twinga

Cuba part 1

Here´s a quick travel report. So far we spent three days in Varadero, Cuba, to get used to the climate and sleep off our jet lag. Varadero means all inclusive resorts with tourists from all over the world. It´s not too busy though, definitely less touristy than Cancun, Mexico and the likes. Either way, I don´t think people who come here actually venture out to see the real Cuba. The real Cuba for instance means not getting whatever food you like at this very moment. 

 

So we spent the first day sleeping most of the day as it was very windy outside (our guess is the weather was part of the tropical storm Ida). The next day was the perfect beach day. Crystal blue-turquoise waters and an almost white sand beach. Beautiful. And then we took off with a bus to Trinidad, where we are now.

 

This town is really something. Hardly any cars (and if so, then the old American ones you see on TV), even less motorcycles but lots of horse drawn carriages and pedestrians. Very fascinating. We are staying in an historic "casa particular" with a very nice old couple who makes breakfast and cooks us dinner. House dog and cat included :-).

 

Right now we are in the state owned Internet facility and I´ll better finish up this post before I lose it - one never knows ;-). Hope everyone is well! Viva la revolucion! :-) (There are tag lines with communist content everywhere and the book shops are full with Marx, Che and Castro books ... ).

San Francisco to Hood River - Trip photos are up

I finally managed to upload our trip photos. Sorry to my lovely friends in Dubai. I know you can't access Flickr but there are too many pics to post. One more reason to come see me in Germany - so that I can show you all the photographs ;) Pictures are here.

Driving from California to Oregon

Lying in bed with free WIFI at some random motel in Grand Pass, Oregon, which for once is real value for money. First thing you notice when you cross the border from California to Oregon: no state tax and thus things get a little cheaper.

We just came back from "dinner" at Blondie's Bistro, the last place that still served food (if only salad) at 8 p.m. on a Sunday evening. Wow... I always thought in America you can get everything 24/7. Guess that's only true for Highway McDonalds :). Either way, Blondie's was a great choice. Our woman bar tender traveled through Heidelberg once. She also taught English in Japan, so we had a pretty interesting conversation with her - including her observation that my American English sounded a bit Indian ;). Well...

So, the past two days we rediscovered what driving means in America: Huge distances with nothing much around, which can get pretty tiring. We are still wondering how our friends could be serious about the fact that you can drive from San Francisco to Hood River in only 12 hours. Wow... that's some serious road tripping. Granted... we took the scenic routes and stopped at tourist attractions like the Redwood National Park and Eureka. 

The great (negative) take away of today was: Don't ever order an "oyster cocktail" for $6.95. This mean you'll get the huge oysters nobody would normally eat I guess. I only know oysters in the shell that are about 1.5 inches in size max. Well, those ones looked like living aliens, and I can't believe I managed to eat three of the six. T sypathized with me and tried one too. I wish I had captured the face on camera :))).

All right then... here are the pics :) (this blog kind of cuts off the pics a bit. Click on them to see the whole ones)

T in front of a Redwood tree

 

Eureka, California

Awesome pancakes and eggs benedict in Eureka, CA

 

Ever noticed that some trucks are taller than their owners?? Insanity!!

Driving along the coast

Out of the shell oysters ... arggghhhh...

The only thing still open at 9.30 p.m. on a Sunday in Grants Pass, Oregon. A drive thru coffee shop.

 

Oh, and have we introduced our beautiful rental car yet? (Manual window openers and NO central locks included)

Sonoma

Before heading up to Oregon and drive up along the coast (Mendocino, Redwood National Park, etc.) we decided to stop over in Sonoma to do some real wine tasting for once. I have always been the driver when I took people up here, so now it was time to do the real thing!!!

April is peak season here, so we were lucky to get an (overpriced) room at El Pueblo Inn. Cool enough, we had a patio and a fire place, which we even used. Nice nice... We then immediately walked to Sonoma town, admiring the cute little houses along the way.

At the center square we now had to hurry up. Lots of wine tasting places close down at 5 p.m. (why, I wonder??). So we just let our instincts take us to a place and we had a really cool wine tasting at Charles Creek. The guy was super knowledgable. One interesting story: We talked about the movie Sideways and how the character in the movie doesn't like Merlot. The insider joke here: The character had been saving up a bottle of some 1961 wine for a special occastion which to a large part consists of Merlot. I didn't know that :)

After tasting (and swallowing) nine different wines, including a most amazing chocolate infused red desert wine, it was time for dinner. To keep it short: La Salette Restaurant was amazing!! Another bottle of wine later, we were ready for bed by 10 p.m. :)

P.S. The weather is amazing. 23C degrees (or more?) and sunshine.

Wine tasting

A Mustang even J.F. can afford ;) (insider joke)

Dinner ... the fish: before and after


Northern Californian coast line

San Francisco

What a trip!!! Literally ... It's been a whirlwind so far and it has been great. Let's see what all T and I have managed to squeeze in so far:
- Sleep two nights at the really cool W Hotel (thanks N!!)
- Hang out in the Mission, especially at Zeitgeist beergarden, the Casanova (my favorite neigborhood bar), Dolores Park (on Easter Sunday, with the Hunky Jesus contest)
- Met baby Max
- Hung out with friends and ate at Sunflower, Sushi Zone, Park Chow, Cancun Taqueria and Abacus
- Had more drinks at Toronado
- Went climbing at Mission Cliffs
- Rode the Cable Car, which I had never done before (really!)
- Had drinks at Bourbon and Branch, which were amazing

and and and...

There's always so much to do and see in San Francisco, it really never gets boring. Tomorrow we are going to have drinks with my co-workers from back then. I can't wait to see everyone.

Here are some pics...

 

Fergburger

Amy, Alex, Jeremy, Kristin, Mike, Wei: Here's Tobi in 2006 eating the famous Fergburger :) .... and the weather sucked, too ;-)

Have fun! We'll see (some of) you soon!

Trip photos are up!!

Yeayyy, finally managed to upload the pics. Take a mini break and flip through our trip album on flickr. Malaysia - Singapore - Borneo - Thailand - Dubai - November 2008.

For the fast ones: Click here and then in the upper right corner "Show info", so that you can see some info about where the pic was taken, etc.

Or go to the normal set overview my photo stream, which will be in reverse order, so it's not that great...

Here's my all time favorite pic of the trip. I just love it:

And it's already December 1 !!!

On November 2nd we took off for almost four whole weeks of vacation in Southeast Asia and Dubai. And they are already over. Wow! Actually, I have to say that it definitely felt like four weeks, so no complaints here. Photographs will follow as soon as we have downloaded and sorted out everything. For now we are just grateful that:

- After a rainy week in Thailand we did NOT fly out from Bangkok but from Krabi
- We had a great three days in Dubai with Navin and Noura. Tons of fun and dancing at The 400 Night Club, going out for late night dinners, checking out the Palm, indoor skiing, seeing a shark shit at the Dubai Aquarium and having drinks on the balcony of Navin's cool apartment on the 17th floor
- We didn't get on our flight from Dubai to Munich on Saturday (it was overbooked) and spent another cool evening in Dubai, flying out Sunday morning
- We reached home safely despite sandstorms and already had our first hot wine and Bratwurst at the Augsburg Christkindlesmarkt
- last but not least: we are right now enjoying the first batch of Tobse's mum's Plaetzchen (Christmas cookies). Here's a pic:

It's raining - again. Thailand - part 2

It seems to be the motto of this year's November vacations. A friend is in Brazil and it's raining there as well. We are in Krabi right now and were literally just hanging around our hotel all day today. It was raining cats and dogs outside. Tomorrow is our flight back to Kuala Lumpur and then we are continuing back through Dubai. Two more days in Dubai should guarantee sunshine though. And our peeps there will guarantee lots of fun. Can't wait :)

 

So... what have been the highlights and the downsides of the trip so far. Let's see. Let's start with the bad stuff:

 

MINUS

 

- We knew it would be overcast in Malaysia during rainy season. The rain wasn't as bad though: maybe 2 hours a day, sometimes not at all. But we totally underestimated the humidity. Hell, can a human being sweat that much???? I think Tobse and I never showered as much ever. Twice a day was normal ... at least. We are surprised we still have skin on our bodies!

- It's hard to plan a Malaysia trip ... should you first go West and then South, and then over to Borneo, or only go to Borneo and not to Peninsular Malaysia, and what about the East Coast and the tea estates? In short: a lot of decisions had to be made all the time. It can get exhausting after a while.

- Interesing to notice that Thais speak very bad English even at major tourist locations like Ko Phi Phi.

- Did NOT like the huge swarm of tiger fish following me around the water and then starting to nibble on me!!! I guess I'm not made for diving. Snorkeling already scares me to death!

- You can't get decent Thai food anywhere around tourist places. The non spiciest food ever.

- I have been sick for the past 6 days. The worst cold in a long time plus some other stuff... let's just say that about three days or so were useless. That said it didn't matter that much that...

- for most of our 7 days in Thailand it's been raining. The calendar says it's peak tourist season here. HUH?? Rain rain rain ... but

 

PLUS

 

- We had a wonderful day trip to Bamboo Island in Thailand when it was actually sunny for about four hours or so. The slight tan you might notice when you see us again is from that day :)

- It was awesome to just hang around Village House on Borneo (see earlier blogpost) and have it all to ourselves. Read, eat, sleep, play chess (Tobse always won... I wonder why ;) )

- It was great to see the rough monsoon sea on Borneo. Wow, what a grey and scary water monster!

- Chinese, Malay AND Indian food in Malaysia. What else do you need (the answer is: German bread, but we'll have that soon enough ;) )

- Melaka's old town. Super cute! Georgetown was cute too, but a bit too big and hectic.

- The Singapore skyline by night

- Seeing the sea lion kiss a scared Singaporean kid at Singapore zoo. So funny!

- Awesome night market food on Krabi. Finally real Thai food!

- Tobse's face when he saw the fried grasshoppers and other stuff the Thais eat as a snack. He then told me that he once drank a glass of fresh snake blood with the snake's heart in it, topped off with rice wine. Hell, what can be worse?????????

- If you try hard, you can even be successful with bargaining in tourist-Thailand (never forget that grin on Tobse's face when he was successful, ha ha!)

- Appreciating again what we have back home.

 

What else do you want. Ah yes, I forgot: two more days of sunshine in Dubai!

 

So long friends. Talk to you back home!

Malaysia part 3 - Thailand part 1

After spending two more days in Malaysia (Georgetown, Penang), we decided to move on and discover a new culture. Is it our short attention span or was it really the hot, humid monsoon weather? Either way, Georgetown had it's nice parts, kind of similar to Melaka, but two days were enough and we were kind of done with cities and really ready for some nice beaches.

 

So we booked a minivan to Krabi, South of Thailand. After an estimated 3 to 4 hours of sleep, the van picked us up at five in the morning. We crossed the land boarder into Thailand, had a break in Hat Yai to have some breakfast (ok, really the bus company didn't tell us that we had to change buses, so we had to wait for 1.5 hours) and then we moved on, picked up all kinds of random people on the side of the road, and finally, the minivan (and yes, it was "mini") was loaded to full capacity with 12 people. Did I mention that I woke up that morning with a beginning bad cold, had a sore throat and a headache? Well, every journey at some point has it's annoying part. Ours was a total of 14 hours in a packed minivan until we finally reached the final destination: Ko Lanta.

 

In Krabi we were totally exhausted and some travel dude sold us Ko Lanta as the place to go (cheap cheap, Ko Phi Phi and Phuket expeeeensive, full with people, Ko Lanta muuuuuch bettaaaa, nice beacheeees). He also told us the bus would need 1.5 hrs to get here. Truth was: it took another 3.5 hours, including two ferry rides. Anyways...

 

Here we are in a fun little "hut resort" (Manu, Navin: it's like a better Gokarna) where our basic bamboo hut costs 300 baht (about 8.5 USD) a night. The beach is a bit rocky, so we might move on to something nicer tomorrow. People are chilled though, food is excellent, and we can't wait to do the island tours, including kayaking, snorkeling, etc.