Two long days in Aceh, Sumatra
Are we there yet? We had our first glimpse of Indonesia on our first trip to the Far East and we started with one of the less popular islands, Sumatra. We only had 12 days, barely enough to make quick stops at four distinct destinations: a volcanic lake, the top of an active volcano, the…
Trouble in Sulawesi
Arriving at the land of Torajas. Rantepao, Sulawesi For twenty years I kept diaries of all of our travels before I switched to using a computer. So now I have hundreds of pages full of experienced, good and not so good. I’ll randomly pick a day each time and add a photo or two. And…
Vintage cars and crusader castles in Syria
After visiting the southern and eastern parts of Syria, let me share with you the experiences we had along the coast and the around the mountains west of Damascus. Vintage cars in active use, hitching a tractor and the depths of Syrian bureaucracy. Plus the photos. The port of Syria As we looked out of…
Java highlights
As I read the worrying news about the earthquake on Java, I remembered the first time we set foot on this magical island. It was our second visit to Indonesia. We were eager to discover a second island after Sumatra and so we spent around two weeks on volcanoes, beaches and in cities before we…
Palmyra to Aleppo as we saw it
In the second part of this nostalgic throwback to the better days of Syria, I’ll talk about the experiences we had in the central and eastern part of the country back in 2002. We spent a few days in Palmyra and then an afternoon in Deir ez-Zor. Finally we took a train to Aleppo, although…
Southern Syria before the war
My then pregnant wife and I spent a little more than two weeks in Syria back in 2002. I have been treasuring these photos and memories since then. In this and the upcoming posts I’ll try to show you how inviting and calm this country was before it fell prey to the greed of local…
Cycling in Albania 2012 – Meeting Theth’s godfather
” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″] The truth is that the idea of a cycling holiday in Albania partly came out of necessity. It was 2012 and we were starting to really feel the effects of the economic crisis so we were thinking of a low budget destination not too far from home. But we also…
Memories of Albania
When I was a teenager Albania was regular subject of jokes as the poorest and most isolated country in Europe. Hidden behind ranges of mountains in a remote corner of the Balkans, it is still overlooked by most people due to the old stereotypes. ” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC” returns=”included” maximum_entity_count=”500″]