Jahérnahér..

Hey langt síðan við höfum sést...

Sit ég hér og rifja upp gamlar minningar af þessari snilldarferð eins og svo oft áður. Verða komið ár síðan við komum til baka, ótrúlegt hvað tíminn flýgur!!

Jæja þeir sem eru nýjir að kíkja inn þá eru auðvitað endalaust af rugl pósti (á ensku og íslensku) hérna sem hægt er að lesa um þessa mögnuðu 6 mánaða ferð um Asíu. Ef þig langar bara svona að fá netta innsýn mæli ég með myndunum sem sýna svona það helsta sem gert var í ferðinni. Við tókum auðvitað nóg af myndum til að fylla heilt herbergi en þar eru svona yfirlits myndir yfir það helsta..
.. linkurinn er hérna neðar til hægri..

enjoy!

kv.
A

Ég veit þetta er rugl!

æi... ok mér er slétt sama hvað ég sagði hér að neðan, ég er byrjuð að blogga!!

www.annasiggan.blogspot.com

:O)

Just thinking back!

I really have started to miss this blogsite. I mean it was a big part of our lives for six months.
I don´t think that I am this day to day blogger. I just don´t think my life is exciting enough. Waking up, going to work, working out, eating dinner, watching TV, going to sleep... meeting friends over the weekend... dose this sound familiar to anyone?? If it dose there is really no need for me to blog about it, you all know the story. So I guess our blog life is over, for now at least!

I just finished putting our pictures we printed out from our digital camera in an album. Looking at them, sometimes I don´t believe we did this all. This is just all so amazing. I am so proud of us and all the others who are out there, who let their dreams come true. So many people dream about this all their lifes and never do anything about it. I can tell you all now, it´s not as difficult as it looks!

We were pretty good at writing stories in here. I am so happy that we did that. So many things we did, so many things happened... I would never remember it all, not all the small details. Now we have it all here, and we can print it out so when we are old we can read about our great adventures in Asia and feel good and proud again! Hm... now I am talking like we will never travel again, which we will of course I am just not sure we will ever be able to top this trip!

Well I am going to ad a few things that I remember from India, and don´t want to forget!

The Indians really love their tee and coffee. They sell it everywhere and drink it everywhere. Often in small clay cups which they then just throw on the streets like all the other trash, but what else is new!
Anyway, so of course the trains are no exceptions. There, guys walk around the train and yell “coffee” “chai” (thats what they call their tee). I don´t drink tee or coffee. I don´t mind that other people do. I don´t mind that they sell it and drink it everywhere, not a problem at all. It didn´t become a problem until I took a long good ride on one of the Indian trains. After a few trips I started to hate coffee and chai. Why? Well, sitting on a 12 to 27 hours in a train and having someone walk past you every other minute to offer you coffee or chai with this strange voice (material for another story), can really make you go crazy. “ No I really don´t want Chai thank you, just like I said when you walked past me a minute ago, thank you”. “ Oh there you are again, I was getting so thirsty this one minute you were gone, I was really getting worried that you weren´t coming back”. Arrrg... well you kind of had to be there..!!

I had a cold when I was in India, that resulted in me blowing my nose a few times a day. The stuff that came out was usually black, or at least kind of grayish. Not very nice. When I washed my face the cloth also had the same colour. I always had to keep my nails really really short otherwise I would always have this black line under them.
How would you keep a countrie clean with 1 billion people? No, I don´t know either!

It´s so funny how Indians have this special way of expressing themselves. It´s kind of hard to explain, they kind of move their head from side to side when ever they say something or don´t say something. After a lot of thinking of what that meant, we decided it meant everything and nothing. “yes, no, I don´t know, I am not sure, I think so, maybe”!!
Hm.. as I said it´s hard to describe it in writing, have to kind of show you if you haven´t been to India, because if you have you would know excactly what I mean. I just wanted to have this here so I wouldn´t forgett about it, because I just thought it was toooo funny!!

Indians use a lot of jewellery, the rich use gold of course and lots of it. You could always know if you were in Little India, say like in Singapore from the endless gold jewllery stores.
In India you saw much more of the poore people on the streets. I guess all the rich people just travelled in their “dark window” cars. Poor people can´t buy gold jewellry but they of course decorate themselves as well. One Indian girl we met from the higher class said that they even did more of it. They just have the cheap fake stuff (I didn´t mind, I bought lots). Even their kids are loaded with all kinds of things. Bracelets and anklets were the most popular ones (with me too). I have to say I thought it was a little cute to see these tiny tiny feet with tiny tiny anklets. I didn´t even know they made them that small.
In Bangladesh the children were also a little decorated but not as much. They were usually just painted black around their eyes and with black eyebrows. Sometimes they had a big black circle on the left side on their forehead. I tried to ask what that meant but I could not understand the anwser. They didn´t all speak good english, you see!! The first time I saw a baby with the circle I just thought it was a strange big birthmark, when I saw another baby with the same thing I realised it was somthing else.
I was just amazed how they could put the black line on so small babies with out them freaking out. Who knows maybe they did, and still do.

Thats all!!

Anna Sigga

To our friends!

We finished our trip around Asia a month ago and we´re gradually settling in here in Reykjavik. We´ve moved in with my mother and we´re going to stay with her until we have enough money to buy an apartment. What is not so good is that while we were on our trip, realestate prices increased about 20% so now we have to save up more money than we thought.
We just bought a car and got a good deal on one. Car prices are falling these days because the crazy Icelanders are taking an advantage of the low price of the U.S. dollar and importing american jeeps and pick ups in the thousands. So all these new cars ar flooding the market which results in very low prices on used cars. We took advantage of this and got a model ´98 German VW Vento. Like I´ve always told my German friends, Icelanders have a high opinion of German products and now I´m putting my money on one.
Just as our trip was coming to an end, I got news about a new job opening within Air Iceland, the airline I worked for. I applied for the job over the Internet from a very unrelable internet cafe in Varanasi India. It took about three hours and I had to send the application in three parts but it got through, I got the job and started working about week after I got home. Anna will be working at the beauty parlor this summer but next fall she´ll start studying Anthropology in the Universitiy of Iceland. So it seems that our traveling days are over for a while, well by that I mean travelling for months like we just did. Of course we´ll be going on many shorter trips and we´ll try to take advantage of our discounts that we have with numerous airlines.
Well that´s about it for now but I just wanted to let you know what we are doing and I also wanted to thank you for contributing so much to our trip. Because of you, we had so much more fun and learned so much more than we otherwise would have.

Take care you all, wherever you are in the world

Valli (Val) and Anna, Reykjavik, Iceland

New Pictures

We just added pictures from the last part of our trip!

Taj Mahal!

I don’t know how it happened but I am going to fix it now. Taj Mahal!! We completely forgot to tell you of our experience about that great monument. So here it is:

On the train to Agra where Taj Mahal is we meet these really nice guys who we talked to on a part of our 12-hour journey. One of them lived in Agra and of course he knew our purpose going to his hometown. He told us though that he had kind of growing to hate the building that everybody where so excited about because on every fieldtrip he went to as a kid with his school they went to see Taj Mahal. Of course he was happy though to have us over to see it. He said he would wake us up in the morning when we would be getting closer so we could see it out of the train window.

The morning after we where up pretty early (can’t really sleep long on those Indian trains). So we where wide awake when we drove past Taj Mahal, it was quite far from us but it was beautiful to see in the morning sun. Every Indian around us where really excited to show it to us and you could see they where all really proud of it, as an old man who sat next to me said “this is a building made out of love” with this special look in his eye.
For those who don’t know the story behind Taj Mahal, it was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his second wife, Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth in 1631. He started building it the same year and it was not finished until over 20 years later or in 1653.
I had to agree with them the mausoleum was beautiful and I hadn’t even come close to it yet. Over 20.000 people worked on the building but the fact that many of them had their hands or thumbs amputated after it was finished so the greatness of the Taj could never be repeated stuck me a little.

Going to see it you could not bring anything with you inside. No food or something that could spoil the environment, no motor vehicles are aloud nearer to the Taj then 10,400-sq-km to try to reduce pollution.

Finally seeing it close was amazing. I don’t know what I was expecting and I really loved it but I think maybe the craziness around it like it was the most beautiful building in the world got me down a little. We stayed there for a few hours walking around the sight and taking pictures. I really wanted to stay there to see the sunset but Valli´s big stomach had to have some food so we left an hour before; I kind of regret that now. Have been told it’s really cool to see it chance colours when the sun is going down. Hm… maybe next time!

At least this is another thing I can take of my list.

Taj Mahal check!!

Anna Sigga.

International friends

I´ve got to tell you that when travelling for a long time or backpacking like we did, you meet a lot of other travellers who are doing the same thing as you. Some are travelling for a month while others for a year. Some cover three countries while other cover thirty but still at the time, you both have a backpack, you´re both in the same place, you´re dealing with the same problems and both having fun. That´s why the travelling doesn´t only give you an insight into the culture of the country you´re in but also the culture of your fellow travellers and getting to know so many people from so many countries is really rewarding and fun.
Now I want to name the people we hung out with on our 6 month journey but of course we met loads more people.

Name, country. where we met

China:
James, New Zealand. Beijing, Xi-an.
Brent, Canada. Beijing
Craig & Vicky, England. Beijing, Xi-an
Vince, England. Xi-an, Yangtze river, Yangshuo.
Peter, Zimbabwe/England. Yangtze river, Yangshuo
Gordon & Michelle, England. Yangtze river
Sophie & Mette, Denmark. Yangshuo, Mui Ne (Vietnam)
Henrik & Elonor, Sweden. Trip of death from China to Vietnam.

Vietnam:
Graeme & Kate, England. Halong Bay, Hoi An.
Jodi & Mark, Australia. Halong Bay.
Gregory, Scotland. Halong Bay.
Chisa, USA. Central Highlands, Mui Ne
Nicky, England, Central Highlands
Liam, Scotland. Mui Ne, Saigon, Mekong Delta, Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and Ko Pha Ngan (Thailand)
Scott, England. Mui Ne, Saigon.
David & Natasha, Canada. Mui Ne.
Shewan & her boyfriend (sorry dude, don´t remember your name), England. Mui Ne

Cambodia:
Agnes & Reiner, Germany. They were teachers in a small village south of Phnom Penh and were so kind to let us stay with them for one night when we ran into trouble.
Their friends, Cambodia. They had cambodian names so I don´t remember them, sorry!

Thailand:
Daniel & Sarah, Israel & Australia. Ko Pha Ngan.
Franka & Paul, South Africa. Ko Pha Ngan, Ko Tao.
Mike (USA), Terry (England), Owen (Ireland), Jared (Ireland), Konrad (Australia), Carl (England), Mark (England) and Darren (England) our diving buddys. Ko Tao.
Gene & Cherie, USA. Ko Tao.

Malaysia:
Jeff & Agniszka, Canada & Poland. Taman Negara.

Laos:
Rob, Canada. Luang Prabang.
Cecilia, Sweden. Luang Prabang.
Fran, England. Luang Prabang, Goa (India).

Bangladesh:
Cecilie, her uncle and her cousin, Norway. Dhaka.

India:
Simone (Fran´s sister), England. Goa.


Thank you guys for making our trip much more enjoyable, I´ll see some of you later here in Iceland or elsewhere.

Valli

"EVERYTHING IS FULL"

The woman at the Alitalia servicedesk was not in a good mood. "Everything is full" she told me an hour before the flight was supposed to leave from Mumbai to Milan in Italy. Her answer didn´t include the business class seats on the flight so I tried to convince her to let me sit in those seats so I could go on the flight but no such luck.

It was 1 am and a flight was scheduled for Frankfurt two hours later. We decided to try for that flight but "everyting was full" and a few of us were left behind so me and Anna decided to spend the night in the airport and try for a 7 am flight to Frankfurt. We got seats on the flight, landed in Frankfurt 9 hours later and tried to get a train to Milan to visit our friend Francesca. "Almost everything is full" said the young man in the Deutsche Bahn office. "I thought the pope was going to be buried in Rome" I said jokingly but the young man told me that everything to Rome was full so people were just going to Italy and then they counted on getting from Milan to Rome. Idiots, why don´t you just stay at home and watch it on TV?
Couldn´t the pope have stayed alive a week longer, just for us?

We then went on a 1 hour hike to a youth hostel we knew about. "Everything is full" or "Alles is ausgebuched" said the helpful young man in the heavy metal t-shirt with long hair to us. I don´t remember if he spoke English or German so that must mean that my German is pretty good. We went on another hour journey with our 4 heavy backpacks to Darmstadt which is a little outside Frankfurt. There they had room for us for one night only "because there´s a musik festival in Frankfurt and EVERYTHING IS FULL tomorrow".

Then we checked out prices of trains, rental cars and flights (we even thought about hich hiking) either to Milan or to Berlin/Rostock where we claim to have friends but when the sum was added up, everything was to expencive for us. There was a direct flight the next day (yesterday) from Frankfurt to Reykjavik so we decided to try our luck with that one. "Everything is full?" I asked the check in staff the next day but to my surprice the answer was no. We got on the flight and 3+ hours later we landed in the land of Ice. -6° celcius was reality and snow in beginning of April was our welcoming present from our fatherland.

It´s nice to be back!

Valli

Don´t stop reading quite yet though, we still have to post a few stories that we´ve left out.