Mauritania - 16 Days We crossed no mans land, the several kilometre wide area between the disputed borders between Morocco and Mauritania. It was pretty eirie at the border with so many exploded and abandoned cars and so many people in the middle of fluffing nowhere queing to enter Mauritania. Nouadhibou didnt have much to see but interestingly there were loads of shipwrecks off the coast that were used in insurance scams and we ended up staying with a really friendly guy from Senegal who gave us his house in the shanty town for a night, he went and stayed with his brother and we treated him to a plate of chicken and chips for a euro. We ended up taking the train to Choem and then a 4 wheel drive to Atar, the train was ... read more

Catalunya I spent nearly 3 months in Catalunya, which is a country really. Most of the time was spent in Barcelona, visiting all the tourist sites and soaking up the lifestyle in Barcelona i.e. beer, food and football mainly. I also made many excursions to all over the province/country. I spent a weekend in Cadaques, visited Girona a couple of times, went to a wedding on the beach an hour north of Barcelona, I fact I went to three weddings, one of which was in the zoo. I worked a night behind the bar at the Sonar festival, worked a couple of nights in a posh restaurant saw the tour de France cycle passed and went for cycles along the beach myself. ... read more

Vietnam - 4 Weeks Vietnam was an interesting place, a country that has been at war for over 50 years against the French and the Americans. For this reason they are quite aggressive people which has become a part of their culture. I found the country has been changed a lot by the western world, capitalism is in full effect, the Americans may not have officially won the war but they certainly took it over in an economic sense, the number of tourists there and the conveyor belt style tourism industry was a little bit too much for me. Despite that there were some cool things to do and it was an interesting experience. I flew into Ho Chi Minh City and here began to discover the atrocious behaviour of the Americans during the war, over ... read more

Brunei I spent 2 days in Brunei and that was plenty. Travelling across this tiny country it was obvious the influence oil has on the people here. Brunei treats its people well as it makes huge amounts of money from its oil industry. The people get subsidies from the state for housing, cars and are looked after, to the point that they get money for trips to mecca but the Sultan seems to be quite wealthy, the people are quite well controlled by their religious beliefs e.g they can get a tattoo or drink alcohol. The mosque was massive, the sultan's palace was even bigger, it is the World's Largest Residential Palace, and the floating village was nice to explore but apart from that there was little else on offer here, although we did enjoy using ... read more

Malaysia - 3 Weeks Malaysian Peninsular I crossed into Malaysia and headed straight for the Perhentian islands for some snorkelling, diving and some sun. Here I encountered a huge dragon and almost trod on a beautiful green tree snake. After the islands I took the Jungle train across the peninsular to Kuala Lumpur. KL was a big hunk of concrete, annoyingly covered in flags, the Petronas Twin Towers were quite impressive, in a capitalistic kind of way, the view from the top of the communication tower was also very impressive. We visited a mosque and I decided if females have to hide their hair then so would I. From KL we travelled to Melaka, another nice town, and a Unesco world heritage site with the Dutch square on one side of the river, and the old ... read more