AROUND THE WORLD
Autor: ATHENEU SERGIPENSE SCHOOL | Publicado: 2012-01-17T12:10:00-08:00

                      Around The World 2010-2011Frequently Asked QuestionsWhat People Are Saying                                                                                        Contact                                                                                                                                                                             Around The World 2010-2011 LA // London // Bath // Paris // Algeciras // Lagos // Granada // Malaga // Tarifa // Chefchaouen // Fes // Marrakech // Dades // Merzouga // Essaouira // Casablanca // Cairo // Aswan // Abu Simbel // Luxor // Dahab // Bahariya // Istanbul // Cappadocia // Amman // Petra // Dead Sea // Bangkok // Pattaya // Chiang Mai // Pai // Koh Tao // Phuket // Bali // Nusa Lembongan // Gili Trawangan // Gili Air // Narita // LA // SF // Buenos Aires // Montevideo // Cordoba // Cafayate // Salta // San Pedro de Atacama // Uyuni // Oruro // La Paz // Cusco // Machu Picchu // Manu // Lima // LA // Las Vegas // Washington DC // Philadelphia // New York // Boston // SF  Title: Time is Nothing by Kien LamOriginal Music: Places and Faces by William Lam [Metaphysika Sounds] William can be reached at MetaphysikaSounds[at]gmail[dot]com Visit the Around The World FAQ Page   Stonehenge, England. The first stop on my around the  world adventure. A friend picked me up straight off a non-stop flight  from San Francisco and we headed on the A303 through the English  countryside to this prehistoric monument. It’s staggering to think that I  was standing in front of something that’s been there for 5000 years.  Checking this off my long bucket list felt good, especially since I knew  that for the next few months, I’d be traveling around the globe and  checking many more things off this little list. I look back and envy the  person I was on that day, standing there at one of the ancient wonders  of the world (not officially) with all the exciting possibilities of  adventures yet to be had and stories yet to unfold and fill itself with  details. I certainly hope the adventures aren’t over, but for now, the  list is definitely not getting checked off nearly as fast. But then  again, what’s the rush if time is nothing?    Bath, England. On the first night on my travels, I  would get 3 hours of sleep on the floor of a friend’s friend’s quaint  little apartment in the lovely spa town of Bath. When you combine the  English’s love for a drink and your host losing her keys on the same  night, you may well end up wandering like a zombie at 3 am down unknown  streets in hopes of finding your way back and hoping that her roommate  is at home and not dead asleep. At one point, with just £20 and no  passport or identification on me, I was ready to jump over a wall and  just pass out under a tree. Lucky for me, I didn’t and avoided the  explaining I’d have to do the next morning when the all-girls school  security guard would find me passed out under said tree. Side note: the  city is beautiful. Even with 3 hours of sleep, I still woke up at 7 am  to go for a run with a friend through the city.     London, England. My carriage to the airport awaits.  London was unfortunately too short of a visit and an incomplete one. I  missed both high tea and Sunday roast. That enough warrants a return  visit, old and new English friends withstanding.    Paris, France. After London, my next country  destination was Paris, a city I have put off visiting the last couple of  times I was across the pond in hopes that I would have more than a  couple of days to visit this European metropolis. From Charles de Gaulle  Airport, I took the TGV to la Gare du Nord to practice my French accent  and walk with a baguette under my arm.  Paris, France. Outside the Louvre, I found a nice  place to sit down and have my so-called Parisian picnic lunch you  usually pick from the local markets consisting of a baguette, some  cheeese and wine. The difference was I couldn’t stop at just the cheese  and wine, and added some cheap caviar, a couple of fromages, sliced  meats (you have to have sliced meats), some jarred asparagus, pate and a  pepper grinder that I somehow managed to carry for the rest of my  travels.  Paris, France. The Louvre is the most visited art  museum in the world, the home to the Mona Lisa, and the resting place of  Mary Magdalena directly underneath where Tom Hanks kneels down and gets  that light-bulb moment at the end of Da Vinci Code. But what’s more  important is that there’s a food court just next door.  Paris, France. Entrance to the Louvre, beneath the glass pyramid. I remember really needing to pee when I was here.  Paris, France. It is hard to stand on a bridge  overlooking the River Seine at dusk with the Eiffel Tower just in the  distance and argue that Paris is not one of the most romantic places on  Earth. It is also one of those cities that invite you to walk everywhere  even when you know the maps make different locations appear deceptively  closer than they really are. I don’t think I logged more miles walking  in any one city during my entire time backpacking.   Paris, France. This was my first unobstructed view  of La Tour Eiffel. A week into my journey and still benefitting from  waking up early due to cross-Atlantic jetlag, I got out of bed at 6 am  and took the Metro to the Trocadero to see the tower without the masses.  Aside from the few street vendors setting up shop before the rush of  tourists, I had the place to myself along with a clear view of the  tallest structure in Paris light by the soft morning light. I stuck  around for a bit as people started to gather breaking that beautiful  tranquility.     Lagos, Portugal. Lagos by day was all about  kayaking, swimming, tanning, caves, coves, and relaxing on the beach.  Lagos by night was all about the bars. And that bar was Shakers with  George the bartender, who may or may not make you a shot called the  “flatliner” that is 1 part Jaegermeister, 1 part Absinthe, and 1 part  Tabasco. Good stuff.    Lagos, Portugal. Sometimes those pictures of  paradise you see in travel brochures and guidebooks don’t show that just  outside framing of the pristine turquoise waters and endless white  sandy beaches are the fist-sized mosquitoes, a lack of potable water,  and swampy path to get to that little slice of heaven. Lagos, Portugal  was NOT one of those places and in fact should be too good to be true.  But it isn’t. In the southern Algarve region of Portugal, you have a  quaint little town, with a thriving nightlife, a simple restaurant that  served some of the most literally finger licking good food on all my  travels, and one of the most beautiful stretch of cliff, coves and beach  in all the world (up to that point in my travels at least, and I have  been to Australia’s eastern coast). In the mornings, you start at the  local croissanteria (that is a word) and then rent a kayak and paddle  around the grottos and caves scouting out the perfect cove (this part  comes later). Now it’s time to dry off for a fresh seafood lunch and  beer, followed by a walk along the top of the cliffs until you find that  perfect cove (from earlier) to hike down to for a afternoon nap and tan  on the sandy beaches below. At around 6 pm, you head to the best  restaurant in Lagos to simultaneously play with your palate AND fill up  in preparation for a big night out one at one of the many bars around  town with the friends you’ve made at one of the most chill hostels in  all of Europe. I resist from using names to avoid sending too much  traffic to these establishments and changing this experience into a  massive tourist attraction. The next day, you lather, rinse and repeat.    Granada, Spain. The friend we hitched a ride with  from Lagos to Granada, also turned out to be a pretty cool unofficial  guide during our stay. From the best tapas spot to the best view of the  Alhambra and his favorite hangouts spot like the stairs near the  Albaicin. The wall art there was awesome, but the smell of stranger piss  may be a slight deterrent as far as calling it a favorite hangout spot.  Granada, Spain. The Alhambra in Granada was the last  stronghold of the Moors in Spain. It is an incredible piece of Moroccan  architecture and a UNESCO World Heritage site. My Australian  yoga-instructor-radio-broadcaster-cocktail-singer friend and I met an  awesome brother and sister pair in Lagos at our hostel and hitched a  ride with them the next morning straight to Granada. Since I was headed  to Morocco, where I would see the influence and design of the Moors  everywhere, the Alhambra, somehow seemed less impressive. What Morocco  didn’t have on Spain, and particularly Granada is the free tapas that  you get with every drink. That’s right. As long as you keep drinking all  day, you will never go hungry.   Malaga, Spain. A coastal city south of Granada. This  was one of two stops en route to the ferry that would take me from  Spain to Morocco. Like Granada, the proximity of the city to Morocco  meant it was once occupied by the Moors. What remains is the old  Alcazaba, a fortress built in the 11th century. It reminded me of some  of the levels from the original 8-bit Prince of Persia games. So much so  that I wanted to swing from one metal bar to the next and jump off of  old crumbling ledges.    Tarifa, Spain. A place between places. At the  southern tip of Andalusia is the port town of Tarifa. There, it sits  across from Morocco, steadfast in extending a hello to Africa from  Europe. For centuries, this Spanish bastion has endured the winds  blowing through the Straits of Gilbraltar, the same winds that also  makes this place the wind-surfing capital of Europe. I could easily see  why sitting on the beach watching the ominous clouds move aggressively  across the skies overshadowing even the mighty waves sweeping into  shore.    Chefchaouen, Morocco. In Spain, I met a  French-Canadian and convinced him to travel to Morocco with me. Having  secured a French speaker, I felt a lot more comfortable taking the ferry  from Spain to tip of the African continent. We stayed in Tangier long  enough to buy a bus ticket and get onto said bus out of Tangier. Our  first destination was the town of Chefchaouen, an old fortress city  painted mostly in shades of blue. It was surreal. Even though we arrived  in the city with no map and only the name of a recommended hostel, 4  hours after we left the European continent, we had made our way through  our first winding Moroccan medina, found a place to sleep and sat on a  rooftop enjoying our first tajine and glass of silly sweet mint tea.  Yes, that was pretty surreal as well.    Fes, Morocco. Getting lost in Fes is fun, but  eventually you need to find your way home. This is where finding a gate  comes in handy. My friend and I found the famous Blue Gate just before  dusk and opted to follow the path outside the medina wall back to a  familiar point to get back to our riad instead of attempting the souk  route. Smart decision. We made it back in time for our private hammam  session.  Fes, Morocco. The guidebook section on Fes warns  visitors about getting lost in the city’s labyrinthine medina. Paths  wind into nooks and crannies, smiling children find it funny to lead you  the wrong way, and everyone is trying to sell you a carpet. Most maps  are also useless. When you inevitably end up lost, the simple solution  is to let it happen. And enjoy losing yourself in the smells of the  spice market, the sounds of metal craftsman’s and the sights of  everything from Coca-Cola transporting donkeys to a freshly killed goat  hanging proudly in front of the butcher’s stall. Then, the next day you  go and yourself a local guide named Mohammed (everyone is named  Mohammed), who will efficiently take you to sites like the Al-Karaouine  Mosque (considered the oldest university in the world) and the Attarin  Madrasa seen here. The latter allows for non-Muslim visitors to enter  through a large set of bronze doors.    Marrakech, Morocco The souk in Fez may be the most  confusing, but the one in Marrakech is the largest in Morocco. And quite  busy at all times. That is until the Jamma El-Fna Square opens at dusk.     Marrakech, Morocco The famous Jemma El-Fna square  comes to life just before dusk as food stalls spring up and the aroma of  simmering stews, roasted meats and exotic spices lure the masses and  one by one disarms any will power to resist taking a seat. Locals,  tourists and even people on bicycles weave about chaotically but in  perfect harmony like a dance of life, dust and activities beneath the  haze of smoke billowing from the fires and stoves and through the  hanging light bulbs. Those not entranced by the food gather around  acrobats, snake charmers, storytellers, and musicians who captivate and  spellbound just as well. Beautiful turmoil. I go back to the smell  because it dominated all other senses, even silencing the unyielding  calls from the food stalls to sit at their table and the clatter of pots  and pans being moved, filled and scooped from. I gave in quite easily.  Marrakech, Morocco This is one of many food stalls  that I was a patron of every night in Marrakech’s Jamma El-Fna square.  Everything smells good, and I will most likely eat anything, anytime,  anywhere, so this place was this a gastronomic paradise for me. They  serve everything from lamb tangias (slowly cooked lamb in an oven) and  mechoui (a whole lamb cooked slowly over an open fire) to more  adventurous fares like cow brains, sheep head meat, and boiled snails.  Yes, I tried everything. And then had a second helping. For dessert, I  went over to the chicken and lentil soup stalls and washed everything  down with some fresh squeezed orange juice.  Sahara Desert, Morocco. The top item on my list of  things to do on my travels was to sleep under the stars in the Sahara.  Even if it meant that I’d have to lie on a camel blanket and under the  same camel blanket I used to ride in on. After everyone fell asleep in  the tent, I felt completely alone (in a good way) out there in the  Merzouga desert and watched for the stars for a good long hour before I  eventually passed out.    Dades Gorge, Morocco. I’m going to do it. I know I  shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. The Dades Gorges were gorge-ous. Pun  undeniably intended. Located in between the Atlas and Anti-Atlas  mountain ranges, everything from the winding mountain pass to the berber  villages, rock formations and ancient kasbahs were just stunning. And  that was before the sun began to set on everything bathing it in such  deep shades of earthy orange and red tones. Gorgeous.     Merzouga, Morocco. A day’s journey east of Marrakech  is the gateway to the Merzouga desert, where travelers can experience a  bit of the Sahara and ride a camel into the sunset. We spent the night  dining on Bedouin cuisine, sipping hot mint tea, and trekking arduously  up a deceptively massive sand tune to provide back-up vocals to our  Bedouin guides as they sang Bob Marley standards. We slept under the  stars and left the Bedouin camp just before dawn to ride back to the  village with the sunrise. My camel is the empty one at the back. Along  the way, I got off my camel, ran as fast as I could ahead and waited for  the camels to come around the dunes. Needless to say, I got my exercise  for the day.     Casablanca, Morocco. After Mecca and Medina, both in  Saudi Arabia, Casablanca lays claim to the 3rd largest mosque in the  world and the tallest minaret in the world. The interior was just  absolutely grand and immaculate. The former king spared no expenses in  the design, material and construction of the mosque, bringing in the  best granite and marble from Morocco and Italy along with 10,000  artists, craftsmen and workers to bring life to the details of this  massive undertaking. To enter, you have to take off your shoes, which is  a given in any mosque, but even then I felt like it was wrong for  people’s dirty feet (not mine, they were clean, they are always clean,  even when I walk barefoot through mud and dirt) to touch the floors,  parts of which were made of glass to look down into the baths below in a  non-creepy way.  Giza, Egypt. The Great Pyramids. Some places  unfortunately suffer from people having an overly romanticized notion of  what it should be rather than what it is. I’ll admit to that being the  case here. Long before coming to Egypt, I imagined that when I arrived,  I’d be riding a camel, wearing a khaki explorer’s shirt, and sporting a  headscarf to protect myself from the constantly blowing sands of the  Sahara. The pyramids would stand in the distance with the intense heat  of the desert rising into the air creating a mirage of a lush oasis. An  old nomad would be leading his camel to the east and when our paths  crossed, he would share his water and some ancient Arabian wisdom.  Here’s how it actually happened. I woke up, put on my khaki explorer’s  shirt, wrapped my scarf around my neck and head and got into an  air-conditioned van. I sat for 40 minutes through Cairo traffic with a  guide I could barely understand, let alone derive wisdom from, and  arrived near the pyramids next to a KFC. Unfortunately, not a mirage.  (Side Note: I love KFC. Just maybe not by the Great Pyramids). I don’t  want to take away from the incredible feat that was the building of  these step pyramids. That part, I was still humbled by standing in its  presence. The part where there were security guards sitting idly by on  the steps, telling me I can’t climb on the pyramids…then later inviting  me to climb the pyramids (for a price, of course), not so much. An  extraordinary place, but sadly one diminished by the legions of hawkers  offering to sell me every kind of souvenirs or telling me to take a  photo of them and then asking for money. That said, everyone is entitled  to making a living and as a visitor and tourist, I shouldn’t really  judge.    Cairo, Egypt. Built during medieval times, the  Citadel of Cairo, a preserved fortification is also the site of the  Alabaster Mosque commissioned by Mohamed Ali Pasha in the 19th century.  The mosque was built in the domed style of the Ottoman Empire. Since  Turkey was next up after Egypt, I got a glimpse of a domed mosque before  I set foot in the old Constantinople.     Abu Simbel, Egypt. In hindsight, it’s incredible how  many of my days started in the early hours of the morning before the  roosters have had a chance to crow. At 3:30 am in my Aswan hotel room, I  heard someone yell up from the empty streets below telling me to come  down. With some measure of trust, I walked for a few slightly nervous  minutes down an empty back-alley to eventually join with a group of 20  others travelers that morning to Abu Simbel. “Safe” now in my cramped  mini-van escorted by police convoy, I tucked my legs in and resumed  sleeping for the next three hours. Besides being one of Egypt’s most  spectacular ruins, the impressive bit in all this is that these two  giant temples dedicated to Ramses II were actually piece by piece,  disassembled from the mountain it was originally carved into, and moved  uphill into a man-made mountain since the rising water levels would have  eventually submerged the temples underwater completely.  Nile River, Egypt. I had an entire felucca to myself  for 3 days. An entire felucca. On the Nile. An entire felucca. To say  that being able to lounge, read and relax and move at the whim of the  north wind up the Nile was amazing is the biggest understatement of my  travels.    Luxor, Egypt. As most backpackers through Europe  would know, after you’ve seen a handful of churches, all but the  grandest of churches catch your interest. The same applies to Egypt and  its many temples. By the time I got to Luxor, I had acquired enough  temple entrance tickets to make a mini flipbook. Luckily, Queen  Hatshepsut’s temple was already quite the sight as you approach from a  distance and see the mortuary temple sit at the base of a colossal cliff  face. Despite a campaign to erase her name from the records by her  successor and the natural damage caused over centuries being lost in the  sands, the restored temple still retains much of its original splendor.  Long before Cleopatra, Hatshepshut was the Egypt’s original female  badass ruling the kingdom for 22 years. This was the 2nd place where the  security guard wanted me to buy another entrance ticket for my tripod.  Tripod in my hand is a tripod. Tripod touching the ground needs a  ticket.  White Desert, Egypt. Egypt is known for its ancient  temples along the Nile, and those three little pyramids at Giza, but go  west to the desert and you can eat, drink and sleep under the stars. And  then wake up to this beautiful white desert. The sand was chalk-like in  feel and some of the rock formations broke off with relative ease.  Delicate, beautiful and white.    Black Desert, Egypt. Close to the White Desert. Except black. And it was on the way back to the Bahariya Oasis.  Mt. Sinai, Egypt. This was my view of the sunrise on  Mt. Sinai after hiking for 3 hours in the dark passing camels and many  shops along the way selling coffee, karkadé, and snacks. When I started  my travels, I planned on chasing the sun, following it east around the  world and then south of the hemisphere when summer would begin there.  This meant that even with every remotely warm piece of clothing I had, I  started to freeze around 4 am while I sat near the summit, waiting to  climb the last few hundred steps at dawn. Just before the top, I  negotiated a cup of noodle down from 30 LE to 15. Freeze dried noodles  never tasted so amazing. It warmed me up enough to comfortably sit at  the top of Mt. Sinai slowly clicking away as the sun came up.  Mt. Sinai, Egypt. The trek down was easier, but not  nearly as nice when the sun started to beat down hard. It was worse for  the camels since the only people who seem to have paid to ride down were  heavily overweight people who did not want to walk.    Dahab, Egypt. There is perhaps no place with better  conditions to learn how to scuba dive than in the Red Sea at Dahab,  other than perhaps a swimming pool. The water was a perfect 79°F for  every dive and visibility was incredible. In subsequent dives in  Thailand and Indonesia, surfacing was usually a bittersweet affair, but  every afternoon dive meant breaking the surface slowly over velvety  smooth water with the setting sun gently warming you up. I could trade  weeks and months of ordinary moments for just seconds of that bliss.    Dahab, Egypt. How do you beat a day of scuba diving on the Red Sea? A night sitting by it, smoking a hookah and watching the boats sway.     Istanbul, Turkey. I think of Istanbul and I think of  this ancient center of an entire empire that through siege and  conquests changed hands from the Greeks to the Romans to the Ottomans  and finally to the Turks. I think of a city that bridges Europe and Asia  and a place so beautiful and revered that even when the city was taken  by the Ottomans, the emperor could not bear to destroy some of the  iconic churches of the Byzantine empire and instead converted them to  mosques. The Hagia Sophia, the most famous of these churches, became a  model for many Ottoman mosques over the next few centuries, including  the Blue Mosque. Even though I am not a Muslim, I still stood in awe and  silent admiration under the domed roof of this holy site. In the  courtyard, I felt like I could just sit along the steps for hours  watching the clouds blow by. Despite a suicide attack nearby in Taksim  square just a couple of weeks before, I felt completely safe here almost  like within a fortress wall.   Hagia Sophia, Turkey. The Hagia Sophia itself, first  a church, then a mosque, and now a museum, was so vast and expansive  when I first entered the nave. The security detail was not so happy with  my tripod for some reason, but not before I managed to capture these  two scenes of movement within the museum.  Istanbul, Turkey. The gateway to Asia. I made my way  from Sultanahmet to the Eminonu Ferry Docks, walking through an empty  Grand Bazaar that was slightly creepier than it should be (especially  through the section with all the mannequins). From a high-up vantage  point you can see the flow of Istanbul traffic, which was a lot less  hectic than actually being down there waiting to get onto the ferry to  cross the Bosphorus river.    Cappadocia, Turkey. After two months of backpacking  through Muslim countries, I jumped at the chance for an  all-you-can-eat-and-DRINK night of entertainment. That and I did  practically everything you could do already in Cappadocia being stuck  there for longer than I had initially planned. Whirling Dervish and  other dancers performed and brought members of the audience in to  participate. Your guess as to whether or not I belly-danced and had a  Turkish fan following who wrote me a lovely little thank you note at the  end of the night.  Cappadocia, Turkey. Getting stranded in the middle  of Turkey because the entire country was on holiday and practically  every bus in and out of the region of Cappadocia was booked for 5 days  longer than I had intended on staying turned out to be a mixed blessing  of spending an extra 5 days visiting fairy chimneys. Lots of and lots of  fairy chimneys. One day on a motorbike, another in a minivan, and third  on a bicycle. After that, I felt like I had certainly seen my fair  share of fairy chimneys and did everything I could to avoid seeing  another fairy chimney for the rest of my stay. Admittedly that was an  impossible task to begin with since the hostel I was staying in was  actually built into one of those fairy chimneys. Still, that place was  felt magical, especially when you can get miles away from anyone else  with no sign of modern civilization. At that point, you can’t help but  feel transported to some far away land. Until you get to that next  tourist stop where the hoards of Turks on holiday come pouring out of  large air-conditioned charter buses and ask you to take a photo of them  with your camera because you (an Asian person with a camera) are the  tourist attraction yourself.   Istanbul, Turkey. A couple of weeks before arriving  in Istanbul, a suicide bomber blew himself up and injured 32 other  people in busy Taksim Square. This was not exactly encouraging news  before arriving in a foreign country, but when I met a local in Taksim,  it sounded like the residents of Istanbul hardly let this event cause  more than a skip of a beat in their routines. If they felt still felt  safe, I wasn’t going to let fear keep me from enjoying myself from  experiencing Taksim both day and night.     Petra, Jordan. In my mind, Petra has always been  defined by the image of a giant Roman building carved into the mountains  at the end of a dark narrow sandstone gorge, almost hidden away like a  treasure. This scene was made famous in the climatic journey’s end of  “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. Knowing little about Petra itself,  I was absolutely blown away when I made my way down that famous  walkway, known as the “Siq”, came face to face with that same view I’d  seen in so many famous photographs of the “Treasury” and then discovered  that this was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The place is just  incomprehensibly vast with the many tombs, monuments and facades  seemingly carved right into the sandstone cliff faces. To put this into  perspective, you are able to buy a 1, 2 or 3-day pass to visit and fully  appreciate Petra. And the kicker on top of this is that 85% of the  ancient city is still underground and undiscovered.  Petra, Jordan. At the top of Petra, two signs point  outward and declare “All Places From Here” and “The View [at] The End Of  The World”. There you can look down across the valley beyond Petra and  have tea under ragged tents at the “Last Shop” at the end of the world.  Petra, Jordan. As my friend and I walked out of  Petra along with the setting sun, we were accompanied along the way by a  security officer who wasted no words of flattery for my friend.  Somewhere between “I drink a lot of camel milk, you know, it is like  viagra” and “You want to know Bedouin man?” I think she got the hint and  we slipped away.  Wadi Rum, Jordan. If there’s an arch, you climb it. I think that’s written in the Genenva Convention somewhere.    Wadi Rum, Jordan. While traveling, I witnessed some  spectacular sunrises and sunsets that swung my heartbeat one moment from  a near frozen lento tempo to a racing vivace the next. The burning red  desert of Wadi Rum was perhaps one of the most dynamic and captivating,  rivaled only by the dramatic sunset in the Valley of the Moon of the  Atacama Desert. Coincidentally, Wadi Rum is also known as the Valley of  the Moon.    Dead Sea, Jordan. It’s true. I swear. A tomato is a  fruit, not a vegetable. Oh, and that thing about being able to float in  the Dead Sea too. This lake between Jordan and Israel has long been an  attraction since the biblical days of King Herod and David. The salinity  of the water is so high here that life cannot flourish, hence the name.  It also means you are as buoyant as a balloon in this thing. I weight  about 150 lbs, but you can weigh a whole lot more than that and you’ll  still float. A caveat to travelers: you will feel every cut on your body  that comes in contact with the water. Also, don’t drink the water and  avoid water exposure to the eye. When they tell you that the water taste  horrible, don’t question that claim. Happy floating.       Amman, Jordan. Right in the middle of the busy and  noisy center of Amman is an old Roman amphitheatre. I watched the sun  set, from the nosebleed section of the theatre, the last fiery yellow  light of the day slowly being pulled away like a falling curtain from  the houses high on the hill across from the theatre. The only other  people there were a couple of visitors walking across the seats and a  few locals who probably see visitors like myself standing there  everyday, watching in awe as twilight made way for the night in their  city.     Chiang Mai, Thailand. If you ever have the choice  between an elephant and a camel as transportation, always go for the  pachyderm. They don’t have humps that ride up your rear. They may  occasionally assault you with their trunks if you buy a bag of banana,  but no humps. That’s my elephant scratching himself on the tree after I  disembarked.   Pai, Thailand. Pai had one of my favorite night  markets, selling souvenirs that were actually pretty neat and creative.  Between every few souvenir stands would be a food or drinks stand which,  if you know me personally or through my writing, is right up my alley.  You see street performers in every country doing everything from being  performing tricks to standing completely frozen as a statue. This guy  was original. For a donation, you can just take one of the paint brushes  provided and use his body as a canvas…and he stood still for the hours  he was there doing this. He definitely earned his keep.    Pai, Thailand. Some hot springs in Pai explicitly  warn to “no boil eggs” in the thermal pools. Not this one, they even  sell little bags of regular chicken and eggs and the much smaller quail  eggs in ready to boil plastic bags. All you do is take one of the bamboo  sticks lying around the thermal pool, hook your bag up to the end of it  and let it sit in the water for 20 minutes. Since the water is about 20  degrees below boiling, the soft whites don’t fully solidify, making for  a tasty but unusual egg eating/sucking experience. Since the hot  springs had a sulfurous smell, you could lie and blame your post-egg  consumption flatulence on the hot springs. “Really, it wasn’t me – * fart *. Ok that was me this time.”  Pai, Thailand. The best way to get around Pai is to  rent a motorbike. We rented 5 for 6 people and looped around the city  stopping by temples, hot springs, and little waterfalls like this.    Bangkok, Thailand. This is Khao San Road better  known as backpackers central. This place is packed with vendors running  the gamut with fake shoes, fake backpacks, fake watches, fake IDs, and  probably even fake chickens. At night, the bars open up along with food  vendors selling anything from piping hot corn to freshly fried up  Pad-Thai. Buyers beware, the whole place can get quite messy.    Chumphon, Thailand. It takes 8 hours to get to  Chumphon from Bangkok by bus. You get used to it. I promise. I arrived  at around 5 am and waited with a fellow traveler for dawn and the  Lomprayah ferry to arrive at 7 am to take us to Koh Tao. I recall the  morning being quite calm and beautiful, except for a gentle breeze  blowing away at the flags. This lasted until we boarded the ferry for  nearly 3 hours of stomach churning, up and down, wave crashing, boat  action that I somehow slept through it. My English companion did not  fare so well and was wide-awake through the entire thing. Paradise comes  with a price sometimes.    Koh Tao, Thailand. Another day. Another island.  Another sunset. No less spectacular. After our tumultuous boat ride to  get to Koh Tao, we settled into our $15 beach front bungalows and rented  motorbikes to ride around the island. This beach and an afternoon nap  more than made up for the early morning stress.     Koh Tao, Thailand. At night, the low tides on Sairee  Beach allow you to walk out deep along the shoreline. Along the beach,  fire dancers perform to pumping music while everyone drinks from buckets  of Sangsom and Coke/Soda. I spent Christmas Eve here with some a  contingent of English and German travelers, starting with a Christmas  feast at the Big Blue Dive Resort, followed by buckets on the beach,  lots of dancing, and a pre-morning dip in the water.  Nang Yuan Island, Thailand. A small set of islands  just northwest of Koh Tao, Nang Yuan is certainly a contender for the  title of paradise in a photograph. This was taken on Christmas Day. I  still get little palpitations thinking about what a great day that was.  After spending the day swimming and lounging on a stretch of smooth  undisturbed sand, we hiked to the top of one of the islands. From there,  you can see that the three small islands are interconnected by a long  sandy beach and surrounded by crystal clear aquamarine and turquoise  water.   Uluwatu, Indonesia. On an edge of a cliff is a  Balinese temple with this breathtaking view of the crashing waves.  Below, it is stormy and violent while above; the temple looks out,  peaceful and calm.    Kuta Bali, Indonesia. If you want the quiet peaceful  beaches of Indonesia, you get as far away from Kuta Bali as you can.  This place is also known as little Australia, where half the population  of Australia goes to party during the holidays. There’s a strict uniform  code for the Australian guys that’s limited to either wearing a Bintang  (local beer) tank-top or going shirtless. Those are the rules. If you  see a group of 5 guys, all wearing matching tank tops in the colors of  the Power Rangers, you can mostly guess that they are Australians. If  one of the 5 happens to be shirtless, it may just mean that his tank-top  got dirty from last night’s party and it’s being washed. Don’t give him  a hard time. I tried to avoid most of this on New Year’s Eve and went  down to the beach where I witnessed the most incredible non-stop display  of “it-must-be-illegal-at-home” hand-held fireworks from 10 pm to just  past midnight.    Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia. “Never let the future  disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of  reason which today arm you against the present.” – Marcus Aurelius So wise, but sometimes living in the moment too much can have its  consequences. I stopped at a nice little resort on the south end of Nusa  Lembongan for a dip in the pool and a cold drink. And then a little  longer for a nap. And just a bit longer to see the sun start to set. And  then set. And stayed for dinner. Next thing I knew, it was dark and I  still had to ride back to my bungalow, somewhere on the west side of the  island. This wouldn’t have been such a daunting undertaking if 1) I had  a real map, 2) the road was more than just a rocky path through the  jungle and 3) I knew where the hell I was going. Lucky for me, I guessed  correctly at a fork and eventually made it back. I was never happier to  see artificial light at the end of that ride.     Gili Air, Indonesia. Stone-oven pizza. Fresh fruit  smoothies. A pair of fins and goggles. All you need for to start your  day on the smallest of the Gili Islands. Life moves at an even slower  pace here than the already island life pace of Gili Trawangan and Gili  Meno. Located between Bali and Lombok, this was a nice post-New Years  respite from Kuta Bali and half the drunk and shirtless Australian  population that flocked there during the holidays. The biggest decisions  I had to make during my time on the Gili Islands were whether I wanted  to do 1 or 2 dives a day, how many games of ping-pong I wanted to play  with the locals, and what to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Not a  bad way to start 2011.    Narita, Japan. While not my ideal way of visiting  Japan, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to at least grab an authentic  bowl of ramen even if that meant traveling to the closest town from the  airport for just a few hours. The alternative was to sit at Narita  airport for 7 hours. Like my climb to Mt. Sinai, I put on every warm  piece of clothing I had in my backpack in order to brave the weather in  Japan, which was about 40 degrees lower than the weather a day before in  Indonesia. The tank tops and fisherman pants that served me so well  through Thailand and Indonesia was, expectedly, not useful at all. After  I acquired that warm, warm, delicious bowl of noodles, I joined the  other tourists and paid a visit to the Shinshoji Temple. And then I went  for a bowl of rice and freshly grilled eel. Both meals cost more than  what I paid to eat for a week at a time in Thailand and Indonesia.     Montevideo, Uruguay. I came to Montevideo for the  beef, but most come through en route to Brazil from Argentina or vice  versa for the beach. Despite it being a pretty nice, and that no one  should ever hold any grudge against a beach, I can’t say I have fond  memories here. I arrived on an overnight bus from BA at 8 am, sleep  deprived, went to the beach to pass the time until my room was ready,  only to pass out and wake up with the ugliest watch, sunglasses and  farmer’s tan. Months of slow controlled tanning across Europe, Africa  and Asia ruined by one careless moment. Yes, you can tell that the  extent of my troubles and worries were not the same on the road as they  are at home.  Montevideo, Uruguay. Meat, meat and more meat.  Uruguay has the highest per capita number of cows in the world. It’s  hard to say whether Uruguay or Argentina has the best beef in Latin  America, but either side you take, them’s fightin’ words. At the Mercado  del Puerto in Montevideo, you can sit down at one of the many parillas  grilling up massive cuts of their finest grass-fed cows and judge for  yourself. Siga la vaca.  Buenos Aires, Argentina. One of my best things about  traveling is meeting amazing people. The only thing that tops that is  when you get to meet them again somewhere further down the line. I met  an awesome couple on a 10-month around the world when we were all in  Egypt. The last stop on their trip happened to be the first of mine in  South America: Buenos Aires. “El Ateneo” is an opera house that’s been  turned into a massive bookstore. It is also where we chose to meet. Two  big birds with one stone. And then an all-you-can-eat Argentine meat  fiesta to celebrate.     Buenos Aires, Argentina. Palermo is the fashionable  and hip Soho district of Buenos Aires. Instead of being frowned upon,  street artists are even commissioned to work on houses and business  establishments. Cafes line the street and life moves at a fast but chill  pace.  Salta, Argentina. The view of Salta high atop San Bernardo Hill. From here, you can see across the Lerma Valley of northern Argentina.    San Lorenzo, Argentina. Getting to San Lorenzo was  an easy enough day trip from Salta, so I convinced two Chilean brothers  who were bicycling from Chile to Salta to join me on this short bus ride  to Salta’s neighboring city. San Lorenzo was a pleasant surprise with  its lush tropical flora and a nice hiking trail for the afternoon.    Salta, Argentina. Every big night starts somewhere.  In Salta, it began with two Chileans at my hostel I met who in turn had  met two girls from Salta. Before the sun set, we met in the main square  for a gastronomique tour of the city where I managed to demolish a huge  lomito (steak sandwich), a bowl of mondongo (cow stomach stew), a bowl  of locro (hearty Andean stew), and a side of roasted chicken and fries.  We ended the night at a local boliche (night club) where I danced away  the calories and was assaulted by a group of Argentinean woman who  refused to let me sit down until I danced with each and every one of  them.     Cafayate, Argentina. While in Salta, I almost  avoided checking out some of the surrounding regions since any of the  tours would mean sitting in a van with other tourists for an entire day  stopping every hour or so to step out of the van to see the sights along  the way. Luckily for me, I slept through most of the boring bits and  woke up to see the amazing scenery like the Castillos rock formations  and the natural amphitheatre. And then I went back to sleep.  Atacama Desert, Chile. The Atacama Desert is the  driest desert on earth, hardly getting any rainfall in a year and about  10-15 days where clouds even appear. When a French explorer discovered a  valley of stone and sand formations carved by the wind and water and  looking similar to the surface of the moon, he named it la Valle de la  Luna or Valley of the Moon. When you combine such a barren and  forbidding landscape with atmospheric fast-moving dark clouds, you get  something that is, for a lack of a better description, out of this  world.  Atacama Desert, Chile. If the Atacama Desert was  something to behold during the day, by sunset, it cranked itself up to  eleven and put on quite a show. In this case, the photographs speak for  themselves.    Tatio Geysers, Chile Despite many early mornings  waking up to catch buses, waking up to get off buses, and waking up to  continue riding on a bus, it is still very difficult to wake up to get  on a bus at 6500 ft at 4 am and then having to wake up at 13,800 ft 3  hours later. At that elevation, the Tatio Geysers are some of the  highest in the world and are an incredible sight in the early morning  when they erupt and the steam plumes rise up and disappear into air. It  is an even more incredible experience when you can do it with a cup of  hot coffee in hand and then go bathing in a thermal pool shortly after.  Southern Altiplano, Bolivia. Geysers are cool. But  they smell of sulfur. And sulfur smells like rotten eggs. So geysers are  cool, but they smell like rotten eggs. Maybe not all, but this one did.  Forgive my lack of excitement here. I was on a tour and one day away  from finally seeing the Salar de Uyuni.     Sur Lipez, Bolivia. Tight on time, quite a few  people skip out on Bolivia while traveling through South America. Or  simply opt to go straight to Uyuni to check out the salt flats there.  From San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, I joined a 3 day tour that would end  with the spectacular Salar de Uyuni. Our drunken driver (this is an  unfortunate but common occurrence amongst tours here) did however take  us to some of Bolivia’s most beautiful locations. One of those stops was  in the Sur Lipez Provence to check out the Arbor de Piedra, a large  stone shaped like a tree.    Uyuni, Bolivia In the wet season, the endless  cracked salt flats of Uyuni is flooded with rain water and perfectly  reflects the blue sky. On a windless day, the horizon disappears  altogether. The sight of the salar grabs you like a pair of rabbit ears  and knocks whatever breath you have left in your diaphragm out like a  pair of unwanted cut off jeans. Who I am kidding, who would throw out a  pair of cut off jeans. Unfortunately for me, after years of  anticipation, my driver managed to time everything just perfect, so that  while the weather was still beautiful, we went shopping for trinkets  and llama socks, made a two hour-long detour to the office, just to  write down our passport number (which they are already had), and took  our time eating lunch. Then when it started to rain, he was ready to  take us into the salt flats driving so slowly that he continuously fell  asleep behind the wheel even after one of the girls punched him in the  arm. The day before, he fell asleep driving at 70 mph and nearly flipped  the car after running it off the road. All without one single word of  apology. It was a pitiful site in the car as everyone sat there angry  staring up at the blanketing rain cloud and hoping fruitlessly for the  sun to burn through. The place was still surreal, but this was the only  time during my time on the road that I actually hated someone.    La Paz, Bolivia. Off the bat, this city knocks the  wind of you, especially if you haven’t acclimated to the higher  elevations. At around 12,000 ft, just walking around is exercise enough.  I found that although it was not so polite to my Danish travel  companions, it was a lot easier to avoid talking to them while we hiked  up the stairs, one breath at a time, to the Mirador Killi Killi lookout  point. Walking down was a lot easier, so I happily continued my  conversation then, not so out of breath.    La Cumbre Pass, Bolivia. La Cumbre Pass is the  starting point of Bolivia’s “Death Road”, where riders gear up, brave  the morning cold/snow/ice at 15,260 ft and descend down to 3,900 ft over  a 40 mile stretch of road through some of the most beautiful terrain.  It was christened the “world’s most dangerous road” since most of the  winding path is no wider than 10 ft and the drops are at least 1800 ft.  If careful and respectful of your own limits, the “dangerous” part is  over-hyped, but despite that, the views and microclimate changes alone  are worth a 2nd ride down.    Copacabana, Bolivia. In the town of Copacabana (not  the one from the Barry Manilow’s annoyingly catch song), I went to the  edge of town to watch the sun set on Lake Titicaca. This was one of  those sunsets that appeared like a painted canvas that moving right in  front of your eyes. I watched as boat skippers undocked and moved their  ships out to the waters before the night swallowed them in its darkness.    Puno, Peru On the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca,  you can visit the floating islands of Puno. The Uros people build their  villages on bundles of reeds that are strong and buoyant enough to  effectively become a floating island. These islands were originally  built to withstand attacks from aggressive neighbors, but now they make  for a pretty nice tourist attraction.     Cusco, Peru. The main square in Cusco always seems  busy without feeling busy. Women pass out little flyers for cheap  massages, tour offices advertise the lowest prices to Machu Picchu and  the rainforest, and both locals and visitors sit around the fountain  chatting about yesterday and tomorrow. Everything seems busy, but  somehow so effortless.    Santa Teresa, Peru. On the 3rd day of our jungle  trail trek to Machu Picchu, we started from Santa Teresa and hiked to  the hidroelectrica de Machu Picchu. The walk along a paved road provided  a few worthwhile sites like this tumultuous waterfall, but it was  notable because after the ridiculous number of invisible bites from the  sand flies along the trail over the previous two days, today I actually  saw the beginning of its devastating effects that would make the bug  bites I got in Thailand and Indonesia look and feel like a day spa  treatment at the Four Seasons. Fun stuff.    Machu Picchu, Peru. The night before the climb to  Machu Picchu, I stupidly left my iPhone behind at an internet café in  Aguas Caliente, losing perhaps one of the single most important items in  my possession, after having lost practically nothing in over 6 months  and with just 10 days left to my trip. A few hours later, I woke up at 3  am along with the rest of my group, put on my rain shell and hiked in  the rain to the foot of the bridge to wait with a group of about 50  other people for the gates to open. At 4:50, the gates opened up and we  began on 40 minutes of non-stop “stairs” up to Machu Picchu in the dark  and in the rain. Despite arriving wet, sweaty, and hungry, when the  clouds finally parted and revealed the ancient Incan ruins, I just  simply forgot about everything else, including the hundreds of videos  and thousands of photos I had lost along with my phone.  Machu Picchu, Peru. You can hardly walk 10 minutes  without running into a view more impressive than the last in Machu  Picchu. From the top, you can look down on the ruins and at the edge of  the ruins, you can look down into the clouds and the vast valley below.  Being one of the first people up Machu Picchu that morning, I got one of  the coveted passes to climb Huayna Picchu. Making the way up the steep,  wet steps of this younger brother to Machu Picchu, you can’t help but  imagine a city built on the clouds themselves. The immensity of this  place just makes you feel so small and lost amongst the ruins.  Yosemite, USA. The Hetch-Hetchy Dam. This is where  San Francisco gets it’s drinking water from. Natural and straight from  the glacial source connected by a 167 mile long aqueduct. Our  backpacking trip began near the dam and took us past Wapama Falls and to  Rancheria Falls, where we camped for the night out in the Yosemite  wilderness.     Las Vegas, USA. What Happens in Vegas, Stays in  Vegas. Viva Las Vegas. Go Big or Go Home. Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.  The House Always Wins. Never Pay The Hooker Up Front. The Happiest Place  on Earth. All sayings and slogans about Las Vegas. What else needs to be said?  In the Air, USA. Red eye flight from San Francisco  to Washington D.C. 6 AM. Who knew the passengers around me would not  enjoy waking up to the sound of my camera shutter going off every few  seconds continuously for 5 minutes.    Washington DC, USA. Any museum that has a T-Rex  fossil, mummies, the remains of a giant squid, and a massive diamond is a  pretty neat museum in my books. And they have an 8-ton, 14-foot African  elephant taxidermy right in the middle of the rotunda to welcome guests  to this free Smithsonian museum.   Washington DC, USA. The DC Metro station boasts some  of the longest escalators in the Western Hemisphere that can take  around 3 minutes to ride standing still. From the surface, it takes you  deep down to where the platforms are located. The vaulted concrete  ceilings are stunning to behold in person, but I’m guessing that most  daily Metro riders heading to and from work probably overlook this  modern architectural marvel.    Philadelphia, USA. Back to my Alma Mater, the  University of Pennsylvania. How many times have I walked down Locust  Walk and how many more times would I have walked down if I actually went  to all my classes? The path from here to the world of finance to  backpacking the world and then becoming a photographer may not be a  straight or related one, but sometimes that’s just how the universe  works. And I’ll take it.    New York, USA. Whenever I stand in places like the  main concourse of the Grand Central Terminal watching people arrive,  depart, welcoming visitors and loved ones, I imagine what it would look  like if I could tag each and everyone person leaving the terminal and  follow them to their final destinations. Within a span of 24 hours, you  would see thousands and thousands of lines shoot out from a single point  and spreading all over America and even the rest of the world. And then  to recall that at one point in time, they were all in the same place:  the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Just fascinating.   New York, USA. Believe it or not, I’m not usually a  fan of big cities where lots of people gather. It’s just a bit too noisy  and crowded for my taste. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in Time  Square on New Year’s Eve standing in the cold, but it’s somewhat  manageable most evenings. Even if all around you is advertisement  blaring and flashing at you, it’s hard to not be impressed by the scale  and immensity of the whole thing.    Boston, USA. Two friends traveling around the world.  Across 5 continents, we backpacked. Across 3 oceans, we flew. Across  countless cities, we ate, dived, danced, and explored. The only thing  was we did it 6 months apart. How ironic that we finally overlap in  Boston of all locations after missing each other by as little as a week  and only a few hundred miles.     San Francisco, USA. San Francisco is infamous for  its relatively cold California weather. Luckily on this day, the sun  came through just before twilight and gorgeously lit up the skies ever  so gently while the winds blew the clouds across the bay and over  Alcatraz. You don’t have to go very far from home to witness nature in  its most divine moments.  San Francisco, USA. Pier 39. Quite the tourist  destination in San Francisco, the pier is a gateway to Alcatraz, and  also a stop for a half-decent bowl of clam chowder.   508                                                                                  © 2011 Kien Lam Photography. All rights reserved.