Day 243 – Asia’s Top Eight

Previously our only first-hand knowledge about Asia was from travelling in Japan, little did we imagine how full of variation the continent is. After 3 months we still realize we’ve only seen but a portion of it and will sure return for more. For people coming from the Europe-centric part of the world, as ourselves, it was actually very refreshing to see places so detached from what we otherwise think is the center of the world.

08 – The Terracotta Army 

The immense detail and beauty of this amazing collection of statues surely make up for the hordes of tourists one has to fight to see them. A must when visiting Xi’an, China.

07 – Suwon’s Ancient Walls

There was something about these ancient walls of South Korea that made us romanticize about forlorn times of honor and greatness 😉

06 – Beijing And The Qing Dynasty’s Heritage

The capital of China has some real treats to offer, most of which can be attributed to the Qing dynasty. The Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City and the Temple of Heaven are all fantastic sights, all accessible from this bustling city..

05 – Thailand’s Beaches

It might sound like a cliché, but who can resist the charm of beautiful soft sand, turquoise water, colorful fishes, friendly people and good food? We chose a spot on Koh Phangan which didn’t disappoint us.

04 – Monkeys And Hot Springs

We’ve seen many monkeys and they remain one of our favourite animals. If there is a place that not only has wild monkeys but also hot springs, it will definitely be one of our tops picks of any trip. Believe it or not, it is not difficult to find a place like that in Japan, but Beppu sure was easy to like.

03 – Buddhist Temple Stay

Probably one of the most personally rewarding experiences from our travels, staying for 2 nights at Golgul-sa near Gyoengju, South Korea. It was fun, insightful, exhausting and painful.

02 – Chengdu’s Pandas

They are adorable, even more than one can ever imagine and as the animal lovers that we are, completely irresistible. Chengdu, China, is a nice enough place to be in anyhow, but the pandas are amazing.

01 – Tokyo And Sumo Wrestling Live

Probably our favourite city on the planet, we are big fans of Japan, and this was our 3rd visit to this versatile city. I mean, can anyone tell me of a place were you can get a cat café, robots, electronics, manga, delicious food, crazy fashion, ancient culture, friendly people and on top of that, this time we got to watch sumo wrestling live! We will surely be back.

Day 242 – A Vacation From The Vacation

Having been on the road for over 200 days and starting to get a bit weary, our plan for Thailand was to simply find a nice beach and relax for the two weeks we had left.

After waking up on the train and arriving in Surat Thani, we spent a few hours on a bus and got on the “express” boat to Ko Phangan (aka. Koh Pha Ngan). With the sun shining, turquoise water and green islands the vacation mood begun to kick in.

Having looked around on the net and thumbed through an old Lonely Planet, we picked a beach called Mae Had and decided to spend our first two nights in a cabana at the Royal Orchid – the cheapest place on the beach that had a home page!

The only disadvantage was that it was located on the eastern part of Mae Had, which has nice sand for sunbathing but it was muddy, rocky and a bit dirty in the water. It was also full of fishermen’s boats that would get stranded daily at low tide. Luckily the west beach was no more than a 3-minute-walk away.

Now this is what we came for! The island has a narrow sand bank connecting it to the mainland and dividing Mae Had into the east and west parts. During high tide it would submerge (the connection, not the entire island!) but you could still wade over if you wanted to. One morning we walked over and explored the deserted resort, but it wasn’t that exciting.

A beach dog who looked like a pitbull taking a rest in the shadow. There were quite a few stray dogs every where. They walked around a lot, but it seemed like they had their favourite areas to stay in. Some were a bit shy while they still wanted to be near humans, so they would often come and lie 1-2 meters away from you. Others seemed more affectionate and came closer so you could pet them.

Mae Had is supposed to be one of the best snorkelling places in the area, yet I was a little bit disappointed. I guess it’s not the optimal time of the year, visibility was decent only one day and ranged from quite bad to very bad all the other days.

Pretty much all the coral are dead, possibly from an overabundance of snorkellers and divers – many not knowing or just not caring that you damage the corals by wearing shoes and walking on them – or perhaps killed by global warming. But there was a fair amount of fishes to look at.

These fish weren’t shy at all and followed me around, while others (not pictured) fled the second I pointed the camera at them.

A pair of giant clams.

Some of the few colourful things I saw.

One of the bottom-dwelling fishes used its fins like limbs to move around on the ground. I think it looks like it has the potential to evolve into crawling up on dry land! Well, it would probably get eaten by a dog if it tried to, now that we already have land animals.

These photos aren’t representative of the snorkelling at Ko Phangan (at this time of the year), and I think all of them were taken on 2 or 3 days out of the 11 we spent at this beach. In 90% of the time you would just swim around looking at sand or rocks.

The happy snorkellers! This day there were big waves and visibility less than 2 meters, but at least the weather was nice above the surface!

Some coral that has been washed up on the shore.

We had lots of great Thai food at the local restaurant. The cabana was cheaper, staff friendlier and food tastier compared to the similar resort on the west beach, so we ended up staying at Royal Orchid all the time.

The local beach dog, named Binky by some Dutch kids, or maybe that was her real name but I don’t think she had an owner. She was very cute but a little spoiled with all the affection everybody was giving her. One night she woke us up by scratching our door, but we didn’t let her in.

While in China we watched a documentary about squid fishing in Thailand. They use lots of extremely bright lamps on boats, and gradually turn them off to lure squids into their nets. Some nights we saw these boats, shining like miniature suns out on the ocean.

We got a few lovely sunsets from the restaurant – when the sky wasn’t covered with a thick blanket of clouds.

And the rest of this post is dedicated to a stray kitten we found.

When I first saw it, it was lying on a shelf  in a never-used store, mewling weakly. I went there to pet it and it was very happy to get a little attention. It looked so feeble that I thought it had been abandoned and got lost.

Gradually we learned that this scrawny little cat was quite fierce for its size, and could definitely fend for itself. When it saw a dog it curved its back, hissed and tried to make a long threatening mewl. Though being a kitten, the latter sounded so pathetic that we couldn’t help laughing a little. The dogs just ignored it.

Another day it caught a tiny mouse, but it squeaked so heart-breaking every time the cat pounced it that we felt a bit sad.

Sleeping on the reception desk. We didn’t find out if they got red paw prints everywhere later.

Just in a few days we’ll see our own cat again. Looking forward to it.

Day 177 – The Shiny Uncle Who Loves Children

When leaving Beppu station we were assaulted, I mean greeted, by a statue of “Shiny Uncle” who according to the plaque loved children (and for reasons unknown had a demon baby hanging on to his coat).

Beppu is pretty much an onsen (hot spring bath) town, but bath houses aren’t that camera friendly so we don’t have many photos to show. Once we went to an onsen where we got a private room, but well, we didn’t have the camera with us. But the water was really warm and nice!

The view from Beppu Tower was pretty good. You can see the beach, but the weather wasn’t that good.

I guess you know by now that we’re rather fond of monkeys, so with a monkey park nearby we borrowed a pair of bikes from the hostel and went.

“And you will go that way!”

Before meeting the monkeys we were reminded of how to not interact with them. It could be summed up as “don’t be a douche with the monkeys”.

Aww, aren’t they cute?

Kawaii (cute) or kowai (scary)? The place was really full of monkeys but they seemed calmer and less aggressive than the ones in Kyoto. All the visitors, and the monkeys behind them, were lined up against a fence with a member of the staff on the other side talking in a microphone. Not really understanding what he was saying I didn’t bother, but it turned out to be feeding time. However, the monkeys were incredibly quick to grab their food and then scattered, so I missed all the action.

Small monkey eating his food.

A monkey who took more than she could eat, so she sneaked away trying to hide all the bits she’s carrying while nervously looking over her shoulder.

“Hmm, is his potato tastier than mine?”

After lunch it was playtime, with the youngsters running, jumping and climbing all over the place.

And after that they started grooming each other.

Having climbed down from the mountain we went to the beach, complete with pirate ship and all, but it got cloudy, windy and a little bit rainy. Besides, the beach was full of signs in Japanese, where the only kanji we recognised was “stop”, so I didn’t dare going for a swim. Later we found out that the signs only prohibited fishing.

Cycling back to town, white steam plumes from the hot springs were visible, maybe because of the colder temperature.

The hostel, Khaosan, had an opening party for their second building in the town (half a block away from the first one). We were treated to home made pizza, takoyaki (squid balls), shochu and plum wine. It doesn’t look much like balls yet, but that’s me cooking takoyaki! We had a nice evening that was rounded off in the hostel’s own onsen, but it wasn’t mixed gender so it was only two Germans, a Dutchman and I. It was the day before my birthday but it was almost a birthday party, and we spent most of the next day on a train, but that’s another story.

Day 153 – Tropical Australia

Arriving in Cairns was like arriving in a different country, or a different planet. The air was humid and hot and the green, lush hills felt exotic.

Our couchsurfing host received warmly and took us around the beaches of Cairns. Johan was determined to hop into the water, but it was a bit too windy for me.

We took a stroll in the botanical garden and got to see several tropic plants that thrive in the area.

In a small alley we found this creative wall of beautiful graffiti.

We spent some time by the open air pool by the harbor. Although the air was hot the water was quite cold.

Day 110 – Road Tripping Middle Earth

We arrived in Auckland, New Zealand on day 104. It felt clean, green and organized but being on South America mode everything felt extremely expensive and suddenly we were not being very organized ourselves. We hadn’t been able to find a New Zealand guide-book while in South America, which added to our general confusion, and in Auckland they were all sold out.

We stayed at a hostel in town and desperately sought for a place with free wi-fi, which was hard to find, but finally, a block from our hotel we found a small café, Victoria Jean’s Café, with free wi-fi. Since we were back in the high consumer part of the world we finally were able to, well, spend our money, Johan got a hair cut (finally) and I got my watch repaired. On our second day in town we found a guide-book and on our third we decided we wanted to rent a camper van, since it seemed the cheapest choice, and go on a road trip.

Of course, it wasn’t just to walk into a car rental and drive away with a van, but finally we found a company that could rent us a van for the next day.

We were a bit nervous about driving on the left (wrong) side a of the road, but it turned out that it wouldn’t be our biggest concern. New Zealand seems to have only ever winding roads and people drive at 100 kph (or more) even though it is one turn after another, maybe you have to be raised with it, we drove mostly at about 80 kph and feared for our life while doing it.

We headed out to Coromandel Peninsula and the landscape reassured us that we had made a good choice in going on a road trip. It felt like freedom on four wheels.

When we saw a beautiful scenery we stopped to photograph it, and when we were hungry we stopped to eat, as simple as that. Soon we had even forgotten that we were driving on the left.

We wanted to go all the way to the top of the peninsula and stay at a secluded camp by the beach, but since the sun was setting, the road was small and of gravel we stopped at Fantail Bay DOC campsite for one night. That is when we realized that even though our insurance covered gravel roads, it didn’t cover this specific road, oh well, a bit late now.

We left the next morning to get to our final goal, Fletcher Bay campsite, as far north on the peninsula as we could get. The reward was stunning.

Coromandel peninsula amazed us and we were hungry for more. In over 100 days we have been travelling around the world and we thought that nature could not impress on us anymore, but we were wrong. So watch out New Zealand, because we are on the road in this fantastic land of yours.

Day 108 – How We Survived The Tsunami

After our first two “cheap” nights, we took an early bus to Moorea Pearl Resort & Spa. We had opted for a beach cabin, which was one of their less expensive accommodations but still cost about €280 per night excluding breakfast (another €20-30 per person for breakfast, if you are wondering, but there’s a supermarket 5 minutes away). Luckily we had paid for the entire stay in advance, so we didn’t feel the strain on our travel budget!

Ok, the front might look a little modest, but once inside the lobby everything had the feeling of a luxury hotel. Compared to hotels of equal standard, our room was not horribly expensive (though breakfast buffet would have been included in Sweden :)), but Moorea Pearl do of course also have much more expensive cabins.

One side of the inside of our cabin, which was pretty much flawless. Big comfy bed, big sliding doors to the sun deck, a sofa, decent bathroom with shower and of course some fresh flowers for decoration. I think the luxury (i.e. a lot more expensive) cabins had bathtubs, but I could jump down from the sun deck and be in the ocean in less than 5 seconds so I don’t really see the point of that.

The snorkelling was quite different compared to outside the camping. Close to the minimal beach there was a wall of coral and after that there was a steep drop. So instead of navigating a maze of anemones and coral you’d glide along the outside of the quite flat reef. On the plus side there were larger schools of fish at the resort, and the fish were bigger, of different kinds and not as afraid of tourists.

Adri snorkelling around. We borrowed flippers from the hotel, which was actually a free service (you could also get mask if you didn’t have one, or a kayak).

I tried to take a photo of the starry sky, but the Earth rotates so fast that they turn into lines. Well this photo is actually from a night at the camping (I hope you are satisfied with our honesty, Anthony!) but I needed an illustration for what I’m about to tell you; At 2 o’clock in the middle of the night, Adri’s mother called and woke us up. Apparently there had been a huge earthquake in Japan, and a 10m high tsunami was coming our way! We didn’t believe it was going to be that bad, Japan is far away and our cabin is on concrete pillars, but eventually Adri went to check with the hotel staff. No tsunami warning for Moorea had been issued, so we went back to sleep.

For about one hour, then the phone rang again… This time it was a Swedish telemarketing company that wanted me to answer some questions. We kindly told them to go to hell and tried to go back to sleep, again.

But our sleep did not last long this time either. At 5:00 we were woken by the phone in the cabin. A tsunami warning had been issued, and the hotel needed to be evacuated. *sigh*

While all the guests were gathering in the lobby we were given coffee, juice and bread to wake up. We also met some nice journalists from USA that were writing articles on different subjects on French Polynesia, and were interviewed about how we thought Moorea is as a honeymoon destination (technically the around-the-world trip is our honeymoon, it has just been delayed a few years).

The hotel lobby was about 6m above sea level, but apparently we weren’t far enough from the ocean so as the sun was rising we had to relocate to a soccer field.

Being on a soccer field, one thing lead to another, which meant that Anthony scraped up his arm and leg pretty badly. Well it probably looked worse than it was. On the right is another of our journalist friends, Jeff, who was there to test the golf course – given that it survived the tsunami.

Discussing, it turned out that we all had heard different stories of animals being able to sense tsunamis before they hit. However, we couldn’t agree if chickens had this ability, but the ones we saw seemed pretty calm. We also saw a dog running by, but it was running towards the ocean and might have just been generally excited like dogs tend to be.

After a few hours we were told that the danger was over, and we went back to the hotel. We were almost a little disappointed, but there was no visible trace of any tsunami except that the sand was a little wet – though only within 1m from the ocean. The hotel was kind enough to treat us to a free breakfast buffet.

More snorkelling, but with a cautious eye on the horizon in case the tsunami would return.

There was some rain in the afternoon which caused the crabs to come out of their nests, but they were really quick to hide when they spotted a human.

Our final day in Moorea coming to an end. As mentioned, we really liked our cabin, but it was a bit of a turn-off that the (more expensive) over-water cabins were built on ugly concrete pillars on top of the reef with a length of cabins running in parallel to the entire beach. Since they were so close they pretty much blocked all our view.

No need for Photoshop (Or Bibble in our case) with colours like this on the sky!

Judging from what people have searched for when they found our blog, there seems to be a lot of people thinking about going to Moorea Pearl Resort and Spa. To them I’d like to say; If you like luxury, having things arranged for you and have the money, it’s definitely a great place to spend a relaxing vacation. If you, on the other hand, don’t feel the need for the extras, I think that a room or cabin at the Chez Nelson camping gives a lot more value for money.

Day 107 – Paradise On A Budget

Maybe some of you remember how we bragged about our upcoming luxury stay in Moorea, French Polynesia, in one of our first blog entries: Moorea. Well, we got our flights changed a couple of times and ended up staying in Moorea for 4 nights instead of 2. Seeing that we couldn’t afford the luxury hotel on our current budget we opted for the cheapest solution, to stay in the Chez Nelson camping and rent a cabin there, during our first 2 nights. It turned out to be paradise on earth and had we known this then we would have skipped the luxury hotel.

At the airport we met a couple of Belgian campers, Colombe and Mikael, we headed to the camp with the first ferry and had breakfast there.

The place was absolutely stunning and we were dead tired from our 5 hour delayed flight from Easter Island, so it was easy to feel relaxed. Even more, we were amazed by the calmness of everybody we met, there was nobody to sell us anything or hassle us with tour offers.

To our delight, there were plenty of cuddly animals in the camp. The kitchen was closely guarded by 5 cats, 2 of which ate breakfast with us every morning. And on the beach there were 2 puppies that were happy to stop and play for a while.

Since French Polynesia and especially Moorea is extremely expensive we decided to do absolutely nothing while there.

The most straining activity we did, was snorkelling, since we had our gear with us, it costed us nothing.

The island of Moorea is surrounded by a reef and outside the camp the beach was like a giant pool with a labyrinth of coral that was a delight to explore.

The under water world fascinated us and it was all there for free, for us to see.

Absolutely everything is very expensive in Moorea, so we had brought with us food from Peru, rice, pasta and tuna in a can. This way we kept our budget down and bought only the absolutely necessary.

Walking to the store we came across this bird that seemed to have problems flying, we did our best to get it over a fence it desperately was trying to get over. Unfortunately the next morning we saw that it hadn’t made it.

The camping was a great place to meet lots of other travellers and we had a great time, sharing food and drinks.

Other activities that we undertook in the camping was the opening of one of the many coconuts found around the place. Without any previous skill in the matter it was hard work, although later we found a machete that did the work much easier.

Day 105 – A Giant Head In The Sand

I consider the Easter Island – Rapa Nui – one of the most exotic places on the planet, because of its mystical history, frequent occurrence in literature and since it’s almost the exact opposite of the world from our home in Sweden. Therefore I was of course very exited that we managed to squeeze it into our around-the-world trip, and as an added bonus we would fly onwards to Tahiti instead of having go back to South America’s mainland.

The B&B owner picked us up at the airport, as there is no public transportation and taxis are expensive. She welcomed us with traditional necklaces made of fresh flowers that smelled wonderful.

But to continue the story; At first we were supposed to stay 3 nights on Rapa Nui, but our flights were changed twice and in the end we got only a single night on the island! To make matters worse, the flight from Lima was 2.5 hours late which meant that we spent half the night on the airport and only got about 4 hours sleep on the plane before we arrived in the morning.

To explore all the sights we rented a jeep, which turned out to be good value for the money (everything is really expensive on Easter Island, including guided tours). But do you notice something else in the picture? Yes, the sky was covered in white clouds, that gradually grew more compact. It didn’t last long before the rain was pouring down.

Trying to get a perfect shot of the Moai.

The Moai statues are several metres high and got to weigh tons. Can’t even imagine how they got those stone hats on top of the heads, but I guess that’s what we would have been told if we took the guided tour.

The beach looked pretty nice, and there were actually a few people bathing, but the weather was a big turnoff for us.

There weren’t a lot of impressive wildlife or colourful flowers in the countryside, but we spotted a few.

It turned out to be difficult to take good photos of dark stone statues against a bright white sky, with rain constantly landing on the camera lens. I would like to thank Canon for making stuff that can withstand a good amount of rain and Bibble, photo editing software that has a native Linux version, for allowing me to get the details showing! And speaking of Bibble, don’t photos look more crisp and colourful now? Unfortunately we only have a time limited trial version, maybe I’ll get the full version for birthday present? 😉

Actually, all Moai have fallen or were torn down by European explorers (I think), but I know that all the standing Moai have been raised and had their hats restored in modern times.

In the evening we took another, unpaved, path. Unfortunately Adri was beginning to feel sick, and the bumpy road wasn’t helping.

As the sun set we stopped at a site just north of Hanga Roa and our hotel.

The second day the weather was great, but Adri was sick and had to stay at the B&B and we couldn’t afford to rent the car one more day just so I could drive around and take new photos with better light and more beautiful sky. I just took a walk to the closest site.

So when our travel agent insured us that two days would be enough to see Easter Island she might have been right – in theory. But you don’t need a lot of bad luck to have a sub-optimal, as I don’t want to use the word “ruined”, experience. We came to see the Moai, and we did. They were awesome. Though I would rather have had a few days more. On the plus side we got two extra nights on Moorea, but more on that in the next post!

The plane was 5 hours late, which we found out when we got to the airport. The B&B allowed us to hang out in the common areas all day after checkout, and had free airport transfer, but now we didn’t really know what to do and got bored quickly. We took a walk to the shore, but the sun went down within an hour and soon we had to return to the airport. We got a complimentary snack and drank some Nørdic Mist (That’s right, just put some dots above vowels or a dash trough an o and you instantly have a Viking feel to your product name!)

Day 104 – Back In The Heat

The road from Cusco to Nazca was far from straight, which got us both a little seasick from the bus’ constant swaying and made it difficult to sleep. We regretted not taking seats on the bottom floor as we were recommended, but the front seats on the second floor were available. Every 50m or so there were crosses to mark where someone had missed a turn and plunged to their death.

It really felt good to be back in warmer climate again. This photo makes the city look really lush and green, but since it’s a desert town it was actually very hot and dry. Can you see something beige at the horizon? That would be Cerro Blanco, a huge sand dune – the world’s highest according to the citizens of Nazca but I’ve heard that claim in other places too – some kilometres away.

The main attraction in the area is of course the Nazca lines, constructed by a pre-Inca culture and preserved in the stone desert for hundreds of years. The best way to see them is of course from a small aircraft, but it was a little too expensive for us (about US$100 per person) so we went on a private – well almost, there was one German guy joining us – guided tour instead.

We also went to the less popular Palpa watchtower where you could see even older geoglyphs. In the photo you can see a family, from left to right: mother, father, son, daughter and up in the corner a (future) baby.

One of the stops on the tour was the Maria Reiche museum where we could see aerial views of the lines, read stories about the early works of discovering and protecting the lines and of course we saw these two cute cats taking a nap plus a scary mummy with tattoos.

The road from Nazca to Lima was thankfully straight.

Adri’s mother’s friend’s mother joined us for a walk in the city centre. I think Lima was a quite nice modern city, with great weather and a couple of beautiful colonial houses.

We visited the catacombs, where photography is prohibited, but I managed to get this shot. I was a little disappointed with the guided tour – the only way you were allowed to visit – since we spent a lot of time in the monastery above and were rushed through the actual catacombs below.

A quick stop at a small local market.

Mmmm, expensive milkshakes and looking at the view from the Larcomar shopping centre.

The second day Mery, a friend of the family we were staying with, joined us and treated us to a city tour by taxi.

The fountain park in Lima, which name I can’t remember, turned out to be a nice place to take a walk or cool down in a fountain. We didn’t join in the water splashing as the sun was setting, and neither did we wait for it to get dark so that they would turn on all the lighting, but at least the entry wasn’t horribly overpriced as touristy things tend to be.

Before dropping us off at the airport our hosts invited us to a grill house to taste their famous chicken.

Day 58 – Desert Meets Ocean

We continue north along Chile and we are fascinated by the dryness of the Atacama desert, however, there are other things to see in the desert besides rocks and cactuses. We decide to stay a couple of nights in the small port town of Chañaral and take a day trip to the Parque Nacional Pan de Azúcar. In the park there is a small community of fishermen by a large sandy beach, and where there are fishermen, there is fish and bird life.

The pelican is such an odd animal, its size surprises me and they move somewhat awkward and clumsily, still they are beautiful in their own way.

Of course, there is a beautiful white-sandy beach, but as in many places in Chile, it is not suitable for bathing. Large waves break on the shore and one can see the currents tearing up the beach and making life hard for the fishermen and their boats.

We laid on the sand sunbathing and hoped that the huge waves wouldn’t come all the way up to where we were sitting.

The morning catch being displayed outside the restaurant.

And here it is on our plates, delicious.

After lunch we took a boat tour out to the Pan de Azúcar island. Our guide told us about the fauna along the ride.

We were lucky enough to spot this family of birds cuddling on the rocks.

Rocks.

Finally we got to see what we came here to see, the Humboldt penguin, they are just as cute and dignified as you’d expect. They have such an intelligent air to themselves.

The penguins took a chance to show off their best skills, here we found two penguins serenading away.

This pelican must be saying something very interesting, with that crowd.

A nutria showed up on the rocks, although it was hard to photograph and it quickly disappeared in the water.

Nature can be cruel sometimes, we found this baby sea wolf a bit away from the sea wolf colony, it had probably got lost or been abandoned there. It would probably not find its way home. We wanted to take it with us.

We found the sea wolf colony further up along the shore, they are the Humboldt penguin’s biggest predator.

This beautiful sea wolf was posing feverishly when we passed by.

What a poser!

Another one was taking a nap.

A pelican showing us its best angle.

When they fly, the pelicans look like a completely different animal.

Back on land, some of the desert flora.

Ocean meets land.

The vultures were also around in hopes of a piece of fish.

Back in Chañaral by sunset.