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Ron Mexico said:
Really sad and crazy the Halloween incident in Seoul. I went to that area for Halloween before COVID and my girlfriend then was terrified of that happening because of how crowded and crazy it was. I kind of laughed at her about it. We were planning to be there for Halloween this year, but we got COVID in the USA and had to delay everything a couple weeks otherwise I definitely would have been there that night. It was one of the most fun nights I've had out anywhere.
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Oh yeah. I've been to Itaewon multiple times (not during Halloween) and I'm familiar with the alleyway where the crush happened. It's so crazy, total mismanagement of a crowd the authorities knew was going to be huge beforehand. I've been in some really dense crowds in Korea before and I don't blame the people in the crowd on an individual level. Koreans are justifiably desensitized to dense crowds. It was obviously bad but from their perspective, in other areas around the crush-point, it was no worse than rush hour on the subway. Terrible tragedy.
 
So I went back to read through the thread because there were a couple posts I wanted to get to from a while ago that I never responded to.

SoberasHotRod said:
I did quite a bit of international travel at my old job. The most beautiful place I've been to is Switzerland. The place with the best food I've been to is Thailand, the Thai people were also the nicest/friendliest. My favorite all around was Chile (mostly because I speak Spanish). I've spent the most time in Hong Kong / Guangzhou China. The place I've never been, but would love to go is Australia and New Zealand.

Unfortunately when you are traveling for business there isn't much time for sight seeing or really immersing yourself in the culture. I'd really like to go back to some of these places as a tourist and experience them a lot differently.
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Switzerland is one of the bigger ones we're looking at doing but not certain when exactly we'll do it as of yet. That's probably what we're going to redeem our SkyMiles on. We want to time it right that we're there maybe like June or so, or maybe toward the end of the summer as it's cooling down, and this next summer is accounted for, so who knows. When we went to Iceland, we did a second leg of the trip that went to England. My parents actually came along with us on the Iceland portion and their second leg was flying in to Zurich and doing Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany and Liechtenstein. I ended up planning most of that for them and doing a circle around the area to hit all those places, so I've got a pretty good itinerary for when we eventually go. It's funny that I put Lauterbrunnen on the list and they stayed around Interlaken so they saw Grindewald and the other areas, but they somehow missed Lauterbrunnen and now my dad is mad that he missed "the most beautiful valley on the planet."

We're curious about Chile and Patagonia. Quite possibly do that, perhaps, when visiting Antarctica below.

Al-O-Meter said:
My family moved abroad when I was five and I toured the entire world to the point that I had extra pages added to my passport when I was six years old. The world was a different place then and I was obviously a much different person, but of all the places I went it was Greece that was my favorite. As an adult, my favorite is Kauai, Hawaii. If there is one place I'd like to go it would be Amundsen-Scott Station in Antarctica. It is the closest thing there is to visiting another planet.
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Very curious about hitting Antarctica. I think that will, however, be a trip for us to wait until all of our kids are grown and out of the house before we did that. I know there are cruise ships that hit it, but not sure how big they are. It appears that if you leave from South America, you don't actually enter the Arctic Circle, though you can also leave from Tasmania and hit the other side of Antarctica. However, flying from the US to Australia/Tasmania to board a cruise to Antarctica may be a hell of a trip in terms of how long that would take.
 
One interesting place I'd like to see at some point would be Wadi Rum in Jordan. It's been in numerous movies, from older ones like Lawrence of Arabia to newer ones like The Martian and Aladdin. It can obviously be easy to combine with a trip to Petra and, though I'd like to see it, would have to navigate what else you would combine that trip with. My wife's biggest dream since she was a little kid was to see Egypt. We originally had planned to go in spring of 2021 but the tour company we were going with also was doing an Israel trip and I think they filled a lot of their Egyptian leg of the trip with people doing both, because when Israel ended up being shut down, they just cancelled the Egyptian leg of the trip, too. I think we should have still found another way to have gone and just got because their tourism numbers in Egypt at the time were really low (and I understand they're still not up to pre-COVID). I had been looking at different options for Egypt recently and I thought this advertisement I got on here was fairly funny:

B604256F-BFEB-4CDB-AED2-520229A72520.jpeg

Some AI pulled together a bunch of images that apparently tagged somewhere as Egypt and they're advertising Gilgal "from $160". For those not familiar, Gilgal is a small park in Salt Lake open to the public. It's free. That sphinx is Joseph Smith.
 
infection said:
One interesting place I'd like to see at some point would be Wadi Rum in Jordan. It's been in numerous movies, from older ones like Lawrence of Arabia to newer ones like The Martian and Aladdin. It can obviously be easy to combine with a trip to Petra and, though I'd like to see it, would have to navigate what else you would combine that trip with. My wife's biggest dream since she was a little kid was to see Egypt. We originally had planned to go in spring of 2021 but the tour company we were going with also was doing an Israel trip and I think they filled a lot of their Egyptian leg of the trip with people doing both, because when Israel ended up being shut down, they just cancelled the Egyptian leg of the trip, too. I think we should have still found another way to have gone and just got because their tourism numbers in Egypt at the time were really low (and I understand they're still not up to pre-COVID). I had been looking at different options for Egypt recently and I thought this advertisement I got on here was fairly funny:

View attachment 13398

Some AI pulled together a bunch of images that apparently tagged somewhere as Egypt and they're advertising Gilgal "from $160". For those not familiar, Gilgal is a small park in Salt Lake open to the public. It's free. That sphinx is Joseph Smith.
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Gigal park is such a strange but great spot.

I just booked a flight for Egypt for new years. I'll spend about a week there. My wife had a job opportunity in Cairo last year, but I had no interest in living there, but I am excited to visit. I plan to go to Jordan pretty soon as well. I have a friend working there and through my wife's work they have a safety course for traveling in dangerous areas that we need to take. It sounds interesting, things like what to do if your driver gets shot and dealing with terrorism.

The place I haven't been that ive always wanted is UAE. I'm going to get over there soon as well. I'm pretty happy to be living in Ethiopia for a few years. They have so many direct flights for cheap to places I want to go. I'm planning for my birthday in February to go to seychelles or one of the other islands in that area. Having been stuck in a country with a closed border I might go a little nuts with travel for awhile.
 
infection said:
One interesting place I'd like to see at some point would be Wadi Rum in Jordan. It's been in numerous movies, from older ones like Lawrence of Arabia to newer ones like The Martian and Aladdin. It can obviously be easy to combine with a trip to Petra and, though I'd like to see it, would have to navigate what else you would combine that trip with. My wife's biggest dream since she was a little kid was to see Egypt. We originally had planned to go in spring of 2021 but the tour company we were going with also was doing an Israel trip and I think they filled a lot of their Egyptian leg of the trip with people doing both, because when Israel ended up being shut down, they just cancelled the Egyptian leg of the trip, too. I think we should have still found another way to have gone and just got because their tourism numbers in Egypt at the time were really low (and I understand they're still not up to pre-COVID). I had been looking at different options for Egypt recently and I thought this advertisement I got on here was fairly funny:

View attachment 13398

Some AI pulled together a bunch of images that apparently tagged somewhere as Egypt and they're advertising Gilgal "from $160". For those not familiar, Gilgal is a small park in Salt Lake open to the public. It's free. That sphinx is Joseph Smith.
Click to expand...


One of my pals who is at the world cup was just in Egypt beforehand said its awesome.
 
I was in Egypt this spring(and UAE). While they were cool to visit I probably won't go back. Cairo is the only place I've been that seems like it could erupt into civil war at any moment. It has massive issues and I got a bad feeling there. Was actually relieved to GTFO.

Sent from my SM-G986U using JazzFanz mobile app
 
Ron Mexico said:
Gigal park is such a strange but great spot.

I just booked a flight for Egypt for new years. I'll spend about a week there. My wife had a job opportunity in Cairo last year, but I had no interest in living there, but I am excited to visit. I plan to go to Jordan pretty soon as well. I have a friend working there and through my wife's work they have a safety course for traveling in dangerous areas that we need to take. It sounds interesting, things like what to do if your driver gets shot and dealing with terrorism.

The place I haven't been that ive always wanted is UAE. I'm going to get over there soon as well. I'm pretty happy to be living in Ethiopia for a few years. They have so many direct flights for cheap to places I want to go. I'm planning for my birthday in February to go to seychelles or one of the other islands in that area. Having been stuck in a country with a closed border I might go a little nuts with travel for awhile.
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str8line said:
I was in Egypt this spring(and UAE). While they were cool to visit I probably won't go back. Cairo is the only place I've been that seems like it could erupt into civil war at any moment. It has massive issues and I got a bad feeling there. Was actually relieved to GTFO.

Sent from my SM-G986U using JazzFanz mobile app
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Great pictures and thanks for sharing. Did you venture out of Cairo? We booked a trip for this spring to Egypt and we're going to hit quite a bit, going all the way down to Abu Simbel. We have a couple days there before we fly down to Luxor and so one of the days we were going to take a tour down to Amarna, which is really isolated and takes about 4 hours driving south to get there. That's the one I'm most concerned about, especially when Ron is talking about "what to do if your driver gets shot." It would just be us with a driver.

I've also wanted to do UAE, though I'm not sure when we'd do that. It's really one of those ones where if you're planning such a big vacation to some place so far away, there are definitely different options, so I think if or when we ever went, it'd be part of a different trip where that was a layover or something.
 
Ron Mexico said:
Gigal park is such a strange but great spot.

I just booked a flight for Egypt for new years. I'll spend about a week there. My wife had a job opportunity in Cairo last year, but I had no interest in living there, but I am excited to visit. I plan to go to Jordan pretty soon as well. I have a friend working there and through my wife's work they have a safety course for traveling in dangerous areas that we need to take. It sounds interesting, things like what to do if your driver gets shot and dealing with terrorism.

The place I haven't been that ive always wanted is UAE. I'm going to get over there soon as well. I'm pretty happy to be living in Ethiopia for a few years. They have so many direct flights for cheap to places I want to go. I'm planning for my birthday in February to go to seychelles or one of the other islands in that area. Having been stuck in a country with a closed border I might go a little nuts with travel for awhile.
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Wife? You got married? Again!

Sucker!
 
infection said:
Great pictures and thanks for sharing. Did you venture out of Cairo? We booked a trip for this spring to Egypt and we're going to hit quite a bit, going all the way down to Abu Simbel. We have a couple days there before we fly down to Luxor and so one of the days we were going to take a tour down to Amarna, which is really isolated and takes about 4 hours driving south to get there. That's the one I'm most concerned about, especially when Ron is talking about "what to do if your driver gets shot." It would just be us with a driver.

I've also wanted to do UAE, though I'm not sure when we'd do that. It's really one of those ones where if you're planning such a big vacation to some place so far away, there are definitely different options, so I think if or when we ever went, it'd be part of a different trip where that was a layover or something.
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Sounds like an amazing trip. I bet it will be mindblowing! We just did the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum so we didn't leave Cairo. They were amazing. If I could afford security, a quality driver and nothing but five-star hotels I would spend more time there. But I hate tours, so it was sketchy, especially with a 17-year-old daughter. Men rule Egypt, and they are some gnarly dudes. The locals near Giza are extremely pushy, even the hoteliers. You have to be strong to the point of being rude or they will take advantage of you, and they are pros at it. It's ok for a minute if you're an intrepid traveller but it gets old fast. Most flights arrive well after midnight and our 45 minute drive to Giza at 3 AM was wild as hell. Read about the way they drive, it's all true. I'd wager Cairo has some of the worst drivers/traffic/roads in the world; it's like they have a death wish. From there it just continued to be weird. Taking advantage of tourists is ingrained in their culture, so read as much as you can about dealing with it and steel yourself before you go. I would only use reputable well-known tour companies if I had my family with me and planned to travel cross-country. One caveat is that we were there this past April and there was not much tourism going on coming out of covid, so it might be different for you if you can blend in more than us.
 
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str8line said:
Sounds like an amazing trip. I bet it will be mindblowing! We just did the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum so we didn't leave Cairo. They were amazing. If I could afford security, a quality driver and nothing but five-star hotels I would spend more time there. But I hate tours, so it was sketchy, especially with a 17-year-old daughter. Men rule Egypt, and they are some gnarly dudes. The locals near Giza are extremely pushy, even the hoteliers. You have to be strong to the point of being rude or they will take advantage of you, and they are pros at it. It's ok for a minute if you're an intrepid traveller but it gets old fast. Most flights arrive well after midnight and our 45 minute drive to Giza at 3 AM was wild as hell. Read about the way they drive, it's all true. I'd wager Cairo has some of the worst drivers/traffic/roads in the world; it's like they have a death wish. From there it just continued to be weird. Taking advantage of tourists is ingrained in their culture, so read as much as you can about dealing with it and steel yourself before you go. I would only use reputable well-known tour companies if I had my family with me and planned to travel cross-country. One caveat is that we were there this past April and there was not much tourism going on coming out of covid, so it might be different for you if you can blend in more than us.
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A lot of this stuff is why I had 0 interest in living there.

My flight plan right now is to get there Christmas day, thankfully its a short flight for me. We will stay a few days in Cairo at the Ritz which, fortunately we get a good deal at so its like $150 a night and probably a suite upgrade. We plan to hire a driver to the pyramids and a couple other things for a day trip. I found some decent companies online with good reviews that seem pretty cheap right now so they will drive us there and take care of tickets and bring us back. Its not my favorite way to vacation but it seems easier and safer for here. Then we plan to fly down for a few days south to a resort beach like area called Hurghada I think ill stay at the Sheraton resort there (similar good deal as above). It looks like a decent beach area with plenty to do and I can relax through new years before heading back. I was really hoping to see the New years fireworks show at the pyramids but this works out as well.

My wife has a work trip to UAE in February so I guess ill go with since I really want to go. I was hoping to go to Seychelles or canary islands around then for my birthday but UAE is high on my list to check out. I got accepted into an MBA there a long time ago and decided against it but I really got interested then to check it out.

Most tourism places are struggling still and people are either more willing to treat you nice and give discounts or the opposite of trying to rip everyone off and being very aggressive. It makes trips a lot more stressful these days especially in a country that isnt particularly safe.
 
Ron Mexico said:
Maybe should take a day trip to Luxor as well.
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The flights are pretty cheap. We’re going through Memphis Tours and their website contains probably a package for anything you want. You can even just tell them what you want to do and they’ll arrange it.
 
infection said:
The flights are pretty cheap. We’re going through Memphis Tours and their website contains probably a package for anything you want. You can even just tell them what you want to do and they’ll arrange it.
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I'm in hurghada now, it's much nicer than I thought. I couldn't find flights to anywhere that didn't require me to go back to Cairo. Usually you can fly to Luxor and back easily but these days there are no flights one direction and only one flight every other day the other way. But I arranged a tour for tomorrow, which looks great. The downside is it's a long drive there and back. But Luxor has been the most consistent place people have told me you must go. Hurghada has plenty to do in the tourist way and decent food/shopping, but no real museums or historical things to look at, just a relaxing vacation area. All of the tourist activities are really cheap though. So for a family it's probably a solid place to spend a few days. They have boat rides, fishing, scuba diving, snorkeling, atvs, camel rides, BBQs, dancing, and all that kind of stuff. Usually it's around 25ish bucks a person.

Side note Cairo is one of the weirdest design airports I've been in. It's kind of confusing. Also I did visa on arrival and it's easier than arranging ahead of time. They literally need no documents or info from them just cash in usd or Egypt pounds and they hand you a visa sticker regardless of where you are from.
 
Ron Mexico said:
I'm in hurghada now, it's much nicer than I thought. I couldn't find flights to anywhere that didn't require me to go back to Cairo. Usually you can fly to Luxor and back easily but these days there are no flights one direction and only one flight every other day the other way. But I arranged a tour for tomorrow, which looks great. The downside is it's a long drive there and back. But Luxor has been the most consistent place people have told me you must go. Hurghada has plenty to do in the tourist way and decent food/shopping, but no real museums or historical things to look at, just a relaxing vacation area. All of the tourist activities are really cheap though. So for a family it's probably a solid place to spend a few days. They have boat rides, fishing, scuba diving, snorkeling, atvs, camel rides, BBQs, dancing, and all that kind of stuff. Usually it's around 25ish bucks a person.

Side note Cairo is one of the weirdest design airports I've been in. It's kind of confusing. Also I did visa on arrival and it's easier than arranging ahead of time. They literally need no documents or info from them just cash in usd or Egypt pounds and they hand you a visa sticker regardless of where you are from.
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I watched a youtube video of some guy scuba diving in the Red Sea. It actually looked pretty incredible. Let me see if I can find it real fast...

This isn't the one but it's a good one...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vU-ArMrN5Q
 
infection said:
I watched a youtube video of some guy scuba diving in the Red Sea. It actually looked pretty incredible. Let me see if I can find it real fast...

This isn't the one but it's a good one...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vU-ArMrN5Q
Click to expand...

I did a couple hours scuba diving today. Despite the fact it was kinda cold and windy it was really awesome. We went to a spot to scuba with dolphins as well but they didn't come around today, but the seem to come most days. But there were lots of other things to look at. We did a private speed boat tour to good scuba spots for 4 hours and it cost 50 usd total.
 
Anyone have any clue where this is?

ED0FCF1B-8EF7-4751-9472-9E930FF55E4D.jpeg
 
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