Categories
Asia Myanmar

Yangon, Myanmar

From Hanoi, I flew to my next destination: Yangon! This was the start of a week in Myanmar, which included visits to Yangon, Inle Lake, Bagan, and Mandalay before I flew back to the US.

Obligatory disclaimer that Myanmar is not the most stable country in Southeast Asia. They had a coup in 2021, perhaps best documented in this exercise video of a woman dancing obliviously while the tanks roll in behind her, and there has been instability ever since while they’ve been under military rule. There is also a long history of conflict between the various ethnic groups, with Wikipedia calling it the “longest-running ongoing civil war” in the world and noting that some of these conflicts have been ongoing since 1948. For the record, I felt safe everywhere we were. Our tour guides did adjust a few parts of the itinerary in Bagan and Mandalay, but the conflict was happening on the other side of the river and we were able to keep a comfortable distance.

In fact, the most alarming part of the trip might have been waking up to an earthquake the first morning in Yangon! It was about a 5.3 magnitude on the south coast and we felt it in the city. It didn’t do more than shake the hotel a bit, thankfully. I will say, I find earthquakes to be the most alarming natural disaster since there is no warning.

We started our tour of Yangon at the Sule Pagoda. One of the cooler aspects of this one, for me, was having the normal buildings behind the spires of the temple, which I think makes for an interesting perspective. Here, I also loved that the guidelines on what to wear appeared to be sponsored by a local energy drink. I have a lot of questions about this arrangement, honestly?

We explored downtown Yangon for a bit, including the main park with their city hall and a monument to Myanmar’s independence. I liked the vibes of the city. The core downtown area had more historical buildings, including some historic hotels as well as some of the embassies, but we did also go to more modern sections of the city as well.

One of the interesting things that I noticed as we were walking around town was that the license plates in Myanmar appear to have the make and model listed. I’ve never seen this before!

One of the more interesting sites in Yangon is the Chaukhtatgyi Buddha, which is a very large (and dare I say glamorous?) Buddha statue. I had seen pictures before, but I was still unprepared for the scale of the statue itself.

What I liked about this one is that it was the most distinct of any temple we saw – when you see a ton of temples over a short period of time, it’s easy to have them all start blurring together.

Yangon, of everywhere we went, was obviously the most developed, and also had by far the best food. Most of the menus in the more rural areas were a lot more basic. Luckily for me, there were always vegetarian options. The vegetarian option was generally fried rice, which I love, but by the end of the week of having it for every lunch, dinner, and sometimes breakfast, I was so ready to eat anything else. Yangon at least had more choices in the restaurants.

I also got to try wine from one of Myanmar’s wineries, Aythaya Vineyard! They only have two vineyards. This one was the first, opened in 1999. It tasted pretty different from anything I’ve had before. The best way I can describe it is that it almost had a smoky taste, which I rather liked.

If I had to pick the single best tourist site that I saw in all of Myanmar, it would hands down be the Shwedagon Pagoda. We arrived just before sunset, got a quick overview of the complex, and then we got to experience it as day turned to night. I say “tourist site” but the truth is that we were the only tourists – everyone else there was local families, coming to pray and to take photos and to spend time with their loved ones.

With every moment the light changed, it became even more beautiful. There were chimes going off in the background and the whole experience felt absolutely magical.

Yangon was an amazing start to our visit to Myanmar, and I couldn’t wait to experience what came next! I really enjoyed our time in Yangon, and we had a lot of cool places left to visit.

Categories
Asia Vietnam

A Party In Vietnam

After Brunei, it was on to Vietnam to meet up with my travel friends for a big party! We were starting in Hanoi. It felt a lot less overwhelming this time than it did when I visited in 2023. Part of that is that I have traveled a lot since then. That was my first trip in Southeast Asia. This time, I was coming back to somewhere I’d already visited, I had more experience under my belt, and I was traveling with friends, which made it a much more relaxed proposition than figuring it out on my own. After a flight from Brunei to Singapore, a long layover, and a second flight to Hanoi, we grabbed dinner and went for a massage.

The next morning, we were off to meet up with everyone else! We took a shuttle from Hanoi out to the Ba Vi National Park, where we were staying in a resort. It was so beautiful, and it was nice to see a little more of the countryside in Vietnam. It was also an interesting experience to do a little road trip through Vietnam – I was very impressed with their rest stops and food options when driving through the countryside.

We had various dinners and activities and cocktail parties while we were there. It was so much fun to have the whole resort to ourselves to spend time with everyone. I was able to catch up with people across a lot of different trips!

From there, it was off to Ha Long Bay. This was a long day, because Ba Vi is several hours west of Hanoi and then Ha Long Bay is several hours east of Hanoi. Plus, most of the bus was hungover from the previous night. But once we got on the boat, it was really nice. I have been to Ha Long Bay once before – I think we were in a different section, based on the activities that we had available, but I loved it then and I loved it now.

This one was Catherine Cruises, and I would recommend them as well based on my experience. The biggest negative was this absolutely appalling beer pour:

The wet floor sign on the rocks cracked me up as well.

We had two activities on the boat – one was the Sung Sot Cave, and the other was kayaking (which I don’t have any photos of, but was very enjoyable). Sung Sot Cave was incredibly crowded, especially at the beginning. Once we got into the larger cavern at the end, though, the temperature was so pleasant and there was room to breathe.

The rock formations were nice as well. I wish they would tell the tourists that there are more rooms of the cave – if people would go faster through the first part and spend more time in the third room, the whole experience would be so much more pleasant.

This is what it truly felt like ^^

Overall, it was a great trip to Vietnam. I had a lot of fun, I saw so many friends of mine, and I was in some beautiful areas of the country. With that, it was on to the next part of the trip: Myanmar!

Categories
Asia Brunei

Is Brunei Boring?

Most of what you’ll find online when you look at what to do in Brunei talks about how boring Brunei is. It feels a bit rude, really. Brunei is tiny, and it’s surrounded by some of the best travel destinations in the whole world, so naturally it suffers by comparison. To me, it feels most akin to Liechtenstein – a small country that’s pretty unusual compared to its larger and more well-known neighbors, but has similar landscapes and less tourism offerings, and often gets overlooked.

Brunei is on the island of Borneo, which is mostly controlled by Malaysia and Indonesia. I haven’t been to either of those countries before but I think most of the tourism is in Malaysian Borneo, where people go orangutan spotting and trekking.

In Brunei, the main things to do are to explore the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan, as well as river cruises where you can spot the proboscis monkey. What makes Brunei unusual, you ask? Brunei is very wealthy from oil and gas. It’s led by a Sultan. Wikipedia tells me that the Sultan’s powers include emergency powers ever since the Brunei Revolt in 1962, which means that they are technically under martial law and have been since the early 1960s. And it’s extremely Muslim, to the point where they practice sharia law. That was implemented in 2013, so it isn’t just a holdover from the olden days. They have some pretty unusual punishments currently on the books. All of this to say – there isn’t a lot to do in Brunei, but I was still quite interested in seeing it because it is unique.

The first thing we saw after landing was a mosque

Bandar Seri Begawan is not a big city. From our hotel to the waterfront, it was only about a 15 min walk, so we saw the majority of the downtown pretty quickly.

The waterfront has an area to walk around in, and it’s possible to get water taxis over to the floating village. We had coordinated with our hotel to do a tour at sunset instead, which ended up being a great choice. More on this later.

From there, we headed over to the Omar ‘Ali Saifuddien Mosque. If you’ve ever seen any pictures of Brunei before, chances are it’s of this mosque. It’s their national symbol. This one was an unusual visit because they had a very specific robe they had us all wear. I’ve been to plenty of mosques before, with all kinds of rules – almost all have made me cover my hair, some have asked me to put on a skirt, others have asked me to put on an abaya. But none have handed me a robe that makes it look like I’m graduating high school / going to Hogwarts / joining the Illuminati, so that was kind of fun. Huge point for Brunei for also making the man in our group wear the exact same robe.

We explored the grounds and walked over to another nice viewpoint of the mosque.

From there, we headed to the Royal Regalia Museum! We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. This was extremely up my alley, though. It was all about the history of the Sultan, as well as all the presents that he had been given from various other countries. At one point we ended up in an area where they had jigsaw puzzles to complete. Since we were enjoying the air conditioning and had nowhere else we wanted to go before our sunset tour, we ended up sitting down and putting together puzzles.

After a quick stop at the hotel, it was time for our tour! We started with a boat ride, which we boarded next to this giant cool bridge.

From there, we headed far down the river so we could find a spot with proboscis monkeys. These are also known as the long nosed monkey, and they certainly do have some spectacular noses. It was exciting to spot them and we were able to observe them in large groups as they maneuvered around the trees.

As the sun started to set, we headed back to the floating village! We had a nice boat ride to the home of our guide, where he and his wife prepared some snacks for us and told us about Brunei.

This is a bus stop

I’ve been to a lot of very untouristy places, but it was pretty unusual to have our guide show us the wall with every tour group he’s ever had in his home and be able to remember which countries they were from and details about their trips. He was so nice and he was excited to have visitors! It was very cool to get to see one of the homes in the floating village, and imagine what it would be like to live there.

We also wanted to go check out the night market. This was pretty far from the main city center, so we took a cab there and back. It was fairly tame by Asian night market standards, but the food was good and it was nice to see another part of the city.

So with that, what’s the verdict on Brunei?

It’s not a big place. There’s enough to keep you entertained for one or two days, but it is more of a day trip like San Marino or Monaco or Liechtenstein vs. somewhere that you would want to spend a lot of time. There’s so much to do and see in Southeast Asia that it’s hard to recommend it over some of the heavy-hitters, but if you want to see a different side of the region, a quick trip would do. Regardless, do a little research on it because it is certainly worth learning about.

Categories
North America United Kingdom

Found in the Bermuda Triangle

It was an important birthday for my dad this year, so we asked him to pick where he wanted to celebrate it and he chose Bermuda! My parents came out to DC and we all flew out together out of BWI. Getting there was a bit stressful, since our taxi almost got in an accident on the way to the airport, but once we boarded the plane it was full vacation mode. BermudAir brought around a basket of giant cookies, which was a nice touch.

We were staying on the north side of the island at the St. Regis. Bermuda is shaped like a big J. It’s also not very big – it only takes about an hour to drive down the whole spine of the island. The capital, Hamilton, is in the center. Bermuda is an overseas territory of the UK and was settled by the British over 400 years ago. It was uninhabited when the British first arrived, so it never had an indigenous population or any non-British version of its history.

The St. Regis was awesome. Traveling with my parents is definitely a more relaxed pace than what I usually do, so we had a lot of time lounging by the pool and the beach, catching up on reading and trying out the various cocktails. Notably, one of the most famous drinks in Bermuda is the dark and stormy, which was invented there and uses local ginger beer and rum.

The first touristy thing we did was visit Crystal Cave! It’s definitely one of the busier sights on the island, and we had to wait in line to get our tickets and our assigned slot to go into the cave. It was a pretty well-organized operation, though, and we got our wristbands and headed in when they told us. The cave formations were nice but the real selling point is the bridge over the beautiful teal water. It was worth the visit.

After we finished up the cave tour, we headed across the street to the Swizzle Inn! The Swizzle Inn claims to be Bermuda’s oldest pub. It was founded in 1932 and invented another one of Bermuda’s most famous drinks, the Rum Swizzle. Obviously, we had to try that too.

Fun fact, we did unintentionally visit the week of Easter, which seems to be a common problem I have. We headed down to visit Hamilton on Good Friday, which we were hoping would be the kind of weekend where everyone was out and about. Instead, it seemed like everyone on the island was up near the north end for a reenactment of the crucifixion, and Hamilton was a ghost town. We wandered around for a bit and then tried to figure out what else we could do.

As it turned out, our best option was to take the ferry even farther south! The Royal Naval Dockyard area had a giant cruise ship docked, and allegedly had some restaurants and shops that would be open. This was still the ferry’s winter schedule, or else I think we would have taken a lot more ferries, but it was nice to get the chance to take one. Fun fact, the ferry uses tokens for the tickets!

After some beautiful views of the southern part of the island, we made it to the Royal Naval Dockyard. We grabbed lunch and did a little souvenir shopping before working our way back north to St. Regis!

In case you thought we couldn’t relax any harder, my mom and I also went to a spa and got a massage! We ended up picking a different hotel’s spa, Grotto Bay, which was fun because it let us explore another resort. This one was also cool because the spa is located in a cave! The view from the massage table was so cool.

We also celebrated my dad’s birthday at the St. Regis restaurant, which was really fun!

A cheesecake tasting where we compared Japanese cheesecake and Basque cheesecake (they were both delicious)

All in all, it was an awesome visit to Bermuda! It’s an expensive place to visit, but it’s so accessible from the East Coast of the US and it is so beautiful and welcoming. It’s a great option if you’re looking for a beach trip.

Categories
Grenada North America

Happy Independence Day, Grenada!

After Suriname, my friends and I had one more stop to make on our way back to the US. After a short layover back in Port of Spain, we landed in Grenada! Our hotel thankfully let us check in early, eat breakfast, and sit by the pool to recover from our early flight leaving Paramaribo.

As it happened, the day we landed was Grenada’s Independence Day! It takes place annually on February 7. Grenada, like much of the Caribbean, had been under British rule, and they officially gained their independence from the United Kingdom in 1974. It was fun to see everyone out and about for it, and there were fireworks on that evening.

Once we had all gotten a nap in, we headed out to explore the island! We started at Concord Falls, which is seemingly on private property, and paid our entrance fee to walk down the steps and see it up close. The water was ice cold but it was a beautiful stop.

It’s always fun to try random snacks that you get at the gas station, and these were the zaniest ones I saw in Grenada. They were sort of like a knock-off Cheeto.

After Concord Falls, we headed to what is probably one of the weirder attractions in Grenada: Pearls Airport. This is an abandoned airport with two planes that are slowly decomposing. The planes were abandoned in 1983 when the United States briefly invaded Grenada, and since the planes were from the Soviet Union and Cuba, the US refused to let them take off again and they ended up grounded permanently. There’s something beautifully haunting about seeing these abandoned planes. I’m glad we made the trip to go find them! It was definitely a unique attraction.

After a quick dinner, we headed downtown to St. George’s, the capital of Grenada, to walk around and see the fireworks.

Obsessed with the tiny sombrero it came with

The next day, we headed out to the part of the itinerary I was most excited about: the Underwater Sculpture Park! This one had to be done as a tour, which was a bit of a scramble because we didn’t book anything until we got there and then it turned out there weren’t as many daily tours available as we had expected. We ended up signing up for the only one we could find, which billed itself as a boat tour with dogs. So after we had headed out of the St. George’s harbor, another small boat pulled alongside us and several dogs boarded. It was a nice addition to a great day.

The sculpture park was awesome. It’s partially an art project and partially a conservation effort to help their reef regenerate after a couple hurricanes in the mid 2000s. I would absolutely recommend that anyone who is in Grenada goes to see it.

Like the abandoned planes, it does have a vaguely haunting aura, which I promise I mean in the most complimentary way possible. Grenada has created these spaces where nature is reclaiming man-made objects and I love it.

After we got back, we still had a little time in the afternoon, so we headed out to another waterfall! This one is Annandale Waterfall, which felt a little more touristy than Concord but did have a deeper pool to swim in and a section where you could easily walk behind the falls.

We had one more lovely dinner on a beach as the sun set.

Overall, I was very impressed with Grenada. It’s beautiful, the people are friendly, and it has enough infrastructure and tourist sites to make for a pleasant visit. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a nice Caribbean vacation!

At the end of this, I flew back to DC, which was still mostly shut down after its horrible snowstorm that created what locals were hatefully calling “snow-crete,” an ice mixture that froze into one solid sheet and resisted all efforts to remove it from the streets. So. I found myself missing Grenada almost immediately.

Categories
South America Suriname

The Stunning Suriname River

It took a lot of effort to get to Suriname, and the logistics didn’t stop once we arrived. From the airport, we drove for a couple hours until we got to a river, where we all loaded onto boats for about an hour’s ride to get to our ecolodge.

Getting on the boats was such a huge relief. I’m pretty sure the ecolodge would have been amazing regardless, but it was particularly nice after the failed ferry attempt and that extra night in Georgetown.

I loved the ecolodge. The way that it worked was as a sort of all-inclusive experience, where they served us breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There was always coffee and tea available as well, although alcohol was extra. Then they arranged activities for us along the Suriname River. We still had plenty of free time to relax by the pool or play games as a group. It was really well-balanced, and it was a great way to experience this region.

Our first activity was a night boat ride down the river to look at animals. For obvious reasons, I don’t have any pictures beyond this blurry sunset, but we did see some alligators and birds and bats.

The next morning after breakfast we headed out to one of the Maroon villages for a tour. Huge shout out to our guide here, who was really engaging and good at explaining the local culture and way of life. The Maroons of Suriname are the descendants of the Africans who were brought across the Atlantic and enslaved by the Dutch, but managed to escape from the plantations and created their own communities in inland Suriname. They speak their own languages, practice their own religions (generally in addition to Christianity, which is taught in schools), run their own schools, and practice their own healthcare, making their culture quite distinct from the descendants of the Dutch colonizers.

A few interesting tidbits from my notes:
1. Trades, such as boat building or local medicine, are taught matrilineally. Our guide was saying he is not able to learn boat building but his cousin can, because he is born from a son of the family where that trade comes from and his cousin was born from a daughter (his aunt).
2. There is a huge emphasis in coming back and investing in the community. Often, young adults will go to Paramaribo for school or job opportunities, but they do come back and re-invest in the community once they are more established.
3. School is taught in Dutch, but children don’t speak Dutch amongst themselves. In this village, their local language comes from a mixture of West African dialect and Portuguese, which is what everyone speaks amongst themselves. This can cause problems with fluency. He spoke about the difficulty that he had once he went to Paramaribo, because he wasn’t comfortable speaking Dutch casually. It took him a while to feel fluent enough to socialize in Dutch.

We also had a jungle tour that was focused on how to live off the land. Our guide pointed out sources of food and water, as well as how to build enough of a shelter to sleep out there. There was even a plant that he called a candle tree that was able to burn as sustained fire, as shown above. These are the kinds of skills that I never want to need, but interesting to learn about!

We saw lots of monkeys on the tour, as well as a tarantula (which I did not feel the need to get close to).

The last outing we had before we left was a chance to swim in the Suriname River!

I was sad to leave our ecolodge utopia. This was such a cool experience, and I loved seeing a part of the Amazon rainforest here in Suriname. But it was time to head to our next stop: Paramaribo!

Categories
Guyana South America Suriname

The Journey from Guyana to Suriname

The next morning after our day trip to Kaieteur Falls, we got up bright and early to start the drive to the border with Suriname. We needed to get in line for the ferry, which we were planning to take out of Guyana. The operative word here is… planning.

Before I get into that, though, one other aside. This trip was the first time I’d ever heard of the Essequibo dispute. Apparently, Guyana and Venezuela have been in an ongoing debate about this since 1840! About 15% of Guyana’s population lives there, but it looks like it’s about two-thirds of the land that is currently considered Guyana. While the territory was originally mapped out in 1840, it became a point of contention when gold was discovered and Venezuela has been lobbying for it ever since. I love that Guyana has their own local billboards declaring it theirs – we saw these all over, but I finally got a nice clear picture while we sat around and waited for the ferry.

Have you ever seen a vulture sit like a chicken before? Because I certainly hadn’t

We got the car in line and went through passport control to formally exit Guyana before we had a few hours waiting in no man’s land. We were having a pretty good time playing games and chatting while we waited. It had been a pleasant morning, right up until the moment when our driver came over and told us that the ferry was cancelled. So we all filed back into the ferry terminal, listened to the official announcement, and then we had to go back through passport control to get our exit stamps officially cancelled.

We were so close! You can see Suriname, right across the river

Side note, I love that the cancellation process is just a large “cancelled” stamp that gets added over the existing stamp. A truly unique part of my passport.

We considered all our options. There were no other ferry options or bridges or even private transport across the river. We looked at flights, but the problem was the 4.5 hour drive back through Georgetown to the airport. And that’s not including traffic. So we tried to get back to see if that was feasible, and the traffic kept adding travel time until we finally gave up and spent another night in Georgetown. It’s a good thing when your hotel is located above a pawn shop, right? Asking for a friend.

With that, all there was left to do was figure out dinner and book a flight to Paramaribo for the next morning. It seemed like the ferry issue wasn’t just a one-off thing, but an ongoing maintenance issue that led to the ferry being suspended indefinitely. And we know what that means (cancelled).

“safety begins here”

Georgetown is not my favorite city. I wouldn’t have chosen three nights here, ideally. The locals warned us around safety a lot while we were there, including this last night in the city. There were seven or eight of us who had gone out for dinner and drinks, and we had about a six minute walk back to our hotel. The other people at the bar were shocked we were going to walk, even with a fairly large group and a short walk, which did not fill me with confidence as we headed back to the hotel.

Thankfully, we made it to the airport the next day and our flight to Paramaribo was uneventful! After all that, it only took an hour by plane to get to Suriname.

Categories
Guyana South America

A Flight to Kaieteur Falls

Welcome to Guyana! This is my 88th country and only my second in South America, so I definitely need to step it up in this continent.

Fun fact, there are a lot of territories that have been known as Guyana / Guiana in northern South America over the years. The word originally comes from indigenous languages and means “land of many waters,” which certainly describes this region. There were at one time five different Guianas: (1) Spanish Guiana, now a territory within Venezuela; (2) British Guiana, now the independent country of Guyana; (3) Dutch Guiana, now the independent country of Suriname; (4) French Guiana, now an overseas region of France; and (5) Portuguese Guiana, now a territory within Brazil. I had originally thought the etymology was related to the four Guinea countries so it was interesting to find an unrelated place word that sounds so similar.

Our first night was fairly uneventful. The airport in Georgetown is quite far from the city, so most of the first night was simply a long car ride to get into Georgetown and then dinner.

Once we had a good night’s sleep in Georgetown, it was on to the main event, which was a chartered flight down to Kaieteur Falls! There are a ton of different ways to rank waterfalls. Wikipedia informs me that the notable statistic for Kaieteur is that it is the “highest flow single drop waterfall” in the world and the 123rd highest in the world. It is very far south within Guyana and requires either a flight or a multi-day trek through the jungle to get to.

The views as we left Georgetown were nice. Georgetown has fairly colorful buildings and it also sits at the mouth of the Demerara River. As we followed the river south, the landscape turned from urban to farmland to jungle.

The first view of the waterfall from the air! It was very impressive, both at a distance and up close. We landed right next to the visitor center and met up with a local guide who showed us around the national park.

There were three different viewpoints to go to and along the way our guide would point out native plants and animals. The walk itself was very easy but the guide was awesome. Our time in Kaieteur National Park was definitely a highlight across this whole trip for me.

This is not the best picture I’ve ever taken, but was a cool animal to spot in the wild! This is a golden rocket frog, endemic to Kaieteur National Park. It was hard to see in the plant – they’re absolutely tiny, I was amazed our guide was able to spot it.

While we were in Kaieteur National Park, we also did a little birdwatching! This was the most excited I’ve ever been to see a bird in person. I’ve definitely seen other cool birds, but in most cases I just recognize that they are cool and then find out more about them later. This is the rare instance where I knew of this bird beforehand. Meet the Guianan cock-of-the-rock. Yes, their name is crazy. I’ve always thought they were super interesting looking with their crests. We got to see several of them through the trees.

Here, you can see Kaieteur National Park visitor records. Most people come by plane, as you can see. I think if you were a very outdoorsy person, the multi-day Amazon trek to come by land could be a worthwhile experience, but I was quite happy with my choice to arrive by plane.

It was such a cool day. Guyana wasn’t my favorite country of this trip but this certainly was my favorite single experience that I had over the course of this week!

Categories
North America Trinidad and Tobago

A Weekend in Trinidad

When I left DC to fly to Port of Spain, it was shortly after DC got a hideous snowstorm. I would not say DC handles snow well in the best of times, and this was definitely not the best of times. There was a substantial amount of snow followed immediately by sleet, leading to an impenetrable ice crust over all the fallen snow. When I left for the airport three days later, the roads and sidewalks hadn’t really been cleared. My walk to the metro was a bit harrowing, and packing so that I didn’t have to lug around a huge coat and snow boots yet I didn’t freeze on my way to the airport was a careful balance. Once I got on my plane and started heading south, it was a huge relief!

I landed in Port of Spain shortly after midnight and met up with my friends. We had rented a car so that we could properly explore the island. Once we had a good night of sleep and had found some breakfast, we headed out.

Our first stop was the Asa Wright Nature Center! As it turns out, we should have made a reservation before we headed out, as that is apparently required. Instead, we had to park outside the gate, call their main office, and hope they would let us in, so…. my pro tip would be to plan better than us. Thankfully, they did have space.

The Asa Wright Nature Center was the one place from Trinidad and Tobago that was in my Lonely Planet 500 Ultimate Places book, which is why we started there. It’s a nature preserve that is particularly well-known for birdwatching. It has over 250 species of birds there and we certainly saw some cool ones during our visit. I’ve always particularly loved hummingbirds and we saw a lot of different species of those.

We also did a light hike out from the property. If the ground hadn’t been so muddy, we probably would’ve gone farther. It sounds like they also have guided walks and tours of the property, which would’ve been cool if we had been a little more strategic about our visit.

The fog was short lived but spooky while it lasted

I had a nice visit to the Asa Wright Nature Center, and I would recommend it as a half day trip out from Port of Spain, especially if you coordinate it in advance to go for one of the tours. I thought it was a good way to see another side of Trinidad besides the city – the drive out to Asa Wright was stunning, and I liked our time birdwatching.

We headed back into the city and went to a lookout point that unfortunately was mostly closed off, but we did find an angle where you could mostly see Port of Spain. Trinidad is very interesting relative to the rest of the Caribbean. It is substantially less touristy, and it’s one of the wealthiest countries in the Caribbean because it’s mostly focused on industry. The majority of that comes from natural gas and oil, and then there is a lot of shipping that goes through the Port of Port of Spain (which is so funny to see written, by the way). You can see that port in pretty much every picture I have of the city’s skyline.

From the viewpoint
From our Airbnb

We met up with a few friends for drinks at a rooftop bar, then we headed back into the city to go to Queen’s Park Savannah. It was time for Carnival!

Trinidad is known for its Carnival, and while we weren’t there for the main weekend of it, it actually has quite a few more events than just the two days before Ash Wednesday. The events go on for about a month! I know it wasn’t the full experience, but I was glad to get at least a taste of what Trinidad has to offer during Carnival. I’d love to go to the main event – I firmly believe that Trinidadians can throw some of the best parties in the entire world. I’m not sure I can keep up, but it does seem like it would be fun to try.

The next day, we headed to the beach! This is truly the point where I was so thankful that we weren’t in a particularly touristy part of the Caribbean, because it was such a chill, relaxing day.

We stayed until sunset and then headed back into the city. We met up with a friend of Matt’s for drinks. One brief aside. When Latifeh and I ordered cider or beer, they served it with a straw and carefully wrapped a napkin around it. Although I thought it was strange to serve beer with a straw, I assumed that was just how they served it. But then when the men also ordered beer and they came out normally, I realized this was just something they were doing for us as women! I found it rather charming.

The next day, it was time to head to the airport!

Truly one of the funniest business names I’ve ever seen in an airport. Yes, let me just go get my airport drugs.

I definitely enjoyed my time in Trinidad. Outside of coming back for the main part of Carnival, I have also heard great things about Tobago and would be interested in going there – that seems like more of the natural beauty side of the country, and has a little more tourist infrastructure from what I’ve heard. On that note, off to Guyana!

Categories
Africa Algeria

The City of Bridges

Constantine is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. It was built over a deep ravine, so there are bridges that cross over the ravine to connect the different areas of the city.

For example, this was the view from the balcony of my hotel room on the first morning when I woke up there! The hotel, by the way, was a former Marriott property that was no longer officially affiliated with the brand, but still had the branding everywhere. My phone automatically connected to the “Marriott Bonvoy” wifi.

The hotel also had a bar, so outside of one night in Algiers when we managed to find a bar to let us in, this was the only part of the trip where we could reliably order drinks with dinner. I was excited to get the chance to try Algerian wine! I enjoyed it, although it wasn’t up to the same standards as some more well-known wine regions. I imagine it’s challenging to get a lot of investment when it’s so difficult to actually sell it to your consumers relative to most other markets.

Here I am in an abaya that I borrowed from our guide’s wife

The first place we visited in the city was the Emir Adelkader Mosque, which is the second largest mosque in Algeria. It was beautiful inside!

It rained heavily off and on as we were touring the city. I, of course, hadn’t brought anything useful against the rain, so it was a cold and wet day for me. This was a hard trip to pack for. It had gotten pretty warm in the Sahara but the coastal parts of Algeria could get quite cold, especially at night.

This whole area was probably my favorite single place we went on the trip. We walked around both sides and even later, the bottom of the ravine, and everywhere you looked was stunning! Because of the dramatic landscape, the city of Constantine has a public transport system that you don’t see every day: gondola. To get back down to the rest of the city, we rode it down to the Kasbah. I loved the experience of the gondola here. It’s clear it isn’t in any way a novelty or a touristy thing – it is just a normal method of public transport for people to get around here.

From there, we made our way through the Kasbah. It was pouring rain on us, so we tried to huddle under the awnings of the shops as we navigated through the streets.

We also visited the Ahmad Bey Palace near here! It was beautiful, with nice gardens and elaborate mosaics. The palace was completed in 1835, which is only two years before the French began occupying Constantine. The ruler who built it did not get much of a chance to enjoy it before the French took it over, and then it became an Algerian military base after Algeria got their independence.

After our visit to the palace, we stopped for lunch, and by the time we had eaten the rain had finally cleared up. It was the perfect time to head down to the bottom of the ravine!

This whole area is just so cool. There’s a trail that you can go on alongside the ravine, and then if you turn into the mountain and go through a dark tunnel, you come out into this:

It is unbelievable that this is just part of a city. This is the kind of place where I am surprised that people were willing to settle here at this scale before we had the kind of technology we do now. When bridges were harder to build and gondolas didn’t exist, how difficult was it to cross this city?

Constantine was definitely a highlight of Algeria for me. This portion of the trip was an add-on and I am so glad I was able to make it work – it was a worthy addition of this itinerary!

And with that, that’s a wrap on Algeria! This was my first visit to Northern Africa (if you don’t count a night at an airport hotel in Cairo, which I certainly don’t). I loved Algeria. While the visa ended up being more challenging than I expected, once I got on that plane from Marseille, I had a great time. The diversity of landscapes and experiences that you can have in Algeria and the well-preserved historical sites makes for a really interesting visit. I would definitely recommend it.