Grand Trawas Hotel Surabaya

... back into euro's it's insanely cheap. So yes, I'm guilty off hanging out in malls.

Try to calculate how many women work in one clothing store, like Mata Hari. If you can, you must be good at match. Take a look at all the different uniforms. Order a cup of coffee and sit down. If you bring along a good book, like I did, your day will fly by. It's not a touristy thing to do, but it's fun!

on 17-21 November 2009 I had the opportunity to visit Bandung in order to follow the workshop document management system in the telecom PDC 2009 bandung. My visit was the second time since 1994. departs from surabaya with executive class train Argo Wilis at 07.30 hours on Tuesday morning. expensive trains worth 205 thousand rupiah is very comfortable. The journey takes more than 12 hours and got on bandung at 20:00. so tired of it because it happens to rain heavily.

... which continued for most of the weekend! So no tennis, no swimming, but lots of reading and relaxing on our balcony and eventually a dry spell for the actual hash on Sunday afternoon. However, the going was "heavy" to say the least...but beautiful scenery through the padi fields and up into the hills, crossing makeshift balancing bridges and wading thigh deep in ...

... Madhya Pradesh, India: Bicycling the Temples of Khajuraho: Riding rickety old bikes, Zoe, Ankit and I spent a day amongst the pastoral plains of Madhya Pradesh, peacefully and continually amazed by the ornate sculptures lining every inch of the sandstone temples of Khajuraho. We graciously accepted an invitation from our friend Rakesh to have lunch with ...

... verticale a l'exterieur. Je n'ai pas besoin de vous dire que j'etais concentre sur le chemin. Rejean souffrait de nervosite au debut et avancait a pas de tortue, puis il s'est resaisie et a bien continuer sans de probleme. Nous avons du faire 3km sur le tour en montant et descendant, comme les montagnes russe et ce, accompagner toujours de cette bonne odeur. Paysage spectaculaire. Vers la fin, le sentier rappetissant dangereusement pour mes nerfs. J'ai fini a 4 pattes ne ...

... plant as an accountant/translator and she took us to meet her ex-boss who now has his own business farming prawns. 1st we had to be the honoured guests in his (very basic) village home - sweet tea and tins of biscuits and bunches of bananas and tubs of fresh peanuts were pressed upon us as we smiled and nodded and asked intelligent questions through Lukis. The purpose of this visit was 2fold - we want to take the children to do ...

... s bed, and other family members bring them meals and stay to eat with them and take over the non-stop fanning of the patients to try to cool them down. I won't describe the state of the inmates - suffice it to say that we toured 4 of the wards, but these were only the worst cases who need to stay in hospital. In the mornings there are hundreds who come in for chemotherapy treatment and then return home. Sobering huh?

... bali strait to java went by without us even getting off the bus. delirious, we were dumped, sometime between 4 and 5 am, not at the bus depot, which i guess we were supposed to have cleared with the driver beforehand, but at a random travel agency. the very place we fell victim to our own early morning thickheadedness. hours too late, as we re-read in LP, we learned that this precise scenario of being dropped off at random, over-charging travel agencies is a common trap set for ...

... I sat down watching the sky melting. Eventually, darkness has slowly descended on the plateau below and the hills have become miniature shadows in the distant. I saw the steady stream white smoke from the bottom. It's as if God was puffing on his pipe. I continued to circle the mouth of the crater and ended up where I started. To be so close to nature's wonder such as this is breathtaking. I remembered a song by Incubus, "Wish you were here." P.s. I ...

... a hankering for a little something so we headed out to find the one reasonable-sounding restaurant in town. We ordered asparagus and crab soup and stir-fried vegetables, both of which tasted fine, but the texture of the soup, this being a Chinese-oriented restaurant, was so gloopy it was like pure egg white. Still, it filled a (small) hole. Then it was back to the hotel for a bit more reading and bed to dream about the volcano we were going to see the next day. (R)