Ron Mertens' blog » Travelogues

India vs China

Ron Mertens — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:35:24 +0000

Today we went to an Indian restaurant here in Chengdu, called Tandoor. It was really great – they were very friendly (the managers come from Delhi), and impressed with our fluent Hindi. And the food? the best we had so far in Chengdu – great Indian food! Dal Makhani, Palak Paneer, Samosas…

It got me thinking. We’ve spent 2 months in India back in 2005, and here we are 2 months in China already. I have to say that India is simply better: the food, the colors, the nice English-speaking Indians, the non-stop chaos, the weather, the food. The minute we walked into that Indian restaurant, Michal said that she feels “at home”.

It’s not a fair comparison (a trip in northern India vs 2 months in Chengdu, and with Abigail) – but still. I guess I’m more of an India person than a China person.

Baby photographer

Ron Mertens — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 12:39:22 +0000

I used to like taking photos during my travels… mostly landscape – beautiful scenes, you know what I’m talking about. I meant, pictures of Michal and friends we met on the way is nice, but it wasn’t really exciting for me.

But now I’m mostly taking photos of Abigail. Suddenly a nice lake or building just isn’t enough. I’m not sure how this happened. It might be because it’s more difficult to reach nice places now, with her on the back. Or it might be that almost everything seems to involve Abigail these days (I really take pity of the people we have to hang around with these days).

Anyway, here’s a new bunch of photos from Chengdu. And yes, most of them are with Abigail…

2.5 weeks – updates from Chengdu

Ron Mertens — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:12:36 +0000

I can’t believe it’s only been two weeks (okay, two and a half) since we left for China. It seems like it’s been months. The flights were better than expected, Beijing was rather annoying, and Chengdu is a strange mixture between India and Tel-Aviv. I like it here

Abigail is behaving great – she’s getting a lot of attention (children are not so common in China, and western kids are really rare!), she’s starting to walk, and she’s talking all the time and learning new words and funny things to do every day. She’s also starting to get used to spicy food…

We are now settled in a nice little apartment (ok, not so little), Michal has started her studies (and is quite happy with it), and I’m back to work on my blogs and sites. Life continues…

Here are some more photos if you want.

PS – I can’t access Facebook from here, so if you want to comment, better do it via e-mail or my blog…

First few days in China

Ron Mertens — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:09:39 +0000

We landed in Beijing 3 days ago, and are on the flight to Chengdu now. The flight to Beijing was actually rather good – much better than we thought. Abigail was great. She’s actually behaving great in China. Everybody here is charmed by her – and wants to play with her, talk to her and take her photo. You hardly see any children in Beijing (which is rather sad) – “One family one child”, and western kids are very rare.

We went to the great-wall, and did some site seeing in Beijing, but we didn’t like the city very much. It’s a huge city, and it’s impossible to get from one place to the other on foot. The streets are wide, and the traffic is terrible. It’s not a hospitable city, at least not to us.

We’re hoping Chengdu will be better. We want to find a nice flat (I hope it will not take more than a few days), so we’ll have “our own place” and start to get into the daily routine.

Chengdu – here we come

Ron Mertens — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:26:34 +0000

So, tonight we’re (finally) flying to Chengdu… Hopefully for 4 months, we’ll see how we like it over there. Michal will practice Chinese Medicine, I’ll look after Abigail and continue to blog.

It’s amazing how much more difficult it is to pack with a child. We carry about 3 times as much weight as we would if it were just the two of us. But somehow it’s also more fun because of Abigail – it’s gonna be great showing her the great wall and the panda bears

You can expect a lot of pictures – most of them with Abigail obviously. I took 2 cameras, 8 GB flash and almost 20,000,000 pixels…

Some old photos from 2008

Ron Mertens — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:58:47 +0000

I just uploaded some new photos from 2008 – a few photos from Herzelia’s beach, the dead sea and from a hike we did in Sataf (a beautiful park near Jerusalem)… enjoy…

Grindelwald travelogue…

Ron Mertens — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:49:15 +0000

Well, I finally finished the Grindelwald travelogue. It’s so much work picking the good photos… but there were some really good ones there. It’s such a beautiful place!
Enjoy

Back from Switzerland…

Ron Mertens — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:20:23 +0000

Well, we’re back. We had a wonderful time! We stayed in Grindelwald almost the entire trip (12 days in all) and hiked up and down the mountains. That place is so beautiful. Here’s a few photos, but don’t worry – I’ll write a travelogue soon…

Oh… and a happy new year to all

Off to swizterland…

Ron Mertens — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 14:30:01 +0000

We’re going on a short vacation to Switzerland. We plan to be in the ‘mountains’ most of the time (starting in Grindelwald), doing some day walks and maybe even a longer trek. It all depends on the weather I guess, I hope it will be sunny and not too cold.

FaceBook / TripRecord

Ron Mertens — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 15:05:46 +0000

Facebook (A social-network site) has opened up their site, and introduced the ‘facebook platform’. Basically it’s an API that let’s you write application for facebook. The idea is pretty cool, and there was a lot of press about it.

We at TripTouch decided to see what’s what, and wrote a small application called TripRecord. Basically it lets you choose the countries you visited, and it displays the list in your profile. Simple, but rather nice, we think.

The application is written using PHP. It’s actually hosted on our own servers. The facebook API is very easy to learn, and quite robust. The documentation is somewhat lacking. Luckily there’s an example in PHP and you can just test and try all sorts of things till you get it right.

If you have a facebook account, click here to get your country list. If you don’t have an account yet, try it – I really like Facebook, it’s an excellent site – those guys are brilliant.