My sea day routine is settling in.  Enjoying the early breakfast, then tea/coffee in Café al Bacio, followed by table tennis. Had a burger for lunch and time in the room to work on loading pictures to the blog (can’t wait for faster internet). Moved from the room to the Sunset Deck for a beautiful sunset.  There were a few small fishing boats in the area and lots of dolphins playing around them. After a light dinner, we both headed back to Café Bacio for reading, etc., while we listen to an entertaining acoustic duo.  Will probably end up with dessert somewhere.

As Judy and I settled in at Café al Bacio this morning, I could see land on our starboard side, and was reminded what the captain had said about passing through the narrows of Aden. Somalia is off our starboard and Yemen is in view off port as we pass headed south.  The Red Sea doesn’t look that big on a map, but we’ve been sailing over two days from Aqaba, and are just now getting to the Gulf of Aden. Like many other things I’ve experienced in the last few years, I never thought I would be here.  Unreal!

Somalia off our starboard side

Yemen in the distance off port side

Had a message today from the Excursions Office that our short trip Sunday in Abu Dhabi for “High Tea at Jumeirah” has been cancelled (not enough guests).  They gave us an option for another excursion at a 10% discount, so I jumped on it.  Now, Saturday, when we first arrive, we’re going to visit the Grand Mosque at night, then have dinner at the Emirates Palace.  This is a nice substitute.  We’ll get a short visit in Abu Dhabi at night, before our bigger tour during the day on Monday.  Depending on how we feel on Sunday, we could always take the Hop-On Hop-off Bus and get a wider experience of the city.

The Jaypee Palace Hotel was great, except for the slow internet.  I spent too much time waiting on photos to upload, etc.  Met Laksme at 8:30 to begin our drive to Jaipur.  Today will be our last day with a site tour in India. Tomorrow is just the drive from Jaipur to Delhi.

 Traffic, traffic everywhere A Hindu shrine by the roadside.

As we drove, we began to notice more farms and agriculture.  We’re told it’s potatoes, mustard, some wheat, and some rice. Several places I noticed stacks of disks piled up or laid out.  It was cow dung drying out to later be used as fuel for fires..

We also began to see camels more frequently.  Where there was grain being grown, the camels were being used to pull carts hauling the grain to market.  Almost every animal we see is used to pull or haul something.

 Just another camel pulling a grain container

Many of the villages we passed had a centralized area where water was available for bathing.  It’s a common sight to see someone standing at one of these areas taking a bath on a raised platform, 50 ft. from the road.

The highway to Jaipur is mostly 4 lanes, and seems to be new.  The median has flowering plants.  Only as we pass thru the villages does it get dusty, and the traffic stacks up, especially at an intersection.  Even on a big highway like this, cattle can bring traffic to a halt if they get stubborn.  We stopped after two hours at an Indian version of “Stuckey’s” with a restaurant, gift shop, washrooms, and a place to buy snacks.

Jaipur is built in the hills.  As we get close, the road begins to climb.  First stop in Jaipur is lunch at a small restaurant.  After lunch, check-in at the hotel, meet our guide, and by 2:30, we’re driving to the Amber Fort.

We thought the Amber Fort was named for it’s color, but it’s something entirely different.  Shiva, the Hindu goddess of destruction has 1000’s of names.  The most commonly used name during the time the fort was built began with Amber………. (didn’t quite get the whole name), but evolved into Amber.  It had nothing to do with color?

 The drive to the gate

The fort is just another amazing palace built by a Maharajah with lots of money, who spared no expense getting everything he wanted.  There seems to be a lot of that going around 500 to 600 years ago.  The views of the valley below were great!

The drive back down

After the Fort, we had a short picture stop at the Water Palace.  It was built as a summer palace for the obvious reason it would be cooler.

Next stop was a place where we watched a “block printing” exhibition.  It’s an ancient version of screen printing, with anywhere from 3 to 12 different blocks to add colors to a design.  After the colors are added, a dip in a vinegar and water concoction brings out the colors.

Last stop of the day is the Palace of the Winds.  It’s a façade built to resemble a palace.  It has 953 windows with lattice-work designs that allowed royal ladies to observe life on the street below without being seen.  We’re dropped off at the hotel to eat dinner and get ready for our final full day in India.

Man, these time changes are hard to keep up with.  We moved forward another hour during the night.  There’s a small digital readout on the phone, and the ship channels on the television have the correct time.  It’s weird, but some of our digital devices are picking up some of the time changes, while others are still showing the time in Rome, or even the time back in Atlanta.  Nothing we have is showing the correct time, except my old-style watch, which I’m setting manually.  I’m pretty sure we’re 10 hours ahead of Central Time.

We settled into our sea day schedule with early breakfast, then coffee & tea in Café al Bacio. I’ve been fighting slow internet for loading photos, so I asked in the iLounge what was going on.  The IT guy confirmed the internet had been slow for a couple of days, but was faster today.

Later in the afternoon, the website quit uploading my pictures?  I’ve read some of the “tech support” answers and articles, and it seems there are four possible options, all of them requiring entering code somewhere in the software.  Yeah, right! I think I’ll get more satisfaction throwing my computer around the cabin.

I eventually gave up trying and went to play table tennis.  The rest of the afternoon was spent eating and sleeping, topped off with more table tennis.  Judy headed out to her usual reading haunts.

We decided today was going to be our day to send in laundry, etc.  We had a couple of Captain’s Club perks to make it cheaper.  We ended up sending two bags of laundry and one bag of cleaning.  The last time we had laundry done on a ship, the finished product was a tangled mess. We’re curious how this will turn out. We washed some of our own things in the sink last week, but it took them forever to dry.  Hopefully we can find some good laundries in the Dubai, Delhi, and Bangkok.

After dinner, we went back to Café al Bacio to relax and listen to the acoustic duo.  Frustrated with the internet, I went back to the iLounge to complain.  A different techie offered to look at what was happening.  I ended up getting a lesson on photo manipulation.  Yes, the internet is really slow right now, coming off a satellite in this part of the world (Yemen, Sudan).  He expected it to be better as we neared Oman tomorrow.  Also demand around the ship slows it down at peak times.  My photos were very large (2.5mb and larger) so he showed me how to reduce the size so they might load faster.  It began to work somewhat.  I finished off the night adjusting and working to get more photos sized so they’ll load.

Laksme is scheduled to pick us up at 9:00am for the drive back to Delhi.  He says it will take 6 hours.  We have a leisurely breakfast and take care of several things on the internet, since the connection is much stronger here than Agra.  Every time we turn around in this hotel, someone is waiting to ask if we’re ok.  Three different times last evening, someone knocked at the door, wondering if we needed anything?  It became almost too much.

The broom is a different model than we’re used to seeing.  Trident Hotel in Jaipur

Doorman at the hotel.  Doormen at several of our hotels have looked like this.

The drive to Delhi is mostly done on a decent road, six lanes at least.  The truck traffic is heavy, much more than anything we’ve experienced previously.  Laksme says it’s the main road for commerce to pass from Delhi to Mumbai.  Anything for Delhi that comes into the port at Mumbai has to be trucked.

 Many of the trucks are decorated.Check out the front of this truck.

There is an election today in the state of Rajasthan, of which Jaipur is the capital.  It’s for state leaders.  All the businesses and tourist venues are closed.  As we’re driving out of town, we see several places where people are voting.  It looks like the polling is done with pen & paper.

Laksme pulls over at one place where there are lots of monkeys on the roadside.  He says this is a “wildlife area”.  Many hindu people come here to feed the monkeys for some type of good luck.

Didn’t open the window to take pictures.  Thought we might pick up an unwelcome passenger.

We made a halfway stop at a cute little combo restaurant/gift shop.  I noticed several similar places within a few miles of this one.

As we get closer to town the traffic gets even heavier.  We spot the first tall buildings we’ve seen since we’ve been in India.  Our Delhi hotel has been near the airport, which is outside of the main part of Delhi.  We haven’t seen the Central Business District where there are bound to be many larger buildings.  We just haven’t been close enough to see.

 How many riders on this motorcycle?

Some added decorations.

We get checked into our hotel around 1:30pm, collecting the two extra bags we stored before we left Delhi on Sunday.  I’m glad we weren’t trying to haul them with us on our short hop flights Sunday & Monday.  It would have been real interesting dealing with them on the train from Jhansi to Agra. We created only one problem by leaving some bags behind. My extra underwear didn’t get into our traveling bags, requiring several sink laundry sessions.  With good blow dryers, I was in good shape.

Some of the Delhi hotel Christmas decor.

The rest of the day was spent looking ahead at our Thailand activites.  I’m constantly working to monitor our budget (for information more than anything else).  Tomorrow I’ll need to exchange our remaining Indian rupees back into US dollars.  I’m also trying to catch up the blog.

Judy is working on our bags, making sure we can meet the weight limits.  We were close to peak when we flew into Rome.  We’ve made several purchases as we’ve traveled, so we’re pushing it.  We can probably make the international limits on the Delhi/Bangkok flight.  Our two short hop domestic flights in Thailand from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, and later to Phuket have lower limits.  It’ll be interesting how we do.

I intended to “close out” our China years long before now.  I just couldn’t get motivated, and there were so many “spam” comments (22,000, yeah 22,000) to delete, I couldn’t keep up, so I gave up.  Now that we’re about to head out on another “trip of a lifetime”  (we’ve had so many more than we ever expected), I thought I would try to post some comments and pictures for my mom.

Here’s a summation of our trip/jobs in China.  In the fall of 2012, Judy and I were both mentally fatigued from doing basically the same jobs for over 37/38 years.  We spent 25 years teaching in Clovis, New Mexico, and 12 more in Arlington.  I taught one early year in Friona, TX, before we moved to New Mexico while Judy finished her degree at WTSU.  We enjoyed our careers and had great memories, but were tired of the same grind, and going to work was no longer “fun”.

We realized we were eligible to retire and the challenge of teaching overseas and the allure of travel sounded exciting and reinvigorating.  Our two years in Beijing were exactly that, exciting and reinvigorating. Judy loved the challenge of embracing a new curriculum, but making it fit her teaching strengths.  She met some wonderful people and has been enjoying keeping up with them through emails and WeChat, since we left.

I developed a deep respect for the Chinese students and teachers I worked with, and also made some great expat friends.  I still check in on Josie, the PE teacher at BSHFIC while I was there.  She moved back to El Paso, and helps me keep track of some of the teachers and students I had a chance to work with back in China.

In the three and a half years we’ve been back in the US, our lives have continued to evolve.  Judy’s had one knee replaced, and I’ve had both knees replaced.  We feel great and our health is good.  We have found part-time jobs that have kept us involved in music education.  Judy works with student teachers for Texas Wesleyan University, and I mentor/consult with band programs at six schools for Fort Worth ISD.

We’ve continued to travel extensively, visiting Israel, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and Australia. We’re about to embark on a six-week trip that includes a 15-night cruise from Rome through the Suez Canal, time in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, over a week in northern India, and two weeks in northern & southern Thailand.  The time in southern Thailand will be “beach” time spent with some of Judy’s friends from BISS in Beijing.  It’s a bit of a reunion, and we’re looking forward to catching up on everything and everyone.o

There’s not really much new happening today.  We wander around between our food favorites and reading relaxation spots.  I managed to get in a little table tennis, both morning and afternoon.  I’m still obsessed with trying to get the blog posting issues resolved.

Things get faster as the day wears on.  I finally completed posts and pictures up to Petra right before bedtime.  It involved posting a lot of pictures, requiring all kinds of resizing, etc., and then they still loaded slowly.  I know you’re reading this not understanding “what’s the big deal”.  Sorry about my obsession, but the time gaps between “living it”, “writing it”, and “posting it” are too wide for comfort.  I need to be able to tour, write, and post in one day for this to work. After Petra, I’ve got all five sea days written and ready to post, and there aren’t many pictures, so they’ll go quick.  But Petra and Wadi Rum need pictures.

We had determined we needed turkey, dressing, and pumpkin pie to make this day right.  Without family, all you’ve got is food, and without the food, you’ve got nothing.  Blu isn’t serving turkey tonight, so we made reservations in the main dining room, San Marco.  We were seated at a large circular table with 7 other guests (five from the US, and two from Belgium).  As usual, the more everyone talked, the more we realized what seasoned travelers they all were.  We’re like rookies in this group.

The turkey was good. The dressing was good, but a far cry from what we love.  The best part of the dinner was the pumpkin pie.  It was memorable!  We spent some time in Café al Bacio, people-watching and trying some new tea flavors.  When we headed to bed, I realized that the early NFL game is on.  Maybe the Cowboys will be on later (as if I’ll be able to stay awake).

The flight to Bangkok is scheduled for 2:30pm, so there’s lots of time to kill in the hotel.  We sleep late, have a leisurely breakfast, and finish up some paperwork (had to get some boarding passes printed).  We walk out the door at 11:00, and Laksme is waiting with the car.  We also have a Memphis Tours contact making sure we get into the airport terminal without problems.

Morning sun fighting through the mist/pollution.

We’ve spent a lot of time in this car since getting off the train in Agra.

 Laksme, our driver for five of our days in India.

Heavy security is again present at the terminal entrances, and boarding passes and passports are required. Once inside I make our currency exchange from rupees to dollars.  I’m trying to hold back enough rupees to purchase a couple of my Starbucks “City Mugs”.

Time to change rupees back to US Dollars.

We moved to the check-in area next. Since I had done web-check-in, we were moved to a much shorter line.  Apparently, not many people are using the web process yet.  They made the discounted Business Class offer again, and after some debate, we upgraded.

The luggage gets priority tags and are the first bags off-loaded.  Immigration and Security both have expedited queues for Business Class, and we sped through.  In no time at all (actually it was a long walk), I was standing at a Starbucks, buying my “Delhi” and “India” mugs to add to the collection.  We’re now carrying 6 different models.

 Delhi Airport art.This is the first time I’ve seen a UN plane.

Now all we have to do is kill an hour, before boarding, and then we’re off to Bangkok.  On the plane, the seats are huge with lots of laying back room and lifted footrest options.  The food is good, and we both agree, we could get used to this.

One last round of Indian food.  Love it!

This is way different than 30 rows back.

It takes a while to clear the clouds, but when we do, the Himalayan Mountains are in full view. This is another one of those moments where I have to pinch myself (there have been several on this trip).  I’m looking at Nepal and the tallest mountains in the world.  This isn’t something I ever expected to see.

The Himalayan Mountain Range!  Pictures don’t do it justice.

Arrival at Bangkok goes smoothly.  I checked with the attendants on the plane about the best way to get into the city from the airport.  They assured me that a taxi is the best option this evening.  They didn’t think there would be that much traffic.  Our other option is the BTS Skytrain.  It’s cheap and there’s a station close to our hotel. But the best I can figure, the taxi will cost about $14, and we’ll get dropped at the front door.  Taxi, here we come.

Business Class customers have expedited lines for immigration, so it goes quickly.  Our bags arrived fast.  Next stop is the currency exchange.  With everything in place, we make the walk to the taxi area. The crowds are light and the taxi area is organized.  Our driver doesn’t really understand what I’m saying, and can’t seem to read the address. There’s a phone number he uses and gets the necessary directions.  The drive takes 30 minutes, and the hotel has everything ready when we arrive.

Bangkok has a much different feel than India.  The modern highways and the city streets are more organized, move quicker, and there’s lots less honking.  We have a day off tomorrow to get ourselves ready for 4 days of touring Bangkok and Chiang Mai with a flight in the middle.  This hotel (Renaissance) is nice and we’re looking forward to our stay.

WEDNESDAY, 7/2/14

My first thought as I got out of bed this morning was “hey, my knee doesn’t hurt.” Why didn’t I get this fixed months ago?

We have chores to do, but none too pressing. I want to make sure we have plenty of US cash for the trip so we both go to the bank for the currency exchange. We’re only allowed to exchange up to $500 each, per day, so we work our way through the process with a clerk at the bank. He’s very helpful.

Lilly is cleaning up the apartment and doing the laundry so we try to stay out of her way. It can get crowded with three of us around. Judy does some shopping, and I get in a swim session. I’m trying to burn a few of the thousands of calories I consumed over the last two weeks.

Back at the apartment, Lilly is gone. She has ironed everything we needed as well as finished all the washing and folding for the suitcases. Our biggest job was picking it out before she arrived. Oh man, this is great!

Some of Lily’s handiwork!

THURSDAY, 7/3/14

Today is “P-DAY”, packing day! There are lots of decisions to be made on clothes. Over the next 27 days we’ll be in Northern Europe and Texas/Louisiana, two very distinct climates. The requirements for clothes are vastly different. How many suitcases do we take and how do we avoid a lot of extra luggage fees? We also have to leave room in the bags for our Beijing return. We’re bound to buy stuff, either in Europe or the US.

We leave for Amsterdam tomorrow for four days of sightseeing before boarding a 12-day cruise of Scandinavia (Germany, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark). July 20^th, after the cruise, we fly direct to DFW, and then Baton Rouge to celebrate my dad’s birthday. It’ll be fun to see my parents in their new surroundings, and visit. Facetime is great, but’s it’s not like being there in person. We fly back to DFW on the 22^nd, and back to Beijing on July 31. I have a little jaunt to San Antonio for a TMAA clinic July 29^th and 30^th. Judy begins her faculty orientation at BISS Aug. 6.

I intended to “close out” our China years long before now.  I just couldn’t get motivated, and there were so many “spam” comments (22,000, yeah 22,000) to delete, I couldn’t keep up, so I gave up.  Now that we’re about to head out on another “trip of a lifetime”  (we’ve had so many more than we ever expected), I thought I would try to post some comments and pictures for my mom or anyone else who might be interested

Here’s a summation of our trip/jobs in China.  In the fall of 2012, Judy and I were both mentally fatigued from doing basically the same jobs for over 37/38 years.  We spent 25 years teaching in Clovis, New Mexico, and 12 more in Arlington.  I taught one early year in Friona, TX, before we moved to New Mexico while Judy finished her degree at WTSU.  We enjoyed our careers and had great memories, but were tired of the same grind, and going to work was no longer “fun”.

We realized we were eligible to retire and the challenge of teaching overseas and the allure of travel sounded exciting and reinvigorating.  Our two years in Beijing were exactly that, exciting and reinvigorating. Judy loved the challenge of embracing a new curriculum, but making it fit her teaching strengths.  She met some wonderful people and has been enjoying keeping up with them through emails and WeChat, since we left.

I developed a deep respect for the Chinese students and teachers I worked with, and also made some great expat friends.  I still check in on Josie, the PE teacher at BSHFIC while I was there.  She moved back to El Paso, and helps me keep track of some of the teachers and students I had a chance to work with back in China.

In the three and a half years we’ve been back in the US, our lives have continued to evolve.  Judy’s had one knee replaced, and I’ve had both knees replaced.  We feel great and our health is good.  We have found part-time jobs that have kept us involved in music education.  Judy works with student teachers for Texas Wesleyan University, and I mentor/consult with band programs at six schools for Fort Worth ISD.

We’ve continued to travel extensively, visiting Israel, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and Australia. We’re about to embark on a six-week trip that includes a 15-night cruise from Rome through the Suez Canal, time in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, over a week in northern India, and two weeks in northern & southern Thailand.  The time in southern Thailand will be “beach” time spent with some of Judy’s friends from BISS in Beijing.  It’s a bit of a reunion, and we’re looking forward to catching up on everything and everyone.

Our arrival into Muscat isn’t early, so our morning begins like most previous sea days, with a relaxing breakfast.  We watched from our balcony as the ship docked, and then began to move downstairs so we would be in position when the ship is cleared for debarkation.  As we exited the ship, we walked through a terminal building, and lined up to get on a bus to transport us to the port gate (they don’t want a bunch of tourists wandering around a busy port with all the trucks, etc.)

 Port of MuscatThe two big ships (yachts) belong to the Sultan of Oman

At the gate, our driver from Memphis Tours, Mohammad, was waiting for us.  We introduced ourselves as we walked to a 4-wheel drive Toyota SUV and loaded up.  We discussed the day’s schedule as we drove.   Our available time for the tour is 4 ½ hours.  We had originally planned for a longer excursion, but we’ll adjust as we go. Wadi Shabb requires a long walk, some climbing, and then working our way through a cave, so we decide to drop that destination.

The drive out of town is interesting as we check out the city and villages.  The road is a wide (6 lanes) interstate-type freeway.  It climbs and weaves through big hills and mountains.  After an hour, we arrive at a turn-off.  A couple of hundred yards off the main road, our road turns to gravel/dirt, and narrows considerably.  Eventually we’re weaving along a river and the road gets more and more narrow, with steep climbs and descents.  There are scattered villages and farms as we go.  This is a rough place to try and grow a crop, much less make a living farming. Four-wheel drive is a necessity in much of the way.

We arrive at Al Arbaeen 30 minutes later.  The drive in was dramatic.  It’s what I would call an oasis, with a small lake, wedged in between the rugged hills and mountains. There are areas where families and groups are camped or cooking. Several swimmers are enjoying the cool water (the sun is hot).  Our driver tells us the water comes from the humidity in clouds on the surrounding mountains and finds it’s way downhill.

I never dreamed I would have the chance to go “off-road” in the mountains of Oman with an Omani guide. Unbelievable!

We depart, taking another road out of the area.  This one seems to follow the riverbed, as it flows to the ocean.  We’re in and out of water-crossings, as we go.  Eventually, we make it to the coast, checking out the really long open beaches.

Our driver pulls into the Hawiyat Hajm (Sink Hole) Park.  We walk in and, sure enough, find a huge sinkhole with water.  There are stairs to the bottom, and swimmers.  We even watched a few brave souls jump from the cliff above.  I checked it out later with “Travel Advisor”.  It said not to make it a destination, but stop if you’re close (and we were).

We began to head back to the city.  We stopped at Quiriyat, a fishing village near the road, just checking out some of the local “color”.  Back in Muscat, we had some time and toured around the city proper.  I had asked to driver to take me by a Starbucks so I could get a souvenir mug.  After my purchase, we made our way back to the ship, in plenty of time to catch our shuttle to the ship.

Homes on the roadside

 Quiriyat – fishing village Muscat Corniche beach area One of the local mosques

I’m constantly evaluating the quality of the tours we’re taking, comparing them to other options. Most of the guests on the ship we talked to were headed into town to shop at the Suok (old style market). Others were busing or taking taxis to the important sites, but as it turns out, because it’s Friday, not much is open.  I felt like we had a really interesting trip to remote area not heavily travelled.  I would recommend this trip to anyone looking for a “different” excursion in Muscat.  It might have even been more interesting if we’d had enough time to get to Wadi Shabb.

Pulling out of the port