We spent three days in Bahrain on the way back from India. We left our Delhi hotel at 6:30 AM on Wednesday for the quick ride to the airport; traffic was nonexistent. However it was still quite cold and foggy and we hoped that our flight wouldn't be delayed. Checkin and security only took about 20 minutes; we then had over an hour to wait in the lounge. The Delhi airport was pretty basic once past security; I hadn't changed any of my rupees and there wasn't a bank. We plopped in the lounge for awhile, where someone had just grabbed [View Full Entry]

---

---

We spent 5 days total in the Andaman Islands, 3 days on Havelock island. One of the beaches on Havelock was named the Best Beach in Asia a few years ago (pre-tsunami). I'd heard that the tsunami hadn't affected Havelock very much and the diving was excellent, so wanted to go check things out. January 5, 2007 Ferry: Port Blair to Havelock Hotel: Barefoot at Havelock An early start this morning to catch the ferry. The hotel charged us 100Rs for the very short ride down the hill (a tuk-tuk should have been 15-20Rs if that but there weren't any around). [View Full Entry]

---

---

After returning from Mysore, I only had about a half hour to change and repack before heading off to the Bangalore City train station for my trip to Hospet. I was expecting it to take 40-60 minutes to get there with Bangalore traffic, but the cab took a back road and it was only 20! So i had over an hour's wait at the train station. People were milling about everywhere, but most trains in India are quite well organized now. There is a computer reservation system with waitlist to prevent overbooking, and you can check where your status is online. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Bangalore so far has been Ok, but I haven't been able to see too much of it yet except the route between the downtown hotel and the office, which is out near the airport. It is only a few miles but it can take over a half hour to get there in Bangalore traffic, which is just incredible. Luckily there aren't any/many cows in Bangalore, but pretty much any other wheeled vehicle is on the streets, three lane roads become 5 or six vehicles wide. So many companies and people moved to Bangalore in a short period that its infrastructure is [View Full Entry]

---

---

Just getting to Coimbra was a bit of an ordeal. Arriving at the Lisbon airport, I had to wait for 40 minutes for all the bags to come out before realizing mine wasn't going to come out. They had a take a number system for lost bags at the Lisbon airport, this must be a common occurrence! Grabbed a cab through the pouring rain to the Oriente train station, the cabbie was quite chatty and singing most of the way. Got to the train station to find the lower level flooded, and no trains running, no explanation. I went to the [View Full Entry]

---

---

It's been a hectic few days. I'm on another of my whirlwind mad crazy trips, knocking out passport stamps by the dozen. Well, not quite a dozen, but will end up with 4 new ones. The main reason for this trip is to attend the OpenBSD hackathon in Coimbra, Portugal for 5 days. I've been working on the ACPI implementation for OpenBSD on and off for a year now; my friend Marco wanted me to go to the conference to meet some of the other openbsd geeks. Since I'd never been to Portugal before that was an easy answer. Since I [View Full Entry]

---

---

My overnight bus ride from Asuncion passed uneventfully. After signing off the internet cafe last night I wandered around the station to grab a bite before hopping on the bus. There were several places selling empanadas (food of the gods for long bus trips in south america). I bought two, ate them, then went back and bought two more :D. yummy stuff. The bus finally showed up, a big double decker deal with almost lie flat seats. The bus filled up pretty quickly and I slept most of the 5 hr trip to Encarnacion, we arrived just before 6 AM. It [View Full Entry]

---

---

$1USD = 5400 Paraguay Guarani I´ve just had one of the most memorable and touching experiences of my travels ever. I left Buenos Aires this morning for the 2 hr flight to Asuncion, Paraguay. The flight left only 10 minutes late which was pretty good as it only had arrived about 20 minutes earlier. Flying on TAM airlines on an Fokker 100 jet, the outside/inside of the plane was spotless clean. There were several German tourists on the plane; there is still a large population of German descendents living in Paraguay. Immigration was a breeze and as I´d only packed a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today was going to be a long day. We planned to drive up to the Troodos massif and visit some of the World Heritage Byzantine painted churches. The painted churches were built at the time the Venetians controlled Cyprus. The Venetians were Roman Catholic but the locals still remained Eastern Orthodox, and they fled to the upper parts of the Troodos mountains where they built a series of 'hidden' churches. From the outside they look like barns or Swiss chalets, with sloping roofs for shedding snow. On the inside they are elaborately painted in Byzantine style biblical themes. There are ma [View Full Entry]

---

---

We've spent the last few days here in Mykonos with M.'s friends. We arrived in Mykonos around 8PM on Monday July 3rd, immediately felt better as the temperature was at least 20 degrees cooler than it had been in Cyprus. Also our bags made it on the same flight! It was an adventure just getting there as our flight from Cyprus had left 20 minutes late, only giving us about 50 minutes to connect in Athens, including busing from the remote stand and standing in line to get our boarding passes. M's friends S&V were there at the airport to pick [View Full Entry]

---

---