Spooky Halloween around the world.

       Here in North America Halloween rocks.  We have a commercially-successful excuse to dress up, trick or treat, do crazy things (”but Officer, it was Halloween!”), set off illegal fireworks, sing Monster Mash far too loudly and eat the junk food we spend the rest of the year trying to remove from our waistline.  Personally, I can’t survive the day unless I’ve heard Michael Jackson’s Thriller at least three times - something I don’t think will be a problem this year.  In the US it’s now the second most popular holiday for decorating after only Christmas.  But if you think we can party, you should check out how they do it in other countries.

                  Scotland gave us one of the great traditions we over here have stolen/corrupted/commercialized into our standard Canadian holiday. Little Scots used to carry traditional lanterns called Samhnag’s made out of turnips with the devil’s face carved into them in order to scare away evil spirits. Nowadays they’ve switched to pumpkins for their jack-o-lanterns, mainly because it’s waaay easier to carve a pumpkin than a turnip, but some cities, such as Perthshire, are trying to reinstate the old ways.  Hopefully vandals don’t go around blowing up turnips like pumpkins are blown up here, as a turnip can do so much more damage since they don’t smush and splatter on impact! 

        In Wales Halloween is called Nos Calan Gaeaf (the beginning of a new winter) and legend has it that the fearsome spirit Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta took the form of a tailless black sow and roamed the countryside with a headless woman.  Needless to say, kids would rush home early.  This fascinates me, mainly because I have no idea how to pronounce Yr Hwch Ddu Gwta.  It’s hard enough to type correctly.  Your how-itch do-doo g-wah-ta?  Beats the hell out of me, but it’s fun to try.   

         Halloween in Mexico is just the start of three days of festivities, Witches Night (Halloween), All Saints Day and Dia de los Muertos (the day of the dead).  I mean, really, why shouldn’t the dead get to party, too?  Skulls play a huge part in these rituals, as wooden skulls are placed on alters dedicated to the deceased, sugar skulls made with late relatives’ names on the foreheads are eaten, and they dance to honor the dead while wearing wooden skull masks called calacas.  Sugar and dancing?  How have we not started celebrating this yet?  Sweet.

              Romanians have the perfect reason to celebrate Halloween, as Dracula himself, according to myth, lived right there in Transylvania (specifically the town of Sighisoara – another one I’m not going to try and pronounce).  Dracula’s spirit is believed to live here, as the city once was the site of public Witch trials (it makes sense to keep all your spooky dead people together, right?) which are recreated by actors amidst all the costume parties.  Can you just imagine getting pissed drunk and watching a live “Witch trial”?  Neither can I.

                 In Lebanon, Syria and the Palestine don’t actually celebrate Halloween, but Arab Christians hold Eid Il-Burbara (Saint Barbara’s Day) on Dec 4th instead.  The festivities are nearly identical to the Halloween we know and love here, and include wearing costumes, trick or treating and singing a Halloween song.  No, not Monster Mash, though I would love to hear that in Arabic.  Similarly, Kuwait and other Gulf states have Qarqe’an.  It’s not scary, but children wear traditional costumes and sing outside homes for handouts of candy and nuts.  There it’s actually cool to get nuts, and if you give them out you don’t have to worry about your house being egged later that night!

          And then there’s Japan.  There actually is no Halloween per se in Japanese culture, but think about it, do you really think they would pass up a chance to dress up in weird clothes (or weirder clothes) and celebrate?  Their Halloween is based mainly on American pop culture, but it has really caught on and I personally would love to see it. Carved pumpkins are a common sight and Disneyland and Universal Studios over there have huge festivities leading up to the big day.  A few years ago I was in Disneyland Paris just before Halloween, and the decorations were massive, with everything from a troupe of life-sized pumpkin men taking over Frontierland to the riverboat in the rivers of the far west being turned into a giant floating gray ghost, but apparently the decorations and theming in the Tokyo park are twice as impressive. 

            There are many reasons fall is one of my favorite times to travel, but if you really want a show, check out some of these countries and I’m sure you’ll have yourself a bewitching good time.  There’s just something about Halloween that makes we want to end this blog with a big Mad-Scientist cackle.  So i will.

           Mmmmwwwwwaaaahaaahahahahahhahaha!

Tags: Canada, candy, Europe, France, Halloween, Japan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Middle East, Monster Mash, Romania, Scotland, Sweden, Thriller, traditons, USA, weird

Need Christmas gift ideas? Go abroad!

My favorite time to go on vacation is the fall (well, technically my favorite time to go on vacation is any time, but you know what I’m getting at). The reason for this is not the lovely crisp air and possibility of a sample sale, but so I can do all my Christmas shopping in destination. It’s great. Combine that with Christmas shopping (my other excuse to go wild – within budget, of course – shopping time of the year) and it’s the best combination since cookies and milk.
What better way to cut down on costs? I always call vacation shopping my “get out of jail free” shopping – I’ve technically already spent the money buying the currency, now it’s just trading it for goods. So as long as I don’t overspend what I’ve brought with me and have to break out my debit card, I’m golden. It’s a second layer of protection to make sure I stay on budget. With exchange rates being what they are, the dollar goes farther in many countries, so you can also get bigger, better, more awesome gifts for your loved ones. And you can plan for this in advance, too. A couple of years ago I knew I was going to bring back Costa Rican coffee for everyone for Christmas (plentiful, not too heavy to carry, and world-renowned while not being budget-busting) but the guidebooks said that the quality was best in the whole roasted beans as opposed to the grounds. So all year I covertly checked with every coffee-drinker I know whether or not they had a coffee grinder. If they didn’t, they got one for their birthday! That year was great, I got built-in ideas for birthday gifts, too
Speaking of more awesome, instead of yet another scarf or gift card from Sears, I can guarantee your Aunt Mil is not going to get two of those hand-carved Guatemalan wine bottle holders from that tiny stall on the side of the tiny winding mountain road. That is going to be memorable. And knowing that you were thinking of them while on your great adventure, they appreciate the gesture more (in my experience, anyway). Plus, even if they don’t like it, they’re not going to return it (the airfare is too expensive) so you don’t need to worry about keeping the receipts.
The coolest thing, though, is that you can essentially get your loved ones anything, and it’s still special, because it’s from wherever. Seriously. Anything. “Yeah, it’s toothpaste, but it’s from Ecuador, so you don’t pronounce it Colgate, you pronounce it ‘Col-gaaat-eh’.” If someone gave you a couple of small pieces of wood tied together at one end with a string from the local Wal-Mart, you’d be thoroughly unimpressed. But if the same thing came back from Spain and were called castinets, now that’s cool.
So, if you’re having trouble coming up with Christmas gift ideas, just go on vacation between now and the holiday season, and everything will all fall into place for you. Simple, really.

Tags: BlogSherpa, budget, Christmas., coffee, gifts, shopping, souvenirs

Julie & Julia, the most disturbing movie ever

Last night the bf and I went to our local drive-in for a Julie & Julia and District 9 double feature and I practically had an out of body experience.  District 9 was good, but Julie & Julia freaked me out.  It also inspired me to bake and blog (chocolate chip cookie squares in the oven as I type this), but that’s beyond the point.

The movie is about me!

I’m not talking one little passing similarity here, I’m talking full-on, Joey Lawrence “Woah!”   The bf kept looking at me, eyebrows raised, amused smirk on his face as I squirmed in my seat, engrossed in the very good, very funny movie, but also having a disturbing moment of self-reflection.  Totally weirded me out.  For the most part it was cool, but there are some aspects of my personality (the occasional meltdown over the smallest things, my neurosis, fears, not always appreciating all the fantastic things I have in my life) that you don t necessarily want projected on a giant screen.  Thank God we were alone in the car!

Get a load of this:

- Julie Powell is an aspiring novelist as yet unpublished.  Julia Child is an aspiring cookbook author in the process of being published.

- Julie and I both have jobs where people occasionally yell at us for something we have no control over or, conversely, burst into tears, and it’s our responsibility to make it all better.  When the frustration of this follows us home we bury ourselves in our hobbies to escape.

- Julie and I both blog about our passions.

- Julie and I both have a fantastic man NAMED ERIC (!!!) who fully supports us through all our emotional meltdowns (not that I have many) and whom we need to appreciate more.

- Julie and I both love to cook.  My particular passion is baking and desserts, but any port in a storm will do. Luckily, Eric is a foodie and loves good quality meals (or pretends to like the lesser-quality stuff that pops up every once in a while), so it doesn’t go to waste.

- Julie and I both have short red hair.

- Julie and Eric just moved to a new apartment to be closer to work and save money.  Holly and Eric just moved (two weeks ago) to a new apartment to save money and be closer to work.

- Julie and I both had no idea about blogs until our Erics got online and set them up for us.

See?  Told you it was overwhelming.  On the upside, the movie (as all Norah Ephron movies do) had a happy ending, so I’m taking that to mean that I will have my novel published, become a super famous (or at least financially stable) writer and live happily ever after until the credits roll.  And it made me want to cook so bad I almost gave up on sleep last night to whip something up at three in the morning.

On an only slightly related travel note, the movie also made me want to go to France, which never happens to me. I have been to France twice (which qualifies me to say this) and left both times saying I had no desire to ever be back. Don’t get me wrong, I love the attractions they have there. The Eiffel Tower is quite possibly my favorite structure on the face of the planet and I can stare at it for weeks happily. But the overall “vibe” of France – the stereotypical standoffishness (I don’t find them rude at all, they just ignore the non-French as if they’re not there) just doesn’t suit me. But seeing the tower, the adorable little winding cobblestone streets, the look on Eric’s face at the thought of eating actual French food in France… I would go back.

Okay, just got the chocolate chip squares out of the oven and they have some issues. I think they’re slightly undercooked and I might have accidentally just poisoned Eric and I. So I will do like Julie and channel my inner Julia Child. As the maestro says in the movie, there are no mistakes in the kitchen, just setbacks.

Tags: baking, cooking, drive-in, France, Julie and Julia, movie, weird

The Importance of Travel Agents

           Welcome to the internet age.  You can now buy a condo, meet your future spouse, learn how to hotwire a car, blog incessantly about your travels, and probably save the world all while still in your pajamas and happy bunny toe socks.  You can also book your next vacation all by yourself.  But just because you can, should you?  Despite having the universe at your fingertips, there is still reason to go to your local Travel Agent and get them to do the work for you. 

         I’m not just saying this because I am one (okay, that’s a teensy part of it), but Travel Agents are still important assets.  We really do have a wealth of information that you’re never going to find online – we talk about popular destinations on a daily basis and/or have probably been there (most tourism offices go to great lengths to get agents to visit so they can better sell their destination).  Even if we haven’t visited ourselves, we  probably know someone (a coworker/past client) who has been recently and can feed off their feedback.  Plus, we sit at computers for a reason, as we have access to a slew of specialized computer programs that can answer most inquiries with just a few clicks or keystrokes.   Think of it this way: one day you want to go to Australia, so you hop online and book a return ticket for Sydney leaving next week.  Seems perfect, right?  But if you didn’t know you needed a Visa to enter Australia (based on Canadian citizenship), the second you got to the immigration counter at Syndey International you’d be denied entry and sent home on the next flight, not getting any of your money refunded.

             Agents have your back.  More than almost anything, that’s the biggest service we provide.   We’re here to support you in booking and planning your dream vacation, but also to help you clean up the mess if something goes wrong.  We have lots of industry contacts who we’ve built up relationships with over the years, and if there’s a glitch in your trip, we can go straight to the source and get it sorted out as smoothly as possible. It’s a symbiotic relationship, we support their product, they do their best to help us (and, consequently, you) out in a crisis.  Plus, my company, at least, has more than 400 agencies across Canada, so they don’t want to make us mad.  We control a nice amount of the selling power across the country, so we wield a little more pursuasive power as the travel companies don’t want to loose our business.  I’ve had cases where suppliers will go above and beyond to get a matter sorted out to the client’s satisfaction solely because I was calling on behalf of my company.  Online, you get none of this.  The classic case is a woman who tried to book herself to London, England and accidentally booked her ticket to London, Ontario (the prices were probably pretty similar!).  She was screwed, and there was no one to blame but her own ignorance.  No online booking site is going to refund any money just because she didn’t read the fine print.  If she had booked with an agent, on the other hand, she would have been going to England correctly in the first place

            Then there’s price.  Travel agencies understand as well as anyone that in these tough economic times price is the bottom line, and that is why we have a vast network of suppliers – suppliers who do not sell to the public – that offer wholesale “bulk” prices and special contract prices just to us.  These are usually better than or at least comparable to anything that could be found online, and without an agent you would have missed out.

             Yes, we charge service fees.  All agencies do it, and if they say they don’t, that’s because they’ve hidden it in the bill and called it a “tax”.   We have to.  No business could stay afloat if all they did was give out information all day and not get paid for it.  And yes, this adds to the price of your vacation.  Think about it, you’re paying for service, booking security and peace of mind.  There is a difference between price and value, and what we offer is definitely valuable.  When you get to Europe and realize you’d accidentally booked yourself into a hotel with one shared bathroom for all the rooms, or come home from the worst all-inclusive vacation ever and want to file a complaint about it, instead of just sitting and fuming, you could contact us and we could help you get it all sorted out while you sit and fume.

              What it all boils down to is this:  I love my job.  I love creating people’s dreams on a daily basis and sharing all I know with my clients.  It’s new and exciting every day, as I don’t know what adventures the day holds.  Don’t get me wrong, dealing with distraught clients, stupid questions and annoying airlines isn’t always sunshine and roses, but at the end of the day there’s nothing better then hearing from an excited passenger that I had just sent them on the best vacation they’d ever had.  So call your local travel agent and let them put their expertise to work on the best trip you’ve ever had

Tags: London, price, service, travel agent, value

I wrote a book! What a novel idea.

Travel agent by day, novelist by night.  For years my routine regularly involves going to work just as Holly, but when I get home I put on my cape and morph into my alter-ego Rocket Girl (or Travel Junkie, or Grammatically Correct Girl, whatever, I haven’t come up with a good Super Hero name yet) and curl up with my laptop and hammer away.  It’s not going to save the world (unless, of course there’s a massive flood and the world needs to use it as a flotation device), but my efforts have finally bore fruit and my novel is finally complete.   You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to say that.  I’ve finally written something that passes my anal-retentive “is this good enough to show other people?” test!  Insert happy dance here.

It’s an action/mystery work of fiction, but, naturally, there’s a giant amount of travel thrown in.  This is me, here.   Here’s the gist (I’m not going to spoil it now!): five years ago a group of people witnessed a brutal murder in a Seattle bar, and the killer was never captured.  In the interim, the witnesses have dispersed all over the globe, either trying to escape bad memories or through job commitments.  When suddenly someone begins unexpectedly hunting down and killing the witnesses, two survivors take it upon themselves to warn the others, but when standard phone calls/e-mails fail, they take to the skies.  Thus begins an international cat-and-mouse game that spans the planet from Seattle to Bangkok, Sydney to London, one where motivation, trust and the truth are put to the ultimate test and a missed connection could leave them permanently delayed.

Ooh, that actually sounds pretty good.  I’ll have to save that.

Anyhow, I’m so crazy-happy-over the moon that it’s finally done, but now I’m entering a whole new phase of the writing process.  The first hurdle is, of course, sucking up that fear that your closest friends and family (or as I like to call them, the “focus group”) are going to read the first draft and hate it (not that they’d actually say that, I do love them for a reason, but still…).  Then there’s the next step of “how the hell am I supposed to get this published?”  This is the new adventure, the research, the nerve-wracking submitting my manuscript for its blind dates in hoping we’ll find the perfect publisher and soon end up on Chapters shelves everywhere.  I’ve had articles published before, but this is a whole different animal, not to mention a hell of a lot more postage to mail.  You know that super-excited-but-scared-to-the-point-of-nearly-loosing-bladder-control feeling?  I’m there.

I don’t know how this is going to progress, but I can’t wait!  Of course, I’ll blog about it every step of the way.

Woo hoo!  My book is done!

Tags: Bangkok, Book, fiction, London, published, Seattle, Sydney, travel agent, USA, writer

Chiang Mai night market – Amazing!

            It was probobly the friendliest shopping experience I’ve ever had, and it involved bartering.   I know, I wouldn’t have believed it either, had I not experienced it.  In fact, I found myself wandering around the market night after night and waiting for the in-your-face sales tactics I’d experienced in other night markets around the world,  but never finding any.  By just being nice, the stall-keepers had sold me on the Chiang Mai night market, and I loved it.

           The market itself, no necessarily the items for sale, was the attraction.  It’s beautiful, a crazy maze of colours, textures, lights, people and sounds, everything brighter, louder, more sparkly than it’s predecessor.  It’s quite spread out as far as night markets go, although in places you’re still inevitably squished up against the other shoppers/walkers/stall walls (but then again, that just adds to the street market experience), and it’s large square footage means if you can’t find it here, you don’t need it.  Sure, most of the wares on offer are souvenir kitsch – carved elephants, Thai pillows, T-shirts with the Chiang Beer logo on them –  but it’s fun as hell to buy it.  One of my favorite things I’ve bought anywhere is my intricately detailed tuk tuk sculpted from a Coke Light can, some wire and a couple of buttons.   Carved soap was also a huge hit (we bought 5), where the artisan takes your standard drugstore bar of Dove and carves and paints it into a stunning orchid or mum or random pretty flower, then safely puts it in a small laquered box.  They look great on display, and it’s also good to know that in case of a dire soap shortage, I have a backup.

           Bartering scares me.  I know a lot of people who love it, who attack bartering as a game and will do almost anything to come out the victor, but I always get overwhelmed by guilt and knowing that the item advertised for CAD$3 would be at least CAD$15 at home, I’m willing to pay the full price.   Don’t get me wrong, I always barter, but I’m a soft sell.  I think that’s why the Chiang Mai market and I clicked.  The salespeople, being salespeople, would call out for your attention, but all you had to do was shake your head a polite “no” and they left you alone.  I’ve been followed by annoying bootleg DVD pushers in Kuala Lumpur, so this was a welcome surprise.  Not once did we have to pretend to be deaf (man, our sign language is so bad we’d probobly accidentally insult the royal family and someone’s dog) and could wander around for hours taking in the smells, sights and ambiance.  The only people that were kind of in your face were the hilltribe women selling the wooden frogs that if you ran a stick up and down their backs, they croak.  The women themselves were equally as friendly as the other salespeople, but that damn frog sound will follow you around for days!

       If you ever visit Chiang Mai and you don’t visit the night market, you’re doing yourself an injustice.  Even if you don’t like to shop, it’s a place that can’t be missed.  I’m already trying to figure out when I can go back!

Tags: bartering, beautiful, BlogSherpa, carved soap, Chiang Mai, coke light, elephants, friendly, frogs, fun, hilltribes, night market, shopping, souvenirs, Thailand