Adventures in Far Far Away Lands

Himalayas!

2008-08-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

A new shrekking adventure is in the works -- Hiking to the Everest Base Camp ! Stay tuned for pictures & details

Luxor

2008-04-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

We visited the temple of Karnak today. The structure is massive, and is covered with egyptian hieroglyphs. Just a glimpse...

A sailboat on the Nile. We go up the river in one of the bigger boats (like the one in the back) tomorrow evening.
Oh..and I got to ride a camel today :) Pictures coming later (I only have a hard copy)

Cairo

2008-04-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

In one word Cairo is hectic. Everything around the pyramids is organized quite well, and the number of touts is manageable. The egyptian museum though is another story - full of tours trying to speak over each other (heh I was part of one), the building is old, the labels date from many years back (most are typewritten on yellowing paper, some are handwritten). Nonetheless, the amount of stuff in it is astonishing.

The last photo is of a KFC delivery motorbike. (Incidentally taken while standing under a Pizza hut sign. The Amman airport also had its fare share of american fast food places. It was the last place I expected to find a Popeyes fried chicken shop.

pictures

2008-04-04T15:43:00.000-07:00

Made it to egypt

2008-04-04T15:27:00.003-07:00

After some flight delays, and unexpected detours, i've made it to egypt & had a glimpse of the pyramids. Some petra images attached.

ps. my bags have now been to Beirut.

Jordan

2008-04-03T07:40:00.001-07:00

I happily made it to Amman..unfortunately my luggage didn't.

Regardless, Petra is absolutely amazing, and is worth the 24 hours (almost to the minute) that it took me to get here. Pictures will come up later, need to sort through the 100+ already taken. More petra tonight & some tomorrow, then to Cairo by tomorrow evening.

Egypt & Jordan

2008-03-31T19:34:00.000-07:00

Off to a new adventure.

April 1: NY -> Amman ->Petra -> Amman -> Cairo -> Luxor -> Aswan -> Abu Simbel -> Cairo -> Amman -> Dead Sea -> Amman -> NY: April 14.

back home

2007-07-27T15:43:00.000-07:00

Like all good things, this adventure has come to an end. Some fun statistics:

Modes of transportation: car, plane, bus (scheduled & chartered on the street), train, tram, subway, escalator (it's a mode of transport in Hong Kong!), boat (speedboat, long tail boat, crazy chinese ferry boat), tuk-tuk, elephant. [missing from the list: helicopter]

Miles flown: around 29,000 (which averages out to a crazy 800 miles per day)

Countries visited: 5 + 2 Special Administrative Regions
Passport pages filled up with stamps & visas: about 5

Things lost: sunglasses, a watch (on the last day), and a little under10 pounds.

pictures taken: around 900

timezones to readjust to: 10 (or 14 depending which way you count)

Climbing climbing climbing

2007-07-25T06:33:00.001-07:00

And of course Railay bay has spectacular climbing... the pictures below don't do it justice, it's simply amazing.

This was a nice 25m climb...waaay high.
The palm tree does not make for a good hold, it's a bit wobbly.
This one definitely took a bit of mental effort to lead, but I got it in the end (the ratings here are definitely overrated - this climb was a 6b+ on the french system / 5.11a on the american system, and I would never be able to lead something that hard).
The famous cave on Tonsai beach. The rusty ladder leads to another terrace of climbing above. The stalactites make for some good holds.

Taking a break inside the cave, only about 20 feet up.

Done with the inner cave climb. Too bad it looks like I climbed the ladder.. I really didn't - the stalactite on the right was pretty handy though.

The paradise that is Railay bay

2007-07-25T06:26:00.000-07:00

I promised some pictures, so here we are. Our hotel:

The beach in the morning - the long tail boats will take you to nearby islands or other beaches.
looking the other way on the beach.
Another view:

The water is almost hot, the sand is silky smooth, what more could you ask for?

ps

2007-07-24T07:27:00.000-07:00

i moved computers in an effort to upload some pictures, but this one just shocks me whenever i touch it (which includes plugging in a USB cable). I can't say I didn't try though..

Railay Beach

2007-07-24T07:03:00.000-07:00

Railay beach is absolutely gorgeous. The water is almost hot, you can easily stay in for an hour w/o feeling a tiny bit cold, the sand is silky smooth, and the cliffs surrounding the beach make it all the more picturesque. I wish the computer in this overpriced internet cafe was a bit faster so I could upload some pictures, but with 256megs of ram it can barely handle the internet.. the plan for tomorrow: find a better computer :)

Went climbing for a full day today, unfortunatley no deep water soloing for me: this is low season, and the guy who does it needs at least 8 people to do it. We were able to assemble a group of 3, but that was far too little.. :( next time, i guess. But we still climbed right on the beach today, which made for some good views.

Tomorrow Lila & I are going on an all day snorkeling / island hopping adventure. Should be a blast.

Chiang Mai

2007-07-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

Ah...thailand..the land of cooking courses, waterfalls & elephants (at least those are the parts that I've seen this far). We are even staying at a guesthouse with a beautiful courtyard that has its own small waterfall :)

Our first day here we decided to go for a cooking course. It was run on an organic farm outside of town and was incredibly well organized. We ate all of the food that we made & got a recipe book to take with us (so there's a slight chance i'll be making some thai food again).

Today we had a day long adventure that included hiking through some local villages, swimming at a waterfall (we dove in seconds after this shot):

and riding elephants through the jungle! We bought some sugar cane and bananas before the ride & fed our elephant throughout the hour long trip.

The trip ended with some rafting on long bamboo rafts down a small river. Even small rapids (grade I, maybe II) were super exciting. The only downside to the day was that it rained non-stop, but after we went swimming in the waterfall we were super wet anyway :) The rain did however wipe out my thoughts of going climbing tomorrow.

We are off to Railey beach on Monday morning & will stay there until thurday afternoon, before heading back to bangkok to catch our flights home. Hopefully we'll get some good weather for climbing and some deep water soloing.

Although I didn't do it in Hong Kong, I am getting a suit tailored here in Chiang Mai...it's been quite an experience :)

Needless to say the food here has been amazing...to top it off, I just had the best pad thai ever from a street vendor for 30 baht (~$1USD).

Cambodia

2007-07-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

We got into Cambodia at 7am local time, after getting a visa & getting picked up by a tuk-tuk (a motorcycle towing a two person carriage) we were in our hotel by 8, and back on the road by 9, making the most of our time in Cambodia.

Our first glimpse of the temples:

Closeup of the majestic Angkor Wat ( I have about 80 more pictures of it)

Here's one :)

And here's another...the "reflective pool" is a bit on the dirty side, but serves its purpose well.

We then moved on to the temple of smiling faces, there're 216 in total, each facing either north, south, east or west.

And then we pretended to be in the Tombraider movie (this is actually where it was filmed)
Can you believe this tree?

Today we went to see the floating villages... these houses are moored near the river banks. You can walk on the banks, but most people are in boats... There are little grocery canoes that float around with vegetables, etc. A bit reminiscent of Venice, but only a bit.

Notice the blue sky in the middle of the rainy season :) We were lucky yesterday as it started raining just as we got into our tuk tuk at the end of the day, today was just sunny and hot (not surprisingly both of us got a little burnt).

We are off to Chiang Mai, Thailand tomorrow for a few days. Hopefully I'll get a little bit of climbing in there, before attempting to do some deep water soloing at Raleigh / Tonsai beaches.

Siem Reap

2007-07-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

After meeting up with Lila at the Singapore airport at 5am, we made it to Siem Reap and had a full day tour around Ankgor Wat. The place is amazing, I can't believe it didn't make the new 7 wonders of the world. We are off for the day, but chances are I'll get some pictures up in 12 hours or so.

Hong Kong

2007-07-15T06:20:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong... After stuffing outselves silly with dim sum the girls went shopping, and I went up to the peak to get a good look at the city. The city is on a hill, and our hotel was quite a ways up, luckily Hong Kong has the world's longest series of escalators. In the morning the escalator goes down, but at 10am it switches and goes back up. The ride from the sea to where we were staying near the top took about 10 minutes..

My second day there I caught a ferry to Lantau island, which in addition to having the new HK airport (which is absolutely wonderful!) also has the world's largest sitting bronze buddha statue (I believe all of the qualifiers are necessary :) There is a monastery on the grounds which serves yummy vegetarian chinese food. The stairs were painful in the blistering heat.

At the top:

Returning from Macau I couldn't resist the picture of the night skyline.

Leaving TLG

2007-07-15T06:14:00.001-07:00

The ferry to take us across the river. If you look closely you can spot the cave where the ferry operator was sleeping slight above the leftmost boat. Needless to say the village is on top of the very steep hill...

4 very happy people on our private bus to Lijiang. About an hour and a half into the two and a half hour trip the driver would abruptly stop & tell us to get out. A few seconds later a small minivan pulled up and took us the rest of the way. The driver went back to the village to pick up 11 more people for the same route...

Our celebratory snack of fresh lychees. The lonely planet claimed that lychee wine is popular in Lijiang, but no one we asked had ever heard of it. So we picked up some fresh ones on the street. We ate most of them in the next 14 hours.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

2007-07-15T06:11:00.001-07:00

Lijiang

2007-07-15T06:04:00.001-07:00

Women in traditional Naxi costumes dancing in the street.

Me, Carri & Dian in Lijiang.
More traditional architecture.
Lijiang at night.
Carri and Dian in Lijiang at night, with lots of touristy souvenir shops in the backgroud

We later learned that this building was built primarily for the tourists in 1997. It's still gorgeous though.

good bye china

2007-07-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

I just went through passport control at hong kong (and found some free internet) I wish all airports had it. It still has not USB port, so no pictures still.

Yesterday saw me going on a day trip to Macau, which was quite interesting. It definitely has a bit of a las vegas feel to it, but without as much glitz (yet - there's a lot of construction going on). The single daytrip resulted in 5 passport stamps - one for leavnig HK, one for entering & leaving Macau & then two more on entering HK (they always give two).

Alas, I did not get a taylored suit while at HK, there wasn't enough time... but there's still hope, people say getting them made in thailand is even better :)

Now onto singapore for a couple of days

-sergei

HK

2007-07-12T00:05:00.000-07:00

Ah Hong Kong, what a change... The city is hot, humid, modern, full of people and quite clean :) SOmetimes you forget this is technically part of China, but then realize that the blog is still blocked by the firewall, so no comment reading for me for another couple of days.

The one gripe I have about the city is that internet is incredibly difficult to find. I guess the point is that everyone has it at home, so they don't need internet cafes...on the other hand the hotels cator to business visitors & charge an arm and a leg for an horu of internet... So no pictures until I find a real internet cafe instead of kiosks scattered in coffee shops across the city.

2007-07-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

Tiger leaping gorge was amazingly beautiful, although a bit wet :) It was cloudy, and raining on and off during our two day trek, but the real adventure came at the end.

Coming down to the last guesthouse we planned on getting a ride back to the starting point and then taking a bus back from there. However, the constant rain the night before cause a few landslides which completely blocked the road back. Not wanting to do the hike in reverse in one day, we found someone who drove us a few kilometers further down stream, to a sign that said "ferry 500m". About 2.5km (and 40 minutes) later we found the ferry stop, shouted across the river to wake up the ferry captain and soon made it into town on the opposite side.

The town people told us there was only one car in town and it had already gone to Lijiang, and wouldn't be back till 10pm. Not deterred we started walking around and saw a bus returning from Lijiang. After some quick negotiations we chartered it for the 4 of us (3 of us, plus a stanford business school student who we met on the way) all the way back to Lijiang, and made it home by 7.

Pictures are forthcoming, in the meantime, we are off to HK in a few hours. The adventure continues...

2007-07-08T01:13:00.001-07:00

Took things easy today, visited a small local town of Baisha, and talked to the famous (thanks to a nytimes article 20 years ago) Dr Ho. Off for the tiger leaping gorge trek tomorrow.

2007-07-07T02:54:00.000-07:00

We went to the great wall yesterday, going as far away from Beijing as possible to find the least touristy part of the wall. View from the valley below..

On the wall..

You can see it stretch for miles..

Now we made it to Lijiang, with a nice pedestrian old city. It's reminiscent of some small european towns..except for the pagodaesque architecture.

Our hotel:

In the land of Dragons

2007-07-05T01:37:00.001-07:00

. After waking up early in the morning, to avoid the heat, the crowds & the traffic, we made it to the Forbidden city, where we were greeted by many dragons.

The whole complex is immense, and quite crowded, but we were able to find a few secluded spots.

We went to grab some lunch afterwards. The food here has been amazing, turns out I like Peking duck (though perhaps only in Peking :).

And what pray tell greeted me right after lunch? a reminder of work life.

We just booked a tour to the great wall for tomorrow. I'm excited!

China

2007-07-04T00:25:00.000-07:00

I've made it to China. First impressions...it's busier & smoggier than New Zealand (shocking, I know). Unfortunately the internet connection is painfully slow, so I won't be posting too much. The current plan is to visit the Forbidden City tomorrow, the Great Wall on Friday & then take off for Tiger Leaping Gorge on sat.

NZ must want me to stay...

2007-07-02T02:55:00.000-07:00

because my flight was cancelled this afternoon... so i'm spending another 24 hours in the land of the lone white cloud...gives me a chance to see a little bit of queenstown I suppose.

The last days in NZ

2007-06-30T19:47:00.001-07:00

I've spent the past couple of days just hiking around Wanaka. More ambitious plans fell apart either due to the weather (flight to the fjords at Milford sound) or lack of snow (heliskiing), but it's been nice to relax in the beautiful scenery of the southern alps.

Tomorrow it's time to ship the vast majority of warm stuff back home, then catch a bus to a plane, and start the long way to Beijing, which appears to be a cool 88 degrees this week (down from 100+ last week).

I'll miss this land down under :)

Ice Climbing

2007-06-29T01:12:00.000-07:00

Ice climbing was great, super, amazing, exhilarating, tiring, exciting...in a word awesome!

We started the first day with a beautiful drive to Fox glacier, and then did some basic crampon, ice ax technique. The 2nd day was really a highlight...after hiking in two hours into the Franz Joseph glacier, we did some ice bouldering, easy toproping, and then I got to do an ice lead! It was on easy ground (ice :) but nonetheless, very exciting and a bit tiring. After learning to build anchors, and a few rappels, we did an overhanging toprope. Around midnight onto day 3 it started to rain heavily, but no fear, because Franz Joseph has an indoor(!!) ice climbing wall (3rd biggest in the world, apparently the biggest is in Scotland). So we spent a few hours there before the long drive back to Wanaka.

My guide, Marty near a wall on Fox glacier.
On approach to the climbing spot at Franz Joseph..

Overhanging toprope...not particularly good form :)
Better form.
On the top!!
I have more pictures, but they'll have to wait until I'm back in the states.

Overall, I must say the rock climbing experience helped quite a bit. A lot of the technique is very similar (keep you weight on your feet, etc etc). But also helping a very experienced guide (he's leading a trip to Everest in a few months, if anyone is interested) all to myself was wonderful!

Now I'm back in Wanaka where it's been raining all day, and is scheduled to rain for the next couple of days. I was hoping to get a chance to go heliskiing (weeeee), but it may not happen due to the weather, so I'll probably just end up going skiing.

In the end, two thumbs way up for ice climbing.

Wanaka

2007-06-26T01:07:00.000-07:00

After some adventures after my flight got canceled this morning, I am in Wanaka. The south island is simply gorgeous, albeit a bit chilly. Most people are here to ski, so everyone is hoping for snow. I'm going against the grain, hoping for sun, as ice climbing in the snow is no fun (i presume).

Another day, another rainbow

2007-06-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

I know I've been obsessing over them, but this is simply ridiculous. This image doesn't do it justice, but this is the closest I've been to that pot of gold...The road went right by the right end of the rainbow, but by the time I got there it started raining and the rainbow was gone.

I was thinking a lot today about traveling off season. Sure, some things are closed, some towns seem (or are) completely dead, and the weather is more often rainy /too hot / too cold/ etc. But then, you get that perfect day (weather wise), but because it's off season there's absolutely no one else around. This is what the first half of today was like - a gorgeous sunny day. So I headed up to the beach on the east coast and did some light hiking with only a handful of people joining me. Alas, not too many pictures from there, but I stopped by a waterfall on the way back.

One second a nice, quiet, peaceful waterfall.

The next, a bunch of whitewater rafters flying down it. (In case you were wondering, I was not one of them )

Tomorrow is a travel day, and then the ice climbing begins. I just got a note saying my course was moved from the mountains to the Franz Joseph glacier, so no waterfall ice climbing, but rather glacier ice climbing :)

More adventures

2007-06-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

Well, first the promised pictures from yesterday...I have no access to photoshop or picasa to touch these up, but they should give a sense of what i was talking about.

The rainbow:

Sheep dotting the landscape:

Today I went to see one of the geysers that Rotorua is famous for. It erupts (or rather is induced to erupt with some soap to loosen to surface tension) daily at 10:15. As you can tell it's a little windy here :)

In the afternoon I decided to be a big tourist and saw a sheep show :) which culminated with a guy shearing a sheep on stage... it was just as touristy as it sounds, but I'll save you from the pictures (for now).

Kiwiland

2007-06-22T21:55:00.000-07:00

My first 36 hours in NZ saw me:

learning to drive on the left (not that bad really, the hardest thing so far has been the fact that the rearview mirror is in the wrong place)
Doing some caving, including a zipline in complete darkness
Seeing many rainbows (I think I am up to 6 or 7 today), NZ should fight Hawaii for having a rainbow on the license plate.
and much much more.

I'd post a few pictures of the lush rolling hills dotted with sheep, but the computer I'm at won't let me connect my camera, so for now you'll just have to imagine them...

The plan for tomorrow is to explore Rotorua and the thermal areas around it.. Today the weather has been unprecitable, partly cloudy on eminute, raining heavily 5 minutes later, and sunny 5-10 minutes after that. The only thing that has been consistent is the fierce wind. Speaking of the weather, Queenstown, the airport I'm scheduled to fly into next Tuesday has been completely snowed in for the past couple of days. The radio was blaming it on wintry antarctic winds...go figure :)

Onwards from HK

2007-06-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

July 15: Jetstar 692. Leave HK 11:05am, arrive SIN 2:40pm
July 17: Jetstar 595. Leave SIN 6:00am, arrive REP 7:05am

Amazingly this costs less than $200, while all of the other direct / one stop options from HK to REP that I was able to find were $500+. It also gives me a chance to see Singapore.

off to the airport in a few minutes...

Current Travel Plan:

2007-06-20T01:11:00.000-07:00

5 weeks, 6 countries, roughly 30k miles to fly. All very much subject to change.

China tickets

2007-06-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

July 7: China Eastern Flight 5714
Leave Beijing 8:20
stopover at Kunming
Arrive Lijiang 13:20

July 11:

China Eastern Flight 5723
Leave Lijiang 12:20
Arrive Kunming 13:10

DragonAir Flight 761
Leave Kunming 15:15
Arrive Hong Kong 17:40

New Zealand Day 1 Plan

2007-06-16T16:31:00.001-07:00

Caving in Waitomo with waitomo adventures:...might as well go for the longest one...

link

Return ticket

2007-06-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 27

Northwest Flight: 28
Leave Bangkok 6:00AM
Arrive: Tokyo 2:35 PM

Northwest Flight: 86
Depart: Tokyo 8:00 PM
Arrive: Seattle 1:00 PM

Northwest Flight: 4021 - Alaska Flight 0384
Depart: Seattle 3:00 PM
Arrive: SFO 5:10 PM

Chinese Visa

2007-05-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

Receieved! One completely empty visa page left in the passport

Ice Climbing

2007-05-28T10:30:00.000-07:00

Ice Climbing Class:

June 27 - 29 + 1 day weather contingency.

http://www.aspiringguides.com/winter_waterfall_ice_climbing.html

First Tickets

2007-05-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

Wednesday June 20

Air New Zealand 007
Leave SFO 9:15pm
Arrive Auckland - AKL 5:30am (Friday June 22)
Boeing 777

Tuesday June 26:

Air New Zealand 5001 (Operated by Air New Zealand Link)
Leave Rotorua - ROT 9:15am
Arrive Queenstown - ZQN 12:30pm (through Christchurch)
ATR Turboprop

Monday July 2

Air New Zealand 0648
Leave Queenstown - ZQN 4:45pm
Arrive Auckland - AKL 6:30pm

Air New Zealand 0039
Leave Auckland - AKL 11:30pm
Arrive Hong Kong - HKG 6:45am (July 3)

Air China 0118
Leave Hong Kong - HKG 8:30am
Arrive Beijing - PEK 11:35am