Good, Bad & Ugly

Good, Bad, Ugly: Hotels

April 27, 2011 By Jillian

Anyone who has taken a weekend away knows that lodging can make or break your travel. Get a bad hotel and the entire experience can become unpleasant.

We took a chance and followed the advice of our hotelier in Phnom Penh. We booked with his buddy hotel, $25 a night for a triple. “It’s a bit outside of town,” he told us. “There’s free shuttle service.” Needless to say I wasn’t holding my breath but low and behold there was a tuk-tuk waiting for us at the mini-bus stop. We arrived at the hotel, which was gorgeous, but definitely a bit outside of the tourist area. It was quiet, peaceful and all together perfect. Looking off our balcony we saw rice fields and the luxurious swimming pool. The place was five star by backpacker standards, and the nicest place we’d had stayed in a long time. We were treated to a delicious made to order breakfast and spent the afternoons relaxing by the pool. When we booked a car for Siem Reap, our driver ended up being the owner and our car was a Lexus SUV. The place was heaven and it didn’t blow our budget!

Bad: Marsabit, Kenya

This would have taken the cake until we got to SE Asia. Off of what little backpacker trail there is in Africa, there exists only two kinds of accommodation: first class and…local. Driving on the “road” from Kenya to Ethiopia we pulled over in the largest town, Marsabit and headed to the local place recommended by the guidebook. The basic cement rooms had seen better days, and the electricity was intermittent. Sometimes there was “hot” water, but the only food available was abysmal. Excellent. Unfortunately the shared toilets were squatters and our friend was sick, a bad combination.

Ugly: Don Det, Laos

Our bus was late to arrive at the turn off for four thousand islands in Southern Laos. We arrived at the turn off after dark, meaning it was well past dark by the time we got to the dock and took the boat across to Don Det. We were frantically searching for a place to sleep in the dark. Thankfully the island was a bit deserted, but the accommodations were abysmal or outrageous. We spent one night in a cruddy little hut and “got the heck out” the next day. Unfortunately that also back fired and we ended up spending the next night (for free) in a crummy hotel room at the bus station. Dirty sheets, walls and floor. It was gross and the buses started rolling in at 6 a.m. We had of course arrived around three, because sometimes a four hour bus ride does take 12.

This column of ishouldlogoff.com aims to answer those questions that we always get asked. What was your favorite this, or your worst that. Every week we aim to highlight a new topic and will do so until we run out of ideas. If you have an idea for a Good-Bad-Ugly post, feel free to tell us in the comment section below or send us an email. To read all of them, click here.

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Good, Bad, Ugly: Advice

April 15, 2011 By Jillian

If there’s one thing people are full of, it’s advice. Where to go, where to stay, what not to do, what tours to do, what companies to avoid, basically everything about everywhere. The trick is sifting through and deciding what advice to trust and what advice to let fly out that proverbial window.

We ran into a lot of advice traveling around the world. As you can imagine, we were always intrigued to hear tips and advice, but as we found out hearing what wasn’t said or reading between the lines became the most important aspect of sifting through to find the travel gems. So before I write any more idioms, here’s our list of the good, bad and ugly travel advice we were given!

The Good – Late to Petra

The ferry from Egypt was late so we arrived in Wadi Halfa sometime around midnight and began to search for a hotel. We were shocked at the expense of Wadi Halfa, but it was late and we finally chose a nice place based on the review of an Australian girl in the lobby. Three hours later we were still downstairs drinking tea and chatting with the Australian girl and the manager. She gave us the best travel tip we’d ever received, go to Petra late. Miss the crowds and stay for sunset. We were hesitant, but unwilling to get up early, we took her advice. We arrived around noon and the place was packed. By 3pm most of the tours had started to leave and by 5pm we were virtually alone. It was magnificent. Thankfully we had purchased a two day pass and arrived late the next afternoon as well and spent hours wandering around the site in the late afternoon sun with virtually no other tourists in sight. Magical and perfect.

The Bad – China during National Holiday

Arriving to a country during their peak festival time can be a great time to experience the culture. Unfortunately the entire population of China (read: 1 billion people) travels at two points of the year: Chinese New Year and National Holiday. Part of our visit coincided with National Holiday.

A expat told us that it wouldn’t be a problem to travel during this time and that it would only last 10 days. Unfortunately that wasn’t our experience. Sites were dangerously overcrowded and we ended up passing up the opportunity to see the Leshan Buddha after hearing one tale of 4 hours waiting just to buy a ticket! Since the population is so large, some companies have started staggering the vacation days, essentially extending the holiday travel period for more than two weeks. We ended up being virtually trapped in Chengdu, no trains or buses were available to go anywhere East or North (we had come from the West) for more than a week. It wasn’t such a terrible place to be trapped, but it definitely impacted our entire travel schedule and our month traveling in China was over quicker than we thought.

The Ugly – Overnight Bus in Malawi

After getting to know a hotel manager very well in Malawi, we felt we could trust his recommendation on the overnight buses. He assured us that he took the bus regularly to visit family in the north and that it was very comfortable at night. He helped us buy our tickets, reviewed the ticket and assured us we’d have a pleasant and comfortable journey.

It turned out to be one of the worst bus experiences of our whole trip.

The bus was three seats by two seats, if you’ve ever been on a bus like this you know the seats are about 25% smaller to accommodate another seat. We of course, were in the three seater most of the way until we negotiated a trade with two women and a baby. A heinously overcrowded bus, crying babies, frequent stops, long waits, several police inspections, and having luggage piled on my lap, it was a nightmare. Everything I had ever dreaded about an overnight bus had come together on this single journey. It was an experience my mind couldn’t even process at the time because I was just focused on getting through the night. If only it had been the comfortable bus in this picture from Peru… Needless to say, it got worse when we disembarked at a muddy bus station well before dawn only to be accosted by what felt like hundreds of locusts (taxi drivers).

What has been your experience with tips and advice? Any gems or nightmares you care to share with us?

Good, Bad & Ugly: Food

March 25, 2011 By Jillian

I’m not exactly a gourmet foodie, but I absolutely love trying new and different foods. Sampling new foods was one of our favorite things about traveling around the world. In fact, we started a segment called “Foodie Friday” to highlight all the different foods we were eating. Like all things in life, some were good, some were bad and others were just downright ugly. Looking back on it now, I’m surprised that Good, Bad and Ugly all come from Asia. Not that the food other places wasn’t good, bad or ugly, but these are the memories that stick out.

The Good – India

We arrived in Mumbai at 2:30am exhausted and greeted our couchsurfing hosts in a blur. The next morning we found out that not only were they interesting people, but they could also cook seriously delicious food. So good that I suggested that for their RTW she teach Indian cooking classes at hostels. Delicious. Fortunately this wasn’t a once in a country experience. Everywhere we went, everything we ate in India was downright delicious. From the chai to the dals, naans and everything in between we could hardly get enough. We almost always ordered the Thali platter, an assortment of small dishes on one big platter (think of a Mediterranean mezze) and no matter what came out it was always delicious and the plates cleaned. I’ll never forget eating at a restaurant in Delhi, turning over the menu and seeing their other worldwide locations- Edison, NJ and Manhattan!

The Bad – Central Asia

Shashlik is simply mutton meatballs on a stick. It’s grilled over a fire and usually served as street food. The meat is usually mixed with some chopped up onion and it’s generally served with a generous helping of flat white bread, vinegar and raw onions. I’ll get to why in a minute. We saw it all along the silk road, and for the most part it was pretty similarly spiced and presented.

Shashlik is generally made with the fattiest cuts of meat and more than once there were bits of bone in my shashlik. That’s not too bad though, I mean it happens, at least it’s a sign that it was real meat! The reason shashlik falls under the bad though, is layer of greasy fat it leaves in your mouth. Hence the vinegar and onions- to cut through the fat. It’s not disgusting by any means, but that fatty film just put me off. It coats your entire mouth and it reminds me of the rendered chicken fat my mom used to keep in the fridge. Gross. After a few days I wasn’t interested anymore.

The Ugly – Laos
I love home stays mostly for the company, but also for the delicious and authentic food. Unfortunately we had downright awful food at a home stay in Laos. So bad that it made me gag and vomit in my mouth. Pleasant details, I know. Some sort of ground up organ (you can tell by the texture) and what tasted like dirt. It was awful and for the first time in all of Asia I went to bed hungry. In the morning we had ramen noodles for breakfast, I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to see instant noodlese before in my life! The rest of the food in Laos was fine, but this meal will always stick out in my head as the worst of the entire trip.

Good Activity, Bad Activity & Ugly Activity

March 11, 2011 By Danny

We travel to open ourselves to new experiences. Some of those involve meeting foreigners and others involve seeing sights and learning about cultre. Some of the most memorable travel experiences for us are those ‘once in a lifetime’ activities that often define a place. At times these are exceptional while other times…not so much. No matter what though, they all make for fond memories and good travel stories.

The Good – Our runner up for ‘Good Day’ in our first Good-Bad-Ugly post, this was whitewater riverboarding in Uganda. The headwaters of the White Nile are unsurprisingly white and filled with rafting companies oozing with tourists looking to head down river. As kayakers we don’t enjoy rafting quite as much as we used to and with our cousin with us kayaking wasn’t really an option. Instead we jumped into a raft with boogie boards and although we had to sit out a couple of the rockier rapids we mostly swam through the Nile’s class 5 rapids in what was an incredibly fun day. Best part about not being in a kayak was that we didn’t have to lift a finger to paddle through the long flatwater stretches between sections of whitewater. Runner Up: That would be the winner of our ‘Good Day’ in our first Good-Bad-Ugly ugly post…Mountain Biking Bolivia’s Death Road.

The Bad – We didn’t even know the ‘W’ trail existed before we were halfway down South America. We were planning to head all the way south so why not hike the ‘W’ as well. When we arrived to town we searched for lodging and in that time out in the cold, I caught cold. In the end our trip to the ‘W’ was cut short because I was ill and this was upsetting because we had otherwise perfect weather for the trip. I think the moral of this story is that when heading to a place with rather extreme weather is is best to pickup the extra clothing and gear before arrival so that you’re prepared when you put your feet on the ground.

The Ugly – Another kayaking story, this one on the Rio Jatunkayo in Ecuador. Prior to this river trip I usually only needed to roll (that’s what you do to get back up when you tip over) once or twice each time I ran a river and had only swam/ejected (that’s what you do when you can’t roll) once or twice ever. On this day, I went for at least seven swims but I’m not sure of that because I lost count. To add insult to injury the owner of the hostel we were staying at had paid for my boat and transportation as the ‘safety boater’ for the rafters he’d sent out that day. I wasn’t a very good safety boater at all…. I did go out a second day in a different boat and didn’t have a single problem…so I blame it on having had a crappy boat that first day.

Good Animal, Bad Animal & Ugly Animal

February 25, 2011 By Danny

There are a lot of animals in the world and we aimed to see all of them. Of course we didn’t but, we seem to have had a lot of animal experiences over our travels. Here are just a few:

The Good

Our first week on the road was an amazing one. Waking up the first morning in Guerro Negro, Mexico, jumping on a boat, and having what is probably the most amazing experience possible with a wild animal was fantastic. The boat tour that we took brought us out into the harbor where the gray whales literally just swam right up to our boat to play with us and allow us to pet them. The newborn calf led his mother and when a second boat stole his attention his mom swam right up so we could continue rubbing her skin. These were wild animals and we never gave them any food. The next few days, further south in La Paz, we took a boat ride around Espiritu Santo where we were visited by (not so nice) pilot whales, a humpback whale, jumping rays and for a finale we snorkeled with some very friendly and playful sea lions.

The Bad

Our trip to the Pantanal saw some practices that we find particularly upsetting. We went fishing for piranhas in the river, a perfectly OK activity and one we’d done just weeks earlier in the Bolivian Amazon, and then returned to the lodge with our catch. Upon our arrival we found the beach littered with caiman (the South American version of the alligator) who were just waiting to eat those fresh piranha…and they were fed, right there on that sandy beach. We consider it a bad practice whenever animals are given the opportunity to link humans with food, the reason we did not go diving with the great white sharks in South Africa. We were also annoyed when bait was tossed into the river for a hawk to come and catch…creating a nice, fake photo opportunity each time that hawk came down to eat.

The Ugly

The whales of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula were wonderful, many of the mammals we encountered in Africa were not quite so accommodating. After spending gobs of money to see the rare mountain gorillas of Uganda, we were more than a bit surprised when our welcoming by these animals was one of dominance by one of the group’s males. The gorilla charged us, actually knocking one of the guides to the ground; it was an authentic experience but more than a touch scary. Runner Up: Also in Africa, one elephant in Kruger National Park just didn’t want us get past him. This elephant just stood in the road, blocking our passing, and when we finally were able to make a run for it, he turned and reared his head….VERY unhappy at our having passed by. Jill wasn’t able to enjoy elephants again, which was problematic because we saw lots more.