Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Itchy Feet

A couple of things have gotten me thinking about travel this week:

1. A young colleague of mine is planning his first international trip, to Thailand, and I've been telling him about the cool things we saw and did there. Hubby and I had a great time in Thailand, and remembering those times is making me want to go traveling again.

2. Hubby sent me a link to Matt the dancing dude doing his thing at Yahoo headquarters.

Which of course made me go and rewatch the earlier dancing videos. If you haven't seen this yet, go see it. I can't watch without getting a big grin on my face, particularly during the parts with the kids in Africa.

Matt's story is one of those things that I love about the internet. This all started as a joke, and a way to keep his family updated on where he was during his travels. He is now an internet celebrity, and probably got paid to go do his dance thing at Yahoo headquarters. Nice work, if you can get it! It also fills me with profound travel envy, because not only has he gotten to go to some really cool places, his travels were paid for by a gum company... just because they thought what he did was cool. (If any gum companies want to pay for me, Hubby and Pumpkin to go traveling, we're up for it, by the way.)

Since I have less than zero time off, thanks to the recent illness, I'll have to content myself with reliving former travels. So, to make me feel better, here is a list of some of the coolest things I've ever done:

1. Seeing the quarry on Easter Island.
2. Seeing the temples at the Angkor complex in Cambodia. I haven't written up a trip story about this yet, but the temples are amazing and the Cambodian people we met in Siam Reap were wonderful. We spent three days tooling around in a carriage pulled by a motorbike, clamoring around temples, and marveling at what we saw. Hubby picked Thailand as a destination on our big trip, and I insisted that if we were that close to Angkor Wat, we had to go see it. We're both glad we did. I didn't even mind getting up at what seemed like an ungodly early hour to see Angkor Wat at sunrise. Of course, I would later spend four solid months getting up at that ungodly early hour....



3. Koala Patting in Australia. Hubby wasn't as impressed with this as I was. But this is my list, not his, so it stays on the list.

4. Riding on a boat surrounded by frolicking dolphins off the coast of Ventura, California. We were on our way back to mainland after a day spent hiking around Santa Cruz Island. The captain came on the speaker and said "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is we're going to be delayed by about 5 minutes. The good news is that there's a pod of at least 1000 dolphins right in front of the boat!" He wasn't kidding. The picture doesn't do it justice it all.


5. Hiking up a glacier in New Zealand. This was during my very first trip to New Zealand, when Hubby and I were first getting together. Almost all pictures Hubby took from that time had me in them... but you can also sort of see the glacier in this one. The glacier was beautiful, and being surrounded by so much ice on a warm, sunny day was a bit surreal.
I'll probably have to write more lists like this while I wait for my paid time off balance to get back to respectable levels....

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous1:55 PM

    I was supposed to take a trip to Spain for my 10th wedding anniversary this past May, and instead I was home and six months pregnant. My feet are itchy as well...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, wow, wow, wow, and wow! Those are really neat snippets and pics of cool travels.

    I've been squashing my travel bug, but it's killing me. I just don't know when we'll be able to afford (time and money) to go on a big trip. I've been dreaming of Italy, and still haven't gotten back there. Maybe I need to do like you are and just start reminiscing a bit about prior trips. I do love to hear about yours.

    ReplyDelete

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