Tag Archives: hotels

3-in-1: history, innovation and business travel.

I find myself in many different far-flung places on this planet, but quite often they’re… predictable: world capitals, business hubs, Must-See places…

But occasionally I also get to less obvious spots. Example: Sviyazhsk. Heard of it? Probably not!

Well, it’s an ancient town, now a village, located at the confluence of the Volga and Sviyaga Rivers.

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According to our excellent excursion guide (I normally trust good guides more than, say, Wikipedia), the short history of the town is as follows:

Read on: Ambitious!…

Sexy shower.

Last week I stayed at the Déjà Vu hotel near the Sviyaga skiing complex in the city of Kazan (dubbed the third capital of Russia, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg). And though there was just me in my hotel room, the shower was most certainly designed for two persons. I have to say it was the first ‘erotic shower’ I’ve ever seen out of all the hotels I’ve stayed at. Most innovational. Good idea!

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Read on: great location, questionnable breakfast…

Flickr photostream

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  • KLHQ
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  • KLHQ

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An eye for a Maasai.

The Maasai are a semi-nomadic African tribe who’ve almost entirely rejected modern civilization in favor of their traditional way of life. For more information about them, check out the Internet – the text below is that of an ‘inquisitive observer’ who just happened to be passing by.

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For just $50 from each car, the Maasai men gathered to perform their traditional greeting.

Read on: Welcome to the village!…

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Tanzanian devilish habitat.

Hi all!

Now, a bit on where to stay on a safari. In the African savanna there are two options – either in tents or in hotels.

They say that spending the night on safari in a tent is really cool. Although not the most comfortable of habitats, what more than makes up for that are the night sounds all around: the growls, woofs, miaous and roars that occasionally cut through the constant background hums and hisses of all creatures wild and great and small as they eat, hunt, mate or whatever else it is they get up to at night.

But we stayed in hotels.

So what can you expect from a hotel deep within the Tanzanian savanna, tens if not hundreds of miles from the nearest civilization? As it happens, you can expect something great! The places we spent the night were really decent, each with a swimming pool and plenty of other conveniences and facilities on site. There are of course the inevitable local ‘specifics’ you have to get used to, but then you get those practically anywhere (no paper napkins on tables in London…, but I digress:).

Ok, about those specifics…

Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge. Our first overnight stop at the top of the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater.

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#Ngorongoro #sunset #Tanzania

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Read on: Simply stunning everything…

The Valley of Nine Villages.

Next stop on the route of my hidden China vacation – the Valley of Nine Villages, aka, the Jiuzhaigou (九寨沟) nature reserve and national park: Yet ANOTHER absurdly astounding Chinese natural beauty!

Cascades of lakes and waterfalls, crystal clear – albeit fluorescent turquoise! – water in lakes, and a freakish forest of horizontally growing trees under that same crazy colored water, and all that set in the most picturesque of mountainous landscapes. And in the fall there’s a bonus: the blends of reds and yellows and oranges of autumn leaves. Oh my gigabytes.

#No filter – no, really!#No filter – no, really!

Read on: Jiuzhaigou walkthrough…

The aquapark in Atlantis: not to be missed.

Beach-resort holidays (‘vegging out’) are not my thing. At all.

Sand, sun-loungers, parasols, ‘refreshing’ drinks and sunblock – I can survive that torture for two or three hours tops. Then I have to start strolling along the beach, sometimes a few kilometers at a time, oftentimes with camera. It beats lounging about any day. You walk along, get a tan, take a dip once in a while, take pictures along the way… Once, in the Dominicanan Republic, D.Z. and I strolled like that for some four hours. Afterwards we looked like models for a scary sunblock ad.

So yeah: beaches, sand, beach beds and basking in the sun are not for me. But!…

But #1. Some of our trips can be really hectic, involving flying across several time zones. As a result we get to the hotel not just tired, but totally wasted. If there’s nothing I have to do the next day and there’s a nice little beach close by, I can easily spend the day sleeping there. I’m pretty good at it. I lie down in the shade around midday and wake up at sunset, all rested, fresh, and ready to go.

But #2. We often organize our business events in beach hotels (which means that for me a beach has come to represent work rather than play:). Anyway, in our 18 years of active corporate life we’ve been pretty much everywhere. From Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. It works out real nice: we work in the daytime and can have a good time in the evening – resort-style. And often we stay for a couple more days after the business is done :).

I seem to be taking a long time getting to the subject of the waterpark at Atlantis, The Palm hotel resort in Dubai…

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Read on: Things to do in Dubai if you got some time to spend on yourself…

Cool your boots, Japan.

Tired after a seemingly endless journey, the long-distance traveler normally resorts to some kind of body of water first in his/her attempt at winding down, chilling out a bit, and returning from zombie state to kinda normal state. Usually a shower, sometimes a bath – sometimes even a banya and its attendant cold pool!

But only in Japan can one hope to reap the mega-chillage effects of a ryokan, which mixes bathing with a fantastic culinary experience to have you back all recharged and fully energized in no time at all. Which is what happened to me recently at Izukogen Hanafubuki Ryokan on the Izu Peninsula (伊豆), not far from Mount Fuji, Japan. Cool our boots, man, we sure did.

In case anyone doesn’t know what a ryokan is, let me tell you that it is a traditional Japanese hotel, usually not too big, with straw mattresses on the floor, offering super-duper Japanese food plus sometimes hot springs to dip in.

If you’re not Japanese, however, you have to be careful. You’ll need to bone up on the Japanese culture first, as it’s easy to put the proverbial foot in it with some faux pas that will cause upset at best, an international scandal at worst :). Best of all is to visit a ryokan with Japanese friends or colleagues, then there’s no chance of unintended mix-ups/offense. Accompanied by locals, you’re safely under their wing, so can feel just like a Japanese: blissfully content to recuperate for a few days, feed the soul, and revitalize the spirit.

And it’s not just the food and waters that act as a tonic to the body and soul – there’s also all the cherry blossoms still a-blooming here, picturesque little cottages, cozy little paths and an overall abundance of fauna and flora. Most fine.

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Why are we here?

Read on: Rainy day at volcano…

INTERNET-INTERPOL-2015.

I first used the term ‘Internet-INTERPOL’ somewhere around the start of the 2000s. The first time I got round to writing it down was in 2003. This year – 2015 – some 12 years later, finally, what I’ve been talking about, pushing for, advocating, promoting all these years is here:

An INTERPOL division dedicated exclusively to combatting the dark side of the Internet!

Yep, just the other week in sunny Singapore INTERPOL officially opened its new cyber-division – IGCI – whose mission is to clear cyberspace of all things criminal and similarly bogus. It will act as the coordinating center for all international cyber-related activities of police forces of all its member states (nearly 200 countries!). In short: international hackerism and other net-diseases – watch out, CYBERPOL is here for good to make your lives miserable and increasingly risky. Besides investigations it will also be training specialists, promoting the cybercrime fight, and doing a whole lot of other helpful stuff in the name of ww-security for the www.

This opening really is no less than monumentally significant. Up until now cyber-villains have been running amok in part due to a lack of unity among national law enforcement bodies – aka different jurisdictions not talking too much with one another. Like the classic FBI vs. CIA vs. regular cops thing that’s been shown in Hollywood movies since the year dot. But this is real folks! Example:

Late last year one cop was asking us for the contact details of certain other cops from a different country! Asking us! Of course – it should be the other way round: all cops knowing each other and their passing on our contact details when they need some cyber-expertise! Indeed, the two systems’ coexistence (the cybercrims’ one without borders, and state cyber-police’s within the jurisdictions of national borders, or, at best, within the European border) has always been a problem. And it’s only gotten worse over the past 15 years or so – with increasingly brazen cyber-swine doing their stuff practically with impunity. Some of them have been caught and punished, but in the main, those were just the tip of the iceberg.

What makes last week’s event in Singapore even more special for us is that the IGCI was opened with our active participation plus support of various kinds – organizational, consultative, financial, and even personnel. For example, one of our top experts, V.K., is now our assigned ‘man in Singapore’, having been living in the city state and working with INTERPOL for several months already, and set to continue for much longer. He’s helping his INTERPOL colleagues develop and deepen their cyber-knowledge and practical cyber-skills, and even takes part in ongoing investigations. And he’s as happy as a sand boy.

Vitaly Kamluk, our man in INTERPOLV.K. minus the trademark Mohican

Read on: INTERPOL can party too…

A hotel on the banks of the Colorado. Woh!

There are a great many beautiful and unusual towns and cities in the world, there are volcanoes, there are valleys and canyons, and islands and lakes. There are also of course rivers: loads of them – all different. There are the grandiose, like the super-wide Amazon with its adjacent jungles, anacondas, piranhas, crocodiles and other underwater perils. There’s the Nile (haven’t seen it myself) – running through the desert, also with crocs, and with 1001 ancient human stories to tell. There’s the Mississippi and all that Tom Sawyer-ness. There’s the Danube and Rhine (and the Lorelei and attendant songs about soldiers fallen in battle). There’s the Yellow River with its unfathomable intensity (also haven’t seen yet), there’s the Lena with its endlessness and Pillars running alongside. Yes, the list is long. // Can you help me continue the list?…

There’s another river – a rather unique one – in southwestern USA (and northwestern Mexico). It’s called the Colorado River. It’s so impressive they went and named a state after it. Its uniqueness flows from how it has cut through the rocky landscapes of several US states – Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. Check it.

Much of what I snapped for my recent posts from Utah was made, literally, by the Colorado River. This river also happens to supply the water for a whole five states, and one particularly parched city of note (built bang in the middle of a desert): Las Vegas. I sometimes wonder how on earth this river hasn’t dried up completely yet.

It was the Colorado that over thousands (millions?) of years dried up the internal sea-lake of the West of Northern America. It was the Colorado that etched the most incredibly beautiful wrinkles – canyons – into the face of this particularly rocky part of the North American continent. Some sections of rock however wouldn’t be worn down, no matter how hard the river tried, and these still stand today, towering up above the canyons. The landscapes here are just astonishing. They’re difficult to describe. You need to experience it first hand to believe it really. Which I recommend you all do one day!

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Read on: Just look at the views!…