Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) – Toronto
The Royal Ontario Museum is Canada’s biggest national historic museum. It shows skeletons of various dinosaurs, a beautiful Asian collection with Chinese temple statues and also one of the best furniture collection of all epochs, starting with the medieval times. I liked the beautiful restored rooms of the renaissance, baroque and so on…you really have the feeling to be back in those times and it helps to understand old paintings of those times. Also I really liked the native American collection because that was new for me. As a special they have right now a Darwin exhibition what shows the complete life of Charles Darwin and his travels and his evolution theories. Very interesting.
Another temple
I visited the oldest temple Vat Xieng Thong of Luang Prabang. It is supposed to be the most beautiful temple in Laos. As well I had booked my ticket today for going back to Vientiane. I will get my visa there for Cambodia. Jost leaves tomorrow too and we will share a room in Vientiane. Read the rest of this entry »
Temple watching and a fountain in the bathroom
Chris and I watched a couple of temple today. In the evening we went for dinner and met a funny couple with them we went later on to the last place what was opened in Luang Prabang – the bowling bar. And who did I met – Jost, a friend of Andy, we didn’t see for at least 3 years. We hang out and went later to the Mekong. When we decided to go home i offered Jost to stay with us because it was to far for him. Chris was so drunk, it was 4:00am and somehow he broke the sink from the wall. The sink was completely destroyed and we had a big fountain at the bathroom. Was really embarrassing when the lady came and had to fix it at night. Read the rest of this entry »
Xieng Khuang Buddha Park
After feeling a little bit weak in the morning I decided having a shake and then doing a trip to the Xieng Khuang Buddha Park. First I had to find out where the park was located and how to get there. I bought a postcard with some pictures of the park and showed it to the people. That seem to help. I found out it is about 20km out of Vientiane city but I could take a public bus for 4000kip. Back home the bus leaves all 10min. So i went to the Buddha Park. It cost 5000kip entry and also another 2000kip for doing photography. It was a good idea to come in the afternoon because it was very quite at the park.
Buddha Park: Read the rest of this entry »
Arrived in Chiang Mai
After a 12hours busride from Bangkok I arrived around 6:00am at Chiang Mai. I asked one of the swedish I met for sharing a room so we paid only 100baht each for our accomodation. Frederic (the swedish) wanted to walk around so we did a little tour in Chiang Mai visiting some temple. It was a little bit complicated to find the way back to the guesthouse but finally we got it. Later I booked for 1600baht my three day trekking tour through the jungle and the mountains around Chiang Mai. Read the rest of this entry »
The “Floating Market”
Early in the morning was the pick-up for the trip to the floating market. Its the oldest and the original one. I hoped to get there lots of photo opportunities. But what a disaster! I started feeling cheated by the travel agency lady. We had only 40min time at the market, what is definitely not enough for buying things, bargaining, doing photos and eating. I was upset. After the 40min they bring us to a carving place and a gemstone place nobody wants to see! Promised was a free drop-off at the hotel. But the hotel was on the other side of Bangkok. So the driver absolutely didn’t want to bring us home. It cost us nerves and 40min after finally he had to drive us home. Besides we heard from the others in the bus, who bought the ticket somewhere else, that they only paid 200baht for the half day ticket… Never buy at a governmental tourist information T.A.T.!!! I started becoming really concerned about my 10 days Koh Phagnan with beach front bungalow and free shuttle service. Read the rest of this entry »