‘Goedemiddag’ friends & family,

We’re back home! This will be the last (short) story on our blog. On Wednesday the 31^st of August we landed in Holland after a long travel from San Jose (Costa Rica) to Amsterdam. On arrival we were very surprised and happy to discover that a whole ‘welcome back’ committee was waiting for us, including our sweet parents, Lianne & Henk Hylke (brother of Remco) and our dearest friends! We had a few drinks at Schiphol airport and went to ‘Casa Sleebos’ in Monnickendam to have a nice diner with the Sleebos & Bakker family. Frans & Afke (Lianne’s parents) opened a few bottles of Prosecco, as they always do when something needs to be celebrated. (more…)

The robbery
We don’t want to spend too much attention and time on the robbery, because the thieves already took a lot from us and we don’t want them to spoil more of our time and state of mind. We will give a short summery of the incident, which became a ‘black’ page in our travel adventure book.

On the 1st of August we drove with our rental car (a modern armored 4WD), together with our friend Marcel, from Granada to San Juan del Sur in Nicaragua. We were looking for a new place to stay, so we packed all our baggage together and took it with us in the car. On arrival at Maderas beach we parked the car on a parking place close to the beach next to a restaurant and locked the car. Right in front of the beach a nice hostel was located, which we wanted to check for availability. Apparently 4 male thieves had kept an eye on us from the moment we arrived and left the car. Afterwards we realized these people already followed us from San Juan del Sur all the way up to Maderas beach. During the 5 minutes we walked away from the car (maximum of 30 meters) the thieves broke into our car and stole ALL our valuable belongings, including phones, laptop, hard disks, camera’s, travel dairies, wallets, (credit)cards, passports, sunglasses, ipods, etc. (more…)

Ola amigos,

Cómo está? We’re doing ok. At the moment we’re in Nicaragua and had the worst experience of our travel so far. We got robbed and lost ALL of our valuables. For a summary of the robbery you can go to ‘Central America’. This is the reason why we’re posting our story about South America later than expected. They ‘stole’ our story which was ready, but still on our laptop. We will try to rewrite the story again, but it will be different and in less detail. Notes of the tours are on Lianne’s Iphone, which is also stolen.

Peru
After a long period of sunny, blue water and palm tree beaches in the Pacific Ocean, we moved via San Francisco to South America on the 26th of May.  On arrival at Lima, we were lucky to meet a nice local guy on the plane, who called his ‘taxi’ cousin to bring us into town. Lima isn’t a city to walk around by night with all your bags. We were glad we got a save trip into the Miroflores suburb and stayed in hostel Miraflores House owned by Francis Chauvel. (more…)

Aloha everybody,

How are you doing? We’ve heard the ‘news’ about a nice, warm spring in Holland! Hopefully, this line of sunny weather will continue throughout the summer of 2011.

We haven’t been doing bad ourselves in Hawaii. It was the first time Remco set foot on an the American state Hawaii, but he recognized all the famous (wind)surf spots immediately, such as Spreckels/Camp one, Hookipa, Pipeline and Sunset beach to name a few. For years you read about these places in surf magazines and finally it’s the moment to see this (wind)surf Mecca with your own eyes. In total we spent 2,5 weeks on Maui, 4 days on Oahu and 3 days in San Francisco.

The first days we took some time to ‘meet & greet’ with Peter Volwater (Yes, we met him before during this trip in Australia. He tests material for Maui Sails & Fanatic and trains on Maui to get ready for int. windsurf competitions), Barry Spanier (Sail designer and R&D of Maui Sails materials and one of the owners of Maui Sails), Phil McGain (R&D and tester of Maui Sails materials and he is also one of the owners of Maui Sails) and Pieter Bijl (R&D and tester for Neilpryde materials and JP boards). We could borrow Peter’s car for a few days, MS materials from Barry and Phil and a waveboard from Pieter. Now, Remco was al set up for his first surf session on Maui! All we needed was windsurf gear for Lianne and wind. (more…)

Bonjour Madame et Monsieur,
Ca va? Ca va bien! Yes, we arrived in French Polynesia (FP), which nowadays has a local Polynesian government, but still belongs to France. When we planned our trip, we were very excited about this group of 118 Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Our expectations of this special place came true: warm, tropical clothing, exotic, women with flowers in their hair, good waves and not touristic! In total we spend 3 weeks on French Polynesia, visiting Tahiti (outline: 120 km), Bora Bora (outline: 25 km) & Moorea (outline: 70 km).

While flying from Auckland (New Zealand) to Papeete (Tahiti) it is a bizarre experience to cross the ‘vertical equator’. In Auckland our day started 10 hours ahead of the European time zone. When we landed in Papeete we were 12 hours behind the European time zone. Which meant we flew on Sunday April 3^rd (at 14:00) and landed on Saturday April 2^nd (21:00). (more…)

Kia Ora family & friends,

Spring arrived in Europe last week! You can almost put away your long and thick clothing. We spend the last 6 weeks 2700 – 3700 km away from Antarctica. Compared to Asia and Western Australia it was chilly in our rented ‘Wicked’ campervan. In North-West of Australia we had one day of 45-Celsius degrees (and 30 degrees at night). The little brother of Australia is much cooler with 25-Celsius degrees (and a maximum of 12 degrees at night). But, aye, the New Zealand (NZ) landscapes are stunning, the wildlife unique and the bushwalks lovely. Luckily, ‘Wicked’ campervans has got a table where ex-renters can donate their ‘old’ camping gear they can’t take with them. There we found two brand new sleeping bags, blankets, herbs, plastic glasses, a sheet, a CD of Ibrahim Ferrer, etc. In NZ we used our ‘Behooked’ beanies a lot, which was a present from Miranda Derks when we left Holland in October (for more information, see Behooked Facebook page)

Our trip started off bizarre: flying above Christchurch one hour after the earthquake on the 22nd of February. At 13:00 (9 minutes after the shock) the pilot told there was no connection possible with Christchurch Airport and he was forced to land on Wellington. Luckily, our Dutch friends Klaas Stijnen & Merel Rip live in Wellington. We could stay at their place for the night and figure out how to move on further. We first made a few calls to Quantas and the parents of Remco (who stranded in Singapore due to the quake) and we send some messages to our beloved ones to comfort them. The surprise visit turned out to be a nice evening together with Klaas & Merel and a good start in New Zealand. (more…)

Hi mates!
How’re you going? Yes! After 6 years we’re back in Australia. Actually, this is the place were we first started to dream about doing a worldtrip, after we met an English couple in the North-East of Australia during that time. They were travelling around the world and due to their nice stories we got enthusiastic about doing it as well. They had a larger budget, and were busy with their 2nd year! No worries, we are coming back in Augustus 2011. This time we have 6 weeks to explore the beautiful west coast (WA).

On the 11th of January we arrived at Perth international airport in the middle of the night, where Lianne her cousin Coco was waiting for us! The first week of our stay in Australia, we spent time with the Bruinsma family: Coco Hartsuiker & Mike Bruinsma with their four adorable children Romy (8), Charly (6), Nicky (6) and Lily (3). In Australia the summer holiday starts in December and ends end of January, so all kids were free from school. This meant swimming lessons at Hillary’s beach & jumping from the jetty, going to SciTech (comparable with ‘Nemo science centre in Amsterdam’), eating with 8 people every night, playing with the children and kissing them goodnight before they fell a sleep (“kiss, high five, cuddle and box”). We discovered that having four kids is more than a full time job, because they ask a lot of questions all day long and demand the same amount of attention as their brother and sisters (“that’s not fair!”) ☺. But above all we loved to get to know their characters and to play with them. While the kids went to camp for a few days during this first week, Coco was able to do some sightseeing with us through Perth suburbs, Floreat Beach (her favorite beach) and the artistic town Fremantle (wreck museum). (more…)

Dear friends and family,

How did you start 2011? And new years eve…with lots of champagne and fireworks? We hope 2011 will be a good year with heaps of special, sportive, adventurous and happy moments! We started the New Year pretty good on Gili Trawangan – Lombok. But let us start our story when we set foot on Indonesia (Jakarta) for the first time in our lives on the 29th of November.

Adoe, Trimakasi, Sama Sama, Soto & Satay Ayam, Nasi Goreng, Gado Gado, Sambal, Dutch colony, World war II, Bridge over the river Kwai, Tropical suits, East Java, Surabaya and Probollingo. This is a small selection of the Indonesian heritage of Grandfather and Grandmother Sleebos. Grandfather Sleebos is originally from Madura and Grandmother Sleebos from Java. The family with 8 members moved to Alkmaar in 1950 after the world war II. Frans Sleebos, Liannes dad, was the only child born in Holland in 1952. The time has come to explore Indonesia and to discover similarities and differences with the Sleebos Indonesian roots. “The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson
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LAOS
Hello everybody! Can you cope with the low temperatures in Holland? St. Klaas left Holland and the Christmas tree is set up? We’re in Indonesia at the moment and luckily we can get updates via nu.nl, Skype meetings with our family and your messages!

‘Can you think of a better place to become 30 than in (the jungle of) Laos on a bathing elephant?’ was one of the last sentences of our Vietnam story. The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Luang Prabang, the second biggest city in Laos, is the relax atmosphere!! Not many tuk-tuks racing around through the streets and no people screaming to sell touristic products. Instead a friendly ‘Sabadee’ (Hello in Lao) from vendors, clean streets, beautiful maintained (guest)houses, French restaurants everywhere… We immediately felt more relax en calm after a busy Hanoi (Vietnam). We walked along the Nam Khan River, bicycled around the countryside and relaxed in lounge bars like Dyen Sabai and Utopia. There is also time to learn more about the Laos culture, so we visited the Wat Phi temple during sunset, watched the monk feeding ritual in the morning and ate traditional Laos fondue. (more…)

VIETNAM
Xin chào everybody! We’re doing OK. Hope you’re OK as well. To make our stories more interesting, we share our insights instead of a chronological story. Here we would like to share some of our experiences about Vietnam.

The climate in Asia is warm with a high humidity. Since we put on our flip-flops five weeks ago, we haven’t taken them off. It is around 25-30 degrees and now it’s the end of the rain season; sun in the morning, clouds building during the day and sometimes short, but heavy showers in the evening or at night.

Vietnam is a lovely, long-stretched country. We already met our Asian ‘friend’: the mosquitooo. Most of the time we hang our mosquito net, which helps us to sleep well. Lianne seems to have a tiny allergic reaction on most mosquito bites:  spots from 3 – 10 cm! Yes, itching… On the streets it is common to see cockroaches and rats (sometimes scrolling around homeless people). Luckily we’ve also seen some ‘huggable’ animals: monkeys, tigers and crocodiles! (more…)