The Chinese new year was fast approaching and one resolution the people of the East make every year is to de-clutter. I think these last two years I may be taking this custom a little too seriously as after clearing away my property, car, stuff and now internal body clutter I felt it was time for me to de fragment and empty my muttering mind with a seven day consciousness enema. I found an organisation that seems to be right up my street, it is called The Middle Way they practice a form of Buddhism I had never heard of before, [View Full Entry]

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There are two Ko Chang's in Thailand, the smaller island is over by Ranong in the west side of the Andaman coast. The bigger island is where we went and is on the east side where the access ferry port is Laem Ngop. The bus from Khaosan was straight forward apart from the one million red ants that decided to accompany me by milling around my head, shoulders and back areas, I was the only one on the bus scratching and slapping the buggers off me which was strange as there wasn't any crumbs of left over delights for them to [View Full Entry]

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Monday morning at Heathrow airport seemed more like we were going back to work to a really enviable job, it felt good to be alive. The flight to Kuwait was near empty, we were given leg room seats by the emergency doors. Before it got dark only bright sunshine shone for us below and above the clouds. Throughout the flight I had my head firmly wedged between Russell Brands big hard-back Booky Wook, he had me in fits of crazy laughter for the whole nine hour journey, thus proving he had successfully written it himself. An Arab child that sat to [View Full Entry]

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We flew in to Lima Peru the night before our flight back to London England, all was fine, until we realised we only had a jangle worth of small change left to our name, this just about paid for a 3 minute phone call back to the UK to interrogate my bank. As we touched into Lima my cash card would not work for a whole 32 painful hours even though it had sufficient funds and it was not flagged as suspicious. I was informed that this was due to complications with 'that type of card! ' Oh England....what’s with all [View Full Entry]

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These last nine months that I have spent travelling the Americas have been everything and more, I feel it has changed me for the better in so many ways. I witnessed some unbelievable sacred, sublime and absurd places of interest such as the newly crowned 7th wonder of the world Machu Picchu, the endearing 'Oaxacan Street Children’s project', healing at Lake Atitlan, walking on hot lava in Pacaya volcano, spooked out in Palenque ruins, being part of a Shaman fire ceremony, swimming in dark cenote caves, seeing inside the wacky church in San Cristobel, pruning down to wrinkled skin in tema [View Full Entry]

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Seven whole weeks had passed since we first arrived in Cusco, at the time we thought we could get straight into conquering the newly crowned 7th wonder of the world The Inca Trail-Machu Picchu Fat chance! To conquer anything worthwhile takes much time, planning and intense training. We were nobly told that our 4 day trek would be subject to a very long waiting list as only 500 people inclusive of all porters were allowed on the site each day and the first available slot would be mid November, we were advised to spend time acclimatising in Cuscos altitude of 3500 [View Full Entry]

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Back to good old lung crushing Cusco for another tour, but this time our transit van carried a small party of retired Texan husbands and their trophy wives, these ladies all wore perfect blonde hair held together by tortoise shell slide grips and black velour scrunches. All five pairs of hands were perfectly manicured, weighed down with real diamonds and gold that rapped loosely around arthritic fingers and solid acrylic fingernails. Every five minutes the ladies would squirt alcohol gel to ward off the slightest sniff of infection, so the tour bus smelt of hospitals all day. We starte [View Full Entry]

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Pronounced Wacka-cheena It took two hours by bus from Nasca through to the even sandier barren district of Ica, we witnessed many homeless families pitched out in tents, sadly they had all lost their homes to the recent earthquake that shook for five whole minutes killing families, especially many young kids who were all face booking and my spacing in the numerous Internet shops near the epi centre of the tremor. My new psychic vibes couldn’t help but feel that something strangely weird was about to happen to us, not in a planet shaking God fearing fatal way, as I now [View Full Entry]

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The bus ride from Arequipa to Nazca was nothing but endless miles of sand, with snippets of a raging coastline every now and then with even more sand dunes the size of mountains everywhere else. There were many run down shacks and half demolished structures that one time was some housing project or holiday rest spot, but this devestation was partly due to neglect over time and the recent earthquake that shook for five whole minutes and unfortunatly took many homes and lives especially around Pisco and Ica. We came here to see these famous Nazca lines and we finally flew [View Full Entry]

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I realised that it was the last couple of days of October and not one sniff of Christmas to be seen anywhere. After two days of sitting in front of the commercially (Christmas) free telly I eventually went out to go stretch my legs. Throughout this busy city I have not seen any tinsel or any single moody black-flocked bauble the size of the moon, no Bing Crosby, Slade or Shane McGowan and Kristy McCall songs playing anywhere. No Christmas cards, no offers of loans @ 0% till 2020, no store card incentives, credit card offers, no two for one’s, mind [View Full Entry]

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