ungsang
ungsang Joined: August 8th 2008
Logged in: February 23rd 2009
Logged in: February 23rd 2009
Travel Blog Posts
Jesse
It was Eid a few weeks back, which is the end of Ramadan. For those of you who don't know, Ramadan is a month of fasting for Islam and Eid is a holiday to break the fasting. From what I hear it's pretty much the biggest holiday for muslims and it's one essentially one big party (I apologize for the extremely simplistic description of Ramadan and Eid. It's actually a really interesting time to be in a muslim country). For those of us who are not muslim, all this means is that we had a week break from school. I've read about Siwa on my guidebook and it really sounded like my kind of place. Desert, oasis, hot springs, cold springs, trees, lakes, salt lakes, ruins. What more do you need? So there was my destination ... read more
Breakfast
I had about a week between orientation and classes so I decided to go on a small trip to get away from the hustle and bustle of Cairo. I've read that taking a felucca down the Nile river from Aswan is a relaxing way to travel, and relaxing I wanted, so it didn't take much thought to pack my bag and headout to Upper Egypt. My mode of transportation to Aswan was a sleeper-train. This was a very expensive option, but I've never done it and I figured it would be kind of fun. The ride itself turned out to be far less interesting than I thought it would be. It runs during the night (hence a sleeper-train), so there isn't much of a view to enjoy out of the window, and the thrill of having ... read more
Floating Car (?)
It's been a hectic few days in Cairo. We've had to cram in a lot of administrative stuff like looking for an apartment, orientation, etc, while trying to live up the Cairene night life. There is some routine to the chaos and we've generally been waking up at around 11, do the boring stuff or if we're lucky do a little sight seeing till 8 or 9, go out at 10, then go to bed in 4 in the morning. I don't think it will last too long if this continued, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. as expected there have been plenty of surprises along the way too. One of the best nights we've had so far was the gallery opening of the Townhouse. Town house is an art workshop/gallery that (I think) is ... read more
Street
So I'm finally here at Cairo after 16 hours of flying and a 12 hour layover in between. The layover itself was actually quite an experience... They have these awesome free showers at Seoul Airport and I really do think I could live in one of those bathrooms for about a month. It's like a luxurious prison cell. I did have a few issues with the Subway sandwich that I bought myself though. What I thought would be a safe purchase, the steak and cheese sandwich, tasted little funky when I bit into it. I thought it might be my choice of sauces (mayo and honey mustard), but when I picked out a little piece of the meat just to be sure, there was definitely the familiar Korean flavors of soy sauce and sesame oil. I ... read more
The Hike
There's a little known fact about Hong Kong. Or maybe it's well known and I just think that no one knows about it... But Hong Kong has some stellar hiking treks and campsites. The best part about it is that you only have to take an hour long bus ride to get out to the countryside and have a little adventure in one of the many routes that lead to pretty cool spots. So Jimbo ,Marcelo, and I got ourselves about 4 gallons of water, some bread, a fifth of rum, and a fifth of scotch, and embarked on what would predictably be an intense bro-down. I seem to find myself in these situations a lot even though I really do try to avoid them... Anyway, the plan was to walk about 3 hours through Saikung, ... read more
Max Dance-Off
Since the thought of starting a blog only occurred to me fairly recently (props to the cmc people who urged everyone to do so), I have a good amount of blog-catchup to do. Fortunately, I've had a lot of opportunities to travel this summer as well as rediscover a few cool spots in Hong Kong, where I've been living for the past 7 years. The summer began with a bang. The rugby club's tour of China. We practically covered the entire country, or at least a lot of the tourist spots that you would think of when you think of China. We started in Beijing then stopped by Xian, Guilin, Yungshuo, Shanghai, and ended the tour in Hong Kong. It's really hard to describe the whole ordeal without having to write an entire book, or severely ... read more
Li River
I never thought blogging would be so much fun. It's like public masturbation at its best. That is why I write. So, I strongly suggest anyone who visits China to stop by Yangshuo. This was by far my favorite part of the tour, which is why I didn't want to skip through it like I did with all the other cities we've visited. I believe the best way to reach the town is by flying in to Guilin, which is a little upstream on the Li river from Yangshuo, and take the epic river cruise down to the cozy and friendly town. That is what we did. When we arrived at Guilin, the weather was horrible, as it was during most of the tour. However, we were told that this was actually a good thing, because ... read more
