backpacking
Jill
Last week, on a sunny Thursday evening after work, I’d had a couple of beers with friends who were heading off to watch the rugby. I said goodbye, and hopped on a bus home. I was on the back seat and watched the bus slowly fill with people. An old woman stepped on, and headed straight for my back seat. She asked me if I minded her sitting next to me, and I smiled and shifted along to give her more room. I didn’t pay her much attention. She was wearing a pink t-shirt, and had her hair in a ponytail. She didn’t look very old, for an old person. Continue reading
Cuba Day 3 – Varadero Purgatory
On the third day of my Cuban trip, I visited Varadero. DON’T GO THERE. It is shit.
Check it out…
Cuba Day 2 – Rum, Thieves and Lightning
Day two of my Cuban diary, and my first full day in the country. It was also the first day of my first conning/polite robbery, at the hands of a gold-toothed charlatan named Julio. Wherever you are now, Julio, fuck you.
Enjoy!
Cuba Day 1 – Arrival In Havana
Today is the first entry in my Cuban diary, which I will be publishing every day over the next couple of weeks. Things start off pretty tame in Havana. They certainly didn’t end that way. Enjoy…
Cuba Diary – Intro
I’ve decided, over the next couple of weeks, to publish my dairy from Cuba a day at a time. I’ll be publishing it as a series of blog posts, woo!
Falling into the Grand Canyon
“Okay, follow me.”
I took my tour guide’s hand and shuffled along after him sightlessly. Behind me was a long chain of blindfolded backpackers clinging to each other like a care home conga line. We edged our way along the path, which we knew would take us to the rim of the Grand Canyon. After a minute of feeling our way down the path, a sudden quiet implied we had reached the edge. Our guide, and my friend, a perpetually upbeat Puerto Rican named Nando, carefully positioned us in a line, and semi-joking warned us not to step forward. He gave the word, and we took off our blindfolds. Continue reading
The Night Train
Leaving the air con cool of the hotel, we walked out into the oily heat of a Saigon evening. Our guide, a tiny 57 year old Thai woman called Lek, who seemed to hate everything Vietnamese, hailed a taxi. We climbed in and were whisked through the chaos of whirring motorbikes beneath the infinite mass of telephone lines. We arrived at the train station after dark. Continue reading
Fiji Time
Time, and how it is perceived, varies greatly depending on where you are in the world. In the Western culture I’ve been raised in, we prioritise and organise frantically to fit everything into our day. We live and work to deadlines, wake up with alarms and work rotating shifts. In several countries I’ve visited, however, the notion of immediacy is actually shunned, or simply doesn’t exist. Vietnam and Cuba are two countries in which patience isn’t just a virtue but a necessity. The country that takes the crown, however, is Fiji. Continue reading
“I can’t afford to travel” Shut up. Yes you can.
Right. I’ve heard too many people say that they would love to experience the mystery of Asia, or the adrenaline of New Zealand, but they just can’t scrape the money together. Is that how you feel?
*slap!* Continue reading