Six Months Down - Highlights and Lessons Learned

Pamela having a little rest at the Canyons Resort in Park City, Utah

Wow! February 5th marked the sixth month, and planned halfway point, of our round-the-world honeymoon. I can’t believe we’ve already been on the road and married for over six months. Time sure does fly when you’re having fun, it seems like just yesterday we tied the knot in Fiji.

This last month of travel has had us bouncing across North America searching for good snow, cruising through the Caribbean and relaxing with family and friends in California. We’ve had a couple bumps along the way but overall this last month has been awesome. We’ve been so busy that I’m almost a week late on this article and several weeks late on many other articles. Hopefully this week I’ll have some time to catch-up as we’ve had some great times the last few weeks and heaps to write about.

Lessons Learned from Month #6

-   Cruising, at least in tropical destinations, is probably not for us. Our cruise was a good experience and something we’re thankful we did, but would have enjoyed spending longer times in each port with less people.

-   When visiting the US Virgin Islands, especially St. John, it is very helpful to hire a rental car. Taxi prices are ridiculous, even charging for your baggage, which makes the cost and freedoms associated with a rental car a better value. Had we hired a car for our St. John trip we could have seen and done a lot more without having to depend on very expensive taxi services. For example it cost us over 70 dollars to get from the airport to the hotel which could have paid for that full days hire car.

-   Using online lift ticket services, like Liftopia, are a good deal when visiting Park City. We saved about $25 USD on each regularly priced $96 USD ticket because we booked in advance. $96 USD is a lot to pay for a single day skiing, especially if you’re on a budget.

-   Eco-lodge travel is definitely hit and miss when it comes to your comfort level and what you’re willing to put up with. Definitely thoroughly read into your destination ahead of time to ensure you’re up for the creature (dis)comforts some of these resorts offer.

Highlights from Month #6
Pamela –  Banff was beautiful but I really-really loved Lake Louise. Walking on the lake with the ice castle was like a dream come true.  I also really loved visiting Key West for the day. The artsy town and all of the beautiful galleries really made my day.

Dave  - Thankfully during this month I got to travel to some of my favorite places so practically the whole month is a highlight. I loved visiting family/friends, snowboarding in Banff and Park City and spending several days on the island of St. John.

Lowlights from Month #6
Pamela – Easy, all of the bug bites I received in St. John. It’s been nearly a month and I’m still itchy in a couple of places, not to mention all of the new scars from my scratching. Never again will we be eco-lodging it on St. John.

Dave – Watching Pamela suffer with all the bug bites in St. John was not fun at all, I felt so bad for her.  It was really hard to enjoy the natural beauty of the island when my wife was suffering so much.

Looking Down on Park City from the Park City Mountain Resort



Stay tuned for upcoming articles from our time snowboarding in Park City and the Reno/Tahoe area.

Cheers for Now –

Pamela and Dave

Four Months Down - Highlights and Lessons Learned

Walk like an Egyptian

Wow. It's been a busy month here in the Middle East. We've stayed at 16 different hotels over the last 30 days and have seen so many sights and sounds that it's hard to keep up. We are so behind on our web posts but hope to catch-up mid-December as we have a week of relaxation booked between Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt and Abu Dhabi.

Currently we're in Cairo and have just spent an amazing day at the Pyramids of Giza. My mom met us here in Cairo two days ago and so far have been having a great time. Tonight we're catching an overnight train to Aswan where we'll tour Abu Simbel then catch a Nile Cruise boat for a trip up to Luxor.

In the coming weeks we'll be posting pictures writing about our experiences at the following:
- Hanging out at the Moevenpick Dead Sea
- Our Spa Day at the Dead Sea
- Holy sites of Jordan including Bethany by the Jordan (Jesus' Baptism Site), - -  - Mt. Nebo, St. George's Church in Madaba
- Petra
- Wadi Rum - A desert camp-out
- Making Sand Art in Jordan
- Climbing Mt. Sinai at Sunrise
- Chilling out in Dahab, Egypt
- The Pyramids of Giza


Lessons Learned from Month Four
1. Be very careful when buying anything from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. We bought a really fancy Turkish Lamp from the Bazaar and found out later that we paid too much. It was a tough lesson learned and now wouldn't recommend buying anything from the Grand Bazaar as the rent there is so high that shops need to charge more.
2. Climbing Mt. Sinai in the early morning hours may not be worth it. It was very crowded, it felt like I spent more time in line than hiking. I wouldn't do it again.
3. Make sure you know exactly what day trips/excursions are included when booking a guided tour as some brochures lead you to assume that by taking you to a site that the entrance costs are included. We found ourselves spending too much money on things we thought were included in our guided tour. Things that other tour companies did include for a similar cost.
4. When travelling through the Middle East it's a good idea to carry small currency notes as conveniently nowhere seems to have change and it will always work out in the sellers favor. We ended up not buying things because the shopkeeper told us no change. 




Highlights of Month Four
Dave - I think it's a toss-up between Wadi Rum and Petra. Wadi Rum was such an amazing natural place, so solitary and grand in scale, I loved it. Petra was equally amazing but from a man-made perspective. The best part of it was we had this natural wonder to ourselves.

Pamela - Also Wadi Rum and Petra :-) Wadi Rum, just a spectacular peacefull desert of natural rocks and cliffs set amongst sand dunes, where you feel so secluded from the rest of the world. Watching the camels cross the sand as the sun was setting in the background was just amazing to watch from atop the cliffs right by our bedouin camp where we camped out the night in the utter silence of the desert. Petra was amazing in another way, to just try and take in the views and understand a little bit of how these people created and lived in this ancient city carved from the rocks and canyons surrounding it. It creates a respect for how civilised the city was, and to see the blend of the different cultures and religions that influenced it.

Lowlights of Month Four
Dave - I wasn't a big fan of all the bus trips in Turkey. I also wasn't the fan of the town of Alexandria, Egypt. Traffic was a disaster....we spent most of the day in the car.

Pamela - Haha, just as Dave felt...Too many long days in buses in Turkey. It was great to see so much of Turkey, but in such a short amount of time, I felt a little like we were living on a bus for a while. AND the traffic in Cairo and Alexandria. We did a day trip to Alexandria, and we spent far more time in the car in shocking traffic than we did seeing any sights. Not to mention hitting two other cars along the way, and the arguments our driver got into with the other people, even when we were at fault! Not good.


So that's it, another month down. This next month we'll be travelling throughout Egypt then to Abu Dhabi and then finally to America for Christmas with our family and friends in Los Angeles. Thanks so much for reading, we really appreciate it. Two days ago we got our 10,000th hit on our website.

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

Three Months Down – Lessons Learned and Highlights from the Previous Month

The 5^th of November marked three consecutive months of our round the world honeymoon. Just a month ago we were in Nepal, since we’ve traveled to India, Maldives, Greece, France and Turkey.  Over the last month we’ve stayed in 15 different hotels,  spent one night in the airport and one night on a train. The 15 different hotels range from the best of the best to the worst of the worst. We went from an outdoor rain shower to an indoor bucket shower and back again. This month has definitely been the busiest for us, we’ve seen so much in such a short amount of time that it’s hard even finding time to write about the stuff.

Lessons Learned from Month #3
Make sure you have enough sunblock when traveling to the Maldives. If 
not, expect to pay a very high price for sunblock at whichever resort 
you stay at. We ran out and had to spend quite a bit on a less than 
good bottle.

Be very careful when handing over money while traveling. Within 20 
minutes of arriving into India the Tourist Police of all people took 
us for 900 rupees (20 usd) using the old switcheroo technique.

Where double-seemed pants when walking through the jungle. Leeches can 
and will get through the seems of your single seemed pants to get to 
your tasty blood.

If you wear contact lenses then make sure you have a good pair of 
backup glasses. I (DW) have needed to wear my glasses off and on and 
my backup glasses (which I never wore for any length of time) gave me 
a lot of problems. Holiday pics don't look so good with a band-aid 
over your nose.

Be sure to pack your own towell if staying in budget accommadation. 
Even if a towell is provided it often isn't clean and could have the 
texture of sandpaper. Our large pack towell dries fast and doesn't 
have the texture of gravel.

Highlights from Month #3 and Why
Pamela -  Definitely the week in the Maldives. I loved it so much, it was a dream honeymoon.
Dave  - Maldives. Pamela and I got to spend some good relaxing time together. So much of our trip has been go-go-go that we haven’t had much time to stop-stop-stop

Lowlights from Month #3 and Why
Pamela – Indian Railways. I didn’t have a good time on the trains in India. From gag-inducing smells and sights at the stations, to trash lining the floors of the cars, it just wasn’t a pleasant experience. If doing it again I’d definitely spring for 1^st class tickets…but next time I’ll try my hardest to fly.
Dave – Catching a cold and eye infection and not in that order. I didn’t like being sick while traveling through India and I’m definitely sick of wearing my glasses. I should have listened to Pamela earlier and gone to the Doctors sooner vs later. Just don’t tell her I said that.

Where are We Now
We’re currently traveling through Turkey by bus and having a great time doing it. We love Turkey….the food, the people, the sights, everything has been great.  Yesterday we visited St. John’s Basilica in Selcuk and today we visited the travertines of Pamukkale.

New Website Info
I can’t believe we’ve had almost 9000 hits on our website in just over three months. That’s more than I thought we’d get on our whole trip. Thanks again to everyone for checking out the site. Recently we added a little gadget that posts our last Twitter updates from our account @FrqtFlyr and we also have a little gadget that lists where we are and how far we’ve travelled.

That’s it for Month #3 update. Month four will be here before you know it….especially since I’m a little late with this one J

Cheers for Now -

Pamela and Dave

One Month Down - Lessons Learned and Highlights from Month One

The 5th of September marked the end of our first month on the road! We can't believe how fast the time is going. Sometimes it's hard for us to remember where we were last week or even what we did a couple days ago. For this reason, at the end of every month on the road we want to capture our highlights and lowlights of the previous month and any lessons we have learned that will help us or other travellers like us in the future. So here goes for month number one, hopefully there will be eleven more to come.

Travel Lessons Learned:
1. When arriving into Northern Vietnam airports it's a good idea to have your arrival airport transportation booked ahead of time, preferably with the hotel you're staying at. We found not doing so left us too vulnerable to scams and generally made the arrival process unpleasant.

2. Only book bus tickets from the place you're currently located. We booked a bus ticket while in Hoi An for a Saigon to Siem Reap bus and ended up with a bad experience. We only pre-booked like this because it was a holiday and heard the buses might be full. In the end it didn't matter that it was a holiday and could've booked the day before.

3. Do not swim in Halong Bay where the boats park for the night. It's okay to swim in places where there's not many boats parked. I (DW) was jumping off the top of our Halong Bay boat where we parked for the night and ended up very-very sick, not to mention coated in diesel.

4. Sometimes it's better to pay the extra money and fly than to take overland trips, especially between countries. Yes, this is not really budget travel but I don't think we're budget travellers. We want safety, reliability and comfort and need to keep these things in mind (not just cost) when choosing travel methods.

Highlight of the Past Month and Why:

Dave -The Temples of Angkor 

Angkor is an amazing place and a true wonder of the world. The people of Cambodia are amazing and have done a really good job setting up the area for visitors.

Pamela - I have two. Playing with the Baby Tigers in Chiang Mai, Thailand and The Temples of Angkor
The baby tigers are too cute. The Temples of Angkor are great because you can see so much history preserved so well.

Lowlight of the Past Month and Why:

Dave - Being sick in Halong Bay, Vietnam

I had such a high fever and was generally miserable in a beautiful place.

Pamela - 17 Hour Bus from Saigon, Vietnam to Siem Reap, Cambodia
We got so ripped off and lied to in Vietnam. The bus ride was terrible and the Vietnam exit border was one of the most corrupt and dodgy places I've ever seen in my life. You needed to hand your passport to the officer with money in it if you expected to get an exit stamp. Amazing.