fachd's VirtualTourist Home Page

Hello fellow traveller, gypsies, nomads my name is Pablo I am the above picture :-)

Pablo, Kim and I live in Canberra and grew up here. We learnt to love Canberra. After travelling, it's always great to come back to home sweet home Canberra.

Like most, we love to travel. At the moment we are not a free traveller. Most of our travel is organised before we depart, such as Trafalgar, Globus and others. We want to see as much as we can from little time. Hence our eyes are focus mainly to where tourist congregate, the likes of Eiffel Tower, Versailles, Tower of London, Troglodyte Village of Avcilar, the moon landscape of Cappadocia, Ephesus, Big Ben, Troy, Lone Pine cemetry, King Midas Tomb, Chapel Bridge, Trevi Fountain, Papal Palace, Louvre, Mevlana Monastery, Pisa, Schonbrun Palace, Linderhof Palace of Mad King Ludwig II, Pamukale Cotton Castle, Pergamum, Topkapi Palace, Prambanan, Colosseum, Borobudur, Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and the list goes on. As a traveller surely you must visit these touristy places at least once. How can you not go and see the 'Great Wall' of China or the Pyramids in Egypt.

Perhaps in the future when we both stop working and have ample time. We will set our own agenda, become an adventurer, off we go to the beaten tracks, respect their culture and believes, mingle with the locals, learn their habits and most of all is free like a bird.

I was born in Jakarta (Indonesia) many moons ago and Kim in Moruya (Australia). We have two children. Our daughter Meya is back from Chile, she was studying Spanish for one year in Lacerena. Doy our son is studying architecture at UC. At the moment we are both working. We are planning to travel overseas at least once a year. In 2007 we visited Hanoi, Halong Bay, Phuket and Bangkok. This year in 2008 or early next year we are planning to travel to Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

When we have time to kill, Kim and I like to relax doing our hobbies to escape reality i.e work. Kim design jewellery, once a month she has store at Kingston market. Mine is painting and strumming my guitar. We both love animals (four legs). We have a dog and his name is Gibson. He is Chinese Crested Powder Puff. My other love is listening to good music from different genre. Rmb, prog jazz, jazz funk, reggae, alternative, folk rock to world music. At present my favourite artist are Dhafer Youssef, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd. I am not really keen on country, pop, trad jazz. I dont mind cooking. We both like going to movies, eating out and dinner with friends. Kim, she likes reading and I am not much of a reader I prefer visual (comics). I collect guitars, cd's, dvd movies and old vinyl records. Kim, she collects old clothes from opt shops.

Dislike, well not many, except fanatics, arrogant, bigot, ignorant people who thinks they know everything, cruelty to animal-cruelty to anything really. Horror movie there on my TV referring to war news, poverty, hunger.

Enclosed are some photos of our favourite places that we have put our molecules into the air. Perhaps one day we will be back.

We took a 45 minutes ferry ride (Buquebus) from Buenos Aires across the Rio de la Plata to Colonia. Arriving at the old Colonia town (Barrio Historico) one must feels like travelling back in time. It was the old Portuguese settlement and now became the World Heritage City by UNESCO. Colonia is a small picturesque town. The Portuguese style buildings, pastel colour rendered brick houses. Surrounded by evergreen trees in either side of the main road. One giant Kapok trees stood in narrow streets made up of cobblestone. Quite town with craft shops, museum, light house, good restaurants, we ate at Viejo Tunel for lunch. Colonia was a nice transition from the busy city of Buenos Aires.

Iguazu Falls or Big Water was a WOW factor. Natural wonder with spectacular view. Deafening sound of water cascading down from Iguazu largest waterfalls Del Diablo or the Devils Throat. The iguazu icon (Vencejos de Cascada or Waterfall Swifts, I got the name from MacLnd the VT bird enthusiast) darting in and out of the water falls. We were drench from the spray. San Martin, Boseeti, Adan and Eva are the other water falls. Surrounded by subtropical forest, Iguazu Falls inhabit many species of animals, butterflies, birds and insects. I saw an alligator sunbaking on top of a rock, a Coati Mundi chasing one another, flock of vultures perching, butterflies smelling the flowers, water rats swim about like nobody business. The boat ride venturing close to the falls was ace. Here's one for trivial info, the film 'Mission' starring Robert De Niro was shot in Iguazu Falls.

Kim and I were in Hanoi for seven nights. This was our first visit to Hanoi. We found Hanoi an amazing city especially around the Old Quarters. Coming from a organised city like Canberra we found the traffic in Hanoi beyond belief, it seems chaotic, coming from all directions, from the side, from the front, from the left, from the rear, any which way. We found it very interesting and I am sure made my adrenalin work overtime. We heard and saw motor scooters dodging and swerving the traffic. Without doubt the motor scooters dominate the road. The cars and busses toot their horns every ten seconds. Pedestrians come from all directions. The rickshaw drivers with one or two passengers have to peddle hard to reach their destination. The bicycle riders selling lotus flowers quietly amalgamate with the congestion. Amongst all of this you will see many walking peddlers selling different items. What is amazing it has a rhythm and flows. I did not see one accident.

After a few days we were able to adapt to the commotion. Crossing the street was no longer a problem. Our method evolved by simply observing the locals. The rule is whatever you do don’t stop. The motorcycles avoid the pedestrians by weaving around them.

Even though it was crowded and busy we enjoyed our time at the Old Quarters. You can almost find everything you need in a compact area.

In Hanoi we visited the Temple of Literature, Army museum, the museum of Ethnology,old French Church St Joseph and the beautiful Halong Bay. We found these places interesting especially Halong Bay, the museum of Ethnology and the Army museum. We also enjoyed walking around the Hoan Kiem Lake to see the local activities.

I think Hanoi has charm and certainly it has character and one day when we get older before loosing our mind we will visit Hanoi again.

Ha Long Bay is a must visit if you are visiting Hanoi Vietnam. It is about 165 Km north of Hanoi and three hours drive. When we were there it was misty for two days. It wasn’t the best for taking photos but without doubt it was still a breathtaking experience.

Ha Long Bay is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage for its outstanding geological value which is mainly made up of limestone.

Today Ha Long Bay support fishing villages that the fisherman’s in search of many species of fish and many varieties of mollusk. They are four community fishing villages with a population of 16,000. They live in a community floating houses, with some of the catches they will try to sell it to the oncoming tourist Junk Boat.

Ha Long Bay consists of large and small monolithic islands made up of limestone. The smaller islands have sandy beaches where you can go for a swim. Most of the islands have thick jungle vegetation which supports animals such as monkeys, antelopes and lizards (iguanas). You will also find several caves, we visited Sung Sot cave.

When you visiting Vietnam you will hear many legends and Ha Long Bay did not escape of a legend story. The local believed that god sent dragons to help of defending the land from the Chinese invaders. The dragons began spitting out jewels and jades to the sky and when it dropped it turned into islands and the island link together form a great wall against the Chinese invaders.