mharleyuk

Most things have remained the same, one or two new things to catch up on. I found the maple syrup in the same place as always in the supermarket; but who the hell is Lady Ga-Ga? No such person when I left. I caught up with Dorothy in Rotterdam who helped provide me with a soft landing and spend my first night back in the UK at Sonia & Mick's place, before picking the car up and driving home to a stack of mail so big it- well, I won't go into it. Banking to be done, screens and screens of emails to answer on my computer at home. My own bed feels fantastic and so does wearing jeans again - 6 & a half months of artificial fibre trousers was starting to get tiresome. ... read more

I hadn't initially planned on a second entry from Georgia, but this one place left a bit of an impression on me and I want to tell you about it. So: a short-ish entry fuelled only by my enthusiasm. I returned from my week in Armenia with enough time to try and knock off the cave monastery of Vardzia. The guidebook says you should try to see either David Gareja monastery or this one. I hadn't heard of Vardzia before I left the UK, but saw an article on it in someone's in-flight magazine and with pictures like that, I had to go. Didube bus station once more in Tbilisi and again I'm looking for a marshrutka. Again, I have a name and telephone number in my pocket, with the assurance from Irina at the ... read more

Outside the Parliament building in central Tbilisi they're flying the blue EU flag next to the Georgian national one. But if I get a map and draw a line directly south from here, it passes through Iran which is definitely in Asia. Also Georgia is further East than "Middle East" countries like Lebanon, Israel and Jordan... so where am I? It's this location at the cross-roads of 3 distinct geographical areas, not fully-in or fully-out of any of them, that has led to just about everybody having a crack at Georgia. It's history is blood-red and she has been Greek, Roman, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Mongol and Russian, when not self-governing. And I might even have left a couple out of that list. Most of the time it has been a Christian nation; the second to ... read more

Stop Following Me I flew to Vietnam feeling quite apprehensive. If you spend a couple of hours with the guidebook you'll get the impression you're going to get scammed and ripped off at every corner. There are stories about drivers that take you to their family's guest-house rather than the one you already booked, then getting shirty when you refuse and ask to be taken where you wanted in the first place; tales about collections at temples where the money doesn't get to the monks. A guy in KL the other week warned me about an aggressive street vendor who chased him across the road, shouting, after he refused to buy a book or something. I don't want to approach this place with the demeanor that they're all out to get me, but the stories ... read more

A short entry this time. I've had a relaxing 10 days in Perth doing next to nothing. After 4 months of peering at computer screens, copying numbers and directions into my notebook; buying tickets in a foreign language; booking flights and bus tickets - and I have done all this without making one mistake with my credit card; reading the guidebook and trying to come up with what to do today... after all of this I am a little tired. Any long journey's going to have these lulls and I can't be adventurous backpacker-man every day. So once I got here, I'm afraid I slumped into the care of Cameron and his friends and took a rest from it all. I've sunbathed down at Cottisloe beach in Freemantle. I've wandered around central Perth, I've met ... read more