Travel Planning

Life in the Foreign Service enables me to do a lot of one of my favorite activities: planning trips! Of course, taking the trip is also fun but for some reason I enjoy planning the trip almost as much as I enjoy being on the trip itself. There is something about the anticipation and excitement that come with making travel plans that is extremely addicting. Fortunately, I have a number of great vacations coming up in the next couple of months and have spent many pleasurable hours poking around on Fodor's, Trip Advisor, WikiTravel, Conde Nast and more for ideas on what to do while traveling the world in the next couple of months!

Lobby of the St. Regis Hotel.

January: Rome & Florence: My next trip will be in a couple of weeks to Rome, Italy, where Scott and I will be attending my twin brother's wife's sister's (sister-in-law's?) wedding at a beautiful, elegant Roman Catholic church! I'm particularly excited about this trip, not only because of the fabulous opportunity to go to Rome, but also because I will be spending a whole week there with my parents, brother, sister-in-law, and sister-in-law's family. It's pretty cool to be able to say that. The wedding will be held at Santa Susanna Chapel and the reception is right down the street at the St. Regis Hotel.

The ceremony is at Santa Susanna Chapel.

Judging from the pictures, both venues will be absolutely amazing. My sister-in-law's family have been to Rome several times, and they've got some great activities planned for us including a high tea at our hotel, Mass at St. Peter's, a Vatican tour, and plenty of group dinners and walking tours. I'll also be taking a two hour train ride up to Florence to spend the day there with my parents, brother, and sister-in-law. Counting down the days until it's time to go! 

March/ April: Cape Town: I haven't looked into this one quite so much yet, because I've been busy planning our Rome trip and because lots of our work colleagues have been there recently so it'll be easy to ask for travel tips. Air Botswana just started direct flights a few times a week from Gaborone to Cape Town, and we plan to take advantage of this newly convenient option by spending a few days in Cape Town and the beaches and wine country of the Western Cape during Botswana's Easter holiday. I have heard only rave reviews from friends who've been to Cape Town and can't wait to see it for myself! 

  

May/June: R&R in Europe: This is another fun one to contemplate. R&R travel is a wonderful phenomenon where the State Department will purchase round trip airfare for employees and their family members once in a two year tour (a few posts don't get an R&R but most do) either to go home to the U.S. or to travel to a designated R&R point. Shanghai's R&R point was Sydney, Australia and in 2011 we used the ticket to spend 10 days in New Zealand. This year, we will again choose the designated R&R point option

Lake Tekapo, New Zealand (April 2011)

to fly to London and from there will spend a few weeks traveling around Eastern Europe. The best route from Gaborone to London connects in Dubai, so we figure we may as well spend a night or two there to check out the United Arab Emirates and visit that region of the world for the first time. The trip is still a ways away, but I've worked out a potential itinerary and will be spending many more enjoyable hours exploring options. I change my mind on the details just about every day, but so far this is what I have (fingers crossed I can get all this time off work):

Fly from Gaborone to Dubai (via Johannesburg)
Dubai: two days
Fly to London
London: three days
Fly to Croatia
Croatia: six days (Dubrovnik, Plitvice Lakes National Park, Zagreb)
Train to Budapest
Budapest: three days
Train to Vienna
Vienna: three days
Train to Prague
Prague: four days
Fly from Prague back home to Gaborone (via Dubai and Johannesburg)

Unpleasant Animal Kingdom

Since moving to Botswana, I’ve had almost daily encounters with various forms of bug life inside our house! While our house is lovely – very spacious and comfortable and I even like our assigned furniture – it’s an older home and in my opinion the construction standards did not incorporate enough bug-proofing elements. For example, there is a one inch gap between the outer doors and the ground which allows plenty of room for creepy crawly beings to make their way into the interior of our home. A significant portion of the caulking on our walls, floors, and kitchen/bathroom fixtures is gone, and those not-too-large bugs with flexible exoskeletons can easily squeeze through the gaps (remind me to get some caulking stuff soon to fix it!). And the bathroom and kitchen drains are all open with no covers, and I suspect are connected directly to the outside by open pipes...  perfect for bugs with the urge to explore the human world.

BUG INVASION!  Cockroaches, rain flies, black flies, ants, and millipedes are common guests in our home. The different kinds of bugs (other than cockroaches, who so far have just made a few random but disgusting appearances, thanks goodness) normally come to us in swarms, all at once.

RAIN FLIES: A couple of hours after it rains, we normally have at least 20 or so rain flies who make their way inside and hover around our lamps and overhead lights. Rain flies look just like termites – in fact, when we first saw them we thought we had a termite infestation. Once came home from a weekend away to find a huge pile of at least 100 rain fly wings just outside our front door. I guess they died trying to get into our house. The lamps that we have by our windows are particularly popular spots for them to gather; locals tell me that when it rains, they turn off all their lights to stop the rain flies from coming into their houses, which are even less protected against bugs than ours are!

ANTS: Now that it’s the summer, we are entering Ant Season. The bathrooms, with all their piping and open drains and bad caulking, are very attractive to the ants of Botswana. Every once in a while we spray ant killer to reinforce our vulnerable borders, and a few hours later there will be little piles of ant corpses scattered around the bathroom floor. Gotcha!

BLACK FLIES: Apparently the Botswana summer time is also Fly Season. But the last couple of weeks large, black flies have been popping up out of nowhere, mostly in the kitchen! They are very fat and sluggish and so are easy to hit with a handy kitchen towel. There have been so many of them lately– we’ve killed at least 10 a day for the last week-  that we actually have a dedicated fly towel we carry around with us in case we need to whack some intruders.

MILLIPEDES: And there are lots of thick, black millipedes that range from about two to six inches long! You can see them crawling all over the roads in town and they like to come in under the front door; once, I saw one crawl under the door into our front hallway, take a look around, and then crawl back out… guess he had the wrong house.  As disgusting as these sound, I have actually grown used to them and don’t mind them as much as say a cockroach…  but my worst fear is that I will step on one – how disgusting would that be? This fear is not unfounded and stems from a very traumatic bathroom experience one morning.  I sleepily stumbled into the bathroom to wash my face and then put in my contacts, which I am almost blind without. After I put in my contacts, I looked down at the floor and saw that there was a millipede there just a couple of inches away from my bare foot! I still shudder thinking about what would have happened had I moved my foot over and stepped down.

COCKROACHES: So far I’ve only seen a couple of cockroaches in our house and let’s hope things stay that way, because these are the bugs that gross me out the most. I screamed and ran when I spotted a cockroach in the kitchen a couple of months ago on the day the movers came to bring us our shipments. The movers thought that was hilarious, and simply reached down, grabbed the cockroach by one of its wings, and put it gently outside. YUK!! And, yesterday there was a giant four-incher in the hallway yesterday headed toward our bedroom… luckily Scott sprayed him with insect killer before he got any further.

*I realize this post would be more illustrative if I had pictures of the bugs to insert, but I was too busy running away from them to take photos!*

Beaches of the World

I would have to say that my favorite way to spend a vacation is on the beach! The soothing sound of the ocean waves, the contrast between different shades of blue sky and water, and the refreshing smell of salt and sand are appealing on so many different levels. Since I have lived abroad for three out of the past five years, I have been fortunate to have visited beautiful beaches in six different countries: China/ Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Indonesia, South Africa and Thailand. Each beach was beautiful in its own way and I couldn't say which was my favorite!

Since for the first time in my life I am living in a landlocked country (no beaches!), I thought it would be fun to reminisce about all that glorious time spent lounging ocean side in various Asian countries.

Repluse Bay and Deepwater Bay, Hong Kong (multiple visits 2007-08 and 2010-12)

Hong Kong is one of my favorite places because even though it's a crowded, cosmopolitan city, it also has surprisingly beautiful and clean beaches. Repulse Bay and Deepwater Bay are located about a 20 minute busride towards Stanley from downtown Hong Kong - watching skyscrapers turn into dramatic cliffs studded with mansions from the top of a double decker bus was an experience in itself! The two beaches are linked by a scenic footpath and walking between the two offered lovely views of the water. During my visits to Repulse and Deepwater Bays, I liked to swim out to one of the rafts anchored a few hundred yards out from the shoreline to escape the floods of mainland Chinese tourists who would rush down to the beach with their sun umbrellas to snap a quick photo of the sunbathers before scurrying back up to their tour bus.
 

Phuket and Ko Phi Phi, Thailand (January 2008)

Maya Bay, Phi Phi Ley

Hiking in Phuket

Scott and I visited the beaches of southern Thailand during our Spring Festival holiday from teaching English in Zhanjiang. This was a truly amazing trip! We stayed in Phuket for a couple of nights, and then rode the ferry to nearby Ko Phi Phi where we stayed in a rustic (as in, no electricity!) bungalow right on the sand. A highlight of this trip was the day we rented a kayak and spend the day paddling around the island exploring all the lovely white sand beaches that encircle Ko Phi Phi and swimming in the warm, crystal clear water. We also visited Maya Bay, where Leonardo DiCaprio movie, The Beach, was filmed. Spectacular!

Sanya, Hainan Island, China (May 2008 & November 2010)

A little piece of paradise in southern China

What's Sanya without matching tropical outfits?

We first traveled to Sanya, Hainan's prime beach location, during Dragon Boat Festival at the end of our time in Zhanjiang, and were so impressed by the cleanliness and tropical beauty of Sanya's beaches that we flew down for a second visit a couple of months after we moved to Shanghai in 2010. I know what you're thinking, and "China" and "pristine beaches" don't exactly go together in my mind, either. However, Sanya can rival any of the nicest beaches I've visited throughout southeast Asia. The coastline in the Yalong Bay area is lined with posh hotels (there's a Ritz Carlton!) and the beaches are truly gorgeous. If you're lucky, you can even spot a submarine or two traveling to or from the Chinese submarine base located out in the bay.

Jimbaran Bay, Bali, Indonesia (October 2010)

Sunset at Jimbaran Bay beach seafood restaurant

View of the ocean from our hotel

Ah, honeymoon in Bali! On our trip to Bali, we saw fabulous temples, street markets, craft shops, tea terraces and even a volcano in and around Ubud. After a few days in the interior of Bali, we moved to the fabulous location of Jimbaran Bay to spend the rest of our honeymoon at the Four Seasons Resort right on the beach. While the beach was gorgeous of course, the best part of this trip was our hotel. It was our first experience staying at such a luxurious hotel, and everything from the food, to the service, to the landscaping was 100% perfect. Not so easy on the wallet... but hey, it was our honeymoon! And when we wanted to save money on a meal or two, we just had to walk down to the restaurant on the beach from some fresh and inexpensive seafood.

 South Island, New Zealand (April 2011)

A hidden treasure

Our favorite vacation yet: we spent 10 days driving from Christchurch to Greymouth on New Zealand's South Island. The drive was truly breathtaking - I actually felt short of breath when viewing some of the most overwhelming natural beauty I have ever experienced. Every time we turned a corner I thought, "This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen." Then we would turn another corner, and again, I was confronted with the most beautiful thing I had ever seen! It was almost difficult to take it all in. During the drive, we saw just about every major geographical feature, from rainforest, to farmlands, to glaciers, to fjords, to... yes, beaches! One day near the end of our drive, I spotted the ocean from the car and so we pulled over. We came upon an absolutely breathtaking beach and there was not a soul to be seen for miles in either direction. I do not know the name of the beach or even where we really were when we stopped - and I think that is so typical of New Zealand that even a random, deserted beach along the highway is so stunningly gorgeous that it ranks among the top few beaches I've visited.

Langkawi, Malaysia (October 2011)

Private beach for our hotel.

Langkawi was our second Four Seasons beach trip and it was truly wonderful. This time we did not have a honeymoon as a handy excuse for our lavishness - we told ourselves it was an anniversary of our honeymoon in Bali from the previous October and therefore a fully justified vacation! The hotel was fabulous and the beach was all you would expect from Malaysia: soft white sand, calm and clear water, and a balmy breeze. Perfect.

Bintan Island, Indonesia (April 2012)

Beach on the rocks!

Our last beach Asian beach trip before we left Shanghai, we rode the ferry just about two hours from Singapore while on vacation there to check out the beach in Bintan, Indonesia. Bintan is a popular destination for many Singaporeans, and once we got there we could see why! Again, I love big cities that also have beaches that are easily accessible. If I am ever fortunate enough to be posted in Singapore, I will for sure be going back to enjoy the lovely Bintan.

Restaurant Review: Ile Maurice, Umhlanga Rocks

We had a luxurious three hour Christmas Eve dinner at a Mauritian- French restaurant called Ile Maurice in Umhlanga Rocks (a popular beach destination about 20 minutes’ drive from Durban). It was by far the best meal we had in Durban; actually, it easily was the best meal I’ve had since moving to Africa! Dinner at Ile Maurice was the first time I’ve tasted Mauritian food, which I can best describe as a delicious, greed-inducing combination of flavorful French food and island spices. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures during dinner, because I was too wrapped up in an eating frenzy to do so.  J

Scott and I both started with the crab soup, which, in contrast to the heavy, creamy bisque I have grown to expect when I order “crab soup,” was delightfully light, flavorful and spicy. For our main courses, Scott ordered the Carre D’Agneau Grille, a flavorful rack of lamb and I had the Canard a L’Orange, a very tender half duck basted in a delicious red wine and Grand Marnier sauce. Buttery mashed potatoes and lightly grilled vegetables for the table were excellent accompaniments to our mains. Finally, dessert: Crème Brulee Madame Mauvis (restaurant founder) for Scott and rich, creamy cheesecake for me. Très délicieux!

While the restaurant itself was very cute and had a nice view of the ocean from the top floor where we were seated by the window, a negative side to the evening was the drunken antics of the elderly South African couple seated at the table next to ours. As the couple consumed more and more champagne (for her) and brandy (for him) their arguing became louder and increasingly vulgar, with her shouting obscenities at him and him slamming his hand on the table violently. Later in the evening, the woman went on an anti-Jewish rant and circulated to each table, aggressively demanding that guests prove they are “Christians and not Jews” by wishing her a merry Christmas. This was amusing at first, but quickly got old and I was surprised that management did not do more to control the situation and/or kick the couple out of the restaurant once they started disturbing other guests. 

Restaurant Rating (ON A SCALE OF  TO )

Food	AMAZING – trunk and tail-swinging good! I had a lot of duck in China but never one like this. YUM.
Service	AMAZING – trunk and tail-swinging good! The waiter was very knowledgeable and I was impressed that they gave us a whole pitcher of ice water, impressive for a French restaurant!
Ambience	The elephant in the room says this place needs improvement. A nice spot, but the angry arguing and anti-Semitism were mood killers. Christmas Eve, people!
Overall Experience	Trunk-swinging good. Had it not been for the drunken couple, Ile Maurice would have easily gotten five elephants.