Traditional Hungarian wedding in Transylvania

What remained from my time at Ingams is the friendship with some really great people, two of whom invited me their wedding. In Transylvania. Yay! That's what I call exotic.

Arrival at Târgu Mureș, a town well connected to the world by the budged airline Wizzair, with a smooth 3-hour transfer to the middle of nowhere, that is, the village of Izvoare. You won't be able to find it on a map unless you know that it is near a town with the impossible name of Odorheiu Secuiesc.

 

The rest: great weather (for most of the time), fairy-tale landscapes, great company, real comfort-food and lots of it, even more Pálinka, kitties and bears and pottery and orphanages, just see for yourself:

Transylvania, Sep 2014

Mallorca in Spring

The traditional yearly trip with my mum lead us to Mallorca this year. Surprisingly, it was cold and windy, so hanging out on the beach was not an option. Instead we drove around the island and caught some amazing views!

Mallorca, May 2014

Bali and the islands

Time flies - only 2 weeks left! And so many things happening and still so many things to do, I don't really want to leave, would there not be new adventures be waiting for me back home: going skiing, seeing how my kitten has grown, finding a place to live...

The visitor flow to Bali does not seem to end (it's great though) - first Henrik, a friend from Berlin, whom I explored the hights and depths of Nusa Lembongan with: that is jumping from 13-m-high cliffs and being underwater with enormous Manta Rays and other big fish.

Then Ingrid spontaneously came over from Austria and we settled for a few days on the paradise island of Gili Trawangan, cultivating beach bumming and all-night-dancing to Nirvana/RHCP/Kings of Leon cover bands. Gili T. is white sands, turquoise water, no cars or motorcycles, party nights, gigantic seafood BBQs, hundreds of cats (but not a single dog!), chilled out atmosphere, turtles on the reef just off the beach, and even a small surf break in the south, what more does one need...?

Back in Bali, a cultural visit to Ubud was not to be missed, even though the monkeys in the monkey forest were slightly more entertaining than the Puri Lukisan art museum.

Then another friend from Berlin arrived in Bali to spend a month in a Surfcamp, and finally - after having seen most of Bali's tourist attractions - I started to focus on regular surfing. Since I have not really progressed during the past 12 years of my attempts at this difficult sport I decided to take a reputable surf coach, who would run through his success-proof one-on-one training programm with me.

After 2 training sessions and surfing every day for 10 days in a row every muscle in my body hurts, my feet are an assembly of coral cuts and I have blue and black bruises all over. I have caught amazing waves, bigger than anything before, but none of them without help, so I still have a long way to go.

Unfortunately my training programm has come to an unexpected break. Yesterday evening on the way home from a friend's restaurant someone driving by tried to snatch my bag and knocked me off my motorbike. I had to go to hospital to get stitches on my elbow. Luckily I was all covered up and the other wounds are just minor scratches. My clothes are totally torn, though. The stupid guy did not have a chance to get the bag, I had the strap across my shoulders and held it in front. No idea why he still tried.

So now I am confined to stay out of the water for at least a week. I should be ok, hopefully, before the next friend from Berlin arrives, so we can go surfing together during my last days in Bali :)

Click here for new amazing Bali pictures!

And finally... Bali

Three weeks ago, when I arrived from Sumatra sick and exhausted, Bali seemed like paradise - and it still does! Especially, since I am living a lifestyle that one can only dream of back home - eating out every day, and really delicious food at that, getting massages, facials, pedicures at least once a week, staying in a villa with garden and pool only 500 m from the beach, and spending less money than I would in Berlin! No wonder the place is full of expats.

Before "settling down" I wanted to see the island, and the best way to travel around is by motorbike. So I spent 8 days doing this round:

On day one I had some difficulties to get started: a police hold-up and my failure to present an "international driving licence" resulted in lengthy debate and a fine - this procedure is a favorite occupation of the local police in order to make some extra money, and they are not even discreet about it, as this Dutch guy's secretly filmed video shows - and immediately after that I had a flat tyre. So instead of making it all the way up to the north coast as planned, I only made it as far as Perasi with its secluded White Sand Beach - quite a treat since most beaches on the island are volcanic black sand.

The beach was so nice that I did not want to drive all the way back into town to look for a guesthouse, so I decided to sleep there on a beach bed at a little restaurant. The owners did not mind, they left me some candles and there I was - alone with a pack of beach dogs, who would not stop fighting amongst each other all night.
So after a rather sleepless night I drove up to the north coast the next day. On the way I stopped for a refreshing swim at Tirta Gangga (a water temple and public swimming pool) and Pura Lempuyan, a mountain temple with great views to Bali's highest volcano, Mount Agung.

In the following days I zigzagged between mountains and the sea, alternated between snorkeling shipwrecks and coral reefs, visiting temples, hot springs and waterfalls and driving through pretty rice fields.
I did not see many tourists - the north of Bali is pretty quiet anyhow and now it is deepest off-season. In small mountain villages my passing seemed to be quite an event, people would stop whatever they were doing to stare and/or smile at me, kids always enthusiastically waved, shouted hello or laughed their heads off, and everybody was really friendly.

My last stop was Permuteran on the very northwest of the island, where I went snorkeling at the nearby Menjangan island surrounded by an amazing 30 m coral wall. On my boat there was a Spanish/French couple who planned a trip to the Ijen volcano on Java for the next day. It sounded quite exciting so I decided to join them.

We left at 11 pm to set over to Java by ferry, drove another hour to the start of the trail and hiked up the steep path to the crater with our headlights on. You do this at night so you can see the blue fire coming out between the rocks of the sulfur mine. The air was thick with smoke and stank of sulfur, we needed masks to be able to breathe and our eyes were burning. It got worse and worse as we approached the bottom of the crater where the workers were cutting the sulfur, it was really sickening. The working conditions of the miners are unbelievable - they have no proper equipment or protection from the toxic smoke, and they carry up to 90 (!) kg of sulfur up the crater and down the mountain, up to 3 times a day.

Per load they earn less than 10 $. One guy showed us his shoulder: the bone had deformed from carrying the weight. This photo essay describes it better than I could, it was truly horrifying.

We returned from our volcano excursion the next day around lunchtime, it had been a long but memorable night. The next day I drove back down south, stopping only once to see the famous sea temple Tannah Lot.

With no time to rest I had to organize my visa run to Singapore and find a place to live. I went to look at a few rooms but the second place, the Villa Vintage, was unbeatable. So now I share a villa with an Australian couple, who teach at Canggu international school, and a German guy, who is working on a PhD project on recycled shopping bags, which is why there are tons of blue shopping bags all over the place, and with a sweet 4-month-old puppy named Pina. All, except the dog, surfers.

It's hard to think about work in this life of tropical luxury but eventually I will have to start. Even my laptop refuses its services, tomorrow I have to take it to the Acer service shop in Denpasar to see if it can be saved. If not - what a tragedy - I might not even be able to work!

Bali Photoalbum - more details in comments of pics!

Singapore - short'n'sweet

4 days before my tourist visa expired I found out that I would have needed to apply 10 days in advance for a visa extension. So I had to leave the country quickly or else face steep fines for overstaying.

Singapore turned out the best option, plus I could visit my friend Aynur, who I had not seen in over 5 years. Booked a flight on Monday, sat in the plane on Thursday. Aynur was on a business trip so I stayed in a hostel, where I met a bunch of people from Jakarta who all went to the Laneway Festival on Saturday. After seeing the line-up - and to keep myself out of the shopping centers - I decided to join them.

The setting was amazing, the crowd relatively small, the music great, the beer expensive... but my savior Anthony from Melbourne with his infinite supply of drink tokens (as friend of the organizer)  took care that I didn't have to remain thirsty. The party was memorable... as far as I remember :)

The next evening was quite the opposite but no less enjoyable - with Aynur and her little son Noah.

Lunch at Google, Chinatown and the Arab Quarter were on my agenda for the last day before I returned to Bali, and to my new home: the Villa Vintage.

Photos of Singapore

K.L. - Sumatra: Monsoon, bugs and other inconveniences

During the past couple of weeks kind of everything that makes traveling unpleasant happened, so I hope I have everything covered for the rest of the trip now:
Bedbugs in Kuala Lumpur - a sleepless night and 5 days of crazy itching, getting sick with a bad cold and cough, torrential rains for 2 days almost nonstop at Lake Toba, a most complicated roadtrip from Lake Toba to Medan: only minutes before we passed the road got completely blocked by a "tree-slide" resulting in a lengthy detour on a mountainous dirt road, a real offroad experience...

...followed by the longest and craziest traffic jam I've ever been in - we covered 120 km in 13 hours (!). On the next day encounter with stupid local motorbike-taxi guy who wanted to molest me and steal my phone and money (screamed at him and ran away), then, just after New Years food poisoning in Banda Aceh and 4 days later again in Pulau Weh, and all that was rounded off with painful bladder infection - yay!

Luckily I still was able to do a few nice things, for example celebrate Christmas with a new-found friend in K.L. (who incidentally lived in a building with an amazing pool in the 34th floor next to the Petrona towers), climb Mount Sibayak in Berastagi - the volcano next to the one that erupted only a few days later (!). Visit traditional Batak villages on Samosir island at lake Toba in the company of a really nice Italian family who let me join them for a few days, celebrate New Year's eve on a lonely beach with a group of surfers in north Sumatra, visit Tsunami sites and the Tsunami museum in Banda Aceh, snorkel around the island of Pulau Weh, and drink cat-pooh coffee with a lovely girl from Upper-Austria, who I met on the ferry back to Banda Aceh.

Now I had a few days to recover in Bali and so far I have only met great people, so I am really looking forward to my time here. Tomorrow I set off for a trip around the island on my motorbike with only a small back-bag, so no computer and no internet for the next few days.

**K.L. and Sumatra Pics**

Amazing Angkor Wat, lake people, Cambodian history and finally, beaches!

I tackled Angkor Wat in a day on the bike, even though it meant cycling out to the temple site at 4:30 in the morning through the jungle in complete darkness. By 4 pm I had seen everything I wanted to see and I wasn't even going in a rush. I had "prepared" by watching Tomb Raider the day before and this temple overgrown by massive trees was my absolute highlight!

I was equally impressed by the floating villages on Tonlé Sap lake. I booked the ferry down to Battambang and was not at all expecting such an interesting trip (the main attraction of the boat ride is supposedly bird watching - I found the people watching much more engaging, they happily let you look into their living rooms from the passing boat!)

Whole towns are floating on this massive lake which is changing its level by 12 m during the year. Since fishing season was on we could see them moving massive bamboo constructions with fisher nets up and down, it was truly fascinating.

Battambang itself is not really touristy, it certainly felt more "real" than Siem Reap. I spent an afternoon with 2 street kids, which was quite an experience. For 1 day I hired a motorbike guide, Tha, (he can be found at the Chaya hotel), who showed me around the area. He was a really nice guy and very knowledgeable. His family had suffered tragic losses through the Khmer regime in the 70ies and he could still remember being in a refugee camp at the Thai border when he was little. We visited the Killing Caves, where thousands of people, including children and babies, were killed by being thrown down into the caves. The atmosphere felt oppressive down there, they still have not even recovered all the bones.

We closed the day with the spectacle of the bat cave - a cave, where every evening for about 1 hour, you can witness a stream of bats exiting the cave. Locals say there are millions of bats.

With some extra days to spend before flying down to Kuala Lumpur I decided to visit the island of Koh Chang again. I'd been there 10 years ago and would not have recognized the place anymore. Lonely Beach is far from being lonely - the village transforms into a wild party zone by night. Their full moon party was not too bad at all. After 2 nights I had enough and went to Long Beach by motorbike, which might some day become the next Lonely Beach, once they build a road there. At the moment you need to be fearless and/or very skillful on the motorbike (I was neither but miraculously I survived).

Christmas in Kuala Lumpur, except they don't really celebrate Christmas here, but with the hot and humid temperatures I won't really get into Christmas mood anyway!

CAMBODIA - KOH CHANG PHOTOALBUM

Laos II

Within the last 2 weeks I had the 2 worst bus journeys ever, the first one was 4 hours of agony on a bumpy road, trapped on the back bench of a beaten up minivan from Oudomxay to Nong Khiaw (with the mandatory several puking-out-of-the-window Laotians you'll have on every bustrip).

It wasn't the luckiest part of the trip: boat traffic to Luang Prabang was suspended - so no chance to see this famous stretch of the Nam Khan river from the boat. The only boat trip I did in the end was to Muang Gnoi, 1 hour upriver from Nong Khiaw. Nevertheless, it was very picturesque, Nong Khiaw is a nice chilled-out village (no cars), but unfortunately it started to rain and got really chilly at night. Next morning I heard all trekking tours to the surrounding limestone mountains were cancelled because of dangerously slippery paths and leeches. I was not tempted to venture out by myself.

So the only thing to do was to take a bus to Luang Prabang, the lovely French-colonial capital of the province. And there were lots of treats to have in this town: Lao massages, food in all variations (even though I saw some pretty gross things at the local market - check out the pics), and my favorite: the fish spa! Also plenty of Wats (temples) and the traditional ceremony of the alms-giving to the monks at 6 a.m.

Next stop: party town Vang Vieng. Was fun, met nice people, saw caves, swam in lagoon, went on tube & kayak and had more Lao and LaoLao than was good for me. So next leg: down south to tranquil 4000 islands for some recovery.

Spent the next couple of days exploring the island of Don Det and Don Khon and another day of rather demanding but fun kayaking, saw an excessive amount of waterfalls (impressively big ones, though) and even some of the very rare Irrawaddy dolphins.

Next was traumatic bus journey number 2: to Cambodia, more precisely to Siem Reap (the town of the famous Angkor Wat temples). Excessively bumpy roads, overbooked bus, 20 hours instead of 15, only 1 short break for food, deep-freezing air-condition, plus I got rather ill, so no fun at all. So now, after 2 days of recovery and changing all my travel plans I will finally undertake the big temple project tomorrow, until I'm "templed-out", as they say.

***NEW PHOTO ALBUM ***

From Bangkok into Laos

The 7-hour stopover in Amman was nevertheless enjoyable because I had my very personal tourist guide from the Royal Jordanian airline to take me out for a delicious dinner and a night-cruise through the city (don't ask how that came about :)

Bangkok - boiling hot, permanent traffic jam, only 1 out of 15 taxi drivers we stopped agreed to turn on the meter... But nice guest house directly at the river, only to be reached by wooden walking bridges.

My destination was Laos, however, so after a night on a luxurious VIP bus, with every possible comfort except for the non-stop snoring Thai in the row in front of me, I arrived at the Mekong river and crossed the border by boat.

I managed to secure a space in the amazing Gibbon Experience, the most exhilarating zip-lining I've ever done. Cables between 400 and 600 m, you're 60 m above the jungle, flying in a speed that makes your ears tingle! What was almost more amazing: the oldest of our group was an 83-year-old Swedish gentleman.

Next stop: Muang Sing near the Chinese border. Visit of Akha villages, the hill tribes of the region. Hardly any tourists there, some villages get foreign visitors about once a month. People did not really seem to be interested in us, or maybe they were shy. Lots of poverty in a picturesque setting, kind of like India. Certainly interesting was the visit in the Whiskey village, where they produce the national drink: rice whiskey or "Lao-Lao". It actually tastes like hazelnut schnapps and is now my next favorite drink after Beerlao (amazingly good beer!).

Stopover today in Oudomxay, another unpronouncable town, to continue to Nong Khiaw tomorrow - a picturesque village in the limestone mountains.

Click here for more Pictures...

 

Tel Aviv in June

Avoiding climate zones with temperatures below 30°C I traveled from Barcelona over Athens to Tel Aviv to visit my friend Karin. The two things that impressed me most: amazing city beaches and the best food ever! I have a new mission in life now: learning to make humus, that is, the real stuff, not the garlic-infested slobber we get here. 

Surprisingly I was allowed to take all important ingredient out of the country - local Tahini - maybe the customs officers overlooked it while they were busy breaking the seals of all my new Ahava cosmetics just in case I was hiding a weapon in my dead sea body lotion.

Anyhow, this will be my bible: The Humus Blog. And this was the reason for a life changing taste experience: http://youtu.be/ZXPJUyFGMgE

Apart from eating and shopping I also traveled around the country conveniently in a rental car. Karin gave me a quick tour of Jerusalem, where we managed to break the Shabbat rules by writing our notes for the Wailing Wall. An upset guard tried to stop us - writing is work and very unholy on Shabbat. I did not dare to ask how her work as a guard conforms with the Shabbat rules...

More of a highlight than strange religious practices and bazaars full of Jesus souvenirs (thorn-crown, anyone?) was our afternoon at the Dead Sea. Amazing, amazing, amazing, just don’t ever get that stuff into your eyes!

Rejuvenated and energized by Dead Sea mud I spend a long day taking a drive around the Northeast of the country, visiting more Jesus-related sites (well, you cannot drive for more than half an hour without running into one anyway). Sea of Galilee near Golan Heights, where Jesus preached from a mountain (which incidentally was closed when I passed by). Lovely landscape though, the lake would be a nice summer holiday destination if they would not have all these great beaches anyhow. And in front of their doorsteps in every coastal town!

Akko was thoroughly charming, even though – surprisingly – I ate the worst humus of my trip there. I cannot confirm the rumor that Akko has the best humus of the country. Haifa was worth a stop for its great location but apart from the Baha’i gardens, which were already closed when I arrived, there are no other great tourist attractions I would have noticed. Apparently they have a vibrant night-life and better bars than in Tel Aviv but I did not get a chance to verify this.

Anyhow, I have to say Israel people are great fun and open and friendly and straightforward and sometimes a little weird (who would not be after spending years in the army or even in combat). I will definitely be back some day!

Israel - June 2012

Tenerife in May

After a high altitude winter straight down to sea level in Tenerife! Although I ventured up to 2300 m again on the volcano Teide - did not make the top of 3700 m, a bit too lazy for walking, but we explored a great part of the island by car. And spent a day in neighbouring La Gomera. And still found time for 3 surf sessions at Playa de Socorro! All in all - seen loads, done loads, ate loads!

Teneriffa - Spanien

Honduras - Guatemala - Mexico - NY

I did a long leg from Granada (south of Nicaragua) to Tehucigalpa (the unpronounceable capital of Honduras), the bus arrived late and a preoccupied fellow passenger did not want me to go around town at nighttime, so she invited me to stay in her house with her family. What a nice welcome to a new country!

The next day I went up to La Ceiba at the Carribean coast of Honduras. I spent the night as the only guest at the spectacularly situated Jungle River Lodge and also was the only participant in the canopying tour. Definitely low-season, but very relaxing after all the surfing action in Nicaragua.

Next I crossed over to Utila, the smallest island of the three Bay Islands and allegedly the cheapest place in the world for diving certifications. Stepping off the boat you get thronged by dive school representatives offering their deals, it is hard to find accommodation as a non-diver - the island seems to be owned by diving schools. Utila itself does not have any beaches worth mentioning but I was lucky to find a dive school (Captain Morgan's) who had a little hotel on one of the small islands off Utila's shore and actually let me stay there even though I was not taking part in a course.



This place was like paradise - it was the only tourist accommodation on this tiny fishing island (2 islands in fact, connected by a bridge: Jewel and Pigeon Cay), great snorkelling right off the hotel pier, private rooms with seaview. The island's population is only 500 people and you can walk across the whole place in 10 mins, it looks and feels like a toy town.

Residents on all the Bay islands are a weird mix of indigenous people, British settlers, and Afro-Caribs imported after some slave riots way back, so you meet people of all colours and looks (and for the first time you won't get recognized as a tourist straight away). Moreover, they speak a nearly unintelligible version of Jamaican English and/or Spanish - this was certainly one of the strangest places I've been to on my whole trip, I loved it!

I stayed on the Cays for a few days, going out with the diving boat every day to snorkel at different reefs around the islands (being too lazy to do a refresher of my diving cert). Snorkelling alone was amazing enough, the reef around the islands is the second biggest in the world and there was tons of stuff to see.

Then I had to say good-bye to the sea (it's always so sad, I think I should live by the sea, I never get fed up with it) and move on north. I crossed the border to Guatemala to visit Livingston, a Garifuna town (meaning inhabited by Black Caribes) that can only be reached by boat.



The further north I traveled the better the food became - finally! Garifuna food is especially delicious, and Tortillas arrived on the menu as a variation to rice-beans-chicken dishes (therefore more food pics in this album - for Annette, who requested a food documentary :).

From Livingston I took a boat through the Rio Dulce Canyon up and continued by bus to Flores, the jumping-off point for visits to the Tikal ruins. Tikal is the main attraction of Guatemala, it's one the largest Mayan sites and is situated right in the middle of the jungle. It's so huge, it would take weeks to see it all. Besides, many of the temples have not yet been excavated (and probably never will be). It was impressive but also very touristy and expensive, but still worth visiting.



After Tikal I had only a few days left to make it to Mexico City. I did a stopover in Palenque (Chiapas) and spent a beautiful day at Agua Azul (a river with almost artificially blue water because of its high lime content) and the Misol-Ha waterfall. In Mexico City I visited friends, went shopping and stayed indoors as much as possible because it was very cold. Same goes for New York - lunches in Chinatown and at the Google office and I spent the remains of my budget in the Burton store, so now I am fully equipped for the winter season to come!

Honduras - Guatemala - Mexico - NY