Quick posting about a recent trip to Russia — Moscow and Saratov

Time really goes by very fast…and things around us (the world around us) is changing fast as well. I just recently had the opportunity to go on a trip to Russia. I have been to Russia only once before — and that was long, really long time ago, so it almost does not count. The country has changed so radically / drastically since 1989….that, I must admit, this trip was essentially my first one!

I will go into more details and experiences in a subsequent posts, but just a quick heads up for you if you are flying into Demodedovo on your arrival, be ready for a long wait to get through passport control… The lines are long and the airport not well airconditioned. If you are traveling with a small child / children, you can look for a line which is asigned for parents with children — that will make the wait a bit shorter and help with your potentially tired kids.

Then once you are through immigration, the next time sink will be the trip to the city. Demodedovo appears to be located about 50-60km (based on where you are travelling to in the city) from Moscow!!! I do not get it. There is no convenient public transport, and the airport is SO far away…. Go figure. On top of that there is only one main highway that connects the airport with the main part of the city. So you can imagine that highway gets pretty bogged down in rush hour.
While on this trip I made 3 round trips between Moscow and Demodedovo, and one of them was in rush hour — it took us about one and a half hours to get from Demodedovo to Kievski Vokzal (Kiev train station near Europe Square in Moscow). So I got bored on the first drive and started taking pictures as we were travelling — here are a few….

Entry into Moscow coming from Demodedovo Airport

Street in Moscow --- the old LADA is still on the street

Trip to Zion National Park - from Las Vegas

Well folks, the Christmas and New Year’s holidays are almost over - literally a few hours left of the weekend and the first work day of the new decade starts - tomorrow is January 4th….But in the next few hours I will try to catch up on posting photos and writing a brief set of notes about what my family and I considered the noteworthy points about some of the trips we took during this vacation.

So lets start — first topic: ZION NATIONAL PARK. In planning our trip during the week of December 20-25th we had several destinations in mind (Las Vegas of course — it was the place we were going to stay the nights, the Grand Canyon, Zion). ZION was certainly a very pleasant surprise — its beauty was quite something! But first things first. If you are willing to spend only a day at the park — which is what we planned — then you can certainly make a day trip out of it. Plan to leave your hotel in Vegas early in the morning. The trip is about 170miles (one way) — we stayed at the Signature at MGM Grand — and will take you approximately 3 hours of driving. Here is a link to the driving directions (per Mapquest — our GPS system showed similar route)

Once you get close to the park, you will enter the town named Hurricane — interesting name :-) where you will see many rock and jewelry shops. We did not get a chance to see any of them as on the way in we wanted to spend as much time as possible in the park so we did not stop. Later that evening, on our way out of the park everything was closed — surprise ! We had forgotten that it was December 24th — yes we visited ZION on Christmas Eve. Needless to say there were plenty of benefits of that — most importantly — the park was near empty. We felt we had the place to ourselves. One of the park rangers told us that there are 5000 cars that enter the park daily in the summer!!! On Dec.24th there were may be 5 :-)

Once in the park, we went to the visitors center (only a couple of miles after the main entrance), where we took a map and were told that the best thing to do for a day trip is to take a drive first on the North Fork road (along the Virgin River) and then backtrack and take Route 9 / Zion Mt.Carmel Hwy through a couple of tunnels and as far as we would like to go past the two tunnels.

It is very difficult to narrate all the beautiful views we encountered on both roads. The North Fork gives you access to see the Grotto, Angels Landing, Big Bend, West Rim, Court of the Patriarchs, Temple of Sinawava…. all these names are neat but the best thing to do is to see the photos (at least) - my descriptions will not do them justice.

The views from the Zion Mt. Carmel Hwy are very different — also spectacular… Here you will get the benefit of climbing through a series of switchbacks in the road. Since we were pretty much alone (or one of the few cars in the park) it was very easy to stop or pull off the road at many of the pullouts and of course took tons of photos….Going through the tunnels gave us the opportunity to see some interesting views as the tunnels have “windows” to let natural light in — as they were built in the 1920s and finished in 1930, there was no provision for electricity — and none is needed as the tunnels are small and the “windows” provide plenty of light and of course give you the opportunity to see the canyons framed in a different way.

On the way out of the park we stopped at a bridge just before the visitors center and again had the opportunity to snap some great photos….

The return journey back to Las Vegas and our hotel was uneventful — we spent the time recounting all the different sights we had encountered and deciding when we will make a longer trip to ZION next…. Hopefully soon :-)

The first set of photos are active on the Web — two albums….

One album is from photos taken in Las Vegas (various hotels and exhibits) and one album with a bunch of photos from Zion National Park. The Park is stunning. I will write more about it in the next 2 days or so. For time being enjoy the images — I believe they speak for themselves….

Travel in the Western States of the US - visits to several national parks

Greetings! And Happy Holidays to everyone! This week my family and I have been traveling to destinations in several states in the Western part of the US. You can expect a few postings about our travels within Las Vegas, NV, as well as our visits to several national parks - the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, ZION national park. As I have been finding out this blogs have been getting quite a bit of traffic from searches for photos. So I will plan to post a whole bunch of photos (I think very good ones :-) I might add) from those locations.

I definitely recommend a trip to ZION National Park. I know you will probably ask — “What about the other ones — Grand Canyon? etc?” Well, I know that those “other ones” are popular and will get your attention anyway.

At any rate, I am at the airport now, and will be going home shortly. Stay tuned for the postings with the photos from the trip.

A trip to the Strandzha Mountains Region in Bulgaria

On a recent trip to Bulgaria, our family decided to take some time and visit one of the places which has been “off-the-beaten track” for quite some time. We visited the Strandzha mountains region and specifically the village of Brashlian. It is located about 10km from the town of Malko Tqrnovo very near the border with Turkey in the South East corner of Bulgaria.
The village has about 50 inhabitants (based on what the locals told me) and has been an architectural reserve since 1982. Of course I think, very little has happened since that time except for may be the last 2-3 years when the locals have decided to drop agriculture (based again on what they told me) and focused on Village Tourism — i.e. meet tour groups from the near-by (about 2 hours based on where you are coming from) Black Sea coast resorts and show them around the old school (dating from the 19th Century — before liberation from the Ottoman Empire) and the old houses. In some cases they even host the tours for an overnight stay (some of the houses were denoted with plates which star - i.e. one star or two star accommodations ).

Long story short, the place is very interesting. If you are into traditional old style Bulgarian architecture this is one of the places to see it…..

Take a look at the photos….and have a good trip!

The Most Famous Jade Art Piece — the Jade Cabbage

Well folks, you thought people are kidding when you heard (at least once in your stay or travel in China or Taiwan) that the most famous jade artwork in the world is the Jade Cabbage…. No, this is the case for sure — countless visitors to the Palace Museum in Taipei line up to see that piece of art. No photography allowed !!!!

I borrowed an image from Wikipedia so I can show that revered piece of jade shaped as a head of Chinese cabbage…

Taking a closer look while you are in the museum one can actually see also a grasshopper hiding in the green leafs… It is a quite amazing piece of work. The importance of the Jade Cabbage is also highlighted in recent article of Beijing This Month magazine.

So, the next time you have the opportunity to go to Taipei — visit the Palace Museum. This is becoming increasingly easy given the direct flights from the mainland to Taipei… Here are a few more photos from Taipei
LungShan Temple The Palace Museum

More on JiuFen and JinGuaShi Towns - a Day Trip From Taipei City

It took me a while to get back to writing about the trip to JiuFen and JinGuaShi areas. Work has been very busy and this has had an impact on how much time I can spend on the blog. But today, Saturday, I finally got to it… So here I go:

I mentioned about going to JiuFen. Yes, this is a worthwhile day trip from Taipei. There are many options on how to get there:

* Of course your own or friend’s vehicle :-) is a good one. Although be careful — parking in the area is quite challenging. A lot of people take the weekend drive into the mountains. There are some parking lots in the town and 4-5 hour stop will cost you around NT250-300

* Bus service from Taipei;

* Take the train — to Rueifang Station — here is a link to TRA: http://www.railway.gov.tw/index/index.aspx

What do you do in JiuFen? Well there are many options:
* Hiking — there are tons of trails some of which pretty steep (see the photos of the hills surrounding the town in this and the previous posting; You can see also Tea Pot mountain — interesting hill in the shape of a tea pot as the name would suggest;

* Visit the small museums:
- The Gold Ecological Park — in the town of JinGuaShi (next door to JiuFen), where you can see
a museum of all-wood Japanese architecture: The Four Joined Japanese Style Residence;
the museum of Gold;
The Crown Prince Chalet - associated with a strange story — the Chalet was built in 1922 during the Japanese occupation in expectation of a visit by the Japan Crown Prince (later he became emperor Hirohito) — oddly enough he did not visit, but the chalet was built nevertheless….Oh, well. Nice place to visit anyway :-)
Visit one of the Benshan gold mining tunnels;

* Shopping: there is a pretty big shopping (ornaments, food, clothing, etc.) — here is a link to some of the shops
http://www.9sale.org/en/store_list.php

Another idea to consider is a weekend stay in the area. There are many single family bed and breakfast like hotels. I took a picture of one of them on this photo you can see the building on top of the hill on the left hand-side. This bed and breakfast place is owned by a lively 85 year old Taiwan lady who was very eager to give us all sort of pointers about the locale….

Here are some more images from the shopping street in JiuFen:

And then some more of JiuFen:

Enjoy your trip!

Visit to the Gold Ecologica Park and JiuFen area - Taiwan

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to visit an interesting outdoor museum in Taiwan. Friend of mine and his family invited me to join them in a visit to JinGuaShi and JiuFen. JinGuaShi is an area where in the early 1920s -1940s-1950s there was an operation focused on mining gold and copper. JinGuaShi was a booming town at the time and also a town where today one can see remnants of Japanese style wooden houses (special type of construction) and check out old mining tunnels. I will write more about this in a later post, but at this time wanted to at least post some photos… Enjoy.

Traveling from Taiwan to China - what are the options

You may or may not know that travelling between China and Taiwan is fairly complicated. There are no direct flights between the two countries (except for several days during the year — during the Lunar New Year / Chinese New Year festival (late January or February))

So if you are travelling form Taipei to Shenzhen one good way to make the trip cost effective is to purchase a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong on lets say Cathay Pacific then also at Taipei airport you can purchase a ferry ticket for Hong Kong to Shekou (in Shenzhen) for HK$200. If you have checked in luggage that luggage will be transfered to the ferry the same way it gets transfered if you switch between planes / flights.

Once you arrive in Hong Kong Airport, just ask for the gate location for the ferry services. The ferry company I used is CKS . The gate for the ferry service is located in the transit area of the airport so you do not need to go through immigration or customs.

If you have checked-in luggage make sure that you have at least one and a half hours between the flight and ferry otherwise the luggage will be late. If that happens the ferry service gate person will ask you to stay for the next ferry — they are every 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Once you arrive at Shekou harbour you can take a cab to Crowne Plaza Shenzhen (the Venetian Hotel), it’s about 20km. away.

I have found this to be a fast and cost effective way to get to Shenzhen.

If you need to travel from Taipei to Shanghai you could travel still to Shenzhen as I described above OR you could travel via Jeju island. The flights are Taipei to Jeju and then Jeju to Shanghai. That will save you at least 2-3 hours travel time (vs. a flight Taipei-Hong Kong - Shanghai)

Then if you are flying to Beijing you can take the Shanghai route above or the Shenzhen route or fly via Seoul (Incheon airport). The flight from Incheon to Beijing is less than one and a half hours duration.

Well, I hope this helps! Happy Travels and let me know if you have questions.

Vacation in Phuket - Patong Beach

Nai Harn Beach Holiday Inn Patong

Well, I am sure many of you are thinking about the next holiday — there are several coming very soon:
New Year’s, Chinese (Lunar) New Year, Valentine’s Day…wedding anniversaries (there must be some between now and March :-) for some of you)… Any of those holidays warrants a trip to a beautiful place like Phuket. My family (my wife, daughter, and I) spent a wonderful week there during the last Chinese New Year. It took me a while to write about it because we had many other things to write about plus Phuket is tough to write about — you simply have to go there to truly appreciate it.

Nevertheless, I decided to write a few lines and give you some ideas as to where to go and what makes sense to do:

Places to stay — we recommend the Holiday Inn Busakorn Wing at Patong Beach

Beaches to go to: Patong Beach, Nai Harn Beach — probably the most beautiful beach in Phuket

Places to eat: sounds strange but the Thai restaurant at the Holiday Inn in the Busakorn Wing is excellent!!! Try it - you will enjoy it.

Things to do: (1) Diving/snorkeling at Nai Harn Beach, rent a speed boat for the day and go to James Bond rock and then to other uninhabitted islands with pristine beached.

(2) Visit a rubber plantation and take an elephant ride. Interesting experience.
Elephant ride Islands off Phuket Kristin and Sarah in Patong