As 2011 comes to an end, I thought it would be cool to talk about my top 5 travel experiences of the year. My year was split roughly 6 months in Australia, 3 months in Southern Asia, and 3 in the US. It's hard to pick just 5, but here are my favorite travel memories from 2011, in no particular order.
Although Sri Lanka is an amazing country to visit, their capital city of Colombo is not one of the highlights. Don't plan to travel Colombo, but since you'll probably be entering and exiting from the Colombo Bandaranaike International Airport, you'll have to spend a little time in the city, so you should know what to do and see. I had 1 day in the city, and chose to have a wander around, find a haircut shop, then board the local train down to Mt. Lavinia, Colombo's best beach.
Q. Hey me and Chris are trying to plan our honeymoon. Have you ever been to Phuket or Thailand? Let me know, or if you have other recommendations?? Somewhere exotic and tropical, but things/excursions to do with good food and drinks!
Late this summer I visited Sri Lanka on my way from Singapore to India. I flew into Colombo and spent a couple days in the city and down on Mount Lavinia beach. Then, since my time was limited and I was feeling lazy, I booked a tour through a company so I could see as much of the rest of the country as possible. I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do and see, and worked with the agent to come up with this 7 day Sri Lanka itinerary. The itinerary is something she wrote, and I added a few of my comments to each location. A fair warning the article may be a bit choppy because of this.
I'm currently wrapping up my time here in Sri Lanka, a place I never planned to visit on this trip, but threw in last minute as I worked my way west towards India. I had about 3 weeks of time to fill from when I split with one set of friends in Vietnam, and before meeting another in India. Originally I was going to head straight to India, but instead I ended up cruising up the Mekong to Cambodia for 5 days, then stopped over in Singapore for a couple, and then noticed flights to Sri Lanka and on to India didn't cost much more than straight to India. On a whim I went for it and booked my flight from Singapore to Sri Lanka.
Magpupungko is a place I am tempted to not write about because I want to keep it all for myself. The Philippines are amazing in general, but the Magpupunkgko Lagoon was amazing and deserted. It gave the satisfying affect of discovery and solitude being the only group at such a cool place. The water in the lagoon is very warm, a more buoyant person than myself could comfortably sleep in it. The lagoon itself is a giant tide pool carved out of the coral, and if you swim to the edge, you can look out over fields of coral to breaking waves,creating a natural infinity pool effect.
Q. I am going to croatia for a week and the end of august but will have about 10 days before our boat trip there to cruise around eastern europe. will probably start in istanbul and work our way up to split. what cities would you recommend going to and what is the best way to get around through there?
The east coast of Australia has a well worn travel path carved into it, running from Cairns to Melbourne in either direction. Along the way there are a set of stops which virtually everyone picks, and all the tour agencies promote. These include from south to north: The Great Ocean Road, Melbourne, Sydney, Byron Bay, Gold Coast / Surfers Paradise, Brisbane, Fraser Island, Agnes Water / 1770, Airlie Beach & The Whitsundays, Townsville / Magnetic Island, and finally Cairns. Most people don't stray very far off this path, but some of these places were not even that developed until fairly recently, so why do people not explore new places more often? Recently I took a road trip from the Gold Coast up to a place called Yeppoon on the Capricorn Coast, where we set off for a sail around the Great Barrier Reef and Keppel Islands.
Word to the wise, watch out for the Cockatoo's, they're poopers. I'm usually not much of a bird person, but the birds in Australia are pretty cool. This is just a small sample of the types of birds they have in Australia and in particular the birds on Hamilton Island. These Sulphur Crested Cockatoo's and Rainbow Lorikeets can be found all around the East Coast of Australia, and I believe up in parts of South East Asia as well.
The Gold Coast is famous for being one of the premier tourist destinations in Australia. There are so many things to do on the Gold Coast, it's impossible to do everything in one visit. This means you have to choose wisely. For those of you who don't know anything about the Gold Coast, it's set on a VERY long stretch of beach on one side, and an intricate system of canals on the other. It actually has more canals than Venice. I've been living here for the past 4 months, and my time is ending in a week, so I'm scrambling to do everything I've not managed to do yet. This afternoon we decided to rent a boat and cruise the Gold Coast Canals, and it turned out to be one of my favorite things to do here.
