Wandery http://www.wandery.net/ Sarah and Patrick's travel blog en Copyright 2007 Tue, 01 May 2007 17:08:44 +0700 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Eating our way around the world Sarah: People travel for all different sorts of reasons, and with any number of interests. There are photography buffs, who spend much of their trip looking at the world through the viewfinder of their camera; beach bums, recognized by their leathery, hot-pink or nut-brown skin, extra-large sunglasses, and extra-small bathing suits; adventurers, with their zip-off pants and penchant for rock-climbing, paragliding, scuba diving. There are the partiers, the amateur anthropologists, the enlightenment seekers. We’ve met examples of all of these throughout our trip.

But the (probably true) cliché about travel is that the thing it teaches you the most about is yourself. And on that front, Patrick and I have come to a realization about what kind of travelers we are: shameless foodies.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/05/eating_our_way_around_the_worl.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/05/eating_our_way_around_the_worl.html Malaysia Tue, 01 May 2007 17:08:44 +0700 Video Roundup Patrick: We've been pretty good about putting up the latest photos from our trip on our flickr page so far, not so hot about posting new blog entries, and downright awful about sharing the silent videos we've taken every once in a while. In this post, I'm just going to share the better ones with you, and give you some background where it's needed.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/04/video_roundup.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/04/video_roundup.html Turkey Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:23:31 +0700 Guess What's On My Mind Patrick: We're in northeastern Turkey today, and our hands smell of the perfume that people in the service industry here seem to pour on them every chance they get. But I want to tell you about beautiful Georgia. We've spent two and a half unique weeks in a fine caucasian country that most people in America probably know only as the former soviet republic that has a familiar and pronounceable name. Never mind that the locals call their country Sakartvelo. Did you know that Georgia is slated to have the third largest troop deployment in Iraq, after the U.S. and Britain? Did you know that to get into the capital city of Tbilisi from the airport, you take George W. Bush Highway? Georgia is trying to position itself as one of America's greatest allies. Don't you think we should all know our ally a little better?

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/04/guess_whats_on_my_mind.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/04/guess_whats_on_my_mind.html Georgia Tue, 03 Apr 2007 15:55:27 +0700 Transcontinental Sarah: Now that it's been fully a month since our last update, some of you have probably started wondering where in the world we are, and whether you'll ever hear from us again. As of a week or two ago, we were pretty uncertain ourselves where we were headed. We knew we were getting ready to depart India. Despite the fact that there are years' worth of sites and cities that we would be missing out on in that vast and fascinating subcontinent, we could tell that after spending about two months there, we were going to be ready for a change of pace and a change of scenery. We also knew that we'd be flying to wherever we headed next, which opened up a whole raft of possibilities.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/03/transcontinental.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/03/transcontinental.html Georgia Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:08:49 +0700 Mold and lodging in Kolkata Sarah: Our journey to Kolkata gets off to a fairly inauspicious start on Saturday when we arrive at the Gaya train station for a 9:00 a.m. departure and are told that our train is delayed and now expected in at 11:30. This is a train that had started in New Delhi some 17 hours before, Gaya being just one of many stops on the long line to Kolkata. We all groan a little -- a couple days before, Patrick had met someone whose train ended up arriving at its destination 18 hours late, and we’ve been told that the Indian Railways policy is that late trains always defer to on-schedule trains for station stops, track changes, and so forth -- which basically means that once a train has started running late, it’s only going to get later.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/02/mold_and_lodging_in_kolkata.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/02/mold_and_lodging_in_kolkata.html India Thu, 15 Feb 2007 15:14:12 +0700 Sorting it out Sarah: I keep trying to figure out how to begin.

We’ve been in India for three weeks now, and already I feel like I have a book’s worth of images to relate, and many years’ worth of fodder for discussion and questioning and study. This is a country with an incredibly rich and diverse history and culture, and it’s also a country with a lot of problems, all of which feel complex and daunting and interrelated.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/02/sorting_it_out.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/02/sorting_it_out.html India Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:23:36 +0700 Stranger in Chandigarh Patrick: We've had a slow start in India. With the excuse that we were recuperating from jetlag and a hectic and emotional holiday in the USA, we spent three nights in Delhi without really straying a block away from our guesthouse. We'll be back in that enormous city later to be tourists, but our first visit was purely a stage on or way out into the rest of India. Now we're in Chandigarh, a spread-out, concrete city planned to a T by modernist architect Le Corbusier in 1955. We've also been taking it slow here. Sarah's still in the dumps about her grandmother, who died while we were in the US with her family, and she's also teetering next to some kind of cold or flu, so we've been watching a lot of TV, and we've not gotten out much.

Despite our reclusiveness over the past several days, we've had some great luck meeting people.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2007/01/stranger_in_chandigarh.html http://www.wandery.net/2007/01/stranger_in_chandigarh.html India Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:15:45 +0700 Goodbye, Bangkok Sarah: Sometimes over the course of this trip people have asked us how much of it is planned in advance -- you know, whether we already purchased a round-the-world plane fare or have an itinerary all mapped out. And the answer to that question -- how much is planned ahead -- has been, very little.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/12/goodbye_bangkok.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/12/goodbye_bangkok.html Thailand Tue, 12 Dec 2006 20:19:07 +0700 The people you meet Sarah: Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to those of you in the states. Patrick and I survived our first big holiday away from family, and had a delicious dinner Thursday night at the Foreign Correspondents' Club here in Phnom Penh. There was no turkey or cranberry sauce on the menu, but the chewy herbed focaccia bread with pesto dip was drool-inducingly good, and we even managed an apple crumble for dessert. The next morning, while we ate breakfast at a little Khmer restaurant near our guesthouse, our parents and families passed the phone around the dining room table (it was still Thursday night back in DeKalb) and we got to say a quick hello to loved ones.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/11/post.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/11/post.html Cambodia Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:47:40 +0700 Stepping over the crocodile Sarah: We've been travelling for long enough now that the things that seemed exotic or exciting, alienating or just plain weird, when we first started, have now become completely normal. Families of five on a motorcycle, water buffalo grazing on the side of the highway, footprints on the toilet seat -- these things don't phase us anymore. But every once in a while, something will still happen that's surprising enough to make us giggle. Like the new phrase we've coined for those times when you have to use a bathroom you'd really prefer not to. "Okay, I'm going to step over the crocodile." Allow me to explain.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/11/stepping_over_the_alligator.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/11/stepping_over_the_alligator.html Cambodia Thu, 16 Nov 2006 20:34:59 +0700 Swords, skewers and parasols, oh my Sarah: The problem with the fact that I’ve been letting weeks go by in between entries here on Wandery is that then there’s so much to say that I’m never sure where to begin, which just serves to make it even less likely that I’ll get something posted. So I’m going to attempt to turn over a new leaf and post more often, even if it’s just a short note to let you know where we are and what we’re up to.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/11/swords_skewers_and_parasols_oh.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/11/swords_skewers_and_parasols_oh.html Thailand Sat, 04 Nov 2006 23:22:51 +0700 Emergent curriculum Sarah: One thing I’m realizing is that the things you learn traveling are seldom the things you set out expecting. At the moment, I’m not even talking about philosophical revelations or new self-awareness or any of that, although there has of course been plenty, some of it surprising. Right now, I’m just talking about the random skills and odd bits of knowledge that I’m going to come back with; skills like knowing how to play chess and ride a motorcycle and estimate distances in meters, or random scraps of factoid like how drainage systems function in traditional Chinese shophouse architecture and how swiftlets construct their nests and the definition and mode of preparation of almost every single type of Indian bread.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/10/emergent_curriculum.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/10/emergent_curriculum.html Malaysia Sat, 07 Oct 2006 21:55:02 +0700 The Life Asiatic Patrick: My first entry here put me off writing for a while. I was overwhelmed with how much of my day it took to chronicle my day, and so I went sour on it. But today, Sarah told me, “I’d like to write another entry, but people will start thinking it’s my blog, and not ours. You should really write something.” My reputation thus threatened, now I write. This will not be a comprehensive log of our recent travels. I’m just going to describe the creatures we’ve seen, beginning with the mudskipper.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/09/the_life_asiatic.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/09/the_life_asiatic.html Malaysia Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:23:36 +0700 From mountaintops to malls Sarah: The thing about travelling for a long time is that the phrase "once in a lifetime" can begin to lose its meaning. Each day is a new adventure, and every city we visit is a place we are likely never to see again after we bid it goodbye.

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/09/from_mountaintops_to_malls.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/09/from_mountaintops_to_malls.html Malaysia Tue, 12 Sep 2006 17:19:42 +0700 Quick link Sarah: In the internet cafe here in Yogya/Jogja, I took a moment to skim the NY Times Magazine online and came across this personally relevant article, which I thought I'd pass on...

]]> http://www.wandery.net/2006/09/quick_link.html http://www.wandery.net/2006/09/quick_link.html Indonesia Mon, 04 Sep 2006 22:51:59 +0700