TravelStream™ news feed for member rapturina on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/rapturina en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:09:57 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/finland2005/1122894540/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/finland2005/1122894540/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/finland2005/1122894540/tpod.html Tue, 25 Sep 2007 07:09:57 -0400 Erasmus exchange in Finland

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Helsinki, Finland

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Sydney, Australia

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Camarillo, California, United States

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New York City, New York, United States

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Rotterdam, Netherlands

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Paris, France

Day 32: Home We get up really early as we have a 6 am flight, and I'm actually thankful we have to leave so early. We get picked up to go to the airport, but when we're there we find out our flight has been delayed for two hours. This means we will miss the bus that we had booked and paid for to substitute the train we would miss. Grmbl. Eventually our plane does leave and after the long and boring flight we finally get to Paris at 3 pm. It takes forever to get through customs and our luggage, but eventually we manage to get out of the airport and we go to the train office to ask about trains. Thankfully there's one leaving to Brussels in about an hour, so we get tickets for that one and wait at the train station. From Brussels we get the train to Rotterdam, and at 10.30 pm we're finally home!
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Rotterdam, Netherlands

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Colombo, Sri Lanka

Day 31: Colombo - Sri Lanka The dreaded day of going home arrives and we check out of our hostel and have breakfast at an Indian place. I have a cheese masala dosa, which is one of the best breakfasts I ever had. :D After that we head for the airport where we spend some time shopping and spending our last Singapore dollars. We were supposed to fly out of Singapore early in the morning, but due to night flights from and to Colombo (our stopover in Sri Lanka) suddenly being cancelled all our flight times have changed. This is *really* annoying, as we had already booked (and paid for) a train from Paris back to Rotterdam that we are now going to miss because of the change in schedule. On top of that, we were supposed to have a stopover of about 10 hours during the day. We could've chosen to have a 3 hour stopover in Colombo but we figured it'd be fun to check out the city and we opted for the longer stopover. Now with the changes in schedule our stopover is suddenly 14 hours long - and during the night. We don't get a hotel from the airline however as we had already chosen for a long stopover ourselves, which is a royal pain in the ass. It gets worse though! We poke around the internet a bit and find out why the night flights have been cancelled: it turns out the Tamil Tigers have been *bombing* the military base next to the civilian airport a few months ago, and have been *shooting at planes* a few times. For the safety of the passengers they have now cancelled the night flights. I really did not want to know this. Selmer then decides to have a look at the Dutch government's website though and finds out that the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has actually issued a negative travel advice for all of Sri Lanka because of terrorist activity. So we're not even supposed to go to Sri Lanka! All this we find out the day before we have to fly home, so needless to say I am not very relaxed about having a 14 hour night-time stopover in Colombo without getting a hotel from the airline. We don't really fancy spending the night at the airport though, so we decide to leave the airport and find our own hotel. Right after we left customs there's a whole bunch of travel agents jumping us as soon as they spot us, and one of them arranges a pretty good deal for a hotel close to the airport and a taxi that takes us there. So in the end it wasn't too difficult to find accommodation for the night, but it was pretty annoying we had to take care of it ourselves instead of having the airline fixing us up. Our own fault really, but still. Anyway, so we get to a hotel and it turns out to be rather nice. The owner is quite surprised to see tourists, but is happy to have us for the night. I would've liked to see a bit of Colombo, but by the time we get to the hotel it's getting dark already, so we decide against going into the city (especially with the negative travel advice!). We have a fantastic dinner at the hotel. I'm not really hungry so Selmer just orders a rice and curry for himself, but the waiter comes back with a huge plate of rice and papadums, and about five or six different bowls with curry, veggies and dips. The lovely smell alone makes my appetite return instantly. :D We go to bed early, but I don't really sleep all that well though, I keep imagining Tamil Tigers coming into our room and shooting us or something.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/se_asia_2007/1181136840/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/se_asia_2007/1181136840/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/se_asia_2007/1181136840/tpod.html Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:52:32 -0400 South East Asia 2007

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Bangkok, Thailand

Day 24: on the bus to Bangkok - Thailand A very quiet day, we just stroll around the city for a bit to stock up on supplies for tonight's busride. We booked an overnight bus to Bangkok, to be followed by a bus to Cambodia leaving early in the morning. We both hate night buses, but we didn't really have a choice. We wanted to take the train, but the train to Bangkok arrives half an hour *after* the train to the Cambodian border leaves, and Selmer doesn't want to spend one more minute than absolutely necessary in Bangkok (he hated it when he was there a few years ago), so we give in and book the bus - albeit reluctantly. The bus leaves at 6 pm though, so we have almost another full day in Chiang Mai, which is nice as it's a pretty cool place. It's a big city, but it doesn't feel like it. There are a lot of backpackers, but because of that also a lot of nice cafés, restaurants and secondhand bookstores. After a few hours we return to the guesthouse to wait for our bus there. I register all the books I've picked up in South East Asia on Bookcrossing so I can start getting rid of them and make my backpack a bit lighter. :D We get picked up by a tuk tuk that takes us to the bus and drive all night. I don't sleep much, I *hate* night buses.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/se_asia_2007/1181137380/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/se_asia_2007/1181137380/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/rapturina/se_asia_2007/1181137380/tpod.html Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:52:00 -0400 South East Asia 2007

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Siem Reap, Cambodia

Day 25: Siem Reap - Cambodia We arrive in Bangkok at 6.30 am and hurry to the place where we're supposed to be picked up to find no one there. We wait and someone finally comes to pick us up at 7.30 am to take us to the bus. This bus takes us to the Thai-Cambodian border. We get off at the border to have lunch and have our visas arranged. We cross the border without too much trouble, but at the other side we have to wait for an hour for the bus that's supposed to take us to Siem Reap. It's not a favourable first impression of Cambodia - the border town Poipet is, frankly, a dusty shithole with lots of huge garish casinos and it's a lot hotter than it was in Northern Thailand where we were the night before. When the bus finally arrives it turns out to be a very rickety one. My window doesn't open, though that turns out to be rather fortunate as the road to Siem Reap is all dirt road and hence very dusty. We'd heard lots of horror stories about this road from other travellers, but I must admit it wasn't that bad. According to our very talkative guide the road is a lot better than it was and it "only" takes us 4,5 hours to drive the 150 km to Siem Reap. There's only a few towns and lots of rice fields along the way, and when it gets dark it turns out there are a lot of purple fluorescent lights that attract crickets; which then get caught in nets beneath the lights and eaten by the locals. We arrive in Siem Reap at 8.30 pm and it turns out to be quite a surprise. It's a much bigger town than I had expected and there are a lot of expensive resort type of fancy hotels. We stop at a guesthouse and even though our guide says we can be taken to another guesthouse we decide to stay there as it looks quite nice and I'm too tired after having sat on buses for 24 hours to be bothered about picking another guesthouse. :D Day 26, 27 and 28: Siem Reap - Cambodia We arrange with one of the guys at the guesthouse he'll drive us around in his tuk tuk for three days for $60, and we set off for Angkor Wat. I'm pretty excited as this is the sole reason we came all the way to Cambodia in the first place (it's a bit out of the way). Angkor Wat is a World Heritage Site and consists of a very large area with lots of temples. Angkor Wat is actually the biggest and most wellknown temple in the area, but usually people use the name to refer to the entire area as well. On the first day we visit Angkor Thom, Ta Keo, Ta Phrom and Banteay Kdei. We have lunch and then go see Angkor Wat itself. It's all completely stunning and *so* worth going out of our way and enduring the gruelling busride! The second day we get up at 5 am to check out Angkor Wat at sunrise. It's a stunning sight and afterwards we check out a few other temples. It's nice to see them in the morning light - usually a much nicer light than in the afternoon. It's also not as hot yet, so that's nice. Today we see Banteay Sreu, Ta Som and Neak Pean. It's interesting how all these temples are different - they're built in different periods of time, with different purposes and by different people. There are so many temples in the area and none of them is the same as any of the others. On the third day we visit the temples in the Roluos group - a bit further out from the main site. The drive there is quite nice, we pass a lot of tiny villages and it's a nice way of seeing how the locals live their lives. After having seen these temples we've seen all the main ones and our driver suggests we go check out Tonle Sap lake as well, which we do. We go on a boatride on the lake. The boatride is a bit lame as we're only on the boat for about an hour in total. Basically we get dropped off at a restaurant/souvenir shop on the lake and then get taken back. Still, on the way there we pass a lot of houses on the water and it's really interesting to see how these people live here. So Angkor Wat is definitely worth the extra travelling it took to get there and I would really like to see more of Cambodia as it seems to be a fascinating country. We only saw the really touristy part, and only for three days. I do think I would like to wait a few years though before I return to Cambodia, and come back when the country is perhaps doing a bit better, economically? Right now, Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in an already poor region (though I suspect especially the booming tourist industry will bring lots of money to Cambodia in the future) and at Angkor Wat there were a lot of children running around trying to sell you stuff. It made me quite uneasy - these children should have the chance to be in school instead of selling cheap crap to rich tourists! These children are pretty annoying too, they stick around for ages trying to make you buy their stuff, saying things like 'if you don't buy something you'll make me cry!', which I thought was very cheeky. I also felt pretty guilty about not buying anything and being annoyed by these children, and I really hated that. I did buy a few trinkets here and there, and then all of a sudden they completely lose interest in you and go bother someone else, which also annoyed me as you're seen as nothing more than a walking cash machine. I suppose that's fair enough, but still. And it's not just the children that want your money, it's everyone. People try to make you buy stuff all over South East Asia and I'm pretty used to that sort of thing having encountered it in other places, but in Cambodia it just seemed worse than anywhere I've been. For example, the guy who was our guide on the boat trip just went on and on about how little he earned - amidst all the other interesting things he told us about life on the lake - and how he and the driver lived off tips. I don't know, it just made me feel uneasy. Maybe that's just my Western mind, not used to having people ask for money so blatantly. Mostly it makes me feel guilty though. I don't consider myself rich at all, but compared to these people I'm very well off and they kind of like to rub it in your face. Anyway. On our third day in Siem Reap we also went to an incredibly cheesy dance and dinner thing. They had a big buffet with really good food and some Cambodians dancing up on stage for the tourists. I really enjoyed the dancing they did (traditional Apsara dancing), but it was a pretty touristy set up. After the dancing was over all the Japanese people jumped up on stage straight away to have their pictures taken with the dancers, which was a very funny sight. :D
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