Tag Archives: Backpacking

Rising travel fever and to Syria.

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We are back now to Finland for more then 3 years, but believe me the fever of leaving again never goes away.

Helsinki is a great place to live, quiet, peaceful,safe, modern,clean and Finns can be great fun but life remains concentrated on work.

When you backpack, you are free. Yes! You got to worry about where you gonna sleep and the budget and all that but you are free to move on from a place to another.

Working hard here and making a good life surely does not compensate on the love to travel! Sadly, in life it is either or.

We have been dreaming both to travel again since we had a great experience during that year, we got tired, broke, exchausted, dirty but we made so many friends, so many experiences.

One of these experiences that will never leave both our memories is in Syria, a country where we were lucky to visit in Peace time before the regime starts oppressing it’s people and killing them. Syria was the heaven of history!

Syria, has so much historical sites that will impress you for life and they were empty, tourism is not so high in there and that memory when we were visiting Serjilla, one of marvellous places there where we managed to get to that forgotten ghost city via a hitchhike with a local and then on the way back, we ended up riding in a huge truck that stopped in the middle of a highway, the driver was doing trips between Iraq and Syria. The driver stopped in the middle of a highway and gave us a ride back to ur destination.

Syrians are sweet and nice people, generous and loving. We remember them and their beautiful country and wish that peace will come back and they succeed in their long  awaited Arab spring!

As for Helsinki, we had amazing years since we came back, new jobs, experiences, a new home and cats. I leave below few pictures of our winter and our cats with a promise to write again from our home here and incoming trips.

More pictures to be published soon.

Sasi

Borneo-ou

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Just wanted to tell that we are glad to present our photos from Borneo in Flickr. Much awaited pictures of Orangutans, nose monkeys and all the rest of the wonders of the jungle.

And also you can enjoy this small piece of backpacking lifestyle here:

Maiku

Walking in the Rain

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I had never felt such a fear. Maiku was behind me screaming on me GO, GO, do not be a coward! And the rain was poring so hard! So hard.

I was really terrified, I looked down and I saw a no end of the green! It was not as I expected to climb up there, it was not the safe treck I had thought, the cords were so flexible and the pathway was so small and it was just so high over the jungle! The pathway was so narrow and there were pieces of wood linked with cords to each other and a small net but nothing that makes you feel really safe, certainly if you have height fear.

Canopy walk of Mt. Kinabalu National Park

Canopy walk of Mt. Kinabalu National Park

The funny part of the event is that my fear of height was understandable due to the extreme weather conditions we were in. It was a heavy seasonal rain and you couldn’t see anything in front of you. It was pouring so hard that even an umbrella couldn’t stop it but the water kept percolating TROUGH it. We were carrying bags and tried to protect the cameras and all wet and hot and humid made the walk almost unbearable.

(Actually, the scariest thing wasn’t the canopy walks but the trek itself. The steep path had turned into streams and mud was extremely slippery. There was also mud slides. I kept slipping and fell down a couple of times and got nice bruises for souvenir but luckily, we managed to get back down in one piece. Maiku adds.)

Canopy walks of Mt. Kinabalu National Park

Canopy walks of Mt. Kinabalu National Park

We were on canopy walks of Mount Kinabalu, the famous sacred mountain that rises as high as 4000 m of altitude and is well know for it’s national park, a world heritage site of UNESCO.

After the walk on the 60 meters height canopies looking all over the Borneo rain forests, we were lucky to see the biggest flower in the world, the famous Rafflesia that looked like an alien plant with no roots and just stucked to a tree trunk. Its the biggest flower on Earth and a rare one to find, so rare that locals charge about 5 Euro’s per person just to go to see it after they have spotted one somewhere in the jungle. Ours wasn’t the biggest one but an intriguing discovery nerveless.

Rafflesia

Rafflesia

Rafflesia was all red with yellowish dots and huge. It sucked and attracted all kind of flies with its smell, attracted them to their deadly fate as it seems. The biggest ones can even attract rats and squirrels to their death though it don’t eat them, they just wander there and dont get up anymore and then die. We walked into the jungle for a while until we saw it behind a wooden barrier and we were not allowed to touch it! I was so happy since it has always been Maiku’s dream to see it, and now she was jumping out of joy like a little girl.

Then we headed to the magic or at least we expected it to be magic and relaxing place, the hot springs that come from the heart of sacred mountain Kinabalu.

It wasn’t any geyser-like ponds I had expected but the water was led to big pools, tiled pools filled with hot stinking of sulfate water that is supposed to be healthy for your skin and excellent for your back pain. It was not what we expected after seeing the crows of local tourists in the pools, kids splashing around, and we were then wondering is it the water that is actually hot or wether the kids had peed in there…

The water was really hot and it smelled really on the skin even after the shower. It was relaxing though after the hard walk in the wet, wet jungle and sore muscles. But after, Maiku was really angry since I forgot to pack any change of clothes with us, and we had wear the same wet and muddy clothes and be all wet the whole 3 hours trip back to town in the bus with A/C on. Gosh it was cold!

That’s it folks from Borneo, Kota Kinabalu the city that rains like hell and flood its streets and then shine with colors and dragons every Chinese new year, not to forget that it offers an escape to the rain forests of Borneo and to amazing Sabah!

Sasi, now in Finland and missing cheap Asia!

In the Finnish Jungle.

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A big apology for our delay of posting. Believe us we want to write but life here back home has not been easy at all between the re-integration and moving flats and work and Finnish winter and it’s flu we had no time to write anything. We are just busy all the time!

By our Blog time line we are still in Malaysia and we should be writing soon about that part of the trip. So stay tuned and we promise in the next few days we will post new pictures and new Blog!

Sasi from the flea market!

A journey to Southern hemisphere.

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Bali, or as also referred to by the name “The Island of the Gods” is one heck of a paradise! I was so happy to be able to make it to the Southern hemisphere at last.

The majesty of the nature in Indonesia is grandiose, from rain forests to furious volcanoes and to the infinity of your vision rice paddies and terraces. Traveling on the road from Kuta to Ubud, we had the chance to team up with other travelers on this rough ride through the jungles of Bali. Transport in Bali is not top notch, I would say, Indonesia after all is a bit isolated and having such a huge population makes things hard to be organized. Bali though gets the biggest part of the pie being renowned as the major tourist destination.

The trip to Ubud gave us an overview on one of the most fierce volcanoes in there, we crossed the area of Mt. Batur and its caldera lake, and see how harsh nature can be sometimes, and how small we are in the face of our planet. The volcano was resting at the moment though it’s still active and attracts many tourists to watch it. It erupted the last time in 2000. You can read more about it here. Not to forget to mention the beautiful rice fields that gave us an outlook on how hard it is to do that kind of jobs, it requires time and patience and lots of energy to be able to get the final stage of the rice. The rice terraces we visited were so green and lush and dipped in water as if it was grass growing out of a river.

Ubud, the cultural center of Bali was one of the most relaxing place in our stay. Religious Hindus are living in harmony there and religion sounded as an important daily task. In Hindu tradition, they put a leaf basket full of rice, flowers and a burning scent daily in front of each house and each shop, so streets are full of these small offerings every day. Someone put that every morning in front of our door in our home stay accommodation, a place called Brata 1. The accommodation itself, was a small heaven, small cottages with lovely Hindu designs surrounding a family temple. They used to be a family house where the whole wide family would live next to each other but times have changed, families moved and now some houses are rented for tourists.

Staying in Ubud, made us discover a totally new culture to both of us. Maiku has been to India and Nepal, but Hinduism in there was totally different she said. We saw lots of art and even had the chance to see an event where all scooter drivers from all over Indonesia met to hang out, that was the most hippie scooters we ever seen. They were like straight away from a Mad Max movie.

The visit to the popular attraction called Sacred Monkey Forest was a must, even though Maiku’s love to monkeys is as much as my love to snakes: we are not best friends. She thinks they are dirty thieves (fact is that they are tricky nasty little devils). The forest has a few small Hindu temples, and we had the occasion to be visiting on the same date when a holy ceremony was taking place, once every six months. Ladies were all dressed up in their batik outfits on their best, carrying a food basket for the Gods on top of their heads, and walking in groups of family members, friends and neighbors. It was impressive how the colors mixed with the surroundings of the jungle. It was just magnificent!

Leaving Ubud was really sad, we found peace and harmony there (no wonder that has been a hot spot of hippies since 60′s) and good food and cheap accommodation and nicest people ever. We left on our bus trip to Lovina, the so-called dolphin heaven, but unfortunately after taking the morning boat for 2 hours in a lovely ride, sunny but windy, I didn’t have a chance to see any dolphins. Lovina was our New Year’s destination. We spent the event teaming up with other travelers in the pool. Literally IN the pool. That was coolest ever, swimming in a pool drinking gin and tonic. What more could you do in The Island of the Gods!

The trip of course, had to continue. The packing has to be done, and it’s always due to our little budget that land transport as our main choice. So we took a bus to Java island, the most populated island of Indonesia and the center of it all. Our destination was Yogyakarta, a student city located nearby the Borobudur Buddhist temple and Prambanan Hindu temple, where we did a day trip to see the majestic holy sites of two biggest religions in Asia.

On the way we saw the other fierce volcano, the mighty Merapi. Puffs of smoke circled over its top, when the monster was snoring in its sleep. The sleep can be easily disturbed, though, and we had a bit shivery feeling of that. I can’t understand how people live so close to these live volcanos and don’t give a damn.

Yogyakarta was awesome. Our accommodation was a hostel where all the rooms had a painting of a different color, pictures of animals and mostly the popular Gekko lizards. We also teamed up again with our new friends after a few days separation. They brought with them greetings from our lovely new young friend Afrika. She missed me so much she emailed a drawing of me. I think its quite alike, especially the hair.

Sasi by Afrika

Sasi by Afrika

Sasi