Korea is not the usual backpackers travel destination. Most westerners that you will see are either English teachers or, to put it nicely, the less liked American GIs (plenty of them in Seoul!). Due to my shaved head, I was mostly considered to be part of the latter group (English teachers with French accents are pretty rare indeed,..so are American GIs actually..anyway, you got my point, I hope), this resemblance caused a few problems at the entries of several bars and was, I believe, the reason for a less smiley population than I had imagined. Luckily, I had met Jiyeon, a [View Full Entry]

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One needs a short break after having traveled through India for five weeks - and that is also what I did. So, after a relaxing week in Singapore (I studied for six months in Singapore in 2001 and therefore didn't feel like doing the touristy thing once again) and a few luxurious days on a beach in Phuket,Thailand with my friends from Singapore (Jacinta, Poonam and Subash), I was back on the road (actually, back on a plane) on my way to Japan. Here are some of the things that I loved about Japan: - The kindness of people: In most [View Full Entry]

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During my previous months of traveling, I had met a couple of experienced backpackers that had traveled extensively through India and I had asked them how they had liked that part of the world - strangely enough, the answer had always been the same: "India is different but, hm, it is great!". So, after my seven weeks in China and a relaxing two weeks in Thailand, I arrived in this "different but, hm, great" country. To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect! I spent five weeks in India, mostly in Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh and I understand now [View Full Entry]

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Dear Friends, I am now in Bangkok to chill out with my very good university friends from Belgium after almost seven weeks in China! I really enjoyed my time there, visiting huge, modern cities and small, traditional villages, hiking through amazing sceneries, "experiencing" chinese people, learning chinese (drinking) dice games and eating very good but sometimes strange food! The plan As you might already have guessed, there was no plan at all...but I knew that I could count on my cousin who lives in China for the last 13 years to provide me with the best possible advice. So, duri [View Full Entry]

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I hadn't organized anything for my stay in Mongolia (as usual...) but ended up in a great 16-day trip accross the country which we organized through the hostel. The diversity of scenery in Mongolia is stunning, one can drive through an endless steppe, walk on Sahara-style sand dunes, slide through an ice covered valley, fish in a river and climb rocks that look like the Grand Canyon...all of it within less than two days! Absolutely crazy! I had wished that Mongolian cuisine could be as diverse but it was (chewy) mutton for lunch and dinner for 16 days - maybe the [View Full Entry]

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After almost two months in the Middle East and Uzbekistan where I had the opportunity to visit numerous mosques and medressas, I arrived in Russia, the first non-muslim destination of my trip, where I stayed approximately 3 weeks, visiting St Petersburg, Moscow and then, after 77 hours in the train crossing most of Siberia and several bottles of vodka later, Irkutsk and Lake Baikal. St Petersburg St Petersburg's long sunny days (I was very lucky with its 20 degrees during my whole stay!), architecture, museums and one of the highest concentration of absolutely stunning women walking down N [View Full Entry]

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I knew that Uzbekistan would be quite a different experience when I saw that the ticket office of Uzbekistan Airways in Dubai was closed three times a week for “Flight Duty” and at the check-in counter where I had to battle with people transporting huge home cinema sets and half a dozen truck tires… I spent a total of 10 days in Uzbekistan, most of it visiting cultural sites along the Silk Road in Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. Uzbekistan used to be an important commercial platform between the East and the West and also Central Asia’s most important philosophical and [View Full Entry]

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I am now in Tashkent, Uzbekistan waiting for my flight to St Petersburg and have some “free” time (I know this could sound horrible to some) and finally found, after a long while, a viable internet connection. Oman Having traveled for a month in the Middle East, I arrived in Oman and was immediately struck by two things: (i) Oman is very clean (the country has won the prize of “Cleanest Country in the Middle East” ever since such a competition was first organized a couple of years ago) and (ii) there is almost no hassling/bargaining which was a (very) welcomed [View Full Entry]

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I am currently in transit at the airport in Amman on my way to Muscat, Oman. I ended my last note commenting about the kindness of people in Jordan… this has been topped by the people in Syria when measured in terms of liters of tea offered and rapidity of people offering any kind of help (it has to be noted that I exclude all taxi drivers in Syria for the sake of this little exercise!) Arrival in Syria I took a three hour taxi ride from Amman to Damascus after an almost longer price negotiation and managed to awake a [View Full Entry]

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Dear Friends, My stay in Jordan was only a couple of days long but it was interesting and great fun! I visited Petra at length, went to Jesus' baptism site, had a quick "swim" in the Dead Sea and will be heading to Damascus tomorrow morning. The border crossing To travel from Egypt to Jordan there are two main options - either a short trip through Israel or by boat from Nuweiba in Egypt to Jordan's only port, Aqaba. Because I want to travel to other countries in the Middle East, especially Syria, the Israeli stamp on my passport could cause [View Full Entry]

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