Posted by: Gideon | May 6, 2013

India with kids 2013. Delhi Highlights

Outside Humayun's Tomb, Delhi

Outside Humayun’s Tomb, Delhi

Delhi is a city with something for everyone. It has thousands of year of history and has been home to seven cities. What this means is that you’ll find huge monuments scattered throughout the city – way too many to visit on any short trip.

We started our day with a visit to Humayun’s Tomb. This is a huge UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a beautiful building surrounded by huge gardens. Typical Mughal style. It was an excellent way to start any tour of  Delhi – it wasn’t too crowded, and there was lots of space for kids to run around. We saw parrots, and we were amazed by the decorations, which looked exactly like the Star of David, something we figured to be unusual on a Muslim monument.

Next stop was Old Delhi, where we visited the huge Mosque. Unlike mosques in Turkey, which are massive inside, this mosque had no prayer room inside at all, and the huge plaza in front of it is actually the place for prayer. It just shows how things differ from place to place.

After the monuments, the next experience was pure fun. We hired cycle rickshaws to take us around the tiny, crowded lanes of Old Delhi. We stopped for some fried syrupy snacks called “jalebi”, and we rode along eating these sticky snacks. With hindsight we would have really enjoyed wandering around these streets on foot as well, but we hadn’t worked that in to our day. My suggestion: take a rickshaw ride, and take a walking tour of the area as well. It’s congested and busy, so ideally for kids 10 and up (and hold their hands tight).

Rickshaw ride, Old Delhi.

Rickshaw ride, Old Delhi.

We stopped briefly at Raj Ghat, the place where Gandhi was assassinated. It’s very simple, and because there is no museum here, it’s a bit tough for kids to appreciate unless they already know lots about Gandhi. It is a real pilgrimage place for Indians.

Our final stop for day was the Qutb Minar, a gigantic minaret that is the oldest and largest free-standing minaret in the world. It’s immense, and an amazing sight. And yes, it’s another World Heritage Site.

We didn’t have time of the Akshardhan Temple, which is apparently a mind-blowing modern temple with theme-park style attractions. It’ll have to wait until another time.

Qutb Minar, Delhi

Qutb Minar, Delhi

My suggestions for Delhi – try give yourselves two days – one for seeing some of the main monuments, and definitely hire a guide for a walking tour of Old Delhi if your kids are old enough. For your second day visit the Akshardan temple, and for women and teenage girls, consider a specialist shopping tour – so many of the clothes we find in North America today are made in India, and Delhi  has some fantastic boutiques for shopping.

It was a busy day, and we were happy to get back to our hotel. Our next day would be very tiring.

I plan great trips to India. For more details see here.

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Posted by: Gideon | April 30, 2013

India with Kids 2013 – Delhi (day 1)

Eitan playing catch with a coconut while the girls shop - Hauz Khaz village, Delhi.

Eitan playing catch with a coconut while the girls shop – Hauz Khaz village, Delhi.

Delhi came as a huge surprise.

I’d been there close to twenty years ago – at that time it was dirty, polluted, the roads were full of tuk tuks, trucks and buses belching black smoke and it was an ordeal.

But things have changed. It’s an even bigger city now, with a population of  about 20 million,  but the roads are now full of modern Indian built cars, and the tuk tuks and buses all run on natural gas, so  the cloying stink that used to typify massive Indian cities is amazingly no longer there.

We stayed at Mantra Amaltas, a great place in a quiet neighborhood in South Delhi. The rooms were good in every respect and we loved eating breakfast on the rooftop patio. There was also an indoor pool which we didn’t get round to using. Breakfasts were solid – lots of Indian breakfast food (which we love) as well as pastries, toast and fruit, and eggs to order.

Our first day was unplanned.  We chose to visit Haus Kaz, a quiet  area of ancient ruins which has become a center of boutiques and antique stores. Delhi is packed with ancient ruins everywhere. Some are major sightseeing destinations, while others see no foreign tourists and are either gardens or in this case, a shopping area. We enjoyed our explorations and the girls bought some stuff, as to be expected. Lots of restaurants offering everything under the sun, and the kids chose an Italian pizza restaurant. It’s abundantly clear that Delhi is where India meets the West in lots of ways. People have money, prices aren’t cheap and there is a massive amount of new apartments going up everywhere.

That night we relaxed and watched cricket, as well as Chhota Beem, a favorite kids cartoon that we remembered from our last visit in 2008.

I plan great trips to India for families. For more info, click here.

No need for tickets or wheel clamps in India!

No need for tickets or wheel clamps in India!

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Posted by: Gideon | April 24, 2013

India with Kids 2013 – Going back after 5 years!

Gal washing elephants 2008

Gal washing elephants 2008

Readers of this blog may well have read about our incredible family trip to South India in 2008.

Well, five years later, we decided to go back.

Gal, who was 11 then and is now 16, had two major complaints about our last trip. The first was the Taj Mahal – how could anyone possibly plan a trip and not go visit it (like us). The second was that we hadn’t seen a tiger back in 2008, and she had been terribly disappointed.

Well, planning this trip I could guarantee her one thing – we would go see the Taj. Tigers…well, we’d try, but they are wild animals and unless we went to a zoo, it would all be a matter of luck.

For first timers, India seems like an impossibly exotic destination to visit with kids. One thinks of terrible slums, disease, dirt, chaos, crazy traffic, and stuff like that. And yes, India is like that in many ways. But India is huge and developing incredibly quickly, and it is becoming easier and easier to visit the country and avoid most of that bad stuff.  You can do it in the South, as we found out in 2008, and you can do it in the North too. It’s an incredible destination for families.

My first visit to North India was back in 1994. India was crazy. Terrible pollution, ridiculous traffic, touts everywhere and terrible transport and communications. It’s become a lot better.

But first things first. When visiting a country like India, you have to be well prepared.

Visas: You need them! This has now been outsourced and so you no longer go to the embassy or consulate. Works fine but it can be very expensive for a family, depending on your nationality.

Vaccinations: You need them! Visit a travel clinic and see what you might need.

Medical Kit – take everything you think you might need. We were very well equipped with antibiotics, creams, ointments, band aids, and everything else.

Malaria Pills – the good news is that Malarone is now available in a generic format. Still not cheap, but so much less than it used to be.

Itinerary – get help! It’s a country that requires expert advice.

Flights: We flew via Korea. When it comes to travel to Asia, I try to fly on Asiana, a wonderful Korean airline. Lots of leg room, great entertainment and they really come across as wanting to do their best for you. One of the very few 5* rated airlines in the world, and often with good rates from the West Coast.

For our family, India is the most exotic country on earth. We couldn’t wait to go back.

With everything lined up and ready, we flew from Seattle via Seoul to New Delhi!

 

I plan great trips to India. If you’re interested, click here.

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Posted by: Gideon | January 25, 2013

Roadtripping California (with kids). San Diego and the Southern California Theme Parks

On the USS Midway

On the USS Midway

Next stop was San Diego. A great place to be and we stayed for a week.

The kids loved San Diego – much more user friendly than Los Angeles, with great places to eat, and tons to do. San Diego Zoo is one the most famous zoos in the world, while Sea World is basically a theme park, but a pretty great one at that.

Leopard cubs at the Zoo

Leopard cubs at the Zoo

Special experiences included visiting the USS Midway aircraft carrier museum, and the kids had a real live sword fight with a pirate on the replica ship used in the movie Master And Commander. We also saw a live baseball match and really had a great time at Encinitas beach.

My take: I’d go back and stay at Encinitas next time!

As we turned North again, we headed for the theme parks.

Disneyland took three days. Now, I am not great lover of theme parks, but I won’t deny that Disney do the most incredible job. I have ben to Disneyworld twice and Euro Disney once, and this was our first time in Disneyland. I think we liked it the most of all of them. It is smaller, but that just makes it so much easier to work your way around the park, and you do work when visiting any Disney park. You need to figure out what to do and when, and it takes some strategy. It was a major highlight of our whole trip. Being August, lines were long, but never so long that we became disenchanted. The kids loved the roller coasters and they went up the Tower of Terror at least 5 times – you know, the one that drops, like a dressed up hellavator.

One of the most unexpected rides was the Ferris Wheel. Why? Because we chose a car that swung freely, and it was one of the scariest rides we did in the whole park!

We also visited Cars Land a few times – amazingly, the line to get a fast pass took a massive 45 minutes, but it paid of in spades later on, when we bypassed the crowds waiting over 100 minutes for their 2 minute ride. The new cars land is great – we loved the race and we loved the Mater ride, but we thought that the Flying Tires was a failure – they just don’t work well, and  hopefully Disney will fix them up or replace them.

A few days later we visited Universal Studios – we spent one day only, but it was fantastic. The only problem – massively long lines – at least they sprayed us with a fine mist all the time.

I took the boys to Legoland – good but not great, and way too busy in summer. We also went to 6 Flags – terrible if you do not ride coasters, and even if you do, the waiting times were a disaster. We missed half the rides we wanted to go on as the lines typically took 2 hours or longer. If you don’t love coasters, DO NOT go here.

So, we learned a lot.

1) Disney work great – even in the middle of summer.

2) Six Flags is terrible – lines go on forever and unless you go in the off-season, don’t go near.

3) Legoland is ok. Probably best for kids 8 and under.
4) San Diego Zoo is terrific.

5) Sea World is good as well.

The hands-down winner by far was Disneyland.

Pluto, Mickey and Me

Pluto, Mickey and Me

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Posted by: Gideon | December 18, 2012

Roadtripping California (with Kids). Santa Barbara to LA

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At Venice Beach

Heading south from San Francisco, we made for Santa Barbara. We’d been along the Big Sur route before, so this time we headed straight down. Our target – the beach!

In Vancouver we live in a beautiful city, and we even have quite pretty beaches, but throughout the year the ocean temperature ranges anywhere from freezing to almost bearable.

Santa Barbara has some great beaches, and we bought a boogie board and headed straight for the surf. The kids took to the water immediately – and refused to come out.

Santa Barbara is a very touristy town, but it’s very expensive as well. We stayed a couple of nights and then it was time to move on.  We drove through Malibu, looked for a parking place at the beach and couldn’t find one, and continued to LA.

I have never had any interest in visiting LA, but Gal, who is now 15, has been yearning to go. The fact is, there is tons to keep kids of all ages very busy.

We did the obvious things – like checking out the stars on the sidewalk at the Chinese Theater and going as close as we could to the Hollywood sign. We also got scammed by Spiderman and someone out of Star Wars, who very kindly posed with the kids and then demanded a big fat tip! We decided to save money by buying a map of the stars’ homes, and then got so lost that we couldn’t figure out where anyone lived.  We hit the beaches – busy Santa Monica as well as seedy Venice beach. We visited the fabulous Getty Museum  - well, the kids needed to be spurred on by gory background details as to what happened to Marie Antoinette in order to appreciate her furniture, and we went to the La Brea Tar Pits and the Automobile Museum – the latter two just great for kids. La Brea is all about extinct mammals, and the Auto Museum is all about…every car you can imagine.

Actually we saw the best car outside the museum, a Bugatti on Rodeo Drive, that apparently everyone knows about. It’s car that costs more than $1 million! House or car, house or car…now lets see what’s more important in life. It was good lesson for the kids to see.

We also spent a great evening at the Hollywood Bowl. I told the kids we were going to see Tchaikovsky, but they were a bit upset when he didnt’ appear personally.

When all was said and done, LA proved to be a big hit, but with the terrible traffic, and the heat, I was glad to move on.

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With CHIPS at the Auto Museum

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Posted by: Gideon | December 4, 2012

Free and fun – a new “book” on how tourists should behave in Myanmar published!

This week the Myanmar Times wrote about a free downloadable “book” that has just been published on how tourists should (and should not) behave in Myanmar. It’s illustrated by some of the top cartoonists in Myanmar and is lots of fun!

The link is here:

http://www.dosanddontsfortourists.com

Enjoy!

It's all about making friends!

It’s all about making friends!

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Posted by: Gideon | November 28, 2012

Roadtripping California (with Kids) 2012: San Francisco and Berkeley.

A mural in the Mission

Mark Twain’s saying that the coldest place he’d ever been to was San Francisco in summer rang in my ears as we approached the city. And first impressions seemed to back him up, as a dense cloud of fog hung over the city.  We’d been in 2009 in spring and the weather had been glorious, but now it was cold. The last time we had visited all the major sights. This time round we decided to see some of the lesser known sights as we didn’t wish to repeat what we had done before.

Our first full day was spent exploring the gritty Mission district. It was apparent to us very quickly that this was a totally different area from anywhere we had been before. Predominantly Hispanic and poor, it is a real eye opener. We explored the stores, the restaurants and best of all, the murals that cover whole blocks in some areas. We ate tacos in a traditional cantina for lunch, bought the kids Mexican wrestling masks and felt as if we were in Latin America. Dinner was an intro to pupusas at a hole-in-the-wall place frequented only by El Salvadorean families.

Rodin – a hit with the kids

The following day we went to the Walt Disney Museum. Covering the life of Walt himself, it’s a great museum for adults, but not so exciting for kids. It’s really expensive too, at around $20 a ticket. It is an incredible testament to someone who really did change life for the better for millions. We also went to the Legion of Honor, a great museum in an incredible building, with a remarkable view of the famous Golden Gate Bridge. There is a magnificent collection of huge bronze sculptures by Rodin, and this immersion in culture paid off – the kids were enthralled! Apart from trying to find a place to park, it’s a great place to take the kids and then to walk in the surrounding woods.

Our final day was spent in nearby Berkeley. We were amazed that as soon as we left the city limits of SF the weather cleared up. Apparently it’s always like this. Blue sky and warm, it was like being in a totally different state. Berkeley was great – quaint streets, a magnificent university campus to explore, and then we tried our luck at Chez Panisse to see if they had space for us. Chez Panisse is an icon of California cuisine, and this was our lucky day – they had a table available and the food was fantastic.

I’m not sure I’d run to San Francisco again in summertime. Mark Twain was right!

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Posted by: Gideon | November 27, 2012

Roadtripping California (with Kids) 2012: Crater Lake National Park (Oregon) and the Calatrava Sundial Bridge, Northern California.

Cruising Crater Lake

Our next stop was incredible Crater Lake National Park.

Crater Lake appears on the Oregon license plate so it’s a big thing, but its a bit out-of-the-way which is why we hadn’t made it there before. It is one of the deepest lakes in the world, and is famous for its incredible cobalt color. And it didn’t disappoint. It is truly an incredible sight! Most people content themselves with driving around the rim or taking some small hikes – we went one step further and took a boat ride on the lake. But it was a steep walk down to the dock and an even tougher walk back up in the boiling heat!

This is a Park that nobody should miss. It’s almost inaccessible for most of the year due to incredible amount of snow that falls in the area, so summer is when the crowds go. It was also really hot. But unmissable.

Our next big stop was in Redding, California. I’m not sure why anyone would have visited Redding in the past, but these days it is home to the incredible feat of design engineering that is the Calatrava Sundial Bridge. It’s a wonderfully impressive white pedestrian harp-like bridge across the Sacramento River, that throws a shadow that amazingly tells the time like any ancient sundial. Designed by the famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, it apparently took teams of programmers to work out the sundial part. A really off the beaten path sight that probably most people have no idea about. Go on a sunny day and be amazed by the fact that this bridge is actually a working clock – we could tell the time to about the closest minute or two.

Crater Lake Rimview

The Sundial Bridge

 

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Posted by: Gideon | November 20, 2012

Roadtripping California (with Kids) 2012: Part 1 – Silver Falls State Park, OR.

Steam powered vintage cars.

While we usually travel to very exotic destination in summer, this year was different. My daughter Gal, who is 15, really wanted to visit California, so we decided that for once, we’d skip the exotic and try get under the skin of the classic road trip. Vancouver to San Diego is about 2250km one way, and we’d be driving both ways.

Now, we’ve traveled to various parts of the West Coast many times, as any reader of this blog will have seen. So this time we would be driving straight through Washington State, and then spend a few days in Oregon before heading for San Francisco.

Heading out, we made good time down the I-5 and ended the day in Salem, Or. Salem is the state capital and apparently is a cool town to visit, but instead we headed through bucolic countryside to Silver Falls State Park, widely regarded as the finest park in the State and well known for the Trail of Ten Falls.

As we arrived, we noticed a very strange procession of vintage cars and their drivers , all dressed up as if it were the 1920′s. Amazingly, these cars were all steam powered – so very “green” and incredibly unusual.

Even the best laid plans can go awry, and Daniel had been stung by a wasp between his toes, so three of us went hiking instead of the five of us.

 

The hike was great – we took a short cut and only hiked to 7 of the falls, but they were really beautiful, and we could even go behind a few of them.  This was very much off the beaten path America, and it was awesome.

Trail of Ten Falls – Silver Falls State Park, OR.

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Posted by: Gideon | November 20, 2012

Myanmar Travel Updates – November 2012

Myanmar continues to feature in the international news almost on a daily basis.

I’m not a political commentator, but in the case of Myanmar tourism and politics is often 100% intertwined, and yesterday’s visit to the country by President Obama confirms the dramatically positive change in the attitude by  the USA and indeed the whole Western World

Downtown Yangon

towards Myanmar. These changes over the past year have been huge, and my guess is that we will see Myanmar rapidly absorbed into the international community in a relatively short number of years.

Along with  this, we will certainly see a massive rise in tourism. The numbers of tourists entering Myanmar over the past year are expected to show a dramatic increase over 2011 and as a result the tourism infrastructure is struggling to keep up. I continue to hear reports of infrastructure shortfalls – lack of hotel rooms and the consequent repricing upwards of the hotel’s that do exist, and a huge increase in tour groups and individual travelers.

So, my suggestions to prospective visitors are the following – go in the off-season – I took my family in August last year, and hotel rooms were easily available. The only popular regions that don’t work in the off-season are the coast and Golden Rock – but the other main tourist regions are open and easily accessible.

Also, history tells us that from time to time there will be regions in Myanmar with unrest and violence. From my experience, this should not necessarily put off travelers, simply because it’s virtually impossible to get anywhere near regions that are suffering unrest. The government simply does not allow tourists access – you won’t be allowed to board public transport headed for anywhere near these regions, and military road blocks make sure that private cars with tourists don’t have access either. Perhaps this will change one day in the future, but for now, there is no real freedom of movement for tourists in Myanmar, unless the government wants it to be that way. I expect this control to be maintained for years to come, until eventually tourist are free to travel wherever they like, as we saw happen in Vietnam over a period of a decade or so.

To summarise, the world is heading to Myanmar, and if you are thinking of going, best to do so earlier than later, while it is still relatively untouched and authentic!

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