Thursday, April 17, 2008

Tales From the Other Side

My friend/landlord, works for a company that makes portable x-ray analyzers and is a technical sales rep. He's currently on his way around the world selling this product and he decided to share this with me and a few of his other friends:

Hi all!

I wanted to drop a brief note saying I’m alive, and I’ve learned a few things during my trip:

1) I don’t think you can see the sun in China . I was in Shenzhen and the sky was a nice yellow.

2) The Monkeys in Malaysia have big balls. Like… ½ of their body weight big. It is unclear whether this is related to them living right next to Malaysia ’s radiation research facility. (And… yes… Malaysia does have a place that does radioactivity research. They have an article in their lobby on how irradiating palm oil improves it)

3) The Malaysian Radiation Research facility has a warning in Malay on the front door, and a picture of the Evil Monkey from Family guy under it. I love this country.

4) I had a reaction this morning that I couldn’t help. I got a Chinese breakfast, which was mostly great. The pork bun, dumpling and red bean paste tart were all great. I was thinking “I could handle this. It’s damned good.” Then they brought congee, which is semi salty rice gruel, and the country music started in my head. Eventually, it broke into the full chorus of “Proud to be an American.”

Hope yall are doing great!

Phil

I doubt I'll be in Malaysia staring at irradiated monkeys, but I thought this was funny and I wanted to share. If anyone else has observations from their world travels, I invite you to post a comment. I'd love to hear about your experiences and observations.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

My first blog!

Hi Everyone. This is my first real blog. I've never really had a reason to blog until now. I just finished my PhD last week and a total of 25 years of education. During that time, I never really traveled much, but I know a ton of people who have. I also know a bunch of people who live in other countries. I had this crazy idea around the end of year 3 in graduate school - when I finished, I was just going to go. When else am I going to have the opportunity to do this?

So, here I am - 2 years after I said I was going to go - I'm Dr. Cappy and I'm ready to conquer the world! Well, maybe conquer isn't the right word. I'm headed out to have the time of my life - then come back to reality.

In this blog, I'm going to document my trip - everything from planning to traveling to reviews and memories when I get back. If you're reading this, I want your comments and suggestions. I know almost nothing about some of the places I'm visiting. For most of the time I'm in Europe, my plans will be up in the air - I'll be making it up as I go along (as much as a Type A person can really make things up as they go along). =)

I look forward to reading your comments and hope you look forward to reading my 1st blog!

A Quick Scetch of My Plans

I'm pretty lucky to have friends and family all over the world. I think that has something to do with being in school so long and meeting a ton of people, and having a mother born abroad (no pun intended - sorry mom, but she really was born in Liverpool, England). This means I have beds or couches in a lot of different places.

I plan to leave some time in early July. I'll start by driving down the east coast of the US. I'll visit my brother in New York City, then make my way down to Virginia (in Ashburn) to see my parents and my grandparents (in Portsmouth).

After a bit of immediate family visiting, I'll leave my car with mom & dad and hop on a plane to San Francisco to visit with my cousin Jane, Aunt Sally and grandma-Rene. From there, I'll either go to Hawaii, then New Zealand, then Syndey - or just straight to Sydney. Ideally, I'd like to go to all of those places, but I need to do a bit more planning to make Hawaii and New Zealand happen. I have an old family friend in Hawaii, who I need to get in touch with. In New Zealand, my thesis adviser has a number of contacts and told me that I HAVE to go there, but I don't quite have a place to stay set up yet. An old friend of mine from my 1st 3 years of grad school lives in Sydney, and I plan to visit him. I've given him a little bit of warning so far.

After Sydney, I'm going to Bangkok to visit an old childhood friend and her family who live there. I may or may not stop in Hong Kong on the way. My mom has a cousin (who I've never met) who lives in Hong Kong, and I've heard great things about that city.

After Bangkok, I will go to Istanbul. I have a couple of friends that live here in Boston who go on a cruise every year off the coast of Istanbul and they invited me to come with them! Their plans aren't quite set for the summer yet, but neither are mine - we'll have to coordinate.

After Istanbul, I will head out to Europe - probably starting in Rome and going wherever I feel on my way to England, where I'll visit with my mom's extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.).

All of this is probably more than I can do in 2 months, but there are a couple of definite destinations - Sydney, Bangkok, Istanbul and England. AND of course I could plan all of this in the reverse order - go east instead of west. I kind of like the idea of going west because I keep gaining time most of the time.

I want to buy my flight package this week, but I need to do a little more research. If you're reading this and trying to figure out where to start in planning a trip like this, here's some quick advice: Wikipedia is awesome. There's a whole Wiki page about starting to plan a trip around the world:
http://wikitravel.org/en/Round_the_world_flights
I've started looking into some of these flight options. So far, I like the Sky Team deal. It looks like I can leave a lot of my trip open ended and plan as I go (as long as I schedule my first flight and give 7 days notice for each subsequent flight). Star Alliance has the best user interface and a whole bunch of flight options. You can see your route on a map of the world as you are choosing your flights - it's really cool. The Great Escapade has a similar user interface, but not quite as flashy. I also run into problems getting from Thailand to Turkey with that package. OneWorld (American Airlines/British Airways, etc.) offers similar trip packages, but no user interface for trip planning. I'm going to have to get on the phone or visit an agent at this point anyway to see if I can get exactly what I want and a price quote for it.

Anyone have suggestions? or run across something I haven't?