New York City (population: about 8,008,000) Fast paced and distracting, New York certainly has it all. After being in non-English speaking countries for over a year, suddenly I could understand every sign, every word, everyone. I was amazed at people’s willingness to talk about absolutely anything personal on the street as loudly and proudly and possible, despite being surrounded by strangers. All this plus neon advertising and sculpture was extremely distracting. Plenty of world class icons to speak of here, including the Empire State building, Statue of Liberty and Central Park. This is the city, where even its residents are proud [View Full Entry]

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Barcelona What a nightmare trying to get to Barcelona! Just a warning to fellow travellers: try not to fly Iberia, anywhere, anytime if you can avoid it. As it turns out, when I rocked up to fly to Barcelona, I was informed that there were no flights to Barcelona anymore, only Madrid. After the most unhelpful service, they put me on a plane leaving in 5 minutes and, without me realising - take 2 of my around the world ticket vouchers instead of one. I sprint to the plane, buckle up and wait a further 40 minutes before the plane can [View Full Entry]

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Roma (Rome; population 2.65 million) Home of the great emperors, gladiators, gelato and the great Renaissance art. On arrival I was hit (again) with the culture shock of disorganisation. Trains sometimes are cancelled or delayed 20 minutes and the train station signs seem to direct you through a maze that gets to nowhere. But, if you block out all the loud English-speaking tourists by escaping the tourists traps, the charm of the city shines through. This amazing country has been inhabited by Italic tribes since 2000 BC. In brief, Rome conquered Spain and Greece in 202 BC, then Gaul and Egypt [View Full Entry]

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Copenhagen (population 1.5 million) After rice or noodles for breakfast, lunch and dinner in Asia, I welcomed the Danish Smorrebrod every day. This is an open rye bread sandwich that combines all the toppings, spreads, fillings and flavours you desire! It was also necessary to try Polsevogue, the traditional Danish hot dog. The shape of the bread so you don’t need to break it but a perfectly sized cylindrical hole drilled in for the hotdog. And of course, no trip to Denmark is complete without Danish pastry. Despite being called ‘a Danish’ in the west, these bodelicious taste sensations came [View Full Entry]

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Helsinki (population 560, 000) If you want to experience some cultural extremes, just fly from Asia to Baltic Europe. Completely different climate, people and food. Already on the plane, I felt comfortable as I blended in with the blondes with blue eyes around me. It’s always a relief to feel like you are not always being watched or targeted as a tourist. Walking off the plane in Helsinki, nobody hassled me for accommodation or tried to coax me into a taxi. I looked and felt completely like everybody else - until of course somebody started talking to me in Finnish [View Full Entry]

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Penang Penage is an Island off the North West coast of Malaysia, Georgetown being the big centre filled with bicycle rickshaws, temples, and colonial buildings. The city is made up of mainly Chinatown and Little India. Plenty of new things to try! Cameron Highlands With unequalised ears I proceeded to the 1400m to Father’s Guesthouse in Tanah Rata in the pouring rain. This is were most of Malaysia’s farming happens with it’s rich soil and reliable rain. In fact it seems to rain every afternoon daily. Although I was only spending one night, there was loads of touristy things to [View Full Entry]

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Phenom Penh The “Tuol Sleng” Genocide Museum was a former Khmer Rouge S-21 Prison used to detain people accused of opposing Angkor. Apparently “Tuol” means higher than that around it, and “Sleng” means supplying guilt, poison or and enemy of disease. This literally translates to a poisonous mound to keep those who bear guilt toward Angkor. Security Office 21 (S-21) was secretly created at Tuol Sleng in 1976 for interrogation of anti-Angkor individuals. Before that, it was a high school which was enclosed by corrugated iron sheets, electrified barbed wire and the class rooms were converted into 0.8 x 2 [View Full Entry]

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Sapa (population 36, 200) On May 8th I finally cross the boarder to Vietnam as the officials unceremoniously stamp my passport. I jump on the public bus to Sapa - a minibus that drives around town trying to pick up people going to Sapa until it’s full. As we enter Sapa, people on motorbikes are slipping multiple hotel cards and maps through the window of the bus. Then getting off the bus, I’m bombarded with local 6 year old girls asking, “Where you from? What your name? You buy from me, yeah?” Feeling refreshed an energised by fresh Vietnamese food, [View Full Entry]

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Guizhou (population 8,940, 116) Our guide for Guizhou took us trekking to some of the more remote Miao ethnic minority villages. The Miao people are the largest minority groups in China and divided into branches, including: Black Hmong, White Hmong and Stripped Hmong depending on their dress. Here people believe that everything has a spirit that controls their destiny. So during disasters, an elder will perform ceremonies to drive out evil spirits. There are yearly memorial ceremonies are festivals celebrated in this region. While we were there, the sister festival was beginning, which is the equivalent of Valentine’s Day in [View Full Entry]

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Yangzhou (population: 300,000) The backpacker’s capital of China, this city has everything every tourist wants. However, something happened to me in this city that every tourist absolutely doesn’t want. We went drinking at a local bar, when suddenly; monsoon rains hit the quite little town until 4am in the morning. By that time, the drains and nearby river were overflowing and flooded - leaving the quaint little bar an island in the middle of streets that were now rivers. The first step I took into the street, my foot stunk into the wet darkness and found the bottom knee deep. [View Full Entry]

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