Pondy, The Place To Be This Independence Day!

From the quiet town of Mamallapuram we travelled 2hrs further south to the small seaside city of Puducherry (aka Pondicherry).  And luck was on our side as it turned out that we arrived just ahead of the Indian Independence Day long weekend.  This little city of 226,000+ people was already a buzz of activity preparing not only for the national holiday celebrations, but also for the annual Fete du Poudoucherry and for the (late) local guru, Sri Aurobindo’s birthday—all of which fell on the same day, August 15.  We managed to find a small ‘Inn’ right in the centre of town that was a nice clean, quiet and ‘cool’ (thanks to AC) refuge for us in the very humid conditions.  From there, we could easily take in all that ‘Pondy’ had to offer—and a lot to offer it did!

French Quarter, Puducherry

How To Cut The Cost of Travel Vaccinations

In preparing for this trip, travel vaccinations played a major role.   Upon researching this further, we soon realised that there were two big issues to deal with:  1) the accessibility of good advice and 2) the cost of the vaccinations for a family of 4.  

While trolling the travel forums, we noticed that specialist ‘Travel Clinics’ were the popular route.  However, there was usually a hefty premium to pay (priced per person) to receive advice from these ‘specialists’, not to mention the accessibility to a good clinic near us. 

City Life: KL to Bangkok

Our travels have stepped up a notch.  Our time in Bali was consciously low-key, keeping mostly with Maddy and Yasmine’s regular eating and sleeping routine as at home. We weren’t overly ambitious with our day, enjoying a mellow eat/swim/eat/sleep/eat/swim sort of day.  But now we’ve exchanged the idyllic ‘vacation-pace’ of Bali for bustling city-life.  Needless to say, the transition has made it a busy week,

Travel Vaccination Update

Just spent the past 2hrs trolling through the LP Online Thorn Tree Forum on ‘Health’—such great and useful info that I wished I’d read yesterday BEFORE I filled the prescriptions today for some of our travel vaccinations!!!  Was referred to 2 highly recommended and reputable clinics in Bangkok (one of them is the Red Cross) that charge half to a third of what I just paid today :( But having said that, we