From the monthly archives:

November 2009

No stamp please

by Keith on November 27, 2009 · 4 comments

“No stamp in the passports, please,” I politely asked the Egyptian Immigration Agent before handing over our passports.

“Ok,” replied the Immigration Agent.

Cha-chunk, cha-chunk (stamping my passport).

“What are you doing!?!  I asked for no stamps in the passport.”  I said with an elevated voice.

Cha-chunk, cha-chunk (now stamping Amy’s passport).

“Stop!  Why are you not listening to me?” Now I’m quite loud, and the chatty Indonesian tour group behind us in line has grown silent to see what the crazy American is yelling about.

Two other Egyptian Immigration Agents come over and are trying to quiet me down by explaining, much to my frustration, that this is not an Israeli stamp, which I am of course well aware of.  They then escort me out of line.

Cancelled Taba Exit StampLet me back up here a bit.  Crossing the Taba boarder from Egypt into Israel, Amy and I had planned to have Immigration stamp loose pieces of paper, not our passports.  This is because while a Taba exit stamp is not an Israeli stamp, it might as well be in some countries (Syria, Lebanon, even the occasional overzealous UAE Immigration Agent) because there is only one place you are going if you leave from Taba, you guessed it, Israel.  That is because after you exit Taba you then walk 100 meters to Israeli Immigration at Eilat.  There is nowhere else to go unless you wanted to jump into the Red Sea and swim to Jordan.  Now we are not planning on going to Syria or Lebanon but why not avoid potential future headaches by having the Immigration authorities simply stamp a piece of paper which they were happy to do after stamping “Cancelled” across our Taba exit stamps?  In the end we will be fine, but it was a final less than awesome interaction with the Egyptian government.

Once we made it to Israeli Immigration the agent was more than happy to stamp a piece of paper once we explained we are going to the UAE.  Even though the official stance of the UAE is that an American traveling on a US passport is permitted to enter, even if they have an Israeli stamp, we figure why ask for trouble when it is so easy to avoid?  Well, easy when dealing with the Israeli agent.

So what is your best clearing Immigration story?

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Diving Dahab

by Keith on November 25, 2009 · 5 comments

Dahab wins the prize for the city we have stayed in the longest, 11 days. It is a very laid back town along the Red Sea on the Sinai Peninsula. We stayed at the Penguin Village Hotel, which offered great budget lodging, and fantastic sea views.  Besides relaxing and enjoying the views we spent a fair amount of time in the crystal clear water.  I learned how to scuba dive, getting my Open Water Certification and completing two adventure dives with Deep Blue Divers.  I would highly recommend them to anyone diving in Dahab.  Amy enjoyed some awesome snorkeling and saw many cool fish including; masked puffers, painted butterfly fish, parrot fish and lion fish.

Enjoy the pictures below.

To everyone in the US we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

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Is world travel good for your health?

by Keith on November 23, 2009 · 4 comments

In the style of Morgan Spurlock and Super Size Me, our readers will be able to see what the health impact is from a year of world travel.  Because Amy and I applied for universal life insurance policies right before we left, we have a pretty robust record of our physical health due to the required physicals and blood tests for the applications.  Now that we have a baseline I am interested to see what changes after a year of travel.  Below is a summary of our key metrics.  We plan on getting these redone upon our return to see what has changed for better and for worse.

Heath Summary – Pre Trip

ATW Health Tracker - Pre1

*Note: as you should never reveal a lady’s weight Amy will only be posting positive changes.

I do have a couple of theories about what will change and the causal factors. And to prevent revisionist history I will put them in writing now and we will see how right or wrong I am.  Feel free to provide your own thoughts in the comments below.

  1. I think we will lose weight, due to a couple of factors including the somewhat restricted access to food – there is no stocked kitchen 10 feet away and getting food for the most part requires effort, limiting mindless snacking.  Also our budget has us eating less animal protein so far, this has to help. Finally there has been a significant increase in our physical activity – so far we are walking significantly more than we did at home.  We have a pedometer and the record day so far was in Cappadocia at 22,000 steps.  For at least me, as I did not walk to work, getting to 10,000/day at home was a real challenge
  2. Improved cholesterol (Keith).  While I have never had great cholesterol (my mom had a report from grade school where I was tested and had over 200 at age 8 ) 268 is by far the worst I have ever had, and it has been getting steadily worse for the last 8 years. My cholesterol was only ~220 4 years ago.  If it does not get better and I do lose weight and am less stressed it seems there are genetic factors at play.  Good thing Lipitor goes off patent in 2010.
  3. Allergies getting worse (Amy).  Amy was tested for allergies before we left and was found to be allergic to nearly everything and is on Allegra-D almost constantly to help control them.  Her one season of relief was winter and due to our itinerary until New Zealand we are avoiding winter.  She was found be borderline asthmatic and was supposed to start allergy shots, but did not have enough time before we left.  The constant exposure to smoky and smoggy air will probably not help this.

Any other predictions?

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