Alex White
Sabah Thorny Stick
The world is big. Life is too short to sit around all day, daydreaming. The journals here represent some of the best (or worst!) moments during my travels. There is also the entire day-by-day journal detailing my Summer 2005 Borneo trip. My trips have taken me to 63 countries, from Malaysia to Mauritania, Japan to Jordan, Laos to Lebanon, through some beautiful and incredibly diverse areas such as the Balkans, as well as to many countries well off the tourist route such as Belarus and Iraq. All route planning has come from endless map-staring and daydreaming. And so life comes full circle.
Albania - Andorra - Austria - Belarus - Belgium - Bosnia and Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Cambodia - Croatia - Cyprus - Czech Republic - Denmark - Egypt - Estonia - Finland - France - Gambia - Germany - Greece - Hungary - Iraq - Ireland - Israel - Italy - Japan - Jordan - Korea, South - Laos - Latvia - Lebanon - Liechtenstein - Lithuania - Luxembourg - Macedonia - Malaysia - Mauritania - Moldova - Monaco - Montenegro - Morocco - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Portugal - Romania - Russia - San Marino - Senegal - Serbia - Slovakia - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden - Switzerland - Syria - Thailand - Turkey - Ukraine - United Arab Emirates - United Kingdom - United States - Vatican City - Vietnam
Travel Blog Posts
August 26th 2009
Some sit, wait and smile. Others desperately try to push their way through. Nearly all use the horn to deafening effect. There are motorbikes. Then more motorbikes. Then a few more until not a single one can inch forward, backward or sideward. On top of the chugging engines sit men, women and children all caught up in this evening time commute. Our taxi, the sole car in the swarming sea of two-wheeled transport, is stuck in the mother of all traffic jams only a couple of minutes after setting off. In this T-junction off a busy road, the authorities had kindly decided to stick a huge concrete wall blocking off most of the turning area. The aircon seemingly turned up to maximum, I wind down the window to let some fresh and warm air in. All ... read more
The One Where I Met Lots of Pharmacists and Went to Iraq
Published: September 5th 2010Middle East » Iraq » North
May 26th 2009
I stare out at the mountains, the watchtower, the dusty blue sky. Shadows grow longer in the late afternoon. The other side of a ten-foot concrete and barbed-wire wall, American troops wait anxiously with their oversized vehicles, making the final checks before they head south. Despite being clearly visible, I manage to hang around unnoticed, pacing in the no-man's land border area between Iraq and Turkey. The price of the journey back into Turkey agreed, the passport stamped and photocopied, it was now just a case of waiting around for others to join me in the taxi. As the troops roll out, I call my host Vafi in Cizre, Turkey, to tell him that I'll be "back soon". Not the best choice of words. ----- Vafi was everything a host could have been and more, and ... read more
April 5th 2008
My room is between the toilet, if you can call it that - it's a hole in the ground - and a small area where goats are kept. The noise from the goats coupled with the incessantly busy courtyard area of the compound ensures that a good night's sleep is never achievable. Still, I'd rather do it this way than be a regular tourist paying a small fortune to stay in one of the numerous upmarket hotels that litter the coastline. You have a regularly cleaned room and a waiter to bring you drinks while you sit and baste by the pool. Meanwhile, outside the gates in the real world, the poverty continues to grind. Of course the hotels bring in money to Gambia's struggling economy, but how much of that money does the average citizen ... read more
Belarussian Babooshkas and Sizzling Saunas
Published: September 24th 2008Europe » Belarus » Minsk Voblast » Minsk
December 15th 2007
It was a short train journey from the Polish border to Brest, and the train was crammed with lots of bulky women, but possibly more packed with their even bulkier bags. It seems this border is a major smuggling and trade route, with goods unobtainable in Belarus being bought in Poland, then sold on. However, this is soon set to stop with Poland entering the Schengen area, making the visa process for Belarussians far more difficult. I was later told that the cross-border Belarussian traders have to change their passports every two weeks, as they are so quickly filled with Polish stamps. With no available seats, and not wanting to squash in next to a big, round babooshka lady and her loot, I sat on the heating vent that skirted round the floor of the train ... read more
August 6th 2007
Aha, it's open! I had finally found it. I walked in, the thick smell of stew filling the air. The restaurant was empty except for two customers and about five staff members, all of whom looked inquisitively at this strange foreigner who had just entered. I took off my shoes, as is customary, and was guided to one of the floor cushions that flanked the long wooden table. I cleared my throat, smiled to the waitress and said, almost inquisitively, "gae-go-gi". She didn't understand. I said it again with more emphasis. Nope. Maybe she understood but didn't want to serve me. I said it a third time and she got the message. A few minutes later, the waitress appeared with plates of rice, kimchi, assorted vegetables, and mostly importantly a bowl of steaming soup. In the ... read more
The DMZ And The Briefest Of Flings Into North Korea
Published: November 16th 2011Asia » South Korea » DMZ
August 2nd 2007
My body wakes itself three minutes before my alarm would have gone off. It is 5:12am, and I spring off the sofa, excitement overriding tiredness. On any normal day, this would be unthinkable, but today was different. Today I am going to North Korea... Mike, my Couchsurfing host in Seoul, had advised me to start at a nearby Hilton where, as promised, several taxis prowled outside. "Hello. Camp Kim?", I call through the window and, upon the reception of a gentle nod, I get in. Fearing going anywhere but Camp Kim, I show the driver a map just to make sure. I sit back in the passenger seat and let the city of Seoul slide past the window. United Service Organization Camp Kim, the army base in central Seoul, was closed when I first arrived, but ... read more
July 30th 2007
I got talking to one of my room mates in the hostel, a Mr Vladimir Jon Cubrt, a half-Czech, half-Canadian guy. This was the first hostel I had stayed in with any distinct signs of life, and I wasn’t going to pass such an opportunity! We ate breakfast at a nearby takeaway place before getting a tram to Urakami, Nagasaki’s ground zero. Coming to Nagasaki wasn’t part of my original plan. The city, stuck out right at the bottom of Japan, seemed distant when studied on a map. Indeed, getting here yesterday certainly seemed end-of-the-worldly. The train followed the coast for a while, past bamboo knocked over by the most recent typhoon to hit Japan, the one that I experienced the edge of when in Kyoto. The further south the train went, the more tropical things ... read more
July 28th 2007
I ignored the alarm at seven, and almost the one at eight, until I realised that the sights of Miyajima island awaited me. I packed the semi-dried clothes that I had washed in the hostel sink, checked out of the hostel and put my bag in the train station locker. I was already sweaty, and the day was only just heating up. It was going to be a scorcher. The ferry to Miyajima island was short and cheap but gave me beautiful views of the temple gateway (or ’torii’), one of the symbols of Japan. As the island grew nearer, the details of the torii became ever present. Two red vertical pillars held up two red horizontal wooden bars, the highest of which was slightly curved. At high tide, like now, the gateway stood gracefully in ... read more
July 26th 2007
With a mother and young son on the seats opposite me, I desperately tried to get comfortable enough to close my eyes and doze off. Just as I was about to fall asleep, sprawled across two seats, a man tapped my knee and claimed I was laying in his seat. Now with nowhere to sprawl, forced to sit upright and sunburn ravaging my body I was so uncomfortable. The train journey was hour after hour of nothing more than light dozing. The lights in the carriage remained on for the entire journey, and even when I moved across the aisle to four free seats, I failed to sleep. The stops in every station we went through were long, the carriage doors opened and closed incessantly and the station jingles were the things of nightmares which I ... read more
July 24th 2007
I took more and more ever-deeper breaths the higher we climbed. The route was now becoming harder, the gradients steeper. On one long stretch we were walking on rubble, with a waist-height stone wall running alongside. Every step forward we’d slide half a step back. In another part, there were rocks that we had to scramble up. Finding somewhere to hold on to and hoist yourself up with was hard enough as it was, but then we were in the dark. Myself, my cousins, Simon and Becky, and my brother David were trying to get to the top of the 3,776 metre high symmetrical symbol of Japan, Mount Fuji, before sunrise. Having set off at eleven at night from the fifth station, we were now continuing our uphill struggle, still very much in the dark, just ... read more
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