G’day and welcome to Sydney, the capital of New South Wales and what is probably Australia’s most famous city. I arrived into the city late afternoon and discovered that driving in downtown Sydney is not fun at all. After missing one turn, several inconvenient one way roads, and a couple of no right turn here intersections, I suddenly found myself driving across the Harbor Bridge and having to make a ten mile loop around the outskirts of the city before…
I left the Snowy Mountains that didn’t have any snow yet and headed northeast through some really beautiful grassland until I reached the Australian Capital Territory. It’s a smallish territory created specifically to encompass Australia’s capital city, Canberra. I wanted to see the capital, of course, but I was most excited about all the museums. I started at the main one, the Australian National Museum. Right in the lobby was the Muttaburrasaurus, Australia’s own native dinosaur. They named it that…
After Mungo National Park the next closest stop on my itinerary is clear on the other side of Victoria, a really really long drive. So I decided I needed to add a stop in between to break up that drive… and now I’m in Bendigo. I picked this place because I wanted to see the Great Stupa of Universal Compassion. Even though it’s a big modern construction, this place was pretty amazing. The main structure is modeled after the 15th…
Greetings from my latest adventure Down Under! That’s right, not only am I visiting the next country on my list, Australia (just in case you didn’t figure that out), but I’m also adding another continent to my tally. So let’s dive right in, since that’s pretty much what I had to do. After flying twentyish hours across the Pacific, my flight arrived into Melbourne at 8am. Which meant I had to try and stay awake all day so I could…
Believe it or not, that whole long thing is the actual, official name of the city that we all know as Bangkok. It’s the longest city name in the entire world. There are different stories as to where the name ‘Bangkok’ (Village of the Wild Plum) came from, but no one is really sure. The locals refer to their city as just ‘Krung Thep’. Here’s a pic of the city’s official name on a monument outside of the city hall….
I think Thailand is one of the oddest shaped countries in the world. After leaving Kanchanaburi I made a hard right turn and now I’m heading south down the thin sliver of land between the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, the Malay Peninsula. My first stop on this part of the journey is the quiet town of Phetchaburi. There’s only a small handful of things I wanted to check out here, so let’s get started. My hotel doesn’t…
It was a different sort of travel day from Lopburi to my next stop. It was time to turn in this, my third, rental car. So I drove due south past Ayutthaya straight to the Bangkok Airport where I turned in the car then I decided to have a little fun by riding the train back north to Ayutthaya. It was about a 45 minute trip and it cost me a whopping 11 baht (about 33 cents). The Ayutthaya kingdom…
My next stop in Lop Buri was a super short drive away, only about an hour and a half, so I spent the day driving around to some of the outer sites before making my way to my hotel. A little over half way between Khao Yai and Lop Buri is one of Thailands holiest places, Wat Phra Phutthabat. In 1624 they found a depression in the rock that resembled a foot which fit right in with the legend that…
Just a short drive west from Nang Rong is another of eastern Thailand’s big cities, Nakhon Ratchasima, or Khorat for short. After my run in with the angry Asian wasps and now with a busted camera lens, I went straight to one of Khorat’s shopping malls to see if I could find a new one. Shopping malls are all but dead in the States, but here in Thailand they are alive and thriving. I never thought I’d end up spending…
After zig zagging all over the Khmer temples to the northwest, I finally arrived at Ubon Ratchathani, the eastern most stop I’ll be making on this trip. Ubon Ratchathani, is like some of my other stops, just a very convenient and pleasant place to stay while I explore the area. I did of course take a day to explore the city, though. Thung Sri Mueng, seen above is pretty much the center of the city. It seems a bit out…