Blogs from San Francisco, California, United States, North America - page 211

In San Francisco we stayed with Sunita's friend Meghan in a small town about 45 minutes out of the main city called Pleasonton. It is quite a rich area, apparently the houses are normally a million plus. Meghan had another friend over (Kendra) who was a pure bred Pleasonton and we hit a local bar which had a live band and a whole lot of merry oldies dancing. For those who usually read my oddities site, it looked as though a lot of them got their moves from the video "How to dance like a white boy". The next day we headed into the city via the bay bridge (which itself is much longer than the Golden Gate). We then hopped on a last minute ferry and cruised to Alcatraz (a historic small island prison 10 ... read more

After escaping the island of Kauai and its $45 nachos we were psyched to get to San Francisco and check out what it had to offer. None of our traveling party (Linda, Ben, Cookie and myself) had been to San Fran before so we were all keen to explore the place with fresh eyes. Our time there was taken up primarily with doing the "tourist thing" which proved to be relatively rewarding as far as those types of experiences go. On the first morning we got up and walked from our hostel in Union Square through China Town up to Coit Tower, across to Lombard Street and down to the Tourist trap of Fishermans' Wharf. I was very much struck with how appealing the architecture is in San Fran. All of the houses seem to have ... read more

I arrived at San Francisco's Greyhound depot on the morning of 31st Dec 2005. The idea of counting down and celebrating New Year in a foreign country made me pretty excited. Also, after travelling around Western Canada/USA alone for 2 weeks, I finally had company in San Francisco. My father has a friend, Uncle Danny, who lived in San Francisco. Uncle Danny and my father worked together in Hong Kong 2 decades ago. After my family migrated to Singapore, Uncle Danny migrated to USA and settled down in San Francisco. I was very lucky to meet Uncle Danny in San Francisco because he's working as a hotel manager and he allowed me to stay in his hotel for 3 nights! Somemore, his hotel was very convenient. (It was right beside Chinatown and was within walking distance ... read more

The past few days we have been at the Pt. Montara Lighthouse which a few miles south of San Francisco right off of Highway 1. The occasion was Lisa and Alex's wedding in addition to a concurrent New Year's eve party. There were about 50 people in attendance at the wedding with the majority staying at the hostel (the lighthouse is also a full-time hostel - not the actual lighthouse but the grounds). If anyone on the east coast has not heard, the weather has been rainy and stormy throughout our stay with mudslides and flooding but luckily not where we are staying - in general it's very humid and moist around here. Amazingly, yesterday afternoon the clouds disappeared and we saw some sun and blue skies; it stayed dry throught the ceremony, reception and remainder ... read more

I am all packed and ready to go. I can't believe how fast the last month has gone by, not to mention the last year! But it has come to an end, and my little adventure is about to begin. I head up North for New Years tomorrow...then leave for Hawaii on Monday...then it's off to Bangkok on the 8th. Things have come together quickly, and I am still amazed and grateful every day that everything has worked out. The rough itinerary is going to be something like this... 5 days in Bangkok to get visas, etc A week in Ko Tao to get scuba certified A couple weeks in Northern Thailand Boat out of Thailand via the Mekong River into Laos around Feb 8th-9th Spend 3 weeks in Northern Laos (the last untouched SE Asian ... read more