India

• Where cows rate higher than women
• Or … if I get my boobs grabbed once more I’ll be stuck in jail for GBH
• Or … not sure there’s enough Immodium in the country to last me
• Or …

Well, the list is fairly endless, I will explain that a lot of my negativity is down, I think, to traveller’s fatigue. Only so much one brain can take in without saying: stop, no more! It’s got to be bad when you’re not awe inspired by the Taj Mahal or (according to a lot of other visitors) not taken in by the spirituality of the country.

The slow boat down the Mekong river - Laos to Thailand

I didn’t think I’d get the chance to do this journey, one listed as a must, as people had been going on about it not being possible as the water was too low, blah, blah, blah. Don’t listen to them, get yourself to one of the starting points and see if the boats are going. They normally are, even if it's the very dry season, which it  was when I was there.

So how to do it?

Buy your ticket at the boat docks, not at an office in town. I was going from Luang Prabang (LP) to the Thai border and visited many offices and thought I’d got the best price, ha! I paid 250 000 kip for a ticket all the way from LP to Thailand, but if you buy your ticket in LP to Pak Beng (PB) it’s 100 000 kip then PB to Huay Xai (HX) it’s another 100 000 kip and you can buy your tickets on the boat.

Tubing in Vang Vieng

First off: you don’t need a tube to go tubing, but get one at least once, otherwise it’s not tubing, is it?

To hire a tube, it was 115 000 kip, 60 000 of that is the deposit for the tube, which has to be returned by 6pm that day. Needless to say we didn’t get our deposits back, we weren’t back in time, nor did we have our tubes. The 115 000 includes the 10 000 kip tuk tuk ride to the starting point on the river. People tend to begin between 12-2pm, any later and you don’t get very far down the river and to many bars before it gets dark.

Back in Action

Sorry for the hiatus in transmissions from my adventures, but I’ve just been too caught with being sociable and seeing stuff. It’s meant a lot of travelling with a great bunch of different people, which makes updating the blog second place to getting to know new friends.

Since my last post here’s a quick summation of places I’ve been to, more details later:

• Mexico City - loved it, culture, good food, learnt a tiny bit of Spanish, failed to learn to dance - though  I had many teachers and a great time. I also got a bit obsessed with the skeletons!

• Cuba - could have been better, saw some parts of Havana that tourists don’t normally get to see and I left early before I was on the streets with no money.

Grand Circle Tour of the Canyons - 4

Day Eight: Hoover Dam - Fri

As I was staying in a hotel 5 minutes drive from Hoover Dam, I decided to do the dam, properly. This meant a $30 tour, including the power plant and within the dam itself. All a bit geeky really. After driving through the security checkpoint to get onto the dam, I avoided the expensive car parks and walked across the dam to the visitor centre. After another security check to get into the centre there’s a 10 minute film about the building of the dam. It’s very American and patriotic, which made me chuckle. After the film, we were squeezed into an elevator, shoulder to shoulder and facing the front, down to the old nuclear fallout shelter and the huge water pipes, which are big enough to drive a car through.

Grand Circle Tour of the Canyons - 3

Day Five - Kingman to Kingman - Tues

Tried again to get to the Grand Canyon - via Phoenix, then Flagstaff but no luck and a horrendous, terrifying drive. Snow and ice on the roads, trucks and SUVs whizzing past far too fast with their invincibility cloaks on.

Day Six - Route 66, Oatman, London Bridge - Weds

Grand Circle Tour of the Canyons - 2

Day Three - Zion National Park, Utah - Sun

After my nightmare journey to get to Zion, with locking the keys in the car I made it to the park, paid the $25 entrance fee,and as it’s out of season people can drive through the park rather than take the normal shuttle buses. So I drove the short scenic route to the riverside walk, which was an easy stroll at the bottom of the canyon. It was very pretty, with icicles - this is the desert, it shouldn’t be so cold.

Grand Circle Tour of the Canyons

Day One - Las Vegas - Fri

I stayed at the Stratosphere Tower Hotel and Casino and had a nice room with a bath, so took advantage of the bath, then walked an hour down the strip, managed to only get so far as the Bellagio then headed back as I had to be up early to collect the car the next day. The strip was full of cowboys because Vegas is hosting some rodeo championships, so lots of cowboy hats on display.
 

Day Two - Valley of Fire, Nevada - Sat

I picked up the car, with the added disadvantage of not having a credit card they would accept and the warning that if I was heading up into the mountains I should get an upgrade from the basic compact model. In fact I was automatically upgraded as they didn’t have any compact cars and anyway I wasn’t heading into the mountains, I was going to the canyons…

San Francisco

With the cold still in full effect, I decided an open top bus tour was the only was I going to see San Francisco in two days, plus visit Alcatraz. Luckily I got a discount on my joint ticket, so it didn’t break the bank hugely.

The Bird Man of Alcatraz had no birds on Alcatraz, there, myth gone. It’s a weird island, very eerie and evocative. The audio tour is by both ex convicts and guards, so it gives both sides of the story, it seems neither liked it there. But then again I don’t suppose prisoners are meant to like jail, sort of against the point.