On the Beach in Phuket After a loooong flight and one aborted landing, in the rain, (don’t look surprised) we landed in Phuket only one hour late. Grabbed a taxi to the Marriott. We were greeted by porters with flower leis and more importantly, a lady with mojitos-quite tasty. Most importantly, as we entered the lobby, there sat Marc. Since he had arrived earlier, he had taken advantage of the poolside lounging and the sushi bar. We settled into our lovely two-bedroom villa. It overlooked the Andaman Sea, but the foliage was so thick, we saw only green. Unfortunately, it is [View Full Entry]

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Australia-home of the gender bender fish Our time in Australia was limited to two stops-Sydney and Cairns, home of the Great Barrier Reef-details follow. The reason for this was that we had to rush off to Thailand, so as not to miss its monsoon season and, more importantly, to finally see Marc. Some of the rain forests we have encountered in various countries claim that over 10 meters of rain fall each season. Dan feels that we have seen most of that just during our trip! So, back to the fun stuff. After our luxurious plane trip, we arrived in Sydney, [View Full Entry]

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On to the South Island! You may want to get out your map to follow along our little journey as we circle the island. So, we hopped on the inter-island ferry along with dozens of other travelers. After three hours, we arrived in Picton, a small town, busy with logging. We picked up our zippy red Ford Focus, in the rain, as you might have guessed. We headed north towards Abel Tasman coast. We got as far as Motueka for an overnight. We had previously signed up for a boat ride along the Tasman coast, where one can get off the [View Full Entry]

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Kiwi country! Quiz: New Zealanders are call Kiwis because: a) of the Kiwi bird b) of the Kiwi fruit c) of the Kiwi shoe polish d) none of the above e) all of the above Just to clear up the historical details, most folks call people from NZ Kiwis, but I bet few know the real story, I’m guessing. It’s not because of the Kiwi bird and not because of the Kiwi fruit, which is actually an African gooseberry. It all started in 1906. A Scotsman invented a boot polish, while living in Melbourne, Australia. He then opened up shops in [View Full Entry]

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Bula from a far-away place called Fiji- Unlike other blogs some of you may have been reading recently, our flights were on time, we made our connections and our luggage found us when it should. So much for the travel part. There were, however, a few interesting sidelights to our trip over. When we got our boarding passes for the long flight from LA, we did not have seats in row 32, 45, 57, but 69! A negative being our seats did not go back very much, which didn’t stop the people in front of us doing so, making for less [View Full Entry]

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