Posts from — February 2009

After ten weeks in New Zealand and Australia, Bangkok was an assault on the senses. I mean that in the best possible way.

Big, chaotic, confusing and a bit intimidating — it was just what we were looking for after the ease of Oz.  We loved Australia, but we had grown soft there, losing the hard-earned “travelers’ edge” we had acquired in South America.

We arrived at Bangkok’s ultra-modern Survarnabhumi Airport, one of South East Asia’s busiest, and home to the third largest airport terminal in the world.

Suvarnabhumi made headlines round the world in late 2008 when the People’s Alliance for Democracy blockaded and seized the airport, demanding the resignation of the government of Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat.

All flights to and from the airport were canceled for nearly a week, leaving hundreds of thousands of travelers stranded.

The protests gave us pause (particularly as portrayed by CNN), and we briefly considered not traveling to Thailand.

But as the weeks passed, it became apparent that our concerns were overblown. The standoff at the airport had been tense, but the country itself was not a dangerous place for visitors.

A little history helps put the recent protests in context.

[Read more →]

I didn’t believe my wonderful New Zealand contact Joanne Black when she advised in her email that, based on the dates I’d given her and the distances we’d planned to cover, we wouldn’t be able to fit in Golden Bay.

We had a rented car and, for the first time on our trip, had easy control of our logistics.

Craig wanted to get as far south as Dunedin.

Our list included the penguin colony in Oamaru, zipping over to Queenstown, cruising in Milford Sound, up the west coast to the Franz Josef Glacier, a stop-over in Nelson and back to Picton before heading back on the ferry to Wellington.

No problem! (I am out of breath just remembering the list.)

The trouble was the five to seven hour drives in between our destinations. One night here, one night there, we had to keep moving to fit in everything. After all, we might never be here again.

But reality hit us when we pulled in to the hostel in Greymouth. The receptionist cheerfully asked from where we’d traveled that day.

The four of us looked at each other. We’d spilled out of the car after yet another long, curvy drive surrounded by New Zealand’s typical gorgeous scenery.

And no one could remember that morning’s awesome hike to the icy end of the Franz Josef Glacier. Too much amazement in too little time.

We learned this in New Zealand: You just can’t see it all. And if you try, you’ll be rewarded with a blurry, cross-eyed, sort of dizzy feeling.

[Read more →]