haasje78
haasje78 Joined: July 8th 2009
Logged in: February 10th 2012
Logged in: February 10th 2012
Travel Blog Posts
Tulum Ruins
The new travelling I have to get used to writing the blogs again, it has been a while since my last travels. After 5 minutes of thinking, I still haven’t got anything on paper. I am experiencing the “new travelling”, sitting in a hostel with my lap topped using the complementary wifi, so I shouldn’t feel the time/money pressure of sitting in an internet cafe. It is convenient this new way of travelling, even though I was a bit sceptic at first. When I entered my first wifi equipped hostel on a late afternoon, I saw many people sitting on the communal table faced down in their laptops or smart phones and not faced towards each other. Now I understand that it was just a coincidence, and many people are just using it a short time. ... read more
Gili Meno - Playing in the waves
From chaos to tranquility Delhi is the most crowded and chaotic place we have seen during our trip. From there we went to Mumbai, it felt slightly less crowded, but still very hectic. Our flight from Mumbai took us to KL, which could be considered as a Paradise in comparison to the Indian giants. Especially when again we were warmly welcomed to stay at Veera and her roomies for a few days. So nice to stay in a real apartment! We continued to Bali, where we stayed in touristy and crowded Kuta. It seemed that we changed from an overload of Israelis to an overload of Aussies. Nevertheless it was again a step towards quietness and soon we would arrive at the quiet beaches of the Gili Islands for total tranquility and relaxation. We had 6 ... read more
Greetings from India
As you know, we are back in Europe again and already settled in our new apartment in Helsinki. I wrote this entry when we were in Lapland. Amidst a beautiful countryside and everlasting daylight, I found time and inspiration to write the blog entry on India, our second encounter. Delhi After the peace and quietness of Nepal, going to chaotic Delhi is a huge contrast. With its hectic traffic, dusty roads, relentless heat and a population of over 15 million people (world top 10), Delhi is a challenging metropolis to visit. Due to the coming Common Wealth Games a lot of streets were getting a face lift which gave an even bigger messy impression to the city. 'Main Bazaar' in Paharganj area is conveniently situated next to Delhi's central station. This is the backpackers street where ... read more
On top of the world
After 10 days in India, we decided to go to Nepal. We found out that it was very easy to arrange this from Varanasi. Travel agents offer package tours including an overnight stay at the border directly to Kathmandu, but we decided to go on our own by night train and bus. It is cheaper, quicker and more adventurous. Since we are already familiar with booking train tickets for Indian trains online, it was easy to arrange our ticket to Gorakhpur in India approximately 2 hours away from the border. When we crossed the border, we had our first quick Nepali lunch and hopped on a bus to Kathmandu, where we would arrive that same evening. Kathmandu Many people don't like Kathmandu, but we think it's a beautiful city. Dirty? No way in comparison to other ... read more
Taxi ride from Kolkata airport to downtown
After an exciting month in Myanmar we flew back for our last stay in Bangkok. From there we flew to Kuala Lumpur to catch our connecting flight to Kolkata. It looks a bit of a detour to fly over KL, but these two Airasia flights were together the cheapest we could find. Flying from Myanmar straight into India was just too costly. This entry handles our stay in India before going into Nepal. Our second stay after Nepal will get a separate entry. Kolkata To start your India travels in Kolkata was not recommended by many fellow travelers. We have heard horrific stories about the 8th largest urban agglomeration in the world. When we arrived in the busy city, we discovered that it wasn't all that bad. ... read more
Our host family having breakfast
After a week on the beach on a Thai Island, we headed back to Bangkok to catch our flight to Yangon, the former capital of Myanmar or Burma. Burma's political situation has been unstable, since the military Junta has taken over control in 1962. People are being forced to labor and anti-government protests are being violently suppressed. Traveling in Myanmar Talking in public about these issues is not done. If the local person in question is caught, he'll end up in jail. There are no ATM's in Burma, so we had to bring in crispy US dollar notes in different denominations and change them on the black market. The use of internet is restricted. A lot of sites like Facebook or even Travelblog are initially blocked. This is usually bypassed after the local internet shop owner ... read more
Poolposing at Rati Lanna Resort
From Vieng Poukha in northern Laos we hired a taxi together with the German and American couples, because the public bus didn't show up as promised to us. Relatively late we arrived at the Laos side of the border and found a hostel for the night. The next morning we crossed the Mekong river into Thailand, from where we wanted to take a bus directly to Chiang Mai. Unfortunately the bus dropped us of in Chiang Rai so we had to wait at the bus station for the bus to Chiang Mai, where we would arrive late evening. Chiang Mai and Pai When we arrived, Rob and Reve (a Kiwi couple I met during my last travels) were waiting for us, to guide us to a nice place to stay. We had dinner with them before ... read more
Monks collecting alms in Luang Prabang at 06.00 in the morning
Again apologizes for our dear readers. It has been very difficult to keep up with the writing the last months. We can say that slow and relatively expensive internet connections are the reason, but in reality it is mostly laziness. Losing our pictures from Cambodia and the first half of our Laos trip didn't do any good to our writing inspiration. After traveling in Myanmar and a bit in India, we are now in Nepal. This beautiful country has been inspiring us and we are now ready to give the writing a go again. Cambodia - Laos Border Crossing Since this border crossing wasn't mentioned in our guide book, we were excited to cross. Our contact in the village arranged a boat for us which dropped us of in a small village on the other side ... read more
Trekking through the Ratanakiri jungle
It has been a long time ago since the last update. Our apologies. We are currently in Bangkok at Anna's relatives. Tomorrow we are leaving for Burma. As you see, there are no pictures. We lost all our pictures from Cambodia and half of the pictures from Laos and are now waiting for some people we've met to send us some pictures. How we lost the pictures.... that we'll tell you in our next entry on Laos. Sihanoukville and Bamboo Island Our travels in Cambodia started with a 2 day bus journey from Bangkok to Sihanoukville on Cambodia's west coast. The bus package included an overnight staying in a nice hotel in Cambodia's border town of Koh Kong, from where we took a bus, which of course had some engine problems. We arrived in Sihanoukville early ... read more
Tioman Island: Juara Beach at dusk
Wow, another update and so short after the last one! After all your nice comments, we are even more motivated to write blog on Singapore Malaysia and Bangkok. Some of you who have met us during traveling might ask why the next destination is Singapore and not the Philippines? Shortly after we booked our flight from Kota Kinabalu to the Philippines, we learned that a huge tornado has caused death and destruction over there. The day we would arrive in Manila another typhoon, even bigger then the first one, was expected. So we decided not to take that flight (waste of money unfortunately) and instead we booked a flight to Singapore. From there we would work our way up into peninsular Malaysia. Singapore After a safe flight we went to Little India to look for a ... read more
