Category Archives: Travel

Back to reality

Posted on June 18, 2012 | 10 comments

Hello everyone, I am back. I apologise for not blogging much for the last 4 weeks as I was very busy. Anyway I have been back for more than 72 hours now and all I have been doing is lots of sleeping. I am not sure which clock my body is following but all I did for the first 24 hours after I got back seemed to be just sleeping.

We landed in Sydney airport and were welcomed by cold and rainy winter. It took a while to clear immigration and customs. As soon as we got into the cab, me and my husband looked at each other and said to each other “Welcome back to the real world.”

I have to admit the best thing about being back home is my warm bed since I have been spending the most time in it. As soon as we got back home, we dumped our suitcases and went to sleep. Even though I had some sleep on the flight (it was 7 hours flight + 4 hours transit + 14 more hours of flight), my body was begging for rest.

So we went to sleep for 6 hours straight. When we woke up both of us were hungry so we ordered a take away and watched TV for a while. As soon as we ate, we felt tired again and off to bed for another 6 hours. We woke up again, talked to our parents to let them know we were back, went for a quick grocery shopping (the fridge was empty) and had our dinner.

AS was working the next day so he had to sleep on time and so we went to bed around 10:30 but even after 2 hours I couldn’t fall asleep so I got up and started surfing the internet. It was probably afternoon in Paris at that time 🙂 Lucky me I had the next day off.

Previously I had gone to work straight from the airport after 16 hours fight from my holiday in USA but this time I am so tired that I am glad that I have an extra day off to rest.

That morning I went to bed around 5 am and woke up at 1 pm. I have never been able to sleep till so late but that morning I didn’t even hear AS leave for work. I was so tired that after I got up at 1 pm just had my breakfast and sat in front of the TV until AS came back from work. I was really dreading going to work the next day.

Anyway, my holiday went exactly as planned and we went to Dubai- Sharjah -Ajman – Brighton –  Devil’s Dyke – Winsor -Wiltshire – Stonehenge – Bath – London – Calais – Holland – Brussels – Frankfurt – Rhine River –  Sankt Goar –  Wurzburg –  Velden – Nuremberg – Prague – Bohemia – Moravia –  Vienna –  Styrian Alps – Venice – Burano – Venetian Lagoon –  Assisi – Rome – Vatican city  – Florence – Como – Lugano – Basel – Flüelen  – Mt.Titlis – Engelberg – Lucern – Danube Valley –  Lake Worth and Carinthia – Paris – Versailles.

There are lots of stories I want to share with you (I have lots of drafts that I wrote on plane and the coach) and it will take me months to do so. This post is to let you all know that I am back and I am still writing 🙂 Thanks everyone for bearing with my absence.

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Midair post

Posted on May 20, 2012 | 24 comments

Right now I am 35,998 feet above the ground and flying at 571 mph towards Dubai from Sydney. The flight is 14 hours nonstop and there is still 6 hours and 30 minutes to reach Dubai.

When I am work, eight hours seems so long sometimes but sitting in one place for 14 hours is proving to be a challenge for me right now. In the last seven and a half hours, I have watched 2 movies had 2 meals and wrote 2 articles but time still seems to crawl. I know I am going on a holiday but the air time seems to make me a bit tired.

One of the reasons why I feel so tired is because I boarded the flight at 6am which means we needed to be at the airport at 4 am and consequently we woke up at 3 am. I always tend to forget that when i book an early morning flight, like 6 am, i need to wake up really really early. We slept a bit late last night as well so I had only 5 hours of sleep.

Our baggage check and boarding went smoothly and after the night of packing, I have only 20 kilos in my luggage :), Emirates allows 30kg for this trip but our tour allows only 23 kgs. I think I deserve a pat in the back either way :). I just hope I won’t regret taking out most of my summer dresses.

We are going to land in Dubai at 2pm local time. We have arranged an airport transfer so I hope to be in the hotel by 3 pm. Then one of my friends is going to pick us up for some sightseeing and shopping. I really need to make sure that I have the energy for all that as he has made a special effort to organize all this for us. Then at 10 pm tonight I am going to be on top of the world, I am serious. We have booked a trip to the top of Burj Kalifa, the tallest building in the world. I am waiting to be mesmerized by the view.

I have a million things in my mind right now about Dubai. I recently watched mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and almost half the movie was shot in Dubai.

Dubai, as you all may know is an amazing city and I am looking forward to being amazed by her. From the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa to the only 7 start hotel, from manmade islands like the Palm and the Map of the World to indoor ski resorts to Ferrari World. I want to see the musical fountains and to go on a dessert safari. It seems like there is so much to do there and we have such limited time.

Ohoo and how can I forget the amazing shopping experience I am going to have.

I will report some more as I experience it and as I can. Wish me luck and hope the trip will go as planned without any mishap.

This post was written on the way to Dubai and published after 2 days.

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My dream holiday!

Posted on May 18, 2012 | 10 comments

We are leaving for our dream holiday today. Right now I am in the airport with my hubby, all excited to board our plane. It took almost 6 months of preparation – booking flights, accommodations, tours and visas but finally the day has come. We will be away for 4 weeks and going to several countries. I will give you guys updates wherever I can otherwise there will be many post coming out of this trip after I am back in Sydney.

Till then take care everyone 🙂

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Packing nightmare

Posted on May 17, 2012 | 14 comments

I have been to many holidays and done all the packing on my own but I have never been this stressed just before a holiday.

To start off with, it has been busy at work which means I have to finish a long list of things before I go. On top of that we are flying out on a weekday at 6.30 am. I am working until the day before so all I have is a few hours after work to sort millions of things.

Last weekend, we decided to start packing so we would have less hassle at the last minute. I packed all my summer clothes and was so happy to see that the suitcase was not too stuffy and quit light. I am one of those persons who don’t know what “light travel” means. I shop wherever I go so I end up carrying luggage to the weight limit of the air carrier.

Anyway I thought I would have an easy few days before we fly out but luck was not on my side. Yesterday we decide to check the weather for the places we are going to just to make sure that we were packing for the right weather. I was disappointed to see that most of the places we are going to will be under 20 degree Celsius if we are lucky, otherwise it is going to be below 15.

One of the main reasons I picked this time of the year to go away was to avoid the winter in Australia but most importantly, the places we are going should have had the end of spring and start of summer, perfect travel time. But I didn’t realise that the weather of the rest of the world is different toAustralia. Here spring and summer are quite warm. So I was packing according to that but to my dismay last night I had to repack everything. I took half of my summer dresses out and instead I had to put in sweaters and jackets. Yes, you guessed it right. Now the suitcase is so bulky that I can’t zip it up!

I’m now waiting for my husband to finish his packing so that I can transfer some of my stuff into his suitcase. Guess I should say that, that is one of the perks of being married. We can share luggage space (I mean to say, I can take his share of luggage space as well 🙂 ).

We were up till late last night and I woke up early this morning and now my head is pounding. God I have never felt this bad before I travel, ever.

I am hoping everything will go well and this holiday will go as I planned. After all this is my dream holiday that I have been planning for a long time.

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Blue passport green passport

Posted on May 8, 2012 | 15 comments

Whoever said ‘All men are created equal’ hasn’t lived in the real world. I am saying this because I have seen it time and time again that there is so such things as – we all are equal and we definitely are not treated equally. If you have different skin colour, you are treated differently, if you have different accent, you are treated differently and definitely you are treated differently if you have different passport colour.

I am planning a holiday with my husband. The problem is he holds a green passport so he is required to apply for visa while I hold a blue passport so I don’t need visa for the places we are going.

It is fair that you can ask someone to apply for visa to travel but the worst part is that they really make it difficult. Me and my husband have the same financial circumstance but while nothing is checked for me, he is required to provide a long list of documents to prove that he is cable of travelling to these countries just because he holds a passport from a country which is considered third world.

The list consists

  • Flight ticket
  • Property paper or tenancy certificate
  • 3 months of you financial statements from your saving account
  • Letter form your employer
  • Utilities bill
  • Pay slips
  • Tax return paper
  • Proof establishing the purpose of your trip, for example a letter of invitation.
  • Copy of marriage certificate if you are married
  • Proof of accommodation, i.e. hotel reservation. If you are staying with family or friends you should submit a letter of invitation

And the list keeps on growing. Then you have to fill out a visa form which is so complicated. Seriously, there are some questions there for which I have no idea what they really mean.

I know they want to make sure only genuine people get tourist visas but if anyone gets a few weeks off and decided to go away for a vacation, they can’t as it takes a while for these visas to be processed.  In most of the embassies, we need to make appointments months in advance so if you hold a passport that requires a visa, you are forced to plan months in advance just to make sure you get all the paperwork and visas ready before you travel.

In some countries, the information you require to apply for visa is hidden somewhere and you will be frustrated searching for it. Then you call the agents and every person you get on the other side of the phone will give you different ideas on what they think you should do. Seriously, if I don’t have a relative/friend in this country and I still want to visit, there should be an easy solution. I shouldn’t be forced to find people or pay ridicules amount of money to visit the place.

Thankfully all visas for my husband have been sorted out and we are looking forward to our holiday but the period when he applied for visas and the time they took to make decision, I was going through nightmares thinking the worst. Because, you need to show your tickets, accommodations and tours which are non refundable so for any reason if you don’t get a visa, all your dream holiday is gone down the drain along with all the money you spent for the holiday.

I know there are lots of problem in every county including Australia due to illegal immigrants but that is really making it difficult for a genuine traveller to get away and have some relaxing time.

I know my good friend Tash from Life through Kaleidoscope had a prolonged wait for her visa and she was just going for her graduation. Fortunately, everything has been sorted out and she is enjoying a great break in the UK along with her graduation ceremony.

One of my cousin’s parents applied for a tourist visa to come and visit their son here in Australia but it was rejected. They are in their 60’s but the rejection letter claimed that they believed, they won’t return to Nepal so the visa was rejected.

The funny thing is, they are making it so hard for all genuine people to enter the country while there are lots of illegal immigrants enjoying their time freely. I hope there will be a time when one has to just scan the passport and pay for visa fee to enter another country no matter which country’s passport you hold.

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