Trekking in the Austrian Alps "Hey, we should really make it happen this time", I said to Yaron. We were having a beer at the local Irish bar bringing up memories from our past trips when it suddenly occurred to us that we've never traveled together. Several years ago we almost made it in Bolivia - Yaron was on his way up to north America while I was on way down to Argentina, when our ways almost crossed, but he missed me by a week, and I couldn't miss the opportunity to catch a ride with a group of Israelis [View Full Entry]

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Celebrating Passover in Shanghai and more I'll never forget my first experience with China. It was during my first business trip alone to Beijing so I asked my local representative to write me the hotel's address in Chinese, just in case. After landing and catching the first available cab, I handed the paper to the driver who nodded in acceptance. 30 minutes later I found myself in the middle of the night, near a deserted office building. Fortunately we managed to find an English speaking student nearby to explain us what went wrong - the address pointed to the office address! [View Full Entry]

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Quick weekend in frozen Berlin I always pictured Berlin as a dark city suffering from terrible weather and an unpleasant past but as years have passed I started hearing more and more good things about it so when the time came, it was an ideal destination to spend a romantic though somehow short weekend in it. I've never been a huge fan of those short hops to Europe where you spend your time & money on hectic shopping journeys and fancy restaurants but when we got this perfect deal how could we say no? The great thing about short trips is [View Full Entry]

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The Alps have been an old dream of mine which in some strange way did not came true so far (I've dedicated most of my traveling time for third-world regions in the belief that Europe and the western world could wait for older age). This time I managed to combine a business trip in Germany with a short however condensed trip to the French Alps. After a week in Heidelberg, I took the weekend off and headed towards the town of Chamonix located at the foot of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps and in Western Europe. It rises [View Full Entry]

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'Grand Finale' Thailand Thailand, the last destination in our long journey, has finally arrived. We knew the whole time that this will be the place to rest before coming back home and so it was. We started in busy Bangkok which was quite a cultural shock after 'shanty' India but from there it only got better. We started with Railay Beach, a beautiful sand strip near the town of Krabi about which we heard many good things. It is a place loaded with rock climbers occuping its many limestone rock and som [View Full Entry]

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Little Town of Luang Prabang Luang Prabang, another town with a funny name, lies on the banks of the Mekong river, in the northern part of Laos. We arrived there after a "short" bus ride from Vang Vieng which took 6 hours. It might sound a bit weird to call it short, a time in which one can easily make the Metula-Eilat way, but that's another interesting thing about backpacking - time loses its conventional meaning and becomes "fluid". 4 hours are considered really short, 10 hours are nothing to worry about and even 15 hours night rides are not that [View Full Entry]

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Water Activities in Vang Vieng Vang Vieng, a quite little town in north Laos, was the right place at the right time. It was a return to the tranquile countryside after busy Bangkok and that was exactly what we needed. We found there a Laos that is rapidly growing to be the next north Thailand, but still hasn't reached the same level of tourist masses that have destroyed the latter. Still, we expected to find more authentic place than we did, which Laos is already not. It's still much poorer than its neighbour, Thailand, but the facilities in the main touristic [View Full Entry]

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Back To The Future In Urban Bangkok Landing in a huge modern metropolitan such as Bangkok after spending more than eight months in "real" third world countries was a confusing experience for us. On one hand, it was so much fun entering a brand new supermarket with everything from fruits to microwave ovens and see Lily, with shining eyes and dazed smile, running enthusiastically between its raws. On the other hand, it was a bit shocking return to a hectic city with everyone around running from one side to god knows where. It left us a bit dizzy, literally. Now, those [View Full Entry]

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A Vacation from the Vacation On A Goan Beach Goa is a place of pure fun. Frankly, we didn't plan getting there due to its bad image but as often occurs in such trips, plans quickly change. We soon found ourselves in the Israeli colony of Aramabol, a small village in the north part of the state of Goa. It is Arambol where you find the Rasta-Jaras-Enfield type of Israeli guys. We're talking about 22 year old dudes, fresh out of their military service, who care nothing else aside growing their curly hair, smoke hash from dusk till dawn and ride [View Full Entry]

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Hampi is one of these places you know you'll get to, when you still plan your journey. It came to my attention due to somewhat tragic circumstances - an Israeli traveller drowned in its lake about a year ago. I remeber myself sitting to lunch with Shahar B. Inbar and Tali, my ex-colleagues, as I read about it in the newspaper. I later asked other people about it and was told Hampi is "a quite place with huge stones, cool lake and beautiful sunsets". Enough for me to include it in our plan. So we took the night bus from Goa [View Full Entry]

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