Hello my name is Ellen Halfwerk, travelling around the world for Netglobers.com ( Europ Assistance ).
Hello everyone,
It’s the end of April 2011 and I’ve been home for a while now. After I returned, I wanted to write about my travel experiences professionally. You can find my website here.
On this personal weblog, you can find Inspiration & Advice, Tips & Tricks, Information & Stories and Beautiful Photos. Based on 10 years of hands on experience in independent travel.
Please have a look and enjoy the wonderful world of traveling with me!
Happy traveling!
Ellen
PS: I captured this last 6 amazing months in amazing pictures. Check out my photography on (click on the text):
Well guys, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. Traveling to remote places in Australia will do that to you 
.
After spending 9 days in Kuala Lumpur, just chillin’ and waiting on our flight to Australia, we arrived in Perth on september 16th. We spent a week at Aude’s place, a dear friend of mine who lives in a Perth suburb. She took us in and we could chill some more and figure out which campervan we were gonna rent. We decided to drive from Perth to Melbourne and left on september 22nd.
The area south of Perth, south west Australia is just wonderful and beautiful. Lots of hilly landscapes and wineries, arts and craftshops, gorgeous beaches and nice towns. We camped in the wild right at the beach a few times which was great! You wake up to the sound of the waves and go for a morning stroll on these whitesandy deserted beaches. After that part of Oz we crossed the Nullabor plain right into south Australia and after that into Victoria. Whe arrived in Melbourne, after enjoying the great oceaan road, and stayed at Carol, another lovely friend. She lives in St Kilda which is a very nice suburb at the beach. We chilled some more and prepared ourselves for our trip home. Yeah home, because this 6 monthis journey together had come to an end.Unfortunately, ‘cos it’s been THE BOMB!!
So yeah it’s been an amazing 6 months which we could spend in Asia and Australia, but sadly is has come to an end. I traveled the world for Netglobers and ofcourse thank them so, so much for this opportunity to discover more of the beauty this earth has to offer. To everyone out there: go out there! Dare to dream, explore and discover! Just like we did! And do not forget to check the Netglobers website for some serious traveladvice! See you around someday, somewhere.
. Yesterday we went for a jungle walk to a deserted beach….the beach was absolutely beautiful! The jungle full of sounds, amazing to hear this other world up close and personal. Tomorrow it is time to move on, no more beaches, no more snorkeling…..we go to the capital of Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur. From there we will make a few more trips into this beautiful country and on september 16th we will fly to one of our favorite countries: Australia!
Well hello again,
This time we are on Pulau Redang, another island on the beautiful eastcoast of Malaysia. From Tioman we took the bus up north to Kuantan, stayed at the beach there for two days. That is more than enough because the city is not interesting (we had to be there to book our flight to Australia) and the beach is beautiful but we were forced to eat KFC and MCDonalds all day……what a bummer . There were two big restaurants and not much more. But the beach was long and white. After that we went to Kuala Terengganu to book our trip to Pulau Rendang. This beautiful island is not really a backpackers place budgetwise, as it is almost only possible to book a packagedeal in advance at a (from somewhat expensive to very expensive) resort of your choice. We did it (the cheapset one) and we do not regret it because it is a very, very pretty island. The coral close to shore is beautifully shaped but unfortunately dead, but the fish are abundant and beautiful. We even saw sharks, huge eals and turtles! It is a divers paradise because the coral further out is fantastic so we heard. We go out on the sea by boat twice every day to small islands for snorkeling, what a life! Some more pics to enjoy!
Hey Guys,
Been out of the air for a bit because I had no internet where I was: at Pulau Tioman at the eastcoast of Malaysia. What a beautiful place that is! Turquoise waters, white sandy beaches and dense rainforest…..I’ve been doing some snorkeling and kayaking, tracking through rainforest from one beach to the other, enjoyed a rough boattrip around the island, saw great marinelife, swam at a waterfall, did some more relaxing and swimming and enjoyed good company and made some new friends. Yeah it’s been a great week. I can recommend everybody’s a stay at the Putari resort. The owner is sooo friendly and is is a very peaceful place. Malaysia so far has been a great place to recuperate from hard traveling….yeah life is hard on the road, haha. I enjoy it so much! And to think there are more white sandy beaches and beautiful islands so come….!
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Koh Chang was nice, I had been there before last year, in the beginning of the rainy season. Now we are right in the middle of it so we had quite some rain. Which is the reason we decided to leave a bit sooner than we planned. The first two days were nice, good weather, Sun, hardly any rain. Beach, waterfall, fruitshake, red currysoup……unfortunately after that the rain was very persistant. It is a nice island though, if you like some more rest and peace than you can find on most of the more developed thai islands. From there we booked a busride to Cambodia. In Cambodia we visited the temples of Angkor, which are truely beautiful and impressive. The complex is just so big and the scenery so beautiful in the middle of the jungle/forest. Further more we visited the war museum and small killing fields where sculls and bones were on display which was kind of confronting, ofcourse. From there, after 3 days, we flew to Pakse in Laos where we are right now.
On Cambodia:
As my dad says: the human species is the most cruel species of the animal world. Being in Cambodia and hearing and seeing about this pour countries past I once again realize: he is right. This is one of the rare times in Cambodian history where there is peace, well peace under a government which is, from hearsaying from Cambodian people, neglecting it‘s people and which excist for a big part of old Khmer Rouge leaders. Only children under 15 years old get free medical help, all the older peolple have to pay for it themselves. And to think that still, still every week at least two people get badly injured by mines…..still! And there still is no painfree way offered to cut their limbs….it has to be done without anestetics, with primitive tools. Still!! All the wars this country has been through…..cruel people with cruel and stupid plans to enrichen only themselves and their buddies. The rich get richer by also selling medicine to Vietnam, and neglecting the needs within the country itself. Pol Pot and his bizarre ways of killing people, for bizarre reasons. To create a country which exportproduct is rice to sell or offer to his good friend Mao Zedong. Leaving it’s own people starving to death. Educated people were killed, uneducated people forced to work on the land. I can go on and on. This is what I’ve heard from a guy who’s family was killed and who is missing an arm himself. So if some facts are wrong or if I sound a bit harsh, forgive me.
Chengdu in China is one of the rare places where you can see giant panda’s in what reseambles somewhat some kind of naturel habitat. It is interesting and fun to see these unfortunately extremely endangered species up close…..what a special animal! After the giant panda’s the giant city of Beijing was next on the list to visit. In the Chinese capital you can easily spend a week and still not have seen it all. It is a relaxing place, if you get tired of busy citylife you can catch your breath in one of the parks or the beautiful summer palace. Tian’men square is special regarding it’s historie.
The Chinese are everywhere, not only as locals, but also as tourists. We planned on visiting the formely called forbidden city, but man it was sooooo busy and soo hot that we changed our minds and went to the summer placace instead. And ofcourse we could not skip the great wall. We did a special trip, because we walked on a piece of the wall that was closed for tourists. The only downside to that was that not all parts of the wall were restored, but on the other hand it made it unique.
From Beijing a 30 hour trainride, with a 4 hour stop at the Chinese/Mongolian border, took us to Ulaan Baator. The city itself is not interesting, and two days to see it “all” is more than enough. However, the Mongolian country is gorgeous. We visited a part of Central Mongolia, which brought us 4 nights of sleeping with nomadic families in their ger’s, a waterfall, blue skies, wild horses, a camelride, galloping on the Mongolian plains on horseback, a former capital with a beautiful monestary, a semi dessert, loads of fun with travelbuddies while spending lots of hours in a russian van to see it all. Now we are in Bangkok, from where we will go to relax on one of it’s many islands, Koh Chang. Oh yeah, bring on the beach!!!!
PS: the pics of the above I will post soon, hopefully from the beach, jihaaaa.
So like I said, we planned on going to Tibet. And because ‘they’ call Tibet the roof of the world, we thought it would be wise to acclimatize and book our trip in Xining, which is located at an altitude of 2300 meters. So we did. Xining is situated on the beginning of the Tibetan plateau…..there you can already get a taste of the Tibetan culture, if not experience it to the fullest. Rules to enter Tibet are subject to change, however they are about the same for the last two years already, which is that as a foreigner you cannot enter without a permit, you cannot enter as an individual but you have to be part of a group, as a foreigner you cannot travel outside of Lhasa without a permit and your itenerary should be fixed beforehand. So in order not to make things complicated we decided to book a guided trip to Tibet. A driver, a guide, a landcruiser, a great itenerary and just the two of us as ‘the group’. Not bad, eh? It turned out to be more than just ‘not bad’, it turned out to be an unforgetable trip. After a 24 hours, a not really comfortable trainride (6 bunkbeds in a very small space, the high altitude and extremely dirty toilets, but with 4 very nice roommates from Hongkong) with passes over 5000 meter – another way to acclimatize to the high altitude – we arrived in Lhasa where we immediately entered another world. The location of our hotel being one of the best in Lhasa, to go to bed every night and wake up every morning with pilgrims underneath our window. Buthi, our female guide, told us lots about the culture and aswered all our questions patiëntly. We learned about the old Bon religion, about all sorts of different buddha’s, about the gods of each town, about buttertea, about skyburrials, about giving birth in the villages, about prayerflags, about prayerwheels, about mandala’s, about so much more. What an interesting and extensive culture! From Lhasa we went to Everest Base Camp, taking in a few places/towns along the way. At Everest Base Camp we slept in a tentcamp at an altitude of 5200 meters. The round trip took us 12 days in total, from entering Lhasa by train to leaving Lhasa by plane. 12 days I did not want to miss. At this time – I am a bit at the stage of being a weiry traveler at the moment- it is hard to describe the kind of impression it left and I guess the pictures say it all. So enjoy them!
Wow! A ferryride from Japan to China which was supposed to take 28 hours took us 46 hours! Because of a (relatively minor, I suppose at sea) storm before mainland China we could not enter the harbour. We had to stay at sea another night! Arrrg not my favorite waste of time, but I managed. When we finally set foot on solid ground again, we decided to stay in Qingdao for 3 days to relax and to find out what exactly we are going to do in China. We decided to go to TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region) kind of straight away while coping with the altitude difference along the way and taking in the army of warrioirs in Xi’an. So we booked a flight to Xi’an where we visited the 8000 soldiers guarding the tomb of the great emperor Qin Shi Huang. It is acclaimed as the 8th wonder of the world and listed as the world cultural heritage. We thought we could not miss this whilst in China. And we were right, although is is very, very touristic (10000 chinese and 5000 foreign tourists a day, 365 days a year) it is amazing. We even shook the hand of the farmer, now one of the most important people of the museum, who discovered it all in 1974 when he was making a well to get some water. Ancient China believed, like ancient Egypt, in afterlife and so it could come in handy to bring everything you own to the grave. His gravesite is situated according to the 3000 year old Chinese feng shui (litteraly ‘wind’ and ‘water‘) philosophy, which learns how the environment can influence good luck. The mountains and the river formed naturel barriers, but not all 4 sites of the grave were protected this way. That is why workers had to make an estimated number of 8000 of each of the figures from his empire, from warriors to generals and horses out of clay. Now, each figure had to look exactly like the actual person, if not, the worker and his family were killed. After this ’project’ was finished all the workers were sent to another province and were all killed. Why? The location of the grave had to be a secret. All this figures from clay were positioned into another directon than the mountains and rivers, also for protection. I can go on and on telling about how soldiers were buried higher than generals etc, but right now I’ll write another blog about our trip to Tibet. So stay tuned!!
