Jerry Peek's Travels

I love to travel, then to spend enough time to get to know the place. Here are some of my favorite places.

• Micronesia is an area of the western Pacific ocean with lots of small islands. I'm just getting to know it: distances are great, so traveling to Micronesia and between its islands takes time and planning (and some money...). The islands are different from each other. Some, like Guam, are fairly ugly and crowded, while others are empty and placid. Some, like Chuuk, have problems with crime; others are peaceful and friendly. A lot of the islands have beautiful scenery underwater as well as above.
  • Jane's Oceania Home Page is packed with all kinds of information -- lots of photos, a chat room, even a poem she wrote! -- and lovingly maintained. You can find Micronesia links here, as well as information about the rest of Oceania.
  • Micronesia photo tour has photos from some parts of Micronesia during my trips there.
  • My Micronesia Links point to various pages around the Web that I found as I planned my travels. This isn't the best page of Micronesia links, and I'm not keeping it up to date (sorry), but it may be a help.
• Vietnam is a country that's just getting its tourism feet on the ground. Although a lot of it is densely populated, it's still beautiful. The people are friendly, the food is delicious, and traveling there can be cheap (I stayed in two- or three-star-type hotel rooms for less than US$10 a night). It's a long, skinny country; the weather varies a lot from north to south. Plan ahead, but be prepared to be flexible once you're there: I bet you'll want to stay longer.
  • Lonely Planet Guidebooks' Vietnam Page is from the perspective of an alternative travel guidebook.
  • Hello, Hanoi! is the first of several photo pages of my trip around Vietnam (follow the link at the end to the next pages, too).
  • Alan Manness' Vietnam 09 photos are of an adventurous traveler's trip around the North.
    • Starting up in the tourist industry and looking for project finance? See Developers International for their worldwide project finance service.
• South Africa surprised me by all of its variety and beauty, and by the optimism of its people after all of the difficult changes their country has been through.
  • Lonely Planet Guidebooks' South Africa Page is from the perspective of an alternative travel guidebook.
  • Nature South Africa has guides for outdoor activities -- especially around Cape Town.
  • Kruger National Park is the first of several photo pages of my trip around South Africa (follow the link at the end to the next pages, too).
• Chile is more European than almost any country in South America, with so much variety along its long skinny sliver of the southwestern coast. The north has desert where it never rains (the climate at the coast, Iquique and Antofagasta, is nearly perfect!). The central regions show that this is a highly-developed country: the biggest concentration of industry and people (and some great wine!) that almost made me think I was in the USA. The south is wild and rugged: huge tracts of forest, glaciers, and a close approach to Antarctica. Far off the west coast is Easter Island, a completely different place.
  • F&K's Chile Trips Written and maintained by two Chileans.
  • Lonely Planet Guidebooks' Chile Page is from the perspective of an alternative travel guidebook.
  • My photographic tour of Easter Island (follow the link at the end to the next page, too).
  • My notes about studying Spanish have tips I've learned from my times in Ecuador and Guatemala.
• London is like a home away from home to me. I lived there in 1997-98 while I was on the one-year Masters degree course in Computing Science at Birkbeck College. It's a huge city, with 2000 years of history (and almost that many cultures!), so I won't even try to describe it. All I'll say is that, if you visit, I hope you'll look past the hyped tourist sights and the stereotypes of Londoners as cold and reserved.
  • Everyone's heard of the famous London West End theatre. Much more interesting, I think, is London fringe theatre. (My favourite on-line listing service closed down. Some venues I like include the Battersea Arts Centre; Bush Theatre; The Man in the Moon Theatre in Kings Road, Chelsea; and the Bridewell Theatre, just off Fleet Street.) Between West End and fringe, I'd bet you could go to a different production every night of the year and never see the same show twice.
  • How many cities have at least five full-time symphony orchestras, three (two?) opera companies, and so much more classical music that you could also go to those concerts every night without repeating? And that's only the classical music: then there are all the jazz and other clubs: London is a great city for jazz. The really unique classical music is the two-month series of concerts every summer, The Proms, where you can hear more than 70 concerts by some of the world's best orchestras and soloists for less than $200 US. That's less than $3 per concert!
  • Here are photos of my first London neighborhood and some favorite places.
  • NetLondon has links to lots of other London info.
  • I learned so much about London on walks with the well-informed and entertaining guides of The Original London Walks.

Last change: 15 September 2009