ellielou's VirtualTourist Home Page

This new year will start off with travel! Yet again, I'm heading back to SE Asia, partly for my little business, and partly to, well, feed the travel addiction.

Once again, this takes me to SE Asia. At the very end of January, I was back in KL, to meet with the great VTers there, eat fantastic hawker stall food, and celebrate Thaipusam. This festival was amazing. If you're interested in it, check out the Thaipusam TLs on my KL page. I then spent time Phnom Penh, and went back to my well trodden path through Vietnam to Vientiane in Laos. I welcomed the Year of the Pig in with some fantastic VTers in Southern Malaysia, near Singapore, and ended my trip with the same awesome VTer in Singapore. Thanks, all, for being so hospitable and lovely!

In between, I hope another little trip or two rear their lovely little heads, and the weather cooperates for plenty of beach time on the Delaware shore.

I'm actually having success building pages from my most recent trip. So far, I've pages on:

--Tbilisi
--Kazbegi
--A general Georgia page (over half finished)
--Veliko Turnovo
--Plovdiv (mostly finished as well)

Still need to build pages on Sofia, Rila, and Istanbul.

Of course, I'm still due to build and/or finish building pages from my trip earlier this year. This includes:

--Vientiane
--Luang Prabang
--Hanoi
--HCMC

Stay tuned!

...Of course, on these pages, you can get a sense of my travels. in addition, I hope you can get a sense about me and my tastes. of course, people travel differently and have different sensibilites; so if you check out my "chosen favorites" album, you can get a sense of my tastes in travel, and a few other totally random things: books, music, and films. You can then decide if any of my advice fits the way you like to travel.

I've also included photos of my k9s...I usually don't long for home when I travel...but, I DO miss them.

Finally, there are photos of our paint-by-number collection. I'm not sure why I put them in an album, other than the fact that I had them already...and, well, again, you can get a sense of my home and life when I'm not away from home....

While trying to avoid "tourist" traps, there are things that one must do in a city. I mean, why would one miss the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, say, just because their are tourist buses parked nearby, and it's on everyone's itinerary?

However, I, like others, am always searching for the authentic, the off-the-beaten path, the true "find"

How do we balance the "must sees" of a place, with getting down to the "local." And, how many countries are left on the planet that haven't been invaded by at least one McDonald's?

Come on....don't be scared.....so, the hygeine may not what you're used to at home, but that does not mean that you shouldn't try the local joints. get your nose out of the guidebooks: with some major exceptions, they won't tell you where the authentic places area...and follow your nose to where they don't have mulitlingual menus, where they probably don't have menus at all, and chow down there. look at what others are eating, point, gesture, pantomime what you want.

In many places, a great and cheap meal on the street, or in a local dive is as good as any sight.

And, you'll save some money, and, in many cases, meet locals who are terribly impressed that you're culinarily adventurous.....and, you may just have a memorable meal!

This is a photo of my late mother (third from left, cat's eye glasses) in college (City College of New York) in front of the Shoestringers' Society banner. The Shoestringers was a travel club for those who traveled on a "shoestring," or tight budget.....

Of course, there's no time like the present to think about the future, especially if one tries to travel as exclusively as possible on award (read 'free') tickets.

Again, SE Asia is a must, and most likely January, and most likely just Vietnam and Cambodia for a few weeks.

I must get myself to Berlin, sometime before airfares go up, in March or April, because I just can't stand reading about all the arts there and just sitting on the sidelines, and because I have to buy a ticket to somewhere every once in a while to replenish those UA miles.

The big trip for later in the year will either be a jaunt around the -Stans, with Kazhakstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and flying home through most wonderful Georgia. around May...and/or ('or' most likely) getting to Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Mali sometime in October/November.

Have an opinion on any of this? Just drop me a line!

If you've made it this far in my humble pages, congratulations to you!

Now, it's time to research, meet locals and other travelers, get all your documents together, and go forth and GO!