Mum and I found a cheap return ticket to Bangkok with hotel included so we decided to go. We did lots of touristy things i.e. visiting temples, going to markets, seeing elephants and getting ripped off...we got on a taxi back to the hotel on our last night, and the taxi driver drove us to a very suburban place before notifying us that he had no clue where our hotel was. Then he dropped us and charged 200 Bahts!! We paid 120B and got on another taxi but this was one of the reasons mum decided that travelling on my own [View Full Entry]

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My birthday was in February but in Japan 20th birthday is the biggest, and normally in January people do celebration when they dress up in kimono ('furisode', with long sleeves) go to the town hall and get recognised as being 20 that year. As I wasn't in Japan when my friends were celebrating and dressing up, and I really felt like I missed out, so I did the whole thing anyway near where my grandma lives, in Nagoya, apart from going to the town hall (which isn't that big a deal anyway). I can drink and smoke now!!! [View Full Entry]

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I started my volunteer placement with street kids in Trujillo, 7 hours north of Lima, on 29th December. This was the plan anyway until I got there and was told it was actually holiday time for another week, so I got to know (and mainly partied with) other volunteers whose number increased each day as they, too, had taken holidays to other parts of the country / continent. How lonely though, when I arrived there were just 2 other volunteers! So we met up with the ex-volunteers in Huanchaco, went to the beach, went out lots... till about 8th January when the [View Full Entry]

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To cross the border from Bolivia to Argentina I took a train from Santa Cruz to Yacuiba. It was all fine, met a Colombian girl who I started travelling with, until the train stopped in the middle of the night for a couple of hours and I was horrified to wake up all sweaty from the heat and no wind, to discover the train filled with gigantic moths and the weirdest bugs. I almost screamed but covered myself with a jacket and waited till the train started moving again and the bugs gone.....I was hoping I'd overcome my fear of bugs [View Full Entry]

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