Mohonk Mountain House, New Paltz, New York

I have been writing about exotic places around the world: Hong Kong, Guangzhou, China, several places in South America, and England. Now is the time to tell you about a great place to visit in the Catskill Mountains in New York.

The Mohonk Mountain House is in New Paltz, New York, about 100 miles north of Manhattan with easy access from I-87. It is surrounded by thousands of acres of beautiful forest and lakes. The Mountain House is a seven-story castle. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is a great place for family recreation.

We were there in early March 2007 and found plenty of winter activity available to all: cross-country skiing, ice skating, hiking, indoor swimming pool and of course just curling up in front of a fire place and reading a book. I’m sure that the list of summer activities is endless.

When I sent my son the picture shown above, he thought it was a picture of one of the places we have visited in Europe. It is that beautiful.

Stonehenge, England – September 2006

Pictures taken by Jenny

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Since I have posted our visits to ruins of Manchu Picchu in Peru and Khmer Temples in Cambodia, I thought I would add another World Heritage Site: Stonehenge, England.

We visited Stonehenge as part of our fall 2006 Ireland trip with my sister Frances and her husband Dr. Jan Creech. Jenny & I continued on to Scotland and England while Frances and Jan returned to the States. After a beautiful trip to Scotland and a stopover in the historic town of York, we then continued on to London where we made a trip down to Salisbury and Stonehenge.

Much is known about the Manchu Picchu and the temples the Khmer Rulers built, but there is a great deal of disagreement as to exactly how the Stonehenge site was built, who built it, why it was built and exactly when it was built, although most archaeologists place the date of the current ruins around 2500BC. However, some work using wood was probably constructed a couple thousand years earlier.

But the amazing aspects of this is how did they get these huge stones, weighing upwards to 6-8000 pounds and which could have come as far away as 150 miles, to the site and then erected them. And of course, what we saw and the pictures I’m posting today is just a small part of the original site. As beautiful as it is today, think of what it looked like a thousand or so years ago!

This is a wonderful, historical place and well worth visiting.

Zola Ruth

All of the above pictures were taken in 2008, except the black and white; it was taken in August 2007
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Well I warned all of you! I said from time to time I would be posting information on our granddaughter, so here goes.

This posting will be short on words but long on pictures since, as they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

Our granddaughter lives about four hours from us and although certainly not as close as we would like, it is close enough for us to go as often as we can without wearing out our welcome!

All of these pictures were taken by our daughter, Peggy Wong; you can visit her web site at bluepoolroad.com where you can see just how talented she really is.

Iguaçu Falls - February 2006

The Pictures really need no explanations! Just spectacular!

The bottom picture was taken from our hotel room.

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When Jenny & I started planning our trip to South America there were always two major requirements: we must find a way to visit Iguaçu Falls and Manchu Picchu. So when we found a cruise that sailed out of Buenos Aires down to Falkland Island and around Cape Horn and ended up in Lima Peru; we said this is it!

We were able to add a pre-cruise trip to Iguaçu Falls and a post-cruise trip to Manchu Picchu. This was just perfect. I have already, in a previous posting, talked about Manchu Picchu and now I would like to post our trip to Iguaçu Falls.

We arrive in Buenos Airs around noon, checked into the Sheraton Park Tower Hotel and then Jenny and I hit streets. This is what we do in most places; we love to walk around the city; it is a great way to get to know the place. Riding a bus on a tour just doesn’t get. More on Buenos Aires perhaps in another posting!

The next morning we were up early for a flight that took about an hour and a half to Iguaçu Falls. When we arrived it was so hot and muggy, since it is about 13 degrees north of the Equator. I didn’t tell you but this is February 2006? And as you know it was summer in South America.

Iguaçu Falls, one of the world’s most awesome series of jumps, cascade or waterfalls (whatever you want to call them) is located in the Iguaçu National Park on the border between Brazil and Argentina. The Falls are over two miles wide with 275 jumps, and a total height of 180 feet. This falls is the widest in the World, although the water that runs over the falls is not near as much as that of Niagara. This site was declared a World Heritage Area by UNESCO in 1984.

We had a great time here! All we did basically was hike around the trails to see as many of the cascades as we could. What a spectacular place! We really enjoyed this trip. We stayed at the Sheraton Hotel overlooking the falls, very much like the Sheraton overlooking Niagara Falls, however, not as close to falls as that one; we could still see one of the falls from our hotel window. Beautiful view!

Manchu Picchu - South America

While posting our trip to Cambodia to my blog and seeing the ruins of the Khmer Rulers, it brought to mind the terrific trip we had in February 2006 to South America to see the wonders of that country, but especially Manchu Picchu. This is truly one of the most beautiful places in the world!

This trip was a 20-day cruise beginning in Buenos Aires and ending up in Lima, Peru. The trip to Manchu Picchu was a post-cruise trip. We spent the night in Lima and then the next day headed for Cusco the stepping off point for Manchu Picchu and a beautiful little town, actually not too little; population little more than 300,000. With its old churches and squares, it seemed like a small place, but a great place to just walk around and enjoy this beautiful old town.

Cusco is located about 11,000 feet above sea level and before we got there we were lectured over and over again about altitude sickness. I thought they were over doing the warnings, since in my younger days I have been in much higher places, including the Rockies and the mountains in Bavaria, Germany. But they were right! It wasn’t long after we got there that I had to sit down and relax a little! It might have to do with my age, you think?

There are many ways to get to Manchu Picchu from Cusco: bus, car, hiking, and train. The way to go is on the Orient Express “Hiram Bingham” train. Such comfort and luxury! It takes about three hours through some beautiful scenery. It was a slow trip but with the views and the food that they served, you wanted the trip to last longer.

As you can see from the picture above there isn’t much left this beautiful archeological site. But it is full of history and so beautiful. The picture, although nice, and one a lot of you have seen in many travel magazine, but this is one taken my me.

As I said it is such a beautiful site; almost like a religious sanctuary!

Cambodia Trip V - Tonle River Cruise

Top two Pictures are our boat; bottom picture was our "First Mate"!

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The last day in Siem Reap was supposed to be a free day for us, prior to flying back to Phnom Penh later in the day and then transfer to a Dagon Air flight back to Hong Kong. However, we all decided to pay US$12/person for a trip on the Tonle River to see some fishing villages, markets and some really amazing sights.

Just a word about the boat we were about to get on and some I my thoughts at the time. When we arrived at the marina, it looked pretty bad. So I told Jenny that if I were not satisfied with the boat, I would not go on the trip. My mind was on the catastrophe that happened to the Ethan Allen on Lake George, NY in 2005 that killed 20 people. After checking the boat over I decided to take the trip but then, about ten minutes out, the engine stopped and I thought we might have to swim back. But it was quite an experience and we made it back. One of the pictures above shows the boat! Just another thought: when we arrived back at the marina, we could not dock because the gangpank leading to boats had collapse just moments before; a number of tourist had falling into the river and unfortunately a couple had not been found at the time we left. And as we departed, we felt very lucky!

I think I took about 50 or 60 pictures, but Jenny took at least 200 pictures. The sights were amazing and looked similar to some sights we have seen in Malaysia & China years ago. Shown above are just a few of the shot I took. Eveywhere you turned, it was a "Kodak Moment".

Cambodia Trip - Part IV - Khmer Temples

December 4, 2009

After spending one day in Phnom Penh we flew to Siem Reap, the gateway to the Khmer Temples located about 200 miles north of Phnom Penh.

Angkor Archaeological Park, a World Heritage Site since 1993, encompasses about 400 square kilometers just outside Siem Reap.

The Park has more than one hundred temples, most are what I would call ruins. The one exception is Angkor Wat, which is the most famous of all the Temples and is pictured above at the top. But one can see enough of the ruins to see some beautiful art works as well as architectural wonders for the time built (about 800AD-1250AD).