sinai (egypt 2018)

the summer is over, i know 😇

well, it took some time till i've got the time and the mood to upload pictures and to share my travel experiences ... we have seen a lot this summer and it was probably my best summer ever ... if s.th. is too good to be true, the euphory transforms into lethargy, you know? i hope i will make some blog updates in the upcoming winter weeks, so we can bring the summer back to our memories easily 

maybe because there were not that many tourists as usually, the local businesses and local people have a hard time to survive. we felt that the egyptian people we met were often somehow sad and sometimes even unfriendly, so let's hope time will bring peace and prosperity into the whole mideast region soon.

 national park ras mohammed (it is an underwater NP 🐋)

sinai's dead sea (, but only in low tide time)

desert

i 💖 sinai

sharm-el-sheikh

the old mosque

sinai peninsula

 

zwei spinnen (two spiders) ... haha, it is a joke in german language 😅

two of us

i 💖 the best of all wives

  

our beach

much, much more holiday pictures are here.

insights from our former visit to sinai (dahab area) from 2013 are here ... enjoy 😃

eof

historical island penyengat (indonesia)

penyengat island = the living museum :-)

beautiful, beautiful, beautiful => this small 2 square kilometers big island close to tanjung pinang (bintan island) looks like if the time stopped moving there. for me it was the nicest experience in indonesia :-)
what did i like in this former malay sultanate? everything: the nice colors of buildings and the green nature, the mosque, the sultan graves, the gardens, the ruins, the stilt houses, the coconut drink we have had at the beach restaurant, the motorcycle-taxi service, the boat trip from and back to tanjung pinang, the (relative) cleanliness .... i'm so happy we have seen this before returning back to completely different world like singapore and germany ...

grand mosque of the sultan of riau (18th Century, important part of the sultanate of johor-riau after malacca (malaysia) was defeated by the portuguese)

stilt houses

 motorcycle taxi

ruins ...

graves ...

stilt houses again

 this road to nowhere reminds me of current western politics, especially of the fiat money financial system :-)

 

penyengat tries to get the unesco heritage status and i hope it will get it soon

more pictures here

eof

egypt 2016, hurghada

well, the war in mid east (syria, iraq & co.) is the main issue in egypt as well. especially the tourists from russia are hardly missing by egyptian tourist business after the russian passenger airplane was shut down over sinai / egypt few months ago...

source: facebook here

well, it was nice + really warm air + water temperatures here even when we have only march, my dears. we enjoyed a rich sports program with volleyball, table tennis + swimming, so it was really nice for us from the tourist perspective. there was even not so much police/army controls as in sinai 3 years ago .... but yes, the folks out there i speak to were quite afraid that even massive protest against the system does not help as the police / army would always crash it down :( ...
well, there is a huge difference between bottom-up protests like the OccupyWallStreet movement 2011-2012 and between top-down organized 'color revolutions' like in ukraine 2014 (maidan), ukraine 2004 (orange revolution) or the capitulation of the whole east european socialists countries soviet union, poland, hungary, czechoslovakia, east germany, romania, bulgaria, etc. in 1989-1990, isn't it?

 hurghada, the young tourist city at the red sea

sahara desert (nubian / arab desert)

our hotel fort arabesque in the makadi bay south to hurghada

 makadi beach

haha, this is the makadi spa hotel, we have spent 10 days in march 2023 😄

 mr. bird

back to hurghada

a new church (approx. 4 years old)

a new mosque

 meat seller in the street

there is no old hurghada, but there are still few original 80 years old

floor fishermen houses near the port

the hindu god of gods ganesha and eros in sand city, hurghada

more pictures here

eof