The Mysteries of Angkor Wat

March 1, 2013 architecture, Asia, Cambodia No comments
Angkor Wat in Cambodia

The Kingdom of Cambodia, as it is officially known, is found in Asia and bordered by the Gulf of Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. With around 15 million citizens it is a moderately sized country that has seen a lot of changes of the years. A Buddhist country, it is best-known for Angkor Wat – a temple that attracts millions of backpacking and standard tourists each and every year.

The temples of Cambodia

Decades of civil war meant that just 12 years ago, the country was almost off the map of travellers. Today, you can’t move without seeing a foreigner and they’re all heading for the big temple, but there are dozens more. From Phnom Chissor in the capital with its beautiful views to Sambor Prei Kuk and the 140 monuments and temples of a 1,400 year old city to Koh Ker, the 10th century lost city, there is so much more to see. But, the largest religious monument in the world and arguable the most important archaeological site in South-East Asia will always rule supreme…

 

Angkor Wat in Cambodia

Angkor Wat in Cambodia

Angkor Wat

This World Heritage Site has history and romance in abundance – not to mention grandeur. Some say that it encompasses all the elements of a Pharaoh, the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal thanks to the luxury, impressiveness and beauty seen across the sprawling 500-acre site. Since opening in the 12th century it has always been a place of worship and was initially dedicated to Vishnu. It is believed that this sophisticated piece of architecture was created to be a replica of the universe.

A big question was how the stones used in its building were taken from the sacred Mount Kulen to the temple in such a short timeframe. The Khmer empire was supremely powerful in its day and used canals to aid transportation and there is a network of some 21 miles that connects the two and quarries en-route go to back up this claim.

Taking just 30 years to construct, it was King Suryavarman II who oversaw it and experts feel it was built to be a funerary temple for him. In terms of positioning, the west orientation would symbolise the setting sun – and, thus death – which supports this believe. We have all seen pictures of the area but the unrestored Ta Prohm is easily the most photographed temple here. Known to be one of the favourites is at the Bayon temple where a Bayeux Tapestry-esque tale tells a long story. Widely regarded as a trip of a lifetime the whole thing is enchanting.

Get going

Whether you are on a budget or looking for a stylish package, there are all manner of options to choose from. Try to get to the Angkor Wat early to see the sunrise.

Where to eat in Western Liguria

February 20, 2013 Europe, food, Italy, tips, travel No comments
Olio Colto restaurant in Taggia

Spending a few days around Western Liguria I was able to taste the best meals in some of the best restaurants. It is not a secret that Italian cuisine together with the Slovak one is my favorite one in the world so trying out different local meals was like heaven to me.

 

Wondering where to eat in Western Liguria? Here are my picks:

 

1. Olio Colto in Taggia – a very modern restaurant where tradition embraces modern dishes. Get some of the tastest vegetarian dishes all covered with the local virgin olive oil, or even olive oil ice cream! Everything here is cooked with healthy olive oil which is what I use in kitchen every day too. Yummy veggies and olive oil? I am in.

 

 

Olio Colto restaurant in Taggia

Olio Colto restaurant in Taggia

veggies with olive oil in Olio Colto

veggies with olive oil in Olio Colto

a cabbage meal in Olio Colto

a cabbage meal in Olio Colto

 

2. Casino di Sanremo – after cycling around Sanremo, head over to Casino for a posh dinner. Remember, no photos are allowed inside and you have to be formally dressed. Live music will make your time here happier. We asked for fish and it was ridiculously huge! It came on a separate table 😀 Guys also seemed to enjoy wine in Casino. Everything was white around and reminded me of a Slovak wedding. Really nice place to have dinner at and feel like a human.

 

live music in Casino Sanremo

live music in Casino Sanremo

fish dinner in Casino Sanremo

fish dinner in Casino Sanremo

 

 

3. Osteria con cucina Antica in Finale Ligure – traditional dishes (pancakes, pasta, bread and many other meals) from the area can all be found here for affordable prices. And trust me, you will get super hungry after the long trip through the mountains to get to the restaurant. There’s free wifi in the restaurant and also turtles and other animals to have a look at.

pancakes in Osteria con cucina Antica

pancakes in Osteria con cucina Antica

ravioli in Osteria con cucina Antica

ravioli in Osteria con cucina Antica

 

4. Palazzo Salsole in Sassello – hiking Beigua Geopark or picking up mushrooms there can be tiring so afterwards I recommend you to try mushroom meals in this restaurant. Ask for all the varieties you can get, they are all super tasty! And if you feel very hungry, you should start with different kinds of cheese and meat.

 

delicios cheese in Palazzo Salsole in Sassello

delicios cheese in Palazzo Salsole in Sassello

bacalao fish in Palazzo Salsole

bacalao fish in Palazzo Salsole

 

 

5. Trattoria Ugo in Genoa – when visiting Genoa, take time to have dinner in Ugo which is great for both seafood dishes and vegetarian pasta. I don’t like sea food, it makes me sick, but I had the most amazing pesto pasta there. Also the chocolate dessert was super delicious.

 

6. Osteria il Castello in Millesimo – this is definitely the best place for tasting meals with truffles. After hunting truffles we got our dinner in Osteria and tasted polenta with cheese sauce and truffles followed by a truffle goat cheese dessert. I can still taste it on my tongue. You can even try the Original alcohol made here 🙂

polenta with cheese and truffles

polenta with cheese and truffles

goat cheese with truffles

goat cheese with truffles

 

 

Have you been to Liguria? Any more tips on where to eat in Western Liguria?

 

Around the world – Cretaceous Park in Sucre

January 3, 2013 animals, Bolivia, tips, travel No comments
where the bus leaves you

In my opinion, visiting Cretaceous Park is a must thing out of 12 things to do in Sucre, Bolivia.

To get there take a bus number 4 from Sucre and get out at the last stop at Parque Cretácico just a few minutes from Sucre town.

 

where the bus leaves you

where the bus leaves you

I was surprised when the bus driver told me to get out just outside of a cement company, it all looked destroyed around. But once I climbed up the hill and paid the entrance (30 Bolivianos for foreigners, 5 bolivianos for the camera), I understood why.

the view when walking up to Cretaceous Park

the view when walking up to Cretaceous Park

First, once I walked the hill up to the Cretaceous Park in Sucre, I watched a video about the dinosaurs and their life. Then a guide walked me around the park and explained me some important facts. We saw some replicas of different species of the dinosaurs, including the biggest titanosaurus tall 18 metres and long 36 metres which is the biggest sculpture of the whole world.

We can see a replica of ankylosaurus which footprints were discovered in the South America for the first time here in the limestone wall.

It was the wall around the park which I saw from the main road but had no idea what it was about until the guide showed me. There were so many huge dinosaur footprints on it! It was because the mud covered them throthout the

Only in 1994 the cement company Fancesa found at this place what is now the world’s biggest paleontological site – Cretaceous Park in Sucre. It is around 1,500 metres long limestone wall of Cal Orck’o, tall 110 metres that is covered by dinosaur tracks that died some 68 to 65 million years ago. There are around 5055 dinosaur tracks of at least 8 to 15 species and 320 different animals. There we can see 581 metres of continuous walking of a middle size carnivorous which is the world record of dinosaur tracks in one place.

110 m tall limestone wall with dinosaur tracks

110 m tall limestone wall with dinosaur tracks

1500 m long limestone wall with dinosaur tracks

I really enjoyed looking at the tracks at the wall, and all the life-sized dinosaur statues. There is also a souvenir shop and a museum with a lot of fossils, dinosaur bones and a replica of a dinosaur found in Chubut province in Argentina. Outside of the museum you can learn more about the past of the area from the pictures and explanations. I am really happy I paid a visit to this parque cretacico as I didn’t know it was the world’s largest dinosaur tracks site. And as I was sick and couldn’t do the trekking to Crater de Maragua observing dinosaur tracks in the nature, I could at least visit the park and see some dinosaur footprints there.

Interview with Rachele and Gabor from Surfing the Planet

December 27, 2012 interview No comments
Rachele and Gabor from Surfing the Planet eating sea food in Chiloe

You would never believe how the small world really is until weird things like this one happens. South America is HUGE but miracles still happen. I guess it must be because many travelers follow more or less the same route when there visiting the most famous destinations. And so did I in Argentina and Chile … and the couple Rachele and Gábor too. We first met on the bus from Ushuaia to Puerto Natales. Then hiking in Torres del Paine, and again in El Calafate, El Bolson, El Chalten, Bariloche and all this by accident 🙂 So then we planned a trip together finally and visited lakes around Bariloche, stayed in nice Molino Viejo in Puerto Varas and took a ride through Chiloe island.

It was not just fun to travel together but also to talk about ”business” of blogging as Rachele and G started a blog Surfing the Planet.

Here they are – Rachele and Gábor from Surfing the Planet:

1. Who are you? Tell us something about you.

We are Rachele (Italian) and Gábor (Hungarian), a couple doing the round the world trip at the moment. We both are fond of travelling, and travelled quite a lot in Europe before meeting each other. The round the world trip had been a dream for both us even before met, and after meeting in Barcelona a couple of years ago, we soon decided to make our dreams real. We started our trip six and a half months ago, we spent almost half a year in South America, and at the moment we are travelling in New Zealand. What we like the most about travelling is not only discovering amazing places, but when we have the possibility, we try to get in a closer connection with local people through Couchsurfing or any other manner. We try to spend a day like they do, and learn from them as much as possible.

Rachele and Gabor from Surfing the Planet eating sea food in Chiloe

Rachele and Gabor eating sea food in Chiloe

2. What is your favorite place, city and country and why? (all three of them)

Gábor: These questions are always rather difficult to answer. As I am a mountain lover, my favorite place would be some of the most beautiful mountains I have been hiking around, can be the beautiful towers of “Las Torres del Paine” in Chile or to say something really recent, “Mount Cook” as it reflects in the lakes. My favorite city as a tourist is New York, this cosmopolitan city where you can listen to people speaking in different languages in every corner, and all this in the atmosphere that reminds you of watching one of your favorite movies. However, if I had to say in which city I would live, it would be Barcelona probably, also very international atmosphere, perfect climate, the sea and mountains are close, intense sportlife, at the moment the only thing you can’t find there is a decent job. My favorite country is the most difficult question, I prefer countries in which people are friendly and open to connect. Spain fits more or less for this, from recent experiences I would say Argentina.

 
Rachele: As Gábor said is quite difficult to decide which place is the favorite one. There are too many fantastic places in the world. I can tell you the experience that I like the most. Close to Cuzco we went up to the Andes in a village and we spent two days living as they live. These people are really poor, they live in a simple way and most of them they are not going out the village neither at the closest city that is just 30 km from there. This experience made me reflect a lot and I really enjoy to experience this kind of life style.

 

3. If you could go anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would it be and why?

Gábor: If I can fly tomorrow to any places, probably would be New York again, just to get absorbed in this unique atmosphere that this city provides. If it had to be a place I have never been to, it would be Colombia, which we didn’t have time to visit in our South American trip, and would love to go there and meet its friendly people.

 
Rachele: At the moment we are doing the greatest trip of our life and I won’t fly anywhere tomorrow, I am just happy and living this great moment.

 

4. What do you love the most about your home country?

Gábor: I love my country, and I am really proud of being Hungarian. Our country always achieved more than it would be expected from its size. You just have to look at the number of Nobel Prize winners we have had or in the Olympic Games, we are always in very honoring position in the medal table. I love in my country, even if it is against us, that general intelligence is still considered to be a really important thing, people admire someone more for being expert in the History of the Middle Ages than someone who had a really great business idea. At last, our cuisine is unique and fabulous, I always miss our dishes when I am abroad.

 
Rachele: My home country is simply brilliant. Italy has lot of good things, history, culture, fashion, good food I love all of them and I am really proud to be part of this country. The place in Italy I love most is Venice, that is a unique city in the entire world. I have been there a hundred of times and never take the same street, it is like a labyrinth in which is amazing to get lost. Every corner is different and special at the same time.

 

5. How travel changes you?

Travelling is definitely the most life changing experience, especially if you do it for a long time. Travelling as a backpacker make you do a lot of sacrifices, you can’t have many of the luxuries that you have in your every day life, you become more flexible in any sort of sense. At the same time, as we travel mostly around countries, where most of the locals live without all these commodities of the society, it opens your eyes and makes you think deeply every day about how much you really need them.

 

Miss traveling with you two and running into you by accident all over!

Love,

Alex

27 reasons why I wish it was the end of the world today

December 21, 2012 personal No comments
the bright day outside

So the end of the world on the 21st December 2012 is here. The Mayan calendar was misunderstood to make a big deal of it without people really knowing what the Mayas – the intelligent astronomers meant with it.

Not the end of the world, but the end of an era.

 

I woke up this morning to the noise of the neighbours’ children running around the apartment above. I looked out of the window and saw the most beautiful day ever. Sunny and dry in Slovakia in the end of December? I haven’t seen such a bright day for ages! And I hope it’s a sign of our brighter future …

the bright day outside

the bright day outside

But I do wish it was the end of the world today.

 

I wish it was the end of the bad world, the end of the world of:

 

1. sickness

2. wars

3. killing

4. cheating

5. unemployment

6. homeless people (unless we decide to be them and travel the world like I do)

7. lies

8. hurting others

9. chemicals in food, cosmetics and drinks

10. human and animal violence

11. fake things

12. fake people

13. stupidity

14. overpriced things

15. stealing

16. bad accidents

17. hunger

18. unfairness

19. rape

20. bribe

21. visas

22.racism

23. broken hearts

24. unhealthy life

25. orphans

26. no education

27. paying for wifi

 

Yes, there are 27 reasons that make me wish it was the end of the world today! The end of the old bad world … and the beginning of a new BETTER era.

 

There’s at least two easy things on the list that you could try to change right now:

– 24. unhealthy life – that’s what I am trying to change personally too. Head over to my other blog to get the best tips on how to stay fit when traveling.

– 25. orphans – there are many orphans in this world and I really feel with them! I always try to help, give clothes and shoes to charities and donate money too. I was lucky enough not to be an orphan and I cannot imagine how difficult it has to be for little children without their parents. I want them to have a place to stay, get hot meals, go to school and get their education. You can donate straight to two charities Mitrata and VSO Bahaginan by donating $25. I am sure you will not miss those $25 in your pocket, but the poor children will be thankful for them forever as it will help them to survive. And for those $25 you will even get a 2013 calendar full of sexy people 🙂 Find out more about Travel Blogging Calendar 2013 here and order it here today. Remember, don’t let the orphans to experience the real end of the world for them. Help with your $25!

« Older Entries Recent Entries »