Travel to Philippines, Manila.

We spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur which we used to go and see a doctor for Victor. While in Kota Kinabalu he had a little bit of fever and started to have a skin rush on his body. The doctor diagnosed nothing serious, probably either a little virus or an allergy. Today he is already feeling better.

We spent some time visiting Kuala Lumpur and spending too much time in the shopping malls (I guess it became the favorite activity in the South East Asian cities…). We saw the preparation of the National day of Malaysia (31st of August ) on Merdeka Square, visited the Jamek Masjid Mosque and saw the Royal Selangor Club, a place which reminded us of the time the British Colonialist were ruling this part of the world.

Just before National Day, we celebrated Victors first birthday in Kuala Lumpur, an exotic place for our little Swiss traveler... Due to the heat and his throat we opted for an ice cream instead of a normal cake. Nevertheless, we believe that he appreciated.

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Travel to Paraguay, San Pedro.

Paraguay has just recently been by dream place to go, and this is because of the program I go to called Metro Achievement Center. Now to explain real quickly, Metro is an all girls program that is held in the summer and fall, during school, they help us with homework, building our character, and have us take classes. My mom has really likes metro, and she likes to stay on top of all the opportunities they give me. Just last year she found a program that I will be able to apply to a part of the program that can send me to another continent. There was a variety of places to choose from, but there was one that stuck out the most, and the place that did was Paraguay. One main reason as to why it popped out to me was because it offered a soccer camp. I would go to Paraguay and live with a family as if they were my own.

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Travel to Portugal, Lisboa.

Lisboa with is almost 2 million people, occupies a hilly site on the estuary of the Tagus River. Over the centuries the city expanded along the coast to Belem, the starting point for the voyages of discovery in the 15th century. Vasco de Gama, Magellan and Christopher Columbus all left from here (will someone correct me here please?).

We heard that the city underwent a great cleanup for the Expo ’98 exhibition, especially in the old docks and industrial areas along the waterfront. The area is very attractive now.

From our campsite we caught the bus which took 20 minutes to get into the city centre. It was certainly a rough ride through some of the narrow cobbled stoned streets. The campsite was to the west of Belem and the city so we caught our 1st glimpse of Belem with its extensive, sandstone-coloured pavements and memorial squares, water features, museums and monuments. The riverside had a promenade and plenty of space for street cafes.

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Travel to Poland.

Hello from Poland. Our ship docked in Gdynia Harbor, on the Gulf of Gdansk, just off the Baltic Sea. We arrived at 9:30, so we had a leisurely morning today (especially with an extra hour on the clock last night too). The view from our balcony is of a very scenic port. We had plenty of time today to go to breakfast, return to our cabin to publish the Estonia blog with pictures, and report for our tour at 10:40.

According to the ship’s description of this port:

Gdansk, previously called Danzig was recognized by many as the starting place of World War II. The city is over a thousand years old with its founding in the year 997. As member of the Hanseatic League, Gdansk was the richest port on the Baltic and became a cultural center that drew artists and intellectuals from across Europe. However, on September 1, 1939 a German warship opened fire on a garrison north of the city, launching World War II. By the end of the war, Gdansk was in ruins and Poland was occupied by Russia.

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Travel to Portugal, Guimarães.

We thoroughly loved Portugal, the people, the extensive and effective highway/freeway system, the rugged coastal scenery with sandy coves, the castles and fortresses on the coasts perched up on cliffs, the food, the colourful tiles on walls (with a predominance of blue on white), the white-washed villages, particularly in the southern Algarve region, the mountains, fields of citrus fruit, vineyards, wheat paddocks, sandlewood plantations are all features to love.

What we didn’t like was the tolls, both at the booths and overhead cameras (the latter of which we haven’t paid yet as we didn’t get an electronic metre for our car!!!!).

We found most people spoke English so it was very easy for us

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Travel to Kyrgyzstan, Yssyk Kol.

We arrive in Bishkek after a thankfully smooth marshutka trip. It is fast and easy to get our Visas at the border and in no time we arrive at our hostel, where we receive a warm welcome from Marcus, Fred, Jule and Werner. Leah unfortunately has a stomach bug the first two days so she takes it easy at the hostel while the others and I explore the city.

Bishkek is another obviously communist city and the old Soviet Union leaders are still imprinted in the minds of the Kyrgyzstani people. You still see numerous sculptures of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin situated around the city. I went to the Mikhail Frunze Museum, to learn a bit about the Kyrgyz history. Sadly most of the descriptions were written Kyrgyz or Russian so I was unable to read much but picked up bits and pieces about Mikhail Frunze and the 1905 Russian civil war in the Kyrgyz area. In honour of his achievement, Bishkek was even named after Frunze between 1926- 1991.

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Travrl to India, Rajasthan, Pushkar.

When we first arrived in India, we had hopes of going to the beach in the South, the holy Ganges in the East, the desert in the West, and the mountains in the North, but once we got used to the country, we realized we’d have to cut back in order to have more time to enjoy the places we were in. So, we cut out the beach and the mountains. That gave us a couple days of leeway, and a few different people recommended for us to visit Pushkar, a holy town in the desert in Rajasthan that’s famous among Western travelers as a shopping paradise. Although it wasn’t on the railway, it wasn’t too far out of our way to go there, so we went for it.

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Travel to Russia, Saint Petersburg.

The St Petersburg story continues at about 30 minutes past midnight (nominally thought of as "last night"). That’s when we got back to the cabin, set the wake-up call for 5:30 in the morning, and went straight to bed. That first day had been phenomenal, but was really exhausting.

The alarm went off as scheduled and we sprang spryly out of bed (if you believe that we should talk about some hot investments), got dressed and the carry-bag repacked for another day. We went up for a quick breakfast and headed off the ship again. We got through immigration quickly this time (everyone seemed to have been ashore the day before so the line went fast) and found the right place for our tour bus. All this was before the 7:00 AM departure time. And once again our bus was one of the first ones to leave (second today), but that got us ahead of the pack. But today is Monday and the local folks were also on the road going to their work.

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