Page 5 of hauteboy Travel Blog Posts


Asia » North Korea » Pyongyang September 1st 2007

September 1, 2007 Hotel: Yanggakdo Today was another full day of touring. Woke up early again this morning to walk around outside the hotel. There was a stream running by that had amazingly clean clear water, the early morning air smelt fresh, quite refreshing! The DPRK is mostly an agricultural society, and a pre-industrial one at that... most of the work has to be done by hand since they are short of fuel and energy. There are corn and rice fields everywhere, but the yields are low. Most electricity here is generated by hydro or coal. Lack of industry and cars means there isn't much pollution (well, at least not that tourists would see). China is certainly much worse in this respect. Our first stop this morning was the Buddhist temple; surprising in a communist country! ... read more
Hotel, Mt. Myohyang
Temple Guards
Monk

Asia » North Korea » Pyongyang August 31st 2007

August 30, 2007 Flight: Beijing to Pyongyang, Air Koryo 152 Hotel: Yaggakdo Hotel, Pyongyang At last.. today I would be going to the hermit kingdom, North Korea! I'd wanted to go now for a few years since I'd heard about Koryo Tours trips, and DPRK had opened up the past few years to Americans, letting them in for the Mass Games. My wife and I were actually scheduled to go on their Mass Games trip last year when it was canceled due to flooding, I wanted to make another attempt this year. M. couldn't make it this time and since their non-US citizen tours are cheaper (I am dual citizen US/UK), I signed up for one of the Mass Games tours using my UK passport. Tours to the DPRK are somewhat unpredictable; there had been flooding ... read more
Air Koryo plane
Fountain Square
Mansundae Monument

Asia » Japan » Chiba August 26th 2007

I had an 18 hr overnight layover at Narita on my way to Xian; my plan was to go visit the nearby Narita temple. Arriving at Narita, the line through immigration was very long. After waiting for 15 minutes one of the agents said the other side was open, and there was no wait at all. I had found a good rate at the nearby Holiday Inn which is very close to the terminal. I had just missed the last shuttle by mere minutes and had to wait 30 minutes for the next one (I could have walked it, it turns out). It was quite warm waiting outside! After checking into the hotel and inquiring on the shuttle buses into town, I found out I had just missed one, drat again! There are two shuttle buses ... read more
Stone messages
Lanterns and temple
Mmm, sake

South America » French Guiana June 1st 2007

Today was our last day in the Guianas, but our flight wasn't until 7:40PM so we still had a whole day to explore. We first went to the Cayenne market nearby, which was probably one of the most organized markets I've ever seen. However it was either too early, or not the busiest day (Friday), there were lots of fruit/vegetable vendors but not many handicrafts. We then started driving towards Cacao, a town of Hmong refugees from Laos settled there back in the 1970s. Sunday is the best time to visit, when there is a local market. We decided to go anyway to check it out, it was maybe an 60-70 minute drive from Cayenne, quite a distance away out in the jungle. We hardly passed any traffic or signs of civilization other than a few ... read more
One-lane bridge
Logging camp
Cacao Church

South America » French Guiana May 31st 2007

May 31, 2007 Hotel: Central Hotel; Cayenne, French Guiana; 67 Euro We were finally able to pick up a rental car this morning, the local Europcar office was at the Mercure hotel nearby and they had a car. We ended up with a Renault Twingo, which although isn't the smallest car I've driven (Smart), it probably was the least featured. It only had a clock and a speedometer. No trip odo, and the A/C only worked sporadically (usually when the windows were down). But we only needed the car for a few days so it would suit our needs. Our first stop was the Centre Spatial Guyanais, the European satellite launch facility just a few km out of town. The CSG was established back in the 1960s as the launch site for the European Space Agency; ... read more
Ocelot
Red caiman
Colorful Cayenne house

South America » French Guiana May 30th 2007

5-29 Hotel: Hotel Ballahou, Kourou, French Guiana, 55 Euro (triple) (http://www.destination.fr/guyane/hotelleballahoug.html) This morning we woke up early to examine our options for getting to Kourou, the launch point for visiting the Space Center Guyanais and the Iles du Salut. Having re-read our guidebook only to find out the bus for Cayenne had already left at 7 that morning and the next one wouldn't leave until nearly 2PM! We went down to the dock anyway where the minibuses departed, as we were arriving some boys started running towards us, one losing a shoe in the process! They were the touts for the pirogues but they left dejected when they realized we weren't going back across the river. We found a minibus that almost had a full load, but it was going to Cayenne only and they would ... read more
Condemned cell
Ile du Diable
Ile St. Joseph


5-28 Hotel: Hotel Tentiare, St. Laurent du Maroni, French Guiana, 75 Euro (triple) Today we were planning to cross over to French Guiana. Since we hadn't spent the extra night in Brownsberg park, we had an extra day, and decided to break the trip in St. Laurent du Maroni, on the French side of the border between Suriname and French Guiana. French Guiana had been used as a penal colony and St. Laurent had been the site where prisoners were unloaded. St. Laurent also supposedly had some of the best colonial architecture in the country, so we thought it would be a good place to break the journey, we didn't want another 16 hour travel day! We had to go back to Avis this morning to get our rental receipt as we had just dropped off ... read more
Camp de Transportation
Canoes to St. Laurent
French colonial architecture

South America » Suriname » Paramaribo May 27th 2007

5-27 Hotel: Guesthouse Albergo Alberga, Paramaribo, Suriname, 15 Euro Early this morning we picked up our rental car from Avis. As we walked through Independence Square, we noticed several people had setup poles with birdcages, today was Sunday and locals hold a 'tweety fest', seeing who has the best songbird. We had noticed people carrying around their birdcages while walking through town yesterday, already this morning there were 20-30 cages setup on the lawn. We would miss the competition though but was interesting to see the setup. We planned to drive to the Brownsberg park, about 120km south of Paramaribo. Suriname has devoted over 12% of the country to national parks in an attempt to preserve ecodiversity and promote tourism. All roads in Suriname converge on Paramaribo, so it is supposedly difficult to get lost. However ... read more
Tweety fest
Native hut
Local girl

South America » Suriname May 26th 2007

Georgetown to Paramaribo 5-25 Hotel: Guesthouse Albergo Alberga, Paramaribo, Suriname, 30 Euro We woke up at 4:30 AM today, our taxi driver Roy would be arriving around 5 AM to take us to the border. The weather looked really bad today, big storms all along the coast. The border was about a 3 hr drive away, but there was a ferry in the middle that only ran once an hour. It started raining quite a bit after leaving town and Roy was driving slower to be safe. He was speaking about his experiences in Guyana and New York, how he had family all over the Caribbean and Guyana/Suriname. We ended up arriving at the ferry about 6:35.. literally a minute too late for the 6:30 ferry! We were still ok on time though, the ferry to ... read more
Parbo beer
Waterkant
Fixxer-upper

South America » Guyana » Georgetown May 24th 2007

5-24 Hotel: Sleep Inn International, Georgetown, Guyana, $65 The next morning Dean and I were going on the Kaieteur trip, Scott would wait around the hotel with nothing to do! They were supposed to pick us up between 9 and 9:30, but it was after 10 before they showed up. Caribbean time! We drove to the local airport (Ogle), and had to get weighed in. The other tourists were already there, all of them were Guyanese living in Canada. The plane was 100lbs overweight, so we had to eat/drink our snacks right then (how that helped the weight? it's still inside us). The plane was a 10-seater, quite cramped. We took off and got a good view out over Georgetown which was completely surrounded by sugarcane fields. The fields soon gave way to rainforest and meandering ... read more
Sugarcane fields
Kaieteur falls
Our plane




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