Forrest Walker's Blog (59)

One day in Bocas del Toro an indigenous man dropped by with a parrot to sell me. I knew I wasn't going to be here long enough to buy pets, but I had owned a parrot when I lived in South America as a kid, and I always wanted another. I figured that when I left Bocas I would let him go, like I did my macaw in Cochabamba.



As long as he was there, I decided to ask him about the indigenous culture. Not necessarily how they lived now, but what…

As I flip through my passport with almost two hundred stamps, and look back on my 185 posts in my WordPress blog, numerous posts on Tripatani or Travel Bloggers Unite, and my 75 reviews on Trip Advisor, I realized that I am living a dream come true. Due to a myriad of converging circumstances, not the least of which is marrying the right woman, I get to travel to exotic locations, luxury locations and mundane locations and write about them. Someday, maybe, someone will pay me to write about…

I am referring to Bocas Del Toro, Panama. While barely within the single digit latitudes,(9.80 degrees north) made famous by Jimmy Buffet, Bocas is also an easy destination to reach. Bocas is on the Caribbean side of Panama, as far west as you can go without getting to Costa Rica. That is right, west. Panama runs east-west, not north-south.



Transportation to Bocas is by air, or water. It is after all an archipelago of Islands. The town referred to as Bocas is on Isla Colon, but…

I think I have remembered all the planes I have flown on since I started traveling in the 1960′s. That was tough. I started traveling as a child in the Midwest, then to South America, and then, well all over.

Douglass

The first plane I remember flying on was  a North…

I just spent ten days in Portugal. Great weather and the Port Wine was fantastic. Maybe I had too much, because on the last day I visited Fatima and the secret that has puzzled people for almost a hundred years was shown to me like an apparition.

Here is my complete story about it.

http://theothersideofthecoconut.com/

I hope you enjoy it and share it!

This post will cover the two most spiritual things I have ever experienced. I was deeply moved by both of them. Bhutan is a deeply Buddhist country. I have mentioned before that if I ever decided to convert, as if I were disciplined enough to try, it would be in Bhutan. I found that…

The Kingdom of Bhutan does not make it hard for a traveler to visit, it is just hard to get there. When I first started reading about traveling to Bhutan I was led to understand that…

Yes, Bhutan is a happy place. I mentioned before that the government actually does a yearly census to evaluate the level of happiness and look for ways to make people even happier, now THAT is a wonderment.

I also mentioned that there is a US$250 “tariff” you must pay to visit Bhutan. This is actually a good deal because it includes everything except beer and souvenirs. So, it cost us a bit more   . That tariff is actually in place to keep Bhutan from becoming over run with…

Everywhere we went in this expedition across Asia, we felt quite welcome!



Our five weeks in Asia started in Kathmandu

We are lucky enough to be able to refer to this as our return to Kathmandu. Dear readers, you really need to be…

We left Umbria after 6 days of wonderful tours, meals, making new friends and never reaching for our wallet all courtesy of the Umbrian tourism authority. When in Italy be sure to visit Umbria.. We took a nice train ride of about 2 hours into Rome’s central train station.

I got off the train and desperately needed to relive myself of that morning’s espresso shots. The men’s room…

When I was young, I remember commenting aloud that in the future cars should be something people ride in, not drive. A person would just hop in, say where you want to go, then sit back and read a newspaper. People laughed at me.

Today, I experienced that world, except that now a person just reads their Iphone. The future has arrived, at least in …

I never thought I would see a blue whale outside of the Smithsonian museum. In fact, I thought they were almost extinct. On January 23, 2012 I saw four pairs of them. Blue Whaleswere not even on my bucket list. When we started doing research on …

Admit it. It is tough to visualize an elephant orphanage.  Visions of elephants in shorts like Oliver Twist asking “please sir may I have another” were short lived in my great expectations, however they were not replaced with anything very clear.

Originally set up by the government to care for abandoned or orphaned elephants it has now turned into a major tourist attraction and seems to be the economic cornerstone of a small village outside of …

Everyone who travels around this coconut runs into hawkers. They try to sell you everything from bongs to plastic models of the Taj Mahal. Many just will not leave a person alone. They follow you down the street putting tubes of tiger balm or fake Rolex watches in your hand. They all know two words in English "good price". Some know how to say "me poor, need money for family." 99% of the time they are selling some POS I have no desire to own. I try to say "no" nicely. The second  time I say…

Here I am on an Air Arabia flight over the middle of the Indian Ocean on my way to a city I had never even heard of a year ago, Colombo. (I am wondering if I should be wearing a crumpled trench coat and smoking a cheap cigar, but I digress) Colombo is the capital city of a country I had only heard of because I am a news junkie, Sri Lanka. 



Sri Lanka is only a few years past a civil war that pitted the Tamil Tigers (never to be confused with the team from Detroit) against the…

My travel style,in case you are a new reader, is to hire a private guide with a comfortable car who is mine for the duration. I do not just show up and say "whatcha got." I do my own research with every book I can find and do not forget my wife is a university librarian. I also peruse all the social media sites, the usual suspects and a few that are truly suspect.



Then I start contacting guides using again every source I can find. If I send someone an email and get no response…

Starbucks. It seems every civilized place on the planet has at least one.

On any continent they are all exactly alike. The only difference is the décor on the mugs. I consider them collectibles. I have no more room on the shelves in my kitchen for them, but I still buy one wherever I go. In fact, I am a bit annoyed if the city I am in (Nairobi, Kathmandu) does not have a Starbucks.

Before I travel, I Google the location of the Starbucks in the destination city. Not only…

The most amazing  and beautiful building in all of London, Westminster Abbey!

An absolutely beautiful building with an astonishing history.

If you ever go to London, do the Abbey. Even if you are  just there for a day, do the Abbey. Photos are not allowed inside, but most of you have…

In celebration of national Day here in the UAE we had a short holiday, so we decided to take a quick jaunt to London. I had never been there, and I am a history fanatic, where better than London! 

I always fly Qatar Airways. Qatar flies into Heathrow. I did nor know anything about this airport, or i would have taken a different carrier and avoided this miserable excuse for an international airport.

We arrived at …

Occupy Business Class!

After more hours than I care to count sitting in the cookie cutter seats in economy class, I was pleasantly surprised today when Qatar airlines upgraded my wife and me to Business Class. I have not flown Business Class since I stopped working and an employer was buying my ticket. I had forgotten how much better it is to spend 7 hours in a fully reclining seat with incredibly good food and service beyond the pale.

The seat not only spread out to a flat…