Merry Christmas!

The Epic Sign Post

One thing we learned while traveling this year: there are a lot of signs in the world. Signs, we also learned, come in many flavors, from helpful to funny, and downright strange.  At some point, we started taking pictures of them.  So, without further ado, here are some of our favorites.

Australia

Mixing British sensibility and caution with the Australian devil-may-care attitude, road signs in Australia are both practical and entertaining...

They forgot about the sharks.

Many tourists forgot this, so these were quite helpful.

A disheartening sign, especially since we were biking and wine tasting.

New Zealand

We spent a lot of time at holiday parks (a.k.a. campgrounds) in New Zealand. While the people running these parks were almost always kind and friendly, they also invariably posted slightly crazed signs like the one below. Woe to the camper who doesn't obey the signs... 

Malaysia

Signs like the one below were common throughout Southeast Asia, where durian is a popular fruit to eat. It also smells strongly of trash and makes everything around it smell like trash - as we discovered on a very long train ride in Vietnam.

Vietnam

Speaking of Vietnam, it was the source of some of our favorite signs, from propaganda to helpful rules about which guests were allowed in your room.

These signs contained no sense of irony.

Picky guesthouse owners. No prostitutes?!

Their third bullet was inviting, but we did not eat here.

Thailand

Thailand had a more mothering tone to its signs, warning us about dangerous people out to take our stuff and hurt us. Thank you Thailand!

 

Unfortunately, this sign was posted in a Buddhist temple.  Where all the monks were dressed in red... 

Excellent advice for life on the last line. 

Japan

Japan also likes to provide lots of signs, though they often advertised their usefulness in English, then offered all the information in Japanese. Below are three of our favorite English translation signs  - they capture the friendly and polite spirit of the Japanese we met.

We never saw the bee. 

This sign would have been more useful in Mongolia. 

Yes, let's!

And so, the next time you're abroad, just remember:

Nepal Part 4: Trek recap and photos

As you might expect, we visited some pretty spectacular places and took a lot of photos while trekking through the Himalayas in Nepal.  Like this one, capturing the entire Annapurna range at sunset:

But as you also might expect, the internet in Nepal is pretty slow.  So it wasn't until now that we had a chance to get some photos online.  Out of over 1,000 taken across five weeks of trekking, we've tried to put together a manageable album from each of our two treks for your viewing pleasure.  To put the pictures in context, here's a quick recap of each of our two treks.

Manaslu-Tsum Valley: 22 days, 191 miles

This trek took us up the Manaslu Valley, with a 9-day side trip up and down the Tsum Valley.  Both of these areas are only recently open to tourists, are fairly remote, and have a strong Tibetan influence.  We spent a lot of time within a 1-day walk of Tibet, and the area reflects this.  The Tsum Valley also has a lot of monasteries (or "gompas") full of monks (lamas) or nuns (anis).  It's flanked by the Ganesh Himal (with several 7,000 meter peaks) and numerous minor peaks that form the border with Tibet.  It's a relatively untouched and beautiful place.  We even stumbled across a Buddhist festival at a local gompa:

And here's a typical early morning view from the trail:

The upper end of the Manaslu Valley is similar, and is an old trade route to Tibet.  The villages reflect this, and there's still a lot of trading, though less now because of China's influence.  To get there, we walked for five days up a narrow river valley, often perched on trails about 3-4 feet wide with a sheer cliff on one side and a hundred-foot (or more) drop on the other, down into the raging river below.  It was tough walking, but rewarded at the upper end by views of the Manaslu Himal, which contains one of the world's 8,000 meter peaks (there are only 14), Manaslu.  Unfortunately, due to a recent storm and remaining icy conditions, we were not able to cross the Larkye La pass into the Annapurna region and instead had to descend along our original route down through the river gorge.  The last 4-5 days were a bit frustrating as a result, with a busy trail and repeated downhill days taking a toll on our knees.  But the trek was still very scenic and diverse, with changing landscapes every couple of days.  Here's a shot of Mt. Manaslu:

A photo gallery from the Manaslu-Tsum Valley Trek is available here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/103829313469224560701/albums/6088721278173380593

Annapurna: 13 days, 99 miles

We had a guide and porter for the Manasu trek, but that's a double-edged sword.  There are a lot of hassles dealing with a guide, who has his own ideas about the route you should take.  And porters can be ill-equipped and are usually not that experienced in the mountains (oddly) so it can limit your high-altitude options.  For the Annapurna, we opted to just go out on our own, which was a great call.  We got a chance to take some very remote and unused trails, explored high ridgelines, and over 13 days managed to almost double the climbing of our Manaslu trek, ascending about 26,000 feet in total.  It helped that we were well-acclimatized.  The trek was a lot of fun, and the Annapurnas are stunning.  Annapurna Base Camp itself, our highest point in our entire time in Nepal, is an amazing basin hidden behind fortress-like mountains rising over 25,000 feet.  Here's a late-day view of a few peaks:

A photo gallery from the Annapurna Trek is available here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/103829313469224560701/albums/6088921645973869873

We're not sure if we'll ever make it back to Nepal, but we're glad we visited.  The scale of the Himalayas is hard to understand until you've stood at the base of an 8,000 meter peak and stared up in wonder at those who climb to such heights. It's a place of amazing natural beauty, interesting culture, and great outdoors challenges.  Including a lot of dodgy bridges...

And we're back...

We're back in Florida after a fairly interesting 45 hour trip.  It started off inauspiciously, with dense fog in Kathmandu and a closed airport.  Luckily, the fog lifted and we managed to leave Nepal with only a 2 hour delay and some chaos at the airport.  Next, it was a 12 hour overnight from Bangkok to Frankfurt.  That flight left on time, but Thai Airways managed to give Erin food poisoning.  So not much sleep that night, yet we arrived in Frankfurt in relatively decent shape (by this point, we're pretty used to long bus/train/plane rides and OK operating on 2-3 hours of sleep).

As it turns out, the Lufthansa pilots had chosen that day to strike.  Meaning 1,400 flights cancelled and 150,000 people stranded throughout Europe.  We were just starting to look forward to extending our trip by a week or two (hey, Germany and Switzerland?  why not!) when we found out that the only flights not cancelled were about a dozen to the U.S. and Japan.  Our final 10-hour flight left Germany on time, US immigration and customs was a breeze, and -- miraculously -- all our luggage made it.  That's something like 25 flights, a dozen trains, and countless bus rides with no lost bags and no theft.  Sort of amazing.

So now we're relaxing in Florida at Brook's sister's house, somewhat disoriented but in pretty good shape.  It's good to be back, but we're still in denial about facing reality.  Things like phone bills, car insurance, and jobs seem like such a hassle... but we really can't complain.