Our New Office

The U.S. Navy just commissioned the latest and greatest USS New York in New York city last Saturday (Nov. 7th). The New York steamed into the city early last week, and after it participates in the Veteran’s Day parade tomorrow, it will officially begin service as a vessel in the U.S. Navy.

Lucky for Sara, myself, and anyone reading this post, the New York was open for public tours this week…and we got to see her yesterday.

Here are the highlights:

Permission to come aboard, el Capitan? We felt like we were honorary members in the VFW while visiting because we were completely surrounded by retirees. They were a little rowdy, but it was a good group overall.

This was a hands-on, “gee that sure is neat can I press that big red button sir?” kind of tour. Kudos to the military for offering the tour in the first place, and double-kudos for letting everyone climb up on the tank.

What a yokel I am! I thought it would be a funny picture, but instead it’s just weird.

The New York is a San Antonio-class Platform Loading Dock…which means it hauls U.S. Marines + equipment wherever they are needed in the world. The inside of the ship is basically a big parking garage filled with tanks, Humvees, amphibious assault vehicles, and two giant hovercraft. These vehicles are secured using lots of tie-down ratchet straps (shown above).

Up on the “roof” of this giant parking garage (a.k.a. the deck of the ship), there are a bunch of Marine helicopters. Cobra attack helicopters, Sea King cargo helicopters, and the big Osprey shown above. It was an exceedingly nice day, so everyone was happy to hang out on the deck and enjoy the weather.

All jokes and B.S. aside, I was really proud to be an American yesterday, and NOT because of the potential havoc and destruction our mighty armed forces can bring to bear. That’s cool, mind you, but that’s not what had me buzzing.

What put a smile on my face were the people. Everyone on this ship – and I mean everyone – was really happy and excited. The sailors and Marines were happy to be giving tours and answering questions. The tourists and New Yorkers were happy to be on board, and everyone understood the sacrifice these young people were making and they all seemed grateful.

It was a cool way to spend a lunch hour on a Monday.

We’ve gotten to see quite a bit in the last week or so. We’ve also gotten a lot of work done, so it’s been a nice mix of work and play in the remote and ever-changing Lancaster household. Here are the highlights:

We toured the Old Downtown (a/k/a Casco Viejo or Old Quarter or Casco Antiguo), but unfortunately forgot the camera (Doy). Out of 10 months of travel this is the only camera mishap so far, which is actually pretty impressive, I think.

Anyway, trust me when I say that it was an afternoon filled with:

• a delightful walking tour
• Cuban food for lunch
• Italian espresso after lunch
• nice views of the coast and city skyline
• interesting colonial architecture
• beautiful renovated theaters and churches
• impending storm clouds, and
• a museum devoted to the history of The Panama Canal, which we were told included English language descriptions, but actually only had one small sign in English out of the 100 or so other signs in Spanish.

But, there was air conditioning so we didn’t complain.

Over the weekend we rented a car and headed to Coronado, which is about an hour to the southwest of Panama City. On the way, we realized we had made a big accomplishment without even realizing it.

We’ve officially visited South America. All this while we thought we were in North America, but Panama City is in South America. This means we’ve officially visited three continents in our travels. Above is a picture of the Bridge of the Americas, which connects both North and South America. It’s also along the road you take from Panama City to Coronado.

According to the sign, “Coronado is Life,” so I’m glad we got to visit. Who knew what we were missing!

Actually, there’s not a whole lot here except a black sand beach, which was tough to get to and the water has some crazy waves and rip tides going on so we didn’t even get in.

Just to get on to the beach we had to wade through this … ick.

Besides the not-so-great beach, we did manage to find one of the best restaurants we’ve ever eaten at. Fire roasted chicken with fried yucca is my new favorite meal — but only from Restaurante Don Chacho in Coronado.

We also found our way to El Valle de Anton, the world’s second largest extinct volcano. The town of El Valle sits right in its crater.

Funny thing is that we had no idea what El Valle was all about until I started researching for this here post. I think its apparent that after so much time exploring new sights, Jason and I are starting to get lazy. First we forget the camera and now this!!!

But the good news is that without knowing the details at the time, El Valle was still a lovely place with its cloud forest, cool temperatures, and market.

We finished off the day with a mini photo shoot and some adventure travel in the car. Turns out navigating Panama City isn’t as difficult as the tour books will tell you.

Today was a big day in our month-long Panamanian journey. First things first, we headed to the Panama Canal to watch the ships pass through the Miraflores Locks.

It was quite a sight. To be standing there watching something we’ve been hearing about all of our lives.  I learned a lot and am wondering what will happen to the environment, the economy, and Panama once they’re done expanding the canal with another set of locks so the real big dogs can pass through. Did you know they are going to use the dirt and rock they dig up from the expansion to build an island in the Panama Bay?

From here we drove up the Cerro Ancon (a big, random hill) for a few spectacular views of the city. Again, another amazing sight. This one reminded us that there is still so much for us to see and do in Panama City. If it weren’t for the rain and lightening headed our way, we might’ve seen more. Oh well, there’s always tomorrow.

We spent five days in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Well, three full days and two travel days. But whatever, that’s not the point.

The point is that we had a great time just hanging out. It felt good to take some time off of work and to see more of Central America.

Bocas Town is the main center there among the nine-or-so islands that compose Bocas del Toro (mouth of the bull). Many of the buildings are built on stilts and sit over the water. While most everything in Bocas Town is within walking distance, making it to the other islands and to the beaches is done by water taxi.

This is Jason in a water taxi on our way to Starfish Beach. (I hope he was wearing sunblock — look at that shine!)

One of our favorite things to do while we were in Bocas was the eating. There are so many good restaurants close by that it was hard to choose. So we decided to try several different restaurants each night and do an appetizer at each one — bocas in Bocas is what we liked to call it.

Here I am patiently waiting for my martini and yummy bocas dip.

The water here is very clear. We spent a day snorkeling at Starfish Beach, we rented a sea kayak and explored the mangroves, and we made the journey to Red Frog Beach. Guess what they have there?

Little red frogs! Well, they looked more orange, but no one asked me. So whatever … it was great no matter the color.

Last week Jason and I took a few days off to explore the Arenal Volcano and the Monteverde Cloud Forest. We had an excellent time enjoying the cooler temperatures, the lush forest, and of course looking for wildlife. We didn’t see much wildlife, but we did hear some. Like the dink frog, for example. The above picture is one Jason snuck of me listening for the frog that actually makes a “dink” noise.

We also saw groups of roadside katamundi. They are the equivalent of a North American raccoon, I think, but they are much cuter and friendlier. People feed them, of course, so they come right up to your car.

The only downside of our trip was that 1) we didn’t see any toucans (I’m not leaving Costa Rica until I see a darn toucan), and 2) we didn’t see any lava.

Arenal is an active volcano set in the most beautiful of forests. However, the area is also known for its clouds, which means that when there are clouds you can’t see the volcano. And if an area is cloudy enough to bear the name “cloud forest” then it’s likely you’ll have clouds, right?

So yeah, no lava for us. However, we did spend hours at the world’s most amazing hot springs resort – Tabacon. Seriously, I think this might be one of the nicest places we’ve stayed in all of our travels. I also think this was the most fun we’ve had in Costa Rica so far. Needless to say, I highly recommend the Tabacon.

December 5th-9th, 2008. Jet. Lag. Wow. The first day back in the USA was easily one of the hardest travel days we had – after leaving Hong Kong at mid-day and flying for 14 hours, we arrived in San Francisco at 10am! Talk about a long day. We managed to take a nap or two on the plane, but it wasn’t enough. We tried to force ourselves to stay up until 9pm San Francisco time (about 28 hours straight) but it was too hard. We took a series of quick naps, walked around, and ate to stay awake. Jet lag isn’t fun (as we all know), but I had no idea just how miserable it could be until we got back.

As we acclimated to the time difference our first days back we enjoyed the AARP dining plan (breakfast at 5am, lunch at 11:00, and dinner at 4:30) and the sights and sounds of San Francisco. Sara and I had both been to San Fran before, but this was the first time we’d visited together. It wasn’t terribly familiar to either of us, and it was fun to re-discover. We woke up very early our first day, ate breakfast, and STILL managed to make it to the Golden Gate bridge in time for sunrise. We walked quite a bit, from the Golden Gate down to the wharf, then onto Coit Tower, and finally to Pier 1.

You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to get this picture, but I think it might be worth it.

The best part of visiting San Francisco was seeing friends – Kate and Courtney showed us around town a little bit, Adam and Noami bought us dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, and Erin showed us a very nice Tapas restaurant.

We hiked from the Bay Bridge to Coit Tower all in the same morning – and then we walked to Pier 1 and met Kate and Courtney for lunch.

We also visited the recently re-modeled science museum in Golden Gate Park (very fun), walked around Haight-Ashbury (sucks, very depressing), and wandered around Golden Gate park (impressive, kind of like central park in Manhattan).

This little guy (actually not little at all) was the star at the California Academy of Sciences museum in Golden Gate park. Visiting San Fran was loads of fun, and a great place to recover from jet lag. See his friend in the background?

San Francisco is definitely a world-class city. It’s charming, full of history and intrigue, beautiful, and complete. It offers everything that a person could need or want. Sara and I had a great time recovering from jet lag and rediscovering San Francisco. It was good to take in a US city after traveling abroad – it made our transition much easier.

Monday, December 1st, 2008. We struck out early on our first day in Hong Kong with a visit to Victoria Peak. We rode an old cog railway up the very steep side of Victoria Peak, stopping along the way to let passengers on and off. Victoria Peak is a popular place to live for the well-to-do, and at $75 HKD (about $10 USD) the Peak Tram is a quick and relatively inexpensive way for these people to get up and down the hill. At the top, we visited a 6-story shopping mall with a roof-top terrace. The views were incredible. Hong Kong is mostly mountains, and all of the development occurs on the narrow strip of relatively flat land between the mountains and the ocean. It’s incredible – imagine the skyscrapers of Manhattan mixed with the mountains of Colorado and you’ve got a good idea of how Hong Kong is layed out.

It’s hard to grasp just how vertical Hong Kong is from these photos, but you can see how narrow the strip of “flat” land is between the ocean and the mountain here and across the bay.

The wife.

Next, we came back down the hill and visited Millennium Park. Like many parks in Asia, the gardens and water effects here were incredible. Large man-made waterfalls (carved from huge pieces of granite), serene ponds, and carefully cultivated gardens served home to a variety of wildlife (especially quite a few turtles). Millennium park also houses a world-class aviary. There’s nothing quite like visiting a wildlife sanctuary with skyscrapers looming overhead. Say what you will about big city life, but Hong Kong has done an admirable job of preserving a small piece of nature amidst all the buildings.

One of the many skyscraper views from inside Millennium Park.

We visited quite a few tourist spots as well. Walking down Hollywood Road, we came upon Man Mo temple, Possession Point, and a large number of trendy shops and art galleries. We also visited Antique Row, a collection of cheap knock-offs that tourists love. We stumbled across a fortune teller who charged $100 HKD (about $15 USD) to answer ONE question. I was tempted to pay the $100 HKD and ask “How do you sleep at night charging $100 to answer one question?”

One of the biggest events of today, aside from all the sightseeing, was a heart-to-heart that I had with Sara. During the past 8 weeks of travel, there were moments where my anger and frustration got the better of me. I know this doesn’t make me special – far from it – but it was a big moment to talk with Sara about how I deal with these feelings. It was very helpful, and I’d like to publicly thank her for listening, helping, and putting up with me during this trip. I think I’ve grown a little as a person.

Thanks baby.

On the way back to our hotel, things got a little rough…

Thursday, November 27th, 2008. We ventured out into Georgetown this afternoon after a morning’s worth of work. On the way to our first attraction, we bumped into Sheila, an expat visiting Georgetown but currently living in China. Genuinely excited to meet another westerner (especially one from the USA), we invited her along on our tour. We talked about China mostly, and it was very enlightening to hear the perspective of a person who had lived in China for more than 10 years (as opposed to our 3 weeks of experience).

After navigating Georgetown’s treacherous sidewalks (or lack thereof) for a few miles, we parted company with Sheila and visited Cheong Fatt Tze mansion. It was hot, so we stopped at the bar of the Eastern and Oriental Hotel for a cool drink and an appetizer. Next, we walked past St. George’s Church (built in the early 1800’s by the British East India company), the Kong Hock Keong Temple (an icon of worship for the local Chinese population), Capitan Kling Mosque, and a host of other local religious buildings.

The Cheong Fatt Tze mansion.

St. George’s Church in Georgetown, Penang.

The Kong Hock Keong Temple, where Joss sticks and paper are burned for good luck.

The Capitan Kling Mosque.

The culture of Georgetown, along with other cities along the Straits of Malacca, is very similar. Indians, Chinese, and Malays settled cities created and defended by the British and Dutch. The melding of Hindu, Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist, and Christian religions (and cultures) has created a place where everyone shares a common experience despite a completely different heritage. “Americans” (a term I’ve learned is improper – What are all the other people who live in North, South, or Central America supposed to call themselves?) tend to think of the USA as the greatest cultural “melting pot” in the world. Not so – the USA is a great melting pot, but there are a lot of other places that manage this same feat too. What’s more, the USA has yet to embrace and respect Muslim religion and culture as well as Singapore, Georgetown, and elsewhere.

Georgetown is a great example of culture and religion co-existing peacefully – an example we should all hope to aspire too.

Phuket is a much bigger island than we anticipated. In fact, we were pretty surprised to find ourselves 45 minutes away from the popular, touristy areas. We weren’t prepared for its size and felt a little stranded in our hotel. However, if I were ever to be stranded at a hotel, I’d pick this one. We had everything we needed and more.

Although Phuket itself was great, the best part of our time here were the side trips we took to some of the smaller islands nearby. We were told there are more than 130 small islands within two hours of Phuket. We only  made it to a few.

The first adventure was a caves tour. It took about 1 1/2 hours by boat to reach a cluster of uninhabited islands where we disembarked from the big boat onto canoes. We had a guide that paddled us through different caves and around some of these islands.

This is by far the best tour we’ve taken while on our travels. That’s saying a lot especially considering the fact that it was raining like crazy and we had to float in and out of caves (you all know how much I like caves).

Yes, those are bats. The guide told us to keep our mouths closed to prevent bat poop falling into our mouths. I’m serious.

Not all of the caves were overtaken by bats. In others we saw beautiful colors and awesome shapes. From our canoes we saw a lot of wildlife living in the water and on the islands. We saw sea spiders, lizards (of course) and a family of long-tailed monkeys…baby monkeys and all.

Some of the caves we toured were so small we had to lie down and suck it in.

The neat little object you see there is a traditional Thai offering that people make in November for Loy Kratong Day–a celebration of the full moon in the twelfth lunar month. Made of banana leaves and orchids, the idea is to take the offering to the river and send it off with a wish. The celebration comes at a time during the year when water levels are high and the dry season begins.

Here we are sending off the offering that we made ourselves (with the help of our guide). The last of the caves we toured was after dark. This was so we could see the water sparkle from all the phosphorecence in and to send our offering with lit candles and incense. If it hadn’t been raining we could’ve gotten video, but trust us, it was beautiful.

******************************

Black Friday Shopping for the Avid Traveler

What do you buy someone who has no home and nothing more than a piece of luggage or a backpack?
Travel supplies, that’s what.

Check out the Our New Office travel packing list for some excellent holiday gift ideas.

Before leaving for Asia we were warned by our well-traveled friends to expect children to come up to us trying to sell us things. We hadn’t really seen any kids working until we reached Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Now, you’re thinking cute little 8-year-olds that smile coyly waiting for you to take what they’re holding in their hands. Well, that’s not the case.

Yes, they are cute and holding items in their hands, but they’re not coy. They are probably the most aggressive salespeople I’ve seen. Even Jason’s friends at the car dealerships offer less stress and pressure than this place.

When we arrived in Siem Reap we were picked up by our tour guide and taken to a floating village where we went on a boat to see a whole community of people living in boats. Although it seemed a bit like we were just touring a very poor neighborhood, our guide told us we were just witnessing a different way of life. And maybe so, but I couldn’t help be feel like it was voyeurism at its worst.

Having said that though, it was one of the most eye-opening experiences we’ve had so far. It was incredible to see they way these people lived. There was a school on a boat, a basketball court on a boat, floating gas stations, grocery stores, gift shops, and dozens (probably hundreds) of homes.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all this is because after the boat ride was over we exited the boat only to be approached by a young girl about 10-years-old. She was holding this:

I laughed so hard. Partly because the picture of Jason is so hysterical and partly because it was the LAST thing I expected in this place. I mean Six Flags, yea, but Siem Reap, no.

The picture was taken as we were getting on the boat an hour before. I did remember seeing a young boy take our picture, but I didn’t put two and two together until afterward.

I got one too.

On the second day of our Siem Reap visit, we toured Angkor Wat. In several areas throughout the grounds of the temple (we’re talking miles and miles and dozens of structures, not just one main temple) there were stands set up housing a variety of touristy items—mostly water, Cokes, postcards, and replicas of the temples. While one person mans the stand, kids run to the tourists holding items and yelling at you to buy them.

I think we said “no” about 18 different times, but then finally at the end I told one girl I wanted a set of postcards. Since it was clear that I was going to buy, suddenly the price went up. It was sorta hard to negotiate over one dollar with a child in the middle of a Tuesday, so I paid her price. Oh well.

But before I could fork over the cash, there were five new girls surrounding me pushing postcards in my face too. Now, instead of one hard-core sales girl, I had five and only $2 to spend. There was lots of shouting and lots of pleading. At one point I looked over at Jason for help, but quickly saw that he was busy working a deal on a bottle of water so he wasn’t much help.

Videos are on their way, check back in a few days.