Just to finish off, here’s a (heavily abbreviated) list of some of the highlights of our honeymoon…
- Watching the mists swirl in the wind and finally, in the end, reveal Machu Picchu (Peru) early in the morning of our last day of the Inca Trail
- Having the hike to Condoriri (one of the peaks in the Cordillera Real, near La Paz) base camp all to ourselves and watching the spectacular Andean landscape change as the snow laid down overnight melted throughout the day
- Watching red flamingos go about there business at the red coloured (and aptly named) Laguna Colorado (Bolivian Altiplano)
- Catching a glimpse into the crater from the rim of Vulcan Lascar (near San Pedro de Atacama, Chile) at 5480m and looking up to get an incredible view along a chain of other vulcanoes stretching off into the distance
- Having the stunningly varied hike around Refugio Frey and Refugio Lynch (near Bariloche, Argentina) all to ourselves on a beautiful sunny Xmas day
- Watching the sun rise over a cloudless Cerro Fitz Roy (anyone who’s been to Los Glaciaros NP in Patagonia can attest to how hard it is to catch a glimpse of the peak through ever-present clouds, let alone catch it on a cloudless morning)
- Walking into the natural amphitheatre formed by the peaks at the end of the (wind-swept) French Valley, having passed cascades, sliding waterfalls, crystal-clear streams, beautiful forests and dramatic (and regularly calving) hanging glaciers (Torres del Paine NP, Chile)
- Glacier walking at the base of Cerro Torre (Los Glaciaros NP, Argentina) on a beautiful sunny day
- Watching a deep red sunset envelop Manhattan, and in particular the Empire State building, from the top of the Rockefeller centre (New York)
- Waking up to find snow falling on the balcony of our guesthouse in Lower Pisang and walking through a stunning winter wonderland for most of the morning (Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)
- Early morning ascent up to the Thorung-La (pass), the highest point (5416m) of the Annapurna Circuit (Nepal) and and afternoon descent into Muktinath, on a perfect (and very bright!) day. Actually, the whole week from Manang to Marpha was pretty hard to beat. Spoilt for choice of highlights, I had to pick one
- Watching our plans for a walk up Bessho-san disappear under two inches of snow (laid down in about half an hour!). Very scenic though (near Fukuoka, Japan)
- Walking through a snow covered gorge with crystal-clear streams and waterfalls called Sandan-kyo (near Hiroshima, Japan) on a beautiful sunny day
- Staying at a secluded and ancient monastery (with sleeping quarters just out the back of one of the temples!) on Emei Shan in China (although had mixed feelings about being woken up by the chanting monks at 4am )
- Watching the sun rise over the rice paddies and karst limestone peaks in Chaolong (near Yangshuo, China)
- Lazing about on a picture-perfect beach on Koh Samui (Thailand)
- And last but not least: sharing all these highlights (except for one or two of the sunrises perhaps, a bit too early for some ) with Justine, who every day makes me feel like I’m the luckiest man alive
And, of course, just as important, our food highlights:
- Asado (barbeque) lamb in El Calafate, Argentina
- Some salmon dish prepared by our friends in Vancouver, Canada
- Cup Cakes in New York (somewhere close to the Library)
- Cold Stone Creamery (icecream) in Times Square, New York
- Some pork dish prepared by our friends in Groningen, Holland
- Sushi in Kyoto, Japan
- Okonomiyaki in Hiroshima, Japan
- Hida beef in Takayama, Japan (apparently similar to, but less established than Kobe beef)
- Steak in Hong Kong (after 4 weeks of trekking in Nepal )
- Some fish dish in one of the restaurants in the Muslim quarter (Xian, China)
- Most of the food around the Sichuan province… spicy! (Chengdu, China)
And finally, yes, I’m working on posting the photos… house- and job-hunting just might have to come first unfortunately
As the more observant readers (both of you) would’ve noticed by now… we’ve actually been home for a couple of days now. Thailand was great, but we didn’t do much touristy stuff. And by “much”, I mean “any”. Pretty much exactly what the doctor ordered, topped off nicely with catching up with some good friends who live there or were passing through. On the other hand, definitely a place we want to go back to and do it justice, from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot to see there.
So I guess that’s it. Best thing is that we’ve been gone from Australia for so long, I almost feel like a tourist here. Everything feels new or different, and therefore exciting again in my mind . I guess they always say a change is as good as a holiday!
Alright, last lot of things that make one go “Hmmm…”
Apart from the dozens of (rather amusing) examples of what is commonly referred to as Chinglish (Chinese badly translated into English, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinglish, one example I can remember was a sign that warned us to “Slip Carefully”), I have to admit there weren’t actually that many What The’s… here goes anyway…
- A bunch of warnings on the Great Wall to be careful around the edges, not to stray from the path, etc and of course… not to use your mobile during thunderstorms. Fair enough. You’d probably need both hands to fly your kite properly?
- There are quite a number of national TV stations (12 I think… makes the 3 or 4 BBC channels look a little anemic), one of which is CCTV9 which is fully done in English. Fair enough (and the only thing we watched for the three weeks we were there), but I was quite surprised to find that one of the anchors doing the news (in a rather Australian accent) was none other than good old… Edwin Maher. Who said weathermen couldn’t go places…
- I have seen some pretty full-on sales in my time, but nothing prepared me for walking down a stretch of shopping street in Xian. This 100m stretch was home to half a dozen mobile phone companies or so and to say things are competitive in the Chinese mobile market is a bit of an understatement. Each shop had at least 10-15 sales assistants (give or take) manning the entrance to what looked like department-store-sized mobile phone shops. All vying to get passing shoppers’ attention. Not often you see them do that though by what to my western ears sounded like (but admittedly could’ve been anything) chanting slogans and singing songs. I guess I noticed them, so perhaps the Chinese walking past did too.
- After having traveled around Japan and Nepal before arriving in China, we were pretty used to the squat toilets generally used around Asia. Wasn’t quite prepared for the old communal squat toilets though. That’s right. One of the monasteries we stayed at on Mount Emei had a set of communal toilets, which instead of having the usual discreet cubicle around each squat toilet, simply had a low concrete divider (about 50cm high, along the side of the squat toilet), and no door or other cover across the “entrance”. Combined with the balcony style “wall” (admittedly giving a great view of the surrounding forest due to the complete lack of wall from about 1m from the floor and up) and interesting (and generally short lasting experience).
- The ability of just about all Chinese (van, bus, taxi, etc) drivers to at the same time instill a complete sense of insanity (quite commonly found amongst Asian drivers) and complete competence. Intriguing.
Forgot to put these up, figured better late than never…
- Upon moving into our room in Kathmandu we were slightly intrigued to find a complimentary box of matches with not the hotel logo on it but… Microsoft Windows? Perhaps one of the latest initiatives of the Gates Foundation?
- When checking the expiry date on some peanuts at the local supermarket, I found that it was 3 months from the date of production. The date of production was March 30th, so nothing that strange I guess… except that that day was March 28th.
- During our trek around Annapurna, at the end of one day I found that my deodorant had moved around and accidentally been emptied. Not wanting to smell too much (always a major concern when trekking ), of course we set out to look for some deodorant around the village we were staying in. We found some, which I was quite impressed with (at 1600m), but I was somewhat intrigued that the four different types that they sold were all produced by… Playboy. Makes you wonder about some of the trekkers that had dropped by previously throughout the years (and perhaps gave the locals the idea that this was a winning marketing strategy?).
- Many a guesthouse had a dining area for breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc. Generally fairly functional areas, a (disturbingly large) number of them had spruced them up with a few posters. Makes sense, except that most of them were pictures of tanned, oiled-up body-builders or swiss chalets. One or two would’ve just been a little odd, but the regularity makes one wonder what the locals think westerners are into. Or what they’re into. Then again, Arnie in his heyday was pretty buffed…
- Cigarettes were regularly included on food menus. I’m guessing Nepal is still a couple of years away of banning smoking in restaurants and other public spaces.
- Quite a few clothes stores could be found selling the latest North Face (or other brandname) gear. At prices generally around 10% of what you’d expect to pay in western countries, the authenticity sometimes was a little questionable. Some stores perhaps made it a little to obvious though, one example I found was of some underwear made by “Calvan Klain”. Whoops.