Blogs
Webby's Travel Blog - UAE
Written by Paul • August 12 2011 • 3 commentsAs you may know, I recently finished my time living in the UAE. In this time I took many photographs and thought I’d share some of them here. Everyone is familiar with the images of skyscrapers and beaches that we associate with Dubai. However, here I wanted to give a taste of the UAE people may not know so well. Below is a selection of some of my favourite pictures taken in Dubai and Sharjah, a city just outside Dubai where I lived.
— Paul
Fake Dog Fitness
Written by Paul • March 01 2011 • 7 comments
“We are not fit men,” or so a Fake Dog once said. Recently I have been trying to rectify this situation. Finally, I think I have found my sport. Running! It’s simple, all you have to do is run a straight line for extended periods of time.
Above you’ll see a picture of me, absolutely knackered after doing the Dubai 10 km run. I did it in 59 minutes 7 seconds. Not bad for someone who’d barely done any training. As we said before, spite is the best motivation. I only got that time because I was trying to beat a friend who actually did train for it. He beat me by about a minute in the end.
With that in mind, I thought to myself “That wasn’t so bad, I could do a half marathon.” So I signed up for the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon, thinking I’d have a few weeks to train for it. This time I’d do it properly. Eh… not so much.
Again with little training done the big day came. I didn’t run it as as quickly as I’d hoped but I did really enjoy the run. Ras Al Khaimah is one of the lesser known emirates. It’s not so built up and industrialised. It was really well organized and the morning air was fresh out in the desert. I ran it 2 hours 26 seconds. I plan to do more and hopefully by the end of the year I’ll be ready for the marathon. We may have to make some special, airy, sporty Fake Dog t-shirts for that.
— Paul
Webby's Travel Blog - Kenya
Written by Paul • January 24 2011 • 18 commentsI recently went on Safari in Kenya. It was an interesting way to spend Christmas, to say the least. It’s an incredible country, and the safari gave me a great chance to try out my new camera.
After staying for a night in Nairobi, we were off on a safari in the Masai Mara plains for a few days looking for big game. We were very lucky and got to get really close to giraffes, hippos, warthogs, lions and cheetahs. The highlight would have to be seeing a pride of lions tuck into a freshly caught wildebeast. Although, I must say I really enjoyed seeing and learning about a lot of animals and birds that I had never heard of.
After this it was down to Mombassa and it’s surrounding beach areas for a bit of chilling out for Christmas. I was a bit trigger happy with the new SLR and took over 900 pictures on the safari alone. So, it took me quite a while but I managed to narrow it down to just a selection of my favourites, I hope you enjoy flicking through them.
— Paul
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Webby's Travel Blog - India
Written by Paul • May 27 2010 • 9 commentsA few weeks back, I had a long weekend and decided to make the most of it and head to India to see the Taj Mahal. This would be my fourth wonder of the world to visit.
So we flew to Delhi. Unfortunately there was a mix up with our hotel and nobody was there to pick us up. Disaster. We got a taxi to the area we were staying in but there were barricades everywhere because of the commonwealth games. We ended up in some strange places but eventually got to our beds at about 5 in the morning.
After a bit of a lie in, we were all set to explore Delhi. What can I say about this city? It’s an intense experience. It sounds like a cliché, but from once you get there all your senses really are attacked. It’s loud, smelly and hot. There’s so much going on, you could just stick a camera anywhere and you wouldn’t know what shots you might snap. So that’s what I did.
The food here is great. I decided to go veggie for the time I was there. It’s a hindu country so they don’t really do meat. In fact there’s no beef as you can’t kill a cow. It was strange to see a McDonalds menu with only chicken burgers. You can’t even chain a cow up. As a result cows are everywhere, a bit like stray dogs. However dogs are not massive lumbering things that get in the way of everything by deciding to just stop in two foot wide alley for no reason whatsoever. So I think it’s wise to stick to the kind of food they eat there. The vegetable and paneer (a kind of cottage cheese) curries are incredible. I still got Delhi belly though.
So next it was the long, bumpy bus journey to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Along the way I was pleasantly woken by a monkey on a chain who was trying to climb in the window, but he turned out quite aggressive and horrible. It took us about 6 hours to get there. Not a pleasant trip.
When you finally get to see the Taj, it is all worth it. I wasn’t disappointed at all. It really is beautiful. It’s probably the prettiest man made object I’ve ever seen. You could look at it for hours.
The story of its creation is really interesting too. Some mad king built it for his wife who apparently was very beautiful. Alas, she died giving birth to his 12th child I think. He then wanted to build a matching Taj in black across the river. That would’ve been class, but his son thought this was crazy so he threw him in jail. Also, interestingly it changes colour at different times of the day. The marble that they use is transparent and can only be found in this area.
So that was our very interesting and enjoyable trip to the Taj. Unfortunately I didn’t fall in love India in the way I would have liked to. But apparently I did not see the ‘real’ India, so I think I will have to take a more comprehensive trip there at some stage .
— Paul
Webby's Travel Blog - China
Written by Paul • March 05 2010 • 13 commentsFinally I am getting around to clearing the backlog of travel blogs. Back blog if you will. I will start with my trip to Beijing, China. Back in November, my friend Paudi and I decided to go to Beijing for our next holiday. Some of his friends were going and we would meet up with them there. We had nothing planned and knew very little about the city we were going to. We organised for our hostel to pick us up at the airport, if you are going to Beijing I would recommend you do this. It can be a bit of a culture shock as nobody; especially the taxi drivers can speak English.
After recovering from our seven-hour flight, we went straight to an acrobatics show. I have to say I was really impressed by the performers. It was so well put together, and the stage and costumes were so well designed. Seeing such a large group of talented and skilled performers at work made me realise why the Olympic Games opening ceremony was such a huge success.
After this we decided to go for a few drinks, this turned into quite a few drinks. I have to give this night a special mention as it was one of the most random nights out I have ever had. There is a street called Bar Street, which has about ten bars in a row. So we bar hopped for the night, each bar stranger than the last. The first one was a trendy kind of karaoke bar. Here we all got our portraits sketched for about euro each. We then went on to the next bar, which had a female and male pole dancer onstage. That’s right a male pole dancer. However this was not really a seedy affair and I wouldn’t like you think that Beijing is full of sleazy strip bars as these are actually illegal in the country. This was just more like a small-scale acrobatics show in a bar.
When they were finished another guy and girl got up to sing some songs. The guy started rapping Hit ‘em Up by Tupac in Chinese, very strange. We met some lovely Chinese people who showed us a drinking game that involves throwing dice. A lot of the bars have dice and a cup on every table for these games. The next bar had a Michael Jackson tribute act. By this stage we were in love with the nightlife in Beijing.
This is partly due to fact that we were not expecting it. Drinking was not a big part of the culture here. However since the country has opened up to western influences, the young people have really embraced bar and club culture. There are great bars and clubs here playing brilliant music. Their beer is much lighter than ours, which meant we drank many, many Tsing Taos (the local brew), which is a lovely, light, crisp beer.
Now it was time to explore the city by day. It was very cold at this time of year so we had to wrap up warm, something we were not used to doing. To get anywhere we had to get the nice people working in the hostel to write out the address in Chinese to give to the taxi driver. Trying to learn any Chinese was very difficult because the drivers could not understand our accent. They did not even know what I meant by Tiananmen Square, which is the main landmark in the city. However the metro system is fantastic and very easy to use once you get used to it, especially since the Olympics as everything is in English now.
Tiananmen square is amazing. It is huge square in the middle of the city. There’s lots of history here as Chairman Mao is buried here and the student’s revolution of 1989 kicked off here. There are lots of universities around and students like to come up to tourists and practice their English. This was great but we were told to be wary of them as they have a reputation for bringing tourists to bars and leaving them with the bill.
Beijing is a great city to just walk around. There are so many beautiful parks and you never know what you will find. The retirement age in China is surprisingly young, 55 for women and 60 for men. The older Chinese folk seem to have a great time. They spend their days in parks, playing cards, singing and generally having a laugh. There was a craze sweeping China when we were there. Everywhere we went people were playing keepy uppy with this colourful, feathery thing. I ended up playing with this lovely old couple in the park.
Next was a trip to the Great Wall of China. I’m not going to tell you too much about this as the picture speak for them selves. We did a 10km trek along the wall. You have to be careful, as there are some steep parts with loose steps. People break their legs here all the time. It was nice to get out in to the country. The air was so fresh and clean compared to Beijing, the most polluted air in the world.
Out of all the places I have been to, I would probably recommend Beijing the most to other people. It is such a great city. There is so much history, the people are brilliant, food is delicious (dumplings especially) and there is so much to do. I can’t wait to go back to China and see some of the other cities.
— Paul
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Webby's Travel Blog - Sri Lanka
Written by Paul • October 20 2009 • 13 commentsFirstly, apologies for my lack of activity on the site over the last two months. I’ve been doing some travelling and working as an English Teacher, as a result I’ve had limited access to the internet.
However, I’ve finally put up a little blog about my travels in Sri Lanka. Hope you enjoy. Sorry for all the pictures, there were just so many. It’s an amazing country with beautiful scenery and really nice people.After a four hour flight from Dubai, we were in Colombo, the capital. There’s not too much to see here so we drove in to the middle of the country to Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. I couldn’t get over how green the countryside is. This is actually near where The Bridge over the River Kwai was shot.
Here we got to get really close to the elephants. There were hundreds of them.
From here, we went to Siguriya where we went on an elephant safari. This is a really beautiful part of the country, there’s so much history here.
This is Siguriya Rock, where the King of Sri Lanka lived. The rock is shaped to look like a lion. The king had 500 wives and he had pictures of them all painted on the walls. Some man!
We were staying in a nice hotel place but they wanted our rooms for other tourists so they offered us a jungle bungalow for the night. We weren’t sure at first, but it turned out be really cool. It was massive and it was right in the middle of the jungle. It also had a tree house to scout elephants and buffalo. Didn’t see any though. Here we had one of the maddest, most random nights ever. I consumed lots of Lion Lager (the local brew) and the spiciest food you could imagine. In Sri Lanka every thing is spicy, even ketchup. They have curry for breakfast, which is surprisingly quite refreshing in the morning.
After that, we went to Adam’s Peak, a big mountain in the middle of the country. It’s twice the size of Carrantuohill (the biggest mountain in Ireland.) We climbed it at night, in the rain, fighting off leaches. They’re horrible you have to burn them off or put salt on them or they’ll leave their teeth in you and they can get infected. I really can’t stress how horrible they are. You’re supposed to climb through the night and reach the top to see the sunrise over Sri Lanka. Apparently it’s breathtaking. For us though it was lashing rain. So we could barely see our hands in front of out faces. But this Buddhist monk made me the best cup of tea I’ve ever had and I rang a bell to signify the achievement.
It was tough but it was worth it for the views on the way down.
Finally after 4 days of heavy travelling and sightseeing, we went to Hikkaduwa to chill out on the beach. This was as laid back as you could get. Great food and surf (not that I did any). I did swim with massive turtles though. It was quite sad though because this area was devestated by the tsunami in 2004.
I would have loved to have spent more time here. It was such a nice end to a pure class holiday. Stay tuned for more travel blogs in the future.
— Paul
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