Articles from this Category
29 January 2011
Leaving my island paradise Check-out was at 0930 today but my ferry from Havelock Island back to Port Blair isn’t till 1630. Despite previous information, there was no earlier ferry. I easily killed the day with a long breakfast, a long lunch and an Ayurvedic massage in between. I’m not a big fan of Ayurvedic […]
28 January 2011
Naughty Ticketing Tricks After a leisurely breakfast I teamed up with Merja from Finland who was my dive buddy yesterday. We thought we’d go to Radha Nagar beach near Village No 7, which is supposedly the best beach around. I opted for a detour into town to buy my ferry ticket back to Port Blair one […]
27 January 2011
Above: It is possible to scuba dive with an elephant. In the Andaman they have one of the last swimming elephants. You can snorkel or dive with the elephant … if you pay … it is about INR10,000 (NZD300) for one snorkel or dive. That’s like 3x the going rate for two normal dives. I couldn’t […]
27 January 2011
Above: It is possible to scuba dive with an elephant. In the Andaman they have one of the last swimming elephants. You can snorkel or dive with the elephant … if you pay … it is about INR10,000 (NZD300) for one snorkel or dive. That’s like 3x the going rate for two normal dives. I couldn’t […]
26 January 2011
Above: Flying into the Andaman Islands. Uncharted Territory I’m flying off into uncharted territory today … uncharted by me, anyway. Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman & Nicobar Islands is 2 hours from Chennai. It’s also accessible from Kolkata … but really, it is closer to Banda Aceh (Indonesia) and Phuket (Thailand)! For some […]
25 January 2011
Above: Dinner near my hotel and railway station. I said goodbye to Ammi, Salome and Jackson Pollock in the morning. I was bound for Chennai at 1235 flying Oman Air. With the time difference flying eastwards, it was surprisingly and pleasantly cool when I landed at Chennai at 1730. It was neither hot nor humid. […]
18 July 2010
I landed at Dubai at 0100 for a short 1h45 transit to Colombo at 0245. I arrived into Colombo airport at 0845 and after clearing the immigration queue from hell, I took a taxi to Mt Lavinia on the other side of the city where the Tropic Inn was located. The ride was expensive but […]
1 July 2010
Today I took the bus from Hikkaduwa to Colombo; it was easier than the train … I only had to walk out to the hotel gate and hail one down as opposed to having to take a tuktuk to the railway station at additional cost. It seemed too easy because I got on an air-conditioned […]
30 June 2010
This morning I took the bus down to Galle (pronounced “Gawl” in English but “Gaal-le” locally) which is less than half hour away. Things are very cheap here … the bus ride is about USD0.20 and meals are less than USD1 each. Galle has an old Fort dating back to the Portuguese, then Dutch then […]
29 June 2010
Sri Lanka Again Today I’m off on my second visit to Sri Lanka. There are a few reasons for my visit: Even though I’ve travelled extensively around Sri Lanka, I don’t have the true feel of the country and its people. We were in a rush as it was a 6-day stopover on the way […]