Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Thailand Photos
Thailand Photos are going up here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Thailand
Laos Photos
Pictures are syncing now. You can check out Laos photos here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Laos
Laos
Laos was pretty cool. I spent a day in Vientiane, which was pretty laid-back. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, but I really liked the vibe there. It was great to finally be in a country where somebody isn’t constantly trying to sell me something. If you walk down a busy street in Vietnam or Cambodia about every 15 seconds somebody will try to sell you something. The constant barrage of “Motobike, motobike, you need ride? Where you going?” and “We have best food, you eat here!” and my personal favorite “You need majuana? You want party? You need lady? I have nice lady for you!” really starts to grate on your nerves after a while. Thankfully, there’s none of that in Laos. Every once in a while a guy will offer you a tuk-tuk ride, but you can politely say “no thanks” and they leave you alone rather than following you down the street thinking that if they annoy you enough that you’ll change your mind.
I actually was considering starting a chain of T-shirt stores in Vietnam and Cambodia. I would only sell one shirt in various colors and sizes. Every thing one of them would say in both English and the local language “If I want a room/ a ride/to eat/to buy something/drugs/to pay for sex, I’ll let you know. Now fuck off!!!”. I’d make a killing.
As you can tell I’ve found Laos to be much more relaxing. And while Vientiane was just a pleasant day stop, Luang Prabang was pretty cool. There’s tons of outdoor stuff to do in the surrounding area, as well. I took a long 7-hour hike the second day we were there, visiting a couple small hill-tribe villages on the way. Those were pretty nice as I feel our stops to the villages weren’t staged at all. I’ve gotten the impression from other travelers that similar village stops in more developed and touristy countries like Thailand can be very staged, even to the point of the villages being completely fake Epcott-esque constructions set up to parade tourists through. So I think doing this stuff in Laos was a good call.
Another day I was here I spent the day (well, supposedly I was going to spend the day, in actuality I spent about 3 hours with another 3 hours of waiting around) riding elephants. I signed up for the more hard-core (and expensive) program where you ride the elephants bare-back instead of sitting in a chair they’re saddled with or using some kind of harness. I also some time learning how to mount and dismount the things and steer them. Finally, I went down with all the professional elephant handlers at this sanctuary to give the elephants a bath in the river, which was a blast. Check out the photos as there are lots of nice shots of me giving my elephant a scrub-down. Given the amount of time I was on the elephants the program was pretty expensive, but well worth it. It was without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
The food in Laos was just decent. The whole 6 days I was here I never had anything in a restaurant which really impressed me that much. However, there is some really great street-food. I had a couple of great meals in the stands set up on the river in Vientiane, and also had some quite good stuff I picked up on the street with all the night-food stalls in Luang Prabang. In particular, all the grilled stuff is really good. They’ve got lots of whole grilled fish, grilled chickens, little grilled birds with the heads and claws and everything, pork ribs, you name it. And it’s all pretty good. However, my luck unfortunately ran out regarding street food during my stay in Luang Prabang. The second night I was here I ended up crapping my guts out all evening after chowing down on some fruit shakes, some unidentifiable meat thing, and some cold sausages that were very tasty but I think had been sitting out a little too long. I suppose that given all the down-market places without running water in the facility that I’ve been eating at it was bound to happen sooner or later.
I’m on my way to Chiang Mai now. Hopefully, I’ll get my pictures uploaded while I sleep tonight. It’s been a week since I’ve been in a hotel with internet access, so I haven’t had much opportunity to synchronize all my photos. There should be a fair amount of places in Thailand with wifi, so hopefully all the Laos pictures will be up soon.
I actually was considering starting a chain of T-shirt stores in Vietnam and Cambodia. I would only sell one shirt in various colors and sizes. Every thing one of them would say in both English and the local language “If I want a room/ a ride/to eat/to buy something/drugs/to pay for sex, I’ll let you know. Now fuck off!!!”. I’d make a killing.
As you can tell I’ve found Laos to be much more relaxing. And while Vientiane was just a pleasant day stop, Luang Prabang was pretty cool. There’s tons of outdoor stuff to do in the surrounding area, as well. I took a long 7-hour hike the second day we were there, visiting a couple small hill-tribe villages on the way. Those were pretty nice as I feel our stops to the villages weren’t staged at all. I’ve gotten the impression from other travelers that similar village stops in more developed and touristy countries like Thailand can be very staged, even to the point of the villages being completely fake Epcott-esque constructions set up to parade tourists through. So I think doing this stuff in Laos was a good call.
Another day I was here I spent the day (well, supposedly I was going to spend the day, in actuality I spent about 3 hours with another 3 hours of waiting around) riding elephants. I signed up for the more hard-core (and expensive) program where you ride the elephants bare-back instead of sitting in a chair they’re saddled with or using some kind of harness. I also some time learning how to mount and dismount the things and steer them. Finally, I went down with all the professional elephant handlers at this sanctuary to give the elephants a bath in the river, which was a blast. Check out the photos as there are lots of nice shots of me giving my elephant a scrub-down. Given the amount of time I was on the elephants the program was pretty expensive, but well worth it. It was without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.
The food in Laos was just decent. The whole 6 days I was here I never had anything in a restaurant which really impressed me that much. However, there is some really great street-food. I had a couple of great meals in the stands set up on the river in Vientiane, and also had some quite good stuff I picked up on the street with all the night-food stalls in Luang Prabang. In particular, all the grilled stuff is really good. They’ve got lots of whole grilled fish, grilled chickens, little grilled birds with the heads and claws and everything, pork ribs, you name it. And it’s all pretty good. However, my luck unfortunately ran out regarding street food during my stay in Luang Prabang. The second night I was here I ended up crapping my guts out all evening after chowing down on some fruit shakes, some unidentifiable meat thing, and some cold sausages that were very tasty but I think had been sitting out a little too long. I suppose that given all the down-market places without running water in the facility that I’ve been eating at it was bound to happen sooner or later.
I’m on my way to Chiang Mai now. Hopefully, I’ll get my pictures uploaded while I sleep tonight. It’s been a week since I’ve been in a hotel with internet access, so I haven’t had much opportunity to synchronize all my photos. There should be a fair amount of places in Thailand with wifi, so hopefully all the Laos pictures will be up soon.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Finished with Cambodia
So my time in Cambodia has come and gone. Not including my travel time, I spent a little over a full day in Phnom Penh and 3 and a half days in Siem Reap. The most interesting part of the Phnom Penh was the Royal Palace. I take that back, the most interesting part of Phnom Penh was the fact that it had by far the hottest women I've yet to see on this trip, but after that it was the Royal Palace. The Killing Fields were interesting to see but not all that impactful. They weren't presented with any information that I didn't already know and I didn't have a decent guide to put things into context. It was still definitely worth the trip just to see, though.
All the Angkor temple ruins were pretty fascinating. I hired a private guide and a driver so I could cover as much as possible in the 3 days I had. Even then I thought the guide was holding me back. I can apparently hike a lot faster than he can. Still we got pretty far afield and were able to cover just about everything worth seeing within 50 Km of Siem Reap in the 3 days. I did get gouged a bit by the travel company I arranged this through. When I bought the guide and driver I was given the impression I could extensively customize the tour and wouldn't have to pay that much more to add in additional places. I ended up having to cough up another 70 bucks to see a couple of the things I wanted to that weren't on the standard tour, which pissed me off a bit. The other disadvantage to the private driver was all kids selling souvenirs and other crap converged on me like a swarm of bees when I got out of the car. I can't really blame them. They see a lone guy show up at a temple in a minivan with a driver and a private guide looking like a fucking Maharaja (or Tom Daschle??) and they probably figure (incorrectly) that he's got money to burn.
The Cambodian food is pretty good. It wasn't quite up to Vietnam's standards, but still quite tasty. You can definitely get some wackier stuff there. In the 6 days I was around, I ate some barbequed snake, crocodile, and frogs 3 different times. You can probably tell I liked the frogs. I particularly liked the ribbity soup I had that was filled up with little frog legs, frog bodies, and lemony broth. Yum! They've got tons of seafood. There's a massive lake in the middle of the country that is one of the most productive fresh-water fisheries in the world, so fish is a big part of the diet. It's a good thing, too, since the cows here are so damn skinny.
The one thing I'll be happy to get away from is the dirt. You get expectedly dirty going to the temples, but aside from the ritzy parts right on the river Siem Reap itself is a big dust bowl. And there is trash absolutely EVERYWHERE in Cambodia. I'm not sure if it's because they can't afford proper waste disposal or if it's just a cultural thing, but there was litter all over the place. The people were great and I enjoyed my time, but it will be nice to get somewhere where I don't feel like I need to hose myself down after walking down the street for 20 minutes. I'm on the plane from Siem Reap to Vientiane as I write this, so we'll see if Laos is any better in that regard.
All the Angkor temple ruins were pretty fascinating. I hired a private guide and a driver so I could cover as much as possible in the 3 days I had. Even then I thought the guide was holding me back. I can apparently hike a lot faster than he can. Still we got pretty far afield and were able to cover just about everything worth seeing within 50 Km of Siem Reap in the 3 days. I did get gouged a bit by the travel company I arranged this through. When I bought the guide and driver I was given the impression I could extensively customize the tour and wouldn't have to pay that much more to add in additional places. I ended up having to cough up another 70 bucks to see a couple of the things I wanted to that weren't on the standard tour, which pissed me off a bit. The other disadvantage to the private driver was all kids selling souvenirs and other crap converged on me like a swarm of bees when I got out of the car. I can't really blame them. They see a lone guy show up at a temple in a minivan with a driver and a private guide looking like a fucking Maharaja (or Tom Daschle??) and they probably figure (incorrectly) that he's got money to burn.
The Cambodian food is pretty good. It wasn't quite up to Vietnam's standards, but still quite tasty. You can definitely get some wackier stuff there. In the 6 days I was around, I ate some barbequed snake, crocodile, and frogs 3 different times. You can probably tell I liked the frogs. I particularly liked the ribbity soup I had that was filled up with little frog legs, frog bodies, and lemony broth. Yum! They've got tons of seafood. There's a massive lake in the middle of the country that is one of the most productive fresh-water fisheries in the world, so fish is a big part of the diet. It's a good thing, too, since the cows here are so damn skinny.
The one thing I'll be happy to get away from is the dirt. You get expectedly dirty going to the temples, but aside from the ritzy parts right on the river Siem Reap itself is a big dust bowl. And there is trash absolutely EVERYWHERE in Cambodia. I'm not sure if it's because they can't afford proper waste disposal or if it's just a cultural thing, but there was litter all over the place. The people were great and I enjoyed my time, but it will be nice to get somewhere where I don't feel like I need to hose myself down after walking down the street for 20 minutes. I'm on the plane from Siem Reap to Vientiane as I write this, so we'll see if Laos is any better in that regard.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Cambodia Photos
Hey gang. I've got a new web album where I'm dumping photos from Cambodia. You can access it here: http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Cambodia
I know that none of the pics I've uploaded have descriptions yet. I've got a long bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap tomorrow, and if the road is sufficiently flat to type on my computer while driving I'll try to fill out all the descriptions for botht the Vietnam and Cambodia albums then.
I know that none of the pics I've uploaded have descriptions yet. I've got a long bus from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap tomorrow, and if the road is sufficiently flat to type on my computer while driving I'll try to fill out all the descriptions for botht the Vietnam and Cambodia albums then.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Wrapping Up Vietnam
So I just spent another few days in Vietnam. The last day in Hanoi was uneventful until the evening. I got out for dinner a bit late, and couldn’t find the restaurant I was planning on eating at. By the time I gave up on trying to find it, I realized almost every other place was closed as well. This is probably my biggest peeve with Vietnam: all the restaurants close so damn early. Even in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, you’re pretty much SOL if you want some good authentic Vietnamese food after 10:00 PM, even on the weekend.
So I started wandering around aimlessly looking for any place were I could get fed something other than pizza and spaghetti (the bullshit tourist places tend to be open later). I saw one place that had a bunch of people in it and the lights were still on (at this point it was around 10:30), and popped in. I asked if they were still open for dinner, and after some guy from the big group of Vietnamese dudes that was filling up the place jumped in to translate I found out that the kitchen was closed. However, the translator guy asked if I’d like to join them. They had a bunch of leftover grub (water buffalo and pork, kick-ass!) and I ended up socializing with them for about an hour and a half. They even ended up picking up the whole tab for the meal over my objections, which I felt particularly bad about since I likely make more money than all eight of those guys put together. It was a really great experience.
After Hanoi, I went to Hue, a medium-sized town on the coast in the middle of the country. They had some tombs from the Vietnamese emperors, and a couple interesting pagodas, but not much else. It was definitely worth the day though, as I went to this dive-y little hole-in-the-wall where I got these lemongrass skewers make out of some kind of pork paste that were served with all the standard Vietnamese accoutrements (rice paper wrappers, sliced unripened baby plantains, bamboo shoots, herbs, and the ubiquitous sweet-sour-spicy dipping sauce). Killer.
I had a tour guide driving me around the city on scooter. This was really essential, as the tombs were 10-15 kilometers outside the city and I had a fair amount to see and had to do it all in just one afternoon. He was a pretty friendly young guy that spoke respectable English so it was a nice time. At around 5:00 I offered to take us both out for a 2nd lunch (well, might have been his first but it was my second). We had a soup cooked with a whole fish (just gutted) with all kinds of great crap like woodear, pineapple, chilis, yadda yadda. After that the guy spent some more time driving me around, doing things like dropping me off and picking me up from a massage, asking me if I’d like to be introduced to any of is Vietnamese lady friends, etc. He actually got a little clingy, so much so that it started to creep me out a little bit, and I ended up ditching out on him in the evening.
After Hue I spent a day and a half in Hoi An, a picturesque old trading port a couple hours to the south. I rented a scooter and went to the beach, but when I tried to part some Vietnamese guys started yelling at me. I never found the right place to park, and after driving around for another 20 minutes the sun went away and it got really windy, so I just drove back to town. I didn’t really want sand up my butt crack anyways, and it was sufficient just to take a scenic scooter ride and check out the beach.
Hoi An is renowned for all the custom tailoring and cobbler work. I spent some time checking out suit and overcoat options, but just ended up ordering a shirt and a pair of custom-made shoes. After the initial sizing and 2 separate fittings the shirt came out pretty good, although in regards to the quality it’s nothing special. If nothing else it will be a good travel shirt (i.e. a shirt that fits really well and looks decent yet I don’t care if it gets trashed) and will come in handy the next 3 weeks.
The shoes were a different story. When I went if for the fitting I saw what he had put together and it wasn’t impressing me very much. I told him I wouldn’t be keeping the shoes and to just keep my 50% down and not bother making any adjustments.
After Hoi An I caught a flight to Saigon. It didn’t impress me all that much. It’s quite metropolitan, and doesn’t have the charm of any of the other places I’ve visited. I took a day tour of the Mekong delta, and that was a bit of a snooze as well. The best part of the tour occurred when the bus was delayed for 90 minutes and we had to kill time in town. I spent it shopping for dress shoes (I brought the wrong dress shoes to wear out at night and was able to get a more appropriate pair for a paltry $15) and skarfing down street-food. I was a little concerned that the street food would give me traveler’s diarrhea and I’d be crapping my guts out during the 6-hour ride bus ride I had the next day, but so far so good.
During the Delta tour I met a guy from Sweden that was also travelling alone. We ended up grabbing dinner and hitting the Saigon bar scene. Unfortunately the normally pervasive Australian backpacker girls weren’t out in force (not the cute ones at any rate), so it ended up being just him and I getting boozy all evening.
Because it wasn’t all that exciting and because I wasn’t able to arrange a half-day cooking class, instead of spending 4 nights/3 days as planned in Saigon I just stuck around for 3 nights and 2 ½ days. Which brings me to where I’m writing the post on the bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I should be crossing the border into Cambodia at any time now. It’s probably a good thing, as I already spent 1 more day than I was planning in Vietnam. I should be able to make that day up in Cambodia or Laos so I won’t cut into my Thailand time, though. I’ll let everybody know what the deal is with Cambodia in a few days. I’ll probably just be in Phnom Penh for 1 day and 2 nights, after which I’ll have a long ride to Siem Reap, so it may be pretty soon assuming my hotel in Siem Reap has WiFi.
Now that I’m leaving Vietnam my temporary cell number will no longer work. If you need to get a hold of me urgently, call me on my regular cell number.
So I started wandering around aimlessly looking for any place were I could get fed something other than pizza and spaghetti (the bullshit tourist places tend to be open later). I saw one place that had a bunch of people in it and the lights were still on (at this point it was around 10:30), and popped in. I asked if they were still open for dinner, and after some guy from the big group of Vietnamese dudes that was filling up the place jumped in to translate I found out that the kitchen was closed. However, the translator guy asked if I’d like to join them. They had a bunch of leftover grub (water buffalo and pork, kick-ass!) and I ended up socializing with them for about an hour and a half. They even ended up picking up the whole tab for the meal over my objections, which I felt particularly bad about since I likely make more money than all eight of those guys put together. It was a really great experience.
After Hanoi, I went to Hue, a medium-sized town on the coast in the middle of the country. They had some tombs from the Vietnamese emperors, and a couple interesting pagodas, but not much else. It was definitely worth the day though, as I went to this dive-y little hole-in-the-wall where I got these lemongrass skewers make out of some kind of pork paste that were served with all the standard Vietnamese accoutrements (rice paper wrappers, sliced unripened baby plantains, bamboo shoots, herbs, and the ubiquitous sweet-sour-spicy dipping sauce). Killer.
I had a tour guide driving me around the city on scooter. This was really essential, as the tombs were 10-15 kilometers outside the city and I had a fair amount to see and had to do it all in just one afternoon. He was a pretty friendly young guy that spoke respectable English so it was a nice time. At around 5:00 I offered to take us both out for a 2nd lunch (well, might have been his first but it was my second). We had a soup cooked with a whole fish (just gutted) with all kinds of great crap like woodear, pineapple, chilis, yadda yadda. After that the guy spent some more time driving me around, doing things like dropping me off and picking me up from a massage, asking me if I’d like to be introduced to any of is Vietnamese lady friends, etc. He actually got a little clingy, so much so that it started to creep me out a little bit, and I ended up ditching out on him in the evening.
After Hue I spent a day and a half in Hoi An, a picturesque old trading port a couple hours to the south. I rented a scooter and went to the beach, but when I tried to part some Vietnamese guys started yelling at me. I never found the right place to park, and after driving around for another 20 minutes the sun went away and it got really windy, so I just drove back to town. I didn’t really want sand up my butt crack anyways, and it was sufficient just to take a scenic scooter ride and check out the beach.
Hoi An is renowned for all the custom tailoring and cobbler work. I spent some time checking out suit and overcoat options, but just ended up ordering a shirt and a pair of custom-made shoes. After the initial sizing and 2 separate fittings the shirt came out pretty good, although in regards to the quality it’s nothing special. If nothing else it will be a good travel shirt (i.e. a shirt that fits really well and looks decent yet I don’t care if it gets trashed) and will come in handy the next 3 weeks.
The shoes were a different story. When I went if for the fitting I saw what he had put together and it wasn’t impressing me very much. I told him I wouldn’t be keeping the shoes and to just keep my 50% down and not bother making any adjustments.
After Hoi An I caught a flight to Saigon. It didn’t impress me all that much. It’s quite metropolitan, and doesn’t have the charm of any of the other places I’ve visited. I took a day tour of the Mekong delta, and that was a bit of a snooze as well. The best part of the tour occurred when the bus was delayed for 90 minutes and we had to kill time in town. I spent it shopping for dress shoes (I brought the wrong dress shoes to wear out at night and was able to get a more appropriate pair for a paltry $15) and skarfing down street-food. I was a little concerned that the street food would give me traveler’s diarrhea and I’d be crapping my guts out during the 6-hour ride bus ride I had the next day, but so far so good.
During the Delta tour I met a guy from Sweden that was also travelling alone. We ended up grabbing dinner and hitting the Saigon bar scene. Unfortunately the normally pervasive Australian backpacker girls weren’t out in force (not the cute ones at any rate), so it ended up being just him and I getting boozy all evening.
Because it wasn’t all that exciting and because I wasn’t able to arrange a half-day cooking class, instead of spending 4 nights/3 days as planned in Saigon I just stuck around for 3 nights and 2 ½ days. Which brings me to where I’m writing the post on the bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh. I should be crossing the border into Cambodia at any time now. It’s probably a good thing, as I already spent 1 more day than I was planning in Vietnam. I should be able to make that day up in Cambodia or Laos so I won’t cut into my Thailand time, though. I’ll let everybody know what the deal is with Cambodia in a few days. I’ll probably just be in Phnom Penh for 1 day and 2 nights, after which I’ll have a long ride to Siem Reap, so it may be pretty soon assuming my hotel in Siem Reap has WiFi.
Now that I’m leaving Vietnam my temporary cell number will no longer work. If you need to get a hold of me urgently, call me on my regular cell number.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Hanoi and Halong Bay
Sorry for the delay in getting a first post up here. We were experiencing some technical difficulties on the other side of the planet.
Vietnam kicks ass. Spent the first day in Hanoi checking out a lot of the major sites: the Old Quarter, Haon Kiem Lake, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, blah, blah, blah. The shopping here is killer and outrageously cheap. It's too bad this is the first stop on my trip. I've found all kinds of stash I'd love to buy, but can't schlep all the stuff around with me for another month in my backpack. I also grabbed a nice 60-minute massage that cost me all of $14.
So enough with all the unimportant crap, on to the food. I had the best $18 meal of my life for lunch the fist day here. I had some soup that was made with rice noodles, egg dumplings, whole plantains with the skin still on, and snails. I never would have guessed that skin-on unripe bananas would complement escargots, but I guess that shows you what I know. I also had some spring-roll like things with some sugar-roasted pork, fresh herbs, bamboo shoots, and other veggies. To top it off I had a whole bottle of Vietnamese wine. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it's actual grape wine. Even more surprisingly, it was good! Don't get me wrong, you wouldn't ever mistake it for a Grand Cru white Burgundy, but it was quite pleasant and went fantastically well with all the food. I also got to sample a couple other things. A couple young Vietnamese women were seated across the table from me, and I was chatting them up while eating. I think the saw me eyeballing the food they got and asked if I'd like to try any. Out of politeness I said "Thank you, but I couldn't", and unfortunately they took me literally. So I spent the next half hour forlornly eyeballing the beef stir-fry-like thingy they were hardly touching and hoping they'd offer again. When it became apparent that they were done eating and weren't going to ask again I sheepishly muttered "Um, is that offer to try that still available?". It was. I ate it. It kicked ass.
I spent the next day a half cruising Halong Bay. Words would really not do the place justice, so if you want the low-down on that, just check out the photos. I’ve already got a bunch up at http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Vietnam, so feel free to check them out. We spent a lot of time cruising around, took a brief swim (at least I did, everybody else stayed on board), and visited a floating fishing village in the bay.
Did more kicking around last night, got another massage, and through a course of events that I won’t bother getting into ended up eating water buffalo at this little dive mom-and-pop restaurant with a half dozen Vietnamese guys. I took a cooking class this morning, and will knock around a bit more before heading down to Hue this evening.
BTW - I got a local SIM card for my cell phone. So I'm not currently reachable at my regular number. If anyone needs to text me or call I can be reached at +84 166 6 256 950.
Vietnam kicks ass. Spent the first day in Hanoi checking out a lot of the major sites: the Old Quarter, Haon Kiem Lake, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, blah, blah, blah. The shopping here is killer and outrageously cheap. It's too bad this is the first stop on my trip. I've found all kinds of stash I'd love to buy, but can't schlep all the stuff around with me for another month in my backpack. I also grabbed a nice 60-minute massage that cost me all of $14.
So enough with all the unimportant crap, on to the food. I had the best $18 meal of my life for lunch the fist day here. I had some soup that was made with rice noodles, egg dumplings, whole plantains with the skin still on, and snails. I never would have guessed that skin-on unripe bananas would complement escargots, but I guess that shows you what I know. I also had some spring-roll like things with some sugar-roasted pork, fresh herbs, bamboo shoots, and other veggies. To top it off I had a whole bottle of Vietnamese wine. I know what you're thinking, and yes, it's actual grape wine. Even more surprisingly, it was good! Don't get me wrong, you wouldn't ever mistake it for a Grand Cru white Burgundy, but it was quite pleasant and went fantastically well with all the food. I also got to sample a couple other things. A couple young Vietnamese women were seated across the table from me, and I was chatting them up while eating. I think the saw me eyeballing the food they got and asked if I'd like to try any. Out of politeness I said "Thank you, but I couldn't", and unfortunately they took me literally. So I spent the next half hour forlornly eyeballing the beef stir-fry-like thingy they were hardly touching and hoping they'd offer again. When it became apparent that they were done eating and weren't going to ask again I sheepishly muttered "Um, is that offer to try that still available?". It was. I ate it. It kicked ass.
I spent the next day a half cruising Halong Bay. Words would really not do the place justice, so if you want the low-down on that, just check out the photos. I’ve already got a bunch up at http://picasaweb.google.com/tunafishandgrits/Vietnam, so feel free to check them out. We spent a lot of time cruising around, took a brief swim (at least I did, everybody else stayed on board), and visited a floating fishing village in the bay.
Did more kicking around last night, got another massage, and through a course of events that I won’t bother getting into ended up eating water buffalo at this little dive mom-and-pop restaurant with a half dozen Vietnamese guys. I took a cooking class this morning, and will knock around a bit more before heading down to Hue this evening.
BTW - I got a local SIM card for my cell phone. So I'm not currently reachable at my regular number. If anyone needs to text me or call I can be reached at +84 166 6 256 950.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Fin
OK, the trip is all over. Boo. Although it's certainly nice to be back home and sleeping in my own bed. After an entire month of staying in budget accommodations with cardboard towels and limp, flat little pillows, I was rather shocked last evening when I started drying myself off. The internal dialog was "Oh, so this is what a fluffy towel feels like". I guess this wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't such a tight wad and spent some more money on accommodations, but alas, I am.
Dubrovnik was absolutely fantastic. It's a walled medieval town right on the Adriatic coast. Being able to walk the town walls and take pictures of the town and the coastline has been one the highlights of the trip. Dubrovnik also provided a unique opportunity to talk to some people that have experienced war first-hand. The city was besieged for over a year during Croatia's war with Serbia in the early nineties. I was able to speak to my kind lady whose home I was sleeping in while I was there, and having her explain the kinds of depredations experienced by everyone in the town, not to mention the loss of life, was rather moving. It's also rather profound to be speaking to someone and be told that within recent memory an artillery shell had crashed through their front door (which at the time I was currently sitting 5 ft. away from) and completely destroyed the stairwell and first floor of the building you are sleeping in. She actually pointed out some patches in her bookshelves and wall with were repairs from shrapnel impacts from the shell. Her father wanted too keep the shelves with the visible patches rather than replace them because he thought it was important to be reminded about what happened. They also still had their nameplate from the front door as well as a portion of the artillery shell mounted on the wall.
Like Split, Dubrovnik had great seafood. It seems that due to the mass of tourism the locals have been priced out of the market by wealthy westerners with superior means for fish, so the locals eat a lot of mussels, oysters, shellfish, squid, cuttlefish, and octopus. Tasty. The two restaurants I was hitting a lot which my hostess said they were the best places to get the local flavor (it's nearly impossible to get a purely local flavor as the town isn't that big and there are so many damn tourists there) didn't even have anything with fins on the menu. Well that's not entirely true. One had marinated sardines (badass), and they both had something translated as "fried little fish". That's basically a huge plate piled with fried minnows. So neither really had a fried/grilled/sauteed/roasted fish fillet or whole fish. Because I felt obliged to at least try some fish while I was there, I asked her and another local for a recommendation on the best place to get fish at a place a local would actually go to (not a tourist trap). They both recommended the same place so I gave it a shot, got the fish, and was a little disappointed. I guess I should have gotten the fried minnows instead. Or my favorite, the black cuttlefish risotto. That's risotto made with cuttlefish (think a cross between a squid and an octopus) with it's ink in the risotto (hence it's literally black). Yum!
The second day I was staying in Dubrovnik I took a bus tour to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a town with a large Bosnian, i.e. Yugoslav Muslim, population. It also was a sight of a lot of the fighting in the Balkans during the nineties, albeit in a separate conflict from that which occured in Dubrovnik. It's a quaint little town with some nice mosques and a few bridges over the river running through the middle of town. Also ate some yummy Balkan cuisine while I was there. Got some great photos during the trip there, as well. They will be posted very, very soon!
Now that I'm back I just need to work off my post-vacation funk. I was so out of it this morning I forgot to bring my cell phone and wallet with me while running errands. I also hit the gym today, and let's say it was a less than impressive showing. I hit the scale after excercising, and it appears that I lost 7 lbs on my trip. Not in a good way. Yes, I'm now a flaccid and disguisting pukesack. I guess I should have done pushups and crunches once in a while in the morning when I got up. I can't believe I lost that much weight in just 4 weeks considering how much I was eating. I guess I need to double up on the squid my next trip.
Dubrovnik was absolutely fantastic. It's a walled medieval town right on the Adriatic coast. Being able to walk the town walls and take pictures of the town and the coastline has been one the highlights of the trip. Dubrovnik also provided a unique opportunity to talk to some people that have experienced war first-hand. The city was besieged for over a year during Croatia's war with Serbia in the early nineties. I was able to speak to my kind lady whose home I was sleeping in while I was there, and having her explain the kinds of depredations experienced by everyone in the town, not to mention the loss of life, was rather moving. It's also rather profound to be speaking to someone and be told that within recent memory an artillery shell had crashed through their front door (which at the time I was currently sitting 5 ft. away from) and completely destroyed the stairwell and first floor of the building you are sleeping in. She actually pointed out some patches in her bookshelves and wall with were repairs from shrapnel impacts from the shell. Her father wanted too keep the shelves with the visible patches rather than replace them because he thought it was important to be reminded about what happened. They also still had their nameplate from the front door as well as a portion of the artillery shell mounted on the wall.
Like Split, Dubrovnik had great seafood. It seems that due to the mass of tourism the locals have been priced out of the market by wealthy westerners with superior means for fish, so the locals eat a lot of mussels, oysters, shellfish, squid, cuttlefish, and octopus. Tasty. The two restaurants I was hitting a lot which my hostess said they were the best places to get the local flavor (it's nearly impossible to get a purely local flavor as the town isn't that big and there are so many damn tourists there) didn't even have anything with fins on the menu. Well that's not entirely true. One had marinated sardines (badass), and they both had something translated as "fried little fish". That's basically a huge plate piled with fried minnows. So neither really had a fried/grilled/sauteed/roasted fish fillet or whole fish. Because I felt obliged to at least try some fish while I was there, I asked her and another local for a recommendation on the best place to get fish at a place a local would actually go to (not a tourist trap). They both recommended the same place so I gave it a shot, got the fish, and was a little disappointed. I guess I should have gotten the fried minnows instead. Or my favorite, the black cuttlefish risotto. That's risotto made with cuttlefish (think a cross between a squid and an octopus) with it's ink in the risotto (hence it's literally black). Yum!
The second day I was staying in Dubrovnik I took a bus tour to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It's a town with a large Bosnian, i.e. Yugoslav Muslim, population. It also was a sight of a lot of the fighting in the Balkans during the nineties, albeit in a separate conflict from that which occured in Dubrovnik. It's a quaint little town with some nice mosques and a few bridges over the river running through the middle of town. Also ate some yummy Balkan cuisine while I was there. Got some great photos during the trip there, as well. They will be posted very, very soon!
Now that I'm back I just need to work off my post-vacation funk. I was so out of it this morning I forgot to bring my cell phone and wallet with me while running errands. I also hit the gym today, and let's say it was a less than impressive showing. I hit the scale after excercising, and it appears that I lost 7 lbs on my trip. Not in a good way. Yes, I'm now a flaccid and disguisting pukesack. I guess I should have done pushups and crunches once in a while in the morning when I got up. I can't believe I lost that much weight in just 4 weeks considering how much I was eating. I guess I need to double up on the squid my next trip.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Slovenia is Good Stuff
Slovenia was good times. Spent 4 nights and 3 days in Ljubljana and surroundings. The scenery around there is really amazing. I spent the entire first day tooling around the Julian Alps with my rental car. That part of the county was also one of the major spots of conflict on the eastern front of WWI. There was a really intersting museum and some other related sights to hit. In some spots you can actually still see some old military fortifications at the very top of some of the mountain peaks.
The one thing that was a bit of a drag is that I hit a rock about the size of a volleyball on the way back to Ljubljana and got a flat tire. Luckily the car had a full size spare, so I was able to get it changed out without too much difficulty (although the first time I jacked up the car I didn't have the parking break on--oops). The bigger problem is that I'm insured by my credit card, so know I'm going to have a big administive hastle to deal with when I get home.
Went and checked out a cave in the area the next day. It looked like something straight out of 'The Lord of the Rings'. One of the caverns was over 100 meters tall, and about 2oo meters long.
Ljubljana was really nice. It has lots of great little riverside cafes and a really pleasant old town. The last night I was there I met a couple German girls who were friends of a DJ that was spinning outside along the river. Afterwards we all checked out a nightlife zone a bit out of the center. It was interesting, but a little too bohemian for my tastes. A tad too much weed, dread locks, and vomit on the sidewalk to suite me.
After Ljubljana, I hit Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. Good stuff. I'll post snaps ASAP. After that I blew through Zagreb (the capital of Croatia), and got to Split yesterday afternoon. This place is now in the pole position for the 'best food' award. The seafood here is fantastic. The chicks are pretty nice, too, assuming you're into sexy, 6 ft tall Amazon women. It's also got a very nice, mellow Mediterranean vibe. Great for relaxing in a small cafe with a long meal and a good bottle of Croatian wine.
The one thing that has been a hassle here is the accomodations. Rooms are actually very expensive in Split. I was unable to find a hostel with a single room, so I decided to give a shared room a try and see if the social aspect would make up for the hassle for sharing a room with somebody. However, it looks like I picked the wrong place to try sharing a room. The place I ended up with had 4 rooms of 6 people, all packed cheek to jowl, with only 2 bathrooms for everyone. It also is lacking some basic items that could make it a little more livable like a hook to hang your towel on (you have to drap it over you bed headboard instead) or some minimal closet, drawer, or table space (you have to keep absolutely everything in your bags, which you have to shove under your bed). Despite having the 2 days already paid for and being past the cancellation deadline, I walked down to the bus stop and found somebody hawking rooms and grabbed one of them. It ain't exactly the Four Seasons either, but the location is good, it's relatively inexpensive, and I'm not living like an animial with a bunch of smelly college students.
I'm off to my final stop, Dubrovnik, tomorrow morning. So it looks like I'll be able to post pictures with weekend when I get back to Chicago.
The one thing that was a bit of a drag is that I hit a rock about the size of a volleyball on the way back to Ljubljana and got a flat tire. Luckily the car had a full size spare, so I was able to get it changed out without too much difficulty (although the first time I jacked up the car I didn't have the parking break on--oops). The bigger problem is that I'm insured by my credit card, so know I'm going to have a big administive hastle to deal with when I get home.
Went and checked out a cave in the area the next day. It looked like something straight out of 'The Lord of the Rings'. One of the caverns was over 100 meters tall, and about 2oo meters long.
Ljubljana was really nice. It has lots of great little riverside cafes and a really pleasant old town. The last night I was there I met a couple German girls who were friends of a DJ that was spinning outside along the river. Afterwards we all checked out a nightlife zone a bit out of the center. It was interesting, but a little too bohemian for my tastes. A tad too much weed, dread locks, and vomit on the sidewalk to suite me.
After Ljubljana, I hit Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia. Good stuff. I'll post snaps ASAP. After that I blew through Zagreb (the capital of Croatia), and got to Split yesterday afternoon. This place is now in the pole position for the 'best food' award. The seafood here is fantastic. The chicks are pretty nice, too, assuming you're into sexy, 6 ft tall Amazon women. It's also got a very nice, mellow Mediterranean vibe. Great for relaxing in a small cafe with a long meal and a good bottle of Croatian wine.
The one thing that has been a hassle here is the accomodations. Rooms are actually very expensive in Split. I was unable to find a hostel with a single room, so I decided to give a shared room a try and see if the social aspect would make up for the hassle for sharing a room with somebody. However, it looks like I picked the wrong place to try sharing a room. The place I ended up with had 4 rooms of 6 people, all packed cheek to jowl, with only 2 bathrooms for everyone. It also is lacking some basic items that could make it a little more livable like a hook to hang your towel on (you have to drap it over you bed headboard instead) or some minimal closet, drawer, or table space (you have to keep absolutely everything in your bags, which you have to shove under your bed). Despite having the 2 days already paid for and being past the cancellation deadline, I walked down to the bus stop and found somebody hawking rooms and grabbed one of them. It ain't exactly the Four Seasons either, but the location is good, it's relatively inexpensive, and I'm not living like an animial with a bunch of smelly college students.
I'm off to my final stop, Dubrovnik, tomorrow morning. So it looks like I'll be able to post pictures with weekend when I get back to Chicago.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Holy Cow!
Two blog entries in two days! What a treat! Actually I've just got some time to kill before my train tomorrow afternoon to Ljubljana. It's going to be a nine hour ride that will basically crowd up both lunch and dinner (gasp!), so I hit the the Great Market Hall today and put together some provisions. I've got some crusty bread, some spicy Hungarian paprika sausage and other charcuterie, some grapes, figs, candied fruits for dessert, and of course a bottle of wine. All said and told it cost me around 3000 Forints, which is roughly 15 bucks. What a wonderful place. The best part was the fast food meal, Hungarian style, that I had after my shopping. In addition to all the produce, meats, veggies, spices and crap they sell in the hall, they've also got some food vendors. I got a roasted chicken leg stuffed with some kind of unidentifiable tasty gunk, a cabbage leaf filled with meat and sausage, and a stuffed Hungarian Pepper with a spicy tomato sauce. And of course everthing cost about 7 bucks. McDonalds is bullshit.
I also spent some time today at the 'House of Hungarian Wines'. It's a setup where you can plop down the equivalent of about 18 bucks, and then taste you way through the various wine regions in Hungary. I was able to taste 50 different pours, most all of which were good. However, none of them had serious wow factor. I'm kind of surprized--based on everything I've drank, I think I would actually have to give the Czech republic the nod for the best wine so far.
Went on a pub crawl tonight. Being Monday, I figured it would be slow and I'd need an arranged tour were I to have any hope of finding a good social scene. Unfortunately, I was the only person that showed up for the pub crawl and it was cancelled. The organizer gave me some tips on places to check out. I'm just down the street from one right now. I popped in earlier and it was fairly busy, but it seemed to be mostly a bunch of college aged kids sitting and chatting at tables. When I'm done on the computer here, I'll maybe pop back in to see if there's someone I can get into a conversation with on a topic other than what thier favorite class is or what the cool new ringtone they got thier thier phone is like. If that doesn't pan out, I'll maybe just head home and see what Maria and Istvan (my hosts) are up to. There's also Fred--the new guy from Kansas that moved into thier other room over the weekend. A very nice guy, if not the most charismatic person I've ever met.
I also spent some time today at the 'House of Hungarian Wines'. It's a setup where you can plop down the equivalent of about 18 bucks, and then taste you way through the various wine regions in Hungary. I was able to taste 50 different pours, most all of which were good. However, none of them had serious wow factor. I'm kind of surprized--based on everything I've drank, I think I would actually have to give the Czech republic the nod for the best wine so far.
Went on a pub crawl tonight. Being Monday, I figured it would be slow and I'd need an arranged tour were I to have any hope of finding a good social scene. Unfortunately, I was the only person that showed up for the pub crawl and it was cancelled. The organizer gave me some tips on places to check out. I'm just down the street from one right now. I popped in earlier and it was fairly busy, but it seemed to be mostly a bunch of college aged kids sitting and chatting at tables. When I'm done on the computer here, I'll maybe pop back in to see if there's someone I can get into a conversation with on a topic other than what thier favorite class is or what the cool new ringtone they got thier thier phone is like. If that doesn't pan out, I'll maybe just head home and see what Maria and Istvan (my hosts) are up to. There's also Fred--the new guy from Kansas that moved into thier other room over the weekend. A very nice guy, if not the most charismatic person I've ever met.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Budapest
OK. I think I'm getting the hang of this. Through trial and error, I've been able to figure out that "Új bejegyzés" means "add new post" in Hungarian. I suppose that's all I need to know.
Budapest is good times. It's charms are definitely more subtle than Prague or Krakow, but it's still very nice. It's got some very lovely buildings, and one nice little pockets of town, but it's not like Prague in that you can't be plopped down in the old town and end up with a picture-postcard-perfect snapshot view in every direction. Being so large, though, there are interesting things everywhere. You can pop into just about any area of town and find some nice historical monuments or buildings.
The highlights here are definitely the food and the people. Chow is cheap, and is consistently very good. The wine is quite tastey as well, although I've yet to find any that match up with a few of the Moravian pours I had in the Czech Republic. I'll be hitting the House of Hungarian wines tomorrow, though, so that might no last. I'm also going to be taking a cooking class on Hungarian cuisine tomorrow, so maybe I can steal some more ideas for home.
The people I'm staying with have basically made me a part of the extended family. I'm actually sleeping in what I believe is thier living room during the tourist offseason. They've gone way beyond what would be considered normal friendliness or assistance for a paid guest. However, I think that's the general gist here. People in Hungary just have class.
I was able to partake of the thermal bath house scene this weekend. I went to the big public bath in the main city park, rather than the famous and touristy one in one of the ritzy hotels here. Was pretty interesting people watching. Was a nice experience, too. It wasn't as fancy, elaborite, or for that matter flesh-exposing (you wear swimsuits here) as the place I went to in Baden-Baden last year, but it's definitely less stodgy and a much more social experience. And it's just part of local culture. If you live in Budapest, a few time of month you drop into the bath, dip into a thermal mineral pool, and chit-chat and play chess in the pool with your pals. It was probably the most enjoyable thing I've done here. But of course I'm always looking for and opportunity to strut my beefcake around.
I also made a new friend this weekend. Met a gal from Australia on a tour of a couple towns further up the Danube on Friday. We ended up hanging out on Friday and Saturday nights. Was a good thing, too, as the night life scene here is surprizingly low-key. The main tourist strip was completely closed down by midnight on Saturday, and the places we knew of that were supposed to be good local hang-out neighborhoods were pretty thin. We were able to get boozed up on our own just fine, though.
Budapest is good times. It's charms are definitely more subtle than Prague or Krakow, but it's still very nice. It's got some very lovely buildings, and one nice little pockets of town, but it's not like Prague in that you can't be plopped down in the old town and end up with a picture-postcard-perfect snapshot view in every direction. Being so large, though, there are interesting things everywhere. You can pop into just about any area of town and find some nice historical monuments or buildings.
The highlights here are definitely the food and the people. Chow is cheap, and is consistently very good. The wine is quite tastey as well, although I've yet to find any that match up with a few of the Moravian pours I had in the Czech Republic. I'll be hitting the House of Hungarian wines tomorrow, though, so that might no last. I'm also going to be taking a cooking class on Hungarian cuisine tomorrow, so maybe I can steal some more ideas for home.
The people I'm staying with have basically made me a part of the extended family. I'm actually sleeping in what I believe is thier living room during the tourist offseason. They've gone way beyond what would be considered normal friendliness or assistance for a paid guest. However, I think that's the general gist here. People in Hungary just have class.
I was able to partake of the thermal bath house scene this weekend. I went to the big public bath in the main city park, rather than the famous and touristy one in one of the ritzy hotels here. Was pretty interesting people watching. Was a nice experience, too. It wasn't as fancy, elaborite, or for that matter flesh-exposing (you wear swimsuits here) as the place I went to in Baden-Baden last year, but it's definitely less stodgy and a much more social experience. And it's just part of local culture. If you live in Budapest, a few time of month you drop into the bath, dip into a thermal mineral pool, and chit-chat and play chess in the pool with your pals. It was probably the most enjoyable thing I've done here. But of course I'm always looking for and opportunity to strut my beefcake around.
I also made a new friend this weekend. Met a gal from Australia on a tour of a couple towns further up the Danube on Friday. We ended up hanging out on Friday and Saturday nights. Was a good thing, too, as the night life scene here is surprizingly low-key. The main tourist strip was completely closed down by midnight on Saturday, and the places we knew of that were supposed to be good local hang-out neighborhoods were pretty thin. We were able to get boozed up on our own just fine, though.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
About Half Way Through
Czech Republic--check. Poland--check. On to Hungary. I just got into Hungary yesterday, into a small town called Eger. It was a nice place, but a little boring. The point of going was to spend tiime hanging out in the cafes around the town square and drinking the local wine. However, the weather was really lousy, so it was pretty dead. After a couple tries I got into Budapest this afternoon. I say a couple tries because I actually got on the wrong train at one of my connections on the way here, so I had to backtrack a little bit to actually make it to Budapest. The town I had my connection in was a small little cow-town, so it's train station didn't have boards specifying the destination of each train in the window. However, I say a train pull in with a sign in it's window saying "IC - Budapest - Kaleti Pu.", which is exactly what I needed. Looked like the train was actually going in the opposite direction and they just didn't update the sign. However, I don't know this for sure as the only people I had to ask about it spoke only Hungarian. Don't know if any of you have ever heard Hundarian, but it might as well be Chinese it's so incomprehensible to an American Ear.
Budapest has been really nice so far, but apparently the lousy weather has followed me down here. It didn't rain that much, but it was extremely cold for this time of year. It's been like this for about 6 days now. I was getting rained on in Cesky Krumlov, more often then not it was rainy and cold in Poland (even by thier standards), it rained the whole day yesterday in Eger, and now it's absolutly frigid in Budapest. The weather's been bad enough that I've actually caught a cough and a sore throat. Pretty annoying considering this is the prime location for my eating and wine drinking on the trip.
Notwithstanding the weather, Poland was great. Krakow in particular had some really nice areas of town to stroll around in, and had some very interesting things to do. I spent alot of time in the historical old center (it's about the only part of Poland that wasn't completely flattened in WWII), checked out alot of the communist-era architecture in the city outskirts, visited Auschwitz, and toured a salt mine a bit outside the city. Sounds a little smaltzy, but the salt mine tour was actually really fascinating--the miners had actually carved a massive underground chapel out of pure salt. It's got the whole spiel, an alter, art (for instance, they carved a very respectable copy of "The Last Supper" out of salt), massive chandaliers made out of salt crystals, and of course, the requisite full-size statue of John Paul II added a few years ago. And it's big. The chapel is about the size of you're typical high school gymnasium. The place is actually a service industry item now. There are other large rooms also carved completely out of salt (the floor is salt too) where you can host events. And they of course have all the kitchen facilities, bathrooms, and bar setups to support that kind of thing. Our tour guide, who is from the area, actually had her graduation party in the mine, 100 meters underground. And yes, people even get married in the chapel. I'll post photos when I get an opportunity.
Posting to the blog here has been a bit more difficult than I expected. Most of the places I've gone are big tourist spots, but they still don't seem to cater to the travel crowd quite as much as other places I've been. In most of the towns prior to Budapest, the internet cafes has closed at 6:00 or 7:00. The last thing I want to be doing is wasting my opportunities to go do stuff during the day sitting in front of a computer. The other issue is the fact that this blog site is automatically internationalized. Then hit it, it recognizes that I'm working on a maching with a Hungarian (or Czech or Polish) locale, and renders the site appropriately. Since all these languages are pretty much inscrutable to me, I've got to work from memory as to what the different actions are on the page (like "login", "create new post", etc.). At the top of my page now I've got:
Bejegyzések - Beállítások - Sablon - Blog megtekintése
Létrehozás - Bejegyzések szerkesztése - Megjegyzések moderálása
OK. So I made out the word "Blog". Aside from that, if you've got any idea what the hell they're talking about, you're one up on me.
Anyways, I gotta run. Dinner time.
Budapest has been really nice so far, but apparently the lousy weather has followed me down here. It didn't rain that much, but it was extremely cold for this time of year. It's been like this for about 6 days now. I was getting rained on in Cesky Krumlov, more often then not it was rainy and cold in Poland (even by thier standards), it rained the whole day yesterday in Eger, and now it's absolutly frigid in Budapest. The weather's been bad enough that I've actually caught a cough and a sore throat. Pretty annoying considering this is the prime location for my eating and wine drinking on the trip.
Notwithstanding the weather, Poland was great. Krakow in particular had some really nice areas of town to stroll around in, and had some very interesting things to do. I spent alot of time in the historical old center (it's about the only part of Poland that wasn't completely flattened in WWII), checked out alot of the communist-era architecture in the city outskirts, visited Auschwitz, and toured a salt mine a bit outside the city. Sounds a little smaltzy, but the salt mine tour was actually really fascinating--the miners had actually carved a massive underground chapel out of pure salt. It's got the whole spiel, an alter, art (for instance, they carved a very respectable copy of "The Last Supper" out of salt), massive chandaliers made out of salt crystals, and of course, the requisite full-size statue of John Paul II added a few years ago. And it's big. The chapel is about the size of you're typical high school gymnasium. The place is actually a service industry item now. There are other large rooms also carved completely out of salt (the floor is salt too) where you can host events. And they of course have all the kitchen facilities, bathrooms, and bar setups to support that kind of thing. Our tour guide, who is from the area, actually had her graduation party in the mine, 100 meters underground. And yes, people even get married in the chapel. I'll post photos when I get an opportunity.
Posting to the blog here has been a bit more difficult than I expected. Most of the places I've gone are big tourist spots, but they still don't seem to cater to the travel crowd quite as much as other places I've been. In most of the towns prior to Budapest, the internet cafes has closed at 6:00 or 7:00. The last thing I want to be doing is wasting my opportunities to go do stuff during the day sitting in front of a computer. The other issue is the fact that this blog site is automatically internationalized. Then hit it, it recognizes that I'm working on a maching with a Hungarian (or Czech or Polish) locale, and renders the site appropriately. Since all these languages are pretty much inscrutable to me, I've got to work from memory as to what the different actions are on the page (like "login", "create new post", etc.). At the top of my page now I've got:
Bejegyzések - Beállítások - Sablon - Blog megtekintése
Létrehozás - Bejegyzések szerkesztése - Megjegyzések moderálása
OK. So I made out the word "Blog". Aside from that, if you've got any idea what the hell they're talking about, you're one up on me.
Anyways, I gotta run. Dinner time.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Czech Republic
OK. So it's taken me over 5 days to post my first entry. If you're inclined to whining, shut your damn cake-hole. There was so much to do in Prague, I hardly ever had any time to waste in front of a computer. I got to Cesky Krumlov yesterday, and as it's really the first opportunity where I've been able to get on a computer for an extensive time, and also do some laundry.
Prague was fantastic. I'd post pictures, but I think that's going to take too damn long. I've got to catch a tour of Krumlov Castle that I can't be late for. The pictures don't really do the place justice, anyways. Particularly at night. In the evening, the view of the Charles bridge and the castle are really stunning, and my little point-and-shoot doesn't do all that well in low light. Guess you had to be there. Oh wait, I'm sorry, you were all back in the US and had to work the next day. Sucka's!!!!!!!!! Ha!
Other hightlights of Prague were the old town, the Jewish quarter, and just the architecture in general. And the price of the food is a winner. I can have a nice 2 or 3 course meal with several glasses of wine for around $25. And I have. Many times. Twice a day, every day, without exception. (OK, I lied, one day I had 3 meals--lunch, early dinner, and late dinner.) I tried the local beer, and as far as I can tell it's very good, but since I'm a non-beer drinker it doesn't really float my boat. Any of the places I eat I'm able to get the Moravian (eastern Czech) wine, though, and that suits me just fine. I've had a few glasses that were ho-hum, but most of it is in the range of quite good to absolutely fantastic. I had one a few days ago that if I didn't know what I was drinking I would have thought it was a $80 bottle or red Burgundy, or maybe a really high-end Rioja. And it was about 2 bucks a glass. I'm blowing back through Prague today on my way to Warsaw, and I think I'll actually go back to that restaruant for a little more wine and the Czech Duck I love so much. It's a roasted 1/2 duck with braised red and white cabbage and potato dumplings. Yummy!!!!!!
I'm getting by just fine on my light packing. Basically all I brought was 6 t-shirts, 2 dress shirts (both black, maybe not the swiftest move), a couple pair of jeans, one pair of pants, and other accoutrement. Probably didn't need the pants, as nobody wears them over here, but I suppose they're good in case I ever need to look really smooth. One night I threw them on because I didn't want to wear a t-shirt where I was eating but was getting sick of the black shirt and jeans thing. Found out pretty quickly that if you ever want do draw some serious attention from the ladies in Prague, all you to do is throw on a generic pair of grey Banana Republic pants. I got the impression all the girls were saying to themselves "Hey, this guy is wearing pants! He must be some kind of millionair playboy!". Apparently, the doormen of the various cabarets had the same thought. A couple of them damn near tripped over themselves running over to me in order to give me the standard spiel: "Come in, we have the most beautiful girls in town, two drinks free". In my 4 days in Prague, I never did quite figure out if "cabaret" was a euphemism for "strip club" or "brothel". I guess I'll save that for another trip (note to my mother: In case you missed it, that was a joke).
Prague was fantastic. I'd post pictures, but I think that's going to take too damn long. I've got to catch a tour of Krumlov Castle that I can't be late for. The pictures don't really do the place justice, anyways. Particularly at night. In the evening, the view of the Charles bridge and the castle are really stunning, and my little point-and-shoot doesn't do all that well in low light. Guess you had to be there. Oh wait, I'm sorry, you were all back in the US and had to work the next day. Sucka's!!!!!!!!! Ha!
Other hightlights of Prague were the old town, the Jewish quarter, and just the architecture in general. And the price of the food is a winner. I can have a nice 2 or 3 course meal with several glasses of wine for around $25. And I have. Many times. Twice a day, every day, without exception. (OK, I lied, one day I had 3 meals--lunch, early dinner, and late dinner.) I tried the local beer, and as far as I can tell it's very good, but since I'm a non-beer drinker it doesn't really float my boat. Any of the places I eat I'm able to get the Moravian (eastern Czech) wine, though, and that suits me just fine. I've had a few glasses that were ho-hum, but most of it is in the range of quite good to absolutely fantastic. I had one a few days ago that if I didn't know what I was drinking I would have thought it was a $80 bottle or red Burgundy, or maybe a really high-end Rioja. And it was about 2 bucks a glass. I'm blowing back through Prague today on my way to Warsaw, and I think I'll actually go back to that restaruant for a little more wine and the Czech Duck I love so much. It's a roasted 1/2 duck with braised red and white cabbage and potato dumplings. Yummy!!!!!!
I'm getting by just fine on my light packing. Basically all I brought was 6 t-shirts, 2 dress shirts (both black, maybe not the swiftest move), a couple pair of jeans, one pair of pants, and other accoutrement. Probably didn't need the pants, as nobody wears them over here, but I suppose they're good in case I ever need to look really smooth. One night I threw them on because I didn't want to wear a t-shirt where I was eating but was getting sick of the black shirt and jeans thing. Found out pretty quickly that if you ever want do draw some serious attention from the ladies in Prague, all you to do is throw on a generic pair of grey Banana Republic pants. I got the impression all the girls were saying to themselves "Hey, this guy is wearing pants! He must be some kind of millionair playboy!". Apparently, the doormen of the various cabarets had the same thought. A couple of them damn near tripped over themselves running over to me in order to give me the standard spiel: "Come in, we have the most beautiful girls in town, two drinks free". In my 4 days in Prague, I never did quite figure out if "cabaret" was a euphemism for "strip club" or "brothel". I guess I'll save that for another trip (note to my mother: In case you missed it, that was a joke).
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Here's the Plan
It's the week before, and I'm just about ready. Here's the itinerary by day:
- Arrive in Prague (Czech Republic) mid-afternoon, Prague
- Prague
- Kutna Hora (Czech Republic) + Prague
- Prague
- Cesky Krumlov (Czech Republic)
- Cesky Krumlov + Prague
- Warsaw (Poland)
- Krakow (Poland)
- Krakow
- Krakow + Auschwitz
- Krakow
- Eger (Hungary)
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Budapest + Danube Bend
- Budapest
- Budapest
- Budapest
- Loooong day train to Ljubljana (Slovenia)
- Ljubljana + drive around the Karst region
- Ljubljana + drive around the Julian Alps
- Ljubljana
- Zagreb (Croatia)
- Plitvice Lakes (Croatia)
- Split (Croatia)
- Dubrovnik (Croatia)
- Dubrovnik
- Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
- Fly home :-(
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Commence Blogging!
The blog is up! Start checking it out after August 24th for news and updates on my trip!
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