Visiting / moving to Paris? Here’s a quick, superficial overview of things to do and see.
Travel
I’m Bonbon – bonbon – children all want bonbon. Or “gift”, whatever the hell that is. Driving back from a day trip to Galle Fort in the South-West of the country, we nearly got a few of the local urchins run over after our driver stopped to show us a tree full of bats cavorting [...]
Aug 222010
I have never flown over a place where a city just stopped, separated by a vast expanse of reasonably pristine bush (national park, hooray!) by nothing more than a rail track. I’ve never been anywhere as smoky and smoggy as the outskirts of Nairobi.
Aug 212010
The next hop of our trip took us to Chumbe, a coral island beach resort off the South-West coast of Zanzibar. The founders and management pride themselves on their ecological credentials, but beyond being a lovely place in a stunningly beautiful location, it’s as good an argument against compost toilets as I’ve ever seen.
Aug 202010
Holy everloving shit, I’ve never seen so many giraffes in my entire life.
Aug 172010
The trip to Zanzibar, although long, was reasonable enough, and aside from four hours spent (as probably the only haram dhimmi kafir infidel types in a surreal windowless Nairobi airport basement sleeping lounge — $42 for four hours — thoroughly uneventful. The only real excitement came when we learned Kenya Airways had lost Karin’s suitcase.
Jan 112010
What amazes me most about the Vietnamese we’ve encountered is their spectacular sense of improvisation and adaptability, while still not being really innovative. Hotel staff will set up camp on the floor at night and tailors work their asses off to get things done under abysmal working conditions; the lady who served us delicious seafood [...]
Jan 062010
Decided to have a relaxing morning and not take the 09:00 to Sapa (partially also to avoid the obnoxious drunk Australian from two nights ago), so hired a later private car to spend a few hours in town before our bus to Lao Cai and the train station.
Jan 042010
All ads for long-distance trains in Vietnam (particularly Hanoi-Lao Cai/Sapa) show photos of a glistening, white rail rocket reminiscent of a TGV or ICE. We were a bit surprised that, given the ramshackle state of the few trains that crossed our path so far, Vietnam would have such modern transport infrastructure, but why not?
Jan 032010
Rather than bother with getting up at 0600 for tai chi (bang bang bang on the door, GOOD MORNING!) on the “sun deck” (we haven’t seen any sun since arriving, and the steel blanket smothering the sky is getting a bit depressing), we took in an extra few blissful hours of sleep, waking occasionally to [...]
