Singapore
April 1-4, 2002

We arrived in Singapore after a relatively short 3 hour or so flight from Darwin, Australia. We knew we had left the wilderness of Australia when we arrived at the supermodern Singapore airport. Everything was automatic, the restrooms were spotless, internet terminals everywhere...wow. By the time we were done oohing and aahing at the terminal and made our way down to the baggage pickup (about 10 minutes) our bags were already neatly stacked against the wall. All the other passengers had already picked up their stuff and had left...compare that to waiting an hour in a crowded hall for your bags at LAX!

Singapore has to be the easiest city in the world to get around in. The subways and buses are great and efficient, taxis are plentiful and cheap and everybody speaks better English than I do. Plus we were staying at a super nice place, the Hotel Intercontinental (on a special rate). Add it all up and it was definitely our most luxurious stay of the trip so far.

So what do you do in Singapore? Two things - shop and eat (you can see why it was Dina's favorite city so far). There are huge modern block long shopping malls all over the city. One day we spent about 4 hours just walking inside from one shopping mall to the next. I think we could have spent the whole 3 days inside of shopping malls if we had wanted to.

The food was incredible too, the best quality and variety of Asian food you can imagine. In some places where we've travelled meal time was an inconvenience - a long search for some place affordable and good. In Singapore it was the opposite. Each meal was soooo good you wished you were hungry some more so you could try another place. We had Black Pepper Crab, noodles, dim sum, bi bim bap, gyoza terriyaki and boba tapioca drinks.

Other highlights were the Night Safari and a hike in some of the jungles near the edge of the city. A 20 minute cab ride from the city center and we're dodging monitor lizards in the jungle. The Night Safari was great also. It's a zoo that's only open at night when the animals are active. You get to walk quietly through the park seeing the animals walking around and eating under simulated moonlight lighting. It was great.

Guilin, China
April 5-8, 2002

After Singapore we made a brief stop in Hong Kong for one night, then it was off to mainland China. Our first stop was Guilin, a city in Southern China reknowned for it's famous landscape. We knew we had entered a different world on the flight in - it was about the bumpiest plane ride we'd ever had, people strolled around the aisles during take off and landing...yes, things had definitely changed.

The scenery of Guilin definitely lived up to billing. We took a boat trip down the Li river and just stood in awe the whole time. Amazing jagged peaks of rocks as far as the eye can see, with green fields and rivers all between. Beautiful. After the boat trip, we rented bicycles and rode around the country side for a few hours and examined some of the various formations up close.

The food in Guilin was defintely an experience. They have a local saying that the people there will eat 'Anything that flies except for airplanes and anything with legs except the table.' That turned out to be a 100% true, except another line needs to be added to cover snakes, which was a local favourite. One restaraunt we ate at looked like a petting zoo outside, with snakes, turtles and about 5 types of rodents caged up waiting to be ordered up for dinner. It made Dina sad.

In Guilin also we got a chance to climb some of the peaks and explore the ancient temples there, and also to get some great massages (another thing Guilin is apparently famous for). China was definitely strange and very very different but we were having a great time.

Oslo, Norway
May 24-26, 2002

We spent the weekend in Oslo, capital of Norway, land of the midnight sun. And midnight sun it was almost, getting dark around 11:30 PM and then light again around 3 AM. Strange...by the end of the days you feel really tired but it's still light outside.

We were travelling with Andy Jacobson, a long time friend of Brian's who is temporarily residing in Malmo, a city on the Southern tip of Sweden. We visited with him for a couple of days (nice to not be in a hotel room for once!), and then he flew up to meet us for the weekend in Oslo.

Oslo was a fantastic city. It's situated at the end of a long fjord full of islands (which we explored via a somewhat mediocre fjord cruise). Some of the highlights in the city were the Viegland park and museum - a huge park filled with monumental sculptures by famous Norwegian sculpture Gustav Viegland, the Norwegian Resistance Museum (describing the Norwegian resistance to Germany in WWII), and of course the beautiful hills above Oslo (which we did some nice hikes in).

Oslo also seems to be a city which never sleeps. Everything is open late or never closes - clubs, bars, restaraunts. We would typically eat dinner around 11PM or so, and had no trouble finding things open. The food was great as well - plenty of fresh salmon and other seafood, and of course fresh Reindeer. One caution about Oslo though - it was by far the most expensive place we'd seen on the trip so far.

Alaska
June 30 - July 6th, 2002

We spent a week on Jim's Catfish, a catamaran/fishing boat cruising through Alaskan waters. Both Brian and I agree that this was one of the highlights of the trip. We are grateful to Jim for allowing us to spend the week on his boat and especially getting to know him much better.

We started off in Sitka and followed the Inside Passage. We saw so much wildlife including bald eagles, grizzly bears, sea otters, puffins, an orca, many humpback whales, and had 3 Dall's porpoises swimming at the bough of the Catfish! That was the most unforgetable thing.

We also visited Glacier National Park, the only park not accessible by car. We saw beautiful Tiddy-bowl blue glaciers that went on forever. And even little ice melts floating all around our boat. We were fortunate enough to drop anchor and sleep next to a glacier!

Oh, and the FOOD. We can't forget one of the most important things! We ate like kings everynight! Freshly caught salmon from the fishermen next to us, about 25 dungenous crabs (I ate about 20 of them), rock fish, halibut, and steaks (not from the ocean).