It is safe to say that New York City and Washington DC are NOTHING like Senegal. After the long flight from Africa, we somehow wrangled a great deal at a terrific hotel. It had been quite some time since we had enjoyed the perks of upscale hotel. In DC we checked out the monuments, museums and most importantly… took in a Expos game, for some strange reason they’re calling the Expos the Nationals, and they’re not playing in Montreal much… but I’m sure it’ll work itself out.

After a few nights in DC we flew up to NYC, and we were extremely luck to stay with friends and family who made our last stop on this trip a loving and comfortable one. The city was great, Kat had never been so it was great to take her up the empire state building and really take in the size of the big apple. We had a nice long walk through the park, theatre district, times square ending in the lower east side, where we met an old friend for drinks. It’s not hard to love NYC, just needed a lot more cash to enjoy it to its full potential!

Then, the LAST flight. Ottawa. 10 months, all the way around. Very happy to be back initially, but the wanderlust has returned. It feels as though our world just shrunk. We are back to living within boundaries, but friends and family surround us. We are Home.

i checked the photos on the camera and it seems that we went to amsterdam. that’s cool. i’ve uploaded them too. can’t say much more than that though, it’s all a bit of a blur, but i feel like there might have been a lot of art involved… monet? van gogh? reimbrandt? picasso? dali? something about ophelia? it’s possible some of those were in madrid though - we killed a day between flights checking out the museums downtown. but like i said, it’s blurry.

up next was senegal!! what a shock. it’s fair to say that i hadn’t heard much about senegal, or western africa for that matter, before we headed there, but i had a general image in my mind of how it would be. i couldn’t have been more wrong!! for starters, it is much more liberal than i had expected. because a large portion of the population is muslim i thought that i would have to wear full sleeves like in morocco (it’s not the law or anything, just out of respect for a society where the women cover themselves up) but barely anyone there wore full sleeves, or covered their heads/hair, so that was a surprise - a welcomed surprise, since it’s pretty hot. also, it’s wicked expensive, but with very little infrastructure for tourism. finding a hotel was hard, and we ended up paying as much as we had in spain, which wouldn’t have been as tough to swallow if it wasn’t kinda sketch and ridden with roaches. the cabs are way more expensive than asia, though less than europe, but are all on their last legs - for example, six out of six cabs we took had broken windshields. there aren’t public long distance busses, so to get to the gambia you can either hire a 4×4 and a driver ($380 + gas for 400km) or take a bush taxi which will leave only when it’s full and could take two days to go the distance. brutal. the people were generally nice, so that was cool, and the food was okay, but again, very expensive for what we were getting. we discovered pretty quickly that we couldn’t afford to stay in the country for three weeks, or rather that we could - by maxing out all available credit cards - but didn’t feel like it was worth it to be struggling through each day while paying through the teeth. we went to the airport with the intention of flying to the gambia, but that bit us also cuz the ticket prices were twice what we thought - it would have cost nearly a grand for two return flights, and it was only 40 minutes away!! so… instead, we went to the south african airlines office and moved up our flight back to north america, washington dc to be exact… we left that night.

i’m sad about how the senegal/gambia leg of the trip went, but life is what it is. if we had come to this dilemma earlier in the trip it’s possible, even likely that we would have bitten the bullet and spent the two days traveling over land in bush taxis to the gambia, stayed more nights in the less than attractive/comfortable rooms, and not cared as much about the debt. but we’re tired……… and home has been a long time coming. so off we go.

Hrmm… Lisbon… Yes, Lisbon was fantastic. Picturesque, friendly, cheap for Euro standards and relaxing. We spent a few nights walking around the old city in Lisbon. The architecture and the city planning were neeto. Yeah, and there was a metro, which really made getting around fun. Far from Africa, it would seem. I had beer.

But alas, Lisbon quickly went, as did Seville round 2, and we found ourselves firmly back in Tangier. Not as lurky as Kat initially thought. We spent two nights even. Good times!

Then we bussed it up to the Rif town of Chaouen. We spent 4 days there. Didn’t do anything. Slept, napped, played cards, hacked mint tea, downed café au lait. Took in the thin mountain air, drooled over the spellbinding view. It was what it is. Heaven. We even lucked out and got into our favourite hostel and a terrace room. Neither of wanted us to leave. It felt really great to unpack, settle and just be sedentary for awhile. Felt nice. Homey. Not like the clown though.

It seemed like only yesterday that we landed in Morocco, but in fact it was many mint teas ago. 5 weeks. On to the next stops, Madrid and Amsterdam. The Euro is getting us down, gladly it’s only for a week, and then back down to Senegal. Riding the Fès-Marakech special tomorrow.

after leaving the desert we decided to book it up to meknes asap - we were forced to spend a night in erfoud, which we (not so) fondly call the armpit of morocco, that sucked, but we kept ourselves entertained with card games and many cups of cafe au lait.

meknes was cool, we ended up being there at the same time as the king, which drastically inflated hostel costs but also gave the city a really exciting feel. we stayed in the medina in a hostel about a five/ten minute walk from where i gather the king was spending most of his royal time - whenever he would leave his hotel or mosque, or wherever it was that he was hanging out, people lined the streets like it was the santa claus parade. kids waving flags, impromptu bands got together with drums and bells, and people cheered as his majesty drove by and waved. we saw him twice, both times he flew by pretty quickly but his arm looked royal.

while in meknes we visited volubilis, some old roman ruins from nearly 2000 years ago. i loved that there were sheep and some baby goats rummaging about in the ruins, partially because i like animals, partially because i´m becoming obsessed with shepards, and also cuz it made the place feel much older, somehow. anyways. it was really beautiful there, set on the side of a hill/mountain type place, with the setting sun it was incredibly surreal. most of the walls had come down, but somehow a lot of the tile flooring was still intact. albeit faded from the sun, since there were no longer any roofs, but i think it´s super cool that they didn´t try to restore the flooring and just left it as it is. i am not a big fan of restoration…

after meknes we hit up tangier… what a seedy little hole! i have to admit that we didn´t give it much time, and perhaps if we had we might have found some underlying charm, but from what we saw i can confidently refer to tangier as the capital of lurkistan. i find moroccans to be lurky in general, always standing in shadows, around corners, lurking - but the rest of morocco has nothing on tangier! i´ve never been offered drugs so many times in a row in my life, pssst pssst hashish? pssst pssst chocolat? our ¨hotel¨ was sooooooooo gross, i desperately wanted to shower, but after seeing the shared shower i decided i would rather roll around in pig crap. and the toilet, if you can even call it that… i´m not even ready to talk about it.

we are now in seville in the south of spain, it evokes mixed feelings in us. i love the hassle-free shopping, eating, and general wandering. i love the fixed prices. i love the menus even if i struggle with spanish, always trying to find the words that are like french. neal misses the craziness of morocco - no one here is getting into fights on the street, or trying to get you into their hotel/restaurant/shop etc, he says there´s no excitement. yesterday we visited the alkazar and neither of us were particularly impressed. sure, it was pretty and all that, but like i mentioned earlier, i´m not a big fan of restoration, and this place has been rebuilt and restored by everyone who has been in power over the last bagillion years. it´s interesting to see spanish, roman, jewish, and islamic influences all in one place, but why´d they have to go repaint everything in the last decade? i find it really distracts from the history. i´m not saying i wouldn´t want to live there, cuz i totally would, but i´m not gonna pay to get into anything again that says ¨restored¨. lesson learned.

this afternoon we´re off to lisbon! portugal here we come!!

So, those who know me know that I really like Morocco, that this isn’t my first trip here. However, my trips here have always been squeezed into 10-14 days and did not really permit exploration. This time is different. After the coastal towns of Essaouira and Agadir we pushed forward into the High Atlas. The road from Marrakech to Ouarzazate was spellbinding. The mountain passes were epic. In the midst of our seemingly endless summer, we actually caught a few glimpses of that white frozen powder that you guys seemed to be complaining about all winter.

The scenery was magical, as I kept telling Kat, I was just waiting for the 7 foot poorly costumed alien to jump out from behind a foreign looking tree and throw a large, but obviously foam, boulder at the landing party of the Starship Enterprise. Killing only the red-shirted enseign of course. I could actually HEAR the fight sequence score from the old episodes. Loved it.

We then visited the Dades Gorge, which was stunning as well. Tiny little villages and communites speckled both sides of the massive red walled gorge. The effect of the sun’s light on the rock walls and the low lying shrubbery was enthralling. I could actually taste the colours. A tiny river flowed through the canyon bringing life to all who lived on its banks. The gorge immediately became one of my favourite places in Morocco.

Off to the desert! We arrived in Merzouga not really knowing what to expect. What we found was brilliant. Unlike the urine reeking hotel rooms we had been cursed with on the way to the desert, we found a lovely Kasbah style hotel with pool and a quiet courtyard set on the edge of the Erg Chebbi dunes, which are the edge of the Sahara. Kat felt as though she was on a movie set. The Mummy was filmed here, Kat was right! (it happens every so often.) Through our hotel we organised an overnight dromadary (camel-like creature) trek to an oasis in the desert. Lotsa fun, except for the comfort factor. Dromadaries aren’t very cushy, nothing like a Honda Accord. They also smell. They are also tormented with gaseous issue. Cute though, in that dopey-eyed sorta way. We trekked 2 hours in and settled for supper and a night in a nomad tent. The night was clear and lit up by a perfect full moon. Never before had i seen such sharp shadows cast by moonlight alone. Pretty radical-awesome.

Oh apparently I still had cell-phone reception on the top on certain dunes. This is where I got word of my Habs getting past Boston. On a dromadary, on a dune, on the edge of the Sahara. You can take a kid outta Montreal but you can’t take the Habs outta the kid.

So now we’re back to civilization, relatively speaking. Enjoy the pics! Next up are Meknes, Tangier and then into Spain and Portugal! Stay tuned humans.

oh morocco… the first time i spent time here i found it a bit difficult - the people harrassing me everywhere for money or food or to come look at their carpets - but after india i’m not even phased! morocco don’t know from touts i’m also not as mesmerized with all the crafts and stuff being sold on every corner so i’m noticing the architecture and the people a lot more. we’ve spent much less time shopping in the medinas than we have exploring the more residential areas and i’m simply in heaven!

we spent our first night in casablanca - it was fine but nothing spectacular. from there we took a lovely train ride to marrakesh where we spent two days and nights in the massive medina eating herira (moroccain soup) and drinking freshly squeezed orange/grapefruit juice where it is very important to specify PINK or you’ll get white, which i usually love but is particularly bitter here. i’m not nearly as afraid of the cobras as i was last time, i don’t want to vomit when i hear that clarinet type snake charming instrument, but i still do not like them and don’t think they should be just sitting on the ground in the medina, like, no leash or anything. at least the monkeys are on leashes - though i don’t think that’s so cool either… they should be playing with their friends in the jungle not sitting on tourists’ heads for five dirham. anyhoo.

we are currently in essaouira where we’ve been exploring the medina and taking long walks on the beach for the past two days. the wind and the waves here are INSANE, i can see why it is so popular with the surfing crew. besides the fact that it’s too cold to swim (only about 20 in the sun) and the wind is strong enough to knock a person over, those waves alone would keep me out of the water - we watched the sun set last night over those 10-foot monsters and just imagined how strong the undertow must be. i got my ass handed to me in goa a couple times, thrown around like a rag doll while i was trying to get out of the water (dave, i believe you know what i’m talking about) and i can only imagine you’d be gritting sand in your teeth for a month if you got knocked around by the waves here. not to mention pulled out ten miles into the sea. they sure are beautiful though! and the surfers seem to be having an amazing time.

we’ve been eating a lot of bread since being here, which is a huge change to our diet after spending so long in asia/india. mmm and the cheese! the restaurants in the more touristy areas tend to be a bit pricey so we like to get these round/flat bun type things, a cucumber, a handful of la vache qui rit cheese, and 15 cents worth of nuts (which gets your an unbelievable amount) and make our own little pic-nic lunches. yesterday we even got half a kilo of fresh strawberries for a dollar fifty!! only my *favourite* food in the world.

we’ve noticed a few changes to the country since the last time we were here - namely all the knock-offs you can buy in the medinas. just like south-east asia you can buy a dolce and gabana purse, shirt or wallet every second turn whereas only three years ago i don’t remember seeing them anywhere. also, the locals seem to be dressed a little more “western” (i use the term loosely, think GT Boutique style “hip”) so neal, in his jeans and hipster top, is getting mistaken for moroccan by everyone he talks to, constantly having to ask them to speak in french rather than arabic. when he says he’s not from here they laugh like they don’t believe him, and say “algerie alors?” but no, not there either. canada. oui, le canada. francais s’il vous plait. it’s pretty funny. the odd guy has actually seemed pretty pissed that he doesn’t speak arabic, like he’s commited some sin. it’s kinda like india and hindi all over again - looks like he has a couple languages to learn before we travel again. hahaha i can’t wait for spain - they all think he’s spanish too!

this afternoon we’re heading to agadir, another beach town but this one without a medina since it all crumbled in an earth-quake in the 60s. i gather no one cleaned up the area afterwards, the bodies just kinda lay where they fell… we might skip that part of the city.

we’ve got a few pics up, including puppies with drawn-on eyebrows and neals favourite MASSIVE seagull protecting his/her eggs on the roof of our hotel. like all the other animals here, living near the docks has fed them well and the seagulls are just enormous - easily the size of turkeys. but they still sleep standing up on one leg. freaks.

Ok, so we were all set to leave Bangkok @ 19:00, but we thought we should confirm our flight with Air India. It was delayed to 02:40 the next morning, not ideal, but not disastrous. We checked out of our hotel and wandered from air conditioned place to air conditioned place, seeing as it was a swealterunbearablingly hot that day, and arrived at the airport at 23:00. Oh look, flight delayed until 07:40. Not cool at al. Luckily Air India put us up in a nice hotel (probably the poshest digs so far on this trip). Got to the hotel @ 03:00, wake up call 06:00, go back to the airport - flight didn’t end up leaving until 10:00. No comment. OH!, and our flight was changed from a direct Bangkok-Mumbai flight to having a stop in Delhi where we had to sit on the plane for 2 hours. This also doubled the flight (from four hours to eight hours). Needless to say we love Air India.

Finally got to Mumbai, spent the the better part of four days eating and jetting to and fro to see family. Kat bought two pairs of specs @ a ridiculously cheap price. We also enjoyed some peace and quiet @ the old apartment building in Dadar. It was SO much nicer being there WITHOUT stressing about wedding preparations and the like. All in all, India part deux went nicely enough. On a personal note, I love India, it was tough for me to leave so suddenly, we will go back, wiser. anywho, off to Dubai!

Air India is to Emirates what a Commodore 64 is to a Macbook Pro. We were SO happy to fly Emirates I cannot even find the words to describe it. Every last detail was perfect. The WORST part of the flight is that it arrived early, so we didn’t even get the three hours that we paid for. Just fantastic.

Oh Dubai… now, we understand that we come from a modern country, so understandably we look like we’re a LOT better off that the majority of people in the last few countries we visited (India, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). This all changed in Dubai. We look like total hicks here, we look disgustingly under dressed, unkempt and pathetic. I wore my fake $20 Rolex to the mall, just to save face! It’s ridonkulous. The city itself is amazingly diverse, meaning it’s full of ultra-rich people from all over the world. It’s a skyscraping mecca built in a desert, the architecture is astounding, the cars put those we admired in Hollywood to shame, and the clothes, accessories and jewelery that people wear to walk around are worth more than anyone could imagine. It’s sparkling. Just crazy. We’re staying at nice hotels, by our standards, but pretty lowly by Dubai’s. We’re eating in food courts, because we can’t afford anything more!

As expensive as these three days have been we’ve still had a great time. Just walking around is great fun, there isn’t much to do but shop. There isn’t much more around than obscenely modern buildings and sand. Yesterday, we hung out @ the Mall of the Emirates, yes the one with the ski hill in it. Rad. We met our good friends Spek and Monica and had a long chat about the world over the best milkshakes ever. Great times. Today we did the desert safari thing which was Dune Bashing: Driving up, down, around, and THROUGH sand dunes in a 4×4 Toyota SUV, (our heads are still spinning) followed by sand boarding, desert sunset admiring, camels, great food, hookah and a belly dancing show. Just nuts! I think we were both most taken by the desert landscape itself than any of the touristy peripherals. It just went on and on, with the finest sand we’ve ever seen. Kat will be washing this sand out of every imaginable area for weeks since she bailed off the snow(sand) board. It was just a great day. Little pricey, but memorable. Tomorrow we’re off to Morocco, which will bring us considerably closer to home! Eight months down!

Oh yeah, and we fly Emirates again….mmmmm Emirates.

our time in chiang mai was awesome - so much air-conditioning!! we went shopping in markets and malls and even went to a movie theatre and ate at our favourite restaurant pizza hut (don’t judge). we got foot reflexology massages from blind women, and i took a thai cooking course! we didn’t take many photos cuz we were too busy being busy, but it is a beautiful city and we absolutely loved it. also - our hotel had a pool! this was kick-ass because the temperature was in the high 30s and even hit 40 a couple times. it’s kinda funny that we’re looking forward to mumbai being only 32 degrees tomorrow…

i’ve been thinking that i want to live here in thailand. i’m not joking, it really rocks. it’s got the conveniences of the western world alongside the culture of a country that is much, much older than home. there are many things that we would miss, so in my mind we would live here for only a year or two. to this end i’ve decided that neal will get a job with dfait when we get home and i’ll start a booming freelance business that can be done from anywhere in the world. you can all come visit!

tonight we fly back to india - of course our direct evening flight got changed to a one-stopover leaving at 2:45am flight, because india has this kind of effect on our trip - but on some level i’m kinda looking forward to being back in mumbai. yes, i expect to get some sort of bug and require some sort of antibiotics, and yes, i know i will need to use my asthma inhaler more in the next five days than i have in the last two months - but ever since we left india i’ve kinda missed it. but shhhh, don’t tell anyone. we will be spending five days in mumbai, three in dubai, and will be starting a five-week adventure in morocco (africa!!) april 6th!

we love and miss everyone and will post again soon.

What a welcome change of pace Laos was! In a hectic part of Asia, it was great to sit back and relax in a country that moved a lot slower than its neighbours. Barely any traffic, no honking cars, no huge congested cities, rien que du bonheur.

Our time in Laos began with an over-night bus trip from Bangkok to the captial Vientiane. As far as capital cities go, this one was a joy to visit. We rented silly looking bicycles and just cruised around the ‘downtown’ area checking out the sites and enjoying the scenery of the mighty Mekong. Wasn’t much to do really, just relax and recover.  Early the next morning we borded a bus that brought up into the hill and to the city of Viang Veng.  This gorgeous little community is nestled in a valley beneath massive limestone cliffs.  The mood was VERY relaxed, so much so that you can spend the sunny (unbelievably hot) afternoons sipping cold drinks and watching Family Guy in bars. (There were ‘Friends’ bars too, but I just can’t take that horrible, terrible, unbearable show.) We had lots of good food, and we were very happy.  Viang Veng was a great place to observe Lao culture, the locals were laid back, not pushy at all, and truly a riverain people. The river brought life to the community and there was always something going on along it’s banks.

After a relaxing stay in VV, with continued north to Luang Prabang.  This city was very quaint.  The was an artisan market set up nightly along the main drag. Colourful people and crafts on every corner.  And, of course the mighty Mekong again.  It’s been great to see the delta of the Mekong (Vietnam) and then its upper portions in Laos, the river is the main reason for any settlement in this region of the world, and being in these cities has helped us appreciate this fact.

As was the case in EVERY south-east asian country our time ran out too quickly.  We opted to fly out of Luang Praabang instead of enduring a 3 day slow boat ride up-river to the Thai border.  Laos was a welcome change of pace for us, it’s just too bad that we did not have more time to explore more of the country.

We are back in Thailand now, soon to leave for a quick stop in Mumbai and then into Africa! Kat is at an all day cooking class, I pray that she won’t cut/burn/injure herself.  I am riding a high off the 7-5 thumping of the SENS by mes Habitants, but also a little saddened by the news that the last possible cup game is scheduled for June 9; we return June 14.  I’ve never missed an entire hockey season… this makes me a bad Canadian.

Oh well, it’s worth it (unless we take the cup). Kat will provide a South East Asian wrap-up blog from Bangkok shortly, so stay tuned.  OH!, and after 7.5 months sans musique, we caved and bought a little mp3 player. It’s really a wonder we made it this far without one!

See you all soon!

The pictures from the mindblowingly awesometatsic temples of Angkor are up! There’s a whole whack of them, so take your time perusing!

We are now in the picturesque hill town of Viang Veng, Lao PDR (by way of Vientiane). I’ll be back to blog about it after we take some time to let it all sink in.

Enjoy the Angkor pics!