt entirely lost walking through tiny alleys until all of a sudden we appeared in front of a guesthouse, nice and clean with breakfast for $16. We decided to celebrate our first night in Vietnam with some yummy Tiger beer. We easily made some crazy (read : weird Americans) friends and spent the night and too much of the morning partying. Got a late start the next day, jumped into a cab and wound up at the American War Museum. Please note that we hopped in a cab and not on the back of a moto this time because M feared for her life. There's about, oh I don't know, a trillion motos in Saigon, all weaving and honking their way through traffic. It is utter chaos, but somehow it all seems to work. Though the tourists walking around with bandages scared us a bit. Anyway, the war museum was nothing special much to our surprise. LP says you can't miss it, but we beg to differ (though we must note that it's under construction).
We hopped in another cab, headed to the market, shmoozed around for awhile, then ate some delicious street food. Vietnamese food is a bit different than we would've expected, the vegetarian options are few and all with an American-style Chinese food twist. But this food (read: noodles and spring rolls) outdid most dishes and was washed down with a dragon fruit shake for M and an avaocado shake for P. Delicious. We hurried back to grab our bags and board our first of many Vietnamese overnight buses. And what a trip this bus turned out to be. Think Japanese capsule hotel on wheels and you've hit the nail on the head. We wound up with some of the worst seats on the bus and were squished like sardines with 3 other strangers. Combined with the worst bus driver in history, we had a sleepless night and were exhausted upon our arrival in Nha Trang. Thankfully, snoozing on the beach restored us to our former selves. We failed miserably trying to transfer buses to bring us to Hoi An and spent the day relaxing on the beach. Not such a terrible way to spend the day. Apparently, there are no local buses in Vietnam and everyone rides these "open tour" buses which only leave twice a day. We could have spent 10 hours crammed into a minibus with cigarette smoking local men, but cheerfully opted for the beach. While M relaxed on her beach chair due to a heightened hatred of sand and salt, P jumped waves like she couldn't believe. A few showers later and it was time for overnight bus #2. A word of advice: If you are trying to cover great distances in Vietnam, 2 overnight buses does the trick. You won't sleep a wink on the first and will be so damn exhausted, you won't stay awake for a second on the next. But make sure you get the bottom bunks, it makes all the difference.

The Temples of Angkor

2009-03-29T11:08:00.006-04:00

After a traumatizing (ask us in Aug) and frustrating day layover in Kuala Lumpur, we finally touched down at Cambodia's Siem Reap airport and anxiously awaited our ATM rendezvous, where we'd withdraw actual US dollars! We were thrilled! (not sure why since it's the ugliest currency we've encountered, by far, but a sense of "home" overcame us) We settled in at a guesthouse then set out on foot to hire a tuktuk driver for the next few days. As an aside, you actually don't have to search for a tuktuk driver in Siem Reap, about twenty drivers will offer their services before you could walk 20 feet. And so, as it goes, we turned everyone down until we ran into the "right guy." The repetition of "Lady! Need tuktuk? Tomorrow? Cheap price for you!" gets old real fast, so we shook our heads and continued on our way until we heard the perfect offer..."Excuse me miss? Maybe you need a tuktuk tomorrow?" I replied "No thank you" and kept walking when I heard "Ok, thank you, goodnight," then things changed. I turned to P and said "That's our guy." So we negotiated the obvious fair price for the next two days and had ourselves our very own chauffeur in a nice, spacious tuktuk for our visits to the ancient temples. As SE Asia was being struck by a serious heat wave, we sweated through it and made it to about 10 temples before we began to feel "templed out" at the end of day 2.
The massive size of Angkor Wat was mesmerizing and though P had been there before, it had us both in a trance in no time. We explored the endless halls and details in the stone work for a few hours before heading out to the next temple. Our next stop was Angkor Thom, an ancient royal city guarded by a 3km stone wall and moat. To enter the ancient city, you enter through one of 5 gates crowned with 4 giant faces. We entered via the south entrance, took the obligatory gate photo and made our way to Bayon, a temple within this enclosure. P recalled Bayon temple as her favorite and as we rounded the corner putting it in our view, this was reconfirmed. With hundreds of smiling faces carved into massive stone stands staring down at you, it's hard not to smile back. The mix of Buddhist and Hindu influences really make for an interesting experience.
What's also amazing, is the sheer power of tree roots. Many of the temples are being engulfed by various species of massive fig trees, which literally upturn boulders easily weighing in over a ton. The muscular tree roots are pushing stones aside to reach down for more ground, growing through cracks, widening gaps and knocking down parts of temples along the way, it's quite a site. Ta Prohm is a fascinating example of these powerful trees...we found ourselves holding our breath as we hurried through the few corridors that remain standing at Ta Prohm (as if this would keep the boulders from crushing us).
A visit to the temple ruins around Siem Reap is a definite must on anyone's SE Asian adventure. Just bring lots of water and endless amounts of patience...you'll need it to ward off the sweet Cambodians trying to sell you EVERYTHING!
(we ended up with more Kramas than we know what to do with)

Sabah, Borneo!

2009-03-23T11:31:00.006-04:00

Borneo is the land of orangutans, gibbons, elephants, probiscus monkeys, long and pig tailed macaques, monitor lizards, hornbills, mosquitoes, leeches and much more! Though we only had a week to experience the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo, we definitely had enough of an adventure to give us something to talk about.

We spent a few days in Kota Kinabalu city (KK), which is like any other SE Asian city, but with a small town feel. The torrential downpours kept us from seeing too much of the city, but we sure did experience some fun Malaysian malls, a street fair and covered outdoor markets...but the city wasn't what we came for, probiscus monkeys and orangutans were priority on our agenda.
We left KK for Sepilok, where the world renowned Orangutan Rehab Center awaited our visit. Arriving at the center just before feeding time gave us some great close up views of a couple of orangutans and yes, they are cuter in real life! Since the center works to save orphaned baby orangutans, they slowly transition the apes back into the forest so designated feeding times within the forest allow food supplement for the cuties and orangutan spottings for us tourists. We watched four orangutans for well over an hour as they hung around, ate and interacted with one another before we left the center for our 3 day jungle excursion.
You cannot visit Borneo without spending at least a few days in Kinabatangan country. Sugai Kinabatangan is Malaysia's second largest river and is just pulsing with wildlife- especially towards the end of northeast monsoon season. Once you look past all the mosquitoes and leeches awaiting fresh blood, you'll be amazed in what you see. During our few days there at a lodge, we had a couple sunrise river trips and evening river trips with a guide and a hike through knee deep mud to view an oxbow lake. The river trips are the way to go since much of the wildlife seeks refuge along the river's edge. So what did we see?
Well, we spotted: tremendous birdlife-the hornbills being the coolest of the bird sightings, followed by the brightly colored kingfishers dotting the river's edge, saw enough long tail macaques to be pleased for a lifetime-best appreciated in the wild (just ask P), spotted an orangutan in the wild! and although it was quite far from our boat, it was cool to watch her armspan reach out to pluck fruit for breakfast- these creatures have quite the armspan! We spotted several troops of probiscus monkeys- only found in Borneo! The ~6ft long monitor lizard was a bit shy so we only had a quick glimpse as it creeped along the riverbank before booking it for the dense vegetation (the sleeping baby monitor tucked away in the crotch of a tree branch wasn't as exciting for some reason). Other sightings included a silver langur, a couple of eagle species, thousands of leeches (during our mud hike) and an elephant! Though not the newly discovered pygmy elephant, we were thrilled to see any elephant and this one was huge. The guide informed us that it was a solitary male elephant and though he seemed calm and content sucking up oil from various oil palms in a nearby plantation, he's actually very dangerous. We watched as he stuffed himself with palm oil and waved at us with huge elephant ears before we moved down along the river's edge to tell the locals of the dangerous beast lurking in the plantation. As a side, these trillions of oil palms making up tons of acres of plantations are part of the reason most wildlife is being siphoned towards the river's edge-that and the logging operations. So, although we were pleased with our wildlife sightings, we hope the Malaysian government will move forward on the protection of native habitat.
So get yourself to Borneo, make sure you go through an eco-friendly lodge for your jungle excursion and be prepared to be amazed!

Avoid the Bali Belly!

2009-03-23T10:36:00.003-04:00

Ahhhh Bali. The land of orchid toting Hindus, gorgeous temples, delicious food, incredible shopping. The vacation from vacation. Maybe this sounds crazy to you, but we really needed a vacation. Traveling is hard work sometimes. I can't think of a day we slept past 5:30AM recently. There's A LOT to do in Asia. After an oddly loud Air Asia flight, we got to Bali, cabbed it to Kuta, and searched endlessly in the heat for a place to crash. Kuta was a bit much. Too much like Sea Side prom weekend for our liking. Maybe because we are no longer 18? Whatever the reason, we had to leave. We headed out the following morning without so much as seeing the beach and made it to Ubud. Ubud is a few hours north, had (slightly) cooler weather, and a ton to do! We wound up staying way longer than expected. Very Elizabeth Gilbert of us. The touts at the bus station ended up bringing us to a wonderful place called Brata II to stay. M arrived first on her moto and when P showed up to find her, she went the wrong way because clearly the gorgeous temple she was about to enter was not a guesthouse. Not a temple it turns out. Just an amazing guesthouse. Check out the pics and see for yourself. M and I discovered some wonderful nooks and corners around Ubud, took an Indonesian cooking lesson, and a silversmith lesson. Watch out for our new businesses when we return! We also hired a driver for the day to take us around the island to the incredible temples of Bali. Goa Gajah was our first stop and was set within a small river valley surrounded by thick vegetation. Tampak Siring, the spring water temple, was set among gorgeous scenery and had constantly running springs where worshipers were gathered for some ritual Hindu bathing. The Mother Temple, Besakih, was incredible. Though we were plagued by crazy downpours, the after rain photos made waiting out the rain worthwhile. Our last day in Ubud was spent shopping and shooing off monkeys. Never in my life have I seen so many monkeys in one place. The Monkey Forest in Ubud is more than we bargained for, quite scary as a matter of fact. A monkey jumped on P's lap, and began to climb up her arm as she flung her arm so hard the monkey went flying. A bit of a scare sent us running out of that Monkey Forest never to return! Over a week in Bali without seeing the beach made P more than ready to leave Ubud. Unfortunately, finding paradise in Bali was a bit more difficult than expected. We heard rumor Sanur was beautiful so we hopped the bus, walked to the beach with our packs, then turned around and waited for the next bus. Nice beach? Yes. Paradise? No. Off to the edge of Kuta where we heard rumors of gorgeous beaches. If the rumor was gorgeous garbage then Kuta was where it's at. Left Kuta due to the strip of garbage separating the sand from the water and next headed to Pandang Bai. Normally Pandang Bai is only known as a travel hub to catch the ferry to Lombok. And we wondered if we should even spill the secret or keep it to ourselves. But dear friends, we will share the secret. Up hill, through the woods, and down the steps leads to Blue Lagoon. AKA: Paradise. A gorgeous secluded beach, flanked by trees, rocks, and coral, with white sand, clear water, a handful of tourists and handful of sarong sellers. And thats all. Now shhh. Go visit yourself and keep it quiet. We stayed at a wonderfully fancy hotel called Padang Bai Beach Bungalow, though we are not sure why the word bungalow is in there. This was probably the nicest place with the fanciest swimming pool we have ever stayed. We did nothing but relax for 3 days. A vacation from our vacation. Can it get any better?

Cameron Highlands & Melaka, Malaysia

2009-03-22T10:09:00.004-04:00

Two travel days, one missed bus, and one killer haircut later, we made it to the Cameron Highlands. We spent a bit longer than planned due to the fabulous weather, the laid back life, and the Quitenas we met. Oh, and by killer haircut, I mean awful haircut M received while we accidentally missed our bus, but anyway, on with the story:
Our first day was spent lazing around the town of Tanah Rata in the highlands, drinking way too much coffee and gorging on vegetarian tom yam soup. Yum. We stayed at a place called the Papillon with extremely helpful owners suggesting we skip the tour because the attractions are easily walkable. Apparently this guy is "quite famous"so we took the advice. On our second day, P decided to try and get her glasses fixed since the eye exam in Japan resulted in the wrong prescription (hmm, I wonder how that might have happened?). And just for fun, M sat for a free eye exam as well. Two hours later, P had brand new lenses and M walks out with glasses! What?! M's still getting used to the fact that she has glasses, she keeps muttering "A bad haircut AND glasses, I don't know about these Malaysians."
Bright and early the following morning we stepped into our hiking shoes, grabbed some water, made some sandwiches and were off to Gunung Berinchan, the supposed highest peak in peninsular Malaysia. Though it's a pretty short hike, distancewise, it's quite steep and after days of rain, it's a slippery mudslide...fun! We were covered in mud by the time we reached the top and exhausted for the continuation of the day. We gathered enough energy to begin the walk back down, started walking down the paved road towards Boh Tea Plantation, got sick of it and hitched a ride. The tea plantation was gorgeous! (just try to ignore the fact that native forest was clear cut to plant it) The green reminded us of the rice paddies in Japan. Check out the photos. We were to continue the walk to the main road to hit some strawberry farms when the rain began. And when it rains, it really rains so we needed a way back to town. Thankfully this is where the Quitenas came in. M asked around and scored us a ride from Michelle and Melissa, 2 girls who grew up half in the US and half in Quito. If you've been following this blog, you know how much we LOVE Quito, so we were pretty damn excited. Michelle braved the steep, narrow road in the rain and drove the rental car up Gunung Berinchan in hopes of the rain clearing for a beautiful view of the highlands. No such luck, in fact, the rain came harder once we got to the top. So, back to town for more delicious Tom Yam was the consensus.
We met the girls at the only bar in town that night for a birthday celebration, where too many gulps of Bear Beer were downed, which made for a painful morning. Really, what were we thinking? We got talked into staying another day by our new friends and headed off in the rental car to check out another plantation and some strawberry gardens which certainly helped the hangover.Thank you Bear Beer. Back for more Tom Yam for dinner, a little more birthday celebrating and we had to call it a night. The Cameron Highlands were lovely. Not entirely public transportation friendly, so may I suggest you find some crazy, fun girls from Quito with a rental car?
Melaka, or Malacca as you might see it spelled- was just plain funny to M, who couldn't stop thinking of the meaning of "malaka" in Greek. It was just too much for her to handle.
BUT once she calmed, Melaka (we'll spell it this way so our Greek speaking followers can handle reading this) proved to be a fun little town in SW Malaysia- site of the famous Strait ofMelaka which connects the Indian and Pacific oceans.
We unintentionally had a walking tour of the town the night we arrived as we strolled the streets with our packs on looking for a guesthouse. We refused at least a hundred trishaw offers since their going rate was often more than 20MR! We eventually found a guesthouse and settled into the 10 dollar, air conditioned room. Melaka has a vibrant Chinatown where you can find anything from $8 "birkenstocks" to Charles Cham's Oran Utan Shops and any mass produced Malaysian souvenir you can think of, fun! Renting bikes for a couple of bucks a day is the best way to explore Melaka, so this was the route we took. We spent most of our time seeking out the temples of Chinatown, browsing artists' studios, popping into crazy malls for some aircon time and turning down trishaw offers- they'll even offer you a ride as you roll past them on your own bike! One thing about Melaka that wasn't so fun was trying to find a restaurant open later than 10pm (S.America messed us up), this left us having to resort to 7-11 cup o' noodles. Though, if you do get in before closing time, many restaurants offer an avocado smoothie topped with chocolate syrup- sounds gross, tastes delicious! A definite must try!

Thailand

2009-03-20T09:32:00.004-04:00

We made it Thailand late late late on Saturday night and got suckered into the Khoa San Rd district to find a place to stay. And if you know Khoa San Rd, you know that's not a place to show up to at 3AM Saturday night if you're over the age of 21 carrying a pack. Think frat party-cum-transvestite show. Fun. The first room we looked at literally had bed bugs crawling on the pillows. Booked it out of there and stepped up a much needed price notch. The next morning was spent eating delicious Thai food and shopping our hearts out. We somehow wound up staying on vegetarian row much to our stomachs' (maybe not waistlines') delight. Then later that day, after nearly 3 months without seeing anyone we knew on the road, we met up with 2 friends. We spent the night eating and talking with Rochel and Chris, then left the next day with Rochel for the long journey to Ko Lanta. M and I are pros at long bus rides, seriously, we can knock out 16 hours like nothing. South America does that to you. The overnight bus left us in Krabi where we waited to transfer to the boat to Ko Lanta. Why we fell for the old "book your room on the boat" trick I have no idea, so of course we were disappointed upon arrival at our "beach" bungalows. The fist sized, barking toad in the bathroom and the RAT running around the room did not allow for much sleep that night. We booked it to another beach on the island and stayed in lovely bungalows called Sa-bye Sa-bye, with a friendly and thoughtful owner. 2 full days hopping waves, looking for seashells, and teaching M how to relax at the beach came to a quick end. Ko Lanta was gorgeous, but we've seen better so head to some Malaysian islands if you're considering island hopping in SE Asia. We parted ways with Rochel before crossing the Malaysian border, expecting to arrive in the Cameron Highlands that day. 2 days later, after some serious transportation struggles, we arrived. Our time in Thailand was short and not much like P remembered from 5 years back. More tourists, less Thai's, and less smiles. Perhaps Laos is the new Thailand?

Japan Take 2

2009-03-04T06:51:00.008-05:00

Sorry for the delay. All this traveling is hard to write about!

So, back to Kyoto. We bought the most expensive transport we could find, because everyone ought to try the Nozomi Shinkansen and we were thoroughly amazed as we felt like we were flying, only ground level. 2 hours to Kyoto is very impressive. We arrived at the massive station which is a tourist attraction in itself and immediately darted to our hotel. The hotel was so Japanese, one single sheet of plastic making up the entire bathroom, optional flushing music on the toilet, robes to sleep in waiting on the bed, slippers way too big for our feet, toilet paper folded into perfect triangles, and every live Japanese game show you could imagine on the TV. We headed out to the Ginza section and did some Geisha spotting. We felt like paparazi as we snapped some photos as they strolled by. We felt satisfied with our sighting so we left to find some food, if you want to call it that. Eating in Kyoto turned out to be a bit more difficult than expected and we had to settle for way too many egg sandwiches from the combinis. P also convinced M to try some Okomomiyaki, which she had fond memories of from her days in Japan. Okonomiyaki is sort of like an omlette made from cabbage, eggs, some chopped up veggies,noodles, mayo, and BBQ sauce. Needless to say, we didn't feel so hot after that meal and P remembered perhaps she didn't like it so much afterall. We then headed to an onsen in the northern part of the city, quite a distance from our hotel in the south. The onsen was lovely, full of old naked Japanese ladies indoors, so we headed to the outdoor pools to avoid the stares. We were about finished with the onsen when 2 young women came and joined us in the outdoor pool. They were full of giggles and eventually worked up the guts to speak to the gaijin in the pool. They both spoke "engrish" more or less and we wound up spending way too long in the hot bath chatting. Or more like us making conversation and them responding with some endearing noises, squeals, ooohs and ahhhs. It was a blast, until we realized it was 11:30PM and we likely missed the last bus back south. Our new best "friendlies" told us that it was no problem and they would be really happy to drive us. They drove us to the other side of the city without hesitation with many more giggles and noises. Man, it was a good time. We love Japan!

The next day was spent temple hopping to the beautiful shrines and temples spread around town, of course inclduing Kinkakuji, the famous Golden Temple. We also spent quite some time smhoozing among tons of Japanese tourists on ths streets leading up to Kiyomizu Shrine. P tried hard but really couldn't resist the shopping and wound up with a good number of souveniers. We spent 2 days temple-ing our little hearts out, then caught some great conveyor belt sushi at the station before getting on the overnight bus back to Tokyo for one more day, and one more visit to the fish market, before our flight out. Japan sure did keep us busy. But man do we love it. We can't even count the number of conversations we had about moving back (or P convincing M this was a great idea)! Can't wait for more Japanese adventures the next time we make our way there. Check out the link for all of our Japan photos.

Turning Japanese...

2009-03-02T23:56:00.006-05:00

was as exciting as it was 5 years ago. As P reminisced about everything Japanese, M was fascinated by her first real visits to Tokyo and Kyoto. We tried really hard not to gawk and giggle, but Japan is so damn fun, it was so damn hard not to! Man, we love Japan.

We left South America on a Wednesday and arrived at Narita Airport in Tokyo, Japan on a Friday night...um, what happened to Thursday? We stopped in the US for a quick layover in D.C. and had family and friends greet us. We also had some good ol' American style breakfast, open bottomed cups of coffee and all. After some sad goodbyes (for the second time), we briefly went on a buying binge of english mags and newspapers, then headed for the flight to Tokyo. 2 days of travel didn't matter as soon as we left baggage claim because our love of Japan took over, we couldn't get out of the airport without spending an hour discussing all the items in the "combini" in the airport. Playing the katakana game (like mad gab if you know what we mean, if not, google it) lasted a bit too long as we settled on some canned coffees, inari, and egg sanwiches. Oh, how we love Japan! (even if that meant blowing a month's budget in ONE week!)

So we visited Tokyo...just about all of Tokyo- Ikebukuro, Asakusa, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ginza, Tsukiji, etc.

We hit up the famed Tsukiji fish market twice because once just isn't enough (totalling 5 times for P!) to catch the crazy stock market like fish market. We saw tuna the size of ourselves, frozen like a brick, then sawed through like wood. Just about everything that lives in the ocean is for sale at this market, what a treat! Sushi for breakfast was a real treat as well (minus the fish for P, she decided she couldn't stomach it at 7 am). We spent our days drinking coffee, people watching, and feeling amazed that everyone was Japanese. Of course we already know this. And we do mean everyone. You can point out the gaijin from a mile away. But it had been nearly 5 years and this really did surprise us...again. Actually, we spent hours sitting in Starbucks (so excited for some real coffee after 4 months of nescafe, I mean "no es cafe") above the famous Shibuya crossing watching the intersection explode with people the moment the crosswalk turned green. M literally took over 100 pics, if you flip through quickly it looks like a video so go ahead and try it out. Crazy Shibuya and Shinjuku were a real treat, we found it difficult to avoid purchasing all of the electronics we saw, especially from the huge Bic Camera and Sakura stores. Asakusa, though a tourist trap, was as always a pleasure to visit with its huge pagoda and Buddhist temple at the end of the street filled with everything Japanese. We ate 14 red bean buns in the shape of birds and pagodas walking down that street alone. Impressive. We also spent a good chunk of time playing video games in Japanese at the Ginza Sony building. And we became Japanese Secret Agents playing the scavenger hunt James Bond game they had set up for us. How do we get suckered into these things?
We stayed in Ikebukuro with a couple and their roomate we got hooked up with on couchsurfing. com. Check it out if you don't know about it. Ikebukuro was a blast as well, a mix of old and new Japan. Tiny roads, lanterns, and ramen shops competing with Tokyu Hands and ABC Mart. Why did P decide this was a great place to get new glasses and an eye exam in Japanese? (She had to get new lenses upon arrival in Malaysia bc she couldn't see!)

We then headed to Kyoto via the super fast Nozomi Shinkansen train. Will fill you in about that in the next blog.

Mata ne!

Best of the Best. South America

2009-02-24T08:43:00.005-05:00

Best country? P&M- Ecuador
Best sight? P&M -Machu Picchu and Perito Moreno Glacier
Best people watching spot? Plaza de Armas in Santiago, Chile for the fountain swimmers and religious crazies
Best hike? Huayna Picchu
Best route? Quilotoa Loop in Ecuador
Best weather? Banos and Mindo in Ecuador. Not Quito!
Best hostel? Itao Cabanas in Puerto Lopez, Ecuador (minus the larger than life spiders) Hammock, mosquito net, fresh paint job, clean sheets and bathroom, including full breakfast for 2 for $16. Not too shabby.
Best budget country? Ecuador, then Peru, then Argentina, then Chile.
Best snack/street food? P- Salcedo ice cream, hands down. M-Empanadas
Best meal? P- Rice with pasta, potatoes, corn and bread. jk. Prob Vegetarian almuerzos in Quito. M-Grass fed Argentinian steak.
Best drink? P- Pilsener beer in Ecuador and Soda water(thanks dani). M- Wine in Argentina
Best fruit? P- Tree tomato. M- Guava
Best shopping? P- Tied between Otavalo for the indigenous market and the colorful boutiques in Buenos Aires. M- Otavalo
Best Spanish phrase? P- Limpia tu mama! M- "Insert word here" no mas.
Best souvenir? P- Jewelery in Ecuador, Alpaca everything in Peru, Antique seltzer bottle from Argentina. M- Indigenous purses in Ecuador, Alpalca sweater in Peru
Best museum? P- Evita Museum in Argentina. M- Guayasamin Museum in Ecuador
Best beach? Iqueque in Chile, but aint much to write home about
Best park? Perito Moreno Glacier National Park in Argentina. Wow.
Best wildlife sighting? P- Flamingos in Patagonia. M- Boobies!

There you have it folks. South America was a blast. We tried to sum up the best, but here's some bonus advice, especially for those planning a trip...

Go to Ecuador. Skip Chile. Unless you are hitting Patagonia in Chile. But lets get real, go to El Calafate if you're headed to Patagonia. Dont be afraid of Quito. Head to Hospital Metropolitano in Quito for organ removal. Learn Spanish. Re-learn Spanish in Chile because they dont pronounce most of their letters and are damn proud of it. Re-learn Spanish in Argentina because they replace most of their syllables with a "sh" and are damn proud of it. Go to Eastern Peru, skip the coast especially if coming from a city. Don't drink too much in Ecuador or Peru, the altitude helps in that department. Land travel into Chile or you'll have to pay $135 at the border. Carry $135 cash if you're American and plan to enter Bolivia. Don't bother getting malaria tablets or a yellow fever vaccination before you come, they're ridiculously cheap here. But you'll need three people (Thanks Mabe!) Take a salsa lesson in Ecuador and a tengo lesson in Argentina. Bring a mutli tool with a corkscrew. Trust us. Always carry antibac and tissues. Again, trust us. Get yourself an ISIC card if you can score one. Stock up on motion sickness pills. You'll need them. Ear plugs wouldn't hurt either. Eat Salcedo ice cream. Eat empanadas. Pick and eat avocados. Eat everything blackberry, and drink the blackberry juice. Wear sunscreen in Patagonia. Your skin will thank you. Rent bikes but bring a seat cushion for the 60km downhill ride from Banos to Puyo. Your ass will thank you.
See you in Asia!

Photos

2009-02-20T02:40:00.003-05:00

OK, we are getting serious complaints from people and we admit, we've been slacking on the blog, ok.

Go browse through our recently uploaded photos, blog posts will follow soon...and by soon we mean the Ecuadorian kind of soon, so be patient.

Much love from Thailand!

-M+P

Tango, Steak and Wine!

2009-02-09T13:20:00.004-05:00

Omg. We heart BA! and here's why...

Our final destination in S.America was Buenos Aires, arriving 2 weeks before our departure flight. We loved this city so much we decided to stay, skipping trips to Iguazu Falls (I know, we're crazy but we couldn't bear 2 more 17 hour bus rides!) and Uruguay. We stayed in the historic, antiquey San Telmo neighborhood which offered great wine and a wonderful leafy plaza for people watching and if you know us at all, you know that people watching is quite possibly our favorite activity. San Telmo's cobblestone streets are lined with antique shops, markets, restaurants and cafes serving fresh hot medialunas, oh and boutiques organized by color, where P spent a great amount of time having fun with outfits. Sunday's antique fair in San Telmo's Plaza Dorrego dislpays live music and dancing amidst rows and rows of antique stalls selling everything from clothing to jewelry to old colorful gramophones.

While in BA, we caught a few tango shows and plenty bottles of wine. Though P shied away from the $5 grass fed steaks, M claims they're the best she's ever had. We were ecstatic to watch Obama's inauguration live online, which gave us even more reason to pop the corks on a few more tasty bottles and celebrate with some Irish friends we met, who of course make great party partners.

Buenos Aires boasts plenty to do to keep you busy for 2 weeks. Plenty of window shopping to be done at various boutiques throughout many of the BA neighborhoods, gigantic, fancy airconditioned malls for browsing to escape the summer heat, enough pedestrian ways with restaurants, shops and crafts, your choice of museums, European architecture, plazas, monuments and parks to kill time at...and the list goes on.

One of our highlights was the Evita museum, in the beautiful Recoleta neighborhood, which boasts a mansion full of artifacts detailing Evita's rise to fame in Argentina. It's well worth the 5 bucks or so, very informative and touching. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Perons where one of Argentina's most influential families and this museum should not be missed. From there we visited Recoleta cemetary, where many of Argentina's rich and famous lie beneath massive, elaborate headstones- of course Evita Peron's is a must see. We ended our Evita day by visiting Plaza de Mayo, where she gave her famous speeches off the balconies of the Pink House.

As much as we love BA, there is one downfall- their "monedas," they simply do not exist. So to ride the buses around BA, you need exact change for the fares which vary between 1.10 pesos up to 4 pesos, the problem is, NOBODY in BA will give you coins. If something costs 2.60 pesos and you don't have the change, you simply can't have it! This can really piss a girl off when it's 90 degrees out and all she wants is a bottle of water, which conveniently costs between 2.20 pesos and 2.50 pesos. If you ask a store owner for monedas, you'll get a response convincing you that you are indeed insane and your request is absurd, with animation of arms flailing and all. Your best bet is the bank, you'll wait in line at the bank to learn that you are only allowed 3 peso coins at a time per person, no exceptions. WHAT?! After asking many Portenos what the deal is with the coins, we learned that the bus companies basically own all the coins in the city and they sell them for profit on the blackmarket. So, unless you know where to go to buy these precious monedas, you're outta luck and save yourself the embarassment, don't ask anyone for coins.

That being said, if you can avoid the need of monedas, Buenos Aires is definitely a place worthy of your time, so go!

Patagonia

2009-02-09T10:08:00.005-05:00

Wow. I understand why there is an entire brand named after this place. After much hassle of making and breaking plans (what else is new!), we finally decided on how we would get there. Rather than spend a few hundred on a 28 hour bus ride down Route 40, we decided to spend a few hundred on a 3 hour flight. Good idea we think. So we headed straight to Buenos Aires from Mendoza on an overnight bus, spent about a week in BA (will blog about BA later), then hopped the flight to El Calafate in southern Patagonia. Lets just get it out of the way, El Calafate sucks. It is stupidly overpriced. But its certainly not the town that draws you here so it doesn't quite matter. Eighty km outside El Calafate is what really counts. We took an early morning bus to Glacier Perito Moreno (one of 3 Patagonia glaciers that are not retreating) and were thoroughly amazed. The bus finally rounded the corner giving us our first glance at the amazing glacier and we really couldn't believe our eyes. Perito Moreno is gigantic- 30km long, 5km wide and 170m deep! We faced the advancing edge of the glacier so had incredible views of calving icebergs and could see the glacier for miles into the horizon, without being able to see the other side due to the sheer size of it. At the calving edge, the glacier stood 60 meters above Lago Argentino, which was a beautiful milky turquoise color. Each iceberg that broke off, no matter how small, caused really loud cracking and creaking noises. We spent all day staring at the glacier from all different angles, trying to guess which piece would break off next. Some of the icebergs were huge, like the size of a large car. And in the sun, the glacier reflected a deep shade of blue allowing for some pretty amazing photos. Check them out. From faraway, I swore the top of the glacier looked like a fancy cake full of white icing. Perito Moreno was pretty amazing. May I suggest you visit for yourselves? And when you do, please bring us. Oh, and there's a hole in the ozone over Patagonia, during Patagonia summer, so wear, and reapply that sunscreen.

Our second and third days in Patagonia were spent at the lagoon and at Lago Argentino, both a 20 minute walk outside of town. Again, both were simply amazing. As usual, we aquired a dog freind to walk with us and hang by our sides all day. The lagoon was full of gorgeous daisies and a reddish colored wheat grass that we have about a million pictures of. The water was such a deep shade of blue and glistened in the sun in such a way that can't be described. This of course contrasted the turquoise blue of the waer in the lake. The lagoon was home to flamingos(!!!) and the lake was home to ice bergs that had made their way all the way from the glacier. Normally you wouldn't consider flamingos and ice bergs in the same body of water, but it happens here. I can't really describe the beauty of this place very well, so I won't. Click the photos link, then the Patagonia album and let the pictures do the describing for you. Enjoy! Love, P & M

Wine country in Argentina...

2009-01-23T10:25:00.003-05:00

is not what you might picture!

Although Mendoza, Argentina is known for the quality wine it produces, drinks and exports, it turns out Mendoza, the city, is not as picturesque as we envisioned. The city of Mendoza is populated with overpriced restaurants, dirty overpriced hostels and thousands of taxi cabs and not much else. However, once you escape the small city and visit some vineyards, your mood will change. Upone our arrival to Mendoza on a long bus from Chile, we were slapped in the face with tons of insanely priced hostels (by South American standards). We left the place we had a reservation at because he wanted to charge us the fee for a 5 person room, even though we are only 2 people. CRAZY! We are still unsure if leaving at 11PM was the best decision...we ended up walking the city until 1AM before settling on a place that, although was still overpriced and dirty, it had an air conditioner to cool us off. To make a long story short, if you are headed to Mendoza, Argentina be sure you have an appetite and plenty of pesos because it´s expensive for what it is. If you´re lacking mucho pesos though, spend them on the wine and sleep on a park bench, it´ll be worth it. Oh, one last complaint about Mendoza- walk if you can because the cabbies start the meter before you enter the cab because "it´s the cheapest thing in Mendoza, we have to make our money somehow," as was explained to us.

On to the positives: the vineyards and the Mercado Central.

Our visit to Bodega La Rural was nothing shy of amazing. We caught the last tour of the day and had an intimate explanation of the grounds and the wines, as well as a taste of the grapes straight off the vines and a few tastes of wines...not the size of tastes we get in the States either, a "taste" here is a full glass of wine, and some! La Rural even has a small museum cataloging the history of wine making in the region, interesting stuff.

The Mercado Central is also worth visiting for a more authentic experience of foods of the region. Very much like Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia (but a fraction of the size), these mercados found in just about all the towns we´ve visited, offer smiling faces, great food, juicy produce, and mouth-watering smells (except the butcher stalls).

After a couple of days of Mendoza, we set off on an overnight bus to Buenos Aires, where leafy plazas offering tango performances and great wine awaited our arrival.

Chile

2009-01-16T20:12:00.003-05:00

This is basically what we looked like for the 2 weeks we spent in Chile...partly because everybody here in South America (except you Eileen!) lacks the ablility to give accurate directions, but they give them anyway AND partly because Chile was not part of "the plan." So we came to Chile on a whim and found ourselves moving at lightening speed to get out of the northern Chilean desert (we decided we don´t like the desert much). I must explain that our idea of "lightening speed," while on a 10 month long vacation, is definitely very different from the general public´s definition of "lightening speed." We spent a couple of nights in quite a few towns before getting to Santiago- that´s "lightening speed" to us considering the length of the country. Another note on Chile: even if you speak Spanish...you´ll have no idea what anyone there is saying to you. Chilean Spanish should be a language of it´s own and that´s all we´ll say, you should all visit and hear for yourselves. We are now in Argentina and very thankful that our Spanish skills do exist outside of Chile.

So our highlights of ´very modern´ Chile:

-Losing our ATM card while crossing the Peru-Chile border, oops. No worries, M was smart to keep a secret stash in a different account and luckily we have a layover in DC where we can replace the lost card...what luck!

-Stargazing at The Community Observatory at Cerro Mamalluca near La Serena where the desert skies make for amazing views...even during a full moon!

-Malls...more importantly, MOVIES!!! in English- this was exciting for us, ok.

-Beaches, for P at least, M is a lake person.

-Our new friend, Eileen =)

-M surviving a haircut. End result = not a mullet, (mullet = style of choice down here).

-People watching was at it´s best in Chile, where anyone can disrobe and swim or bathe in fountains found in parks and plazas.
-Paved roads.

-Buses with air conditioning and reclinable seats.

-Fast, clean subway in Santiago.

-SPOTLESS public bathrooms in Santiago (NYC has a thing or two to learn from Santiago).

-Hearing the word "perdon" when one accidentally bumps you.

We have changed "the plan" once again and have decided to visit Patagonia in Argentina, so our next update will be coming from Mendoza, Argentina as we explore some of wine country before heading south to Patagonia.

We are also seeking a good town to have our very own, 2 person, inauguration party.

Any suggestions?

Another tidbit on food...

2009-01-16T19:52:00.006-05:00

So this is supposedly pizza...you figure it out.

and this, sadly, I didn´t have a chance to order, but I guess that is a photo of what I might have been served. The slogan below states that it is "the best flavor in La Serena, Chile," yea, I bet.

Lake Titicaca, ALMOST Bolivia & French Fry Soup!

2009-01-08T13:39:00.006-05:00

So, who knows if this is the highest, navigable lake in the world, and who cares really? It´s beautiful...even when riding on a boat that moves slower than you can swim ( I guess sometimes it pays to do what tourists do and buy a tour- the tour boats were blowing past us out on the water). Our "motor boat," and I use that term loosely, stopped at the floating reed islands of the Uros for a quick explanation of how the natives live off the reeds. The reeds, which grow in the shallows of the lake, are used for building homes, boats, toys, fuel for cooking and are even eaten. After a short visit on these islands, our captain guided the boat on the long 4.5 hour journey to Isla Amantani, where we´d spend the night in a local´s guest room. Pam was ecstatic to hear that the islanders are vegetarians, for the most part, since meat and fish are only eaten on very special occassions. Our hostess, Olga, prepared lunch for us upon our arrival- a bowl of quinoa soup and a plate of rice, boiled potatoes, boiled carrots and fried cheese (what healthy vegetarians!). We roamed the rock footpaths of the island for a bit before heading back for dinner- a bowl of quinoa soup and a plate of rice, potatoes, carrots and tomatoes (we enjoyed the slight change on the plate). After dinner we were asked to put on some of Olga´s clothes to attend the party in the square...we somehow got out of dressing as locals. Danielle and Pam had to represent us at the party, as I wasn´t feeling well. Being the only two wearing "western clothing," they didn´t stay too long. The next morning our boat headed across the choppy water for Taquile Island, where Pam did all the exploring on her own and Danielle and I waited out the departure time at the dock with a few games of cards...we couldn´t wait to get back onto firm land. Our celebration of New Year´s consisted of a mini-bar crawl to some of Puno´s finest watering holes and a great game of Jenga. As the sun came up, we had our goodbyes with Danielle, as she left to catch her flight(s) back to NYC. Pam and I decided to get it together and head to Bolivia. Packs full and bus tickets purchased, we signed the "customs" form and boarded the bus headed for Copacabana, Bolivia. About 20 minutes into the ride we were informed that as US citizens, we each had to pay fee of $136 to enter the country, little did we know! As you might assume,

there are no ATMs at the border and with about 40 bucks on us, we were let off on the side of the road to catch a collectivo back to Puno. Back at the bus terminal, we begged for our money back from the bus company, no luck there, but the lady did give us 10 of her "very own" nuevo soles as compensation (that´s about 3 bucks). In planning our next move, we decided on an overnight bus to Chile (which was cut out of the plan due to how expensive it is there). After a dinner of french fry soup and laughing at the day´s experience, we boarded a very comfy bus to Tacna, Peru where we´d arrive in the AM to cross the border to Arica, Chile.

And so, the adventure continues...

FOOOOOOD

2009-01-02T20:06:00.010-05:00

You know the food is pretty awesome when we find ourselves longing for Japanese food. If you know us, you know how we feel about Japanese food.

These are the greatest meals we´ve seen thus far...

1) Deep fried guinea pig, teeth and all

2) Hot Dog Spaghetti Soup with beef chunks

3) ¨Lasagna¨ (some sort of mushed vegetables with one uncooked noodle baked on top)

4) Deep fried vegetable omelette

5) A platter of rice, spaghetti, and potatoes

6) Plate of beans and rice with cabbage salad bigger than my head

7) And tonight´s bus station specialty: French fry soup.

Buen Provecho!

(BTW, we really don´t like Japanese food.)

Machu Picchu!

2009-01-01T16:12:00.010-05:00

After scooping up Danielle at the airport and celebrating Pam´s 27th and Christmas in Cuzco, we headed out to Aguas Calientes via bus & train. The weather wasn´t looking great upon our arrival which worried us a bit for Machu Picchu, but the Inca gods must´ve known we were coming because we couldn´t ask for a better day to tour the Inca site. Views of the Urubamba river valley and of the Inca site from atop Huayna Picchu were amazing. We woke early to ensure an entry ticket to climb Huayna Picchu, where only 400 visitors a day are allowed entry, then joined our tour guide for some history of the site. After an interesting tour of the grounds, we began our ascent of Huayna Picchu. Climbing hundreds upon hundreds of steep, slippery rock steps just makes you think of what kind of shape the Incas were in...and to be able to transport these rocks and boulders to build on top of Huayna Picchu, insane! The views from above were spectacular to say the least. The descent was just as difficult as the ascent, leaving our muscles aching for days...but well worth the pain! Our photos are uploaded and ready for viewing, of course we took tons, so grab a cup o´joe and enjoy.

Feliz Navidad! Happy Hannukah! Que Tengas Un Buen Año Nuevo!

2008-12-25T14:17:00.001-05:00

It´s been awhile...

2008-12-19T21:52:00.010-05:00

For all you avid blog readers, let me fill you in a bit. M recovered and is now 100%, like she never lost her gall at all. So we decided it was really time to leave Ecuador. We hopped on a flight from Guayaquil to Lima, Peru and said goodbye to our first country. And to our neighbors with another tearful goodbye. Lima was a pretty crazy place. Kind of like Quito, but bigger, badder, and dirtier. So after one day, we left. But not before seeing Juno in the theaters, again. Rather than sitting through a 24 hour bus ride headed toward Cusco, we took the slow route down the coast before heading inland. Pisco was our first stop. There was a 7.9 earthquake in Pisco about a year and half ago that destroyed most of the town, little did we know. So needless to say, Pisco was not a very happening place. But we did have the chance to check out Isla Bellistas, another ¨Poor Man´s Galapagos¨as they say. We had some great wildlife sightings including penguins and sea lions. The rest of the day was spent touring Paracas Peninsula which is a coastal desert. Check out the pictures. We then headed inland towards Ayacucho, a small ¨city¨right smack in the center of Peru. M and I were possibly the only foreigners there making it a really authentic experience. Ayacucho was a sleepy, laid back city with plenty of artists. And purses. Um yes, that is actually a purse. Or is it a dead animal? Good question.

M and I got the special tour of a carpet weaving gallery. We learned about the indigenous way of carpet weaving from wrapping the alpaca wool to making natural dyes. The whole process takes about 25 days. Pretty crazy. Speaking of indigenous, man can they party! Seriously, M and I were in shock when we heard thumping and stomping and screaming above us for half the night in our hotel last night. We took an overnight bus to Anduhuaylas, our next stop en route to Cusco and did not sleep a wink. May I suggest not taking the route we took if you ever travel from Lima to Cusco. The road was pretty scary and damn bumpy. We were exhausted last night and annoyed with the party above us. We walked upstairs to see what on earth was going on and we walked right into a happening indigenous party. Don´t let the outfits, babies, llamas, and impossible loads on their backs fool you, they are party animals! We did get to catch up on some sleep on the 10 hour bus ride to Cusco today, where we are now. We´ll be here for about a week as we await our guests! Yes, Ateka, Danielle, and Darryl bought spur of the moment tickets to Peru and will be here in a few days. We can´t even control our excitement. Well maybe M can a little better than I can. But wow, we really can´t wait! Will update with stories and adventures from Cusco and Machu Picchu as they come. Until then, Happy Hanukkah, Christmas, New Year!

El Dia de Gracias!

2008-12-05T15:02:00.003-05:00

Lately the most popular question asked of us is whether we were able to have a Thanksgiving feast...were we? Pff, of course! We somehow ended up cooking for the entire Escobar family, 11 people. Everything was delicious and since Ecuadorians can eat, there were barely any leftovers, a first for us.
So after countless hours spent in the kitchen of the Escobar home, the family gathered at two tables and went to town on P´s delicious squash soup recipe, a 16 lb. turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, stuffing and topped it off with vanilla ice cream & apple crisp. We´re absolutely sure everything turned out great by the amount of times we heard the phrase "¡Que rico!"
M is just about at 100% with her recuperation and although we´re sad for a second round of goodbyes, we´re ready to continue this journey. We´re off to Lima, Peru on Thursday!

"...and she´s OK!"

2008-11-25T15:25:00.006-05:00

Some of you are dying to read details of my ailment, so here goes:

Tough as I am, I ignored the first pain spell in Quevedo, a stopover town on our way to the coast, where I experienced shortness of breath, stabbing chest and upper back pains and nausea. The pain finally subsided and allowed for a restful sleep. We awoke and left for Puerto Lopez feeling great. After an amazing day on Isla De La Plata, I began experiencing the same pain. P hired a tuktuk to drive us to the nearest doctor, who injected me with some pain meds and said nothing more than a guess at a digestive problem. OK, next morning, same episode! Off to a different doctor recommended to us by our hostel owner, luckily, this time, we were accompanied by a friendly, fluent Spanish speaker from the States, who overheard P´s frantic conversation asking for a doctor in town and offered to help (thank you Rebecca!). Dr. Olga gave me another painful injection for pain, felt my abdomen and said we needed to get to a hospital ASAP. The problem was that the nearest hospital was 2 hours away by car, 4 hours by bus! Dr.Olga said she knew a guy who´d take us for 40 bucks, we accepted, Rebecca was so nice to come along to help (and keep P calm). We arrived at the hospital in Manta with an order for a sonogram. The doctor placed the camera on my upper abdomen to reveal many stones in my gall bladder, he looked at us and said "need surgery, immediately" and I began to lose my mind. P, calm and composed, called our travel insurance company and asked all the right questions, she returned with great news- we can go anywhere for the surgery and we´re covered. Of course we thought of returning to NYC on the next flight, but I couldn´t stand the pain and I needed to be in a hospital as soon as possible. We thought heading back to Quito was our best bet- best hospitals, best friends, an apartment to return to, a familiar place and the list goes on. Luckily enough, Manta has an airport with frequent flights to Quito, it was that or a 12 hour bus ride! We bought tickets at the airport and took a 40 minute flight back to Quito where Belen and Diego awaited our arrival. They took us straight to the hospital. My skin and eye color was now changing for a yellow tint, not too attractive. After being admitted and having blood samples read, the doctors informed us that a stone has left the gall bladder, an MRI was needed to find out where it has gone before surgery can be performed. Results suggested I needed an endoscopy procedure to locate and remove the stone before my gall bladder could be removed. I was now very yellow, but with little pain considering I had an IV in each wrist. It wasn´t until the second day in the hospital that the endoscopy was performed with success and late that same night the surgery, also successful. We had a pleasant experience in the hospital for 5 days, it only took them 2 days to understand that P is a vegetarian and what that means (rice and carrots in this case), but they made up for it by giving us an amazing room with a flat screen TV and a pull out couch for P´s comfort (she slept in an upright chair the first night, what a trooper!). The hospital was great, nurses were very attentive, doctors were so sincere and helpful, even the cleaning staff tried to take our mind off things by asking us every question imaginable! We weren´t allowed to be discharged until I stopped vomitting, which thankfully happened towards the end of day 4. We got the great news early on day 5, we can go home! We are now back in our Quito apartment until I´m allowed to fly. In a few weeks we´ll fly south to Peru and continue on our journey.

Baños, Buses, and Boobies, Oh My!

2008-11-24T20:10:00.006-05:00

So, we haven´t blogged for quite some time. Why you ask? Because we were in the middle of nowhere followed by a 5 day stint in the hospital. M is now alive and well. No worries. Let me back track...

BAÑOS

We finally left Quito 5 days later than planned because we love our neighbors a little too much. Seriously. We tried to wait for Tomas to walk, but that wasn´t happening so we finally had the dreaded tearful goodbye. We arrived in Baños 4 hours later. Yes, baños means bath, real creative for this town known for their natural hot springs. We spent a few days shmoozing around town, soaking in the (clean?) warm waters and riding mountain bikes. We engaged on a gorgeous bike ride from Baños to a town about 60km away called Puyo. Our aching asses only made it about 22km, but that was more than we could take. We saw nearly 15 waterfalls on the way, ending with the beautiful waterfall near Rio Verde before we called it quits. Apparently M isnt too keen on relaxation, so we cut the stay short to have more adventures and less relaxation. Which is where the bus rides began. Will post pictures at a later date.

BUSES

Hours on a bus? 15

Days until arrival in Puerto Lopez? 2

Number of buses? 4

Kilometers travelled? 200, yes about 120 miles in 15 hours

Number of motion sickness pills? Too many

Number of times we feared for our lives? Too many

Bus window decorations? Red fuzzy rear view mirrors decorated in Mickey Mouse stickers, giant, I repeat GIANT Jesus saying that we are all in his heart, isnt that nice of him?

Items for sale on the bus? Ice cream, bread, chicken, rice, salad, and beans in a little garbage pail container, gum, candy, pens that write sooo smoothly, in many colors, empanadas, mangoes, porn videos, watches, detox drinks, etc. You get the drift.

Strangest luggage? A man with a box of chickens, live.

Strangest luggage on top of the bus? 2 live sheep. Seriously.

BOOBIES! The blue footed kind that is...

We arrived, barely, in Puerto Lopez, a tiny town on the Pacific Coast, in the middle of nowhere. We found a great hostel called Hostal Itapoa and found ourselves in a cabaña equipped with a comfy bed, clean bathroom, hot water, mosquito nets, hammock on the porch, and the largest spiders I have ever seen. Ever. Puerto Lopez is a little dinky town with too good of a repuatation given by Lonely Planet. We hear Montañita, a little further south down the coast, is where it´s at. But Puerto Lopez is the take off point to explore Isla de la Plata which is exactly what we were there for. Known as the poor man´s Galapagos, we were in for quite the treat. We had a full day tour of the island which is an hour´s speed boat trip from the shore. The island is a low land dry forest, which basiclly means that for 10 months of the year it looks entirely dead. If it weren´t for the birds it would have been very ugly. But, every step we took, we had to avoid Blue Footed Boobies. Man, they are so cute. The island is uninhabited so the birds have not grown afraid of humans making them very accessible. The best part was that the birds made their nests in the middle of the path, not off the path, hidden in some brush, right smack in the center of the trails. We had to walk through the brush to avoid them because they started honking at us when we got too close. It was egg hatching time so we saw lots of Boobies sitting on eggs and lots of Boobie babies. Again, so cute! We hiked around the island for 4 hours as we encountered countless birds. It was incredible. We then had the chance to snorkel before we headed back to the main land. As we got back on the boat to prepare for snorkelling, we saw sea turtles swimming around the boat! It was a first for us and very exciting. We then got in the water and saw coral and beautifully colored fish. M quickly insisted on rushing back to the boat because she was finished. I followed because I was nervous to be alone. Once we got back on the boat M revealed she popped her head up while we were swimming and saw a big fin in the distance and was afraid it was a shark, hence the rush back to the boat. Turns out it was nothing but a sea lion! Very exciting wild life sightings!About 20 minutes after we got back to the hostel, M started feeling some crazy pain in her chest and that´s when the next 5 days in the hospital began. Thankfully M is fine now, and we will update with the story tomorrow.

Mindo, Ecuador

2008-11-07T19:27:00.007-05:00

We´ve received enough complaints from friends to update you on what we did last weekend, so here goes:

Last weekend we left Quito for the cloud forests of beautiful Mindo. Mindo is a small, laid back village surrounded by lush vegetation & so relaxing that we ended up staying an extra day, though our funds were minimal. We started our day early Saturday, with a delicious, fresh breakfast compliments of our hostal owner, Cecilia. She was very proud to inform us that everything we were consuming was "de la casa"- fresh eggs, homemade bread & cheese, fresh Guayaba juice from her trees and homemade jam. Our stomachs pleasantly full, we headed to the mountains for a 4 hour hike to 5 waterfalls. To get to the trail, we had to cross in a makeshift cable car from one mountaintop to the next over a river valley hundreds of meters below us. Our hike came up short in the wildlife department, only one lizard and one snake sighting, nothing too exciting. OH and thousands of mosquitos, plenty of which left their mark. We then headed to Vivero Cafe farm, voted Ecuador´s #1 coffee, in hopes of a tour and a tasting. Upon arrival, we notice that the farm is smaller than my parents´backyard and that the tour was simply a "self-guided" look at the plot. We smiled, accepted the invite and took our walk through the 4 rows of coffee trees. The ladies offered a taste of coffee on our way out, best coffee since arriving in South America (did we mention that all they drink is instant coffee, EVERYTHING is exported). So, "the tour" lasted a whole 15 minutes, we alotted a couple of hours...what to do? Well, we´re not into the canopy tours and it was too late to try and scope out tropical birds, so we had a few Pilseners, a few card games and called it a day. We arranged an early morning bird hike with a guide for Sunday at 6AM, which turned out to be the highlight of the weekend for both of us. William, our guide, was amazing. We were thoroughly impressed by his knowledge and ability to point out every bird within earshot. Including this toucan which was barely visible without the scope! Sunday afternoon consisted of hanging out by the river that runs through town and staring at hundreds of hummingbirds zooming past with a local friend we encountered. On our way to grab a bite to eat we realize there was a bus station in Mindo, who would of thought? since our bus dropped us off outside of town when we arrived! We popped in to check on bus times for Monday, to our suprise all buses were full except the 6AM departure...another early morning for us. We were back in Quito by 9:30AM on Monday, but in unfamiliar territory, the bus we took dropped us off at the northernmost bus station in Quito, about 40km from our apartment...another adventure!

DOUBLE YAY OBAMA!

2008-11-05T18:11:00.001-05:00

We will now definitely return to the U.S. once our journey is over.
Thank you for doing the right thing!

2008-11-05T18:04:00.000-05:00

Yay Obama!

Our visit to Guallabamba

2008-10-28T18:33:00.004-04:00

Our lovely neighbors invited us to spend the night at their family´s home in Guayabamba, just under an hour northeast of Quito. Of course we accepted without hesitation even though we knew Spanish would be the choice language. It turns out, we understand and can speak more Spanish than we may have thought...thank you Escuela Beraca! We arrived at Señora Maria´s house around 9pm on Saturday, she accepted us with open arms, kisses and warm Colada Morada. Her recipe was delicious! After a peaceful night´s sleep, we awoke for our day of fun. We got a thorough tour of the finca that the family owns. P was ecstatic over how many avocados they grow on their farm, so she enjoyed every moment of it. I, on the other hand, got excited over the fat, juicy moras (blackberries) they had! Nothing short of delicious. They also had a litter of 7 kittens and a litter of 8 golden retriever pups, so cute! We then got a tour of the market in the town´s square, where they bought tons of food for our BBQ. The BBQ was outstanding, tons of meat & chorizo, poor P, although I think she was pleased with the fresh guacamole served. Lunch was the event of the day, everyone relaxed and asked a million questions about the U.S. afterwards. Luckily our Spanish skills have come along, so we were keeping up with the conversation. It was soon time to head back to Quito, Señora Maria wouldn´t have us leave emptyhanded, we left with a bucketful of avocados and lemons...enough to last at least a month! We´re so happy to have met such a welcoming family, we love them! Check our Quito album (to the right) for more photos.

El Tercero City Tour

2008-10-24T17:10:00.004-04:00

After taking a day off from school due to a long night of partying, Ecuadorian style, we gladly accepted the invitation for our 3rd city tour as half of our Friday lesson. To ease back into it, you know. The thought of sitting in class for 4 hours was enough to make me feel ill. Since we kept asking how big Quito is, distance wise, our teachers thought it was best to take us to the Virgin of Quito so we can get a glimpse of the entire city. The weather held up for spectacular views of Quito...and yes, it´s huge. Every inch of space available in this valley has been taken over by some building. Guess you take what you can get when you´re surrounded by massive mountains. We´re excited for this weekend as we´re invited to our neighbors family´s home an hour outside of Quito for a BBQ & fiesta. We´re going to celebrate The Day of the Dead a week early with the family. The tradition here is to eat "guaguas de pan," which is sweet bread shaped as dolls and drink "colada morada," a thick purple drink symbolizing blood. Colada morada is made of black corn flour, blackberries, blueberries, pineapple and "other ingredients" and is served hot or cold.

Can´t wait!

Otavalo, Ecuador

2008-10-21T19:43:00.004-04:00

We started out late in the day on Friday, successfully found the bus terminal, paid for our tickets, paid the tax to enter the area where we could get on the bus, got prime choice of seats on the bus, then proceeded to watch BS anti-choice propaganda for the next 4 hours. ugh. A video persuading against abortion is not fun viewing material for a bus ride. Especially after the 60 mile journey took 4 + hours. We arrived in one piece thankfully and then had the weekend to enjoy. Otavalo is an indigenous mountain village home to an incredible market and beautiful sights. Friday night was spent chatting in the hammocks in the garden of our wonderful hostel. We awoke Saturday morning to the hustle and bustle of early breakfasts before a jam packed day of shopping. The market was tremendous, as were our purchases. After we were dizzy from staring at the brilliant colors surrouding us, we wound up with 1 sweater each (some of us won´t take it off, echem M), 1 purse each, some decorative rugs, an imitation Guayasamin paiting, a few smaller paintings, etc, as well as gifts for some of you. Guess we´ll have to ship out a package earlier than expected.
Later in the afternoon we visited a waterfall called Cascada de Peguche. The walk leading up the water was beautiful and entertaining thanks to the teenagers drinking beer and slyfully making out. We had dinner, drinks, and plenty of time for playing cards back at the hostel before we headed out to a peña until the wee hours of the morn. A peña is a bar filled with a ton of smoke and a ton of locals being entertained by live traditional Andean folk music. It was a blast, especially thanks to the techno music and strobe light during the band´s breaks. We slept off a hangover and headed to Lago de San Pablo, the largest lake in Ecuador. Little did we know, our bus dropped us about an hour´s walk from the lake. The walk was filled with cow traffic, sheep, indigenous shepards, polluting cars and buses, adorable kids, and tiny tiendas selling anything imagineable. Seriously, who doesnt want to buy a broom from a travelling broom salesman? Only $1! On the northeast side of the lake stands Volcan Imbabura which we took some great photos of. After a filling yet strange lunch with an incredible view of the volcano, we hopped on a bus that brought us right back to our hostel. How did we miss that on the way there? We packed up, got some blackberry pie to go, got on the return bus which was only a delightful 2 hours. The motion sickness meds made us pass out and the trip was over before we knew it. It´s back to studying spanish all day everyday, wait until you hear us!

Granizo!

2008-10-16T15:00:00.003-04:00

The weather in Quito is a great conversation piece. Here we are stuck in school because it´s hailing outside...again. Everyone got a kick out of the fact that we´ve only seen hail maybe 5 times in our lives. The mornings are beautiful, with warm sunshine and blue skies, but by 3pm the dark clouds roll in. You never know if the clouds are going to dump a 5 minute shower on you or a 30 minute hailstorm, either way it makes for a cold and wet evening. Pam and I have been troopers and braving the weather. We´re the only two people walking the streets and as we run out of clean, dry clothes, we´re considering switching to indoor activities. We´re going to our first salsa lesson this afternoon! More to come on how that goes, until then, hasta luego!

A Stow Away!

2008-10-13T16:48:00.004-04:00

Somehow, the Jenkins made it into one of our packs. Here they are sharing a few beers and lots of laughs with us.
Our first weekend in Quito went by pretty fast, we spent a day walking around old town Quito, browsing a craft market and other shops, listening to live music in the plazas scattered around town, dodging the rain and hail, visiting our local supermarket (our favorite pasttime) and, of course, studying Spanish.
You can view some of our photos by clicking on the ladies to the right. Enjoy!

Take a tour...

2008-10-10T17:07:00.003-04:00

Pam will take you on a tour of our apartment, click below!

Nosotras vivimos en Quito!

2008-10-09T18:13:00.014-04:00

After a 3 hour delay and many moments of feeling lost in translation(even in NYC, where Avianca Air strictly hires Spanish speakers ONLY!), we arrived in Quito.We´ve been here for 3 eventful days, to say the least. Within 24 hours of being here we moved into a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment. How did we accomplish this, you might ask? Well, we decided the best way to do this was to walk into every building that resembled an apartment building, point and say "apartmento?" Needless to say, that didn´t work out too well. We then tried calling phone numbers we found posted in various internet cafes and leaving messages for random people. Since there was no way of getting back in touch with us, we realized this was also a bad idea. We aborted that mission and decided to stop into Beraca Spanish School, where we´ll be studying for 4 weeks, to introduce ourselves and ask about finding an apartment. Carmen, the school director, made one phone call for us and, voila, an apartment was found. We´ve also started our very much needed Spanish lessons. Our heads are spinning from the 4 hours a day we spend in a one on one lesson, but this will soon pass, hopefully. We haven´t had much time to explore the city between classes and homework, but we do have a great view as we walk home from class!

be nice!

2008-10-01T01:25:00.005-04:00

home of the evil sales rep

So, you would imagine that after mentioning our plan of wanting to purchase around 10 flights to connect us around the world, the sales rep would be thrilled to serve us, right? WRONG. I realize we all have bad days, but this guy works on commission, he should have emerged from his funk, smiled and be happy to serve us. That didn't happen. What did happen though, was that his funk rubbed off on me, jerk.
Anyway, what seemed like days later, we walked out of STA with our flights purchased.
So, friends, check out the google map for details of our major flights and let us know where you want to meet us!

the time has come...

2008-08-25T00:52:00.006-04:00

On October 6th 2008, we will begin a trip we've been dreaming of for years.
Around the world in 10 months is the goal!
Stay tuned as we prepare for our big journey.