Everglades National Park: Gurl! You bess be crazie playing wit tha alig8tors in tha Evaglades! Shiiiiit!
Miriams attempts at rising at 9am to catch her class were in vain and I dragged myself off her couch to wake her about 10 minutes before she was supposed to be there. We used the extra time to pack her things and decided it would be easiest for me to drive her to University and then we could leave as soon as she was done. Why this was a good idea was never explained to me since she lived North and the
New York: Chasing Dinosaurs
George went to work early and I tried to remember how I get to the train station for my express train into Manhattan. Finding the station was fine, getting back wouldn’t be so easy. I took the 10.05 express train to 125th in Harlem and got off and went looking for the subway. Its a pretty poor neighborhood and the African Americans outnumbered everyone else by 20 to 1. I started wondering if getting a late train back from here at 1am would be a good idea…. I decided to buy a 7 day pass, I might only stay in NYC for a few days but it would be a saving if I used it for 3 or more days. I jumped on a train heading downtown, went too far, came back and failed to read the subway map correctly, ending up on the west side and thinking I was on the east and then walking the wrong way. I was saved by a local girl when she saw me looking confusedly at my map and pointing me in the right direction. I was there at 11.25 and no renae. She had no mobile either so I had no way to contact her, nothing to do but grab a soft jalepeno pretzel and wait and see. She came about 15 minutes later having sat at her subway stop waiting 30 minutes for her train. She only had 10 minutes travelling time but when the trains dont run you go nowhere.
Tags: guitars, mistake, freak, weather, map, seat, maps, girls, wanderings, stupidity, rocks, animals, Travel, museums, locals, sally, rainBack in the U.S.S.A!
Well I made it to the States, Boston to be specific, although I wasn’t completely sure it was going to happen. Customs and immigration were a nightmare and we got here extremely late on the Monday night. I had hitched a ride with the Boston crowd who had come down for the weekend and they were a good group to know. The previous night we had spent dancing until the early hours and I threw myself upon their generosity and begged for a lift. I had to get out quick before Daniella‘s crazy room mate came back and knifed me in the early hours. I really need to check up on what I said still.
(more…)
Bongos, Be-Bop and Strawberries
As drunk as I was I still had something to remember, the place to meet for the following night. I got Jo to shout it into my camera as a video so I would remember. But first I needed some food to recover so I heading back to Osu for a bad coffee, terrible sandwich and dodgy cake. For about £4, but thats hangovers for you. I didn’t get up until about 2pm so it was already late. I just hung out reading in the food court, watching the kids have birthday parties reading on the phone. I went to use the net for a while too and send a few mails. Haven’t been using it much as its so damn slow and the PCs are horrendous too. Welcome back to the ninties in some cases….
At about 7pm I needed to be making a move to meet up with the people from last night so I walked down the street and there are Jo (and Pam, the aussie woman she has been temporarily travelling with) talking to a taxi driver so we all hoped in together. He didn’t know where it was (neither did we) but we knew the
Tua is your biggest fan!
general area and headed over there, asking another taxi driver on the way for directions. It was a concert at the ‘Alliance Francias’, some franco institution that loves to promote French culture (or language) wherever the poms have too much influence. I ran into Renet from the taxi the day before sans Peter who was at the airport about to go home then went and sat with Anna and Tua for the concert.
Talk about numb bum! I thought it was supposed to be a gig, but they got the french consul and the mali ambassador up to give a speech (in french) and boy could those guys talk. Half an hour we all sat there listening to god knows what! Speak a language we all know…. Anyway, eventually Habib Koite came on and I must say they were pretty good. African band from Mali, guitars and drums, and they looked happy to be there, unlike the miserable bastards at Ryans. I got up for a boogie, but by the end of the night there was no room at the front and they were pulling people onto the (rather low) stage. Jo had a great time as HK are
Finger clicking good! :p
Me, Jeff and Anna show our appreciate of Jazz. Nice! :p
one of her favourite bands, dont think she got to meet them though, but I snagged her a band poster off a noticec board and got extra brownie points. We sat around in the bar area afterwards as people slowly left, there was no cold beer left and they let you order sandwiches only to come and tell you you wouldn’t be getting them after all….
Time for more music! We got 2 taxis and headed off to ‘Jazztone’…. oh dear! Yeah, the band was in full swing, the be-bop was coming out and people were scatting all over the place. Expensive as hell (like 60p for a *small* beer!?!?) but at least they were cold and they still served food. I dont really appreciate jazz, but it was ok. The band was from all over, with several members Americans only here for a while. Some guy got up and sang ‘when the saints go marching in’ and I chatted to him at the end, he was a ghanian living in LA and playing Jazz in the states. Nice guy, couldn’t find the CD he showed me on Amazon though. I got up and played some ‘Jazz’ too at
Country *and* Western!
the end, I mean, how hard can it be, just hit some random keys right? :p
2am and it was still to early to go home so we headed back to Osu in 2 Taxis, me with Anna/Jo/Tua. Seems the right choice as the place we wanted to go was closed and we assumed (falsely) everyone else was going to bed. (They hunted for us all over Accra for 2 hours, oops!). We had no idea where to go, but the Taxi driver (who was a country loving cowboy) stuck on his Parton tape and took us over to the Strawberry spot across from the Orangery Restaurant. There was the English Anna I met in the pub the night before along with Paul (dressed like a knob, it was his birthday) and a half dozen other young volunteers. We all grabbed some beers and introduced ourselves and got down to a good chin wag. We were soon up dancing to the music they were playing and by now I was recognising more and more songs they were playing. There are some great local bands in Ghana and I resolved to track some of them down when I went home.
Strawberry Dance
Of course the sight of half a dozen white girls dancing drew in all the local blokes, but they weren’t too aggressive and we all had a good laugh. Where else would you get your Taxi driver hanging around to dance and chat at 4am?
It started getting light and there was some talk of the beach going on when running up the street past the spot came about 30 people in shorts and trainers out for their morning run, before the heat got too much. I was quite drunk and when a few people joined in with the run I had to go along as well. Damn steep hill though and after 2 mins and a failed attempt at taking some photos I gave up and walked back down. I think Anna and Paul kept going for a mile as they didn’t come back for 20 minutes! I would have gone further, but…. what was the point? :p
I then had my first 2 bad encounters in the country. I was walking back down the deserted road to the bar and I hear a car beeping behind me. Nothing unusual in that, I’m white, I love it
when Taxis beep at me because I’m too rich and lazy to walk anywhere. My first assumption was correct, it was a taxi, but sitting inside it was a policeman that then proceeded to shout at me, asking if I owned the road and what I was doing. I wanted to say ‘listen pal, make a f**king pavement by the road that isn’t strewn with rubble, open sewers and plastic bags and I’ll walk on it. Until then get you stupid beeping croney to move the taxi to the other side of the *empty* road and just go around me. Wanker!’. But he had the gun so I stayed quiet and apologised. Arsehole.
Then I got chatting to a guy called ‘Lyrics’…. heh, right, who was as camp as christmas. He started going on and on about Jazztone and didn’t quite believe me when I said I was in there earlier. We started chatting with the gold ‘ol taxi driver and a black girl that was dancing with us earlier when I saw 3 local guys walking down the road. I knew they were trouble as soon as I saw them, but they didn’t head towards me or the girls so I wasn’t that worried. You could see the one with the brown shirt on had a bad attitude, like a guy in the pub that just wants a fight. He started talking to Paul and pulled him of the side of the road to talk to him, he was acting all friendly but you could see him holding Pauls arms and I knew there would be trouble. Then he puts his hand in Pauls pocket and Paul’s pushing him away, telling him to fek off. Paul goes back over to the main group but then this arsehole starts trying to pull the same trick on the Canadian lad who hasn’t seen this. I go over and tell the lad to leave, go join his friends, meanwhile Anna is down the road walking to some bloke and Im worrying about her. The arsehole comes up to me to shake my hand, which he does but Im not getting into this bullshit and I get over to the main group.
The spot is closed now and they’re tidying up, but the arsehole kicks a big beer bottle at the bar. The guys cleaning up go mad and start shouting at him, his mates come up and back him up, Im thinking its all going to kick off, but they go off down the street. Phew. Then 2 minutes later its decided we’re not going the beach, we’re not taking a taxi (the poor taxi driver waited for us for about 3 hours) and we were all going for breakfast. Most of the volunteers had left by this point (they had to get a bus at 9am :p) so there was only 6 of us, but we’re going in the same direction as the arsehole and since everyone walks so damn slowly in this country we soon catch him up and he’s trying to shake everyones hand again. He gets mine and when I force him to let go he says ‘Dont touch me, I’ll F**k you up!!’. Muppet. Eventually everyone realises we need to get away frorm him and backtrack and go down a different street looking for food.
All we could find was the ‘fan man’, which is pretty good. Everybig city in Ghana have guys on bikes with big ice cream boxes attached to the front selling ice cream. They do a great frozen strawberry yogurt one for 3.000 cedis. Very nice when you’re stuck on a stationary bus! I got the round in and we carried on looking for breakfast, and who do we run into again? Mr Arsehole :p Thankfully that was the last we saw of him. We found a little stall and had omlette sandwichs and milo before jumping in taxis for home. It was 7am and already heating up, not that I cared because I had holy AC! I got back to the Guesthouse in time for breakfast, I hope they assumed I had been out for a morning walk, but I doubt it. I ate my brown rolls with jam and jumped into bed as the choir played sweet music in the halls below. They had given the drummer a day off.
Tags: beers, cars, photos, camping, mate, stupidity, franco, Travel, locals, girls, wanker, beds, guesthouse, photo, mail, huntingRoad trip!
I managed to crawl out of my sweaty room in time for a quick breakfast of
chocolate spread on bread and milo. The woman looked at me like i was mad for
wanting food at 11.30! I had decided to head down the coast, apparently
busua was a backpacker mecca in Ghana, surely there would be parties and
beach volleyball, chicks in bikinis and guitars around the fire. Perfect! I
grabbed a taxi and headed for the STC bus station, after allowing several
people to push in front of me, I shrugged off my stupid british way of
queuing and got a ticket for the 2pm bus to Takoradi. It was 12.30pm, I asked
the helpdesk where the bus left from and the woman said the 12pm bus was just
there and I could get on that one. Result! I climbed on and off we went right
away.
No A/C and I sat right at the front so the view was pretty crap, but at least
I was getting out of boring accra. I could already smell the banana pancakes!
The road was excellent for 2 hours but after that it was being repaired and in
variable condition. People would be selling things at the toll booths and
police check points, hawking pineapples and dead bush animals at the side of
the road. Not much in the way of jungle really, lots of foliage but not the
thick jungle you’d expect in a rainy country like ghana. It was nearly dark
by the time I got to the city of Takoradi, so I got a room, went for a meal
of red-red and read another novel on my phone. Restaurant service was
typically poor, order a drink and a meal and sit there for 15 mins before
going up to get your own drink. The reason, the sprite was finished, so
obviously i didn’t want anything else….
The hotel was a dump, but it was cheap, the batteries on my phone died after
being used all day on the bus and although there was a plug in the room, the
cable to it was inextricably cut. The guy on duty knew all about it and
showed me, quite why they couldn’t be bothered to fix it I’ll never know…
Lazy day
It rained in the morning and when I dragged myself up I found everyone eating breakfast in the room next to the dorm. It looked like a building site but I spotted a Yamaha acoustic guitar and made a mental note to check it out later. After breakfast I got out my tuner I was carrying with me (you never know…) and had a go and getting it in tune. Once I had oiled one of the pegs broke a string, restrung it with the part left ad gone through the tuning up again it sounded… awful! And it wasn’t just me, the neck had actually been broken on a boat ride and Dom had rescued it and glued it back together. I guess he shouldn’t have bothered because you could tell it was f**ked. I gave it up and returned to the routine of reading, wandering around, making coffee and skinning up. It rained a bit more later on but soon the sun made a comeback. We had evening drinks on top of Doms ‘castle’, discussing in depth how to destroy the evil local fishermen who were stealing all the islands fish. Lots of fish eagles circled overhead as the sun went down and right on cue, thousands of fruit bats lifted off from the forest in the jungle in search of their evening meal. Then we retired back to the beach and sat around chatting until it was late. ‘Nother perfect boring day!
Tags: boats, circles, sun, laziness, rain, wanderings, guitars, Travel, jungle, drinks, dorms, beaches, localsDouble Yay!!
Found my CD and I booked my flight!
Destination is a suprise for now, but its warm, I get to see something few people do (and will cost me too!) and I get 2 (maybe 3) passport stamps! The CD was downstairs in the passage with my arcade cab. Phew!
Can’t wait! Now I need to go buy some boots, maybe get my guitar patched up and find a guide book. Looks like Im shopping after work tomorrow then… Oh and video camera films (I’ve inherited another one), and film camera… and a camera battery. Shall I make a list on a piece of paper instead?? :p
Tags: Travel, guitars3 weeks in Bangkok and the worlds your oyster!
had a pretty crazy week in bangkok, first few days were a bit boring, but theres plenty to do and as soon as I hooked up with some other single travellers its been awsome. getting rather drunk nearly every night, dancing on the podium, breaking up fights, fending off the transvestite prostitutes, pretending to be swedish all night, breaking the heart of my gay hotel receptionist, sleeping all day, falling over in the toilets, having emotional breakdowns over the death of john lennon, finding new cocktails, shopping like crazy, watching the sun come up over the river, learning to dance thai style with the girls from the veggie restaraunt, improving my thai, being searched for drugs by the police (did he really have to feel my crotch?), eating pad thai, drinking mohitos, and generally trying to have a great time while being a responsible englishman abroad.
The only thing thats pissing me off, is of course that 99% of the people I meet are not leaving anytime soon (oh and my guitar was smashed on the flight…:( ). And I’ll spend in 3 weeks enough money to keep me going to 4 months. Lets hope its worth it eh? I’ll find out this afternoon….
Lets get wasted!
Next day was more of the same, bandy recovering from his poorly stomach
(and getting up at 7am to find his watch, to no avail). I’ve felt fine pretty
much the whole time, had a sore throat in bangkok but that gave our kid a
chance to oggle the attractive pharmacist in boots when I bought strepsils.
Theres not a lot to do, swim, play guitar, banana pancakes, etc etc. Great
weather, occasional showers, steady 28 degrees the whole time I reckon. Got
a bit of a tan now, nothing serious, no burns like a usually do. Can see
the white bits on my feet from my sandals nicely. I like that 
Ran into Tom the next night again and he”s been drinking since the
afternoon and was well on the way to getting completely hammered. We’d been
given flyers for toks again, free bucket of sang som which is a huge lethal
drink! The flyer said ‘lets get f**king wasted’ which is a nice thought. He
was with his ex-girlfriend, which was kinda freaky (for him). Bandy went
early and I consoled poor Tom as his ex went off with some bloke she’d met
on the ferry. Nice girl, aussie. We even got accosted by a random french
bloke on the beach who reckonned we were going to win the world cup with
‘rouuunay’ or someone. Was nice to hear someone have some faith! I had the
scary jungle trek on my own and we had arranged to leave the next day for
the trap that is bangkok. Any chance of leaving the day after…..?
hmmmmm…..
Karaoke Madness (again)
next day we woke bright and early to take advantage of another day and
another beach. We had ended up on one of the more remote beaches so getting
to where the majority of the action was entailed a trek through the jungle.
I kinda like ko samet, lots of thai tourists, enough bankpackers, not too
rowdy, not too quiet. We had a boring day, swimming, listening to Jack
Johnson (again!), eating banana pancakes, drinking shakes. We had a great
afternoon jamming away on the guitars too, until some random thai woman
opened our door and yelled “excuse me!” I think she didn’t like the sweet
music we were playing, Bandy thought she’d just got the wrong room. She
looked pissed off to me! That night we went out in search of action, but
there wasn’t much to be had. Met a english guy called Tom and took him off
to the local karaoke bar. Quite a good selection, and we broke the rules by
getting 4 songs in a row instead of the usual 2 per group. I belted out a
great ‘band on the run’, bandy muddled through àwill survive and tom make
a massive mistake with coldplays yellow because he forgot about the high
bits which he couldn’t sing due to laughing too much. The crowd was going
wild when we lauched into ‘bohemian rhapsody’, we were building up to a big
rock out climax, and just at the point of beeelzeebub having a devil set
aside for me, for meeee, for mmmeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE!! the computer crashed
and the song ended. I guess you had to be there, but I was so I dont care.
We wandered back to Toks huts and spent the rest of the night chatting to 2
danish girls who I insulted by asking if they were swedish. I dont know who
suggested the skinny dipping, but I dont really care. Although technically
it was only the boys as the girls were much more modest. Bandy lost his
watch, and now I torment him by constantly asking the time. Shame 
Jungle
treks while drunk and soaked are best avoided.
Sawadee
may as well start this mail as I wait for Bandy to get back from buying
his guitar, I think I’ll be regretting not getting one in about an hour. He’s
bought exactly the same one that Qatar Airways broke on my last trip to
Bangkok so he really knows how to annoy me!
Well I’m here, I think I’m not jet lagged, after getting up at 2pm and
working all night Sunday and then getting 2 hours sleep on the plane I didn’t sleep
last night until 2am, and I had to practically drag Bandy back out when we
somehow ended up back at the hotel at 11pm. The guy has no stamina! so
Sunday 2pm to Wednesday 2am on 2 hours sleep is pretty good :p
Yesterday was mad, got in at 7am and took a nice convoluted tour to Khoa
San Road. I was planning on ambushing bandy as I said I would be there at 11pm,
as it was he had booked the room in the place I wanted, but put it in his
name! SO the very helpful receptionist wouldn’t let me have it. Probably
just as well as I would only sleep and i needed to stay up and beat the jet
lag. After 1/2 of checking other hostels for my missing travel companion I
stagger back to the ‘New Siam’ and he turns up 10 minutes later just as I
persuade her to give me the key. Its 9am by then and the earliest he’s been
up!
Khao san hasn’t changed much since June, we have a wander, get some food at
the best Thai veggie place I know then set off looking for guitars. I knew
vaguely where it was and its nice to get away from all the tourists and
hassle of backpacker central. Of course, as soon as I told Bandy this ‘no
one speaks English round here’, the words had barely left my lips before
someone asked where we were going and what country we came from :p bloody
touts! Somehow bandy just attracts them like flies, I’m surprised he managed
to make it to the city. He got an unmarked ‘taxi‘ with 1 guy, who was
joined by 2 others. They wanted 3,000 Baht, thats 45 quid!! I got my taxi on the
meter and it was 200B and I felt ripped off cos its usually 150! He got
away with paying 1000, I would have ran to the tourist police….. scratch that,
I wouldn’t have gotten in the car!!
Still, its nice to have a friend in a strange city, or it would be if he
wanted to go out. He stayed out a bit longer than me last night and now
he’s sworn off beer….. we’ll see.
We checked out the guitar shops and carried on through Chinatown, wandering
randomly, working up a sweat, but not too much as its rather mild. About 25
degrees or so. I might have to buy some long trousers! Eventually it was a
bit too tiring and we jumped in a taxi to legendary MBK shopping mall. We
even spent some money!! 8 nice new shirts, since i deliberately came with
one t-shirt so I would have to buy some. They have glass booths up on the 6th
floor, which are supposedly sound proof, you put it your money, grab a mic
and karaoke to your hearts content. I insisted we get the outer one, and
some western guys were killing themselves walking past as I was doing my best
wacko jacko impression while singing thriller. All the locals enjoyed the
show too.
Then we went bowling, and its not exaggeration to say I kicked bandy‘s arse.
Strike on the first ball, and it was all over from then, I rattled him too
much We looked great in those white socks and blue shoes, while sipping
strawberry daquaris from martini glassed. Super!
More food at a great Tappanyaki bar up in the food court, god knows what
bandy ordered, ‘aki steak’ but I think it was squid… could have been
tripe…. oops! This trip should be much more interesting since i stopped
being vegetarian, I can stop being quite so afraid to experiment. Bit more
shopping, got sucked into the fourth floor which is a mistake, its
completely devoted to mobile phones, but I’ll be down there selling mine so
we needed to do some research.
Back on khao san its more of the same, cocktails, curry, pineapple off the
street and avoiding the lady boys. Wasn’t the best idea to try to make it a
big night after so little sleep but I had to try. Gulliver’s just didn’t
seem the same after my adventures last June, we found a nice bar with cute staff
to entertain us and hung out there until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. When
I say bar I mean a load of tables and chairs on the street, the toilet is
down an alley and go right, left, left, right, left and left, you can’t
miss it :p Come twelve o’clock because of Bangkok‘s crack down on late night
drinking they remove the tables and get the mats out, but you still keep
drinking. I had a banana daquiri and a pink pussy, it was quite good!! God
knows what Bandy was drinking, I think he was trying to impress the cute
owner with his constitution (and wallet :p).
No reason not to drink tonight though. Wtf is he?? I leave him for 10 mins
and I’ll never see him again! Surely he’s still not testing his guitar!
I’ll have to get up early and get one tomorrow. Looks like we’re flying down to
trat so we can get the ferry to the Island of Ko Chang. Should be good,
I’ve never been. Then back to BKK on Sunday and off to Cambodia, I guess, who
knows….
So much for just starting this mail, I’ve finished it!! I better go look
for him, plonker sold his mobile, looks like I might have to give him a spare
so I don’t lose him all the time.