Post-Christmas diet

Ah, after two solid weeks of eating non-stop in the Philippines, we both added a bit of holiday pounds. So, where do we find ourselves on our first day in Melbourne? The Pancake Parlour! Together we ordered two short-stacks (two pancakes each), one with a scoop of butter and one with a scoop of ice cream, and a potato and cheese pancake. Karen then starts to debate whether we should get bacon bits on top of the potato and cheese pancake and then tells the waiter "oh, we'd better not - we're on a post-Christmas diet". Well, the waiter just stood there a bit dumbfounded and then walked away quietly, not knowing what to say. Let's re-iterate: we're at a place called The Pancake Parlour and have ordered 4 pancakes with butter and ice cream as well as a potato and cheese pancake and Karen is trying to decide if bacon bits fit in with our post-Christmas healthy diet! Hmmm.....

Delighting in Down Under

So we are now in Melbourne and taking it easy in this chilled-out city. It reminds us a lot of Vancouver. It's a similar size and has a similar vibe to it. We've caught up with some English friends of ours who are in Melbourne for the holidays and to watch the Ashes series. It's great to catch up with everyone and be able to hang out in all the fabulous Melbourne restaurants and bars. We watched the last day of the Ashes series of cricket with them as well. However, it was supposed to go 5 days but the English bowed out early after an overwhelming defeat by the Aussies. So though we had tickets for today, we decided to explore the city and the St Kilda district (which reminds us of Southern Californian coastal towns like Santa Cruz). We head to Sydney tomorrow where we will be celebrating New Year's with Paris Hilton. Yes, you read right, Paris Hilton. Well, she's supposedly celebrating New Year's in Sydney too but we actually hope not to run into her. My godmother lives in a suburb of Sydney so we'll be staying with her and we will be meeting up with an old, old (think 5th grade) friend of mine named Sarah Aylott who lives in Oz. I'm so excited to see her and catch up. After New Year's we're heading to Cairns and the Great Barrier reef and we'll drive down to Brisbane from there. That's about 1500 miles of driving! But apparently a gorgeous ride all the way down. Of course we'll be posting pix...the internet connection is fab down here.

Ranakpur Jain temple

The Jain temple at Ranakpur has simply stunning carvings. The temple has over 1400 pillars, all of which are carved differently.

Gorgeous Thailand

Thailand never ceases to amaze me. Culturally, it has so much going for it. To us, it now seems to rival Singapore for its efficiency and modernity! Economically it is doing fantastically and even despite its recent coup things are progressing quite normally. We were there for the King's birthday (which is incidentally the same day as my brother's) and all his subjects were in full-honouring mode decked out in bright yellow shirts. We looked so out of place in the sea of yellow. We had been to Bangkok 5 years ago to attend my cousin Irma's wedding to her husband Art. The traffic was so terrible at the time and we stayed at a hotel where the air-con kept conking out. 5 years later, we were stunned by the progress of the city--fantastic flyovers and new highways that has reduced traffic significantly, the site of our old hotel (the Intercontinental I think) is now a blinging new luxury mall called the Paragon (which holds one of the nicest supermarkets I've ever seen anywhere!), and all around we saw signs of progress. I hope the Philippines can catch up! So here are some pix of BKK...better late than never!

Art and Irma took us to Ayuthaya, the old imperial city in Thailand where there are lots of gorgeous stupas and sights.


We were particularly impressed with this gigantic reclining Buddha. All the buddhas were clothed in shining orange cloth.


When we went to Chiang Mai we went trekking and visited some hill-tribes, including the Karen tribe! We also went to this cool waterfall where Kevin had a little shower.


We particularly loved the elephant ride. We tried to feed him loads of bananas since he looked so cute eating them.

More El Nido

I named my last post Happy Holidays but I forgot to actually wish you all a Happy Holiday! So here it is. I hope wherever you are in the great big world that you have a wonderful time. I also forgot to mention that I had laser eye on my right eye surgery the DAY BEFORE we went to El Nido. Talk about bad timing (with the holidays coming up this was the only window of opportunity! This meant that I had to wear gigantic goggles to protect my eye from water (in fact they advise you not to swim for a month). Not very cute but it did the trick. My eye is fine and I now have 20/20 vision with both! Yippee!

Here I am pre-op with what looks like a shower cap on. My mom went into the surgery room with me and held my hand. It was over in a few seconds!


And after! I know it all looks a bit grim and I was woozy the first day but by the next day at the beach I was feeling a lot better and didn't have to wear the patch(as the El Nido pix show)! I think Kevin liked me as a pirate though.


I just had to post this cute picture of Kevin being welcomed to the beach. He tried to look inconspicuous but it's difficult when he was over a foot taller than these ladies!


I think that Kevin had a pretty good run-up to his birthday. He looks happy as a clam here and he even got a touch of sun.


The last 2 days in El Nido we had some crazy weather which lead to some crazy waves like this one. We also took a speed boat and had the ride of our life but I couldn't take any pictures as we were grabbing on to each other for dear life.

Udaipur

If you've ever seen the James Bond film Octopussy then you've seen the beautiful city of Udaipur. It has a great setting on a very large lake. There are two main attractions in Udaipur - the massive City Palace and the amazing Lake Palace. The interior of the City Palace is similar to many a palace, but the sheer size and great location of the place make it impressive as a whole. Unlike the one outside Jaipur, this Lake Palace actually had a lake surrounding it. Unfortunately we kept running into price inflation in India so even our 18 month old guidebook was hopelessly out of date when it came to prices. The reason I mention this is because to see the inside of the Lake Palace, you either have to be staying there (at least US$400 a night per room) or you can go out there for lunch. Orginally we thought the lunch was about 1,000 rupees, or about 22 USD per person. Turns out it is now 3,000 rupees per person, or about $67, so we decided to give it a miss.

The Lake Palace is the white one; City Palace is the sandstone color one.















Here's a cute advert for the store inside the City Palace.



I think we forgot to mention the Indian porters, to be found at all the train stations. I don't know if it's impressive or foolhardy, but these guys are so desperate for cash that they want the whole job to themselves, even when there's 60 kilograms of luggage to carry. This guy has 40+ kgs on his head plus another 15+ kgs on his arm!

Happy Holidays All!!!

Happy 29 years birthday boy! Since it's Kevin's birthday I suppose he's entitled to post as many pictures as he likes--but you might suppose that all we've been to is India when we've had a lot of great adventures since then. I think Kevin is so enamoured by India because it's unlike any other place we've ever been (unlike the Philippines and Bangkok where he's been several times). But I wanted to post some pix myself especially of the gorgeous El Nido resort on a small island off of Palawan in the Philippines. As these pictures will attest, the Philippines has fantatic holiday opportunities and could definitely use more tourism...so come on over!




As the resort consists of a series of islands, we all had to get around by little speed boats and "bankas".


My mom and dad also kicked it back big time at El Nido. They look so chilled out don't they?


There were loads of activities in El Nido including kayaking through lush lagoons and snorkeling.

Jaipur

Jaipur is the capital of Rajasthan and its largest city. It is known as the Pink City for the lovely hue that many city buildings were painted in 1876 for the arrival of the Prince of Wales. The most famous building in the city is the Palace of the Winds or Hawal Mahal. The facade is beautiful.





Outside of Jaipur is the Amber Fort, which is dramatically situated atop a hill about 11 kms outside town. Here is the requisite picture of a snake charmer outside the fort as well as two lady workers inside.





On the way to Amber Fort we passed by this former lake palace. Unlike the beautiful one in Udaipur (photos upcoming), this one seems to be a lake palace lacking, well, a lake.



Back in town is the Jaipur City Palace, where the maharajah of Jaipur still lives. Here's a pic of some of the palace workers.



The girl in the middle isn't one of the workers there but was on our tour. If you want to buy a copy of her upcoming book (published in January), here's the link to Amazon. Maybe she'll give us some commission if we build up some of her sales volume. And if you're in Massachusetts, you can visit her studio on Quincy. She also has another book about popes, but I think this upcoming book might be a bit more exciting!

This photo from the city palace I like to call "life's little necessities".



And, of course, some more monkeys hanging out at the city palace.

More Taj pics

We're back from a few days at the beach in the Philippines and back online and ready to post a few more of our pics from India. First up, a few more pics from the Taj Mahal. I must admit that a few of these look like superimposed images on some great backgrounds.

Bye bye tattoo

Well, it turns out my mom wasn't crazy about the tattoo after all. I actually asked for the lady to put "mom" on there but I guess she misheard me because I wound up with "om" instead. Good thing these mehndi/henna tattoos wash off after about two weeks, eh?

Other India pics

If you ever go to Delhi, we really recommend going to see Humayun's Tomb. We hadn't heard of it before, but it was really impressive. And the beautiful gardens are a welcome reprieve from the bustle of Delhi.



Some cows frolicing on the median strip of a busy highway.



And if you can never figure out the difference between "desert" and "dessert", why don't you just spell it this way?

Keeping busy

Besides opening up our own Spanish language school in Kathmandu, Karen and I have also opened a travel agency in Jaisalmer and an art school in Udaipur.

Two quick pics

I liked the way the sunset looked through the stained glass at Jaisalmer City Palace.