One of my favorite places in Mexico is San Miguel de Allende, a beautiful city with a year round spring-like climate which makes a welcome break from the heat and humidity of Playa del Carmen!

The streets of San Miguel are so interesting. You really have to peer into every open doorway to get a good look at what’s inside. They are not allowed to put signs that stick out sideways on a building and all signage must be approved by the government so it keeps the heritage look of the city. All paint colors must also be approved by the city so you can’t just paint your house or business purple

At one time these were grand homes and now many have been turned into retail stores with the kitchen intact. This is one of my favorite stores.

On this visit to San Miguel the house that we stayed in was spectacular and needs to be shared! Built in 1717 one 1/2 of the home was the town bakery back then. Cool…..

The owner then purchased the home next door and did that 1/2 in Moroccan style which is popular in SMA. Both sides are rented at the same time. It had a bose sound system thoughout the house and the tunes got cranked and enjoyed! (not too loud ) What a joy it was to stay there and the owners were fantastic! Upon arrival the phone started to ring and it was the owner calling from San Francisco!

This house was the HIGHLIGHT of the trip for us!!!!

The rooftop deck

Part 2 of the house…. the Moroccan side of the home. Every bit as spectacular as the other side. This would have been good enough for us but of course it’s rented all as one home!

Staying in this home was magical!

The owners did an amazing job of decorating!  More on the decorator later.   Whatever the cost of this house if you have the $, spend it! You only live once and this house will make you feel alive!!!!!!

The Museum of Modern Art is a must see in NYC. 

Elvis is for you Frank   

They set this up perfectly for photographs!  My favorite Mexican Painter Frida Khalo.

This one is for Carol.  xo

My obsession with travel started many years ago BUT after spending 7 months in Asia backpacking I came home and could not go back to my office job.  At this point in my life I had to figure out a way to incorporate travel into my life and get the hell out of the corporate world.  I took the plunge and quit my job and opened a store with all my savings.  Of course it was decided that I would be importing goods from all over the world for this store   Global Presents, Home Collection.  Vancouver, BC

Finding treasures in India!

Certainly the most important part of doing business in India…..chai (tea).  You drink so much of this sweet, sticky, tasty stuff that you truly get addicted to the shit.  My favorite Chai Walla greeting me in the morning.  Now this guy really knew what I wanted!  The best part of the chai…being allowed to smash the terra cotta cup on the sidewalk when your done Instantly recycled!

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life!  One of the greatest moments in my travels for sure.  Getting to them is the hard part. Trekking through the jungles of Sumatra, Indonesia is not easy.  It’s hot and humid with lots of mountains.  When I look at these pictures the circles under my eyes say it all….exhausting.  Then you hear them crashing through the jungle to come and see you and it’s so exciting.  You have to be still, silent and not make eye contact and let them check you out first.  If they think your ok, they come really close to check you out.  It’s kinda nerve racking because you know how strong they are but it’s just so cool all at the same time.   I fed them some bananas.

Orangutans are very special creatures.   After my experience with them in the jungle I understand why they are preyed upon.  They are amazing but I wish they weren’t so curious…..if they didn’t have this trait it might just save them!  Very human like.

 My guide tells me that’s close enough! 

Travelling through India is an assault on your senses.  The sights, sounds, smells, cows and people are in your face at all times!  The first time I landed in India way back when…..Delhi had an airport that was a wooden shack.   As I waited for my backpack to come around the carousel all I could smell was smoke and I was convinced there was a fire close by.  The longer I waited the more the smell started to nauseate me.  I thought the airport was on fire and couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there.  As I exited along this narrow path with really high walls the smell only grew stronger.  A Indian man going into the airport walked right past me and proceeded to grab both my breasts!  Welcome to India….fucking free feeler…..little did I know that there would be much more of that in my future.

Only upon exiting the airport did I realize the smell of this smoke was actually pollution!  The air I was to breath! You can’t even take a photo after dark as they turn out blue. For me, 5 days max in Delhi and I start with my usual nose bleeds morning and night.  This happens even wearing a bandana on my face.   One would think this has to be one of the most polluted cities in the world but in fact it’s not even in the top 10.

This photo was taken as I walked out of my guesthouse in Pahar ganj, New Delhi.  This is where I always stay.  A backpacker ghetto for sure!   When you rent a room here in PJ, I strongly recommend you check the room before you pay!   These places have toilets that shit back at you! 

Planes, trains and automobiles are a true testament to travel in India.  The slowest train system in the world.  The ambassador car,  painted buses with funky sounding horns and lunatic drivers but there is always India Air or Air India oh….the horn in India has a whole different meaning.  They actually want you to honk at them!

To be in India is to physically feel India.  To have someones head leaning on your shoulder as they fall asleep on the bus or hands pushing on your back getting off the train.  Shoving you,  using you for balance at the same time or maybe trying to cop a free feel.  India is not for the modest or shy as everything is in the open!  From using the toilet to death, it’s all in your face!  Sometimes….. I wonder if seeing too many things in the world makes one jaded to the Western way of life?  If only one could truly tell where private and public honestly belong…….

Being one of the most populated places in the world the chaos is exhilarating and at the same time exhausting.   To see something so beautiful one moment and then something so horrific the next is mind boggling.   It sure is chaotic fun though…..come on….the cows are like dogs and beg for food from the restaurants.  The merchants throw Chapatis at them and the cows actually have mastered the catch, after 2 or 3 they then move onto the next restaurant :) 

 A sacred cow begging at a restaurant.

 Both of these are valid means of transport

One of the most interesting people of all time!  I have been fascinated with Frida Kahlo for many years and would really like to visit her home in Mexico City.  My all time favorite painting is this one:

An exact duplicate of this oil painting hangs in my hall.  From what I can gather online Madonna owns the original of the above as well as “my birth”  I must go to the next exhibit wherever in the world it is…..her 100th birthday was just recently…..or so they claim on Wiki…..they are not in fact certain which year she was born.  It’s up for debate if you dig deep.

The 100thanniversary of the birth of Frida Kahlo honored her with the largest exhibit ever held of her paintings at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Kahlo’s first comprehensive exhibit in Mexico.^[30] Works were on loan from Detroit, Minneapolis, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Nagoya, Japan. The exhibit included one-third of her artistic production, as well as manuscripts and letters that had not been displayed previously.^[30] The exhibit was open June 13 through August 12, 2007 and broke all attendance records at the museum.^[31] Some of her work was on exhibit in Monterrey, Nuevo León, and moved in September 2007 to museums in the United States.

In 2008, a Frida Kahlo exhibition in the United States with over forty of her self-portraits, still lifes, and portraits was shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and other venues.

A “Frida Kahlo Retrospective” exhibit at the Walter-Gropius-Bau, Berlin from April 30 to August 9, 2010, has brought together more than 120 drawings and paintings, including several drawings never before publicly displayed. In light of Kahlo’s”preferred” birth year (she claimed to be born in 1910 during the Mexican Revolution), the Berlin show is also being touted as a centennial exhibition.

Frida lived a life of pain, physically and emotionally!  At the age of 6 she was diagnosed with Polio.  At the age of 14 she was in a motor vehicle accident in Mexico City on a trolley bus.  An interior pole in the bus impaled her and she was not expected to live!  She had more than 30 surgeries in her life to try to correct her back and the pain.  Her father was an artist and photographer, truly the one who taught her the world of art.

The link below is a virtual tour of a home just outside of Mexico city.  The next time I am in San Miguel I will take the bus 4 + hours to see this home!  The colors are spectacular.  Her biography is truly an amazing story!  Take the time to read the book or at least watch the movie.  Salma Hyack did an excellent job!  

http://www.recorridosvirtuales.com/frida_kahlo/museo_frida_kahlo.html

Indonesia is an amazing place!  I could spent a life time there….so much to see! 

  Next equator crossing.  Kenya, Africa. 

This boat ride was one of my more memorable experiences in Asia.  The only foreigners on the boat with over 250 Muslims.  We had taken a ferry from Singapore which dumped us in Indonesia somewhere.  From there we were on our way to Sumatra, Indonesia.  As we departed the pier the guide that put on on this particular boat kept screaming “be careful” from the dock? WTH?  Why didn’t he say this before?   This was the only picture taken after that.  Since we had just walked onto this boat without reserving we got the last single berth.  We could barely sit in it let alone sleep once we had our packs in there.  Each berth is suitable for 2 very small people. 

We all crammed in our little berth and as many locals that could possibly crowd around us did!  Winni and I covered every part of our skin and hair and all valuables were put away.  Unfortunately, my camera never came out again.  We offered cigarettes to everyone as it seems everyone in the entire country of Indonesia smokes.  I’ve even seen kids that look like they are 4 or 5 years old smoking! (although, there is always a fag in my hand also!) 

The primary question from all of the locals was ‘what religion are you?’  There were many problems with Catholics and Muslims in the entire country so we told them we were Rastafarian’s.   Gary and Winni were from Ireland and immediately spun their St. Christopher pendents to the back of their necks and then the questions came in waves…. The Rastafarian thing really threw them for a loop as they had never heard of such a religion. 

I swear 1 million questions in 14 hrs….what does your god look like, how do you pray, how many times a day do you pray etc. etc. etc.   With smiles and some humour it was all good but edgy.  The Roof of the boat became the prayer room every 4 hrs.  for 25 people at a time so it was all night long prayers.  Loud, enthusiastic, fanatical prayers! 

It seemed the route this boat took was along the coast line but in fact we were actually travelling though 100’s of little islands.  It was remarkable even in the middle of the night.  There were so many oil drills in the ocean and they looked like monsters in the night as we approached, lights glaring at us.  Huge platforms big enough to house 50+ men.  It was surreal!  Indonesia is very wealthy with natural resources.  It’s sad that there is so much corruption that the locals don’t benefit from any of it.  Just contribute to destroying it, through no fault of their own.

We had to take turns lying down in the berth so trying to fall asleep sitting up outside on the roof top of this boat with just a sarong to keep warm and prayers in the background was exhausting!  You know when you’re 1/2 asleep and you sense something or someone….you have the wonkies and your head is bobbing up and down like a bobble toy.  well….wake up to a dozen men sitting all around you just staring…..lets just say, I was awake pretty fucking quick!

Morning couldn’t come quick enough but when it did we were actually served breakfast!  Ichiban noodles in a plastic bowl.  I have to admit, I stared at that soup for sometime…. wondering where the water came from and if it had actually been boiled for more than 1 minute or even at all…..hmmmm.  Watching Gary, Winni and Glenn chow down I decided all was good and ate it anyways and again, I lived to tell the story.

Just as someone was collecting the bowls….Yeah!!!!  Were docking!  Mohammad, who seemed to be the leader was truly confident that we really were Rastafarian’s and when we finally arrived at our destination at 7:00 am it was hugs and kisses all around.  Whew!   Time to find a room and sleep this shit off!  Wait….we still have a 4 hour bus ride to our destination, Bukit Lawang   Wonkies all the way! 

 Bukit Lawang

We anchored in a small little cove in Halong Bay for the night and slept soundly on the boat.  We woke up to a another spread of crustaceans for breakfast.  Alright, enough is enough…I just can’t eat this shit!.   I can afford to skip a few meals so I did just that!  We then took a small boat into a village which was beautiful.  This village has existed for 100’s of years and they have everything from a floating store to a floating Pho Soup restaurant.  The dogs seemed kinda malaise with no place to run.

This is the floating corner store.

Nicole looking a fresh as can be 1st thing in the morning!  A beautiful lady inside and out!

Wow!  One of the most spectacular sites in the world!  Halong Bay is truly one place in all of S.E. Asia that takes your breath away!  There are several other breathless moments in Asia but this is right up there.  If you happen to catch it on a perfect weather day you’re privileged. 

Cruising on a Junk through Halong Bay is very cool and we spent 1 night on this boat with 8 others + staff.   I won’t bullshit, cruising on a Junk is expensive!  Vietnam has the tourist path very well mapped out and equipped and the options are limited.  Vietnam is actually one of the most expensive places in all of Asia to visit but after all it’s communist so the government has a very tight fist in the tourism industry.

Ok….they made art out of our food….then we had to guess what it was made of….the smile on my face is because I didn’t want to eat this shit!  I don’t really like clams, oysters or cat fish but that wasn’t the real problem.  Now give me lobster, scallops or shrimp and I’m thrilled.  My problem was that I couldn’t grasp the fact that this seafood came from the very sea which we were cruising in and it was soooooo polluted.  Let me tell you!  Unbelieveably polluted, trust me!   I think my stomach turned a couple of times but once again I ate it and lived to tell the story.  This was just the main dish which was made from a pumpkin, beautiful.  I honesty can’t remember what seafood came along with it but it looks like little crabs.  Eating shell fish for two days was not easy for me.  I swear I saw our staff scrapping the clams off the walls of the stones as we anchored at low tide ….yum!