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 [View Full Entry]

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Nearly the end. Ukraine is my final significant destination I'm going to tell you anything about. After that its a brief stop in Western Europe to see friends I haven't caught up with in a while, then it's home. In a way, I'm already winding-down from the trip since the adventurous bit is finished now. I've been to the Ukraine before, I have friends in Kiev and I know my way around. I can thoroughly recommend Kiev for a short city-break if you fancy a change from Paris or New York: it's a lot of fun with great restaurants and [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Public transport: The Marshrutka I'd been working on Russian; I had a few dozen words maybe, but no grammar because I'd been doing it myself from a book and a CD in the car. But my tutor in Aberdeen, Anya, gave me a couple of hundred more words plus some basic grammar so I should now be able to hold survival-level conversations about buying tickets, asking directions and ordering food. But that was last Summer and since then I've been a little slack about practising, as well as having a confused head with trying to get some Japanese in there [View Full Entry]

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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, [View Full Entry]

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I've thought for years that airline stewardesses get a rough deal on looking good. The uniforms are reasonable except for KLM whose shade of blue suits nobody, but often the hats are ridiculous. For example, Servisair in the UK used to give it's check-in girls these awful boaters with a wide-brim; they looked like gauche public school girls - "I say, do you play Lacrosse?". I seem to recall BA had a corker some years back, a variation on a bowler hat I think, which has thankfully disappeared now. Anyway, I can't remember which airport I was in but a [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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So Vietnam won the poll, for those of you that didn't spot my brief note at the bottom of the last entry. I've got a visa and have a flight booked as well, so I'll tell you all about it in another couple of weeks. But first... Kuala Lumpur Dad was stationed in Singapore when he was in the Navy in the late 50's. He'll have had Chinese food for the first time, watched dragon-dances at New Year and been amazed at all the red lanterns, silks and gold embroidery around. In the days before cheap air travel allowed us [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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A bunch of the guys and girls I used to work with at Kenny's have now moved to Perth in Western Australia and I also had an invitation from Cameron to stay at his place if I was ever in town. I'd spent a week in South Australia between Merryn's pal Sarah's house in Dutton (near Nurioopta) and then a weekend in the city of Adelaide itself at Amanda and Adrian's to see the opening stage of the cycling. The Tour Down Under kicked off with a 30-lap (about 50km) circuit of Rymill Park in Adelaide town centre. Local boy [View Full Entry]

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