After our first six months of travelling and constantly being on the move, we needed a break – and took a month off at home in Vancouver. Six months later we were due for another break, but not at home this time. Instead, we booked ourselves an apartment for one month in Chiang Mai, Thailand where we experienced our first ever Christmas abroad! Continue reading
Tag: Travel
Overwhelmed by India
Before we get to how we were overwhelmed by India let me state that almost everything in life is opinionated and subjective and travelling is no exception. Where you travel to and the places you like the most depend on a lot of factors, such as: Continue reading
The Jewel of India: The Taj Mahal
The Taj Mahal is on almost every travellers must-see list. It’s one of the world’s most celebrated structures and one of the Seven New Wonders of the World – and deservingly so. Its design, as well as shear size, are majestic and breathtaking. Continue reading
100 Days in Europe: From Iceland to Hungary
It’s been less than two weeks since we left Europe for Asia, and yet it feels like a lifetime ago. That could possibly be because we’re in Varanasi, India which is a whole world different than Europe. Having had enough of the sensory overload from the city, we’re hiding in a café drinking coffee (made with filtered water) and reflecting on our 100 days in Europe. Continue reading
Dubai: The World’s Biggest Everything
A stopover in Dubai en-route to India was an obvious choice for us as almost all flights from Europe to Asia go through Dubai. Most flights arrive late in the evening/early morning and the connecting flights leave hours later. We thought it would be much better to spend a couple days gawking at the engineering marvels in Dubai. Since the early 2000’s Dubai has been dumping money into infrastructure and luxury accommodation to attract tourists and has become a city of the world’s biggest/best everything. As an example of how far the country will go to attract tourists you just have to look at the Palm Islands: because the beautiful pristine coastline wasn’t long enough for the amount of tourists, Dubai built the Palm Islands with the first (Palm Jumeirah) adding 78 kilometers of beach to the city and another two islands are in the works. Continue reading
The Ancient City of Ephesus
Our last stop in Turkey was Selçuk which we chose mainly for it’s proximity to the ancient city of Ephesus. We also read that it’s only a short bus ride from Şirince, a neighbouring town famous for its wines. We spent four nights in Selçuk (you only really need two) because we wanted to relax before our overnight flight to Dubai followed by another overflight flight to India three days later. Continue reading
Cappadocia: A Surreal Landscape
Our first views of Cappadocia, a region in central Turkey, were from the window of our shuttle van which picked us up at the Kayseri airport and drove us roughly an hour to our hotel in Göreme. Although we had Googled the area and had an idea of what it would like, it was still pretty cool to see the mars-like landscape in person. When we arrived at our hotel the receptionist asked us if we had already signed up for the red, green or blue tour. Neither of us had a clue what he was talking about and excused ourselves to go Google it in our room. We clearly had done very little research of the area because the first thing that comes up is those tours and almost everyone (who doesn’t rent a car) does a tour. We are usually fairly anti-tour but this one was the only way possible to see everything in the region in a limited time – and I was really interested in learning more about how the landscape was formed. Continue reading
Istanbul – Not what we Expected
I was really getting used to flushing toilet paper, transit systems that were integrated with Google Maps, organized infrastructure, and pedestrian crosswalks that were respected. I was enjoying simply being left alone when I walked down the street. I was getting used to people who respected queues, waited their turn, didn’t push and shove or budge their way to the front. I started assuming that all food was safe to eat and drinking the tap water was OK. I loved getting on trains that left the second they were supposed to and travelled at speeds upwards of 300km/hr to get you to your destination in a timely manner. We’d been enjoying all these ‘privileges’ (without thinking of them as such) over the past four months of our trip, ever since we left Latin America. Don’t get me wrong; Europe was by no means perfect and there were some exceptions to the above, but they were just that: exceptions. By and large, Europe is very efficient and extremely Westernized. Continue reading