came home hills

Montreal

2013-08-04T23:54:00.003-04:00

Montreal is a place I'd like to return to again; it's a great city, and a lot of fun. The 2 most famous Montreal foods, I think, are wood-fired bagels, and Poutine. I started by visiting the 2 most venerable bagels shops, using the amazing bike sharing service, Bixi.

The houses in Montreal are lovely:

Here is a Bixi station (I used them in Toronto too.)

The Museum of Fine Arts is free! They were having a Chihuly show, for not-free:

Mary, Queen of the World, Cathedral:

Famous food number 2, and with vegetarian gravy:

I got caught in a crazy rain storm, and sheltered in a doorway for 20 minutes:

This is the inside of the amazing Notre Dame in Old Montreal:

Ontario > Quebec

2013-08-04T23:29:00.000-04:00

Another long day of driving! But I managed to squeeze in the Capital of Canada, Ottawa:

I did the tour of the East Building of Parliament, which was free, and pretty educational. This is the original office of the first Governor General:

After a day in Ottawa, I hauled butt to Montreal, and was amazed and delighted to find it bigger and way more cosmopolitan than I'd remembered. I loved this town. The night I arrived was the first night of their Fashion Week, and I caught a weird runway show with DJ and light show:

And walking around Old Montreal at night is a treat, and they light everything up:

North Country

2013-07-31T10:08:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was a lot of driving. It was a tough one, and my ears are still ringing from wind noise. There are thousands of lakes up here, and it was a beautiful drive, at least. But here are some photos!

The most popular beach in Canada, apparently! Water was too cold for swimming on this chilly day in Wasaga Beach:

Saw a moose in Algonquin Provincial Park!

Did a hike about some big white pines

And another quick hike through a spruce bog,on a great boardwalk

Finally made it to my hostel, in the middle of nowhere, and had hundreds of bugs splatter on my helmet, even as I ducked being my windscreen

And is morning, had the region's famous butter tarts:

Ok! I'm off for another long drive to Ottawa and Montreal. bonjour, MPH

Location:Maynooth,Canada

Bruce Peninsula 2

2013-07-30T09:38:00.001-04:00

The Bruce peninsula has been everything I imagined it would be (including freezing cold water), with a little extra New England flavor thrown in to make a man feel more welcome. I highly recommend you all come visit this place. I'll keep it brief, here are some money shots from yesterday:

Indian Head Cove

The Grotto

The inside of Grotto! See the light coming through the cave? I'd been dreaming about this spot for months, so you'd better believe I braved 58 degree water to experience that swim-through

My first cold-water and first fresh-water dive. Saw 4 shipwrecks; not many fish:

And I saw flowering pitcher plants on a hike at sunset! This was an exciting one for me:

Location:Carlton St,Tobermory,Canada

Ontario 1

2013-07-29T09:11:00.001-04:00

Ontario has been amazing so far. Posting blogs from my iPad isn't working great, and the pictures all jumble together. Sorry!
Toronto skyline, from Jamie and Katie's roof deck at night:

And in the morning:

We also had breakfast in the "distillery district" which is old factories, converted into new galleries and brewpubs:

Then I headed north, to the "badlands" which is a result of bad farming a century ago, and makes a sweet stop while driving:

My ride:

I first decided to head to Canada because I had seen photos from the Bruce Peninsula on the Internet. And this was the reason I came:

Lake Huron up here is amazing! Here's a photo from Bug Tub Harbor:

And a sunset from last night:

That's enough for now! Enjoy your week, and safe travels to all. I'm goin swimming!
MPH

Location:Carlton St,Tobermory,Canada

Waterfalls aplenty.

2013-07-27T09:01:00.001-04:00

The weather has been exceptional, if a little chilly. It's been a lot of waterfalls, in Ithaca and obviously in Niagara. Today, I head to the big city of Canada: Toronto! I'm going to reunite with some Canadian friends I worked with in Seoul, which is exciting.
photos:

Taughanock Falls, Ithaca

Robert Treman state park, Ithaca

Niagara, Canada

HorseshoeFalls, Niagara
- Michael

Location:Cataract Ave,Niagara Falls,Canada

Class

2011-08-24T11:45:00.001-04:00

wacky filters and pano

The wilderness

2010-03-15T01:08:00.001-04:00

We stayed for 3 days in the Jungles of Borneo, on the Kinabatangan River. It's known for the dense concentration of wildlife, and it was pretty great. The water level of the river is at an alltime low, so many animals have migrated elsewhere for the season, but we still managed to see wild Orangutans, Gibbons, Snakes, Hornbills, and lots more. Take a look at the flickr photos to see what I was able to capture with my small lens!

Kinabalu

2010-03-11T21:03:00.006-05:00

One of the main things I wanted to accomplish on this trip was to climb Mount Kinabalu in Borneo. And we did it! Weather was perfect, the climb was really tough, and my legs still hurt, 3 days later. But it was amazing and gratifying. The mountain is in a national park, and the climb takes 2 days. Unfortunately, the national park has given the accomodation concession to a private resort company, and this 3rd party has raised the accomodation prices unbelievably. And you are required to book a nights accomodation at the overpriced hostel on the mountain. So, we hiked 6 hours up, and stayed the night at 10000 feet. Then, we woke at 230 and finished the remainder of the hike, which was really gruelling, since the oxygen's fairly thin and it was close to freezing before the sun came up. A large part of the hike was pulling ourselves up on ropes on really steep granite, illuminating the path with headlamps. But we got to the summit with lots of time to see the sky change colors and the amazing sunrise. Amazing experience, great hike and beautiful plantlife and scenery.

Bye bye Bali

2010-03-07T08:25:00.037-05:00

Well, Bali was awesome. Truly great. The timing of our trip was really good; it's the "low season" and the "rainy season" which means that everything was deserted, and for the first time of our trip, we had low-prices and empty beds wherever we wanted to stay.
When we left the Singapore airport, the airline (JetStar) had a 5-hour delay (!) but we were fortunate enough to meet an amazing woman who's from Singapore, but owns a house in Bali and offered to rent it to us. We ended up going to her birthday party, and then renting her amazingly beautiful house for 5 days!

We spent 5 great days in Ubud, which is famous as being the center of arts and culture in Bali, and recently infamous for being the scene of the Author's revelation in "Eat Pray Love." It's a really comfortable place, with a large ex-pat population, and lots of vegetarian food and comforts. We managed to see 2 consecutive nights of dancing, an impromptu Gamelan show for free, and an overly-packed temple with dancing AND gamelan actually being used by locals for a religious ceremony. Music and dance is everywhere, and it's just another facet of their powerful and beautiful spirituality on Bali. One of the dances we went to I have been looking forward to for a long time is the "Kecak" dance. It's an all accapella music and dance performance, with 70 men shouting "Kecak!" in lieu of actual instruments, and it'll give you goosebumps. This video is from the movie Baraka, and it wasn't quite like this when we saw it, But, you get the idea:

Dancers acted out scenes from the Ramayana, simultaneously. We had just learned the full story of the Ramayana in Singapore, so we followed the story, and were very impressed. Eventually and reluctantly, we got a bus to the North Coast, to the sleepy village of Amed, where we did some legendary scuba-diving. We had a great hotel on the beach, with a pool for 15$! Day one, we rented our own equipment, and just walked in the beach off of the hotel, and had an amazing dive. The next day, we had an even better dive at the WWII shipwreck of the USAT Liberty. Easily the best dive in my life; crystal-clear, overflowing with wildlife and at an easy depth.

After beach-bumming it, we headed back to Ubud and rented a car, and spent 3 days driving around central and northern Bali. Driving in Bali is not recommended; the roads are not wide enough for 2 cars to pass comfortably, and like every country in SE Asia, the roads are overrun with scooters. But we survived, only cracking one side-view mirror, and getting rear-ended by a scooter on only one occasion. We climbed an active volcano, went to another northern beach, and drove through amazing rice terraces to stay overnight at a hot-spring.

Hauled butt back to Ubud, hoppped on a mini-van, and got taken to the airport for our flight to Borneo, where we are now. Come tack a look at more photos! 2 weeks in Bali, and some of my favorite photos.
Hope all is well, and I hope this blog post was emailed out automatically, as there has been a problem with my email subscriptions. Also! I bought a plane ticket to America, and I will be landing March 20, coming home for the first time in 15 months! Wee!

Crispy

2010-02-25T23:31:00.000-05:00

We went into the Tourist Info office in Ubud, Bali, to see if anything cultural was happening. They told us a rare cremation ceremony was happening the next day, and we signed up for a group trip to watch the bizarre and exciting Balinese cremation, Ngaben (wikipedia link).
First, a giant bull-shaped sarcophagus is carried down the street in a frantic, weaving sprint, by a group of perhaps 40 men. Then, they load the corpse into a giant temple-shaped carrier

Then a bunch of offerings were carried to the cremation-site

Next, a huge group of people carried the body and it's enormous carrier down the street, with musicians making a lot of noise behind them. In front of them, a truck sprayed water on them the whole way

Sometimes, the whole structure would lean dangerously to one side, which would incite lots of shouting, and faster drumming from the musicians. It was terrifying to watch.

Here's a video of this happening:

Eventually, the procession headed downhill to an area behind a temple, to set-up for the cremation

Next step was to load the corpse into the bull-shaped sarcophagus

After this, there were about 10 minutes of family members making offerings and placing items inside the sarcophagus with the deceased. There was also singing, which was very haunting and the music from the procession continued . Eventually, the lid was put back on the bull, and the fires were lit. In the interest of efficiency, they used propane blowtorches to get the pyre really hot, which is good for disposing of a body quickly. After some time, and directed flames, the bottom started to give way, and the corpse fell out to finish burning in a penned-in metal area. You can see the body falling down here

After that, things mostly broke up, as the cremation guys directed the flames on the body to reduce it to ash as quickly as possible

The whole ceremony was really amazing, and not gruesome at all, even if it seems so. The family was not sad, the music was peppy, and there were only a few tourists (and lots of Balinese) so it didn't seem like a spectacle. Afterwards, Lee Ann decided to try to world-famous roasted pig of Ubud, which may have been a poor-taste in food, as it shared some crispy-skin resemblances to our mornings entertainment.
But she said it was awesome

Cambodge

2010-02-10T04:25:00.003-05:00

Most people count themselves lucky to see Angkor Wat once in their lives. I guess I count myself extremely lucky to have visited it twice now. Although I still haven't seen any other part of Cambodia, for which I apologize to the Khmer people, who do seem very nice.
When we were leaving Burma to fly to Kuala Lumpur, we realized it would be relatively cheap and easy to get an AirAsia flight from KL to Cambodia for about 90$, and that's what we did. After Thaipussam festival, we hopped on a flight and found ourselves landing in Siem Reap very soon after taking off. When I visited 5 years ago, Erin and I traveled overland from Bangkok and I was a pain. Flying is a whole lot easier.
Lee and I decided on a 3 day pass, and followed the suggestion of Lonely Planet guidebook, saving the major attractions of Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat for the last day. I don't recommend this, as we were "templed out" on day 3 and didn't have enough patience to explore the main temples on the last day. We also broke up the 3 days of templing, doing the days non-consecutively, and donating blood to the amazing Angkor Childrens Hospital in the middle of our time in Cambodia. We also made friends with the daughter of our guest-house owners, her name was Chorp Won, and she took us out twice to a public dance/exercise class which was really silly and funny. We also did a spot of pool-hopping, and ate all kinds of tasty food. The main downtown street of Siem Reap has changed entirely in the 5 years since I was here last. It is as busy at parts of Bangkok, and business is booming all over the area for folks in the tourist industry.
When we finished our time in Cambodia, we caught a bus to the Thai border for 8$. 5 years ago, there was no pavement to this border, and I had to hire a taxi to drive the grueling 60 miles at a snail's pace, dodging potholes the size of refrigerators. The road is now paved! We then somehow sweet-talked our way onto a free super-nice minivan with lots of A/C in Thailand and blasted back to Bangkok at ludicrous speeds on the lovely Thai highways.
Feel free to go and look at my favorite images from our week in Cambodia. I've added more specific descriptions of our day to day adventures and sights:

Thaipusam

2010-02-01T20:26:00.002-05:00

We took a short trip to Malaysia, thanks to AirAsia's cheapie tickets, specifically to see the Hindu festival of Thaipusam (read about it on Wikipedia). It was an amazing spectacle, and also quite interesting for it's spirituality and diversity, as well as it's masochistic acts of faith and devotion.
This is a yearly festival I'd read about a few months ago, and decided I really wanted to be in Kuala Lumpur in time to see the celebration, and the timing worked out, flying from Myanmar to Malaysia a few days before the celebration. We also met an amazing couple at the festival; they're Malaysian-born, but ethnically South Indian (Tamil) and took us out after the festival for an amazing dinner and night on the town. Click the photo above to see a few more images from the festival.
Malaysia, from the 4-day peek we got, is an extremely diverse and friendly place where everyone speaks some English, and we really liked the people. Excited to go back in a few weeks.
We're in Cambodia now, looking at Angkor Wat and then back to Thailand.

Burmese days

2010-01-29T10:21:00.007-05:00

The 4th country on our trip, Myanmar is a beautiful country, with beautiful and kind citizens and a harsh and terrible government. It was a trip filled with frustration at transportation and "fees" paid to the government to see the best tourist attractions, but some of the sites were breathtaking.
The people are genuinely surprised and excited to see foreigners, sometimes embarrasingly so! More than once, we had people stop whatever they were doing to point and stare, tapping their neihbors shoulder to share the spectacle of the Foreigners. But we always felt welcome and safe, and were very happy with he innocence of the people, especially since they live under the least innocent regime on earth.
The question of "whether to go" is a unique question travelers must ask themselves before going, as a large chunk of tourist dollars goes to the government, but we avoided entry fees when we could, stayed at independently-run guesthouses and avoided govt-operated transportation throughout the country. Speaking of dollars, we had to bring 100% brand-new US dollars with us, which we acquired in Bangkok. Lee Ann actuay had a perfect 100$ bill rejected by a moneychanger because it had a small spot of blue ink on the corner. Also, we learned that the largest bill in Burma is 1000, which is 1 Dollar, so we ended up changing too much money and carrying a shopping bag of cash with us :)
The main 2 sites to see in the country are 1) Bagan, which is an ancient city filled with Temples, rivaling Angkor Wat and 2) Inle Lake, which is a gorgeous mountain lake with lots of people living on stilt-houses, and making livings as fishermen and farmers. Both places were gorgeous, and worth the trip. I have a lot of photos from each, but I'll just upload a few favorites.

Sawadeeeee!

2010-01-14T11:29:00.004-05:00

Hello! Sorry it's been a while, no?

We've been really busy, in a good way. Thailand always delivers with activities, and excitement and we've been enjoying what it has to offer for almost 2 weeks!

In short:

we went to Chiang Mai
then to Pai which is a cool mountain town that turns into a yupee/hippie market at night and I almost lost my camera and passport on a minibus
back to Chiang Mai and did a cooking school and motorcycled all over the place and up a mountain
went to the old capital of Sukhothai and saw beautifully restored ruins while I fought a 101° fever and felt pretty lousy
went to the neighboring city of Phitsanoluk to meet with an old co-worker from Seoul
and came south to Bangkok to enjoy what this exciting city has for the past few days.

Whew!

I just uploaded a bunch a photos, which are pretty cool, and I wrote small descriptions for most of them. So go look at them on Flickr, and you can visually catch up on my travels if you like!

Luck in Laos

2010-01-04T04:50:00.023-05:00

We took a loooong and freezing cold bus ride from Luang Prabang to the sleepy border town at Huay Xai, ready to cross into Thailand. One of the things we'd been looking forward to the most on this trip was to be the Gibbon Experience. Unfortunately, they require a 1-month advance booking, and we could not possibly specify what date we'd be ready 30 days ago. BUT, the Gibbon Experience office is located right here in Huay Xai, and after breakfast with a group of Koreans we met on the night-bus, I ran to the Gibbon Experience office in town, and begged our way in. A French couple had just canceled, and they said "You can go, if you get ready in 10 minutes." We dropped everything, and stuffed our big travel bags in storage and headed to their own private nature preserve.
The ride out was about 2-hours, driving 10 miles or so into jungle and parking at a dusty village at the end of the road. From there we walked into the jungle, met up with another group and put on our zip-line harnesses. From there, we walked another 90 minutes, using ziplines to cross ridges and eventually right into our accommodations for the night, a huge treehouse!

We were lucky enough to spend 3 days and 2 nights living in an enormous nature preserve, seeing gorgeous old-growth jungle and seriously large trees. We also tried our darndest to spot Gibbons, as there's a healthy population living in this area of Laos, largely protected by these Gibbon Experience people. In the evenings, our guides left us alone, with food and bedding and permission to use any ziplines we wanted before the sun went down. And use them, we did! We were hiking and zipline-riding until sunset, and getting up as soon as the sun rose to ride some more. The food was good, the guides were fun, the treehouses were gorgeous, and the forest was breathtaking.

We got extremely lucky to find space on this trip, and savored all of our time in the Bokeo Nature Preserve. Get over here and stay at the Gibbon Experience!

Luang Prabang

2010-01-01T04:44:00.000-05:00

Chalk up Luang Prabang, Laos, as being tied with Hoi An, Vietnam, as the nicest city in Southeast Asia. Luang Prabang is a small town, mostly focused on a thumb of land formed between the Mekong and the Nam Khan Rivers. As Wikipedia says, "Until the communist takeover in 1975, it was the royal capital and seat of government of the Kingdom of Laos. The city is also notable as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (So was Hoi An)."
It's pretty compact, and really well-kept and clearly well-loved by all the residents and tourists alike. It has 40 or more Buddhist temples, and monks everywhere. It's the spiritual heart of the country. We spent a few days biking around, riding a motorscooter to amazing waterfalls and exploring the countryside, and taking a boat trip up the gorgeous Mekong River to see some caves. The weather's been perfect!

See all the photos from Laos here
We also spent a quiet New Year's eve here, first at a bar, trying to be enthusiastic about celebrating, but eventually ending up on a hotel balcony, reading books until it struck 12 and some fireworks went off! It was pretty nice.
Tonight, we get on another night-bus and head to the border fo Laos/Thailand. Tomorrow, we'll cross over and find transportation to Chiang Mai in Thailand to start that leg of the adventure!

Observations, so far

2010-01-01T04:27:00.000-05:00

Some random thoughts I wanted to put down before I forgot.

Lee Ann is 1/2 Korean, which apparently equals 100% Vietnamese. Almost every person we talked to in Vietnam asked if she was Vietnamese, or just started speaking Vietnamese to her and ignoring me
Taking a big SLR camera and lenses with me is a pain, but it's worth it to acquire these images and memories
Southeast Asia is saturated in fresh fruit, and devoid of fruit juice. But, tourists have created a "fruit shake" marketplace, and shakes are delicious. But you can't find orange juice, or pineapple juice, etc.
Prices are rising steadily here, and tourists seem to willingly pay more and more. Not that it's Europe-expensive, but the tourism inflation is rampant. Especially in Laos
Smiling is universal, and almost all "situations" can be deflected by smiling and a sense of humor
Night buses are never comfortable for sleeping
Scooters are extremely efficient and reduce traffic, but the level of scooter usage over here is probably at the tipping point and they might want to think about installing traffic signals

I miss you all, and thanks for reading!
M

Hello Laos

2009-12-27T08:29:00.002-05:00

Our 3rd day in Laos. This is a very underdeveloped country, and at times we've felt a little stranded. We took a loooong bus from Vietnam, over the Laos border and into the city (?) of Savanakhet. This is apparently the 2nd or 3rd largest city in Laos, and it's really tiny and half of it is dirt road! We explored it on foot (dodging dogs on every corner) and on scooter. Scooter riding was a lot of fun, even when we got lost. The countryside of Southern Laos loos like Africa, with water buffalo and grass huts everywhere. Visited a shrine where some of Buddha's bones are entombed, and went to a bizarre casino that caters to Thai gamblers from just across the Mekong River.
After our strange day in Savanakhet, we took a VIP double-decker bus to the Capitol, Vientiane. It's a very nice town, with lots of Buddhist temples and colonial French buildings. It's clean and friendly, with an interesting collection of foreign restaurants. Today, we visited the amazing and iconic Pha That Luang, which is a Stupa that is the symbol of Laos, and apparently holds the breastbone of Buddha himself. Tomorrow night, we're likely taking another night-bus to Luang Prabang which is supposed to be one of the most interesting places to see in Southeast Asia, and Laos' most popular destination. Stay tuned!

Hue

2009-12-24T10:11:00.004-05:00

The city of Huế is the former seat of power for the Nguyen Dynasty, and regarded as one of Vietnam's cultural centers. We had about 36 hours here, and managed to do some boring things, like buying bus tickets and mailing our tailored clothing home. But we also rode bicycles around the city, and toured the Imperial Place, which is gorgeous. It was built about 200 years ago, but has fallen into crumbling disrepair, and we loved that about it. It felt a bit "Indiana Jones", and was like finding and exploring a secret. It's a beautiful place, encompassing mostly a palace and home for the Imperial family. It's sort of like Beijing's Forbidden City, but more jungle-y. Click the photo to see more pictures from Hue.

We also splurged on a Christmas dinner at the fanciest hotel in Hue, which was a buffet with a live Violinist and lots of desserts/cheeses. Splurging was 21$/person, which is equivalent to 3 nights at our current hotel. So it was a big spend. But a fun and glutinous way to celebrate Christmas eve.
Be well, and Happy Holidays all!

Dapper Duo

2009-12-24T09:55:00.004-05:00

Our new clothing! This suit was about 200$, custom made, wool/cashmere blend. Silk lining. Amazing quality. Lee's dress was about 40$, custom.

Hoi An

2009-12-21T22:27:00.002-05:00

We're currently in the town of Hoi An, which is an amazingly preserved slice of yesteryear. The town is famous for historic buildings and tailoring. We've been enjoying both. Please click the photo to see all the pictures from Hoi An.
This city looks like the image of Vietnam I had in my head before I came. It's gorgeous, and small, and packed with things to see.
We've been to a few tailors, and are going back today for final fitting and adjustments on a suit, a dress, a bunch of shirts. I got a pair of custom sandals (Rainbow style) yesterday. It's cheap, and they pay a lot of attention to details. But we're still blowing a large chuck of the budget here; it's so much fun.
Next, we're off to Hue in a few days. We love Vietnam!

Beach time I

2009-12-17T10:22:00.001-05:00

So, our last night in Ho Chi Ming City, I got some terrible 24-hour sickness. I was stuck in the hotel room, with liquids coming out of everything. Lee Ann was able to go out with our friends, Joanne and Stephanie for dinner, but she got the same bug about 4 hours later. Then we spent a miserable night in bed, a sick day of traveling, and an arrival in wonderful Phu Quoc island. We have been on a regimen of Fruit shakes and beach time, and we've recovered our strength.
Today, we rented a scooter and explored the extremely remote and quiet northern tip. There is a fabulous stretch of beach that is completely abandoned, for now. This is the place I will lament about in 20 years to the younger generation "I remember when I was your age, and there were NO resorts on Bai Dai Beach!"
So, we enjoyed it while it's still abandoned, and had a great, but long and dusty, day.
All's well now. We're healthy, and sunburned and going snorkeling tomorrow. Ciao!

Victory

2009-12-14T23:15:00.001-05:00

Last night, Vietnam and Singapore played each other in a Southeast Asia games soccer match. Vietnamese people went crazy after the win, and poured into the streets, most of them on scooters. It was insane, but not scary in the least. I have never seen happier people; you'd think they'd just landed a man on the moon.
Lee Ann and I had just met our friends from Korea, Joanna and Stephanie, who are overlapping our time in Ho Chi Minh City for 2 days! We had dinner, and walked around downtown HCMC and bought headbands for the victory and screamed "Vietnam Va Deng!" all night. We were local celebrities.
A few photos and a video on Flickr.

Trung nguyen iced coffee

2009-12-14T07:54:00.002-05:00

Vietnamese iced coffee has got to be the best drink in the world. So thick, so flavorful. It's like chocolate milk with extra sugar and caffeine.
Today was a sweaty, but great day walking around Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon). Ate lots of food. Check the Flickr set! (click the photo to open the Flickr)