Blogs from Asia - page 5

7 months ago a friend asked me if I would like to visit India with her, I said yes, and here we are. the flights were fairly decent and I was not sad to say goodbye to the self induced stress sickness I had fallen prey to the day before I left ( fyi: malaria pills + major stress + a previously empty stomach filled with dill pickle chips will give you one of the worst nights of your life). Amsterdam gets my star airport award as they are now officially the best international airport I've esee experienced. I was able to meet up with E in Amsterdam and say hello in person to a truly wonderful, brilliant person I haven't seen in too long. The flight to Delhi had me sitting next to an older ... read more

May 20, 2013 (Chengdu, China) Yesterday was largely taken up as a travel day getting to Chengdu and settling in to the Hotel Tian Chen Lou on Qing Hua Road. Our hosts graciously met and picked us up at the airport in two large hospital vans for a 30 minute drive to the hotel. The flight was uneventful, and our first impression of Chengdu is always from the air as we're landing - the air was much clearer than it usually is and we actually had some sunshine! The city is changing rapidly...while still under what appears to be a phenomenal construction boom, some of the infrastructure is now finished, the roads were good and it appeared greener than any of the other visits we'd been on. Nice to see. The hotel is a bit of ... read more

May 20, 2013 (Chengdu) We're watching channel 4 live from OKC and seeing the rough weather everyone is under right now. Stay safe folks!... read more

So we are now back in KL after a 5hr bus ride back along the same winding road. We arrived back at around 10pm and Mazen helped carry the luggage as Maher was still under the weather. We have checked back into birdnest guesthouse as its cheap at RM35 a night. We took a day trip to Genting Highlands; otherwise known as resorts world genting. its locsted on the top of a fill accessed by cable car. It is nestled on a mountain peak of around 1,860 metres (6,100 ft) within the titiwangsa mountains on the border between the states of pahang and Selangor. Resorts World Genting is operated by Genting Malaysia Berhad (formerly known as Resorts World Bhd), which also operates a number of resorts & hotels. There are a number of theme parks there ... read more

Travel day today. Up early to have a 7am breakfast for a 7:30am departure. Short stroll to the ferry (porter took our bags for grab total of $1.50) where we eventually got on and secured an area for the four of us. Technically the ferry trip was four hours. That was fairly accurate, we probably departed at around 8:30am and got into Lombok at 12:30pm. The problem was that there seemed to be no where for the ferry to pull up and off load, meaning that we sat on the ferry for about another two hours. Not what any of us wanted nor needed! So at around 2pm or just after we exited the ferry and headed towards the biggest shopping mall on Lombok for lunch and shopping. Grabbed Indonesian take aw... read more

It wasn’t the easiest place to get to, but the fort at Orccha is the best we’d seen in India. It also wasn’t the most opulent or the most fascinating historically, but it was the most fun architecturally, with a complicated web of passageways and doorways seemingly randomly leading to different areas of the fort – it would have been the perfect place to play Hide-and-Seek as a kid. Honestly, I think you could hide for days within its walls. The Fort of Orccha sits on the Betwa River and is actually a conglomerate of several large palaces and buildings built during different times. The ruins and the fort buildings themselves are extremely well kept, while the views from the palace are extraordinary, especially towards the Chaturbuj Temple, built in the 9th century, across the river. ... read more

Seeking group traveling from Lhasa to TBC 8/9 days September 5th. If interested in saving money, please reply.... read more

This morning I woke up to the sound of gongs and chants from the nearby monasteries. It's a peaceful, hypnotic sound, and I fell back asleep feeling strangely comfortable in this new, completely foreign place. I'm in Bhouda, or Boudhanath, a holy site in Kathmandu. At the center of the area is a stupa, a kind of circular religious shrine where pilgrims come to pray and meditate. It's customary to only walk in a clockwise direction around the stupa, so as not to disturb the positive flow of energy - even if the place you want to get to is only a few meters in the other direction, you should go with the flow all the way around. There are prayer wheels all the way around that you spin as you walk past. Coming from the ... read more