Hi folks!
We are totally psyched about the huge response on all our TATW postings and especially about the recent part one from USA west coast. Maybe it’s because a lot of people have seen that part of the world already long before we did. However, we thank everyone so much for stopping by and sure thanks for all the lovely words on Facebook as well as here in the comment section.
As said, we needed to split it up and here we continue on the road to San Francisco.
It’s time. Getting there. closer to home. We were boarding a brand new Boing 777-300ER in Auckland. The best “bird” we have had on the trip and the best entertainment system we have ever seen in an airplane. Air New Zealand gets a 5 star rating anytime. Well Carmen did not enjoy it too much as you might know. But Ingo did not sleep much to enjoy it even more :-)
Hi Folks, here we are with part two of our unforgettable trip through “Middle Earth”. If you missed part one, check it out right here. Also if you have not seen our cool little “super 8” video from New Zealand shot entirely on the Iphone4, you should check it out here.
But now, be prepaired for lotsa pictures, and a long story. Maybe the longest post from our TATW. Sorry but we want to get this trip stories out the door before we are posting weddings :-)
Hello Friends!
Here we are, back home after this incredible trip. Still “high” from the experiences. Friends were welcoming us with open arms again. We had a ball last weekend having some of them hanging out with us. Somehow we were thinking about this home coming thing as yet another stop on the tour but to a place we are totally familiar with.
But guess what. It’s not, we are finally home and the thing we were planning and looking forward to is over now, gone, done! What’s left? We need new targets to focus on now on the long term and we have some stunning ideas and hope to share this very soon with you all. But for now, here we go for the first part of the road trip in freaking beautiful and amazing New Zealand.
This is part two of our road trip in Australia. For those of you who missed the first one, here it its.
After the actually not easy decision what kind of rental service we will use for our three weeks on the road we picked up a Jucy camper in Melbourne to head down towards the great ocean road in the first place. We chose Jucy over Wickedcamper because they had a better reputation if it comes to help and service as well as newer cars, and the last thing you want is loosing a day because of an old camper. Wise decision, we loved the camper and did not had a problem at all!
Hello Folks,
The silence is over here on our blog if it comes to TATW stories and photos. We know it, we are way behind schedule with blogging but you should follow us on twitter or get friends on Facebook to keep better track of where we are and what’s going on. Just saying. And again we would like to apologize to those unconditional followers here on the blog for coming over so often even though we have no updates for a while now! For those you have not been with us in Australia via Facebook, and for all others as well, here is our first part of this incredible huge country and continent respectively.
Hi folks,
today we want to give you a little view on our wonderful month in New Zealand. But no pictures this time, rather a short film. Eversince the 8mmvintage app for apples iphone came out we badly wanted to shot a film using this app (you need iOS4.1 or higher). It’s just what you want to do if you love this vintage things so much as we do and New Zealand is so diversified that it is no problem to get loads of footage. So we put this little piece together and hope you like it. Have fun!
Love from California
Carmen and Ingo
Hi out there!
We have been a bit quite here regarding our trip. This is a result of freaking huge Australia and interesting New Zealand. Traveling here keeps you busy at all times and being on the road means driving by ourselves. You don’t feel like blogging if you arrive after a six to ten hours drive and somehow you feel guilty if you do not get out in the morning and explore the places. If you follow us on Facebook, which you should, you can check out where we are and get sneak peaks. But enough of why, here is our overdue post about two big cities in south East Asia.
Hej folks. We hope that everybody got back to work safe and sound after Christmas holidays. We know its been a while since we posted the last pictures and we feel terrible about it. Our apologies go out to everybody but special to those stopping by frequently to see if we have posted anything new.
Traveling is lotsa fun, no doubt about it. We still love it! But you start missing things now and then. Small things. Not talking about friends and families which sure come at the first place, but things like dark bread, farmers bacon and some liptauer or Käsekrainer with “Kren und Senf”. The austrian guys will know what we are talking about. You can’t get things like that in Asia. And then, at some point you wonder why you have ever wasted a though about such unimportant food stuff. At least we have something to eat everyday.
Well, we knew this would come and we also knew it’s going to be quick! You knew it too, right? It’s half time already! We always mentioned that the time on our trip is going very fast. Even though we do not head from one weekend to the other like we did during the past season, we still are always busy with doing something. Just recently over new years we had the first really doing nothing days on Bintan. Hanging out in the bungalow/bed and watching TV and some movies, celebrating New Years Eve very basic and private. We should have stayed in Singapore though, but this is a different story…
Hi folks,
No changes, time is still flying here in Asia. Christmas trees and music hits us in Malaysia right now and we hope everybody back home is having a good time with family and friends. We still owe you some pictures and stories from Thailand. Here we go. Remember when we wrote that you just get a 15 days allowance for Thailand if you come over land? So we had to hurry up a bit, first time actually since we are on the road that we had to have a date in mind :-)
We arrived in Chiang Rai first of December and we wanted to stay at a place called “Aka Hill Guest House“. We found it on the web somewhere and liked the view and pictures. They have a free pickup from the Aka River House” in the city. It takes around 45-60 minutes jeep drive to get up the hill. We arrived late, got a nice room and arranged a jungle trekking for the day after before we went to bed.
Hi there,
here we are with part two of Laos. Which is actually a chain of horrible bus rides up north. If we speak of “horrible” we rather mean totally (!) uncomfortable and long then unsafe. Maybe both, but most of the trips are safe or at least not too obvious dangerous.
Two ways to leave Tad Lo: going back to Pakse and taking a VIP sleeper to Vientiane, or going “local” across the land ;-) guess what, we went for the latter.
Next target were some huge Caves called “Kong Lor Cave”. Very recommendable, people say. Getting there from Tad Lo approximately 20h with local vehicles. So we split it up and went for Takhek, which are still 14h direction Vientiane. It was fun and exhausting at the same time. Driving 4,5 hours on the back of a truck with local people and lot of things to deliver, like 3 meter boards etc. was one stage at the very beginning. The street may not be drivable during rainy season but now it was just a dusty off-road kind of way. You do not feel your butt anymore after this. Trust me! We had good connections though and jumped on a local bus right after this. It was surprisingly not very crowded and we got some sleep. Bad thing: They through us out of the bus in Savanaketh because we were the only people in the bus. No people no bus. We got told the connection bus should leave in 20 min right away. Somehow this people are not around anymore if 20 min are over and you go to ask about the bus and then it suddenly leaves in 1,5 hours! Thanks a lot!
And to top it all, we got the worst seats in the back, a Lao lady next to us that seemed to have not taken one breath during the 4 hours!! And this bus was stopping literally every kilometer to get people in the already totally full bus. No kidding!
Hello everybody!
Oh my Buddha ;-) it’s been almost two month now that we are away from home and as we type this we are just sitting in a Thai bus heading to Chiang Rai. Back home they got the first snow and Christmas flair and feeling is all over the place. Nothing to see about this here though. Neither snow, nor Christmas feelings coming up. But to be honest, it could ;-) as its wintertime here in South East Asia as well.
We left Laos behind and we realized that we haven’t blogged about it. So here we go for part one:
We left Siem Reap very early in the morning. Before sunrise. Having an overpriced 13h trip ahead we hopped for good conditions. Looking back they were not bad but at the time we were a bit scared as the minibus driver though we are in a race he got to win. No kidding we were really happy as we changed to another as bus about half the trip to the so-called “4000 islands”
We choose Don Det to hang out a couple of days to enjoy the famous “Laos style” which is pretty much doing nothing than “testing” hang mats.
We saw the best sunset so far on our trip (check out the time-lapse below) the other day and could not resist getting bikes and cycling around on the island.
We had the impression, that this island was just made up for tourists and indeed there were lot of those very “cool” travelers. Also the staff working on the island did not look happy to be there and was thus not very friendly.
So we did not stay long and took a boat/minibus trip to Pakse. This trip got famous as “ticket-ticket-ticket”-trip because we had to show our tickets almost twenty times to the same person again and again.
Hi everybody!
We are happy to present our short film we shot in cambodia a few weeks ago. Together with Michael and Juliën from Kraakhelder Productions aka the Dutch guys, we spent two days in the Cambodian country side as we blogged already here. Here is the result.
Dear Friends
We know it’s been a while that we blogged and we feel really bad about it. But we got several good excuses: First of all we were pretty busy during the last days in Cambodia. Second, after crossing the boarder to Laos the quantity of wifi was as good as we have expected it before we left back home. Now and than an Internet cafe with very very slow connections but expensive.
Right now we are in the Capital of Laos, in Vientiane. We stay in a relatively expensive hotel (25$/night which is 5 times more than usually) to enjoy a very very clean room and bathroom with warm water and quiet stable Wifi. But now, let’s catch up with the last days in beautiful Cambodia with some pictures and stories.
Siem reap is the place where people stay to explore the historical treasure of the Angkor temples. We spent three days for the temples, where two would have been enough because the “ladies temple” is very far away and if you are not discovering every stone out there it’s maybe not worth it. This is just our personal optinion, but what makes it worth is a stop on the way there at the official “Cambodia Landmine Museum” run by Aki Ra, who is recently named one of the CNN top 10 Heroes 2010. His story is unbelievable, tragical and heroical! Check out the website for more about him and the museum as well as the most important part: the help to disabled children! He indeed is a hero, not just 2010. Be sure you watch the show today.