Dennis88

Sounds very similar. I stayed at the W hotel in May of this year and it took the taxi driver (two of them actually) over an hour to find the hotel. It even might have been two. They just don't know where to find it. They might now the Sheraton, if you are lucky, and they might not at least a few of the touristic highlights but that's about it. Unbelievable. The hotel is recommendable, we soon called it "Istanbul's best kept secret".

And the taxi driving is horrendous. 60 miles an hour through a red light into a street that says "no entry" with a police car next to it. I'm not kidding.

Dennis

snowymt

this is amazing! Love the blog--look forward to reading it all!

olafman

I interrupt your regularly scheduled trip report for a brief product endorsement. As my family travels the globe this year, I must share that Terry and I both love our Kindles. When you already have six checked bags and three carry-ons, carting around a library of books is simply not an option. We love having many books in the palm of our hand.

While traveling internationally in over 160 countries, Amazon used to charge $2 extra per book for delivery which seemed reasonable. Now they deliver books for free anywhere in the world. For only $4.95 a week, you can wirelessly receive all your daily newspaper and blogs that you subscribe to. Normally, I prefer to save money and download them via the Internet but have enjoyed this feature a few times.

The three best features are downplayed in the Kindle marketing. The first is the Kindle iPhone app giving you access to all of the books you have purchased for your Kindle at no extra charge. My favorite feature of the app is that it syncs with the mother ship after you’ve used it and then your Kindle knows where you left off on your phone. Very cool! The iPhone app is perfect for reading in bed when your husband is sleeping.

Another great feature is that Terry’s Kindle is on my account so we can “share” all the books we buy. The new David Sedaris book came out and for the price of one book, we can both start reading it separately at the same time! We don’t have to wait for the other to finish. We even recently gave Terry’s dad a Kindle on our account and he can read all of our books too! We can also read his (he just pays us back for what he buys!) Amazon allows up to five Kindles on one account.

The least publicized feature of the Kindle is the built in web browser that uses the mobile data connection. Remember that there is no monthly fee for data so this amounts to free worldwide Internet. YES YOU READ THAT CORRECTLY: FREE WORLDWIDE INTERNET. Are you salivating yet?

I have successfully posted to Facebook, read my Gmail, read Google news all for free. Sound too good to be true? There are a couple of downsides. The first is flyertalk.com doesn’t work that well. I wish it would bring up the mobile site like on the iPhone but it just brings up confusing version of the normal FT website. Yahoo mail also doesn’t work. I switched my personal email to Gmail because of this. Finally, it’s a bit slow. Think dialup speeds. Even when it displays the 3G, it’s pretty slow. If I don’t have a local SIM card in my iPhone, slow, free Internet is better than the outrageous international roaming rates I get charged.

The bottom line is that the Kindle is great for simple email, the news and Facebook besides being my favorite way to read books. Don’t leave home without it!

Arthur Randolph

This sounds like an interesting alternative to what I do: tediously buying local prepaid sim cards with data plans..

CMK10

Really great so far! Your son has two wonderful parents and I assume we'll see him on FT one of these days. I'm just sad I have to wait until May, 2011 for Chile, the part I'm most looking forward to.

qbrain

Freaking awesome. My only disappointment is that I found your trip report when you still have 10 more months to go.

londonienne

Very lucky son! You two are great dads! ^^

Looking forward to seeing how this year unfolds!

olafman

We've just arrived in Hong Kong. I'll be posting a proper trip report on our CX flight from JNB soon. I took lots of pics and it was a wonderful flight.

My boys are upstairs sleeping the day away. Time to go wake them up and explore the city.

bennytma

AWESOME idea! I traveled quite a bit at that age - round the country train trip on A3, a summer in Nicaragua, many trips to the left coast and the Caribbean but nothing like this! What a great idea and what a great education.

XLR26

Great report so far. Lookn fwd to more...

belfordrocks

Wow just wow. Thanks for sharing and look forward to the rest.

Cheers

totti

I just discovered your trip report and you did / are doing a fabulous job ^

IndyDavid

Fearing it would become tedious if I posted every time I marveled at your posts or blogs, I'll just say this once: Yours is the most fascinating story I've read online in ages! Great raw material well told. Thank you so much for sharing!

David

olafman

Thanks to you all for your words of encourage.

It is very rewarding to have so much feedback as I've received. My hubby is also writing but is envious that I get comments along the way.

We've been in four countries in the past eight days so I haven't had much time to write. We'll be down south at our house in Krabi on Tuesday where I'll get settled again.

olafman

I have just uploaded my report on our month in Madagascar that can be viewed on the first page of this thread. Also you will find a separate report for our flight from JNB to HKG.

We had a great time visiting both Hong Kong and Bangkok before arriving down to our tiny little island, Koh Pu off the coast of Krabi here in Thailand.

It does take me a while to write the reports for each month. If you every want to get up to date information on what we are doing, check out "Carl's Blog" on http://fifthgradearoundtheworld.com

Enjoy.