East-side

Just a bit of an update on what has happened after the Rockies. I met up with Thibaut, my friend from Lund-times. It was great catching up with him and we drove from Vancouver, for a few days Vancouver island, up to Whistler. This meant the full hilarious North American experiences once again, including drive-thru-ATM's, getting stuck in a Vancouver ghetto, partying with only Asians, and some more activities such as mountain biking, hiking, bear watching and partying (yes!). Finally in Seattle I left the west coast to head for Toronto.

In Toronto I was reunited with my Lao friend Carmen, who I visited for the week. This meant once again a lot of uselessness, drinking, partying with Asians, sushi, drive thru's, North American suburbs, and loads of sightseeing. Carmen is truely a great hairdresser.

And now I just arrived in Montreal. Will catch up with some friends here as well and after about a week will head down towards the US of AAAIII! Let's see how Asian Montreal is!

The Canadian Rockies

Hiking, mountain biking, rafting, or just driving around in your car. I am lucky that this year the Indian Summer indeed feels like a summer. Just a few shots to give an impression!
(btw, useless drinking will only start after Vancouver I'm affraid)

Nudity is Not an Option

After having been told to wear pyjama's in my hostel's dorm room, this time I was almost chased out of the sauna. Next time I should definately read more carefully!

Canadian Loser

After the flight landed in Calgary it was directly clear Canada is a truly multicultural country. Even in a city that is purely known for being a cowboy/redneck town, that over the last years has boomed due to the discovery and exploitation of oil, you get picked up by a Pakistani taxi driver and eat at one of the many Vietnamese restaurants in Chinatown.

For the rest, Calgary is definitely not an interesting city at all, which becomes clear when you ask locals what would be cool to do in town and they all say ‘get out and go into the Rockies’!
So, I am going to take their advice and explore the Rockies around Calgary for at least the coming week. Going back to nature......the Canadian way. This means with a BIG Land Rover packed with timbits and Molson! It'll be clear that the following Canadian will be officially crowned loser of the year

Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia - 3 weeks

No jokes, this is what I did. After flying to Singapore, I caught up with one of my best mates Erik, who was doing his exchange there, after which we did a 3 week holiday. The keyword was uselesness and random conversations here, and it was damn good! For the first week we had Carmen, a Candian girl, join us who got some organization into our lives. Even though she wasn't German, she did well in that and managed to get us on track most of the time. Starting off at the aiport for our first flight, where we'd partied all night in Singapore and hadn't even reached the stage of hungoverness yet. Erik and I walking 10 meters behind Carmen all the time, chasing the facts and our own legs, managed to actually make it to Laos that day.






Best in Laos was probably the tubing; floating down a river in a tube, having bamboo drinking shacks every 10 meters, where we could consume the local beerlao and moonshine 'laolao' and that got us on our way.



Life became difficult when Carmen left and we were on our own, having to find our own way around. We made it to Vietnam where we did a three day trek in Sapa, rain set in and this helped us get down the mountain even easier; sliding. At the homestay we were once again put to the test and downed a few bottles of their homemade ricewine, dziou. As always the night was better than the day after and with no bloody mary's around we made it back to the top of the mountain without drinks but with a headache.



Last part of the trip was Cambodia. After mainly hearing about Cambodia in relation to the Red Khmer it was a great surprise. The Angkor What temples are amazing and too large to cover in a single day. Just because we'd been doing too many activities untill now, we made our way to the beaches of Cambodia and relaxed for a few days, before a BIG goodbye party in Bangkok.

More pictures on my flickr account.

Keywords: papaya and turtle, happy shake, bongs, tubing, hiking.
(please let me know whether any of this makes sense to you)

Part II !!

House Party I

Was weer een mooi feestje!

Home!

Finally, after 8 months in India I got back in December, about time to update my blog!
The last month in India it was time to travel in the North as my internship had finished and I loved India much....... =)
It was great to catch up with Thibaut again and hear that even a French can speak 'Borat'. It made a big impression on me! We travelled from Delhi, through Rajasthan, Agra and Calcutta to Assam. These first weeks were a bit too much for me, India was just too bloody much (expressed weakly) and Assam was actually a nice surprise. Spent a week here in the jungle, after which we departed to Goa for a last week in India full of parties. This was actually all I longed for at that moment......
Coming home was just great, the food was so good over x-mas, seeing friends and family again. Of course being in Europe in winter meant spending some time in the Alps, so went to France for a week to do some skiing.
And now.... let's see how long it takes before life becomes boring again and I need to travel again. For now still enjoying being back and writing my thesis, I don't know if it's a good choice yet, but my thesis' topic has to do with: .....India.....