Sign In
Chris Booth
After more than a decade working my way round the code mines of the City of London the risk of developing a DVT from sitting in one position for hours on end has become too great, so I'm off round the world for a few months...but I could be back in a fortnight if I don't like it. As seems to be the fashion these days, I'll be putting my holiday snaps and a bit of blurb about where I am on this site as I go round the globe.Bowthy
I've created a rough map of my itinerary which can be found here: Ropey Route Map I'm not sure it works all that well, so I'll try to get another one together when I get a moment.
Either way, my itinerary goes something like this:
Nepal (April and May)
India (June and July)
SE Asia (August and September)
Australia (October, November and December)
New Zealand (January and February)
Fiji (End of Feb)
USA (March)
That's it for now, I'm off to make the bloke on my roof a cup of tea.
Travel Blog Posts
April 6th 2008
Great curry. Arriving in Nadi airport, starving hungry as the muck the airline served was inedible, I was excited to find a cafe in the arrivals lounge with the same ambience as some of the best restaurants in the world, found in ramshackle buildings throughout India and Nepal. The veggy curry they served me was simply delicious. My time in Fiji was off to an excellent start. Pressure Drop It turns out that Fiji is even more chilled out than Australia and New Zealand and I could feel my blood-pressure drop another few bars, or whatever it's measured in, as the staff from the Nadi Bay Hotel ushered us onto the bus to take us to the hotel. Not that I was particularly stressed out after almost twelve months of travelling, although the thought of getting ... read more
March 8th 2008
One night in LA My good pal Daymo came over from London to meet me in LA and we finally met after Daymo got through a very sluggish immigration queue. Jet-lagged, tired after the long flights from the UK and Fiji, with no guide book and no plan except to head to San Diego at some point, it took us a while to get organised, plus, of course, we had to have a couple of beers for old times' sake. It was rush-hour in LA so we didn't want to travel too far and I was running short on funds and so wanted to stay somewhere cheap, so we plumped for the backpackers paradise that is the Tradewinds Adventurer in Inglewood, home town of Jules Winnfield; Samuel L. Jackson's character in Pulp Fiction. We weren't expecting ... read more
February 29th 2008
Christchurch to Auckland Starting in Christchurch,a sleepy city with bags of character and friendly people, and finishing in Auckland, a vibrant town with more of an edge, I cruised round New Zealand, some of the time with my good friends Lana and Stu; me in my 95 model Toyota Corolla, with its 1.5 litre, straight-four beast of an engine under the hood delivering an almighty 104 BHP to its balding front tyres, Lana and Stu in their electric-mauve, passion wagon of a Ford Telstar. Love affair My love affair with dormitory accomodation was definitely at an end, the final straw being the snoring competition I was subjected to on my first night in Christchurch. Luckily, Lana's folks have a lovely big place in Kaiapoi, just up the road from Christchurch, and they looked after me a ... read more
December 12th 2007
Home and Away After a few very relaxing days on the island of Lamma, a short boat ride from the always impressive Hong Kong, enjoying the hospitality my good friends, and future purveyors of fine chocolates (all being well), Adam and Vicki, I took a flight to Sydney. Initially, I thought I'd made a big mistake: the skies were grey and it was drizzling and the rush-hour commute had begun. It felt like being in London. Even some of the place names were the same. However, after a delicious dinner with my mate Bree and her mum and a trip to the beautiful Bondi Beach to see the "Sculptures by the Sea". The weather hadn't cheered up, I had, especially after looking round the excellent Museum of Contemporary Art and seeing the iconic harbour bridge and ... read more
November 2nd 2007
Happening Hanoi After a couple of weeks European rest from the rush of Asia, I was excited about arriving in Hanoi and I wasn't disappointed. After eventually finding a taxi driver that would reset and use his metre I found myself in the middle of one of the most exciting Asian cities I'd ever visited. Hanoi is a champagne explosion of sensual delight: on every street corner is a scene from a novel, below the incessant beeping and buzzing of a thousand scooters can be heard the chatter of traders hustling through the day and at every turn is a new scent of delicious cooking. The exuberant Hanoi life spills out of crumbling buildings onto a maze of narrow streets. People are busy buying and selling everything from fresh crabs and trout to sunglasses and hats. ... read more
September 16th 2007
BangkokIt was my brother's first time in Thailand so we did the sensible thing and headed to Pat Pong for some food, beers and, unexpectedly, live Thai kickboxing.The boxing wasn't "live" in the same way that football is live in pubs, it was actually two Thai blokes having a proper scrap in a tiny ring next to the bar. I'm guessing that they were once top fighters, but they were knocking on a bit. However, they could still pack a punch and the slightly nimbler of the pair managed to floor his opponent two or three times with an eye-wateringly solid right-hook. I wondered if they were just acting, but the tears in the bloodshot eyes of the floored boxer looked pretty real to me. Welcome to ThailandFearing we were about to be fleaced, we followed ... read more
September 10th 2007
Luang Prabang I only had a few days to spend in Laos, but I still had time to have a good look round the beautiful UNESCO World Heritage site of Luang Prabang, enjoying the excellent food, including my first delicious taste of bacon in a few months, in the French colonial restaurants along with one or two glasses of Beer Lao and the odd two-for-one mojito with some friends I hadn´t seen since Rishikesh. Monks I was woken every morning at 4AM by the monks in the temple opposite the immaculate Villa Sokxai, another colonial building with rooms decorated in a surprisingly simple, yet luxurious, European style, getting themselves ready to collect early morning alms from the townspeople. Boat Race For once, I was in the right place at the right time as it turned out ... read more
September 3rd 2007
Phnom Penh After having yet more contraband toiletries confiscated at the airport I arrived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and was pleasantly surprised to find it a chaotic and welcoming place with friendly locals and, at last, some draft lager. The beer in the hotel bar was cold enough to take the edge off the humid city air and a delicious plate of amok, the local fish and coconut curry, and a game of pool later I felt at home. Where am I? That didn´t stop me waking up in the morning with, as usual, absolutely no idea of where I was or which country I was in, something that has been happening for a few weeks now. The superb breakfast of eggs on toast, with the eggs and toast miraculously arriving at the same time and ... read more
August 15th 2007
Jungle I arrived in Borneo without having read anything about the place as I'd spent a good deal of my time in Singapore fast asleep. I had thought that the island was an untouched jungle paradise and with this in mind, my vague plan was to spend a couple of weeks living in the trees with a family of orangutans. A quick chat with the staff at the very comfortable Step In Lodge in Kota Kinabalu shattered my dreams: a trip to see the orangutans at feeding time would only really take a day at most and no, you can't play with them. You're not allowed anywhere near them. Damn. So what was I going to do with the rest of my time in Borneo? SCUBA A bit like FBI Agent Jack Baer at the end ... read more
Dylan's Coffee Shop, Trivandrum and Singapore
Published: August 17th 2007Asia » India » Himachal Pradesh » Manali
August 5th 2007
Best Coffee Shop Ever Once back in Manali after the excitement of touring round Ladakh I went back to Dylan's Coffee Shop to relax with my mates Raj and Riyaz. Dylan's is the best coffee shop I've ever been to. It's run and owned by Rajan, one of the most laid-back and yet hardest-working people I've met, with a great team of assistants:Ramesh, Raju and Chaman (when the Bob Marley song "Jammin" comes on, which is quite often as it's a traveller hang-out, everyone joins in at the chorus "We're Chaman, we're Chaman,we're Chaman, we're Chaman." haha). International Playboy Rajan's best mate is Riyaz who owns several businesses in India, and is usually quite busy, so he tells me. In fact, from what he's said, he's an international playboy spending a fair chunk of time travelling ... read more
Tot: 0.143s; Tpl: 0.007s; cc: 18; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0476s; 1; s:apollo w:www (50.28.60.10); sld: 3; ; mem: 6.4mb
© 2013 TravelBlog.org & Bloggers