Kim Wagner Designs

Vietnam

2012-01-06T01:08:00.000-05:00

November 30th-After three rickshaw rides, two taxis, a fifteen hour train ride, and two flights over the course of two long exhausting days, we finally arrived in Vietnam. Many people have asked us why we don't wait until retirement to go on our around the world adventure. We know now that we made the right choice by not waiting. I can't imagine being able to sleep in airports or on trains or traveling two days with no sleep or food at all when I'm twice the age I am now. By the time we got to Vietnam we were dirty and feeling the type of exhausted where you could start crying for no apparent reason. Everything seemed to be spinning. As tired as we were, we also felt excited to be there. It was all so different and fascinating.

We stayed in Hanoi first. It's a charming little city with an obvious French influence. I call it the Asian Paris. Its filled with high-end stores like Cartier and Louis Vuitton by the Opera House as well as art galleries, little markets, fancy restaurants and also little sidewalk restaurants where the locals sit on these tiny child-sized stools and eat bowls of noodles. The people here are so welcoming and friendly and also very thin and petit. I feel like a 5'2" giant among the Vietnamese. I haven't felt this tall since my 5th grade growth spurt. Darren and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out their secret for staying so slim. The Vietnamese take pride in their ability to eat anything and everything that moves and most Vietnamese dishes consist of fried and salty foods. Our first night in Hanoi we went out for a traditional Vietnamese dinner. Darren and I shared a plate of noodles while the two girls next to us had ten plates and six beers between the two of them. Both girls were built like toothpicks. It's just one of the many fascinating things about Vietnam.

Everyone in Vietnam is also very young. It's like we landed in Never Never Land where no one grows old and no one gains weight. Perhaps it's all the MSG they consume that keeps them so well preserved, we ponder. Our hotel seems to be run by a gang of twelve year-olds. They're all so cute. They giggle and run everywhere they go like they're really excited to get somewhere. Then we discover the reason why there seems to be no adults in Vietnam. Three million people were killed in the Vietnam war and so two-thirds of the population was born after 1975.

We saw so many great things while in Vietnam so I will try to give a brief description of the highlights. It was raining really heavily our first day there so it was a perfect opportunity to visit the History Museum. They were currently showing an exhibit of exquisite jade artifacts. The permanent exhibits were Vietnamese artifacts spanning from prehistoric times to the end of World War II and consisted mainly of intricate wood and stone carvings. The detailed carvings were incredible and are still present in much of Vietnamese architecture, particularly the temples.

The weather was perfect the next day so we walked to Hoan Kiem Lake. There is a foot bridge that takes you to Ngoc Son temple which sits in the middle of the lake and is surrounded by ancient trees with roots that look like vines coming up out of the ground. The temple was really pretty and had such a great location in the middle of the lake. There were views of the lake and city in all directions.

We got a taxi and asked the driver to take us to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum but he dropped us off at the Temple of Literature instead. Um Ok. We wanted to go there eventually anyway so we checked it out. The Temple of Literature was Vietnam's first university. The temple was first constructed in 1070 under King Lý Nhân Tông and is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars. It consists of a series of large courtyards with beautiful gardens, ponds, temples and statues. We also saw a wonderful performance of live Vietnamese music and a photography exhibition, as well as a graduation ceremony so for once we were happy our taxi dropped us in the wrong spot. We walked to the mausoleum but only got to see the outside because it's closed on Fridays as is the Ho Chi Minh Museum. We were alright with missing out on this though. You have to pay to get in and what you are paying to get inside and see is the well preserved body of Ho Chi Minh himself. I personally feel that paying to see someones corpse is a little macabre and creepy but the Vietnamese think of Ho as a god and like to come to pay their respects. Outside there are guards in white uniforms that stand stock still much like the guards at Buckingham palace.

Close by the mausoleum, is the One Pillar Pagoda. It's description is self explanatory. There are tons of pagodas all around Vietnam but this is the only one standing on one pillar like a flamingo in the middle of a little pond so it's a big attraction.

Then we hopped in a taxi to the Hai Lo Prison, also known as the "Hanoi Hilton." I noticed the meter seemed to be going up quite rapidly. We pointed this out to the driver who proceeded to have a fit because we busted him for trying to cheat us. Who did this guy think he was fooling? We had just been to India and we were like seasoned veterans of taxi scams at this point. He yelled some things at us in Vietnamese which we didn't understand but in conjunction with his hand gestures we were able to interpret as, "get the hell out of my taxi." We spent a couple of hours at Hai Lo prison which has now been turned into a museum. The first wing has been kept pretty much the same as it was when it was a French prison except there were life size figures in the shackles where the real Vietnamese prisoners used to be. I think it was smart that they decided to do this. It shows just how cramped and horrible the conditions were. If the room were empty, it wouldn't tell the story at all and the story was not a good one. Some of the exhibit was very graphic. In one room they had the actual guillotine that the French used to cut off prisoners heads. There were even photographs on the wall taken during executions. But to leave out these details would be erasing some of the history of what happened in that horrible place. It did end on a more positive note though. Another wing of the prison focused on when it was used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war (or the American War as they call it here) to hold American soldiers prisoner. They made a point to show how well they treated the American soldiers. There were many pictures of American soldiers looking happy and healthy and enjoying themselves at the "Hanoi Hilton". If you can get past the obviously posed photographs and forced smiles and their message that Hai Lo was some kind of fun boys camp, it's a pretty interesting exhibit. In fact, it had pictures of John McCain being pulled out of the water when his plane was shot down. It also had his flight uniform on display.

That night we saw a water puppet show. This is a real Vietnamese cultural experience and a must see if you're in Vietnam. Even though all of the story was sung in Vietnamese, the music, the orchestra and puppets were mesmerizing.

The next day we went on an overnight boat cruise to Halong Bay. The whole experience was amazing. We drove three hours through the rice paddy fields. The houses are mostly pagoda style and are really tall and narrow. This is because people are taxed on the width of their street frontage. No one is allowed to own the land their houses are on so if the government decides they want to put a road where your house is standing then you're out of luck.

Halong Bay was magical. Kayaking through the caves was unbelievable as was the walking tour inside the limestone caves. I would recommend anyone who visits Hanoi to go on at least an overnight trip to Halong Bay. We enjoyed it so much, we were sorry we didn't go on the two day cruise.

The day after we got back from Halong bay we flew from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. When we got there we regretted not staying in Hanoi. It was so much more crowded and hectic than Hanoi and lacked all of it's small city charm. The population of Ho Chi Minh is 10 million people and there are 6 million motorbikes. Helmets have recently become compulsory and they are the most popular fashion accessory in Vietnam.They have entire stores devoted to selling helmets in every color and style. Just like India, there are no traffic lights and no stop signs. Except in Vietnam there are no cows in the street. I didn't think traffic could get any crazier than India but Vietnam is definitely the craziest. The only way to get across the street is to just walk out into the middle of traffic. You can't stop. You have to keep walking at a slow and steady pace while cars and motorbikes swerve around you. I felt like the little frog in the old Atari game "Frogger" trying to get across several lanes of traffic without getting squashed. Darren and I practiced by using some of the locals as human shields before we tried it all by ourselves. Eventually we got the hang of it but walking anywhere in Ho Chi Minh City can be very stressful although it may bring back many fond memories as your life flashes before your eyes.

The locals like to go to the park to do their exercises, practice Tai Chi or ballroom dancing. They also play a game using a badminton shuttlecock but instead of volleying it with rackets they use their feet. Going to the park was a great source of entertainment.

The next day we visited the Cu Chi Tunnels. During the Vietnam/American war, the Vietcong built an underground tunnel system that spanned over 200 km to hide from American troops. The tunnels were like an underground city and were even equipped with kitchens and hospitals.

The tour started with a viewing of a documentary created by the Vietnamese in 1965. It praised the local peasants who turned into guerrilla soldiers to fight against the Americans. The video featured one little gentle peasant girl for having the record for killing the most Americans and called her an "American killer hero."

Then we got to see the actual tunnels. They've since been widened to fit westerners but even with the extra room, I still had to crouch down and crawl to get through. The Vietcong would crawl through the tunnels and American soldiers would run in after them and get stuck. There was no room to turn around so if they went into the tunnel there would be no getting out alive. Then our guide took us to an American tank that had been destroyed. They had it on display like a trophy and kids were climbing on it. People were posing in front of it to have their picture taken and I was thinking, "People died here". When approximately 59,000 Americans died and 3 million Vietnamese died, did anyone really win? It seems to me like everyone lost. Our guide told us that his mother was killed during the war while trying to protect him from a napalm bomb when he was just a baby. He was burnt on half of his body. I could see the rubbery spiderweb of scars peeking out from his shirt sleeve. An Australian tourist asked him how he felt about American tourists visiting Vietnam. The guide took him aside to speak with him privately. I suddenly wanted to crawl back into the tunnel and hide. I had nothing to do with the war and many Americans wanted nothing to do with the war. Australia also fought against the Vietnamese as well but the whole focus of the tour was about how they fought and killed Americans. I wasn't even born until after the war was over but I was feeling very uncomfortable in my American skin.

The next part of the tour was to show us all of the traps they built for killing and torturing American soldiers. We found this to be pretty sick and in very poor taste. Our guide cracked jokes while he showed us trap doors in the grass where they dug a hole underneath and planted four foot long spikes. There were many other variations on this type of trap that he showed us. It was pretty sickening and disturbing. All the while we could hear the sound of gunfire. It wasn't a soundtrack either. It was actual gunfire. They had a shooting range where visitors could pay to fire American rifles and machine guns.

Our tour bus dropped us off at the War Remnants Museum but after our experience at the Cu Chi Tunnels, we decided we'd had enough. We could see all of the American tanks and planes on display like trophies outside the museum and it just didn't seem right so we skipped it. The next day we met an Australian couple who went to the Cu Chi tunnels and the War Remnants Museum and they said they had the same feelings about it as us. They said they wished they hadn't visited the War Remnants Museum either as they felt it was morbid and in poor taste so we were glad we chose not to go in.

The next day we took a tour of the Mekong Delta. The reason we chose to go on packaged tours while in Vietnam was because they were actually much less expensive than taking taxis everywhere and we also had the bonus of English speaking guides. We took a motorboat out to some different islands to taste the homemade honey tea that they make there and some native fruits. They took us to the coconut candy factory and showed us how they make the candy. We got to try some samples too. We took a rowboat ride down the Mekong Delta and we rode bikes around one of the islands. The tour was interesting but we both felt like we were in a tourist mill. There were tons of tourists that they were trying to rush in and out as quickly as possible and they were constantly trying to get you to buy things which was annoying. There were parts that were enjoyable but overall we felt it was not worth the time and money.

Vietnam was an incredible trip. Our only regret is that we didn't stay longer and it's one of the few places I can say that I'd like to go back to someday. We both preferred the north to the south. The north seems to be focused on the future while the south is stuck in the past and uses the war as a money making industry. We had met a young woman on our Halong Bay boat cruise who was from North Vietnam. She was orphaned at a young age and eventually adopted by an American couple when she was ten years old. It was interesting to get the perspective of someone who was both Vietnamese and also American. She said that she had never even heard of the Vietnam war until she learned about it in school when she moved to America. She said they don't like to focus on the past in the north. They only want to talk about the future and the young people love American culture and all things American.

One of my tips for traveling to Vietnam would be to bring an empty suitcase because you're going to want to do a lot of shopping as everything is so incredibly inexpensive. You can get a custom tailored suit for only $60. We purchased two silk sleeping bag liners for only $4 each in Hanoi. In the U.S. they cost $60 each. We also found it very unusual that they accept US dollars everywhere. In fact they prefer to be paid in US dollars rather than Vietnamese Dong and they can all calculate the currency conversions in their heads. However, their currency can be very confusing. One US dollar is worth approximately 21,000 Vietnamese Dong so it feels like you're spending an enormous amount of money even though you're not.

Breakfast can be tricky as well. A typical Vietnamese breakfast is a bowl of noodle soup with chicken or pork and Vietnamese coffee is the worst I've ever tasted. There seems to be a scarcity of fresh milk in all of Vietnam so Vietnamese coffee consists of instant coffee mixed with hot water and condensed milk. As hard as we tried, we just couldn't get used to it. If you ask for fresh milk in a cafe and they do actually have some (most Vietnamese seem to not even know what fresh milk is) you will be charged extra for it.

Vietnam is also the least English speaking country we've visited so far but you can get by with sign language. Darren and I needed toothpaste and had a fun time miming to a shop keeper. First we pretended to brush our teeth so she brought us a toothbrush. Wrong. Then we acted out applying the toothpaste onto the imaginary toothbrush and then she got it right. We all had a good laugh. We also downloaded a very useful iPod app that translates, "I can't eat garlic" in every language. This was a literal lifesaver for me. We were trying to explain my garlic allergy to a waitress but she wasn't able to understand. We showed her Darren's iPod and then she said, "Aha!" and began clapping. She thought it was great and I did too because I knew it was safe for me to eat my food. If you get sick in Vietnam and need to go to the hospital you might come out sicker than when you went in. We met a volunteer nurse from Australia who told us the hospitals are so overcrowded that they put two or three patients in every bed! Good thing the Vietnamese are so tiny.

On the rare occasion that you do spot an elderly person, they are so tiny and adorable that you will need to restrain yourself from trying to put them in your pocket and take them home with you. One cute little old lady came up to me and put her hand on my arm. Some people, particularly little children, are not used to seeing westerners and they will stare and want to touch you. They don't mean any harm but I was getting a lot of stares and people were following me and wanting to touch me and I couldn't figure out why. Then Darren gently pointed out to me, "you've got curly hair and freckles for god's sake!." Curly hair is not something they see everyday in Asia and freckles are considered unsightly. Asian women spend billions on skin bleaching creams and skin lightening procedures so it's very rare to see a person with freckles as well.

One of the many things I loved about Vietnam was that it's completely socially acceptable to bring your camera everywhere. Even locals carry cameras with them at all times. They love to take pictures of themselves striking ridiculous poses and for some reason they bring their cameras to dinner and take pictures of their meals.

I'd recommend Vietnam to anyone. It's people, culture and history are fascinating. It is a beautiful country and extremely affordable and easy to travel around. We had a truly wonderful and memorable experience and hope to go back someday.

India

2011-12-13T00:44:00.003-05:00

In order to tell the full story of our trip to India I need to start at the very beginning, before we even left New York.
It was Monday October 17th and we were packing up our apartment and getting everything ready for our around-the-world trip. We were leaving for Turkey that Friday and had gotten all of our visas except for India. We had read on-line that we could go to the Indian Embassy's visa outsourcing office, "Travisa" and get our visas the same day. So we filled out all of our forms and made an appointment for Monday morning. When we got there they told us that they don't do same day visas anymore (even though it says they do on their website). They also told us that Darren's visa would take longer because he had an Irish passport but they assured us it would be ready before we were leaving the country on Friday. At the very worst they said we could withdraw the application if the visa wasn't ready in time and get the passport back from the embassy so we could leave for Turkey.
The next day I received a text message from Travisa informing me that my visa was ready but received no news of Darren's visa. They don't allow people to call and check on the status and they claim that passports are with the embassy and they have no way of knowing when they will be ready. By Thursday we still hadn't gotten any word on Darren's passport and we were panicked. We had moved everything out of our apartment, all plane tickets had been purchased and Darren's passport was still at the embassy. We called Travisa and they told us that his visa would take up to 2 weeks because he had an Irish passport even though they had assured us on Monday that it would be ready in a couple days. When we told them that we just wanted the passport back they said we had to submit a form and it would take up to 72 hours to release the passport even though on Monday they said we could get it back right away if the visa wasn't ready by Friday. While I tried calling the Indian Embassy and got nowhere but the voicemail black hole, Darren called the Irish Embassy to see if they could help. He spoke to a nice woman named Fiona who said she'd try to call the Indian embassy and see what she could do. In the meantime, we decided to run over to the Indian Embassy ourselves to see if they would hand over Darren's passport. We hopped on the subway and then ran all the way there. There was a long line and clerks working behind bullet-proof glass. Just as we got there Fiona called to say that she spoke to someone at the Indian embassy and Darren's passport would be ready that evening but the visa would not. We stayed on the line anyway to see if they might hand his passport over to us then. By the time we got to the front of the line I learned why they needed the bullet-proof glass. I was just about ready to break through it when the clerk told us they had his passport and his visa was ready but we had to wait and pick it up from Travisa between 4:30-6:00pm. Good job Fiona! So we waited all day and got to Travisa at 4:15. There was already a long line outside. When we finally got inside they said Darren's passport wasn't there but that it might arrive in the next batch in an hour or two. So we waited and waited and waited.

At 5:57, three minutes before they were to close, my phone rang. It was a woman from Travisa calling to tell Darren that the Irish embassy had pushed his visa through (they were probably thinking he was a Diplomat or something) and asking if he would like to pick it up in the morning. Darren told her that he had been sitting in their lobby for an hour and a half and he was standing right outside. So she came out from behind the counter to personally deliver his passport back to him as if he was the Prince of Ireland. That was our first taste of what traveling through India would be like.

We had originally planned to travel from Nepal to India overland but found out that it would take two buses and a rickshaw over the the course of two days to get from Kathmandu to Varanasi. We didn't want to lose so much time traveling so Bishnu at Nature Trail (see blog post, "Nepal") found us a 45 minute flight from Kathmandu to Varanasi. The only problem was that the flights only left every other day so we didn't get to India until the 19th when we had wanted to get there on the 18th.

When we arrived in Varanasi the first thing we noticed was how much more modern it was compared to Nepal. We had requested an airport pickup by our hotel but no one showed up. When we walked out of the airport we were immediately swarmed by taxi drivers. We went with the one who gave us the lowest price. When we got to our hotel they said they had no reservation for us even though we paid a deposit,had sent two e-mails about the airport pickup, and showed them our confirmation letter. They denied knowing anything about it. We then spent the next two hours with our taxi driver taking us from one hotel to the next. All of them said they were full because it was "wedding season". Finally, we found a place that had just one night available even though we were wanting to stay two nights. We were desperate and they knew it and they charged us triple the rate. We had no other choice but to stay there.

Here's what we know now: It is very common in India to make a reservation and then get to your hotel and find that they have given your room away to someone else. The taxi driver was all too happy to take us around all night because he got 50% commission from the hotel for bringing us there. Since we already had a reservation with our hotel, he wouldn't have gotten any commission which is why he was prying us with questions about how much we paid for our room and telling us to check the room first to see if we liked it because he knew a lot of other nicer hotels we could stay at. Our driver had the phone number for every hotel in Varanasi programmed into his phone and called our hotel on the way to tell them to lose our reservation. We had no clue because we couldn't understand a word he was saying. Then he took us to other hotels who told us they were full because they didn't want to pay him commission. The hotel we finally found told us to tell our driver we only paid 2,000 rupees when we actually paid 3,000 so that they didn't have to pay him his full commission. I had never been anywhere in the world where haggling for everything, including hotel rates, was the norm. Welcome to India. It was a major culture shock. Nepal was definitely "India lite". Everything here was much more extreme.

Our taxi driver offered to take us to the Ganges the next day. He said the best time to see it was at 6 am when the sun was rising. We had come to Varanasi to see the Ganges so reluctantly agreed to wake up at the crack of dawn.

He picked us up the next morning at 5:45 but when we got to the Ganges we couldn't see a thing. The fog had followed us all the way from Nepal. He pushed us into going on a boat ride even though there was nothing to see because of the fog. The boat guide wanted 400 rupees per person even though our driver had told us the night before it would only be 98 each. Then he changed his story and told us that was the price only if you were in a large group. We didn't want to pay all that money when there was nothing to see. Finally we agreed on a price of 150 rupees each (we later found out that we should have only been charged 150 rupees total rather than 300 and that our driver made commission on that as well). So we rowed down the Ganges and watched the locals bathe in the river before they went into the temple.

In the Hindu religion it is believed that bathing in the purifying waters of the Ganges will cleanse you of all your sins. Whether you're a believer or not, one has to admire the devotion of people who get up before dawn to bathe in the chilly water filled with the ashes of the dead. When a person dies their ashes must be scattered in the Ganges in order for them to reach the afterlife. All the dead are cremated except for holy men, babies, pregnant women, someone bitten by a cobra, and Lepers. Those people are dropped directly into the Ganges. We drifted along and saw people bathing, washer men beating laundry on rocks, water cobras, and fires burning-cremations in progress.

We spent a couple more hours driving around looking for another hotel. Again, more of the same. Everyone said they were full because of wedding season and all the while our driver is making money driving us around all day. Finally, we found another hotel. It was absolutely disgusting, located in a slum, and we were way overcharged again but no one else had a room for us. Our driver made another nice commission. Then he drove us back to our previous hotel so we could check out and bring our bags to the new hotel. Then he drove us to the train station so we could get tickets to Delhi for the next day. There's no direct train to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, so we had to go to Delhi first and then get a train back to Agra. When we got to the train station we were immediately ushered by the "Tourist Police" into a separate room just for tourists. We thought it really strange that tourists were not allowed to even step into the main train station and were kept sequestered in a private room. We later found out it was because the locals will harass the tourists and try to scam them by selling fake tickets. The situation was so bad that there was a need to segregate us and create the Tourist Police to protect us. Nearly two hours and one power outage later, we finally had our tickets.

Then our taxi driver tried to convince us to let him take us on a tour of the city for the afternoon. His proposal included taking us to the Massage Institute and the Silk Factory. We were not interested in getting massages or buying silks but he was insisting. We didn't want to pay someone to drive us to places we didn't want to go and we had heard from another tourist the night before that he was brought to the silk factory and wasn't allowed to leave until he purchased half a dozen silk scarves that he didn't even want. Our driver would get commission for bringing us to every one of these places but we didn't find this out until later. We told him we'd prefer to do things on our own and he started arguing with us and wouldn't go. Then he doubled the price he had originally quoted us for driving us around all night and all morning. We paid him what we originally told him we would plus a tip but if we had known at the time he was responsible for our hotel reservation being cancelled and all the other aggravation of the past day then he wouldn't have gotten anything. He insisted on dropping us at a restaurant saying it was on his way and acting like he was trying to be nice but he brought us there to get another commission. Then he tried to get us to go with a rickshaw driver that we didn't want (another commission for him). After we ate lunch the rickshaw driver wouldn't leave us alone. He chased us down for an entire block.

We found a different rickshaw driver to take us to a temple that we wanted to go to called Bharat Mata. Everyone was trying to charge us double or triple but the tourist police had told us what it should cost to get to all the places we wanted to go. Finally, after a lot of haggling over prices we got to the temple. It was unremarkable from the outside. Inside it had a three-dimensional topographical map of India and Nepal carved from marble which took up the entire room. This was something that was unique for a temple where one would usually expect to see statues of deities.

Frustrated and exhausted from haggling with drivers, we decided to explore the city on foot. The streets in India are insane. There are no stops signs, no traffic lights, and no street signs. Cars, rickshaws, motorcycles, tuk-tuks (these are sort of like motorized rickshaws), bicycles, and cows are all moving in every direction. There are seemingly no traffic rules whatsoever and there are no sidewalks to walk on. Whole families will ride on the back of a motorbike. Dad will be driving and mom will be on the back holding a couple of babies. Crossing the street is a very scary and dangerous experience. Just one of the millions of ways a person can die in India! The cars never stop so you just have to walk out into oncoming traffic and hope they will swerve around you otherwise you'll be standing on the side of the road all day. Since there were no street signs, we got completely lost. Whenever we'd ask for directions someone would send us the wrong way. All the while, we were being followed by rickshaws and tuk-tuks who wouldn't leave us alone. Finally, after two hours we found our hotel.

The whole day was pretty draining but we decided to go back to the Ganges that night to see the ceremony. We hadn't really gotten to see much that morning because of the fog and we had come to Varanasi just for that so we talked another driver down from his ridiculously over inflated price. We thought we won this one but then he dropped us over a mile away from where we wanted to be. We had no idea which way to go and the streets were packed with crowds of people. We found a nice family who let us walk with them and tried to protect us from the hawkers who kept following us. When we got to the Ganges there was music and lights and fires burning. The scent of incense was in the air. There were boats in the water filled with people. I was taking in the whole scene when I heard Darren call my name. I turned around and an old man had him in a head-lock. He was forcing Darren to let him give him a massage. Darren didn't want to hurt him or offend him as he thought maybe it was some sort of Indian custom to rub a total stranger but he didn't want a massage either. The old man wrestled him to the ground and was massaging his feet, legs, arms, back, head. He wouldn't let him go. When Darren finally got away from him the old man insisted he be paid 200 rupees even though Darren never asked for nor wanted a massage. We paid him some money so he would leave us alone and found a seat up from at the ceremony.

The ceremony was for three people who had died. We were expecting it to be weird or maybe morbid but we both thought it was fascinating and a wonderful way to say goodbye to those who've passed away and we really enjoyed it. We were so happy we got to experience it.

When we got back to our hotel there was a marching band playing outside our window. That's right. A marching band. There was a wedding party staying at the hotel across the street and they were playing for the bride and groom. Wedding season! Next came the fireworks. What next India?! I covered my dirty pillow with a t-shirt, we slept fully dressed and laughed ourselves to sleep.

The next day we went to the train station to catch our train to Delhi. Our train was delayed an hour and a half. There were no shops to buy food in the area we were staying in so we figured we'd buy food on the train but now we were getting hungry. Darren left the tourist holding pen in search of food. All he could find was a loaf of white bread, some jam and some chips. I noticed the bread had a big hole in the bottom. A rat had gotten into it. He had to run back and get a new one. We ate jam sandwiches and potato chips for lunch like we were five years old. Our train finally pulled in. Someone told us which car was ours but it turned out they sent us to the wrong car and we were kicked out. They told us we were in the next car over so we sat there and we were sharing a compartment with two British sisters, Mel and Louise. They had about a 10 or 15 year age different between them and had been volunteering in India for a few weeks already. They amused us with stories of all the creative ways they had been scammed out of money. So it wasn't just us! They were frustrated because they were here to help disabled children and they were having a rough time traveling around India. It was even worse for them as they were two women. I understood. No one would even speak to me. It was like I was invisible. People only spoke to Darren. Plus they were traveling with huge suitcases full of medical supplies. On top of that, Louise suffered from Narcolepsy so Mel had come on the trip with her to keep her safe. With narcolepsy she could fall asleep on the train and wake up some place she shouldn't be or she could fall down and hurt herself. Sometimes she would be telling us a story and she'd fall asleep while talking.One of her triggers was laughing so every time we made her laugh she'd doze off and that would make us laugh some more.

Our train ride was only supposed to be 13 hours but wound up being 24 hours. About an hour into the trip the conductor came to check our tickets and told us we were all in the wrong car....again. He made us all get up and move to yet another car. The sleeper car we were in was pretty comfortable and they gave us sheets and pillows which was nice. Traveling on the Indian railway is an authentic Indian experience.

A day later, we finally made it to our hotel in Delhi (after being overcharged by 90 rupees by our tuk-tuk driver and a violent fight between two drivers who wanted our business and one of them physically pulling Darren out of another driver's vehicle) so we chose to walk around on foot. A young man came up to us and made friendly conversation. He told us we should go check out Connaught Square and then helped us get a tuk-tuk for a fair price and sent us to the tourist information office. We went in looking for a metro map and all they did was try to sell us an overpriced taxi tour of the city. We told them we'd go have dinner and think about it because they were not taking no for an answer. Then they had someone escort us to a restaurant (so they could get commission for taking us there) and he waited outside when we went in. We snuck out another door and then suddenly the young man who put us in the tuk-tuk appeared again. He was following us. Then he made up some story about how the driver took us to the wrong tourist office. He was supposed to take us to the "government tourist office" (they all say they are the government office but it doesn't actually exist) so he got another tuk-tuk for us. It was the same driver again! They were all working together. This was getting really creepy. He insisted it was just a coincidence and the driver pretended he'd never seen us before. He also no longer spoke English when his English was perfect during the first ride. They dropped us at another tourist office and made us pay for another ride. We asked for a map again but all they tried to do was sell us ridiculously priced tours and send us to places we didn't want to go. We wanted to go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Gujarat to meet up with our friends Sonal and Dave from New York who were in India for a family wedding. No one would help us book train tickets and we never did get a metro map from any of these "free tourist information offices." We politely declined their tours and the man wouldn't let us leave. We literally had to run out. We were swarmed on the street by young boys trying to bring us into their tourist offices. Everywhere we went we were being followed. This was nuts. We tried to get a tuk-tuk back to our hotel but all of the drivers were asking for triple the price. A local boy tried to help us. None of the drivers would take us. He tried for fifteen minutes and could only get a driver to take us for 40 rupees when it should have been 10. We were so appreciative for his help because we could only get a ride on our own for 150 but in the end he was apologizing to us because he couldn't get them to take us for a fair price.

The next day was more of the same. We walked to the train station to see if we could get tickets to go to Agra the next day. We couldn't even get into the train station. We'd ask where we needed to go to buy tickets and someone would send us to the wrong place. They'd try to send us to a tourist office so they could get commission and then follow us to make sure we didn't go somewhere else. We asked a railroad employee that we thought we could trust. He showed us his badge, told us not to follow the directions of the locals, and put us in a tuk-tuk and sent us to another "government tourist office". We gave up. We had spent 24 hours on a train to Delhi so that we could see the Taj Mahal and no one would sell us a train ticket to get there. The only way we were getting a train ticket was through this tour company. We just hoped the tickets were legit. Then we tried to see if we could get tickets to Ahmedabad to see Sonal and Dave. The train would get there (if it was on time) Saturday morning and they were flying back to New York Saturday night. We had been looking forward to seeing some friendly faces and we were so frustrated. Our flight from India to Vietnam was leaving out of Bangalore so we needed to work our way down south. We had wanted to go to Kerala as we'd heard it was really beautiful and not as hectic as the north but it would take three days by train to get there leaving us with maybe one day in Kerala and then we'd need to take another train back up to Bangalore. A flight was too expensive so we finally settled on a much cheaper flight to Goa which we had no desire or intention on going to but we felt we had few options and little time. Goa wasn't really the Indian cultural experience we were after but at least it was on the coast and we could stay put for a couple days.

There was a group of Canadian girls in the tour office as well. One was really upset. They couldn't get anywhere either. They had spent their whole trip just trying to book tickets and never getting to see anything. She thought India would be really inexpensive to travel around but had to call her bank because she had been swindled out of all her money. They booked a taxi tour that they didn't even want to go on because no one would sell them tickets for anything else. We had planned on touring the city that day but it took us 5 hours to finally get train tickets and we were $450 poorer! Then we had to find somewhere that had Internet so we could find a hotel in Agra. This all took up our entire day.

November 24th Thanksgiving day. We were on a train to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. It was a Thursday and the Taj Mahal is closed on Fridays. If the train was late there was a possibility we might not make it in time.
Of course, our train got to Agra 3 hours late so we wanted to get to our hotel, drop our bags, and run over to the Taj Mahal. Before the train even pulled into the station a man snuck on to try to get us to go with his taxi company. He pretended to be helping us by telling us the tuk-tuks and rickshaws will overcharge tourists and he would help us by showing us where the "government taxi stand" was located. He followed us off the train and wouldn't leave us alone. We had very little time so just gave in and paid for another overpriced taxi. When we got in, the driver immediately started telling us about nice hotels we could go to and tried to get us to go on a tour. We told him we already booked a hotel and we were leaving the next day and didn't want a tour. He insisted that he let us show us other hotels. He wouldn't leave us alone. Then we got to our hotel and they said they didn't have a room for us even though we made reservation and paid a deposit. They told us to wait and they would give us a ride to another hotel. We were furious and the Taj Mahal would be closing soon. We got back in the taxi. I informed them we weren't paying for the ride and they took us to another hotel. Both the taxi driver and the hotel owner would get commissions for bringing us to another hotel. They were all working together. We got a room. It was really gross but we were leaving at 4:30 am for a train back to Delhi and would only be sleeping there for a few hours. We had no time to look for another place either. We dropped our bags and sprinted to the Taj Mahal. Tourists have to pay more than double the price of locals to get in but the nice thing is that they have a separate and much shorter line for tourists so we went right in. We made it. It was a Thanksgiving miracle! And the Taj Mahal was incredible. In the midst of all the filth and chaos of the streets just outside its walls was this pristine and peaceful sanctuary. An amazing feat of architecture that took 22,000 architects, artisans, and laborers 22 years to build by hand.

There are several different versions of the love story about how the Taj came to be. Here's the version I like the best: It is said that Shah Jahan was walking through the market one day and met a peasant girl named Arjumand Bano Begum, selling glass beaded necklaces that she told him were diamonds. It was love at first sight and so of course Shah Jahan bought several of her "diamond" necklaces that day. He wanted to marry her the next day but he was already betrothed to another woman. It took five years but they were finally married. Her name was changed to Mumtaz Mahal. She was his third wife but his one true love and they were inseparable. Even when he was on the battle field she insisted on being by his side and that is where she died pregnant with his 14th child. Just before she died she made him promise to build a monument that would be a testament to their love. Shah grieved for her so deeply that he gave up all his possessions and became a recluse. None of it mattered without his true love. He commissioned a mausoleum to be built for his wife that's magnificence and grandeur would surpass any other structure in the world. Both of their bodies still lie side by side in marble coffins inside the Taj Mahal today.

That night we had vegetarian Indian food for Thanksgiving dinner in the hotel restaurant/lobby decorated with a poster of Britney Spears. The bathroom in our room was so filthy that we chose not to shower for fear we'd catch an infectious disease. We woke at 4:30 the next morning to catch strain back to Delhi. Our flight to Goa was leaving that night so if the train was late again we were in trouble. It was still dark out and cold at that time of the morning. On our way to the train station we saw a boy of about 4 years old wandering the streets alone. He was naked from the waste down. We were one block from the Taj Mahal which cost 32 million Indian rupees to build -the equivalent of roughly 1,062,834,089 US dollars if it were to be built today. It's gates are surrounded by poverty. Sixty percent of the population lives on the equivalent of $1.25 a day.

This was our third train ride in India. The toilets on the train are just squat toilets and the waste goes directly onto the tracks. There are all types of bodily fluids on the restroom floor and I watched a woman walk in with bare feet. I was looking for a garbage can to throw away some trash and a railroad official told me to just throw it out the window but I couldn't do it. Our train arrived three hours late again but we still had time to get to the airport. We found a taxi-more haggling-and he drove us through the nice part of Delhi which we hadn't seen before. This was the area where the President lived and where all the embassies were located. The streets were paved and there we sidewalks, well manicured lawns with beautifully landscaped gardens. Ten minutes away people are living in slums surrounded by human waste and garbage.

We arrived in Goa late that night. What a long day! It was different from the north. It was more modern and cleaner with an obvious Portuguese influence. The best thing was that tuk-tuks and rickshaws were not allowed at the airport. It was refreshing to see a whole group of school girls at our hotel the next morning. And there were even some women. We had rarely seen any women the whole time we were traveling in India. All the hotels, restaurants and trains were completely employed by men. Mel and Louise think that if they had some women working in the hotels we'd at least have some properly cleaned sheets and towels! I think one of the most beautiful things about India is the women. Indian women are like artwork in their colorful saris with their hennaed hands and feet and their bangles on their arms. India is extremely dry and so there is dirt and dust everywhere. We are baffled at how they stay so clean and perfect.

We spent a couple days at the beach and swam for the first time in the Arabian Sea. There are hawkers that will constantly come up to you while you're trying to relax and convince you to buy things like jewelry, clothes, fruit, newspapers, head massagers, blow up pillows, DVDs, drums, flashlights etc. It was annoying and ridiculous but mild compared to everywhere else we'd been.

After two nights we checked out and began our long journey to Bangalore. We checked out at noon but our train wasn't leaving until 9:25 pm so we had about 7 hours to kill until we needed to leave for the train station. We wandered around trying to find air conditioned places because it was a scorching hot outside. By the time we left for the train station we were sweaty and gross and wouldn't have access to a shower until we got to Vietnam in two days. Who can complain about such things though in a country where most people don't have access to running water? We took an hour long taxi ride to the train where we discovered the travel agency had booked us into a 3rd class sleeper car with no air conditioning, no sheets, no lights. Our carriage companions were 12 rowdy boys and we were initially upset that we'd have to spend the next 12 hours with them. It turned out that they were college students from Nepal. It was their first time ever leaving Nepal and they were so sweet and excited. We felt bad because they had been having similar travel frustrations to us and had been scammed out of some money. We practiced speaking to them in Nepali. Their trip to Goa was their first time ever seeing the ocean. The beaches in Goa don't have seashells so we gave them the rest of the shells we'd collected in South Africa. One of them gave Darren 10 Nepali rupees. Darren didn't want to take his money but he said he wanted him to have it to remember him by.

The next day the train was rolling through some beautiful countryside that we hadn't seen before. There were mountains and lush landscape. Most of what we saw of India was from the window of a train. After a not-so-good night of not-so-much sleep we finally arrived in Bangalore the next afternoon. The train was a few hours late again but we had plenty of time to kill before we needed to be at the airport for our flight to Vietnam. We were able to leave our bags at the train station for 10 rupees each and found a taxi that would drop us in the city center for the day.

Bangalore was way more modern than anywhere else we'd been India so far. When you call customer service for a problem with your phone bill, credit card, appliances etc., you are most likely speaking to someone in Bangalore. We were disappointed that there wasn't anything nearby to see or do. It was mostly a business area. We were extremely hungry though after not having a meal in almost a day so we found an awesome lunch buffet and stuffed ourselves with Indian food for two hours. India has great food and we love Indian food. If you don't like Indian food then you will probably be really hungry if you visit India. And no. Despite all of the warnings from people about food and water-borne illness, neither of us ever got sick.What I also like about India is that they give you ketchup (my favorite condiment) with everything. Even when it makes no sense like with ice cream or salad.

After the two hour binge we wandered around Bangalore for a while before being stopped by a police officer who told us that we shouldn't be wandering around Bangalore. He said there was some stuff to do but it was too far away and so he sent us to the mall. This was the first we had even seen a real store in India so we were amazed. We found a "Mother Care" store and borrowed a great travel tip from Louise. We bought a crib blanket for covering nasty hotel pillows. It's waterproof on the back and soft fleece on the front. Then we bought some baby wipes. We had to pretend that we had a baby because it was too embarrassing to tell the store clerks that we were using the blanket to cover disgusting pillows and the wipes to wash ourselves when we don't have access to a shower!

We had to get another tuk-tuk back to the train station to get our bags before going to the airport. We agreed on a price with the driver and then when we were halfway there he changed the price. There was more arguing so we got to the train station, got our bags and looked for the bus that would take us directly to the airport. The only problem was that we couldn't find it and nobody would tell us where the bus stop was. We had to get another taxi.

It took us about 34 hours total to get to the airport and when we were going through Immigration they wouldn't let Darren through. They thought it was suspicious that he was an Irish citizen living in America and because he had so many foreign stamps in his passport. I tried to explain to them that I was his wife and I am an American citizen and that's why he was living in America but they wouldn't let me speak. I had three guards yelling at me to step away but I told them I wasn't leaving without my husband. Then everyone felt the need to get involved. People were yelling at me to step back. Everyone took turns looking at Darren's suspicious Irish passport and his suspicious and irate American wife. First they wouldn't let him into India and now they wouldn't let him out. Where was Fiona when we needed her?! They finally let him go after making him swear that he would never return to India.

If anyone were planning a trip to India I would tell them to get their visa well in advance and not to book their flight until their passport was back in their possession. I'd also recommend that they book every part of the trip in advance. It is not an easy country to travel around. Find a reputable travel agent and book all of your flights, trains, hotels and tours before you go. Anyone we met who went on a pre-organized tour had a fun and hassle free time. We completely underestimated how long it would take to get to all the places we wanted to go and we spent the majority of our time trying to purchase tickets and we spent four out of nine days just riding trains. It's a huge country so unless you have a month to spare, you will have to choose the places you want to see the most. Know that you will be charged double or triple local prices for everything. If you're not on a backpacker budget then 100 rupees extra times five or six taxi rides a day might not be too much of a bother but it does add up pretty quickly. Also I'd advise Western travelers to bring lots of toilet paper. They don't use it in India and it can be difficult to find a shop that sells it. It's also the one country where I'd recommend you'd buy a guide book. Read it and then read it again. It will tell you many of the things that we learned the hard way.

My videographer, Darren, took this footage of our ride on a rickshaw in Varanasi. The two of us plus our four backpacks weighing approximately 75 pounds were piled into the back.

Nepal

2011-12-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

Holy hand sanitizer! We're in Nepal. What a stark contrast this place is compared to Abu Dhabi. I've been in third-world countries several times before but the state of this country was shocking. Our expectation was that Nepal would be this untouched, pristine, Sacred and spiritual place. The river was black and filled with garbage. The streets were filled with so much garbage it looked like a city built on top of a landfill. There was so much dirt and debris in the air that many people wear surgical masks when walking outside.

Darren and I believe that Nepal has the most adorable children in the world but it's upsetting to see how filthy they are. I read in the local paper, "The Himalayan" that 6.5 million people in Nepal still do not have access to clean running water and 11 million people do not have toilets and still defecate in the open. This was also shocking to see and we saw a lot of people using the street as a toilet. There seems to be no standards for hygiene, safety, or sanitation here whatsoever. What we discovered is that the people have had no education in these areas but there have been volunteer programs developed where villagers can take classes on health and hygiene. Nepal has been blessed with beautiful landscape and it's a shame to see it destroyed by pollution.

Our trip to Nepal was the only part of our around-the-world adventure that we actually planned in advance. My friend Tricia highly recommended a tour company that she used called "Nature Trail" so I contacted the owner Bishnu and he put together a trekking itinerary just for us. They picked us up and dropped us off at the bus station and airport, booked hotels, and got trekking permits for us. They also helped us book our flight from Nepal to India. We didn't have to plan a thing. They took care of everything for us.

This was our itinerary:

Ghorepani Poon Hill Trekking – 5 days:

Day 01: Fly from Kathmandu to Pokhara. Drive to Nayapul then trek to Ulleri (1960 m.). Overnight stay at tea house.

Day 02: Trek Ulleri to Ghorepani (2750 m.) – 8 hrs. Overnight stay at tea house.

Day 03: Explore the Poon hill (3193m) / back to Ghorepani and trek to Tadapani (2590m) – 7 hrs walk (1190 m.) Overnight stay at tea house.

Day 04: Tadapani to Ghandruk (1940 m.) 4 / 5 hours. Overnight stay at tea house.

Day 05: Ghandruk to Pokhara – 7 / 8 hours walk + 45 minutes drive. Overnight stay in Pokhara hotel.

Day 06: Drive to Kathmandu by Greenline tourist coach. 8 hours

All meals and flight were included, plus we had our own English speaking guide and a porter. We spent a day in Kathmandu before we left for our trek so we got to see some sights before we left. First we took a rickshaw to Durbar Square. The rickshaw ride was a bit scary since the roads are not paved and there are seemingly no traffic rules. Cars, bikes, motorcycles, cows and pedestrians whiz by in in all different directions. Nepal was quite a culture shock for us but we feel like it's preparing us for our trip to India. We like to call it "India lite".

Hanuman-Chola Durbar Square is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has 43 monuments, shrines, museums and temples. Most of them were built between the 12th and 18th centuries, in the pagoda style embellished with intricately carved exteriors. Until the early 20th century the Durbar Square was the King's residence. It is now a living open museum of Nepal.

Our next stop was to Swoyambunath or "Monkey Temple" which it's more commonly referred to. There was what felt like a million steps to the top. The Nepalis really adore their steps. At the top there were prayer wheels and monks, prayer flags, music and men giving blessings, a panoramic view of Kathmandu, and monkeys everywhere.

Saturday November 12th-Day 1 of our trek. As I mentioned, Nepal was the only part of our trip that we planned in advance. Nature trail took care of everything except for the only things we can't plan which are the weather and natural disasters. November is supposed to be the best time of year to go trekking in Nepal because of the clear skies and 0.00" of rainfall.

We got up at 5:30 am to go to the airport to catch our flight from Kathmandu to Pokhara. The airport was just one small filthy room with one small and even filthier bathroom (with a woman vomiting). All flights out were delayed because Pokhara airport was closed due to heavy fog. Hundreds of people were crammed into this one room and no flights were leaving. Just the week before 3,500 people were stranded at Mt. Everest base camp due to the fog. It was too dangerous to hike out and the guest houses ran out of food. Helicopters had to fly in to rescue people and violent fights broke out. People paid between $750-$1500 to get on the helicopters. We were starting to become concerned about the fog situation but after 5 memorable hours we were finally on a tiny prop-plane which still has imprints of my fingernails in the arm rest. It was a bumpy ride and a not-so-soft landing. There was so much fog we couldn't see anything out the window. The Himalayas were out there somewhere.

Pokhara airport was just a landing strip and our bags were taken off the plane and put on a cart which was considered "baggage claim". Our guide, Dharma and our porter, Daya had been waiting for us the entire 5 hours. Dharma had a Masters Degree in Education and spoke Nepali, English, Japanese, and Korean. He was sweet, and kind, and had a really great sense of humor. Daya was shy and quiet. He barely spoke to us for the first few days but eventually came out of his shell. He was also very sweet and gentle as we found most Nepali people to be. His caste was Sherpa so that was his name, Daya Sherpa, and it was also his job as was everyone in his family. Every single day the Sherpas carry 20-50 pounds on their backs up and down the steep mountains. Some of them wear only flip-flops and some are little old women. We didn't like the idea of someone carrying our things but it was explained to us that the porters made good money and wouldn't be able to feed their families otherwise. We packed only a few things that we needed into one backpack so he wouldn't have to carry such a heavy load. Daya never took a drink of water or even broke a sweat and he was carrying at least three times the weight of the rest of us. I cant believe I ever thought that living in a 4th floor apartment was a pain. The only way these people can get what they need is if the porters carry it in for them. There are no roads here so everything must be carried by people or donkeys and the villages are 6-8 hours walk away from each other. Tourists come here to trek for fun but these people do it every day out of necessity.

We drove about 45 minutes to our starting point and began trekking right away. We lost a lot of time and we had to find a tea house (Nepali guest lodge) before it got dark. We found a house that had a room for us. We climbed up a ladder and there was a 5'x7 room built out of plywood with 2 cots. There was an outhouse and they boiled some water so we could take a bucket shower before we went to sleep. At about 5:00 am we awoke suddenly. The house was shaking and I could hear rumbling. It was an earthquake. The house was just a brick shack built on the side of the mountain. I was afraid it crumble and fall right into the river. Darren said it felt like the house was on springs. The roosters were crowing and the cows and goats were all freaking out and making noise. A half hour later we felt another earthquake. We weren't sure what to think and without phone, Internet or any form of contact with the outside world, we had no way of knowing the extent of the damage. If there is an emergency in this area there are two ways in which people can be brought to the hospital. They can be carried out on a stretcher, which would be 3-5 days depending on where you live, or they have to be rescued by helicopter. We were worried the news of a quake would reach home and people would panic if they didn't hear word that we were alright but we were five days walk away from a phone or email so there was nothing we could do but hope no one heard about it and continue trekking.

Day 2 we trekked up the mountains for 8 hours. This was a seriously challenging trek today but we wouldn't complain when the porters were carrying bags of flour, gas tanks, live chickens, and mattresses on their backs. There was more fog. We were hiking in the Himalayas and couldn't even see them. All that exhausting work and no reward. Dharma entertained us with songs and taught us to speak some Nepali. Everywhere we went people were so nice and welcoming. Everyone greets each other with, "Namaste" and the little children come flying up the mountain with big smiles, " Namaste! Do you have sweets?!" Life here is as basic as it gets. The children have nothing and yet they seem to be the happiest children in the world.

The next morning we woke up at 4:45 to trek up Poon Hill to watch the sun rise on Annapurna. I look back on this trek and refer to it fondly as, "The Death March". It was freezing cold and we began hiking uphill just 10 minutes after waking. It was pitch black and we were following a line of flashlights. I was suffering from altitude sickness and the cold air was making it worse. I couldn't get air into my lungs and despite the freezing cold, I was drenched in sweat. We hiked uphill for an hour. Steps, steps and more endless steps and all the time it was like breathing through a straw. My doctor back home had done a trek in Nepal and warned me about this and so she gave me extra Asthma inhalers. She said everyone on her trek was borrowing her inhaler whether they had Asthma or not. Asthma and altitude sickness are not a good mix so I took puffs of my inhaler the whole way and I pushed myself to the top just as the sun came up and there they finally were. The fog had lifted and we were staring at the Himalayas.

We hiked back down, ate breakfast and learned that Dharma, with his Masters Degree had never heard of McDonald's. There is a wonderful innocence about the people here. He had also never even seen the ocean so we gave him and Daya some seashells we collected in South Africa. They didn't even know what seashells were. We had given them to some children one day when we didn't have any candy for them. They were so excited and tried to blow in them like they were horns. Dharma tried to blow in his too. His amazement and appreciation for the little gift was so genuine. In fact, Everyone we came across was so genuine and grateful for everything.

We started out again on another 6 hours of trekking. A half hour into it the fog came back and stayed for the rest of the day. That night was even colder than the last. The teahouses don't have heat and there's no electricity until after 5 pm. Even then,there are rolling blackouts so we were all sitting in one room where they were burning coal for warmth and the power went out so we just sat there in the dark. The food is really basic too. All they really have to offer is fried rice or fried noodles. They have some other stuff on the menu but if you order it they say they don't have it or it will take too long to make.

The next morning Dharma was excitedly knocking on our door. The fog had lifted and the mountains could be seen again. He didn't want us to miss it. We ate breakfast outside overlooking the mountain sunrise. It had been a rough and freezing cold night and there was a woman staying at the tea house who was really sick. There were no pharmacies or doctors and she had to keep trekking despite being miserably ill. I had some cold medicine and lozenges that I gave her and it was like I handed her a million dollars. The people who live here don't have access to the most basic necessities and at home we can just run across the street to the store and get anything we need. We are so lucky.

We reached our next village, Ghandruk by mid day. The teahouse was particularly nice. By this I mean that the electricity worked and the bathroom was indoors. Since there had been no sun for days, the solar showers could not produce hot water but they were still lukewarm and Dharma made sure to always look after us. He was so intent on making sure that we got the warm shower before the other guests arrived and used it up that he tried to drag Darren into the water with his clothes on! The showers are just a faucet and a drain in the floor next to the toilet and the toilets are usually squat toilets. They don't use toilet paper so you have to carry your own wherever you go. At this teahouse we watched several people brush their teeth in the shower, followed by a woman washing dishes from the dining hall (cold water with no soap) and then another woman brought her little girl into the same shower to urinate. No knowledge of hygiene whatsoever in this part of the world.

That afternoon Dharma took us to the Ghandruk museum. Yay! The museum was basically just a house filled with old Nepali artifacts most of which they still use today. Not much in Nepal has changed in the past 100 years. The museum had some funny diorama style out-of-scale displays with farmers that were five times bigger than the cows. There was a certificate on the wall for "Museumology." I loved it. Dharma then took us to the local monastery and then the Visitors Center. Ghandruk was considered a large village. It had 200 homes, a school, a monastery, and a Visitor Center. The Visitor's Center had information about endangered wildlife, environmental protection, health and hygiene workshops, bridge development and other projects they were trying to undertake in the Annapurna region. Tourism is Nepal's biggest industry and so there was a lot of focus on keeping the Annapurna region clean and safe for visitors. This was really wonderful to see.

We had a really fun day and that night Dharma and Daya finally ate dinner with us. They eat Dal Bhat everyday-a traditional Nepali dish of rice and lentils. All of the porters and guides would usually wait to eat until after the tourists had eaten. We asked them why and they said that tourists are most important. Dharma said that to the Nepali people tourists are Gods. Without the tourists these people would have no livelihood. But we insisted that we were just regular people who were just as important as they are and we wanted them to eat with us. So they finally did and Dharma taught us more Nepali. I'm learning to say, "I'm allergic to garlic" in every language! He taught us Nepali trekking songs and we joked around. We learned about their families and traditions. A little girl about the age of two entertained us, with funny faces and dancing around. A tourist had given her an orange and she played with it for hours. She looked out the window and pointed to the mountain and said to us, "Annapurna!" She was a little trekking guide in the making.

It rained really hard all night. So much for clear skies and 0.00" of rainfall in November! The next morning we had a 6 hour trek down hill. It was so slippery Dharma had to hold my hand most of the way. But all of us were slipping and each time we slipped we'd turn it into a dance! Even Daya slipped once but just a tiny bit. He lived his whole life in the mountains and this was like taking a stroll for him. When porters or donkeys pass by everyone must step aside for them since they have to carry the heavy loads. But where there are donkeys there is also plenty of donkey dung so another difficult task is trying not to step in it because it is really slippery and you don't want to fall in it!

We passed a woman who lived in one of the villages which consisted of maybe three homes. She had a festering wound on her foot. She was in the woods and a boulder fell on it. It looked horribly painful and she had no medication or any ability to walk to a doctor. All Dharma had for her was a small bandaid and she was thrilled. Our problems are so silly. We are so lucky.

We were almost out and the path was blocked off so we had to take a detour. We came upon an avalanche and had to climb over the rocks that had fallen above. As we trekked down it got warmer and it became easier to breathe. It was our last day of trekking and the sun finally came out. We finally got to see some views and we sang Nepali trekking songs. Our trek was over in the afternoon and then they drove us to our hotel in Pokhara where we would spend the night. Dharma and Daya were taking the local bus back to Kathmandu that night. They would spend a few days with their families before leaving for a 21 day Everest base camp trek. Darren and I had tickets for a bus the following morning. It would take 8 hours to get back to Kathmandu. We took the worlds most amazing hot showers and ate a real meal (with meat!) at the hotel restaurant. They had a performance of traditional Nepali dancing and they were singing Dharma's trekking song! We were so excited that we knew the words.

I woke up in the middle of the night feeling very sick. Maybe the meat was bad or maybe I drank bad water. We had an 8 hour bus ride ahead of us and I was dreading it. We thought about staying another day and seeing if we could get a flight back to Kathmandu but the airports were closed again thanks to the never ending fog. We managed to make it through fog, rain, freezing cold, mudslides, an avalanche and an earthquake and then I got sick. I was so nauseous and couldn't eat a thing. The bus was old and rickety. None of the roads were paved and the driver was driving like a lunatic in true Nepali fashion. We stopped for lunch and all I could manage was two forkfuls of rice. At the next stop I managed to make it out of the bus in time to vomit on the side of the road a few times. Nepal wound up being a spiritual place after all because I started praying to God to just let me die rather than get back on the bus again. And then a miracle happened. A girl came up to me and gave me some anti-nausea medication. Now I had just been given a million dollars.

We made it back to Kathmandu without any further incidents. When we arrived we saw wonderful sweet Dharma had come to meet us. He had already been paid and was no longer our guide but he paid for the cab himself and came to make sure we made it safely back. He took us back to the hotel and was insisting that I let him take me to the private clinic but I was so weak that I couldn't do anything but lie in bed and that's where I stayed for the next 16 hours. While I hibernated, Darren and Dharma went to the pharmacy to get me medicine. We were supposed to meet Bishnu and his wife for dinner but that was unfortunately out of the question. The next morning I was feeling a little better and was able to eat my first bit of food in over a day. We had no clean clothes left and desperately needed to find a laundromat but there was no place that would let us wash our clothes ourselves so we had to drop it off. At this point I had no clean underwear or clothes left. I'd like to thank my friend Michele O'Brien for the a brilliant travel tip: a bathing suit can be worn as underwear. So there I was in Kathmandu wearing a winter coat over a bikini and a pair of Darren's pants which were ridiculously big on me. Only in Kathmandu can a person blend right in wearing an outfit like this. It's is a Mecca for dirty hippies. When we finally got our clothes back they were dirtier than when we brought them in and half of them were missing. We had to go back and recover the rest of our clothes minus some socks and underwear but the majority of it was there although it was all now the same shade of dingy gray.

So despite all of our planning, we didn't have the trip we expected but we challenged ourselves to do something we weren't sure we could do, we learned a lot, and pushed ourselves to do things way outside of our comfort zone. We discovered one of the rare places on this planet where people have never heard of McDonald's. We trekked through the magnificent Himalayas and even got to see them from time to time! We met some of the worlds most genuinely nice and happiest people, we made new friends and were reminded of how incredibly fortunate we are.

******
Namaskar=Welcome/Hello
Shuba bihani=Good morning
Shuba Ratri=Good night
Tapai lai kasto chha?= How are you?
Dhanya bad= Thank you
Pheri bhetuela= See you again/goodbye
Tapaiko nam ke ho?= What is your name?
Malai lasun man pardaina= I can't eat garlic

14 hours in Abu Dhabi

2011-12-01T09:31:00.000-05:00

We left South Africa on November 9th. We drove five hours to Johannesburg airport and then flew from there to Abu Dhabi. We flew on Etihad Airlines and it was the nicest airline either of us had ever been on. The seats were really comfortable and even in coach they almost fully recline.

They had the most delicious airline food we'd ever tasted and they even gave us real silverware. There were over 85 movies to choose from on our personal television screen plus TV shows, music, and games to play. You could also watch the plane flying in real time from the perspective of the cockpit. We got to watch the plane taxi down the runway and take off! You can also choose to watch an above ground view and see the plane flying over the mountains below.

We arrived in Abu Dhabi around mid-night and our next flight wasn't leaving until 2pm so we had 14 hours to spare. We went to the airport hotel so we could sleep but they were already full. An airport official told us it would be easy to find a hotel close by so we went through customs, got our visas, and entered Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi is pristine. All of the men are dressed in traditional white Kandura's and Ghutrah's (robe and head scarves also known as dishdasha or keffiyeh). The longer the robe, the more wealth a man possesses. We watched the cars driving up to the terminal. Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes.

They are all about luxury here. We wished we had more time to see more but what we found out was that since they were currently hosting the Grand Prix, all of the hotels in the area were fully booked (or at least the hotels we could afford!). We had no choice but to go back into the airport and sleep there for the night.

That was basically our entire crazy adventure in Abu Dhabi. We didn't get to see or do much but I did get to ride a camel!

South Africa

2011-11-18T04:26:00.001-05:00

South Africa

Thursday October 26th we left Istanbul and began our long journey to Cape Town, South Africa. We had to start taking malaria medication and the pills were making me sick. About ten minutes before we left for an hour long bus ride to the airport, I was vomiting in the dirty hostel bathroom. Oh the glamorous side of traveling! We had three flights ahead of us. Our first layover would be in Abu Dhabi and our second would be in Johannesburg.

It was a full day later when we finally arrived in Cape Town on Friday the 28th. We stayed at a backpacker's lodge called "The Backpack" which was thankfully so much nicer than the horrible dirty smelly hostel we stayed at in Turkey. South Africa has become extremely backpacker friendly over the last ten years and the lodges we stayed at were all fantastic. Most of the places we stayed in had pools, a bar, a cafe, and a travel desk to help coordinate and book tours, rental cars and accommodations.

I wrote in my last post about Turkey that we met a woman from Cape Town who gave us lots of helpful information about the city. She sent me an extremely descriptive email with suggestions of places to see and things to do. We found it really helpful to have a real Capetonian's perspective on things rather than reading a guide book. It was so useful to us that I've asked her to allow me to post what she wrote to us. The following text in blue was written by Alex Swanepoel:

Alex's Cape town post

[ LONG STREET is the main street in the Cape Town CBD (Which all refer to as "Town") and is great for shopping, african souvenirs and partying. It has the biggest variety of clubs, shops and what-not. BUT, there is plenty of theft!!! You will find anything here.

Good places to go for drinks etc. THE DUBLINER, ZULU BAR (for live music), STONES (if you like to play pool), NEIGHBOURHOOD (for food and a more alternative upper class vibe) DO NOT walk down a dark alley alone, or alone at anytime. DO NOT wear lots of expensive looking jewellery. DO NOT flash your money, try using smaller notes when you pay. AND DO NOT trust helpless looking street kids or car-gaurds! Just carry on walking if they approach you, the street kids distract you, etc and that is when your phone or money goes missing. Be nice to car-guards as they can cause trouble... so be friendly, say thank you, make a joke and give them a tip of about R5 depending on how you feel about them. NEVER TIP THEM BEFORE, always when you return to your car. otherwise they leave and they don't do their job. But generally the normal rules apply for theft in any country, just watch your bags and don't ever leave them unattended. Don't put your phone/wallet in your pocket. Just ignore beggars... bla bla same in New York I am sure.

Just be aware, be clever, be humble and smile! South Africans are very helpful and friendly and respond well to kindness.

- CAMPS BAY is home to the up market lounges/clubs/restaurants, and some of our best/cleanest beaches. Great to go to after a day at CLIFTON (The main beach close by) or Camps bay beach. You can go all sandy from the beach, for some sundowner cocktails at CAPRICE, BLUES, THE BAY HOTEL, SAND BAR, BARAZZA, but keep in mind that you spend more in Camps Bay... cocktails are expensive but as a sun downers place. Always busy and vibey, food is good. Bring a bottle of your own champagne or wine to take down to the beach.

- CLAREMONT is where our rugby stadium is. Its the rugby and beer central! Go to the brewery for a tour if you can. and to a rugby game if one is on! they are about R50 for a ticket. And right next to each other. Cavendish Square, is the shopping centre in Claremont if you need some clothes etc. Best places for everyday clothing is Woolworths for quality at a decent price and Mr Price for cheap cheap cheap clothes, they won't last long from here but they do the job for a couple months. Both of these shops you find pretty much anywhere you go.

-KALK BAY is a whole day trip along with CHAPMANS PEAK DRIVE, HOUT BAY, CAPE POINT, and SIMONS TOWN. Let's plan it.

On a hot, sunny SUNDAY day you go to HOUT BAY for the market (go early) its better as a whole day thing but if you can't then try quickly do this whole trip in once. Get breakfast at the market. GET A DOGHNUT!!! This doghnut stall has been here for over 20 years and still going strong. its amazing. HOUT BAY also has the 'world of birds' if you spend the day there its pretty cool to support. For dinner or lunch in Hout Bay go to the harbour for fish and chips. BEST FISH AND CHIPS EVER!!!

!! CHAPMANS PEAK DRIVE (CHAPPIES) !! cannot be missed. its incredible to see and you have to do it no matter what! You can only go on a good weather day as its closed on bad days. You pay about R28 in a car to cross.

CHAPPIES takes you from hout bay to NOORDEHOEK. Noordehoek is cool and lots to see but you can see better.

Drive through from Chappies over to Kommetjie, where you can ride camels if you like? through to Misty Cliffs, Scarborough, on to the CAPE OF GOOD HOPE (CAPE POINT) another MUST!!! What ever you do, you must do cape point! Drive through, see baboons, springbok, dassies (little rock rabbits, FACT: their closest relative is the elephant), and walk to the point of Africa :) STUNNING. There are great hikes in the Cape Point Reserve, down to beautiful caves and beaches, unreachable by car. Try do it if you can. Food is expensive and not so great inside the reserve though, so rather eat in Simons town or at the ostrich farm to try some weird foods ie. ostrich. Just across the road is an ostrich farm. If you have never seen or ridden one, then go have a quick look.

Drive from there through Simons town, an old navy village, where you can go to boulders beach to see the penguins! on to KALK BAY. Go to the BRASS BELL for some drinks and sundowners. On the weekends it is full of surfers and plenty of drinking. Nice pizza. After then, if you stay late, go to Polana (either after Brass bell or for dinner). CAPE TO CUBE is a great restaurant for Cuban food. OLYMPIA CAFE is a good breakfast spot... be aware they are dirty in their kitchen, but they make the most amazing croissants!

FOR SURFING (learning) go to MUIZENBERG.

Long Beach for bigger surf, this is where all the locals go.

Otherwise Llundudno is good (but freezing cold) or to

Kalk Bay, but Kalk Bay is a bit rough if your not experienced enough and locals tend to get pissed of with people mucking around at this spot.

Wit Sands on good days is amazing, plenty of kite- surfing out here.

!! TABLE MOUNTAIN, you have to do. Hike up if you can and take the cable car down. !!

Very expensive to eat and drink at the top, so bring your own picnic and food etc. It gets cold and windy on top so bring a wind-breaker. You can go KLOOFING, or Paragliding from the top.

http://www.adventurehub.co.za/abseil-africa-table-mountain-kloofing-hiking-cape-town

Kloofing at Crystal Pools, would be an incredible experience. I think that -especially for the two of you- it would be an incredible adventure in the mountains and natural springs.

http://www.cape-xtreme.com/water/kloofing/

SHOPPING. go to CANAL WALK for a million million shops, its our biggest centre. and the

V&A WATERFRONT is great too, more up market but its great for lunch, movies, to see the boats, people, the mountain, its a great tourist thing to go to and I highly recommend it. Also at the V&A Waterfront:

!! The TWO OCEANS AQUARIUM is incredible. I have never been to an aquarium like this in my life. You will love it !!

Robben Island, where Mandela was in Jail. You take a day trip out on a ferry.

Little indoor Market on your way to the Aquarium with lots of hand-made African Crafts. Across the road is Put-Put and the Scratch Patch.

Or LONGSTREET, which depending on where you go can be expensive or cheap. GREENMARKET SQUARE (in Town) for african souvenirs,.

GRAND WEST CASINO is brilliant. a huge casino, with ice-rink, games area, food and restaurants and generally have theatre and shows. Its a bit far out but the casino is well work the visit!

!! KIRSTENBOSCH GARDENS is a must and I mean A MUST!!! You cannot go to cape town without going to kirstenbosch. Best on a hot day. If you are able and if the live act is any good, then on a sunday, they have an open air theatre in the gardens. You go around 3pm (always go early as possible as parking is hell) with a big picnic blanket and basket. take wine, cheese, more wine, and grapes, snacks to keep you going for a good couple of hours. its crazy busy but the best thing. A picnic in the gardens with live music, good happy people, children and nice food. Its a truely cape town experience .

http://www.uncoverthecape.co.za/event-calendar/kirstenbosch-concerts.htm

This is a pretty good site.

There are some great Hikes over into Kirstenbosch Gardens from Constantia Nek, that go through Cecilia Forest, where there are many natural water springs from the mountain :) Should only take Two hours or so depending on the trail you walk and how fast you go. But try do this. The forest is a working one, They might have recently cut down some trees but not too sure???

http://www.uncoverthecape.co.za/hiking-guide.htm

For wine tasting go to Steenberg in Tokai, Constantiaberg uitsig in Constantia... these are great and close. but if you have a chance to get out of cape town, take a day drive out to

Franschhoek! Just wine wine wine farms one after another. But its so beautiful! Take a sober driver, stay the night in a B&B or hire a bus haha as you will be waaaay to drunk to get home.

Or to Stellenbosch which is a student town, very old, plenty wine farms and great local shops etc. Just outside of Stellies is a Cheetah sanctuary at "Spier". You can take a train out to this area which is quite nice to do. The restaurant here MOYO is amazing, they paint your faces, wine tasting and you can dine in a tree house, really great!

http://www.spier.co.za/what_to_do_at_spier/cheetah_outreach/

For Kruger I think you might need the Wild Card? https://www.wildcard.co.za/

I know this is a lot of info all at once but maybe one or two of these things will spark a memory and you'll have a good experience.]

We were only in Cape Town from Friday to Monday and there were no rental cars available until Monday but we still got to take advantage of a lot of the things Alex mentioned in her list. We climbed up Table Mountain which was amazing but it took an hour just to walk up to the base of the mountain and an other three to do the serious vertical climb to the top. This was a very difficult hike but worth it. If you take the cable car up you will miss all of the beauty along the way. Most people choose to take the cable car up and then hike down. Now we know why we only passed a few other people hiking up. It's a tough climb to the top.

One thing we really wanted to do that was on Alex's list was to take a tour of Robben Island. Like the rental car, this needed to be booked in advance and tours we booked up through Wednesday, two days after our departure from Cape Town. So if you're planning a visit, know that tours are very limited and plan ahead.

You can buy a ticket for one of the backpacker buses and hop on and off at backpacker lodges all along the Garden Route. It's a really safe and easy way to travel around South Africa. But we found that for the two of us traveling together it was actually cheaper to rent a car. It wasn't available until Monday though (another thing I recommend booking ahead of time) so on Sunday we took the bus to Kirstenbosch Gardens, home to the worlds oldest plant species which predates the dinosaurs and survived the Ice Age.

We also saw the V&A Waterfront, Camps Bay, and Mariner's wharf in Hout Bay where we did eat the fish & chips and also saw seals! They came right up to the pier to get fed.

We also decided to take a Township tour. It was an extremely awkward and uncomfortable yet humbling experience to take a tour of someone else's impoverished living conditions but this is something I think is important and also necessary for anyone visiting South Africa to do. I found the disparity of wealth in this country to be disturbing. People are living in shacks made of salvaged scrap metal and just up the street others are living in mansions. We were invited into people's homes even though the six of us on the tour could barely all fit inside. At one point (and this is the part where it got awkward and uncomfortable) we were invited into a church while a wedding was in process. We were brought right up to the altar where the bride and groom were standing. All over Cape Town and the rest of South Africa homes are surrounded by fences or walls with spikes and barbed wire.You have to pay car guards to watch your car and you can't leave any items inside the car when your driving or when it's parked. It's extremely unsettling, unwelcoming and gives the impression that nowhere is safe. Yet, in the township where they had nothing to offer us but their smiles, we were welcomed in. A little boy ran up to Darren and gave him a hug (this was the humbling part) This township was small in comparison to most. 30,000 people lived there (most of them children) and there was one bathroom for every 500 people. The name of this township was Imizamo Yethu which means "Our Struggle"

We spent the next week driving across the country along the Garden Route to get to our final destination of Kruger National Park. Along the way we stopped in Simonstown and saw hundreds of African penguins at Boulders Beach. Then we drove for six hours to Knysna and saw no houses or people for almost the entire drive. What we did see a lot of was mountains and wide open land with ostriches,donkeys, cows, sheep, goats, and baboons!

We spent one night in Knysna, a gorgeous little town on the coast. We explored the Knysna waterfront, Thesen Harbour Town and these amazing cliffs called The Heads.

We spent the next night in Port Elizabeth and stopped in Jeffreys Bay to check out the world famous surfing beach. The waves and surfing did not disappoint us! What an amazing beach and phenomenal surfing!!

The next day we headed to a remote little town call Chintsa. A Canadian couple we had met at The Backpack back in Cape Town mentioned that it was their favorite place they visited in S.A. So we decided to check it out. On our way we saw giraffes, monkeys, wart hogs, goats, cows, sheep, ostrich, impala, pigs and horses. It was way out of the way and really hard to find. We drove down an unmarked dirt road and what we discovered was an amazing little gem in the middle of nowhere hidden away in the wilderness and overlooking a lake and the ocean. For approximately 50 US dollars we had our own private house with a terrace and an ocean view. So of course we decided to stay an extra night.

We went canoeing the next morning and that afternoon we went surfing for the first time in the Indian Ocean. There were millions of giant colorful seashells all along the shore. The hermit crabs loved them too and we discovered a lot of the shells could walk!

We wished we could have stayed in Chintsa but had to get back on the road if we were going to make it to Kruger Park. Everywhere we drove in South Africa we'd see people hitch hiking or walking along the road or selling fruit, crafts, live chickens. Women with babies on their backs and groceries on their heads. Vans drive around picking people up and cramming in as many as possible. There were children walking barefoot along the highway by themselves and up to ten kids would pile in the back of pick up trucks to take them back to their villages after school.

We spent just one night in Durban and originally we weren't really thrilled about stopping in a big city after our relaxing time in Chintsa but we wound up happy that we did. We found the diversity refreshing and promising. Durban has a large Indian population as well as some other Asian in addition to the black and white South Africans we'd seen everywhere else. It was nice to finally see some diversity and on top of that blacks and whites were interacting as friends and colleagues, which we unfortunately saw very little of elsewhere.

From Durban we drove to Swaziland. (read my separate post on Swaziland)

We drove through Zululand and started seeing round huts with thatched roofs. One woman working in the toll booth tried to teach Darren some Zulu but Zulu is such a complex language and with an Irish accent is a total disaster. She couldn't understand his English either so they just laughed at each other.

We finally reached Kruger National Park on Sunday. Kruger National Park is a protected area for Africa's amazing wild animals, many of which are critical (ie. Wild Dogs) or endangered (ie.rhinoceros) Poachers kill one rhino every day in Kruger Park just for their horn. It's estimated that a rhino horn is now worth about $250,000. We were told it is very difficult to spot a rhino-probably because they're hiding from poachers- but we were lucky and spotted nearly ten of them. It's sad to think that by the time I post this many of them will have been killed by greedy poachers.

There are so many magnificent animals in Kruger. Even though I worked in zoos it still amazed me and I saw animals I had never seen in person or in pictures. I never thought I'd hear myself say, "Watch out for the elephant in the road!" Everywhere we went we saw elephants, giraffe, nyala, kudu, wildebeest, buffalo, wart hogs, zebra, rhino, and cheetah. What an amazing experience. All of South Africa was truly an amazing and eye-opening experience. It is not a vacation but it definitely leaves a lasting impression. It is a land of extremes. It's rich in so many things- culture, landscape, animals, and minerals but people are living beside diamond mines and starving. One in four people are HIV positive and 25% are unemployed. There is no welfare and no unemployment assistance.

It's one thing to read about it but it to experience it first-hand has truly affected us. It is such an amazing and terrible place all at the same time. One woman we met from Johannesburg summed it up perfectly when she said, "I love South Africa and I hate South Africa."

Swaziland

2011-11-18T04:25:00.000-05:00

Swaziland

Even though crossing from South Africa to Swaziland involved driving through a gate, it was very apparent we had just entered another country. We drove through and there was a dirt road with a plywood sign with hand-painted letters reading, "Welcome to Swaziland". Then we drove through dirt roads and fields until we finally found a main road which was (thankfully) paved. We found Swaziland to be even more rural than South Africa. We never came across any big cities or even a big town. The land was really lush with these magnificent trees covered purple flowers.

We drove around trying to find some place to stay before dark. We found a lodge that had a room. It was an unusual place with an unusual caretaker who chose to sleep in a tent in the yard even though there was a whole house filled with empty beds. It wasn't the most comfortable or cleanest place to stay but we were happy to have a place to sleep for the night. When we went out for dinner we realized we didn't have any Swazi money. The waitress said it was no problem because they took south African rands and they were worth the same amount anyway.

The next morning, Sunday November 6th, we went to the Swazi Cultural Village. We got a guided tour of the village and our guide let us go inside the huts. The doorways are very small and you have to crawl to get inside. The straw used to make them keeps them cool and dry inside. Once children are six years old they sleep in separate huts from their parents. Girls and boys also sleep in separate huts.

Girls will marry around the age of 18 whereas the men would not get married until the age of about 30. The reason for this is because they have to pay the girl's father a dowry of between 10-20 cows. The price varies depending on whether she is a virgin or not and several other factors which will be negotiated between the groom and father. If the men can afford it they are allowed as many as two wives. A typical family would have 7-10 children. This would ensure that the parents would have someone to take care of them in their old age-Swazi Social Security.

The men would be responsible for hunting for food and the women would cook, clean, and take care of the children. The wife must always be subservient to the husband and when feeding him his meal she must bow, leave the food and back away. When eating meat, she is not allowed to eat the brain for fear she will become smarter than the man. She may not eat the tongue for fear she will talk too much. And she may not eat the feet for fear she will walk away and leave him.

After the tour we were treated to a performance of traditional Swazi singing and dancing. This was so much fun and somehow the tribesmen kept dragging me into the act!

Afterwards we walked up the trail to see Mantenga falls and then we got back on the road and headed back to South Africa. We had no cash left so we stopped at an ATM and took out 1200 Swazi Lilangeni. We crossed over three border checkpoints to get into S.A. and then drove another hour to our lodge. When we got there we found out that they don't accept credit cards and no one in S.A. Accepts Swazi currency even though Swaziland will accept south African Rands. So the next morning we tried the bank and they wouldn't exchange it for us. They told us to try the exchange bureau at the Mozambique border. So we drove to the border of Mozambique but they didn't want it either. Even the ladies who sit on the side of the road at the border crossing and try to get you to change your money with them before you go into the exchange office didn't want our money.

The only thing we could do was drive back to Swaziland. So we drove an hour back to the border, got our passports stamped leaving S.A., drove into Swaziland, got our passports stamped entering Swaziland, and changed the money at customs. Then we got back in the car but the south African official wouldn't let us in until we went back and got a stamp to enter S.A. again. So we parked the car again, went back into the S.A. immigration office and got our stamps, all while providing entertainment and outbursts of laughter amongst the border patrol guards. We got in the car again and drove to the S.A. gate but this time the guard had to check our immunization cards just in case we might have come in contact with any diseases during our ten minute visit to Swaziland that we hadn't been vaccinated for.

We thoroughly enjoyed both of our visits to Swaziland and found each of them to be a unique cultural experience in their own way!

Turkey

2011-11-03T13:06:00.000-04:00

We left New York on Friday October 21st. We had a layover in Kiev, Ukraine and our connecting flight to Turkey was delayed for over an hour. After spending four hours in Kiev airport with only one bathroom for hundreds of angry people we have no desire to ever visit Ukraine again.

Our second flight landed in Turkey around 5pm Saturday the 22nd. A little over an hour late. We got our visas on arrival and then went through customs. The first challenge was to find the bus we needed to take to Taksim Square with the added obstacles of having very little sleep, not knowing a word of Turkish, and while carrying 20 pound bags on our backs. We found an information kiosk and Darren asked (in his politest Irish accent), "Where do we get the bus to Taksim Square?" The girl replied back in English, "I can't understand what you're saying." So I repeated the same question to her again (in "American English") and she understood! She directed us to the bus stop and we were on our way. It was an hour ride but the bus was a very comfortable coach bus and we got to see a lot on the way. We were dropped off with our giant backpacks in the middle of Taksim Square on a Saturday night and it was like Times Square on New Year's Eve. We found our hostel pretty easily especially considering the directions told us to go right when we were supposed to turn left. After we dropped our bags we went out for our first Turkish meal and then we bought roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. There are chestnut carts everywhere and also corn on the cob and carts selling Turkish bagels.

Sunday October 23rd, we woke up so late we didn't get out for breakfast until 11:30. We had our first Turkish coffees. They're dark and rich and served in tiny little cups so you have to sip it really slow and savor it. I really like the little cups and think it makes it like a special ritual. Darren didn't like it at first but it's grown on him. We didn't do so well with finding breakfast on our first day in Istanbul. I wound up with chicken and Darren had Turkish ravioli!

In Taksim Square there were protests going on. People were marching with Turkish flags and the military were out with machine guns and riot gear. We chose to steer clear of the riots and found the train to the Spice Bazaar.

The Spice Bazaar was amazing and everything you would expect a real Turkish bazaar to be. It went on and on and up and down all the streets.We wandered around for hours. You can buy everything from spices to fruit to cell phone batteries and even Viagra! The vendors like to ask where you are from and their prices change according to the country you're from. Americans get the most expensive prices so Darren says he's Irish and then I just stay quiet and they think I'm Irish too. They are much nicer to us when we are Irish rather than American. Although I've been asked five times if I come from Spain???

After the bazaar we walked around the Suleymaniye and Fatih Mosques. If you're a female traveler visiting Turkey I'd recommend bringing your own head scarf. You need to wear one to enter the mosques. You can buy one at any of the markets for 5 Turkish Lira (5 TL). They will also let you borrow one at the entrance to the mosques but it has also been worn by a thousand other heads.

Next, we took a boat ride on the Golden Horn River. It was really fun and gave us a different perspective of Istanbul. The sun was setting and the city was bathed in all different colors.

Darren learned his first lesson about Turkish culture when a man on the boat handed him a sandwich. If someone in Turkey gives you something, they want something from you. So if a man puts a sandwich in your hand then you just bought yourself a sandwich. Somehow we wound up with three sandwiches and two cups of fresh squeezed orange juice that we didn't even ask for but I have to admit the juice was really good.

After the boat ride we got some coffee and then took the metro back to Fundikli. You have to pay 2 TL for each transfer so we realized we could save 8 TL a day by getting off at Fundikli and walking one stop to Taksim Square. The only problem is that on the way home you have to walk up a really really steep hill but we figured it's preparing us for our trek in Nepal in a few weeks.

We wandered around Taksim Square for a while and tried some Turkish Delight which was fantastic. Turkey has some of the best desserts in the world. Later at the hostel we found our Lebanese and French roommates had moved on and we now had new French, German and South African roommates. Alex is from Cape Town and was really excited to hear that Cape Town is our next stop after Istanbul. She was so thrilled that she planned our whole itinerary for us (See next blog on South Africa). She showed us where to go and where we should definitely NOT go. Complete with what we should eat and where the best surfing beaches are. We were happy she wound up being our roommate because we hadn't planned out what we were going to do in South Africa yet so now that's taken care of.

Once we finally checked our email for the first time, we found out there had been an earthquake in Turkey. We weren't anywhere near the quake but some friends and family were worried until they had heard back from us. There was an earthquake when I was in New Zealand. Then when I was home in New York over the summer and now on my first day in Turkey. I have now been named "Earthquake Kim" (Thanks Alison!) but I swear I had nothing to do with it and am grateful to be unharmed.

Monday October 24th, we took the metro to Sultanahmet to see the Hagia Sophia (the museum was closed so we had to go back the next day) the Blue Mosque and Topkapi Palace. Inside the Blue Mosque it is very ornate and impressive. You don't have to pay to go inside (they do ask for a donation) but you must take off your shoes. Don't worry, the carpet is amazingly soft!

A young Turkish man approached us on the street. He was very friendly and said he was not a tour guide but that he wanted to practice his English. He told us some interesting facts about Turkey, ie. it has over 2,000 mosques. He also told us that if a Turkish man offers you tea and you accept, you will be friends for 40 years. So he asked us to have tea with him and we (reluctantly) agreed. Then he led us to his "Uncles" carpet store, gave us tea, and left us with his "Uncle" who chatted with us about Turkey for a little while and then tried to sell us a $600 carpet. Even after we told him that we don't have a home to put a carpet in, he still persisted. We did, however, enjoy our Turkish tea which is served in these special little glass cups. We had just said that morning that we wanted to try some Turkish tea but need to be more careful what we wish for!

After being lured into the carpet store we finally went to the The Blue Mosque and then Topkapi Palace. We paid 20 TL each to enter the palace. It is now a museum but was originally the primary residence of Ottoman Sultans and is the oldest surviving palace in the world. It was constructed between 1460 and 1478 and built on the site of the acropolis of the ancient city of Byzantion located on the Seraglio Point, at the end of the historic peninsula of Istanbul between the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. The museum has a collection of 80,000 articles including thrones, swords, jewelery, and sacred relics of the Apostles. The exhibits dated back to biblical times. One display even had the staff of Moses. The rooms of the palace were artwork in themselves. The most interesting of them all was the Circumcision Room. This room was solely dedicated to circumcising princes.

Tuesday we took the train back to Sultanahmet to see the Basilica Cistern and the Hagia Sophia Museum. The Basilica Cistern is one of several underground cisterns commissioned by Byzantine emperors to meet the population's water requirements in case of a siege. It was constructed in the 6th century AD and still holds water to this day.

The Hagia Sophia is stunningly beautiful and architecturally impressive. There's so many little details like the mosaics that were restored after they had been plastered over from when it was turned into a mosque. It was originally a church built by Emperor Constantius in 360. The current Hagia Sohpia is the third construction that was built between 532 and 537. After the conquest of Istanbul in 1453 by Fatih Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror, Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque.

Our last stop was the Grand Bazaar where there were rows upon rows of hookahs, spices, lamps, rugs and everything else you could possibly want or need for sale. The bazaar seemed like an endless maze where everyone is trying to haggle with you and make you a deal. It was so confusing that we got lost and couldn't find our way out. I'm convinced it is purposely designed this way.

I hope you enjoyed our trip to Turkey. Our next stop is South Africa!

Away We Go!

2011-10-17T20:38:00.000-04:00

Ireland was the first of what will be many trips in the coming months. Darren and I have been planning an adventure that will take us to 10 countries in roughly 4 or 5 months. I'm really happy that I finally have a traveling companion and after my tour of the Dunbrody on our trip to Ireland last month, I will never again complain about being stuck in the middle seat on a flight. The Dunbrody passengers were piled 10 to a bed and it took them over a month to get from Ireland to North America. It has given me a whole new perspective on traveling.

We leave October 21st for Turkey. We'll be there for about a week and then we will fly to South Africa for 2 weeks. Then we'll fly to Nepal (with a 14 hour stop in Abu Dhabi) and take a guided trek for 6 days from Pokhara to Kathmandu. From Kathmandu we will travel over land via several buses to India. From India we will fly to Vietnam and travel over land from Vietnam through Cambodia and into Thailand. Then we will fly from Thailand to Australia and from Australia to New Zealand and then to Fiji.

Finally, sometime in February we'll come back to the United States through Hawaii. I've received many requests to keep up with the blog posts while I'm away. I will try my best in the midst of all this crazy country hopping. We're only bringing what we can fit in our backpacks and we're not bringing phones or laptops so we'll see how I do with typing posts on an iPad and limited internet access! So please keep checking back in to see where we are or click "Follow" at the top left side of this page or "Subscribe To" in the right hand side bar.

Wexford, Ireland

2011-10-14T20:47:00.000-04:00

In September my husband, Darren and I took a trip to Wexford, Ireland to visit his family. Darren grew up in Wexford but hadn't been home in many years and while this would be my third trip to Ireland it was my first trip to Wexford.

Wexford has a few "claims to fame." First, it's known as the county where the Kennedy family comes from. Second, Curracloe beach is where the movie "Saving Private Ryan" was filmed. And last but not least, Wexford is known for its strawberries.

On our first day there we visited Tintern Abbey and the Hook lighthouse. In the year 1200, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, set out to pay his first visit to Ireland as Lord of Leinster. Threatened with shipwreck off the south coast, he vowed to found an abbey wherever he should reach safety. On landing in Bannow Bay, he redeemed his vow, bequeathing about 3500 hectares of land for the foundation of a Cistercian abbey. Situated on the west shore of Bannow Bay in Co. Wexford, Tintern Abbey was one of the most powerful Cistercian foundations in the south-east until the mid-16th century.

Our next stop was Hook Lighthouse, the oldest operational Lighthouse in the world. Hook Lighthouse offers guided tours of the lighthouse tower, a 13th Century Norman structure, built by William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke as part of the development of his Lordship of Leinster.

Allegedly, the prase. "By Hook or by Crook" comes from the names of the villages of Hook Head and

the nearby Crook, in Waterford, Ireland. Hook Head and Crooke are on opposite sides of the Waterford channel and Oliver Cromwell is reputed to have said that Waterford would fall "by Hook or by Crook."

Over the weekend we took a tour of the Dunbrody in New Ross. The Dunbrody, is also known as the "Famine Ship" or "Coffin Ship". Coffin ship was a nickname given to ships transporting the Irish to America, due to the number of people who died on board. Compared to most ships, the Dunbrody had a very low mortality rate. The ship we visited is an exact replica of the original ship built in 1845. The original Dunbrody carried thousands of Irish people from the desperation of the Great Famine to hopes of a better life in America.

The next day we visited Irish National Heritage Park, an authentic recreation of Ireland's heritage. The park has over 35 acres with full scale reconstructions of ancient houses, forts and tombs, a fully reconstructed early Christian monastery, mill, cooking place and Viking boatyard and boats.

On our last day we went to Johnstown Castle. The castle was built for the Grogan-Morgan family sometime in the 1800's. The property was presented as a gift to Ireland in 1945. The Johnstown Castle Estate extends to 1,000 acres, of which 100 acres is open to the public. Within that area you can explore the outside of the castle, the Meat store, Sunken garden, Castle lake, the Statue walk, the Lower Lake, Rathlannon Castle, Garden Lake, the Walled Garden and the Irish Agricultural Museum.

The Museum displays an extensive collection of artifacts relating to rural life in Ireland in the 19th and 20th centuries including an Irish furniture exhibit and a new exhibit about the Great Famine. There is a separate admission fee for the museum. Darren's grandfather's farming equipment was donated to the museum so of course we had to go see it. We really enjoyed all three exhibits and would recommend not skipping the museum if you decide to visit Johnstown Castle. It is worth the extra admission.

Pompeii comes to Times Square

2011-09-02T11:41:00.000-04:00

Earlier this month a friend and I visited the Pompeii Exhibit at the Discovery Museum in Times Square.
First, we were brought into a room where we watched a short movie that gave an overview of what Pompeii was like before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. When the movie concluded the doors swung open and we were led into the exhibit which had displays of artifacts that have since been unearthed. Many of the artifacts were still in pristine condition. Because they had been encased in volcanic ash for over 2000 years, they had been protected from damage by the elements and remained virtually unchanged. This part of the exhibit introduced visitors to the history, culture, and lifestyle of the people of Pompeii, giving a glimpse into their everyday lives.

Once we had worked our way through the entire room, a docent announced that there was another movie to watch which would be played every five minutes. She said that visitors should make sure they took their time to see everything in the exhibit before viewing the movie because once you went into the theater there was no coming back. At this point my friend asked me if I thought this was the mid-way point or if the movie was the end of the exhibit. I said that it would be very unusual to put another movie right at the mid-way point of the exhibit but I later found out why.

We stepped into the movie theater and the doors closed behind us. The lights went out and the screen lit up showing a view of Pompeii as if we were standing in the middle of the city looking out onto Vesuvius. The ground began to rumble and smoke started to come out of the volcano. The movie continued to depict what the eruption would have been like, revealing a sped up time-lapse of the eruption and increasing temperature reading. Then smoke began to fill the room and the screen went dark. Suddenly, the doors swung open to the next room. This room, which was hidden from the first half of the exhibit, was dark and somber and had casts of human bodies that had been encased in the volcanic ash. At this moment I realized why they chose to put the movie at the mid-way point. Pompeii before Vesuvius erupted and Pompeii after Vesuvius erupted. Well done.

This part of the exhibit was extremely moving and powerful. The casts showed so much detail that you could see the folds in their clothing and the fear on their faces. While conducting excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. These were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so a technique of injecting plaster into them (today resin is used) was developed to perfectly recreate the forms of the victims in the moments just before Vesuvius took their lives.

The room was black with just spot lights on each cast and there were curtains with colored lights dancing around on them. I'm not sure what they were trying to do with this effect. Maybe something to do with the afterlife? The lights were a bit cheesy and it would have been much better off without them. Whatever effect they were going for really didn't work on me or my friend. But overall this was the best part of the exhibit.

That room then led out to another room. At this point the exhibit got a little too long. The room had even more artifacts and a timeline of Pompeii's history. There was a ton of reading to do and it became exhausting but I really did enjoy seeing all of the artifacts. My friend was amazed at all of the glass bottles that were left completely intact. It was most fascinating to me to see the everyday objects like the hair brushes and mirrors and cooking pots. It reminded me that these were people living everyday lives just like myself and they and their entire civilization was frozen in time the moment that volcano erupted. Their whole city became a giant time capsule that has now allowed us to learn so much about what life was like 2,000 years ago. After seeing the technology they created such as medical instruments, pots that filtered water,and an aqueduct that provided water for more than 25 street fountains, at least four public baths, and a large number of private houses and businesses, I imagine how much more they could have invented and how advanced they would have become had they not been wiped out.

It's unfortunate that more people haven't chosen to visit this exhibit but it seems that Pompeii is doomed with misfortune and has found itself competing with the Discovery Museum's extremely popular Harry Potter Exhibit next door. I personally think it's a wonderful thing that this exhibit was developed so that we can learn about this once forgotten civilization. In a way, this exhibit has brought Pompeii back to life.

I love the Library!

2011-08-28T16:54:00.000-04:00

Not all exhibits are located in museums. In addition to being fabulous resources for all ages, libraries often have some great exhibits as well as many other enriching activities and programs. My favorite library is the New York Public Library located between 40th and 42nd Street on 5th Avenue. The library sits adjacent to Bryant park which also happens to be my subway stop so I'm literally underneath, above, inside or outside the library every single day.

On Monday nights in the summertime you can watch a free film on the lawn. On Tuesdays and Thursdays you can attend a free yoga class-- even the mats are provided. If yoga is not your speed they even offer knitting classes!

You can also get food and drinks at the outdoor bar and restaurant behind the library while listening to live piano music, knitting and watching a film. Or you can listen to an outdoor book reading while knitting and watching 600 people do yoga. You can do all that without ever even stepping foot inside the library but inside there's even more exciting and stimulating things to see and do.

They offer free guided tours everyday but you can also explore the exhibits on your own. The Wachenheim Gallery focuses on the history of the library and has clips of movies and TV shows that have been filmed at the New York Public Library over the years.

The Celebrating 100 Years exhibit is best known for featuring the Gutenberg Bible but it contains so much more than that. You will also find Sumerian Cuneiforms, a Tale of Genji scroll, a handwritten manuscript by Jorge Luis Borges, one of Malcolm X’s journals, costume designs for the Ballets Russes, and even dance cards and board games.

Those two exhibits are ongoing but they also have several other temporary exhibits throughout the year. Currently, Children's Book Illustrators and Authors Come Alive and Winnie-the-Pooh and Friends: The Original Toys. You should also explore their special collections which include The Manuscripts and Archives Division which houses over 29,000 linear feet of archival material in over 3,000 collections. The George Arents Collection on Tobacco is a comprehensive collection on the history, literature, and lore of tobacco. Additional collections are The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle is one of the world's leading repositories for the study of English Romanticism. The Photography collection comprises approximately 500,000 photographs, including examples of almost every photographic process from the earliest daguerreotypes to contemporary digital images, The Print Collection has over 200,000 prints, and The Rare Book Division has approximately 130,000 titles. The Spencer Collection surveys the illustrated word and book bindings of all periods and all countries and cultures.

If that's not enough to keep you occupied, they also offer many programs and films for adults as well as children. The Children’s Center at 42nd Street features on-going public programs for kids and their parents. From intimate readings to large-scale events, programming includes storytelling, musical and theatrical performances, spoken word performances, and guest appearances by authors and illustrators.

The New York Public library also has a General Research Division, Art and Architecture Collections, Jewish Division, Periodicals Room, Map Division, Microforms as well as U.S. History, Local History & Geneology.

Lastly, you can also get your hands on some free music, e-books, audio books and believe it or not, the library still carries those old fashioned books printed on paper.

The New and Improved Kim Wagner Designs

2011-08-27T21:19:00.000-04:00

If you're wondering why my blog posts have subsided over the past few months, it's because I've been working on giving my website a face lift. I'm pleased to report that I've finally finished and after many hours of hard work Kim Wagner Designs has a whole new look! Please take a few minutes to check out the new and improved www.kimwagnerdesigns.com

Star Gazing in Los Angeles

2011-07-31T18:01:00.001-04:00

I was working out in Los Angeles a of couple days ago and although I did spot some stars here and there, (Yes, that is Mario Lopez, a.k.a. A.C. Slater from "Saved by the Bell, in case you were wondering) I found the star gazing at the Griffith Observatory to be much more fascinating.

The observatory is located in Griffith Park which sits on top of Mount Hollywood. Walk around the exterior and behold a panoramic view of Los Angeles. You can get an even closer look with one of the many telescopes surrounding the building but whatever you do, don't forget your camera.

You could easily spend your entire time outside and be satisfied with your visit but once inside, I'd recommend seeing a show at the planetarium. It's hypnotic, beautiful, educational, and very dramatic. I'm sure the narrator was an aspiring actor!

After that, make sure to view all of the exhibits. They have several exhibit halls: Wilder Hall of the Eye, Ahmanson Hall of the Sky ,W. M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda, Cosmic Connection, Gunther Depths of Space, and Edge of Space Mezzanine. Also, you don't want to miss the demonstration of the Tesla Coil in the Wilder Hall of the Eye. But if you do, you can always come back another day because another great thing about the Griffith Observatory is that it's FREE!

New Zealand-Goodbye for now

2011-04-05T21:11:00.000-04:00

Week 5

I spent my last week back in Auckland. Last Saturday, my coworker Anthony and I went to Western Springs Park to see the Pasifika Festival, the worlds largest Pacific festival which showcases the culture, traditions and heritage of all of the Pacific Island Communities.

The park was filled with an estimated 200,000 visitors and each section of the park was designated to a Pacific Island. There were booths set up for selling food and wares as well as stages for performances. You could even get a tattoo if you wanted. I know it would have made the blog much more interesting but Sorry, I did not come home with a tattoo. After the festival we walked over to Eden Park to watch another Rugby match ending a complete day of the New Zealand cultural experience.

Kiwi

On Sunday we decided to visit the zoo because I could not travel all the way to New Zealand and not see a Kiwi. Kiwi's are a native flightless bird and New Zealand's national symbol. They are also endangered. I felt bad for the little endangered Kiwi all alone in his big enclosure. I only saw one Kiwi in there so I hope he had a friend that was maybe sleeping or hiding. He was bigger than I thought he would be. Like a small chicken but cuter and sillier. He was digging through the leaves with his long beak and when he pulled his head out there were leaves stuck to his head. I wanted to take him home with me.

The thing I liked about the Auckland Zoo was that you could get really close to the animals. The thing my friend Anthony did not like about the zoo was that you could get really close to the animals! At one point we saw two zoo keepers walking an elephant through the zoo during regular visiting hours amongst the visitors including children. Anthony, being from London is not accustomed to seeing elephants casually walking by. He became completely flabbergasted and began ranting "The health and safety standards of this country are seriously lacking. You can't just walk an elephant like it's a dog! You can't walk an elephant through the zoo while there are people walking around!!!" I tried to calm him down but was too busy laughing and chasing after the elephant with my camera.

Elephant going for a walk

The exhibit design and signage were pretty much non-existent. It would have been nice to see a label here and there indicating what animal it is you're looking at. They had a lot of native birds I had never seen before. I would tell you their names but I don't know because there were no labels.

The highlight of my visit was the hippos. Despite my repeated requests we did not have any hippos at the Bronx Zoo. I almost didn't get to see them at the Auckland Zoo either because there was a wedding going on right in front of the hippo pond. That's right. Somebody's dream wedding involved saying their vows in front of a hippopotamus. I waited out the wedding procession, managed to inadvertently get myself into some of their photos, and then got to see my hippos.

The following Saturday was my last day in New Zealand. We decided to visit Auckland Domain before going to one more rugby game. Within the park is the Auckland War Memorial Museum which we did not get to early enough to visit (sorry! I definitely will go next time) and several botanic gardens called the Wintergardens (which we did get to visit. Yay!). Then there's the park itself which has cricket fields, and fountains and beautiful ponds. Ok New Zealand. We get it already. You are stunningly beautiful. You can stop rubbing it in. It's not fair that all the beauty should be concentrated on your two tiny islands and not spread out evenly throughout the rest of the world.

Wintergarden

So here I am now back in New York for less than a week and have already endured snow, a thunder storm, and a hail storm. aaah! Springtime in New York. During my entire five weeks in New Zealand it rained only twice. One of those times was during my white water rafting trip in which I was already wet so no big deal. It's been difficult settling back into life here now that I've had a dose of paradise. New Zealand was definitely a life I could get used to. The driving and the coffee were a bit tricky at first but it's not hard to get used to seeing perfect weather and beautiful scenery every single day. It was easy to settle into the laid back lifestyle, the peace and quiet, the endless beauty surrounding you wherever you went. It didn't really feel like a foreign country to me. In fact, it felt like home. I could imagine what it would have been like to grow up there. A little barefoot Kiwi with wild hair climbing the rocks on the beach. Now New York seems so foreign. At least in New Zealand they speak English.

This is the last New Zealand post I will write. Hopefully not forever but just until I can go back someday. I barely even scratched the surface of NZ. There's still so many more places I want to see and explore. New Zealand, I will miss your fresh air and water. I will miss your magic and your sheep. I will miss the free bottle of milk you give me when I check into a hotel. Who wouldn't love a place so sweet and endearing? It's hard for me to even write an ending to this story so I don't think I'll write, "The End." Instead I will leave it unfinished and write, To be Continued.....

New Zealand Continued

2011-03-14T05:29:00.000-04:00

Week 4

While in New Zealand for almost a month now I've been undergoing a slow transformation from New Yorker to Kiwi. I've learned the metric system, I use Celsius instead of Fahrenheit and I drive on the left side of the road. I am shedding my dull gray American skin (literally because my skin got so sunburned it's peeling off in sheets) and coming out of my chrysalis (with lovely tanned brown skin) a bright and shiny Kiwi.

It's week 4 and the transformation is finally complete. Last weekend I had the 100% hardcore Kiwi experience. I spread my new Kiwi wings and set out on a 3 hour trip to the town of Turangi for a white water rafting trip with some co-workers. First I stopped off in Taupo to meet one of them and watch the New Zealand Iron Man Competition. The competitors not only had to endure a grueling Triathlon but it was also pouring down rain the entire day. The town was packed with people from all over the world coming to see the event. Despite the rain it was still very exciting. New Zealand seems to be the perfect place for an all day competition that pushes the limits of human strength and endurance.

After that we drove another hour to Turangi for White Water Rafting down the Tongariro River. Because of all the rain the water was 30 meters high (note use of metric units instead of imperial units) instead of the usual 16 meters high (although a native Kiwi would spell it "metres" rather than "meters") and therefore twice as fast as normal. My Kiwi initiation day. The rain did not let up for the entire two hours of the rafting trip but it didn't really matter since we were soaking wet anyway. I was a little scared at first but once we got through the first set of rapids I was all right and loving it. It was non-stop excitement.

White Water Rafting

On the way home we stopped back in Taupo again for dinner and the racers were still at it in the dark and pouring rain. There were a few miserable stragglers still trudging along to the finish line. As I was driving past them in my warm comfortable car I wished I could pick them up and give them a ride to the finish line but thought that would probably be a bad idea. Anyway, I had a three hour drive back to Tauranga and had to get back on the road.

The country roads were pitch black and the rain was pouring down so hard I could barely see two meters in front of me (note use of metric system again). And of course they were the typical sharp and steep treacherous New Zealand roads I referred to in my last blog about driving through the Coromandel Peninsula. For the next three hours I had the most terrifying driving experience of my life. My fingernail prints are permanently embedded in the steering wheel. The drive home made the white water rafting seem like a lazy row boat ride down a quiet river. I call this passing the Kiwi drivers test.

Shipwreck at base of the Mauao

Sunday morning one of my coworkers drove up to keep me company in Mount Maunganui. Since I'd spent the past couple weeks there all by myself it was nice to have someone to do things with and not have to sit in a cafe drinking my flat white talking to myself. It was mandatory that I show him the main attraction and take him up to the top of Mount Maunganui. So we started with a warm up on Moturiki Island and then hiked past the Kiwi's with their broken limbs to the summit of the Mauao. Then we did the base track and I showed him where the remains of a shipwreck from 1950 were located. After that we got some lunch and rented some surf boards to wind down the day with a fun surf session in the Blowhole.

Monday I left Mount Maunganui to go stay the night in Waihi. On the way I had to work in Te Aroha and Paeroa. Te Aroha is another tiny town that you can walk through in under a minute. Paeroa's claim to fame is its really popular beverage, "L&P" which stands for Lemon and Paeroa. It's a delicious and refreshing drink, like lemonade with a kick, and can only be found in New Zealand. Paeroa is so proud of its beverage that they even have a statue of an L&P bottle at the entrance to the town. At the L&P cafe you can get all kinds of L&P souvenirs and even L&P ice cream.

L&P cafe

While in town, I visited the L&P cafe (of course) as well as the Paeroa & District Museum. It had photographs and collections of artifacts relating to Paeroa's history in addition to a very diverse assortment of collections ranging from seashells to this old beauty salon hair waving machine. It looks like some sort of torture device but this is what women used to make their hair wavy before the invention of the perm.

200 year old Waka sterrn post

Hair Waving Machine

They've got exhibits relating to military, sports, fashion, crockery and school to name a few but my favorite collection was the Maori artifacts because it's something I've never seen at any other museum I've visited and they are truly beautiful and intricate works of art that have deep meaning. With almost 800 objects on display, they have one of the largest collections of Maori artifacts in NZ and possibly the world.

Karangahake Gorge

Gold mining equipment

On my way to Waihi I stopped off to hike Karangahake Gorge. It's the site of the original gold rush in 1875 and still has the remains of an old gold mining company and mine shafts all along it's trails. The views were beautiful but the bridges were a little scary!! You have to walk across while they bounce and sway over the Ohinemuri River but it's worth the small heart attack.

Maximum load 10 persons!

Mine shaft

After that I drove to Waihi and checked out the gold mining quarry. At around 6 pm Waihi became a ghost town and I had to eat dinner at Subway because it was the only place still open.

Waihi Gold Mining Quarry

The next Morning I drove back to Auckland where restaurants, shops and bars never seem to close (especially O'Hagans which is right outside my bedroom window and plays music until 4am everyday) and just in time to miss the Tsunami which reached the Bay of Plenty a few days after my departure. Thankfully, it was only a small Tsunami and my beloved Mount Maunganui was unharmed. I was scheduled to fly home yesterday but it looks like I'll be staying here for a bonus week. Now that I've had a chance to test out my new Kiwi wings I should be ready to fly home.

New Zealand-Tauranga & the Coromandel Peninsula

2011-03-04T04:05:00.002-05:00

Week 3

On Monday I drove north up the coast to Whangamata located in the Coromandel Peninsula. After work I went to check into my hotel but no one was there. There was a sign on the door to let myself into my room. Where is everybody? Gone surfing...as I later found out. I might as well go check out the town...which took up about five minutes. There was one main street with all of the shops and restaurants. If you were driving you could go through it in about a minute and miss the whole thing if you weren't paying attention.

Whangamata Harbor

Coromandel Forest

Next, I had to drive to Kopu which is on the west side of the peninsula. The only way to get there is to drive an hour through the Coromandel Forest Park which has some seriously steep roads with extremely sharp turns the entire way but also spectacular views. My only complaint is that there are few places to pull over and take it all in. There's not even any shoulder on the road so if you pull over, your car will go flying off a cliff! This forest, with the exception of the road that goes through it, is basically untouched.

Mercury Bay, Whitianga

Tuesday I had to work in Whitianga which is another hour or so up north in the Coromandel region. So I set out again and was off through the Coromandel Forest and Tairua Forest. Not a bad commute to work. After work, I explored Whitianga (another one-street town) and visited Mercury Bay and then set out to go back to Tauranga.

On the way back I just had to make a pit stop at Hot Water Beach. I've been to many beaches but never one like this. If you dig a hole in certain locations of the beach at a particular time of day, warm geothermal springs will bubble up from underneath the sand. You can dig a hole and sit in your very own hot tub.

Hot Water Beach

Tairua Forest

Driving up steep mountain hills really sucked the gas out of my car and while out in the middle of nowhere, my gas light came on and my car started making a threatening beeping noise with an exclamation mark flashing on my dash board !!! This is not good. Next, the skies opened up and it started pouring. It was a treacherous drive with no gas in the pouring rain through the steep and sharp turns of the forest. I didn't think I would make it out of the forest but when I finally did, the car coasted to the nearest gas station and I took my first breath in probably ten minutes. I was almost back to Tauranga when I suddenly came to a line of cars. Traffic in the country? Once I inched a little further up the road I was informed by a police officer that the road to Tauranga was closed. This was the only road to Tauranga but it should be open again "in about three hours," he told me. Drivers just pulled their cars over and left them on the side of the road to wait. If this happened back in New York there would a riot in the street. But the road was closed so there was nothing left to do but to turn around and find someplace to pass the time. I made a U-turn and drove back into the town of Katikati and saw a sign for the Katikati museum. Perfect!

Outside the closed Katikati Museum

So I went in and found out the museum was also closed. This is not my day. At least the cafe was open. Until they closed that too. But they let me sit on a bench outside until the road opened back up two hours later. Apparently, a tanker truck tipped over and the road had actually been closed since 6 am. It was now 5:30 pm. When I finally got back on the road the skies cleared and as I drove on the only road to Tauranga, a brilliant rainbow stretched across the sky.

Ok, New Zealand. I still love you.

Te Puna Quarry Park

Wednesday was a much better day. I went to Te Puna Quarry Park, a community project built in an old quarry. This was one of my favorite places I've visited here so far. It's part museum, part sculpture garden--with works by local and regional artists, part hiking trails (or "tramping" as they call it here), part botanic garden. They also threw some rock climbing in the mix as well.

Musical sculpture

They didn't forget to add a musical element either. Visitors can play music on this sculpture made from found objects and the sound will echo through the park. This place was really fantastic. You can stick to the main track or venture off onto one of the little side trails. Wherever you choose to go you'll discover a sculpture. You could come dozens of times and still not see it all. It would be a different experience every time. They also have a butterfly garden as well as a sensory garden for the visually impaired. Admission is simply a donation and the park is open all the time. You just let yourself in and explore.

Kiwi Train

Kiwi 360

Thursday was a triumphant day when I found my first cafe that served filtered coffee. Victory!

I was working in Te Puke (It's pronounced Te Pookey just in case you were wondering) so I had to go see Te Puke's main attraction, Kiwi 360. I took the guided tour of the kiwi orchard. We drove in the little kiwi train through the orchards which grow not just kiwi's but just about 70 other kinds of fruit as well. We got to walk under the vines and pick kiwi berries and eat them. Kiwi berries (or Arguta) are like tiny little hairless kiwi's that taste like a kiwi and grape mixed. They were sweet and delicious. An interesting fact I learned about growing Kiwi's is that only the female vines can grow the fruit. The male plants only need to work for about two weeks out of every year to pollinate the females.Typical. ha! At the end of the tour we were allowed to get off the kiwi train and wander around the orchard on our own. The guide let us pick and eat the Nashi off the trees. Nashi are a type of Asian pear that grow very well in the New Zealand climate. They are shaped and look like yellow apples but taste more like pears. They taste so good I had to take a couple for the road...because you never know when the road might be closed and you could get hungry waiting for it to re-open!

Picking Kiwi Berries

Mount Maunganui, Tauranga, New Zealand

2011-03-02T01:50:00.000-05:00

Week 2

I left Auckland on Monday and headed off on a three hour drive to Tauranga, The Bay of Plenty. It shouldn't really take that long but as this was my first solo left-side drive I wanted to take it slow. So for the next three hours I got the hang of driving while taking in the absolutely gorgeous scenery. But the more I saw, the more angry I got thinking how deprived the rest of us are for not ever knowing such beauty exists. It was like the scene in "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy's house lands in Oz and everything is transformed from black and white to technicolor. I left cold gray dreary New York and I found the yellow brick road.

Another refreshing change is that you won't find a McDonald's along New Zealand's Highways. Just cute little roadside cafes with fresh homemade food made by mom and pop. I never would have thought chicken and apricots would be a tasty combination but put them together in some fresh bread and you've got one really delicious panini. Another thing you probably won't run into at a rest stop on one of America's highways are these cute little guys.

So here I am now in Mount Maunganui, or Mauao, which means "caught by the morning sun." I'm staying just a short block from the beach and lucked out once again and was loaned a surf board by the nice guy who works in the office at my motor lodge. I was at the beach by 6:30 the next morning to watch the sun come up and get baptized by the New Zealand waters. Then I went for a short run on the beach and was at work by 9am. Not a bad way to start the day. I could definitely get used to this.

Mount Maunganui

On Saturday I decided I wanted to hike up to the top of the Mauao. The Mauao is a dormant volcanic cone that is 232 meters high and has 250 sheep grazing its slopes. It was a fairly steep climb to the top that really gets your heart racing. I consider myself in pretty good shape but took a blow to the ego when I was struggling near the very top and a man of about 80 who looked like the Kiwi Jack LaLanne sprinted past me while yelling words of encouragement, "You can do it! It will be worth it!" I soothed myself with the excuse that I was carrying at least ten pounds of weight in my backpack and therefore I was being slowed down but then, not one but two young girls wearing casts on their legs up to their knees went by me.

My daily count of broken limbs averages somewhere between 3-5 per day. Kiwi kids are fearless. After school they don't go home to play video games. They head straight to the beach with their surfboards. Their parents meet them there after work and go surfing right along with them. I've seen children as young as 5 surfing and even a woman of about 75 riding a body board. Then they will lay out a blanket and have their family dinner on the beach. The children here are free. They climb on the rocks and if they get hurt, so what? They put a cast on it and keep going straight up to the summit of a volcano. But Kiwi Jack Lalanne was correct. It was definitely worth it. The view from the top was breathtaking. It would be worth the effort even with a broken leg.

Naked toddler climbing the rocks

View of Moturiki and Motuotau Islands from the top of the Mauao

After the summit I hiked along the base track and watched as the waves crashed on the volcanic rocks that line the shore. The beauty of this place is just astonishing to the point of being overwhelming. It seems a shame that I am here all by myself and can't share this with anyone else. If a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Base track of the Mauao

Another option besides the base track of the Mauao, if you feel you're not up to going to the summit is to walk up Mount Drury which is just down the road. Its paths are not as steep and are much easier if you're just looking for a casual walk. The views from the top are also really pretty. You could also try the paths on Moturiki Island which you can access from the beach. Hike up its paths and you will get the ocean perspective of Mount Maunganui. You'll be looking back at the shore from its hills.

My hike among the elderly and wounded really worked up an appetite. Conveniently located across the street are many choices of cafes to eat in. Here's another travel tip: If you order an iced coffee in New Zealand don't expect it to be filtered coffee with ice. What you will get is a milk shake with coffee flavored ice cream. That's right! It's now week two and I still haven't gotten the hang of the coffee thing. I thought I was getting the hang of the driving on the left side too but judging by the look of my car apparently not. oops!

The perfect thing to do after a morning hike up a dormant volcano is stroll on over to the Salt Water Hot Pools strategically located right at the base of the Mauao. There are many geothermal pools in the region but Mount Maunganui is the only place in New Zealand where you'll find hot salt water pools. They have several pools of varying temperatures that you can choose from and it's a great way to loosen up the muscles after a long day of volcano climbing.

After that I walked over to the beach to watch the rest of the life guard competition. Dozens of young kids were competing in a grueling competition where they run through the sand then kayak or board through the ocean waves dragging their equipment. These kids are unbelievably fit and I realized I have yet to see an overweight child here. If I was ever drowning, one of these ten year-olds would no doubt be able to rescue me.

Every Sunday morning there is a Farmers Market. They have live music and lots of local produce and homemade treats. I did a little shopping and then decided if I was in one of the best surfing towns in New Zealand I should go visit their surfing museum. The museum is located downstairs in the Mount Surf Shop and has a vast collection of classic surf boards. The co-owner, surfer businessman Dusty Waddell has the best and biggest collection of surfboards in Australasia. The shop museum shows the different eras of New Zealand surfing.

Mount Surf Shop and Museum

Omanawa Falls

Next stop was Omanawa falls. It was a bit hard to find since it was out in the middle of nowhere on yet another long and windy road. Since all of the roads here seems to be long and windy that made it even more difficult to locate. There's a tiny little sign posted at the start of the path but it was so small I drove right past it and had to make a u-turn. Even then I wasn't sure if I was in the right spot because there was no markings on the road or trail. I set out anyway and was finally greeted by my tour guide here in the picture below.

(Why do pigs keep following me wherever I go?) The falls were really pretty and just because this country seems to keep outdoing itself, there was a rainbow coming out of the water cascading into the Omanawa River. The experience was abruptly cut short by a mysterious locked steel door at the end of the path blocking entry down to the river (am I in a new episode of LOST?) That's as far as you can go and it was disappointing to go all that way and get so close to the falls and the beautiful rainbow and not be able to get near it. Maybe I should have clicked my hiking boots together and said, "there's no place like home" but I have two weeks left here and I'm not ready for this dream to be over yet.

Adventures in Kiwi Land

2011-02-23T04:40:00.001-05:00

I decided to take this blog and turn it upside down. I've traveled to the other side of the planet and landed in my version of utopia, New Zealand. The only difficult thing about blogging from New Zealand is not having internet access. Now that I've managed to get online I can get my first Kiwiblog started.

I left New York City on Sunday February 13th and after approximately 24 hours of travel I stepped onto New Zealand soil on Tuesday February 15th. Since I don't have too much experience with time travel I wasn't prepared for the toll it would take on my body. I will definitely listen to the advice of my boss and buy one of those neck pillows next time. It also doesn't help to be sitting on a packed flight next to someone who had the flu. This brings me to my travel tips for this blog entry:

1. Do not get on an international flight if you have a raging head cold. Nobody wants to sit next to someone for 14 hours who is blowing their nose, sneezing and coughing on them every 5 minutes. Take some Zicam and postpone your trip.

2. Buy a neck pillow. Even though you look ridiculous wearing a pillow around your neck, you will be happy that you're able to turn your head when you finally get to your destination.

The best part about this trip so far was actually getting into the country. I was more than a bit hesitant after my little incident with Canada (see blog entry "NOT On The Road Again"). I had absolutely no problems and was welcomed with a smile. Very refreshing. I'm already loving this place.

First stop was Mount Eden (Te Ipu Kai a Mataaho or the Food Bowl of Mataaho), an inactive volcano which they refer to as the "crater." To me it looked like a big grassy hole in the ground but the view from the top was spectacular. This was actually the first volcano I had ever seen and had I not just gone there directly from the airport I might have thought to take pictures if I wasn't so delirious.

The apartment I was staying in was located right in downtown Auckland on Customs Street overlooking Waitemata Harbor. Conveniently located above many restaurants, pubs, and shops, I was spoiled for choice. It's summer here in New Zealand and having dinner on the waterfront and watching sail boats and yachts pass by in the middle of February feels like a dream.

Waitemata Harbor

Auckland is a very tourist and backpacker friendly city. The visitor center is located right on Quay St. and I used it a couple times to find out how to get places or where I could find a concert or rugby tickets. There's no shortage of places to rent equipment either. You can rent anything from a bike to a sailboat. Kiwi's love their outdoor activities and extreme sports and it really shows. I started a game of counting the number of people I spotted wearing casts and bandages. I've only been here a week and on five occasions I've seen someone make a parachute landing right in front of me. I feel at home here with my fellow dare-devils. I love the outdoors and I love surfing, mountain biking and hiking. New Zealand has it all. Mountains, beaches, forests, volcanoes but I've had to adjust.

I'm learning to drive on the left side of the road. My steering wheel is on the right side of the car and I keep turning on the wind shield wipers instead of my indicator because that's on the other side as well. They have these roundabouts which completely do my head in. I panic every time I have to go through one and they are all over the place.

I'm also learning the metric system which I'm not finding nearly as difficult as ordering a coffee. They have "Long Black", "Short Black", and "Flat White." When I finally figure it out, I will let you know.

A Flat White

The light switches are also upside down which I guess makes sense since the whole country is upside down. The sun also moves in the opposite direction across the sky. So basically I have to take everything I've learned my whole life and reverse it. The Kiwi's are reprogramming me.

On the weekend, my coworker and I headed over to Mission Bay for some sun. It's got a little beach where you can of course rent rafts and kayaks and paddle boards. The water was really shallow and you could keep walking for 10 minutes and it would still only be up to your ankles. There's many restaurants and bars right across the street so you can refuel after rowboating or kayaking or kite surfing.

That night I went to my first rugby match. We saw the Auckland Blues vs. the Crusaders. Some of the more enthusiastic fans will dress up in costume so the fans were almost as fun to watch as the game. Rugby is like an expression of the Kiwi lifestyle in sport form. It's non-stop action, dangerous, and exciting.

Rugby Match

Sunday was my last day in Auckland so I crammed in a bunch of sightseeing. My coworker and I went to Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere. The elevators which take you to the top have glass floors so you can see the ground moving away from you as you go up. It makes you really dizzy! There's a rotating restaurant at the top and of course more amazing views and the option to bungy jump or walk around the outside...but not without a harness!

View from Sky Tower

Next stop was a Reggae concert in Henderson Park. We were finally in with the locals and probably the only tourists who managed to find it. After that we shot over to One Tree Hill, a well known landmark thanks to the song "One Tree Hill" by U2. The obelisk on top of the hill was erected as a memorial to the Maori people but you won't find a tree up there. In 1852 British settlers planted a Monterey Pine to make ammends for chopping down a sacred totara. The Moari's, offended that it was not a native tree, chopped it down in 2000.

A typical New Zealand scene. Sheep, Parachuters, and One Tree Hill

As I am writing this I'm on the second week of my trip. Yesterday, Christchurch was hit with a devestating earthquake. I'm currently in Mount Maunganui which is far away so we were not affected. I had some frantic emails and phone calls from friends and family but could not get internet access to let people know I was safe. Many people are still missing and most of the country is in shock and mourning. Now that I've got the blog up, you're now all informed of my whereabouts. Thanks to everyone for your concern and sorry for the worry. Thankfully I'm fine and having a great time here. I guess there's no Utopia afterall but so far I think New Zealand is pretty close.

Wayfinding

2010-11-27T14:56:00.000-05:00

Earlier this month, I had the honor and privilege of being asked to speak about Wayfinding for the Fashion Institute of Technology Graduate in Exhibition Design class.

The students were working on a project that challenged them to create a new Wayfinding system for the Central Park Zoo. Many museum or zoo visitors probably never think about Wayfinding. That is, until they get lost!

An effective Wayfinding system will Identify, Inform, and Direct. It's not all just words and arrows. Wayfinding can be architecture, lighting, color, icons, images, landscape, and signage.

Think about who your audience is. For instance, if you're developing Wayfinding for an airport, people are coming from all different parts of the world and speak many different languages. Instead of using words, use color and symbols. Many symbols are universal and can be easily understood no matter what language you speak.

Make sure your design is universally accessible. If you follow ADA guidelines, your signage will be readable by people with a wide range of abilities. Not just those of us with 20/20 vision. Think about placement. Can a small child or a person in a wheelchair see the sign from their perspective? Do the colors you chose have enough contrast? Is your font legible?

Consider the look and feel of your location. If you are developing Wayfinding for the Central Park Zoo, you want to incorporate their brand and image into the design. For example, a Wayfinding system for a hospital will have an entirely different look and feel than a Wayfinding system for an amusement park or museum. Make sure your design is consistent with the brand.

Though most people don't give them much thought, Wayfinding systems are extremely important. And if designed well, people shouldn't have to give them any thought. Navigating a foreign location should be effortless. As someone who is a frequent traveler and has to constantly navigate my way through unfamiliar cities and airports, I know how helpful a well designed and user friendly Wayfinding system can be. I also know how confusing and frustrating it can be to encounter a poorly designed Wayfinding system.

Nobody likes to get lost and Wayfinding helps us find our way. It keeps us out of danger, it informs us and directs us and gets us to where we need to go.

Circus life

2010-10-16T14:23:00.050-04:00

It's been a busy few months. With all of the traveling, deportation, web site designing, book cover illustrating and then getting married last month, there's been no time to blog! In the midst of juggling all of the above mentioned activities and wedding planning (see picture of juggling clown below modeled after me), I did manage to work on a couple of exhibits as well.

The first exhibit called "Under the Big Top," was all about the circus. My life was starting to feel like a circus so when Ring Master and Lead Developer, Paul Orselli of Paul Orselli Workshop (POW!) asked me if I could create some illustrations for an exhibit about circus life, the job seemed like a perfect fit. I created a life-sized rendering of a lion for an interactive where children could attempt to throw fake meat into his mouth. Pictured to the left are three clowns I illustrated for another activity where the children could create faces using color forms. The exhibit was displayed at the Art Space for Children at the Nassau County Museum of Art on Long Island.

"With its color, daring and explosive fun, the circus has always been a theme that intrigues and inspires artists. In Under the Big Top, The Art Space for Children presents reproductions of circus art by Seurat, Leger, Prendergast, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Chagall and others, showcasing them alongside displays that will guide the museum's young visitors through explorations of circus skills, and memory games using circus characters and activities. The Clown College station includes wall panels that will assist children to master the skills involved in pantomime, juggling and creating a clownish costume. Roomboxes include miniature circus animals."

The second exhibit which was finished just in time for my nuptials was called, "Israel-land." This exhibit was created for Temple Sharray Tefila in Bedford Corners, New York. The concept was to give Temple members an interactive museum with a variety of exhibits dedicated to helping the community enhance their knowledge of and appreciation for Israel. The design team for this project consisted of Lead Developer, Paul Orselli from POW!, who worked on exhibit development with the Rabbi and staff, and DCM Fabrication who built and installed the exhibit. I designed the interpretive graphic panels (and learned a little Hebrew in the process) and together we created a model Israel experience for the Temple. Also, thanks to Paul Orselli and Jim Polk for installing the graphics for me so I wouldn't miss my wedding!

The League of Freaks

2010-07-18T15:43:00.004-04:00

"The League of Freaks and the Secret Key" is now available for purchase at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/League-Freaks-secret-key/dp/1451519168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278991757&sr=8-1

You can also buy a copy directly through the "League of Freaks" website using paypal.

Both the book and website were designed and illustrated by Kim Wagner Designs.

"Embrace your differences. That's what Shree Mandvi's father is always telling her. If only he knew just how different she really is. It's not being an Indian-American from the Bronx that makes Shree stand out at her new school. It's turning into a bee that does. And if that wasn't weird enough, Shree also discovers a map-filled book from the 1600s claiming that there's hidden treasure-and a mysterious secret key-lost somewhere under the campus of Harvard University. With the help of four freaky new friends, Shree must race to solve an ancient riddle. If she succeeds, she will unlock the final door that leads not only to the treasure-but perhaps to death as well. Can she summon her powers in time to save herself and her friends?"
Visit: http://www.theleagueoffreaks.com/

NOT on the road

2010-07-18T15:41:00.000-04:00

Canada

You might have noticed that the "On the Road" blogs came to an unexpected end. After the Massachusetts trip I was scheduled to go to Ottawa. I had a difficult time finding a plane ticket costing less than $1,500 and discovered that there are no direct flights from New York to Ottawa. The shortest trip would have involved not one but two layovers.

The best I could do was postpone the trip for a week so that I could secure a ticket that would get me to Canada with just one layover and at a comparably reasonable price of $875. Since the ticket was so pricey I tried to save money by booking a hotel and car for just one day. The total cost of this one day adventure to Ottawa was $1000.

The morning of my trip, I left my house at 7am. I flew from New York Laguardia Airport to Washington, D.C. where I had a two hour layover. From there I took a flight from D.C. to Ottawa.

Those of you who read my post in 2008, "On the Road in Montreal", will know that I had a little trouble getting through customs due to some confusion over business permits (which it turned out I didn't need) and after being questioned and held by immigration for an hour or so, I was allowed to enter the country.

This time I wasn't so lucky.

Because of the trouble I had on the previous trip, I was advised to say that I was there for pleasure rather than business so that I would be allowed in with no problems. What I didn't know was that there had been a flag on my passport from the previous trip. I simply checked the box on the form that said "pleasure" and when I went through Customs they told me to go to the Immigration Office and then I'd be "on my way." Only they didn't specify where I'd be on my way to.

The Immigration officer I encountered was not a very pleasant or friendly man. I was interrogated and accused of outlandish things such as "trying to steal Canadian jobs" and "trying to Emigrate to Canada." He told me he wanted to "teach me a lesson" and that my entry to Canada would be denied or else I could sit in jail for a few days and await a hearing. I chose to be "on my way" back to New York. Except I found out that they were only obligated to send me back to my last point of origin which was Washington, D.C. So I spent the next 5 hours watching people board direct flights back to Laguardia while I waited for my flight to D.C. but not before I was escorted by two very large armed men in bullet-proof vests and paraded through the airport like a terrorist. When I asked if the reason for my being deported was because I checked off "personal," the Immigration Officer told me he would've sent me home even if I checked off "business". The reason being because I didn't have the proper permits--but if you read "On the Road in Montreal" you already know that it was discovered I did NOT in fact need a permit to do my job! In this situation, I felt the only thing I could do was surrender to this man's insanity and go home without seeing any new museums (or even stepping foot in Canada) resulting in the disappointment of my many loyal readers.

My last On the Road adventure took me on 17 hour door to door journey involving 4 flights and two trips to Washington Dulles Airport all in one day. For the rest of my life I will not be allowed into Canada (not that I have any vacations planned!) without being questioned by Immigration and the only thing I have to show for my exciting journey is this picture.

On the road in Boston, Massachusetts

2010-05-17T16:29:00.005-04:00

Boston, MA

I'm in Boston this week so I find it fitting to mention a new book that's coming out which takes place at Harvard University in Massachusetts. It's called "The League of Freaks and the Secret Key" by Dr. Alberto Hazan. I illustrated the book cover for Alberto as well as designing the official League of Freaks website. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Also in Massachusetts is the Brigham and Women's Hospital. I worked on a project for the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in March. I hand painted two book carts to look like dogs, Macie and Shadow. The carts are wheeled from room to room to cheer up patients.

And finally, my travels in Boston brought me to the Liberty Hotel.
Formerly the Charles Street jail, the Liberty Hotel is super swanky, architecturally stunning and yes, there are still bars on the windows! (Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures but there's plenty to see on their website so click on the link above).
I had dinner and drinks with some friends at the hotel restaurant, Clink. The hotel also houses the Liberty Bar, Scampo and Alibi. The food, drinks, and atmosphere were all fantastic. If you're in downtown Boston it is definitely a location you must visit.

Walkin' in Memphis

2010-04-27T11:37:00.004-04:00

This week I visited Tallahassee, Florida and Memphis, Tennessee. I spent less than 36 hours in Tallahassee and was hoping to get to see at least one cool attraction while I was there but unfortunately the "Sunshine State" did not live up to it's name. Severe thunderstorms left me confined to my hotel room and by the time the rain stopped at 4 am I was on my way to the airport again and off to Memphis.

Memphis was another quick trip but thankfully the weather was great and I was able to walk around all day. The first thing I did was follow the Mighty Mississippi along Downtown Memphis and over to Beale Street for Barbecue, Blues, and great people watching.

The picture below is of an interesting museum housed in A. Schwab's Five and Dime store on Beale Street. This is the first museum I've ever visited where I could also buy homemade jam and underwear all under the same roof.

Although A. Schwab's Museum was truly fascinating, it just wouldn't have been a satisfying trip to Memphis if I didn't get to see Graceland. Luckily, I had a couple hours to spare the next morning on my way to the airport.

I have to admit was well worth the extra hustle. I absolutely loved it!

There are 3 tours you can choose from.

1. Graceland Elvis Entourage VIP Tour

an audio-guided tour of Graceland Mansion and grounds
a self-guided tour of Elvis' two custom airplanes
a self-guided tour of Elvis' Automobile Museum
a self-guided tour of Elvis in Hollywood Exhibit
a self-guided tour of Elvis Lives: The King and Pop Culture Exhibit
a self-guided tour of Elvis Presley: Fashion King Exhibit
a self-guided tour of '68 Special Exhibit
a special VIP Only exhibit at Graceland Mansion
Front of the Line Mansion Access
Special All Day Ticket
Keepsake Backstage Pass

2. Graceland Platinum Tour

an audio-guided tour of Graceland Mansion and grounds
a self-guided tour of Elvis' two custom airplanes
a self-guided tour of Elvis' Automobile Museum
a self-guided tour of Elvis in Hollywood Exhibit
a self-guided tour of Elvis Lives: The King and Pop Culture Exhibit
a self-guided tour of Elvis Presley: Fashion King Exhibit
a self-guided tour of '68 Special Exhibit

3. Graceland Mansion Tour

an audio presentation and tour of Graceland Mansion and grounds only
a self-guided tour of '68 Special Exhibit

If you only have an hour you can do tour #3 and just see the Mansion and still get the full experience. I had about 2 hours to spare so I took tour #2. The Graceland Platinum Tour.

I usually prefer to have a live guide to conduct the tour because I find audio tours to be dull but this audio tour was fantastic. It had Elvis' music playing in-between clips of information which really set the mood. Some parts were also narrated by Lisa Marie Presley. She spoke about memories she had of certain rooms in the mansion as you were walking through them which really brought them to life.

After touring the inside of the house, you're led to the backyard where you can tour the grounds, the office, and some of the other buildings which used to be the trophy room and racquetball court but are now showcasing exhibits of Elvis' gold records and other awards. The exhibit also showed a side of Elvis that many people don't know about. Rather than just displaying his trophy's, they also displayed an entire wall of checks that Elvis wrote to various charities. The display of gold records showed how many people he touched with his music but the display of checks showed how many people he touched with his charitable heart.

In the backyard, are also the graves of Elvis and his family members. Everyone slowly walks through the meditation garden, pays their respects and this is where the mansion tour ends.

The rest of the exhibits were also self-guided tours so you can choose which order you see them and how long you spend in each one. My favorites were the Elvis Automobile Museum and the Lisa Marie and Hound Dog II Jets.

The Elvis Automobile Museum displays all of Elvis' cars, motorcycles, Go-carts, and even his John Deere tractor. The tour of the airplanes was definitely worth paying the extra money for the Platinum tour. You're allowed to board both airplanes and even walk through the Lisa Marie.

Just like the Mansion, the planes have been left exactly as they were when Elvis was alive. I think I was expecting Graceland to be something like a Disney Land adventure but the whole tour was done very tastefully and with a lot of respect.

On the road again

2010-04-13T20:09:00.000-04:00

San Antonio, Texas

Much like my trip, this blog will be short. With only a few hours to see the sights of San Antonio, I headed over to it's main attraction, The Alamo. Admission is free and contrary to popular belief it is not open 24 hours a day. You can visit the Alamo 9:00 am-5:30 pm Monday-Saturday and 10:00 am-5:30 pm on Sunday. There are guided tours about every half hour. No need to sign up or wait on line. Just follow the crowd. In addition to the "Shrine" as it's called, there's a beautiful courtyard, the Long Barrack Museum, the Sales Museum (which is really a gift shop with some artifacts on display), and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library. It's pretty small and depending on how long you linger around the grounds, it should only take about an hour to see everything.

I learned on the tour that the Alamo is a place where men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. It is considered hallowed ground and the Shrine of Texas Liberty. Unfortunately, just right across the street from the hallowed ground is San Antonio's equivalent of the Vegas Strip. Neon lights, Ripley's Believe it or Not Haunted Adventure, Museum of oddities, and the Tomb Raider 3D ride aren't exactly the first things that come to mind when I think of a Shrine. I wonder what Colonel William Travis and Davy Crockett would think if they could see what it looks like now.

After my visit to the Alamo I headed over to the Riverwalk. Winding around downtown San Antonio with shops and restaurants along the way, the Riverwalk was even prettier than I expected. It's a beautiful feature that sets San Antonio apart from other cities. There are boat tours that you can take but I opted to wander aroud on foot. My self-guided tour took me to Old San Antonio or "La Villita." Maybe it was because I visited on a weekday but it was kind of like a ghost town. There were a few artsy shops but mostly just stores selling the same touristy junk that every other store sells. It seemed deserted and there wasn't really anything to do so I went back to the Riverwalk and had lunch outside at a Mexican cafe and watched the ducks and pigeons fight for tortilla chips.

Had the weather been nicer, I really could have amused myself in San Antonio all day but the rain cut my visit short. I'm glad I got to see the Alamo and the Riverwalk because they are as crucial to the San Antonio experience as eating Tex-Mex and Barbeque.

I'm not sure where my next trip will be so check back in next week to find out!