Un bateau avec des voiles et des cabines é-nor-mes, des supers amis, beaucoup (trop) de vent mais aussi plein de soleil et de richie et c’est parti pour une semaine de rigolade!
Some pics here.
Ok so here are finally our best pics from our trip to NY!
We organised them in 6 albums :
the daywise album – NYC is vertical, horizontal, hectic, dirty, loud but also peaceful, clean, stylish and so photogenic.
the nightwise album – The same as above but in the dark!
the everyday people album – THE “style” city, it’s funny all the kind of people you meet on the streets, in the subway or in the bars…
the street art album – it’s on every street corner!
the fooding album – Flavors from Asia to Burgercity
the friend and family album – The special people we came to see! Featuring Claire, Davy, Geil, Alex and Toubaaaab!
Our NYC trip was nuts! pika.
My sister got us a wicked gift : a 7 minutes heli ride above New York. The video footage is a bit dark, but the view and skyline is still magical!
It was incredible!
Union Square is a super lively place in the heart on NY. There’s guy there trying to write himself in the Guiness book of records for the most push-ups with people on his back, there are skateboarders, dog walkers, tourists, t-shirts and art sellers…it’s a non stop action place where sometimes there are also mellow reggae vibes!
It was halloween in NY yesterday! Crazyyyy! We checked out the parade and then went to a freaky concert : Cypress Hill!
Here’s Daka with Shauwn White and Hannah Teter from the Burton Team.
We went to see the premiere of the new Burton movie ‘For right or wrong’ in a little theater, with Dave Downing, Nicolas Muller, Trevor Andrew and Keir Dillon. Fun!
That’s how we got greeted at the airport in Paris…hmmm, we might just go to New York! It’s Halloween craze right now! Some of our first pics here. It’s great!!!
Check out Anousheh Ansari’s space blog. She’s on the way back to earth.
Giova is a good friend of mine from the time I was living in Milan. Long time no see, and yesterday he sends a mail saying that they are leaving next week with his girlfriend Gaelle for their round the world Space Odyssey! Of course they created a blog so that lazy people like us who are stucked at work can follow their adventure and cry with envy! 
All the best for the trip!
I didn’t want to, but it was time to go back to work again today. It felt weird to wear shoes again after 3 weeks in slaps…
This trip in the Philippines was just amazing! It went all the way with no trouble, just easy times moving around from island to island, seeing crazy landscapes both above and under the sea, meeting very nice and friendly people, tasting fresh fruits and food and just enjoying in the sun.
We were really lucky though because August is the rainy season and most of the Philippines is affected. Specially the west side, and then on the east side typhoons regularly hit the coast. So we had a few doubts before leaving but this is why we opted to go to the Visayas region which was supposed to be more protected from the rain. And it was! At least during our 3 weeks!
We started out in Boracay where we stayed in a place called Villa Camilla on the south tip of the beautiful White beach, and did a kiteboard course for 4 days with the Hangin crew and the best rider from the island for sure, our coach Merck! It was lots of fun and the beer ar sunset with all the guys was always a mellow moment!
Than on Bohol’s alona beach we stayed in this nice place called Alona tropical and dived with Atlantis dive and cruised the island on a bike.
On Negros we visited Dumaguete and then stayed 4 days on Apo island, a divers paradise but also a real local community life dedicated to preserving their environment.
And to finish it up, we cruised around Manila for a day to experience true asiatic chaos
Moving around was really easy. Since we didn’t have soo much time we had to use little planes. However it was not to expensive and saves lots of time. We also used a few boats, tricycles, tuc tucs, slaps…! Travelling in the low season is also cool, because prices are down everywhere and there is no need to book anything in advance.
So this was our trip, mostly beach and outdoor sports oriented. But Philis offers much more diversity and everyone can find it’s share and live a great adventure from the rice fields of Banaue to the surf beaches of Siargao island. Philippines has much to offer and the locals are the ones which make the trip special! So forget about the negative ideas people generally have about the Philis and go there!
A great place to find info about travelling in the Philippines is the website from Jens Peter.
Here you can find a first album with some of our pics! Hope you like them!
We made it to Apo island after one night stop in the town of Dumaguete on the island of Negros. Dumaguete is quiet a pleasant town compared to other towns we have seen for now in the Philippines, but still it was no use staying to long. We organised our transfer to Apo and the return to Manila and just moved on…
Apo Island is a little unspoiled paradise. This tiny island has just one village and one dive lounge. The whole island is a diving sanctuary and the locals established a community to protect their environment. We were almost alone in the lodge, diving two times everyday and chilling the rest of the time contemplating the amazing view, or the smiles of the kids on the beach at sunset!! The dives were amazing, because the visibility was huge and the guides showing us so much stuff..like being in an aquarium and taking a biology lesson!! crazy! The highlight must be the nice eagle ray that we spotted and that just peacefully swam (flew?) around and away from us….
Ok, now we are back down on earth and in the chaos of Manila! Tomorrow we’ll go around a bit before heading back home on Thursday. What a trip! Go to the Philippines!!!
So we dived twice in Baligasa Island. Baligasa is a 30 to 40 minute boat ride from Alona beach and the sea was pretty rough so you can imagine in what state we were all day!
The dives were nice but not incredible because rough sea means a lot of sand moving around and this affects visibility. However we saw some very nice coral gardens, a lonely turtle, a couple of barracudas, and hundreds of colorful fishes! Our 100% german dive trip partners were, well, german! Ok the bad point is that I had problems equalising with one ear so my second dive was a complete failure.
Yesterday we decided to go tripping around Bohol island so we just rented a bike and went cruising around. We visited some beautiful old stone chuches, as well as the Tarsier center. The Philippine Tarsier is like a gremlins! It’s a 10 – 20 cm creature with huge eyes which can jump 5 meters. Daka will say it!s “sooo cute”. I think it looks weird! 
His eyes are bigger than his brain…
The objective of our bike trip was to go see the landscape of the Chocolate hills. No this is not Switzerland even though with a name like that it sure sounds suisse! The Chocolate hills “are eroded formations of a type of marine limestone that sits on top of hardened clay“. The scenery up there is beautiful…like thousand goosebumps spreading in the middle of rice fields.
So that’s it! today we chill big time before moving on tomorrow to APO island! Supposedly one of the best dive spots in the country! Till then be guapo!
Alona beach is on Panglao Island next to Bohol. It took us the whole day to get there from Boracay because we had to take a plane and than a boat! But we are here now and the place looks great! The weather is still fantastic and we are off for a treat of crazy dives! More in a few days…!
Left our place at 8h15 on saturday morning in Paris and we made it straight to Boracay. It’s 17h45 local time, so something like 11h45 in europe and we are here!!! 27 hours of non stop travelling! A metro, a plane, another plane, a taxi from the international airport to the domestic one in Manilla and straight on the plane to Caticlan on the main island opposite Boracay, than a 20 minutes walk to the jetty, a boat ride, a tricycle ride and just when we made it to the White Beach it’s started to rain ‘moonsoon style’so we sheltered in this internet cafe before finding our place to stay, eat and relax for the next days! pa pa!
Next saturday we are on the move to the Philippines! We are going there for about 3 weeks. We are flying through Bahrain, and since we have a four hours stopover we might try to go around to check out something else as the airport’s lounges!
To prepare the trip we got some really good advices from friends who lived in Manilla or went there on holidays already, but we also had good mail exchanges with people over there, had a lot of replies on questions left on the Lonely Planet’s forum, and read good reviews on places to stay or things to do on travel sites like tripadvisor. Internet really changes everything, and brings people closer. Plus reading about people who stayed there or have done that is much more valuable.
Ok now check out this video which should make you want to go to the Philippines too!
This guy, Matt, got a round the world trip sponsored by some gum company just for him to dance around. He doesn’t even know how to dance…
This is how the Champs Elysees looked like yesterday evening following France’s win against Portugal in the World Cup semi-finals : thousands of people gathering to celebrate and sing “Zizou, il a marque! Zizou il a marque!”. More pics here. Allez les bleus!
We spend a incredible WE in Brussels at Erwann and Delphine’s place. The weather was perfect the whole time so we enjoyed their garden and had some nice BBQs going. In fact we were there mainly for the Couleur Cafe festival. The setting of the festival is amazing and the atmosphere there was super relaxed. On the 2 evenings we went there, we had the chance to see big names like James Brown, Gilberto Gil, Gilles Peterson, Burning Spears, or Lee Scratch Perry, but also some less known promising bands like the partyful mexican ska band Los de Abajo, or local band The Peas Project. But maybe the highlight of the WE for us frenchy out there was the football game against Brasil! We watched it on a big screen at the festival and cheered among the mostly brasilian crowd. It’s was good fun and good atmosphere…and we must admit a crazy win for France!!! Some action pics here.
In this previous post, we were asking for your feedback and ideas about cool places/countries to go for a backpack trip. Thanks for the comments and advices you left us!We made up our minds and also managed to find some cool tickets to go to PHILIPPINES! Yeah!
The choice was mainly motivated by the fact that it sounds more exotic and 'hardcore', and that the country looks unbelievable! Plus we had some great advices from our friends Julie and Alex who used to live in Manilla and got us completly excited about all the possibilities especially for diving, trecking, the food and the people. So that's it, this august we are off for another crazy trip!
If you digg through our public albums on those pages, you can find pictures from some off our previous crazy trips : Thailand and Bali.
Filed under: travel
Been to Warsaw this past two days for the job. I couldn't take pics coz our digital camera is dead now. It passed away in the old town of Warsaw…too bad. The old center is very nice and pleasant to walk about. I was sad because the light was really perfect for taking pictures, so I can only advice you to go discover Warsaw if you haven't been there or in the mean while go through these two slideshows I selected on flickr here and here.
Otherwise it was a pretty short trip but my impressions on Warsaw and Poland in general :
- it's a flat flat country! I like hills and mountains…
- it's green and there is a lot of free space (seen from the plane)
- it's too late..Mc Do, KFC, Pizza Hut, but also Carrefour, H&M and so on have invaded the huge promising polish market
- people are friendly – except this one taxi driver who screwed me..;) and also very religious
- I just missed the Pope for a day!
- some words are like slovene so I was not totally lost : pivo is pivo!
Filed under: travel
We have 3 weeks of holidays end of august – beginning of september and we want to go for a cool backpack trip. If we can do some diving, trecking, little surfing maybe and cultural wondering it would be great. We cannot make up our mind between Costa Rica, Thailand, Mexico, Brasil, Vietnam…You've been there? Leave us a comment and give us your opinion, good ideas about stuff to do there or discover…any other destination is welcome! thanks!
Filed under: travel
During my recent travels in the ‘new’ Europe, I discovered a new magazine called B East. Of course it is not distributed in France yet – even though there has been a launch party in hype shop Colette last december. However you can find it almost anywhere else, so try to grab one – it’s written in english btw.
Moreover I totally agree with their vision statement : new Europe is where life is the most exciting today, the best in terms of quality, and where there are still huge opportunities. Go east!
B EAST Magazine is the vibrant New Europe’s provocative lifestyle and fashion glossy. It seeks to capture the energy of the enlarged Europe through edgy fashion spreads, contrarian features that challenge received wisdom, and photo and travel editorials that give real insight into this region and beyond. It is our belief that the Old Europe has lost its energy since the collapse of Communism and is no longer the source of inspiration it once was. Its nightlife is moribund and tired; its social fabric strained by racial and sexual tension; and its art and commerce not so cutting-edge as in the past. B EAST Magazine will celebrate the exciting zeitgeist of the New Europe while also using its pages as a forum to de-mystify and de-hype the West.
Filed under: travel
Internet is still down at home. So i’m posting this one straight from my Hotel room in Vienna. I gonna stay here until thursday. Hope I get free time tomorrow to go around and check out the city. For now I just had time for a Wienerschnitzel! jeeee the portions are huge! Last week, I was in Budapest. It was super cold and snowy and I stayed just 2 days. But I definitly want to go back there because the city seems to be beautiful..gonna wait for warmer days though! And since the w-e just before that trip to Buda we were in Ljubljana, I’ve been around a good part of the “Austro-Hungarian empire” this past two weeks! More about our w-e in LJ in another post soon. I have some pics and videos to upload. Take care!
“Ich möchte Bier haben! Bier haben!”
Filed under: travel
Hi there! We were in Ljubljana for Xmas. It was great spending some time there and seeing all the friends and family. Even managed to go ride in Krvavec with Fish, Kravos and Luka and it was perfect. Brought back a lot of good memories…
And Ljubljana’s city center was nicely decorated and really lively…Xmas feeling!
It started snowing when we left on monday morning…we had a crazy journey to go to Leysin passing by Paris?! – don’t ask- but we made it and after a plane ride and a few trains we arrived in snowy Leysin! Now we are going to dedicated the next days to riding the freshy so ALL THE BEST EVERYBODY and see ya in 2006!
