A short video from a visit to Wat Saket in Bangkok. From the top of this artificial hill you get a pretty good view of Bangkok.

I like to walk around Bangkok when I visit the city as it is a strange combination of noises, traffic, beautiful temples etc. Here are some images from day one when I took a walk around after donating blood. I took the river express to the Grand Palace area and walked over to Wat Suthat.

We are going to Thailand today This will be the last vacation this year and we look forward to some beach, sun and relaxation. Going from Stavanger in Norway at 8 degrees Celsius to Thailand with 30+ degrees is quite a change that’s for sure. But we look forward to the hectic city life in Bangkok and the relaxing beach life at Phuket. This is not our first time in Bangkok – as you can see from our homepage we have been to this city a few times before. It can be a stressful city to start with…all the noise, the traffic, the tuk-tuk drivers that tries to trick you, the scent on the streets, the hot and humid weather etc. But once you get past that you will find a city full of contrast, good food, friendly people, peaceful and colorful temples, great shopping etc. After a few days in Bangkok we are going to Phuket and to Kata beach. We went to Phuket many years ago and back then we stayed at Patong beach. Obviously things have changed quite a lot as we all remember the tsunami in 2004. Our hotel is Avista on Kata beach and it is actually brand new so it will be exciting to see if everything is up and running when we arrive :-) So if you do run into us on the streets of Bangkok or on the beaches of Phuket, don’t hesitate to say Hi

As some of you have noticed, I’m a bit of a fan of Google…and one of the greatest tools is Google maps which I have used to map out cities that I have been to (see an example in my Rome Google map). In connection with the Google maps there is also another great tool called Google Street View. Some cities around the world have been photographed on street level and this allows the user to walk virtually through the cities – this means that you can e.g. check out the area around the hotel that you are about to book, or “walk” to the restaurant that you are thinking about visiting etc.  If you are wondering which cities that have been mapped please check out this Wikipedia page. So how about walking past Collosseum in Rome to get an idea of how it looks Just zoom in on the city and drag the little orange map into the street that you want to take a closer look at and then start by moving around by clicking on the arrows that run along the street. Here is my Rome trip report in case you need some more background information: http://gardkarlsen.com/rome_italy.htm

Well, maybe this is not really news but it is a sad fact I guess. Due to the climate changes in the world the glaciers on highest mountain in Africa is melting and the prediction is that the ice will be gone in 20 years! I have had the pleasure of standing at the top of Kilimanjaro (see my trip report http://gardkarlsen.com/kilimanjaro_index.htm ) and it was freezing. But I have to admit that towards the top I was so tired that I didn’t really notice the glaciers at all and I should have taken lots more photos.
I would guess that the main problem of the glaciers disappearing is that the fresh water source will be gone for many of the people that live around the mountain and I guess that this a much bigger problem than issue that the mountain will not be that picture perfect anymore without the glaciers.  So if you want to climb the mountain and still enjoy the view of  “The snows of Kilimanjaro” you have to hurry – it will be gone soon. On the right hand side you will see a couple of photos showing the difference from 1993 to 2000. If you can read Norwegian you can read an article about this in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.

I just booked a hotel for our vacation in Phuket in Thailand and when I check the hotel website directly I think the price was something like 5100 Baht (about 152 USD) per night which is not too bad for a 4/5 star hotel. But then I checked on http://www.agoda.com and the same room was offered for 92 USD. I got in touch with the hotel again and told them that I would love to book directly with the hotel if they could offer prices like Agoda but they just quoted their official price list. So in the end I did book the hotel using Agoda and the hotel has confirmed that the reservation is OK. So how can Agoda offer the same room for 60 USD less than the hotel itself? I have no idea – I just know that if you are going to book a hotel you should check several places to get the best deal. In the past I have used places like http://www.asiatravel.com , http://www.hotelthailand.com and now Agoda. But you should also note that in some cases the best prices comes from checking with the hotel reservation office. So how do you try to get the best prices when booking hotel and which hotel sites do you use?

As we speak, AirFrance will be the fourth airline to recieve an Airbus A380 plane and they are the first European airline to get their A380. The other companies that have A380′s already are Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Qantas. I’m a bit surprised that AirFrance is not making more of a fuzz out of this – the link to information about the A380 on the AirFrance page just leads to a “Page not found” page. Anyway, AirFrance will use the plane from Paris to New York City so hopefully we will get a chance to try it in the future. I had the pleasure of trying out the A380 when I went from London to Dubai in March this year as you might remember from this article.

If you want to keep an eye on the production of A380 you can check out this blog or this production list.

Maybe you think that travel guides are a new invention – well, think again. Books describing journeys have been around for centuries but I guess they have changed a bit as more and more people have the chance to travel. I came to think of this the other day when I heard on the news that the book “Northern Travel” by Bayard Taylor has finally been translated into Norwegian. I guess it was about time as it was written in 1857! The book is a tale of Bayard Taylor’s trip to Sweden and Norway and on his trip he gets to visit Bergen, Oslo, the fjords, see the midnight sun etc. Norway has changed a lot over the last 150 years – we have gained full independent once again, we have gone from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest nation in the world etc etc. In that respect I think all Norwegians should read this book to get a glimpse of Norway anno 1857. Taylor describes food in Bergen as being horrible, he talks to the lepers and the lack of hygiene, he describes Norwegian jealousy towards the Swedes etc. If you want to read the book you can actually do it online. Thanks to Google Books you can find it here.

The travel magazine Condé Nast has released readers’ travel awards 2009 and here the best countries, best cities, best airports etc have been listed. Let’s take a look at the list of best vacation countries:

1. Italy
2. New Zealand
3. Turkey
4. Australia
5. France
6. Egypt
7. USA
8. South Africa
9. Spain
10. India
11. Marocco
12. Greece
13. Mexico
14. Canada
15. Thailand
16. Brasil
17. Argentina
18. Sweden
19. Portugal
20. Kenya

Well, first of all I would like to say that I totally agree when it comes to Italy. Nikki and I have been there several times and our last trip was to Florence and Tuscany and it was one of our best vacations ever (see trip report on http://gardkarlsen.com/florence_italy_travelogue.htm ). I’m also very, very pleased to see that South Africa is ranked on 8th place. I see that Cape Town is also high on the list of best cities in the world and I couldn’t agree more. I think that it will get even higher on the list when they host the soccer world cup in 2010.  I’m a bit surprised to see Turkey so far up on the list…for most Scandinavians Turkey is just a place where you go to find sun, beaches and partytime. I have actually never been there but I would love to visit Istanbul one of these days. You can find the awards on http://www.cntraveller.com/ReadersAwards/2009/Countries/ .

Do you agree on the list? What country is your favorite vacation country?

I stayed at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in the end of September 2009. The room was booked online at the SPG site and it was 1400 Hong Kong Dollar (approx. about 170 USD). I chose the Sheraton as I’m Starwood preferred guest and as it was located in the same area that I stayed in the last time I was on HK…at Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon. I got to the hotel by taking the airport express train into the Kowloon station (costing 90 HKD) and from there I took a taxi to the hotel and it was only like 5-10 minutes and cost 35 HKD (4.5 USD). Click below to read the entire review of my stay at the hotel and see photos and videos

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