Schedule for the extensive honeymoon travel: Fiji Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, Iceland.
Big News, we have booked our honeymoon travels and this is truly the trip of a lifetime. Our journey will take us from Fiji to Iceland: thirteen countries, four continents (excluding North America), in four-and-a-half months. For us, it has just the right mix of relaxation and activities, adventure and romance, roughing it and pampering….
View MoreOur big trip begins in six days! We’re traveling light — carry-on only. We’re “practicing” packing today. We just picked up our travel documents, which take up half a suitcase.
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Our honeymoon has started! After a few days of preparations, packing, and cleaning the house (kind of), we got a ride to the Denver airport (thanks Jerry, Suzanne, and Riley!). We got onto the plane without a problem and the flight to LAX was uneventful and ahead of schedule. LAX is not our favorite airport…
View MoreWe’ve arrived at Matamanoa, a speck of an island in a chain off the southwest coast of the main island. The nearest neighbor is Mondriki, an uninhabited island that was the location for the movie, Castaway. Remember the sheltered lagoon, and the big waves outside the reef? That’s what it’s like. Our boat stopped at…
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Travels to Fiji went smoothly – for the most part. Karel used his iPhone to snap a photo of me settling in for the trans-Pacific leg of our air journey, but somehow misplaced the cellphone before we landed. It may be that the airline has found it already, but we immediately traveled beyond the world…
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Today we went on an excursion to the village of Tavua, on a neighboring island, where most of the staff of the resort live. It was a very interesting trip—we really learned a lot. The culture and economy of Fiji are so different from western norms, we think it’s fascinating. Tavua has about 200 residents,…
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Today we bid Matamanoa farewell and traveled to the “Mainland” to be close to the airport for an early morning departure. For convenience, our travel agent booked us into one of the major hotels for one night. It was high-end, luxurious, and utterly cold and bland. I’m pretty sure I stayed in that exact room…
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We flew on Air New Zealand to Aukland on a brand new jet. The safety video was a humorous spoof of The Hobbit, very cleverly done. In Fiji everyone spoke English, were very friendly, and went out of their way to make visitors feel at home. In New Zealand it’s much the same. Aukland is…
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Our first day in New Zealand! To get familiar with Auckland, we got a tour of Auckland and the surrounding areas. We tasted our first pies (which are addictive), looked over huge forests, enjoyed walking on the beach (with sand that sticks to a magnet), and had a very nice day. Denise wrote captions to…
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We took a longer route up to Paihia (from Aukland) which took us over to the west coast (Tasman Sea) for a bit. The drive was beautiful, a lot like California, but greener, and you have it all to yourself. There are even big trees — we stopped to see the largest living kauri tree,…
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Didn’t feel right when I woke up. Karel —my hero— rearranged our plans for the day to give me a few hours to sort it out. I’ve delved into our first aid kit and we’ll see how it goes. … Just a little traveler’s illness. I think I’ve slept or dozed for 30 hours and…
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I’ve started adding captions to some of the photos, so look there for interesting tidbits. For the past couple of days we’ve been touring the northern end of the north island of New Zealand. This place is incredibly beautiful! Sort of like California, only greener and a lot less populated. Today we had a prearranged…
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A leisurely drive to the south today. We decided to skip the glowworm caves, which cut our driving time by several hours. We’ve learned you have to add 25% or so to the GPS calculated driving time, which is supposedly based on speed limits and traffic conditions. The speed limit is usually 100 kph, but…
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This morning we “helped” feed the sheep and move the cattle. Then, it was off to one of the highlights of our New Zealand trip: Hobbiton! Neither Karel nor I are the type to go on a pilgrimage to set locations and movie star houses, with this one exception. Hobbiton is a place I’ve wanted…
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We have so many photos and video clips every day, we’re unable to upload all the keepers before running into daily data quotas (you can’t find unlimited data transfers here, even if you pay for access). In addition, connection speed is usually just too slow to handle our video clips. We’re also placing a major…
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Last night we finished the day in Rotarua, New Zealand’s most active geothermal area. We went out for a splurge, celebration dinner at the Makoia Restaurant. The meal included local delicacies and was served with tips on some of the healthful uses of the ingredients. For example, kawakawa leaves are a natural liver cleanser and…
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Kiwis are very kind and will go out of their way to offer help if you look lost or confused. They speak English, of course, but that doesn’t mean an American (or Dutch guy) can understand what they say. Get used to it, because the Kiwi way of saying it is the RIGHT way. For…
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Special treat this evening, a Maori feast and cultural show. We were transported by waka (the Maori word for canoe, but now used for any means of transport—in this case, a bus). Our waka driver, Dennis, is a Maori elder, jokester, and party animal. He taught us the traditional call-and-response chant for paddling a waka…
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We just wrapped up a few days of adventure in the vicinity of Taupo and Tongariro National Park. Our first stop was at the impressive Huka Falls. Lake Taupo is New Zealand’s largest lake. At 616 square kilometers, it could swallow the entire nation of Singapore. There are several large volcanoes around the lake, some…
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Dawn wasn’t looking very promising. The weather was cold and misty, and Karel didn’t exactly bounce out of bed. The hotel proprietress was knocking on our door and asking after his well-being, however, and she bundled us into the dining room. Never mind what we ordered; they stuffed us with the deluxe breakfast and sent…
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We zigged back over to the east coast to spend a couple of days in the town of Napier, the Art Deco capitol of the world. The entire business district was destroyed by an earthquake in 1931, and was rebuilt in that stylish mode over the next few years. They had a lot of new…
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When we arrived in Wellington, the capitol of New Zealand, we immediately set out in search of good ice cream, which I’d been craving ever since my big hike. Then we explored art exhibits and did some window shopping. As dinnertime approached we started looking for a likely restaurant. We had just noticed we’d strayed…
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The Inter-Island Ferry is more like a cruise ship than a commuter vessel. It’s huge, with 10 decks, food court, café, bar, and private cabins. For families with babies, there are private nursery rooms, and for the kids there was live entertainment by a magician and two feature movies during the three-hour journey. The vehicle…
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Picton – Wow! What a pretty harbor. By far the nicest ferry terminal I’ve ever seen. This tiny town has only about 3000 full-time residents. About twice that number are here every day in the summer, visiting. We’re at the north end of the South Island, a complicated realm of mountainous islands, peninsulas, bays, and…
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As we left Picton the character of the east side of South Island immediately became apparent. The land was dry, grassy, and alternated flat plains and hilly ranges. Although we were on the main highway from the ferry terminus to Christchurch, it was sparsely traveled and more like a secondary route. After traversing a region…
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We had only the briefest stay in Christchurch before boarding the train for the trip across the Southern Alps. What we saw of Christchurch reminds me a lot of Minneapolis, but we didn’t go downtown, which apparently is still a wreck after the 2011 earthquake and the—literally—thousands of aftershocks (still up to three per day)….
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People living in Boulder often lament that Boulder would be absolutely perfect, if it only had a beach. If you want to see what that looks like, go to Queenstown, which is nestled between high mountains and one of New Zealand’s largest lake, named Wakatipu. Like Boulder, Queenstown is overrun with young and athletic types…
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The pine trees in New Zealand were designed by Dr. Seuss. The ferns were designed by Stephen Spielberg. New Zealand reminds me, in some ways, of the US when I was growing up. I remember when farms were small, roads were narrow, retail shops closed by dinnertime, when we kids ranged from one end of…
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Travel day; we had a few hours in the morning to upload photos and check email at an internet café before heading to the airport. While Karel worked on that, I had a nice conversation with the girl at the desk, another Scottie on a work visa having a great time living in New Zealand…
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It was dark when we arrived in Denpasar, but we could tell instantly that we were in another world. It was very warm, but not unbearably so; however, the humidity was around 90%. As we stepped out of the air-conditioned jet, we were instantly covered with a sheen of moisture, and we haven’t been dry…
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Karel has been to Japan, China, and Thailand before, but Bali is my first experience of Asia. When we left the serene confines of our resort—this time in daylight—every sight and sound and smell was a novelty to me. You can read about Bali on Wikipedia, but here are a few factoids for context: •…
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Over the next few days, we traveled by minivan to the highlights across the central part of the island, along with our tour director, drivers, and fellow travelers. Often we had local guides to take us through a village or park. At the first village we visited, just outside of Ubud, we were invited into…
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When you drive through Bali, you can see much of the commerce crammed up against the pavement, and get a sense of what’s important to the people here. Besides restaurants, hotels, and a few other touristy things, I have the impression that 80% of the Bali economy is devoted to religion. All the beautiful arts…
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Our vans climbed high up into the mountains, encountering rain showers along the way, and crossed the rugged spine of the island. Then, with the weather clearing again, we descended steeply into a huge, ancient crater. We arrived at a bare bones hotel and went to bed early to get as much sleep as possible…
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After the hike we moved on to the north coast tourist town of Lovina. Karel and I wandered down to the beach to find dinner. There was a restaurant called Sea Breeze that we’d heard had live music, so Karel brought his guitar along, just in case. Sure enough, there was a band of four…
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In the tropics, the trees are prolific litterbugs. As we’d walk down to breakfast, we’d always see the staff tidying up the gardens and grounds, but no sooner had they carried away a bushel of leaves and twigs and husks and blossoms from under one tree, than a little breeze would bring down another basketful….
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Five of our group opted to rise before the sun, walk the short distance down to the beach, and hire two motor-driven, outrigger canoes to see if we could spot any dolphins. There were four to a boat, so Karel and I shared ours with another couple not from our tour group. We glided out…
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That evening we were treated to a home-cooked meal in the home of a local friend of our tour director. The food was fresh and delicious. After that, we enjoyed another jam with the band at the restaurant. In the morning, we began our return trip to the southern part of the island, with a…
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Our friend Jaa welcomed us at the airport in Bangkok and, after a brief visit to a local market, drove us to her house near the outskirts of the city. We took a short break to freshen up, then headed over to her mother’s home, nearby, to meet the family and have dinner. While Jaa’s…
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Bangkok has between eight and nine million people—about the same as New York City, where I lived when I was very young. I sort of expected it to be an Asian version of New York, but instead it feels even bigger, noisier, dirtier, and more chaotic. This is really surprising to me, because New York…
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Our first excursion was a ride on a long boat on the Chao Phraya River and one of the canals that Bangkok is famous for. It was a nice glimpse of the old Bangkok, although the waterways are no longer the main thoroughfares of commerce through the city. After that we visited Wat Pho, where…
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The next big adventure was getting ourselves and our luggage across the street to the central rail station during rush hour. Terrifying. We boarded our train and soon we were creeping, crawling, and lurching along the tracks toward Chiang Mai. The train moved very slowly and stopped frequently, but that was all accounted for in…
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Before leaving Chiang Mai, we walked in the old city and enjoyed a few temples. It was a long ride from Chiang Mai to the Thai-Laos border, through an increasingly rural landscape. We broke the trip up with a stop at a cashew farm and another at Wat Rong Khun in Chiang Rai, also known…
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After our arrival in Laos, it was a short trip upriver to meet our boat, but we very nearly didn’t make it when our songthaew stalled on a hill and wouldn’t get going again. Somehow, the driver managed to restart it, and we got over the crest of the hill and rolled into a spot…
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For our first full day in Luang Prabang, we started at the ethnology museum. There are three major and several minor ethnic groups that comprise the population; we learned a bit about their origins, clothing, and cultures. Then we drove out of town to a beautiful waterfall, where we swam in the limestone pools. On…
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For our final full day in Luang Prabang, Karel and I meandered through the old town and visited one of the ancient temples. We stopped for a cooling drink on a terrace overlooking the river and watched people crossing a rickety-looking bamboo bridge (which gets washed away every year during rainy season), two young monks…
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From bottomlands as flat and green as a lake, the mountains soar skyward all around us, improbably high and straight-sided. With the smoke of burning rice paddies drifting between them, they look like the crumbling teeth of fallen dragons. After climbing and descending a few mountain passes, we leave this stunning scenery behind us and…
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In the morning, Joan brought me over to meet her host family, so I could watch the mother working at her loom. The father, meanwhile, was cutting tobacco up for drying. It was interesting to see them at work and get a sense of how they produced goods for the local markets. It was a…
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(Karel was taking a couple of days off from photography, so we don’t have much visual material to post for this entry. The cover image of this post was taken at the village homestay and is not related to today’s story. Don’t worry, though, the avalanche will resume shortly.) The capital city of Vientiane is…
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Nothing we’ve done, nowhere we’ve seen, has prepared us for the streets of Hanoi. Our hotel was in the Old Quarter, a district of narrow streets and turn-of-the-century French architecture, absolutely jammed with people and motorcycles. Our bus was too big to navigate the few blocks to the hotel, so our luggage was crammed into…
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Old ways die hard, especially when they once represented life and death. It was a long walk to the mausoleum, but we went through a district of embassies and officials, so the sidewalks were passable and traffic was more orderly (although that’s not saying much). Ho Chi Minh is revered in Vietnam in almost the…
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Today a lime seed fell into my fruit shake, where it threatened to clog my straw and cause all sorts of trouble. Without even thinking about it, before it sank below the foamy froth at the top, I plucked out the slippery little bugger with my chopsticks. I’ve never had an easy time with crowds,…
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I had a version of Southeast Asia in my imagination. It was based on books and movies and travel journals and postcards. It wasn’t a perfect world; there was war, and poverty, and dictatorship. But it was beautiful and human, life was artful, and it was completely different from, and even immune to, the ways…
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Ha Long Bay was magical. The air was clearer once we left the busy port area. Our junk, although not much to look at from the outside, was gorgeously appointed inside. The food was delicious, the presentation was spectacular. Loan continued to endear herself to the group with her stories and even singing. I went…
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Hoi An straddles a navigable river near the coast of the South China Sea. Its location made it an important stop on the Sea Silk Route, but long before that it was a prominent player in the spice trade. It has had many names and been inhabited by different people over its long history of…
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I was drifting off to sleep after our busy day when my body starting sending signals that something was amiss. I spent the rest of the night making frequent trips to the bathroom, sweating, shivering, tossing, and turning, and feeling miserable. The worst was over by daybreak, but I still had a fever and spent…
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Saigon is a lot like a modern American city. The bikers and drivers seemed more aggressive there, so we really had to be on our toes on the streets and sidewalks. And it was hot, unbelievably hot. The scheduled activities were focused around the history of the American War. Karel and I opted out. We…
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For our last day in Vietnam, we made a short journey to the town of My Tho, on the wide and muddy Mekong Delta. There, we boarded a longtail boat and visited a floating market, got off to see a fruit orchard where we sampled the produce while enjoying a performance of Vietnamese folk music,…
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It was a long ride from Saigon to Phnom Penh, but the public bus was reasonably comfortable and we were entertained by a couple of Charlie Chaplin movies (The Kid and The Great Dictator), followed by the outrageously violent Ninja Assassin (think Kill Bill with a bad plot, overdubbed by a single, female voice in…
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Karel and I elected not to visit the infamous killing fields or prisons of Cambodia, but the aftermath of this horrible period was all around us. Many of the adults we saw working in the shops, hotels, and restaurants were orphans. They grew up, not only without parents, but without teachers. They were deprived of…
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For our bus ride to Siem Reap, we were entertained by the many ways that Cambodians get themselves and their stuff from place to place. The highway was a decent road with light traffic, by Indochina standards. Besides the usual motorbikes, bicycles, tuk-tuks, cars belonging to government employees, small trucks, and tourist vans, we encountered…
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About a thousand years ago, Cambodia was rich and powerful. During the Khmer dynasty, the kings built fantastic complexes of temples and cities, including the crowning glory, Angkor Wat. We were told by our guide that the old name for the country literally meant Land of Gold, so named because the sands and rivers contained…
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When you shop at the markets and decide to make a purchase, the vendor will often whip out a packaged version of the product, untouched and ready to go. “Same same,” they assure you, pointing from the sample you were holding to the proferred package. The wise buyer should verify this before handing over any…
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After nearly three months of travel, it’s time for a little break. My body seems to agree. I hadn’t gotten back to 100% after my brief episode with the flu. The moment I lowered my defenses, I had a minor relapse. Nothing like the first time, just a little tiredness and a special request from…
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Kelvin joined us, on break from his job in Perth at Curtin University, and we set plans in motion for a trip to the legendary beaches of southern Thailand. Jaa made the arrangements for our flight to Krabi, with transfer by bus and boat to a resort at Railay West Beach. The beaches of Railay…
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Jaa’s hometown of Trang is only a couple of hours by public bus from Railay. Her family still has a house in town, where we stayed for a few days to visit her rubber plantation and explore some of the nearby beaches. Karel was keen on finding a music jam. We succeeded when we found…
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Jaa and Kelvin kept us well-entertained by taking us to eat at local restaurants, plunking us into local waterfalls, and visiting Jaa’s rubber tree farm. The next day, we went on a full-day excursion to the coast, local style. Here’s how you do it: Start with dim sum for breakfast at the tour company headquarters….
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We returned to Bangkok for a day and bid farewell to Kelvin, who had to fly to New York on business. Interestingly, his work took him to Stonybrook, which is right near where I lived as a child. I’m sorry I couldn’t show Kelvin around my old stomping grounds the way Jaa showed us around…
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We were enjoying our vacation from our honeymoon, which is what our stay in Bangkok felt like, but it was time to be tourists again for a couple of days. Jaa had kindly arranged a home-stay in an area of Thailand that still maintains the old ways of life on the rivers and canals. Karel…
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We used our last couple of days in Bangkok to take care of errands and do a little more souvenir shopping. I was mostly interested in textiles, but I found some beautiful porcelain at the huge weekend market at Chatuchak. Thai Five-Color Porcelain, also called Royal Porcelain, used to be available only to wealthy nobles….
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When I was a little girl one of my best friends was a girl from Japan. Our families were very close for several years while we lived in New York City. Then, when I had just turned eight, we moved away. Junko and her family moved back to Japan a short time later, and we…
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If you were an artist in Egypt, you might be tempted to dispense with shades of gray in your palette. In the dry air, the fierce light of the sun brightly illuminates some aspects, while casting others in dark shadow. There is water, or there is not, with a stark end to greenery at the…
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There are advantages to traveling when tourism is down, but there are disadvantages, too. Our flight to Luxor was canceled due to lack of passengers, so we were rescheduled onto a different flight that left later, and didn’t arrive at our hotel until after midnight. Unfortunately, our bodies still hadn’t adjusted to the five hours…
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We always felt safe and well cared for in Egypt, but this segment of our trip was not about immersing ourselves in an authentic cultural experience. Egypt is a challenging place for westerners, and especially for western women. In public spaces, men seem to outnumber women by four or five to one, and sometimes local…
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We finally found out where all the tourists have gone. They’re in Rome; legions of them lining up around the Colosseum, mobs and globs clogging the Spanish Steps, masses of chatterboxes disturbing the sanctity of the Sistine Chapel. We were actually in Rome twice, with the Amalfi Coast sandwiched in-between, and we used our time…
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A clatter of hooves draws me to the balcony. What? Where? From my perch I can see half of the village of Pontone above and below me. I spot the horse just across a gully, down a bit from me, standing next to a parked van at the end of the single road. A man…
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The Amalfi Coast was one of my favorite places of our spectacular trip around the world. Set off walking in any direction, and an adventure of discovery awaits you, with big views of the Mediterranean Sea, mountains, and cliffs, contrasting with an intimate, enchanted world of orchards and gardens, ancient churches, old stone houses, and…
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It wouldn’t be a honeymoon without at least one magical moonrise, right? We arrived on the island of Santorini (Thira), Greece, in the early evening and were almost done with dinner on the upper terrace at our hotel, when Karel spotted a great, red disk peeping above the horizon. The Mediterranean was glassy smooth, and…
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Our honeymoon has been an interesting sampler of some of the many ways to travel, from the full package/bed and board/tour guides and transport, to the let’s-just-go-there-and-see-what-happens style. For this next adventure, we were committing ourselves to 10 days of a very unique blend of these two extremes. On the one hand, we knew where…
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It was a long travel day from Santorini to Amsterdam, due to long waits between connecting flights. We took the opportunity to catch up on photo processing and blogging, although it was a losing battle, especially for me. Dineke and Martin picked up two bedraggled travelers at Schiphol and drove us another two hours to…
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Our honeymoon has taken us to some marvelous and exotic destinations, but not off the beaten track. The name, Iceland, however, still has a ring of wildness to it, a cold, lonely outpost at the bitter edge of the known world. The strange thing is, though, that in these days of air travel, Iceland is…
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We’re home! (OK, not really. We were home, and were too busy to finish things up, so we actually caught up on most of our writing during our vacation in Paris – and now we’re home again.) The honeymoon has a happy ending, but the story has been told, and there’s not much more to…
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