Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Hotel of the Day - Le Meridien Dahab


Hotel of the day is a new section that I am going to mess with.  I am plotting launching a larger site, and I am going to test out some of the future site's content here.  On the future site, I will have reoccurring content, and one of the features will be profiling a hotel every day.

For my first hotel of the day, I have to give a huge nod to the Le Meridien Dahab on the Sinai Peninsula in Dahab, Egypt.  As tired a metaphor as it is, I must liken this place to an oasis.  It literally is.

The Sinai Peninsula boasts 2 features, desert sprawl and rocky mountains.  It probably looks more like our conception of Mars than the real Mars could ever hope to be.  On the east coast of the Sinai Peninsula, is the Red Sea, separating Egypt from Saudi Arabia and Jordan.  Lining the Red Sea coast are a number of resort towns and Bedouin (desert nomads) villages.  The primary resort area on Sinai Peninsula is at the southern tip in Sharm el' Sheikh.  This city has an international airport and is the most populous city on the peninsula.  Some of the best diving in the world can be found in this area at Raz Mohammad National Park.  About an hour or two north of Sharm el' Sheikh (or "Sharm") is the quiet town of Dahab.

Dahab is almost perfect.  It is cheap.  The beaches are torn straight out of the Thai playbook, the food is surprisingly delicious, and the Egyptians are hospitable and kind.  The snorkeling is world class.  Want to take a road-trip to Jerusalem or Jordan, you can also do that from here.  Aside from these praises, Dahab also possesses an atmospheric variable that makes it one of my favorite places ever.  It is the chillest place I have ever been.  Ever.  Very very very laid back.  I always have an insane desire to do as much shit as possible while traveling internationally.  In Dahab, I had to be coaxed out of my sunning chair with promises of Egyptian sheesha and homemade hummus.

In the southern area of Dahab is the Le Meridien Dahab compound.  Gorgeous manicured lawns, multiple pools, plently of beach real estate, and offshore reefs to explore contribute to make this place a real stunner.  It is ideal for quasi adventurous family types not completely hellbent on the idea of independently exploring, but that may want to entertain the notion on a whim.  It is beautiful, with western amenities and food, and if you get the itch to explore Mt. Sinai, Jordan, or some Bedouin settlements, then you can easily arrange 5 star transit and guides through the hotel that will be safe and pleasant.  Essentially, places like this serve the function for individuals that want to dip a toe in to experience Egypt, but want to retain creature comforts and a luxrious home base to dine and lounge.


Some random Tidbits

Rooms right now are about $100 per night.  We went in February and paid about $40 per night.  It is possible to get insanely good deals.  It is a very nice resort.  

This resort is very 5 star.  The rooms have ocean view patios, jacuzzi baths, outdoor and indoor showers, and flat-screen televisions.  The food is decent, but not excellent.  We had better food in Dahab at restaurants.

The beach is the best we experienced in Dahab, but lacked the authentic vibe of beaches in Dahab proper.  The guests are primarily wealthy Europeans.

           A room

 View from our patio 

 Lawn chairs 

 Hotel Grounds

 Pool with Saudi Arabia in the background 

 The grounds are very well kept 

 Kristin on the golden beach, Dahab means gold 
 Year round sun 

 In our pod 

 A shot of the multiple pools 

 Front of resort 


 Lobby 

 Entry 

 Our room 

 Outdoor Shower 

 Jakuzzi
 Entrance at night



 The main airport of the region is at the tip of the peninsula in Sharm el' Sheikh.  You can fly there on easyjet from London, on Egyptair from Cairo, and also from Rome on Egyptair or Alitalia.      

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Super Duper Weenie


Off of the Black Rock Turnpike in a town called Fairfield (CT), wieners are sizzled to perfection by the hundreds.  I do not know how or why such resplendent creations came to be in such a nondescript little corner of the world, but after my first bite, I frankly did not care.  Super Duper Weenie creates a mean hot dog.  I have no idea what sort of alchemy goes on back by the fryers.  Men hover meticulously over their stations converting beef and pork into heaven.

You give the woman at the counter a few greenbacks and she returns to the exchange with a tray.  A fine sense of value arbitrage forms in your head.  In an age where you don't always get what you pay for, it is nice to know favor can still tip in the consumers' direction.  Hot dogs here are cheap, as are their award winning french fries, which you will need to purchase.  The fries trap a robust potato flavor within their pastry light outer shell.  They taste good enough to eclipse the guilt that will form from deep within your diet reflex.  If you are anything like me, you will tell your conscious to shut up while you proudly saunter up to the counter for seconds.

I had a few hot dogs; I am sure of that much.  Specifics are conveniently lost.  I left Super Duper Weenie like a bloated oaf.  I sort of just tossed myself into the driver's side seat of my chariot and drove off into the wilds of Connecticut.  8.37 out of 10.

Super Duper Weenie is located in Fairfield, CT.  Website.  From I-95 take exit 24.  It is at 306 Black Rock Turnpike.  







  Later in the day...I iced Kristin at the beach.  I politely asked her to retrieve my large zoom lens from my backpack.  She unzipped my backpack and grimaced when her eyes met her fate - a warm smirnoff ice.  She is a champion though, and took to her knee, finishing the beverage with utmost dignity.  If you have no idea what icing is, click here

Thursday, September 16, 2010

More Photos, Less Words


I took my photography portfolio live earlier tonight.  It is a flash site.  If you try to access it from an iPhone or iPad, you will just get redirected here.  I want to buy a new camera, so all of my pictures are for sale as well.  Each photo is limited to 5 prints total.  Go there, or don't.  Link is below. 

Monday, September 6, 2010

Musings on Gadling

AOL's travel site, Gadling.com, has payed me to write some pieces for them.  I am currently working on articles about Florence, Dahab, and Cambodia, and I will link to those from here.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Index of Travels 2008 - 2010

My name is Justin Delaney and I like to travel and take pictures.  Goboogo is my personal travel blog that follows my adventures around the world with my fiance Kristin.  Below is a collection of adventures over the last few years through the welcoming and the treacherous alike.  We are currently in Dallas, TX planning the next move.  If you have any questions, solicitations, or opportunities,  please contact me at justindelaney@mac.com.      


Yangon 2010 
Bagan 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 )
Mandalay 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 ) ( 5 )
Hong Kong 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 )
Cambodia 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 )




Bunaken Island 2010
 Sulawesi 2010( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 )
 Gili Islands 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 )
 Bali 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 )



 Luang Prabang 2010 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 )
 Vientiane 2010
 Kuala Lumpur 2010
 Ho Chi Minh 2010 ( 1 )  ( 2 )


Venice 2010  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )
         Rome 2010  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )
Cairo 2010  ( 1 )  ( 2
Dahab 2010  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )
Florence 2010  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )
Pisa 2010  ( 1 )

  
New York 2010  ( 1 )  ( 2
Montana 2009  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )  ( 4 )  ( 5 )
Borneo 2009  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )
Bali 2009  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )  ( 4 )  ( 5 )  ( 6 )  ( 7

Phi Phi Islands 2009  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )
Phuket 2009  ( 1 )  ( 2 )
Cambodia 2009 ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ) ( 4 )
Macau 2009
Hong Kong 2009  ( 1 )  ( 2 )  ( 3 )  ( 4 )  ( 5 )





Sunday, August 1, 2010

The End


So yea, we get home and my blogging perseverance and persistence fades completely.  It is a shame that these trips do not end like movies.  There is no climax, just a long tired flight home, and my life suddenly seems too boring to even comment on.  When you leave the adventure, no one really says goodbye to you, which of course is logical, though also feels a bit like finishing a marathon with no cheering. No little paper cups of water shoved in your face or high fives over well deserved beers.  I know you goons are out there though, reading and fist pumping and enjoying the blog, but it is a lot like keeping phantoms as friends.

It feels unnatural coming back to the United States from a long and strange trip.  I would not call it depressing. You sort of just string yourself along for a couple weeks of perpetual disappointment. My camera is broken.  The other one was stolen.  I have nothing to write about.  My tools and subject are gone, and this is a difficult thing to articulate.  I feel like a comedian with no jokes.  Aside from domestic travel, I do not know when the next adventure will come.  This is the first time in a few years that I do not have an adventure looming somewhere out beyond the grand horizon, beckoning to me like a siren at sea. 

I suppose this is goodbye for now.  For all of you that kept up, it means so much to me.  I got to check off a box next to "travel writer" on my checklist of things that I want to be in life.  I would not have done it without readers.  Hopefully, this is not the end of goboogo, but I get married in May and have a feeling that this part of me may live on as a ghostblog to reference an especially exciting period of my life.

Or I might move to China in September.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Kecak Dance Bali


The Kecak dance in Bali is a performance that utilizes no instruments, just vocal chords.  I have about an hour of footage from this dance, but I really like the harmony in this very dark 5 minute portion.  It is repetitive until the 1 minute 30 second mark, and than it gets fairly sonorous as the small amount of light left in the day fades completely. This is more for ears than eyes.  The last video cracks me up.









Monday, July 19, 2010

Yangon Loafing


Our last flight on the hardly prestigious Yangon Airways would have us gripping our arm rests in white knuckled terror.  Imagine being at a haunted house with ghosts groping your nethers and a meth addled axe murderer lurking just shy of a shadow line beyond your bedroom window.  The axe glistens from your porch flood lights as he slowly steps towards the house.  That scenario can begin to explain the high levels of survival adrenaline coursing through my throbbing veins.  Anvil seconds slowly accumulated to form minutes that would eventually form an hour, and I counted them all.  Ironically, we had been taking off into thunderstorms on all our other derelict Myanmar flights, and for this flight, we initially welcomed the clear skies as a nice change of pace.  The storm was out there though.  And we headed straight into it.

Survival justifications began to form in my mind as our steel tube bobbed and weaved natures windy jabs.  Yangon Airways has two planes.  Surely, I thought, if anyone wants to keep the plane in the sky, it is those that stand to lose half of their fleet into the muddy Irrawaddy river.  And their slogan, "You're safe with us," they mean such a thing, right?  Or was it ominously crafted with irony and a wink.  Either way, it began to take on a more curious meaning as my stomach slingshotted from the depths of my bowels to to the back of my tongue.  Back again.  I read page 174 of my book maybe 16 times.  It is amazing what thoughts of death can do to an already sensitive attention span.

Of course, we all know how the story ends.  We land, almost skid off of the runway, and I forget about going down in a fiery blaze almost instantly.  In a vacuum with turbulence fueling the suck, we are left alone to our suspicions, egomaniacal inclinations, and fear.  It is easy to forget that the pilot deals with this nonsense daily, or that the odds of dying in a plane crash are similar to finding a krugerrand on the sidewalk.  I desperately craft deathly scenarios that defy possibility because my experience always seems unique or extraordinary.  Also in the early 21st, I could not lift off without having a bath in the Dewars first.  So maybe I am just a baby.

Yangon nee Rangoon is the quasi-capital of Myanmar.  It served as the capital city until the current regime of assault rifled baboons quietly moved it to the obscure city of Naypyidaw.  In the process, they renamed Rangoon to Yangon.  I wager that if you go around calling it Rangoon, some one will probably open fire on you, so we stuck to Yangon.  The soul of Burma remains in Yangon along with their national treasure, the perpetually jailed Aung San Suu Kyi.  Her party won the last election in 1988, but of course, never took power.  She has since won a Nobel, made a bunch of people sad,  and spent most of the ensuing years under some sort of arrest.  Metaphorically, this serves up a situation that is akin to the plight of the Burmese.

As a result of the capital's old colonial name, Rangoon.  We speculated endlessly about it being the authentic birthplace of the Crab Rangoon.  I think a lot about these crispy wontons.  Actually, if you ever see me in a public space staring wistfully out of the window with a mile long gaze, a small chance exists that I am daydreaming about crab and cream chesese stuffed delights.  The logic goes, Buffalo wings are from Buffalo, Crab Rangoon must be from Rangoon.  So the question goes, are these Rangoon inspired delicacies actually from Rangoon.  The answer, sadly, is no.  They are from America.  It did not stop us from ordering heaping plates of the fried morsels, and subsidizing our fried food guilt under the pretense of authenticity.  It is a small wonder that we have lost weight on this trip.

Our hotel, the Kandawgyi Palace, had upscale aspirations and a multiple personality disorder.  Sure the manicured gardens spoke to the ambition of a high dollar presence, but something sinister rose from the lawns.  Outside of our window, a gigantic Tyrannosaurus Rex sculpture loomed above the Japanese ponds, pool bar, and expertly sculpted shrubs.  Ye gods, I thought.  What the hell is this thing doing here?

Like curious children, we strutted down to the ground floor for a closer inspection of the beast.  Thankfully, probably due to incessant query from guests, a bronzed plaque stood at the base of the creature detailing whys and answering hows.  Apparently the building we were staying in had been a British Rowing Club, some sort of national party headquarter, and briefly, in the 60's, a natural history museum.  The Saur that stood in the courtyard once proudly announced to all the ingenuity and intentions of the Natural History Museum program. It lasted for only a few years.  And such is Myanmar, in its eccentric nature, questions do get posed and answered, sort of, but they leave the inquisitive groping at larger questions. Questions that seem like rhetorical riddles or perhaps erstwhile enigmas gone mad with too much time dawdling in the crevices of an uncertain existence.    

I learned a valuable lesson.  If you walk by an all hours Yangon club and a transgendered being is singing pokerface in a husky voice, refrain from ordering the shrimp.  It will take root in your stomach, and ruin your night.

After being put on the traveler IR from questionable crustacean consumption, we basically just slayed around the hotel.  The storms came in and refused to leave, so exploration seemed futile.  In our hotel, we dined at an upscale restaurant called Nuts.  NUTS!  No experience is even close to normal here and dinner did not disappointment.  We were the only 2 people in the restaurant, and were waited on hand and foot by a team of 16 confused attendants.  The whole scene made me want to overturn a table and berate them all in Spanish, just to add my own surreal twist to an already psychologically mucked situation. Every time we ordered, they asked if we wanted 2.  It made me wonder what kind of nonsense usually went on around this place.  Kristin tried to order fondue, which was displayed prominently in an elevator advertisement for the restaurant, but it did not exist.  The whole meal felt like a plot-less movie or a bicycle without handlebars.  We just careened through time from one moment to the next, praying for it to add up in the end.  Luckily, the food did its job and we escaped.   It felt downright presidential in nature, having such a grand room to oneself, and figure that the tsars perhaps dined under similar circumstances.

We spent the evening watching Sex and the City while raindrops violently pelted the poor T-Rex just outside of our window.  It felt about right.  We were the world and the T-Rex was Burmese democracy.  Not now, HBO is on, we have no commercial break.  Our attention must be undivided.  Undivided, I say.  Abandoned in a courtyard, laughed at by sophisticated Chinese foreigners, and far beyond the function it served so long ago, Burmese democracy is no longer a real thing or even a foreseeable option.  All the notion serves is a dialogue for the intelligent; something for Bono to sell with his image at a U2 show.  It is a deserted monument and deader than dinosaurs.  It has been so far from normal for these people for so long, that normal is a different beast entirely.  Goodbye Burma, I hope you find what you are looking for and are looking for what it is that you need to find.  You need both really, and for the world to tune out to tune in.

 A typical Yangon street.  All of the cars are old Japanese cars from the 1980's 

 You can see the mighty Shwedagon Pagoda dominating the skyline in the distance 

 Our hotel lobby, which was cold and empty 

 Traditional Burmese Ships 

 The shrimp that poisoned me

 Ryan enjoying tofu

 A crowd at Shwedagon at night.  Shwedagon is the most important monument in Myanmar.  It is built on a few of Buddha's hairs.
 
 Walkway to Shwedagon 

 This was the night of the world cup final 

 We watched this compelling match between 2 youngsters 


 View from our window of the mighty Saur 

Shwedagon just dominates the skyline.  On the top of the spire, the crown is topped with 5448 diamonds and the top diamond is 76 carats.  There are also 2317 rubies in the mix.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Playing with Asiatic Black Bear Cubs in Myanmar




We play with a few Asiatic Black Bear cubs at the Mandalay zoo in Myanmar. One of them attempts to get into my camera bag. Ryan pushes him over.


The Asiatic Black Bears were a little stronger and wilder than the sunbears. They are really fun to wrestle around with, kind of like crazy dogs with brief bipedal talents and hands.



Saturday, July 17, 2010

Sunbear at Myanmar Zoo

Ryan holding a Malay Sunbear at the Mandalay Zoo. The bear gets a bit frazzled when a motorbike speeds by.