Both Prachee and I have always liked Portland, but it had been 10 years since we’d last been there as Management Trainees at Toyota! This year we were determined to go back and visit friends and family – and introduce them to Julian. We met our friends Sarah & Munier (& their son Rohan) in Bangalore when Prachee got Obama fever and got involved with the chapter of Democrats Abroad that Sarah had founded. Their “tour of duty” ended just short of election day and they returned to Portland, but we said we’d get together again back in the US. Prachee’s cousin Ajay and his family (Brook, Maya, Sophie and twins Cash & Kai) are also long time Portland residents and in the last year had added twins to the family. It was great to catch up with the Portland Date’s whom we hadn’t seen since our wedding and of course also meet Cash & Kai. Portland has only gotten better in the last 10 years and we also got to visit the town of Hood River on the Columbia River Gorge – Sarah & Munier have their lovely weekend place there. It was a bit chilly, but we ventured out to the Pumpkin patch and grabbed a beer at one of Oregon’s finest brew pubs – Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River. We had a fantastic weekend and Julian loved his first of hopefully many more Portland trips!
Archive for the 'Vacations' Category
A quick detour out of our Thailand trip landed us in Hanoi, Vietnam for 3 days. Our friends Craig & Grace, with whom we’ve traveled before (Philippines, Italy & India) said, why don’t we meet in Vietnam over Christmas? Makes perfect sense to spend Christmas in a Buddhist-Communist (Socialist) country, right? It turns out that the Vietnamese have embraced Christmas with the same fervor as their pseudo capitalism.
We spent 3 days hanging around the French quarter, going in and out of shops (mostly galleries) with a few detours to see the sights. Hanoi is a fantastic walking city, especially if you stay at one of the hotels in the center of town such as the Hilton Hanoi. The culinary highlight was lunch at “Little Hanoi 1,” a hole in the wall Vietnamese place that 4 of us had lunch at for about $12. The Vietnamese 5 course dinner for Christmas Eve was also very memorable, especially the girls getting a second dessert because the staff thought they hadn’t served it to us!
Craig did a great job on his post about our time together in Hanoi, so I’ll link to his blog and you can read more if you’d like: Who wants to be a Millionaire?
From Hanoi we headed back to Bangkok for one more day of shopping and sightseeing. Since it was the weekend we headed to JJ Market which is just outside central Bangkok. This place is massive and you can find just about anything you are looking for. With the heat and humidity and the sheer amount of stuff and number of people we were a bit overwhelmed. Prachee picked up a few gifts and we headed back to Silom for some massages 
Writing this from the lounge at BKK airport – back to Bangalore tonight. Next is the Rickshaw rallye, so stay tuned!
Bangkok was next on the itinerary and it didn’t take long for both Prachee and I to realize what a great city it is. I mentioned on my FB update that I felt like “Goldilocks” because Bangkok seemed to be “just right.” It straddles many dimensions: old & new, asian & western, provincial & cosmopolitan, laid back & full of energy, clean & dirty! It seems to have whatever you are looking for and as a bonus the best food in the world. Thais tend to eat many small meals throughout the day, so on every corner and every alley you can find people who have set up a mini kitchen serving amazingly fresh food. And despite being on the street, cleanliness is impeccable – even tourists can eat at these impromptu restaurants without any fear of getting ill.
On our first night after arriving we ended up at an Italian restaurant in West Silom where our hotel was located. After 4 days of Thai food for lunch & dinner in Phuket we were ready for some pizza! The next day we started with a river boat “bus” ride up to the old part of Bangkok where the holiest temples or Wats are located. First was the Grand Palace & Emerald Buddha, followed by the Reclining Buddha – for me the highlight of cultural Bangkok. We then made our way to Banglamphu market, Soi Rambutri & Khao San Road which are the “backpackers” areas of the city. The streets are lined with stalls selling everything imaginable and you can graze on the great Thai food carts while you shop. We’d been snacking all day, so we had a light dinner with the backpackers on Khao San and headed back to the hotel.
The next day all plans had to revolve around having lunch at Chote Chitir, a hole in the wall restaurant that had gotten rave reviews in the NYT travel section and was also highly recommended in our Lonely Planet. If you know Prachee, then you understand how a whole day in a city could be planned around meals! Since the restaurant was near Khao San Road we decided to head back there to continue our exploration of the area. This time we did a bit of shopping – I am now the proud owner of “Thai Fishermen” pants… don’t ask! The morning flew by in our exploration of the endless streets and alleys of Banglamphu and soon it was time for lunch. Thanks to Lonely Planet we were able to actually find Chote Chitir and since it was nearly 1:30pm, we found that we had the pick of the 5 tables in the place. Prachee excitedly asked the owner for her recommendations on what to order and soon the dishes started to arrive: first, the Mee Krob – a house specialty of thin fried crispy noodles with a delicious sweet and sour sauce; second, black pepper and garlic prawns; third, raw mango salad with grilled salmon (both Prachee’s and my favorite); & fourth, banana flower salad. The proprietor asked if we wanted steamed rice, we kindly declined – who wanted to waste valuable stomach real estate with rice! Let me just say, there wasn’t much for a “doggie bag” – Chote Chitir lived up to the hype!
After lunch we “rolled” to the hotel, picked up our bags and headed to the airport for our trip to Hanoi, Vietnam.
After 2 years in India it was rather sad that we had not yet done a South East Asia trip (with the exception of Singapore). It was a conscious decision to focus on trips in India and the idea was to do a month long backpacking trip at the end of the assignment prior to moving back to the US. Given that there are two and a half of us, the whole backpacking thing went out the window. Prachee calls it a “baby moon,” I call it one last hoorah!
What better place to start than the beach! We flew from Bangalore to Phuket via Bangkok and stayed at the Kamala Beach Hotel & Resort which was recommended by our friend Phil. It was a chill place – exactly what we were looking for. Lots of reading by the pool and the beach, broken up by fantastic (southern) Thai seafood and walks on the beach. We’d definitely recommend the hotel even though we were a little out of place as we had not arrived on a charter plane from Northern Europe. Tons of Scandinavians, Dutch & French staying for 1-2 weeks at a time. I love doing nothing at the beach, but I don’t think I could do it for 2 weeks straight!
Kamala Beach is also 15 minutes by taxi to Patong, which is probably Phuket’s best known town/beach. It is kind of a mini-Bangkok with the bars, clubs and nutty night life. At this point this is not necessarily our scene, but we were glad to be so close and we spent one evening in Patong. We were also very fortunate because they were having a “Beach Festival” for 4 days which included about 60 or 70 food stalls all along the beach boardwalk highlighting all the different types of Thai cuisine. We were planning on eating at a restaurant, but when we saw all the food stands we couldn’t resist and ended up eating as we walked. After coming from India it is a pleasure to be able to eat from the street vendors with no fear of getting sick – the cleanliness & professionalism is fantastic!
Prachee is usually the big fan of massages, but during pregnancy the kinds of massages are restricted. On the beach, there are a couple of massage beds every 20 feet and of course our hotel had about 10 of them – perpetually busy! On our last morning we decided to get up early and start off the day with a massage. Prachee chose an oil massage (gentle) and I chose Thai (when in Rome…) having never had one before. For the next 1 hour this diminutive Thai woman proceeded to pretzelize me, using her hands, elbows, forearms and feet – using her entire body weight as leverage. I often wonder why I don’t like massages – to me they are just the ultimate luxury. Somebody labors (for very little money ~$10 for 1 hr) in order to relieve you of your physical pain. I guess it’s just my personality, but physical pain is something you endure, not relieve. For this reason, Thai massage appeals to me – in order to achieve the relief you have to endure 1 hour of pain!
Prachee and I both finished a great new book at the beach in Phuket so I wanted to encourage you to read it if you haven’t already. The White Tiger is Aravind Adiga’s first novel and the 2008 Man Booker prize winner. For those of us who live in India, the narrative strikes close to home, but regardless, it is an exceptionally written novel with a unique and dark story that you won’t be able to put down.
Next is Bangkok, followed by Christmas in Hanoi. I will try to post individual blogs for each, but we’ll see how that goes. I’ll probably post photos at the end once we get back to Bangalore. Check back soon!
We just got back from another great trip, although I now need a vacation to recover from it. The last couple of weeks have been a non-stop affair, starting with Dana & Roeland’s Wedding in the Netherlands. We had a fantastic time and it was wonderful to get an opportunity to catch up with many friends from Barcelona that we’d not seen in too long. I got to know Dana & Roeland through our involvement with the IESE Swim Team – they were both fierce competitors, especially when it came to swimming against each other
. Prachee and I were both ecstatic when they announced they were dating and honored to have been able to share in their wedding day.
We also got to spend some time with the Van Zenderens in Utrecht. This was the second year in a row that we’d had a wedding in the first week of October in Holland. Harriet, Philip & Max hosted us again and even had all our favorite dutch snacks waiting for us! Bart had a dinner for us at his place and we also got everyone together for Pannekoeken (dutch pancakes) after a hike in the woods. We are running out of single dutch friends who are getting married, but I hope we get to visit Utrecht many more times in the future.
The next stop was San Francisco. Seeing friends, family in the evenings. Appointments and business meetings during the day. Part of the reason for our stop in SF was for Prachee to get a sense of the opportunities available for her at Cisco upon our return from India. Fortunately, she got a very positive response and she’ll be working to finalize the details of her next role in the weeks ahead. With that however, comes the bitter sweet realization that our time in India is drawing to a close. It is looking like we’ll be relocating back to the Bay Area in the 2nd half of January 2009 – just a few weeks shy of our 2 year anniversary of arriving in India (Feb 14, 07). For those of you who were planning on visiting us in India in 09, sorry – but please still keep your plans, you won’t regret a trip to this fascinating country!
Another weekend, another wedding. We flew down to Los Angeles Saturday morning and headed over to Craig & Grace’s new place in “South Pasadena Adjacent.” They were gracious to put us up for the weekend in their guest bedroom. A quick Tamale lunch getting caught up on the latest and we had to head out to Janelle and Jared’s Wedding in Ventura. LA traffic was predictably bad, but we still made it only to the last 20 minutes of the ceremony – it was Catholic, otherwise it would have been done long before we arrived 
. Janelle and Prachee were roommates in Barcelona during their exchange at ESADE from USC MBA. They also shared an apartment in LA upon their return from Barcelona. We heard all about Jared from Janelle, when she came to visit us during our vacation in India in 2004. She was in Kazakhstan and flew south to meet us in Bombay. I still remember how ecstatic she was at the availability of “imported” products and the level of infrastructure in India… all I could say is wow! Janelle was her radiant self and I can honestly say I have never seen a bride enjoying her wedding day as much as Janelle. Jared is a great match for Janelle and we couldn’t be happier that they found each other – all the best in married life. Regretfully, in our rush to beat the LA traffic I forgot our SLR camera, so we have only a few pictures from the wedding – they are included in the Holland & California Trip Album.
On Monday morning after a brief stop at Toyota to say hi to ex-colleagues we had lunch and caught up with our friends Bill and Jim. It was all too quick, but it was great to catch up and let them know we’ll be back on the west side in no time. We then drove down to San Diego for what was to be the relaxing part of the trip. We ended up running around nonetheless, but we let the great weather and laid back San Diego attitude recharge our batteries. We also got a chance to catch up with friends as my mom put together a small dinner for my 33rd Birthday (Oct 23). Pedro made an unbelievable paella – a memorable evening of great food and great company. In what seemed a flash we were loading up the car for our trip up to LAX – Lufthansa to Frankfurt and on to Bangalore.
Album links: Dana & Roeland’s Wedding; Holland & California Trip
Spent a couple weeks in the States seeing family and friends. This time we bounced between Washington DC, San Francisco and San Diego. I guess we are of the age that our friends, siblings, cousins, etc. are all having babies… so lots of baby pictures in this album. As per my previous post, I did become an Uncle recently, so this trip was also an opportunity to meet Santiago – barely a few weeks old when we arrived!
DC was lots of fun as usual… we met up with some of Prachee’s friends from College and since Saurabh was in town it meant the whole Date family was in one place for a change . Vivek & Shobha also hosted a small party for their Maryland friends who were not able to attend our wedding (in 2005). So I think with that last party, that concludes our “wedding functions” – 2.5 years later!
San Diego was chill as usual. Saw Becky & Ron plus had the prerequisite Uruguay-Argentina BBQ lunch. Claire & Jackie came down from LA and we had some quality family time.
Album Link for Facebook users: US Home Leave 2008
It has been quite a while since Prachee and I have been to a country neither had traveled to before – I think the last time was Morocco in 2005. It reminds me of my first trip to India, looking at things with a fresh perspective and amusing the locals with “strange” observations.
If at all possible, I like to travel to a place and live like the “locals” – there are always the “must do” sites in every country, but the more tourist traps I can avoid, the better the trip will be. So when Craig suggested doing this trip we jumped at the opportunity to see the Philippines with locals (Grace was born in the Philippines and lived there many years; Craig amuses the locals with his fluent Tagalog).
Grace’s family were wonderful hosts, putting us up in their house while in Manila, making us feel welcome at several family dinners and events and of course feeding us until ready to burst – that’s just the Filipino way! The first night we checked out some of the Manila Nightlife hanging out with some of Craig & Grace’s friends and seeing a local band (Aura). We didn’t go too crazy though as we had an early 7 am flight the next morning to the Island of Palawan and the El Nido Resort of Lagen.
The pictures don’t do justice to the natural beauty of Palawan and the Bacuit Archipelago specifically, which is where the resort is located. The limestone cliffs rise dramatically out of water that ranges in color from light green to deep blue. We did some hiking through the jungle, kayaking, island hopping and a lot of eating! We’d highly recommend either of the El Nido Resorts (Lagen or Miniloc) for anyone looking for a getaway to a spectacular place that has not achieved the renown of similar types of resorts in Thailand or even the Maldives. Be forewarned that the price of this unspoilt paradise is one hairy propeller plane ride ending in a dirt airfield that seems carved out of the jungle. Just check out the pictures, there is no point in me trying to describe the place.
We tried to extend our stay by one more night at El Nido, but everything was booked solid by an offsite of a Belgian Insurance company (in hindsight we might have gotten out just in time!). Back in Manila we dedicated ourselves to shopping and some more eating. On Tuesday evening, Lola (Grace’s grandmother), invited us to go Ballroom dancing. Yeah, I know, it’s not in the Lonely Planet, but remember what I said about living like locals… so off we went. The room was massive with a live band in the middle and full of gyrating 80+ year old women with their 20 something old “DI’s” – that’s Dance Instructor in Pilipino. Even before we’d had our first beer, Craig, Grace, Prachee and I were coaxed onto the dance floor and proceeded to be out Rumba’d, out Waltz’d and generally embarrassed ourselves. Having “danced” my plan was to attract as little attention as possible while ordering round after round of San Miguel Pales (local beer), but Lola had other ideas. Soon enough Craig and I as well as the girls were assigned our “Shared DI’s” (one man and one woman) and alternated between dancing and drinking. I must admit, dancing with someone who knows what their doing (even if she was doing all the leading…) was a lot of fun. After about 3 hours of dancing we called it a night knowing that was a once in a lifetime experience.
Between all the shopping and eating we also managed to do a bit more sightseeing and even some exercising (sort of). We headed south of Manila through the heavy traffic to see Taal, the world’s “smallest” volcano and to play a round of golf at the Tagaytai Highlands Country Club. To get to the Volcano you have to take a boat ride on the lake that surrounds it and if you want to go to the rim it requires a one hour horse ride. We opted just to take some pictures and head to the Country Club for lunch. The Highlands golf course is striking as it winds down the hillside and offers breathtaking views from just about every tee. It also doesn’t allow much room for error as the narrow fairways are lined both sides by thick jungle and brush – good thing we bought a bunch of used balls at the caddy stand! Being a total golf hack it was fun to play with a caddy as they know the course and give you pointers that really do make a difference. I was even lucky enough to win a sleeve of balls for hitting the “flower planter” on hole #4 which has a dramatic 500 ft drop from tee box to fairway.
As usually happens with vacation, the time went by too fast and we were rushing through some last minute shopping on our way to the airport! We had a fantastic time, thanks to Craig & Grace for hosting us – hopefully next trip for the four of us will be Uruguay in ‘09.
We took advantage that Vivek & Shobha were flying back through Bombay, to spend a few days in the city catching up with friends and family. It’s sad to say, but we’ve been in Bangalore for 10 months and had not gone back to Bombay. All I can say is that this trip, everything just makes more sense… funny how it works that way! It was great to be back as the city has great energy and it’s always a lot of fun to hang out with Prachee’s “local” friends!
One commentary on the state of Bangalore is that my recent travels to Bombay and Delhi make me realize how far this city has to go. Neither Bombay or Delhi are perfect, but they are light years ahead in infrastructure and most importantly in imposing the social norms that make these massive metropolises “livable.” Of course Bangalore is no where near the scale of the behemoths Bombay or Delhi, but I’ve seen proof that India can have infrastructure, can implement traffic discipline and can curb public urination – to name just a few. Bangalore, you have no excuses!
We decided our final trip to the US of 2007 would be for Thanksgiving to spend it with the Vignoles side of the family. The Date’s will be here in India during Christmas, so those who are married know the 1 holiday with each family drill. Prachee’s family doesn’t really celebrate Christmas, but in my mind it’s about spending time with family – the holiday is just the excuse. We tried to see as many people as possible, but the trip was only a week long, so our apologies if we didn’t get the chance to call you or see each other.
We flew into San Francisco, so Rani & Nick let us crash at their place and we got to spend maximum time with Devin (you can see how big he’s gotten in the pictures – but the mischievous smile remains the same). We barely had a few days in SF before we drove down with Chris & Lindsay to my parents place in San Diego. Dreading the day-before-Thanksgiving traffic, we left while it was still dark and drove around LA. We ended up making it in just under 8 hours, which was fantastic – thanks to a little luck and dad’s masterful re-routing using the traffic info on Google Maps!
In San Diego we had a fantastic Thanksgiving meal and also did our tradition of Secret Santa as we were all going to be spread out around the world for Christmas. Caught up with friends and even got a round of golf in thanks to Jackie organizing. In what seemed a flash, we needed to start packing to leave for LA on Sunday. On our way to the airport we managed to see friends from Toyota and USC as well as check out Claire & Jackie’s apartment.
The flight home was a bit different than usual as we flew over the Pacific Ocean on Singapore Airlines. I was really excited because since we flew to California through Europe, we’d be completing a Round the World Flight! I also set my personal record for longest flight I’ve taken: 14 hours from LAX to Taipei. Anyway, we had an eight hour layover in Singapore, so we took the time to wander the city for a few hours. Hope you enjoy the pictures!
If you are a frequent visitor (one or two of you…) and click on the “Recent Albums” thumbnails to the right, you might have noticed a slew of new albums. They are actually old albums that I had on Sony ImageStation and most are of pictures of my time at IESE Business School. Sadly, ImageStation is closing up shop, so I have moved my favorite albums on to the blog. You can access the albums via my old posts, but I’ll add the links here if you are curious as to what we were up to a few years ago: Sailing the British Virgin Islands, IESE Business School (5 Albums by Quarter), Christmas 2004-05: India, Summer 2004, Christmas 2003-04: Italy and Uruguay 2002-03.
