Long overdue update and my maiden seaplane flight.

It's been a long time since I posted anything and I've actually got a few articles still in draft stage. All on the back burner as currently I've been on the road since last October. 1 Month in Japan followed by North America. It's been awesome so far. Food was great in Japan and there was such a diverse range of sights even in a small country such as Japan. I had the fortune of visiting Kamikochi, Matsumoto, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Okayama and Tokyo in that month. When you consider the arm and leg that we get charged for mediocre Japanese food in Singapore, I just went crazy eating in Japan.

After Japan, I headed to North America, starting in the East coast hoping to avoid winter. Didn't quite work out as it snowed in Niagara. After  the east coast, I flew to San Francisco where I met up with a cousin to do a road trip where we drove down to Big Sur through Carmel, cut up to Las Vegas and the Grand canyon, down to San Diego and finally ended in Los Angeles. My cousin flew back to Singapore whereas I carried on with my trip, Greyhound-ing my way north to Portland, Sacramento and Seattle where I spent Christmas with another cousin and her family. Since I was so close to Vancouver, I took the amtrak over, spending 2 weeks in British Columbia visiting Whistler and Vancouver Island as well. This would also be the first time I tried skiing though it was really expensive at Whistler. In Vancouver Island I stayed in Nanaimo and Victoria but had to skip Tofino as I couldn't quite make my connection work. Transport within the Island is really spotty, you would only have 1 bus crossed the island the whole day. Miss that bus and it's wait for the next day. It kind of worked out in the end as while I was researching alternative transport options, I came across Seaplanes. This option lingered in my mind when I was leaving Victoria for Seattle and I ended up catching a direct flight instead of the Clipper ferry I had. This turned out to be a great choice. The staff, ticking off the namelist of passengers,who I chatted to turned out to be the pilot if the plane. Having heard that it was my first time taking a seaplane, he let me sit up front in the cockpit.  Talk about having the best view! Mount Rainer and the cascades were right in view the entire 45min flight.

Snowboard on Big Bear mountain,  California

Right now I'm on the southern leg of my North America journey. Having some epic fail on my flight on Spirit airlines which is why I have the time to write this so there are always some silver lining. Update more later.

ESTA applications for those nationalities under the USA Visa Waiver Program

So I was applying for my ESTA again since I was making an impromptu trip after Japan to the States. As what most people do I a just typed in ESTA USA in Google search, took a cursory look at the search feed and saw that first links are actually not to the actual US Government Customs and Border Protection (CBP) site. It should be https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov/esta/ . The current fee charged is 17USD for Singaporeans if you apply directly on the CBP website and is a very straightforward process. Applying through an agency which appears on the top of the feed however can end up costing an additional 50-80USD in addition to the 17USD.

Iran December 2014

So this is the follow up to the sneak preview post of my trip to Iran in December 2014. This was a country which i had been planning to visit if my company sent me to Dubai again which never occured so after a year of waiting, I decided to just clear my leave and take a trip myself. It helped that my Sister was staying in Dubai as well so I had a (sort of) base of operations to operate out of.

One of the things you would notice is the number of negative news reports you see about Iran. This also translates to a lot of naysayers when they heard about my plans to travel there. All I will say on this matter is that anyone who has travelled there will tell you to go and almost all the people who will tell you not to go will have never been there before. Visa wise, it was very easy for me, with a visa on arrival for 15 days available at 75USD. I had a copy of the lonely planet on my tablet, so while waiting for the visa to be arranged at the airport, I searched for my first accomodation which was Firouzi Hotel. This would turn out to be an excellent choice as the hotel manager, Mr Mousavi, was a wealth of information and a great help during my stay. I called him a number of times during my travel as well when I needed some help even after leaving Tehran but he was always willing to help me. (Hopefully i was not too annoying).

Over this 15 days, I managed to squeeze in quite a number of cities and my journey was like this: Tehran, Tabriz, Ardabil, Rasht, Kashan, Yazd, Shiraz and finally Esfahan. I have to admit that in terms of the sights, there are many other countries with more majestic or better conserved buildings. But the real beauty of Iran is the people. I have never felt safer walking on a dark street at night or been helped as much by strangers on the street. They really made my short jaunt one of the most amazing trips of my life and made memories which I will always hold dear.

Just to give 2 examples, Firstly, this gentleman I struck up a conversation with at the bus terminal in Tehran offered to show me around Shiraz. When i was approaching the town, he picked me up from the terminal despite the early hour and showed me around town including taking me to the nearby Persepolis. He also brought me around to different accommodations until I found one that was within my budget. When I was in Ardabil which was an unplanned stop, two young lads accompanied me the whole day despite me not speaking farsi and they not speaking english. They were also unwilling to leave me alone until they were sure that I was able to link up with my host. This despite me wanting to walk an hour instead of taking a shared taxi.

If you are unsure on whether or not to go, all I can say is go now!!