Thailand recap

It's been awhile since we've updated this blog. It's pretty much been untouched since we arrived to Asia. Let me make a few excuses so you understand why:
1. When we first arrived to Bangkok we were overwhelmed with the city. Too much to do, too much to see. Who has the time to write?
2. Then we moved to the islands and the only thing that we had to do was enjoy the sun and the beach. Who wants to write at that point?
3. After 6 days of the beach we were ready to update the blog, but it turned out that our computer died and we couldn't write. (more about the comp later)

Now we are in in Bangkok once again. And some of the novelty has worn off and we can relax, gather our thought and tell you all about it...

On the weather

Dear mothers -

Despite what the Russian media says, not all of Thailand is under water.  This is what the weather looks like at the moment on Koh Phangan:

Imag0155

Indeed it rained a bit overnight, and quite hard for about an hour in the morning.  But that's the first rain we've seen since we got to the island over a week ago.  The prognosis for the next 3 days is the same - showers in the morning, and sunshine in the afternoon.  Then it turns to sunshine all day long again.

Also, our numerous newly-acquired Russian friends from the local community, dive instructors included,are vigilantly following the local, more precise weather forcasting, and will inform us of any looming "danger".  

So don't worry, we're fine, and are working on our perfect tan; even though in my case it's just the growing number of freckles.

Us

Europe Recap

10 weeks

16 countries

36 cities

5 islands

2 backpacks

1 great adventure!

We were very pleased with our time in Europe and excited for our next stop, Bangkok, Thailand.

Short preview of things to come: by the time we are finally posting this we’ve spent a couple of days in Bangkok, moved to Koh Samui island and spent 2 days there, and are now on our 2nd island Koh Phangan “enduring” the tough life under the palm trees.  More on that later...

Sophia, Bulgaria 10/6 – 10/8/11

After Bucharest we went to Sofia, our final destination in Europe.

We heard that there was nothing to do in Sofia, so we left only 1.5 days for it. And that was a big mistake because we loved it there. 

The first day, when we arrived to our hostel it was pretty late. The hostel was a great change from the one in Sibiu. The common area was just really cool. It was big, with funky decorations, and cozy couches and very, very helpful staff. Right away we got a recommendation for food and went out for dinner. 

The next day was a lot more eventful. We found out that there was a free tour around Sophia and were excited to go. I think we have mentioned before in this blog that free tours tend to be the better ones. In general, the tour guides work for tips which means that they have to earn that tip. This means that they really put a lot of effort into the tour and into making it engaging. This particular company works differently. It’s a non-profit organization whose goal is to open up Sophia and Bulgaria to tourism. The guides are really volunteers and any tips that they receive go to non-profit organization and not directly to the guides. 

This may have been the best tour that we received to date. Boyko, the guide was funny, engaging and knowledgeable. He reminded us a lot of Borya Dolin (for those who do not know Borya - he is our favorite guide from Israel). We spent about 2.5 hours walking the city.

We saw a church, a mosque, a synagogue and 3 communist-era government buildings standing practically side-by-side.  We saw thousand year old churches hidden in the middle of government buildings, and dug out in the underground metro stations.  We drank mineral waters – hot and cold that are abundant in the city.  We found a bell attached to a tree because the church it belongs to does not have a bell tower.  We furthered our knowledge of European history of WWII, and the Communist era that followed.

Then a bunch of us from the tour went to a place that Boyko recommended. And he joined us as well. There we got to hear a lot more about the company that he is running and met a couple who runs the tours in Bucharest (Mikhael and Georgina.)  We also met a guy from SF (Mark) who is a marketing consultant. Naturally, he and I had a lot to talk about. And he made a grand gesture and paid for lunch for all 12 people who were there. So we all agreed to meet again in the evening and pay him back with drinks...

I want to remind you guys that this was our last evening in Europe and we wanted to go out and make it memorable. I don’t think we could have found a better crowd to do it with. About 8 people from the tour showed up. Also Boyko showed up with his girlfriend and then had some of their friends join us. So we had a great mix of tourists and locals and had a ton of interesting conversations. And in the meantime all of us were trying to get Mark drunk.

The highlight of the evening was when we were talking to the locals (a lovely couple of Boyko’s friends whose names we do not remember) about how they view foreigners. I was telling them that in the late 80s and early 90s when American tourists just started to visit Russia, we not only were able to recognize them on the street right away, but also thought that they looked stupid. In response one of them smiles and says, “We STILL think they look stupid!” :)

No offense to our American readers, please let me explain. The way any Russian (or in this case Bulgarian) can tell an American apart from anybody else is by the fact that they smile as they walk down the street. It’s completely natural that they may even say hello to a passerby. From the perspective of a Russian (or a Bulgarian) this just looks odd. We also talked to some Americans who have traveled to Russia or Ukraine. Their perception was that everyone looked mean and angry. They didn’t see one friendly face anywhere on the street. Oh in that same conversation, we found out that we look American at this point as well ;)

A side story about Levka: Last time that Levka went to St. Petersburg (his home town), he went into a coffee shop and ordered his coffee (in Russian of course without any accent). After taking his order the barista inquired where he was from. He responded, “I’m from here. Why do you ask?” She said, “I can tell you are not from around here: you smiled when you entered, said “hello” and “please” when ordering a coffee” :)

I guess the American culture has rubbed off on all of us!

And so the night ended and so did the first chapter of our trip. It is hard to believe that one third of it is already over. It seems like we only just started. 

2011.10.06 Sofia

Sibiu, Bucharest, Romania 10/2 – 10/5

Before going to Bucharest we decided to go to Sibiu.  We liked the description we read:  Sibiu is one of Romania's cultural and tourism capitals, attracting tourists due to its wonderful medieval charm, excellent views of the surrounding landscapes, great food, and stunning parkland. Sounded good to us, and it was only a couple of hours away from Brasov by train.  Additionally we thought that the train from Sibiu to Bucharest would take us via a scenic route that could include the capital of Romanian online fraud (I forgot the name of the town again), and that presented a special interest to me since eBay was their primary target.  That hope unfortunately did not come true; the train we took was going via Brasov.  Oh, well.

The town however was just as the book, and the wiki page described it.  It was well restored, and had a lot of medieval buildings.  There was a hiccup with the hostel we booked that was getting rave reviews as far as our tastes in hostels went.  They could only accommodate us for 1 out of the 2 nights, so not to unpack we decided to go immediately to another hostel they suggested.  That hostel turned out to be much worse, not to our liking, and we did not get much sleep there.  Nevertheless we enjoyed what the little town had to offer tremendously – the architecture, the food and the sunny weather.  And Julie got a consolation prize – the hostel that we wanted to stay in originally allowed her to take one of the books from their library.  One more book in my backpack…

Naturally, we could not miss the synagogue.  What was different about this synagogue was that we were invited in for free by an old lady that (I guess) was minding the admin part of the Jewish life of the town.  She unfortunately did not speak English, so information we got was very limited, but we were overwhelmed by her hospitality.  When we got there the synagogue was closed, as well as the community center, but she saw us standing there, opened up everything, and gave us a tour. From what we understood, the Jewish community in Sibiu is very small (about 65 members). They meet regularly for Shabbat and to celebrate holidays, as well as for community projects. Under their care are 3 synagogues (only 1 is functioning and the other 2 they try to upkeep to preserve the history) and 10 old Jewish cemeteries. Also they do a lot of outreach projects to seniors in Sibiu and surrounding areas. Since the community is so small, they actually don’t use the old synagogue building for prayer. Instead they use a small room in the community center behind the synagogue. And the synagogue is used for concerts and other evens by the city of Sibiu. All this was a great change from all the other synagogues that we saw in Europe. They either required tickets to get in, or were closed to us completely.

2011.10.02 Sibiu

After spending 2 days in Sibiu we moved on to Bucharest, our 2nd to last stop in Europe.  Bucharest reminded me of St. Petersburg in the late 90s.  It’s in its development stage, not “cleaned up” yet, but you can see that they are trying.  We saw a few restoration and infrastructure projects under way.   We also noticed loops and loops of extra wires hanging from pretty much all the light poles in the city. (Most of those wires were not isolated)   I’m told that there is a huge project underway to get them underground, but that has not happened yet. 

As far as sightseeing went we were not able to find any tours that were suitable for us (the one for 65 Euro per person that we found would not work on our backpacker budget.)  Later in Sofia we met 2 travellers from Romania, who apparently organize free walking tours in Bucharest, but our hostel did not know about them, and neither did Google.  Julie gave them a quick lesson in marketing for the future :)

One tour we thought we could catch was the tour of their Parliament.  That building is rather big (second biggest parliament building in the world), not-so-bad-looking, and it has a terrace from which you can see the panorama of the city.  Unfortunately once we came there the guard told us that the Parliament was closed to tourists for the next 5 days due to an “administrative problem”.

Another annoyance in Bucharest was due to the fact that all the banks are afraid of transactions coming from Romania.  First my PayPal account was put on hold pending the password/secret question change because I tried to book a hostel while in Romania;  second, and more annoying was that HSBC decided to suspend our primary ATM card, and it took me 2 days to get it working again because their agent was screwing up. 

Note from Julie: While all this was happening, I got a lesson from Levka about online Fraud. Apparently, Eastern Europe has split up their online “business”. Russia has the Mail order bride business. We heard that they are “franchising” into other eastern bloc countries. And Romania has the online auctions fraud. As Levka mentioned above there is a village in the middle of Romania that has a Mercedes dealership in it.  Apparently it’s the central hub of the online fraud (that targets eBay) and has been investigated for many years by Interpol and others, but it’s still going strong. 

2011.10.04 Bucharest

Brasov, Romania 9/30-10/2

Так как я все это пишу пока мы едем из Бухареста в Софию, буду продолжать по-Русски.

Из Клюй-Напока мы поехали в Брашов (Brasov), наш следующий город в Румынии.  Брашов знаменит в основном не самим собой, а парочкой замков неподалеку.  В самом Брашове, как и в Клюй-Напока мы нашли парочку замечательных ресторанов, а так же приличное количество церквушек, старых домов, и улиц.  Тур, на который мы хотели пойти не сложился, поэтому мы гуляли опять сами по-себе, по карте, на которой был отмечем маршрут.  В основном маршрут пролегал по окраинам города, где сохранились остатки старых защитных сооружений, т.е. стены с башенками.  Вот именно на эти стены с их башенками мы и залезали со всех возможных сторон.  Еще в городе есть одна основная улица со старыми домами, которые сложно рассмотреть и сфотографировать изза зонтиков ресторанов и кафе, которые располагаются на первых этажах этих самых домов.  Так же там есть одна из самых узких по всей Европе улица.  Она проходит не далеко от синагоги, которую мы тоже, конечно, нашли, и которая была закрыта (по непроверенным данным она как синагога не служит, а стоит в основном для виду; там вроде и равина даже нет)

В Брашове мы познакомились с нашим любимым Румынским десертом  «папанаши», которые оказались нашими Питерскими пышечками, только большего размера, и политыми сметаной с вишневым вареньем.  Это если в ресторане; а если найти пышечную на улице, то там продаются пышечки под названием «гогоши», те еще больше похожи на Питерские пышки, только Питерские более воздушные.  И кофе не хватало – того, которое сваренное в огромном котле, с молоком и с сахаром.  Питерцы знают, о чем я говорю.

Из Брашова мы сьездили в самый известный замок неподалеку – "замок Дракулы", он же замок Брэн.  Насколько Румыны еще не научились заманивать туристов, и делать все для того, чтобы мы отдали им свои деньги, настолько этот замок впереди всей Румынии.  Сам по-себе он замок, как замок.  Но в какие-то годы там останавливался проездом Влад III, кто стал прототипом для Дракулы.  Все, что его связывало с кровью была его любовь к изощренным казням, и пыткам, как например сажанием на кол.  Как бы то ни было, количество туристов в замке нам показалось значительно больше, чем во всех остальных местах Румынии, которые мы посетили.

2011.09.30 Brasov

П.С. заканчиваю я эту запись уже в Бангкоке.  После Брашова мы поехали в Сибию, потом Бухарест, а потом в Софию, от куда мы и улетели.  

 

Cluj-Napoca, Romania 9/28-9/30

Julie insists that I write at least one entry in Russian so here it goes.

Клюй-Напока оказался не большим, и не особо примечательным городком.    Мы приехали туда днем, скинули сумки и пошли ужинать в Румынский ресторан который нам посоветовали. Ресторан оказался действительно очень хорошим, и не дорогим.  В Румынии вообще цены были пониже, чем в Венгрии, и предыдущих странах.  Именно в этом ресторане мы увидели американца обсуждающего религию пока он заливал еду кетчупом из бутылки, которую он принес с собой.  Все, что мы заказали нам жутко понравилось, включая хлеб, который мне напомнил хлеб из Красногвардейки (старшие Бревдо и Ирка должны помнить эти огромные караваи.)  Так как на дворе был Новый Год (Рош А Шана), то на десерт мы заказали запеченые яблоки.  

После ресторана мы решили, что всю эту еду надо растрясти, и пошли в гору чтобы посмотреть на город сверху.  Город и сверху оказался не особо примечательным, или даже менее примечательным.   В Румынии пока есть более важные нужды, чем красивая подсветка достопримечательностей.  Лучше всего получилась рекламная вывеска основного банка Трансильвании.  Как все знают, именно в Трансильвании живут все само-уважающие себя вампиры.

Наш первый полный день в городе мы провели как и полагается, гуляя по-городу, и рассматривая старые церкви, старые дома, и старые улицы.  В этом, и в других городах Румынии мы не попали ни на какие туры, все приходилось делать самим.  Поскольку хорошего путеводителя у нас не было, фотки в основном будут не подписанные.   Еще мы искали, и нашли, где бы сделать маникюр и педикюр.  Юлька была напугана преисторическими методами которые применяются в Румынии (это после супер-модерновых приборов Кракова.)

Мы закончили день опять в ресторане .  Он назывался Булгаков, а вовсе не Набоков, как мы уже писали.  Кроме имени в нем не было ничего примечательного.

2011.09.29 Cluj-Napoca