HELP ME!!!!!! HELP ME!!!!!! HELP ME!!!!!!

As you may know I'm thinking of writing a book about all my travel adventures over the past 8 years and 61 countries. I have many crazy stories and most of them happened a long time before I even started this travel blog. The book will be written much better, funnier, clearer, and in more detail than what I managed to do whilst travelling with this blog. Some of the stories I will write about will include;

How I lived in a forest for a month under a log and hunted rabbits, flew out to Germany to test a new heart medicine, became a stand up comedian in Germany, towed a speed boat across Europe for some complete strangers and lived in their millionaire Greek Islands villa for 2 months, sunk a speed boat, got lost in a secret cave for hours, almost died in a blizzard on the peak of UK's highest mountain, was almost arrested for running across an NBA court, fell down a cliff in Greece, volunteered for a police line up and was told I was the armed robber by the witness, walked 250km across Scotland in the middle of winter in the snow to save some cash and slept in our tent in knee deep snow, almost killed myself bleaching my hair with pool chlorine, was almost stoned to death in a rock throwing riot in Nepal, was nearly caught in a mini tornado in the desert in India, had the windows of my bus blow out in my face on a bus in Egypt, was forced to help smugglers hide thousands of packets of cigarettes into Bulgaria from Serbia, was caught in a 2 day violent riot in Peru being trapped in a random country town, my tour of a real prison where I tipped the guards to enter in Bolivia and was shown around by the prisoners....and much much more!!!

My problem is now I have to get a publisher interested in helping me out to make this book a reality. If any of you have read my blog and have enjoyed it PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE write me a comment or email me one on paulwood900@gmail.com and mention why you think it would make a great book and how you have enjoyed my stories. Also please add your name and the city and country you live in to make it a bit more credible and I would appreciate it ever so much. These stories are too good to waste and must be written down before they are lost forever. PLEASE help me get this book up and running and write a cheeky comment.

THANK YOU for reading my blog,

Paul Wood

paulwood900@gmail.com

USA to Australia…the last stage!

G’day all,

Well the trip of a lifetime has finally come to an end 61 countries and every continent bar Antarctica later. My last week or 2 went fairly smoothly travelling with my brother Simon and we didn’t even have any near death experiences so that was a bit boring. On our Greyhound bus ride from San Fran down to LA we amazingly had the same bus and same driver and sat in the same seats as when we caught the bus to San Fran a few days before. Robo-cop the bus driver was back to his best form dictating the bus ride and at one stage he yelled at me to get off my phone when I was actually showing a girl some pictures on my camera. We arrived in LA early in the morning and caught a few public buses to our hostel in the beautiful suburb of Inglewood. If you can’t tell I’m being sarcastic about Inglewood as it’s the Ghetto of LA and where many of the gangs like to have street wars and get shooty with each other. The hostel however was nice and cheap so that’s why we stayed there and it had a nice big pool and free meals. I guess real estate must be cheap in the area. Once Simon and I settled in to the hostel we caught a bus straight down to Santa Monica and we went for a nice stroll along the beach to Venice Beach. This is the area where they filmed ‘Baywatch’ and it is exactly how it looked in the show. The walk up to the beach was pretty interesting as there are all different areas where the beach changed from the family zone, to the gay area, then to the muscles and fake tits area. There was a fair bit of eye candy about but you can see how fake everyone is a mile away. On our second day in LA Simon and I had a bit of a chilled out day and went out to have a look at UCLA, the famous university. UCLA was bloody huge and was like a little city within itself. We found our way to the UCLA store where they had a massive shop selling all the merchandise including everything from pens to shoes with UCLA printed all over them. On Friday we did a tour of Beverley Hills and Hollywood and saw where all the famous people lived. I’d seen it all years ago but Simon was pretty impressed and took about a thousand photos in every direction. We drove past the homes of Julia Roberts, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, Janet Jackson, J-LO, Kevin Costner, and just about every other celebrity you can imagine. Hollywood was pretty cool but a bit overrated being mainly just stars on the footpath and souvenir shops. Seeing the Hollywood sign is always cool though but again as hard as I looked I never saw anyone famous. For the weekend Simon and I went to San Diego and we actually went first class this time and caught the train down. The train ride was amazing because it actually went along the coast just meters from the sand and you could see people surfing and sunbathing so close to you. Getting accommodation in San Diego was almost impossible and we booked it days in advanced and the only place we could stay at on the cheap was a small hostel way out in the suburbs. The hostel was basically a tiny house with a few beds in it and just ran by this lady who was way too overprotective of us and mothered us even more than our own mum. San Diego is an awesome city and probably the best in the States but travelling for almost 2 hours to get back to the hostel each day really got annoying. San Diego seemed like a pretty nice chilled out city and was quiet clean and safe but the best part were the beaches. After a huge night out on the Saturday night we headed for Pacific beach where we met up with our friend Nessy who we met in San Fran on the ghost tour. The beach was packed but had a great atmosphere and seemed much more real than the fakeness of LA. Nessy was awesome and showed us all the best places to hang out then took us for a nice drive down to Mission bay then along the coast. Mission Bay was also really nice and had a big theme park on the waters edge and some really funky bars. One of the bars actually had an artificial wave in it where all the drunken patrons try to surf it in their board shorts. We had a nice sunset drive then we fare welled Nessy and sat on public transport for the next 3 hours to get home in time for bed. On Monday we bused it back to LA big malls and bought some last minute clothes as we were flying out of the States the following day. On our last day in USA we rounded up a bunch of Irish lads and headed out to Hollywood to watch a few episodes of Dr Phil being filmed with this ticket we were given on Venice Beach. Somehow we got there in time for the 8am start after winging it on public transport from the moment the sun rose. As tired as we all were it was really interesting to watch it being filmed and we actually had the camera being on us a fair bit. The first show was about older women dating younger men so us being the youngest guys in the crowd, we had the camera on us constantly. We were pretty un-photogenic and eve and had a bit of a shopping spree day at one of thery time the camera pointed at us we laughed and elbowed each other so there’s a good chance we were cut from the show. After the show we had a bit of a walk around Hollywood again then Simon and I had to get our gear together and head for the airport for our flight to New Zealand. The flight was 13 hours long but we left on Tuesday afternoon and arrived in Auckland on Thursday morning because of the International Date Line. It was very weird arriving in New Zealand because it’s so similar to Australia so it felt like I was home again but it wasn’t quite right. Auckland seemed like such a small city after travelling the world but it had a really nice friendly feeling to it. I think New Zealanders must be the friendliest people in the world as every one you talked to seemed to want to chat forever to you. Heading through immigration was so relaxed after the ego head American Immigration officers who basically strip search you to get from A to B at the airport. When the Immigration officer found out I was only going to be there for 4 days she was begging me to stay longer and see the place properly. She said “Cem on ya gotta stey longer den thet bro” with her funny little Kiwi “eccecnt.” We only stayed in Auckand for a day and a night then moved onto Rotorua. Rotorua is a tiny volcanic active town famous for its boiling mud pools and geysers and of course the smell of sulphur in the air. The mud pools and geysers were really awesome and we relaxed the night away in the natural spas in the town. Again we just spent the day and the night there then moved on the following day to a little village called National Park Village at the base of some snow covered volcanic mountains near Taupo. Neither Simon nor I knew the slightest thing about snowboarding, skiing, or the area but we decided to whip up there and give it a whirl. The lady at tourist information in Rotorua told us there would be no need to worry about booking accommodation ahead so we just caught the bus to National Park Village. Once we arrived we went to a hotel and the guy laughed at me and said its peak season and they’ve been fully booked since about 5 days ago. The second hotel we checked out said the same thing and as he was saying it he got a phone call and somebody cancelled their twin room for the night so we got it. Dead lucky we were because it was bloody freezing and we were stuck in a tiny town without even a shop in the middle of nowhere. Even though this place was as busy as it possibly gets the town seemed like a ghost town and not a car or a person was to be seen but then we figured everybody was up on the mountain skiing. It was midday by this stage and our only day in the snow so we asked around about getting up to the snow fields which were 20km away. Everyone we asked said there were no more shuttles or busses up there until tomorrow and the only way to get there was to hitchhike….so that’s what we did. Some random tradesman gave us a ride to the highway then we had to hitch again from there. Both Simon and I looked like a couple of homeless men as we had walked the highway with this big foldout bag that mum gave us and had our thumb out for a ride. After being told it was easy to get a ride about 20 cars drove straight past us without any hint of stopping so we decided to get some new tactics. We then hid our homeless can and bottle collecting bag in a bush and smiled and eyeballed the driver with our sad eyes and it worked first shot. A really nice lady pulled over and drove us all the way to the mountain and even gave us a bit of a tour on the way. By the time we got to the mountain we had only about 2 hours of snowboard time left for the day and luckily rented out some gear and headed straight for the beginners’ hill. We were too cheap to buy a ski lift pass so we ended up walking back up the hill every time we caught a ride. Apparently it’s the best snow fall they had in about 50 years and the conditions were perfect with blue skies and plenty of powder so the place was packed to the rim with thousands of skiers and snowboarders. We had a heap of fun and after 2 hours I was snowboarding like a champion and could even stop so I was pretty proud of myself. Simon and I had to share 1 pair of gloves the whole day so every time our hands got too cold we swapped for 10 minutes. After returning our gear it was time to figure out how to get back to the village and the bus was no option again so we were back to hitchhiking once again. After our 4th hitched ride for the day we finally got back to the hotel and crashed out with exhaustion. The following day we caught a train back to Auckland which broke down on the way. We spent our last night of the 18 month trip just relaxing and chatting to fellow backpackers in our hostel dorm. On our last few hours before flying back to Australia we ran around and spend our last dollars on souvenirs before heading to the airport. Arriving back in Adelaide was so weird after being away for so long and I didn’t know if I was feeling happy or sad about it. Let’s see how long I can stay here for now without the travel bug taking over again.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Woodsy

Party Time, Cancun to Vegas to California

G'day all,

Again, it’s been a “Heaps Good” couple of weeks since my last cheeky update. Sorry this one took so long but I had a computer virus which destroyed my computer but it's back in business now. Anyway back to the trip. After suffering another torturous Central American 70’s chicken bus ride and a almost daily border crossing I finally arrived in Belize to a very interesting town called Belize City. I was expecting skyscrapers and pollution but it looked more like a little country town in Kansas from the 50’s thrown on the edge Caribbean with dirt roads and a real laid back atmosphere. All the buildings seemed to be wooden and on stilts and painted all different colours. The locals didn’t look a thing like the rest of Central America as it was full of cool African looking dudes with dreadlocks and happy clothes and Caribbean accents everywhere to be heard. As soon as I arrived I pretty much jumped straight on a water taxi which whipped me over to the number one tourist attraction in Belize, Caye Caulker. Now if I was impressed by the chillness of Belize City then Caye Caulker was so chilled out it makes you want to just fall asleep under a coconut tree. The moment I arrived in Caye Caulker I was in love with the place and could have moved there in a flash. Unfortunately I only had 2 nights there due to my tight schedule so decided to make the most of it. I first found a hostel called Belles which was run by the biggest Menopausal Dutch bitch I’ve ever seen. This one lady and the price of food on the island were my only complaints I could think of about this Paradise Island. I get to the hostel and this ‘people hating’ old chook with more bush under her arms than in South Australia glares at me as I walk towards her. I’m like “G’day luv have you got any spare beds for the night?” and she’s like “take your shoes off and go find a bed for yourself.” I felt some really bad energy and BO wafting my way and pondered the idea of staying under this beast of a woman’s roof. As I was just about to give her an answer she yells at me “Well do ya bloody want it or not, I don’t have all day.” I then nose laughed and said in my pissy little weak voice “Yes Please” and found the nicest bed I could find. After that awkward little discussion I organized a snorkeling trip for the following day and went for a stroll along the long skinny island it is. I really was shattered to be only staying here 2 nights as I walked along the palm lined main dirt road filled with people walking, riding bikes, and cruising around on golf buggies. As I walked I watched people play soccer on the beach and drink beers in a bar hanging out over the clear light blue Caribbean water with a diving board hanging from the second floor. The next morning I did my snorkeling trip out on some protected reefs with more marine life than you could ever imagine. We all went on a sail boat and sailed out to the 3 reefs for about an hour. I had to help the guy with the sails and he was like “Don’t pull that rope mun, nah just joking mun” and it was a joke a minute for the whole day. I had a brilliant day andI have. never snorkeled or dived in a place like it. I saw everything from sharks and sting rays to the highlight of the day, a Manatee. I didn’t even know what a Manatee was until I saw one. I never expected to get so close to it. We were told not to get too close to it because if they get scared they swim away. I swam up to it within a few meters and stopped moving and videoed it with my camera (as in video) As I was videoing the Manatee it swam right up to me and stared me in the eyes suddenly bringing back some instant strong memories of the lady running the hostel. It was an amazing moment and I couldn’t believe how close we got to it. Our second swim was almost as good as the rusta men running the tour poured a heap of food into the water next to the boat causing a rush of huge fish, sharks, and rays to engulf beside the boat. I couldn’t believe how close these huge creatures were to me and they were so busy eating that they didn’t even notice us snorkeling around them. Anyway that’s enough about fish back to the trip. My last night on Caye Caulker was spent indoors gripping my bunk bed as a hurricane like storm just about blew over the hostel. I’ve never heard winds or rain like I did that night and I was actually pretty scared feeling the building being blown around all night. At one stage the windows in my room blew off the building and one fell inside my room and a man came in the room saying something about a hurricane but I think it was just an extreme storm. After Caye Caulker I headed up to Playa Del Carmen in Mexico and after waiting for my 4 hour late bus ride amongst a pack of angry backpackers. As soon as we crossed the Mexican boarder it was a very nice feeling and felt like I was back in a western country again. The cars were all new and shiny and washed and the roads had no pot holes and had a nice surface. I was also excited to see Mcdonalds, Burger King, and KFC lining the highway as we zoomed towards Playa. I was so used to twisty flooded dirt roads, full of land slides, rocks and holes, and random animals from being in Central America that a normal road felt so pleasurable and smooth. I spent 3 nights and 2 days in Playa Del Carmen and most of my time was spent just relaxing, swimming, and eating junk food again. I never realized how westernized Mexico was (even though it’s a beach resort town) and I really enjoyed the structure and standards of it but wasn’t enjoying the high prices again. Playa was a really nice place, very clean, and easy to get around, and the beaches were near perfect. Playa Del Carmen is supposed to be a mini Cancun and most people prefer it to its big brother town. I only went out one night while I was there and I stupidly sprained my ankle trying to do salsa dancing. I’ve now been limping around for the past week with a swollen and bruised ankle due to my pathetic attempt to do the Salsa. My last stop in Mexico was Cancun, party central. I was there for only 3 nights and they were 3 very big nights at that. I was hoping to meet another party animal like myself at my hostel in Cancun and luckily I met my perfect match, another Aussie guy called Damian. Damian was originally planning to move on from Cancun the following day but after our first huge night out he decided to stay for another 2 nights and party with me. We stayed downtown which is a fair way away from all the action in the hotel district but managed to catch the good old R1 bus into the party zone each night. On our first night out we went to a club called ‘The City’ which is the biggest club in Central America and holds about 15,000 people. As soon as I stepped into the front door of The City I saw what all the fuss was all about. This joint was bloody massive and not only was it a club, it was basically a circus. In the centre of this huge super room was a stage where different circus acts are performed all through the night. All the bars and clubs in Cancun have a entry charge of about 20-60 bucks where you get free drinks all night once you pay the cover. On Saturday we pretty much slept all day and at night we went to another super club called ‘The Bulldog.’ The Bulldog was also big but was crammed full of try hard tools everywhere which really annoyed me. Everyone in that joint loved themselves to bits and the only cool thing about the night was this hot tub they had on stage with 2 hot girls in bikinis making out. On my last night in Cancun I went to the famous ‘Coco Bongo’ club which was the most expensive but best of the lot. It was more of a show than a club but the entertainment factor was 100% During the night they had dozens of different impersonators from Michael Jackson to Elvis and thousands of balloons and streamers fell from the roof. The highlight of the night was a spiderman show they had where a guy was attatched to cables hanging from the roof and he flew and did flips over the crowd with many special effects. After Cancun I few off to Las Vegas to meet up with my brother Simon who is travelling with me for the last 3 weeks of the trip. Everything seemed to go wrong when trying to meet up with Simon as his flight was delayed causing him to miss 2 flights. To make things worse my flight to Vegas was cancelled during my stop over in Florida because Spirit "bloody" Airways was striking and I ended up arriving 24 hours later after flying half way around America (via Pittsburgh). Never fly Spirit Airways...Ever. They were so bad and rude that the news came and videoed everyone at the airport and my boofy little head got on CNN news....again. So 24 hours later I rock up in Vegas and finally meet my brother who had already been to Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam while I was sitting in the airport. We had 2 nights and 3 days in Vegas and had a ball. I had already been to Vegas 8 years ago on my first trip but it didn't stop me being just as amazed, if not more this time around.Vegas really is the Disney World for adults and we really could have spent a month there and still only seen half the casinos. Our hostel was called 'Sin City Hostel' and was right across the road from the wedding chapel where Britney Spears accidently got married once. Simon and I walked constantly for 3 days straight and still saw half the things we planned. Where ever you looked there were huge flashing lights and shows of all sorts. I only spent $20 on gambling and stuck to the slot machines because it's the only thing I know how to do when it comes to gambling. Each casino had different themes from the Circus to New York and some even had mini zoos inside and huge swimming pools. New York New York was probably our favourite casino as the place just looks just like Manhatten and it's only a casino. There was even a roller coaster weaving in and around the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. Las Vegas was boiling hot each day and making our way up and down the strip ended up being quite a process. They have a bus which runs up and down called the main strip called the "Duece" which was always full and kept driving past us and left us out in the heat but the great thing about it is you can pay $5 and use your ticket for 24 hrs! Last Thursday I introduced my brother to the infamous dodgy "Greyhound" bus and ended up having Robo-Cop as a driver. The bus system is so bad over here that to go from Las Vegas to San Francisco we had to go to LA first then up the coast 14 arriving hours later. After such a crazy week or two Simon and I chilled out and caught up on some sleep on our first few days in San Fran. I've also been to San Fran before but I never realised how many homeless people there are, or maybe it was just the classy location of our hotel. It seemed almost like 1 in 10 people on the street was a begger and the funny thing was they also seemed to be quite intelligent. Simon and I went to the library to check our emails one day and there were homeless people galore reading books and surfing the net and I think that explained some of the unusually intellectual conversations I had with them. All the homeless people seemed to own their own stolen supermarket trolley and had it packed with all their goodies. On Sunday night we did a ghost tour which was unlike any I've been on before. Our first stop on the tour was in this haunted hotel which was very spiritually active. We were warned about the hotel having many cold spots and while I was listening to the guide talking I felt this cold sensation constantly running up and down my hand. We then took a heap of photos of the inside of the hotel and orbs were appearing in almost every picture in eveyones cameras. It was crazy and the next thing we did was hunt cold spots where we actually tracked a cold spot and there was three of us feeling it's shape and size. The other freaky thing that happened on the tour was we stood outside a haunted house and the guide put a key in his hand and we all witnessed it rotate around 180* over about 30 seconds bit by bit with no explanation. The wind and gravity were both facing the opposite direction and his hand didn't move at all because everyone held it firm. It is peak tourist season at the moment and unfortantley there was a week wait to go out to Alcatraz because of everyone booking their tickets online these days so we missed out on that one. Instead we decided to invest the money in something much more fun and rented a sporty red Mustang convertible and zoomed down the Californian coastline on HWY 1. I normally wouldn't go near a Ford but this was one sexy sexy car and it was damn fun to drive. We had the roof off all day and had the radio cranking tune after tune as we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, then down Lombard Street (crookedest street in the world) and even tried to get it airborn off the steep Cisco streets. It was an awesome drive down the coastline to Monteray and we even stumbled across some humpback whales swimming off the shore. The funny thing was that we forgot to ask how the roof is put back on and ended up driving in dark with the roof down and us shivvering the whole way back to San Fran with the heating up full. When we got back we found a button that popped the roof back on and we felt real stupid. We've been having a great time so far and are currently in LA with under 2 weeks before my trip is finished and I'm back home to face reality. Only 1 blog update left to go.
Having a wicked time,

Woodsy + Woodsy

Mayan Ruins and Chilling on the Caribbean…..Mun

G'day all,

Ok so where the hell do I start with this past week or two other than saying I’ve been flat out like a lizard drinking. Since my last update I’ve been to Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and today I’ve just arrived in Belize. After Costa Rica I decided to have a couple of days rest in a nice little colonial town in Nicaragua called Granada. Nicaragua was a new word to me as I only realized it was a country 2 weeks before I received my Nicaragua stamp in my passport. Granada is supposed to be one of the nicer and safer cities to visit in Nicaragua so that’s where I decided to go. I only spent 2 nights in Granada and found myself hanging out with a cool Canadian guy, Mike, who helped me out speaking Spanish along the way as the 4 words I know don’t get me very far. Our first day in Granada was spent accidentally walking around the Ghetto of Granada and our first impressions of this town were pretty dodgy. On day 2 we actually realized it’s a really beautiful town and we took the wrong street on the map. The town is full of these nice old colourful Spanish colonial buildings which line almost every street apart from the ghetto. Most of our time in Granada was spent avoided heavy downpours of the wet season rains, and heading out to explore in the dry patches during the day time. Granada was a nice but random little town but I sure as hell liked it better that my next stop, Managua. Managua is the capital city of Nicaragua and has a bad reputation for its violent backpacker muggings, especially outside the main bus station. I had to take what everyone calls in Central America, a ‘chicken bus’ from Granada to Managua which was an experience on its own. Once I arrived in the dreaded Managua I took a taxi to the front door of the ‘Tika Bus’ which is kind of like the Greyhound of Central America. My next stop was to head up to La Ceiba in Honduras but there was no bus until the following day. Once the taxi dropped me outside Tika Bus a gang of thugs were waiting for me. I got so nervous I walked past the entrance of the bus station and half way down the street before realizing I missed the building by about 50 meters. I had 3 guys on my tail bugging me and asking where I was going but luckily I power walked myself to the safety of the station before anything happened. I was relieved to see that they had a hotel inside the station so I stayed there and didn’t leave the building until my bus left the following morning. After a powernap I popped out of my hotel room for some dinner and ate with a nice Argentinean couple who were also too terrified to leave the building. As we were joking and laughing about the situation we heard someone yelling and screaming outside the window and banging on the door so we let security deal with it and decided to call it a night. La Ceiba in Honduras was my next stop where I stayed the night before catching the ferry across to Utila, one the Bay Islands in the Caribbean. My hotel was a shocker and I couldn’t sleep due to my ceiling fan sounding like a V8 and the bathroom stinking like bile. The following day was a thousand times better as arriving on Utila felt so nice and safe and I was surrounded by other backpackers again. Utila is one of the best places for scuba diving on the Caribbean and is also probably the cheapest too. My plan was to just chill out for a few days and do some diving but instead I ended up being talked into doing my Advanced PADI diving course and had an absolute ball. I did the course with a bunch of great blokes from all over the world and we partied every night and dived every day. The day I arrived on the island was the last day of this big carnival they have each year and the whole island was going crazy with parades, dancing, music, fireworks, and thousands of people lining the streets and beaches wearing beads. Although we were starting our advanced course the following day we still partied the night away and had a brilliant night. We did 7 dives on our course including ship wrecks, night diving, and 2 fun dives. Our first dive was our deep wreck dive where we went down to 30m and fed eggs to these crazy fish. The wreck was so awesome, it was a big cargo ship that sunk and we got to swim around and through it. After that first dive I was completely addicted again and each dive just got better and better. On our second day we did the night dive which was probably my favourite. We headed off on the boat at sunset and before we knew it we were 20m underwater with a torch and swimming around another smaller wreck in complete darkness. The feeling was unreal and I was in my element the whole 45 minutes we were under. It was quite funny watching fish sleep and the highlight was seeing a large eagle ray swim under us in pitch darkness. Each night after diving we all met up and had dinner together then hit the town (all 3 bars of it). The best of the bars was called Treetanic and I’ve never seen a bar so impressive in my life. The bar is actually built in the tree tops like tree houses with board walks and ladders joining all the different platforms together. On our last night I had a huge night with the scuba guys and I was suffering the following day on my fun dives. My buddy Jack and I were vomiting at the same time for the whole morning after we surfaced from each dive. Our first dive was a real task to get through but the second dive was much better. The highlight of the dive was when we went through a tight underwater cave almost scraping the walls as the cave zigzagged around. The funniest thing about Utila is the Caribbean accents. It seems like a scene out of cool running where everywhere you walk you hear ‘yeahhhh mun’. Sometimes the accents are so thick you have no idea what they are even talking about. I had a brilliant 4 or 5 days on Utila and Utila Dive Center was amazing. It was sad to leave but it had to be done and Michael, one of my mates from the course came with me. We had perfect weather every day on Utila but the minute we left the island we had non-stop rain again. Our next stop was the Copan Ruins in Western Honduras which were awesome. It took us one full day to get there finally and the following day we ventured around the famous Mayan ruins. I was pretty impressed with Copan being my first Mayan ruin site and they did a pretty good job preserving all the carvings after so many hundreds of years. At the entrance to the ruins they had these massive parrots almost pecking your eyes out at the front gate. Michael and I did a tour of the ruins but were much more impressed by the Tikal Ruins we saw 2 days later. The whole town of Copan was out of electricity and water for days so we decided to shoot across to Guatemala to some random town for the night before heading up to Flores. I’m not even sure what the name of the town was but we were the only foreigners or “Gringos” (as they call us over here) to be seen. As we walked down the street people were looking at us from every direction but they were just curious and we felt safe enough. At 5am the following morning we took another torturous chicken bus for the whole day until we finally reached the town of Flores in the afternoon. Flores is the launching pad for the Tikal ruins which are supposed to be the best Maya ruins of the lot. Flores was a nice little town on an island in the middle of a lake which is about an hour away from Tikal. The following morning we left for Tikal at 3am to watch the sun rise. Tikal is amazing in every sense of the word with its huge pyramid like temples strung out between a dense jungle full of monkeys, toucans, and tarantulas. For sunrise we climbed the largest temple and watched the sun come up over the jungle as growling monkeys growled in the background. Growling monkeys are their actual name and they actual do growl so loud they sound like an angry lion which was quite scary until you see how small they are. The temples in Tikal were much bigger than the ones in Copan and it’s on such a large scale it takes hours just to walk around them all. One of the interesting things I learnt was that the Mayans played this ball game with a big 10 pound rubber ball which was kind of a mixture of soccer and basketball. They took it so seriously that the winner of the game was often sacrificed because he became a god like figure and the game only goes for about 10 minutes until the ball touches the ground. We were at Tikal for about 5 or 6 hours and by the end of it we were so exhausted that we had a nap when arrived back at the hostel. After our nap Michael and I swam out across the lake to this island which didn’t look too far away. By the time we got there we were stuffed and a storm was coming through so we had to try to get back to the mainland again. Yesterday Michael and I parted ways and he went to Guatemala City and I headed to Belize to a much talked about island on the Caribbean called Caye Caulker.

Next stop…Mexico

Woodsy

Winging it Bolivia to Central America

G’day all,

Well the adventure of a life time has taken many twists and turns over the past week or 2 with me just going where the wind blows me and loving every minute of it. Arriving in Bolivia felt like getting out of jail after all the strike and riot action we had in Peru. I found myself new travel buddies with 3 English girls, a Dutch girl, a German couple, and a Greek and American guy who all survived the Peru ciaos with me. Arriving in Copacabana felt not only like getting out of jail but also like arriving in paradise at the same time. After sniffing around for some cheap accommodation we walked through the chilled out town and along the beach. We then found ourselves bargaining down a 10 year old boy to rent his sail boat for an hour. We got him down to 50 cents each then did a boomerang to get some cheeky beers and off we were paddling out into the middle of Lake Titicaca. The weather was perfect and we were all laughing about how good the moment was and how good if felt to be out of the trouble in Peru. After such a great day, we ended it with a nice trout restaurant meal, a bottle of wine, then 2 for 1 ‘Pisco Sours.’ The following day we hiked around some island in the middle of Lake Titicaca (the highest lake in the World) which was awesome and caught a bus late in the afternoon to the capital of Bolivia, La Paz. It was a funny old bus ride on the way to La Paz as we all had to pile off the bus and take a speed boat across Lake Titicaca as the bus floated across behind us on some half sunken old wooden raft thing. Arriving into La Paz was unreal as the city looks like it is stuck inside a huge crater with hills wrapped around the entire town. As the bus drove downtown we passed many stinky old looking markets with dozens of feral dogs chewing at any leftovers they could get and I felt almost a little bit worried at how rough this place was going to be. I heard stories of other backpackers being robbed at gun point here so I was on full alert to not let it happen to me. We were all buggered by the time we arrived and once we found a hotel and bolted down a huge Burger King meal it was lights out. The following day, Saturday, La Paz looked a lot less dangerous then it did the following night so I did a bit of sightseeing and went to this crazy witches market were they sold ingredients for spells and also went to the ‘Cocaine Museum” which was different. La Paz seemed like such an interesting yet crazy place where the tourist attractions were different to any other city I’ve seen. Many backpackers even ride mountain bikes 3 hours along the world’s most dangerous road where 50 buses fall off the cliffs each year. There are even little ‘coke dens’ where you apparently get a line of cocaine when you order a beer. The buildings are completely boarded up like a construction site and when you knock someone looks through a slat in the door before they let you in. On Sunday I did the craziest of all the things in La Paz and went on the prison tour. I probably shouldn’t even be writing about this but here it goes. In La Paz you go to San Pedro Prison and tip the guards off about $40 and they let you go in and meet up with some of the prisoners inside and they give you a tour. This is not an advertised tour as you can imagine and I was desperate to do it but had nobody to round up to come with me so I went alone. I walked up to the guards and apparently you have to ask for Daniel, Stewart, or Sebastian, which I did and they let me pass. The next thing some crazy foreign prisoner yells through the bars to me “come here, come here”, then laughs and says “don’t worry I’m not going to bite ya.” He then whispers “so you’re here for the tour” then he goes and gets one of the other prisoners who gets the guards to let me in behind the bars and takes me into a room up about 3 little stairways. I get to the last set of stairs and some scitzo crazy coked up guy meets me and asks “what do I f**king want.” I say “Are you Daniel” then he replies “Do I f**king look like Daniel, I better f**king not, I’m not that f**king short am I.” I felt about as uncomfortable as a fart in a space suit but managed to tell him I’m here for the tour. He then lets me up into a small room where about 15 mainly Irish girls were being briefed about the tour. I was the only guy there doing the tour and the girls looked so relieved when I walked up the stairs. Some of them were so nervous they were shaking so that didn’t make me feel any better. An older guy took the tour and finished of the briefing with all of us. He told us somebody was in there for chopping his sister in 8 pieces and another prisoner stabbed his wife 52 times. He also said that this prison has the lowest escape rate in the world and you can murder up to another 2 prisoners without getting your sentence extended. The last thing he says is “If we get attacked we have to just fight back until the police come to break it up.” Me, being the only guy on the tour was feeling pretty responsible at this moment in time. The prison was separated into 3 parts, the rich, the poor, and high security, and it was all run like the outside world with prisoners buying their own businesses inside. We were only allowed to visit the richest part for safety reasons as the guide was stabbed last time he took a tour to the poor section, where 4 people a year are murdered on average. The tour was short but interesting and well worth it and it defiantly turned me away from ever wanting to go to jail. I would like to write more about it but don’t want to get into any trouble so I’ll leave it as that. Straight after the prison tour I met up with the girls and went to probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen before ‘midget wrestling.’ We caught a cab to the outskirts of the town where we went to a big old shed and witnessed probably the most entertaining 3 hours our lives. There ended up being only 1 midget who was dressed up as ‘Mighty Mouse” and the rest of the wrestlers were men apart from 2 women. The women were the highlight of the show as they didn’t fight each other they actually fought the men. The main lady had her hair in braided piggy tails, wore a dress, and women’s dress shoes, she was about 40 years old and had to fight two big strong men at the same time. She was getting bashed to buggery with a chair and even had blood dripping down her forehead when all of a sudden she went mental and cleaned both of the men up within a couple of minutes (as in video) The crowd roared and we were gob smacked for the rest of the night. Some of the fights even went into the crowd and I have to admit it was so much more entertaining than that WWF stuff. The following day I said my farewells to the 3 English girls and the Dutch girl and I took a quite easy 28 hour bus ride back to Lima in Peru. I ended up staying in a much nicer area in Lima this time by the coast and stayed for just a night before my flight back to Miami on the Wednesday. When I went to check in I found out they overbooked my flight with too much weight and I had to jump onto another plane which stopped in Costa Rica. After thinking for a few minutes I decided to not get off in Miami like planned and instead grab my bags in Costa Rica and travel up through Central America for the next 3 weeks. On the way to San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, the plane hit a storm and we had really bad turbulence for a few minutes. Everyone looked extremely worried but in the end we arrived safely and I found myself to a cheap enough hotel for the night. I knew nothing about Central America or Costa Rica so grabbed some pamphlets from the hotel and read up on different tours. The following day I found a hostel and did some research and found out about a really nice backpacker beach town called “Montezuma” so decided to head there for the weekend. On the bus to Montezuma I ended up chatting to a heap of nice Americans and hung out with them for the whole weekend. When we arrived I found a cheap hotel on the beach where crabs were living in the sink and various sea life was walking around on the ground, but it was just a place to sleep and it was cheap so who cares! On Saturday we decided to go for a walk through the jungle to find some waterfalls and had a real adventure sliding down the steep muddy river edges and hanging onto vines and tree roots. As it’s the wet season here it ended up bucketing down with rain for about an hour and we decided to walk back through the water and forget about the last waterfall. As we were walking I kept joking around and telling everyone I saw a snake and one of the American girls said “haven’t you heard of the boy who cried wolf.” Just as she said it I felt something big with claws wrap around my foot and it felt like it was starting to bite my large toe. After that we just walked back along the muddy river bank holding onto the trees. Montezuma is a tropical paradise with monkeys and huge lizards jumping all over the place (even though I missed them due to chatting too much). The town is tiny with just one main road running through it and a few restaurants and shops. As you eat tropical birds come up and sit around the table with you. The beach has crushing waves and plenty of rocks which are quite dangerous but good fun and some surfers take on the reef breaks. There is only 1 bar in Montezuma; ‘Chico’s Bar’ which is the place to be each night and during the daytime everybody just chills on hammocks between the coconut trees, my kinda paradise. It seems to be the place to go for a weekend in Costa Rica so the bus back to San Jose on Sunday arvo was chockablock and we had to stand up half of the 6 hours ride. Yesterday I did a day trip to one of the most active volcano’s in Central America, Arenal Volcano, which smokes each day and spits lava at night. Unfortunately it was a cloudy night and we didn’t get to see the lava flow but during the day it was a bit clearer and we saw smoke pouring out of the top of the volcano which was awesome. On the tour we also spent the day relaxing in some hot springs beneath the volcano which was awesome fun and I hung around 2 really cool American girls for the day. I’ve decided that to keep on schedule I must be in Cancun, Mexico in just over 2 weeks which is a real squeeze so today I’m heading off to Nicaragua which will be interesting. Update ya’ll again in another week or so.

Woodsy

Miami to Peru

G’day all,

What can I say but another crazy week of partying and unpredictable travel surprises. I settled into Miami quite well and moved into this great hostel called the Jazz Hostel on South Beach. I was in such a great mood after having my bags back and finally being able to mix with some fellow travellers again. My time in Miami seemed to be a mirror image of each day where we slept in until midday, spent hours down the beach chilling out, then started preparing for the next massive night of pre-drinks and clubbing. By my first night at the Jazz Hostel I teamed up with a whole bunch of great people who ended up being my party buddies for the next 5 nights straight. We all seemed to arrive on the same day and were staying for the same amount of time and hit it off straight away. Miami has a pretty cheeky little night life where many bars have free drinks all night for the one price. Each night at the hostel we had a different party planned and probably the coolest was on the Sunday night where we went to this bar where all the celebrities hang out and party on the beach. The place was crazy with actual beds and plenty of them blocking the way between the club and the beach and people partying inside and out. Miami Beach was amazing and the water was so warm it was hard to get out. Each day the beach was crowded with pretentious and materialistic boofheads with rippling muscles and everything fake from lips to tits. Although I could see through their bullshit my backpacker mates and I had a good laugh as we walked up and down the beach each day pointing them out. There is nothing you don’t see and everyone is there just for the show. Just about everyone has their designer sunglasses on and is talking on their mobile phones and one goose was even sitting on the waters edge with his laptop out. One big shot came up to us trying to be cool in front of the girls and asked where we were from to gain the attention of the girls behind us. When we said Australia, he said “that where Schwarzenegger is from hey dude.” We had a ball in Miami and it was hard leaving even though I was excited to get down to South America to check out Peru. On Tuesday morning I flew out of Miami and had three flights with stops in Costa Rica and Ecuador on the way down to Lima and arrived late at night. I did no research at all about Peru and after talking to a guy from my hostel that night I decided to duck off to Cusco the following day on a 22 hour overnight bus. What I saw of Lima looked really poverty stricken with old graphite filled crumbling buildings lining the roads full of pre-historic old bombs for cars. After sitting in the taxi for a while on the way to the bus station the taxi driver told me to wind up the windows and lock the doors because we were heading into a real dodgy area where people grab your belonging at the traffic lights. My 22 hour bus ride to Cusco was somewhat a surprise as the bus was run like a 1^st class flight with nice big fold out seats and blankets with a bus stewardess bringing us food and drinks. One we arrived on the bus we were filmed by a video camera as we sat down. I thought it was a Japanese tourist going one step too far but it ended up finding out it’s incase we get kidnapped. Overnight we went from sea level to almost 4000m up in the air and altitude sickness was kicking in. In the morning we were winding up and around the mountains and the stewardess had a tray full of boiling hot cups of water for coffee balancing in one hand. It was quite a frightening experience as we hit some bumps and she fell to her side and almost gave the people in front of me 3^rd degree burns to their faces. I fell in love with Cusco the minute we arrived as it’s about a thousand times nicer than Lima and has a real nice small town feeling to it. Once I arrived I made my way my hostel “The Peak” and found myself a bed for the next few nights. As I introduced myself to some fellow backpackers at the hostel I found out that Cusco and this hostel is quite a fun trap and most people plan to stay a few nights and 2 weeks later they are still here partying each night. There was some great people staying at the hostel and I saw what they meant straight away as my first three days were spent sleeping in and partying each night away. I did however get to walk around the town a fair bit also and saw many old Inca buildings and beautiful old churches surrounding the main squares. The main square in the town was stunning no matter what angle you saw it from and the mountains circling the town were just as pretty. Each night the bars competed for the backpackers attention and we got many free drinks in the bargain to keep us in each one for the night. One of the main reasons people head to Cusco is because it’s the base for the world famous “Machu Picchu” Inca ruins. On Saturday I booked my trip up to Machu Picchu for Monday and $155 later (which was cheap may I add) I had finally made some progress from the wild nightlife that controls the travellers lives here. On Monday I was picked up from my hostel at 6:30am and endured a very slow 4 hour cramped 100km train ride up to Machu Picchu. The train was ridiculously slow and half the time it was going backwards instead of forwards. As we approached Machu Picchu the scenery became stunning with massive green mountains engulfing the valley below where the train slowly chugged away. I’d seen many pictures of Machu Picchu before and knew what I was about to see would be beautiful but I didn’t realize the extent of the 360º mind blowing perfection that it really was. Once we arrived there were alpacas strolling freely eating the grasses around the ancient ruins and every angle you looked was just picture perfect. I did a tour which was helpful to understand the history of the place. I ended up hanging out with some nice German people for the rest of the day exploring the ruins and taking in the views. Machu Picchu is definitely a must do and probably the most impressive thing you can see in the whole world no matter what you compare it to. The train ride back to Cusco was equally as painful as the ride up and when we finally arrived I had to head straight to the bus station for my overnight bus to Puno. I booked my bus ride days before and was told that on Tuesday and Wednesday there would be strikes and Monday night was the last chance I had to catch the bus. Once I arrived at the bus that’s where the nightmare of the next 2 days began. Firstly they overbooked the bus and gave me somebody else’s ticket who was already sitting on the bus. I then had to try to convince them in my 4 words of Spanish I know that I paid for the trip and they stuffed up and gave me the wrong ticket. The tried to kick me off and eventually my Aussie spirit wore them down and they let me stay on the bus….bad move. For hours through the night I lay in the aisle trying to sleep with the smell of sewerage wafting up from under the toilet door and into my face. I also had people walking all over me and dropping things on me over the night. That was the least of my worries as you are about to read. About 2am the bus came to a stop in the middle of nowhere and everyone on the bus was locked in until the sun came up. Nobody understood what was happening but we eventually found out we were caught between two violent road blockage strikes either sides of this small town and were stuck here for the next 2 days. Everybody on the bus was extremely angry and confused but we later found out how extreme this strike was and decided to get a hotel for the night. The day ended up turning into a bit of a laugh as we were all powerless and to do anything was putting our lives at risk if we tried. The strike was about pay rates and rights and it was country wide forcing the whole of Peru into shutdown. Every main road was blocked off with hundreds of rock throwing rioters forcing everybody to stay within their own town. The town was forced into shutdown mode causing all the businesses to pull roller shutters over their shop windows as angry protesters everywhere threw rocks at the shops and held large bamboo sticks. Later on in the day I met some people who were caught in the thick of the riots and every window on their bus was smashed in with huge rocks and the fields on the sides of the roads where lit on fire. The tourists all had to walk almost 2 hours before the police escorted them into the town for safety. The roads where layered with rows of boulders and broken glass everywhere making it almost impossible to drive anywhere and forcing people out of their cars and busses. I ended up becoming good friends with the people from my bus and we kept each other in good spirits as the riots continued. The following day we were allowed to continue on our bus at 6pm as the protesters gave us a window to escape. Getting back to the bus was a challenge of its own and ended up being more of a military mission as we ran through alley ways to escape trouble. The bridge to the bus was blocked and we had to force our way across as one lady threw a bottle on the ground in front of us to prevent us going any further. We chilled out at a hostel with another bunch of stranded backpackers as we waited for 6pm to arrive. We sat on the rooftop watching the action on the streets below us as we sucked back a few cheeky beers enjoying the show. As 6pm got closer we noticed the protesters removing the rocks from the road and dozens of busses and trucks passing through the town with dents, flat tires, and smashed windows galore. I ended up changing my mind about Puno and instead jumped on a bus to Bolivia to escape further action and chill out in a beaut little town called “Copa Cabana.” Anyway more about that and more next update.

Alive and well and full of adrenalin,

Woodsy

Down the East Coast

G'day all,

Well I think I'm getting slacker and slacker with this blog or maybe I'm just having too much fun to keep up with it. Ok so it's been 2 weeks since my last update so let me try and remember back on what I've been up to. Dan and I had a nice last couple of days in New York and finished up our site seeing by taking the ferry to Staten Island and passing the Statue of Liberty and going up to the top of Rockefeller Center. The heat and humidity continued and eventually turned into a massive thunderstorm for our last few hours of walking around Manhattan. The funny thing is that we had near perfect weather for the last 8 or 9 days in New York, and each day we said we would go and check out the view from the top of the Rockefeller but never got around to it. By the time we got to do it we were told there was 0 visibility due to the storm so we waited a while then went up when it cleared a bit. The view was amazing and while we were up at the top they were filming either a movie or a TV show up there. The director told us to be quiet and take no flash photography. Half way through one of the shoots I pull out my camera for a cheeky photo and the flash goes off and lights up the actors faces. Highly embarrassed I side step and duck away and the lady standing next to me was told off with her camera still in hand. Dan and I couldn't believe I took the photo with the flash on and after that I was too scared to pull out my camera again. We watched the sunset or what was left of it, then came back down at night. On Tuesday Christine, Dan, and I headed to Philadelphia for a couple of days and stayed at Christine's college apartment. Our main interest wasn't really to see Philadelphia but to head out to Lancaster to the 'Amish Country' and see how they live. On Wednesday we rented a car on the cheap and headed out to Lancaster. It was such an amazing thing to see the Amish riding around on the highways in their horse and buggies wearing their hats and bonnets and suits. We found it strange knowing that it's just an average day for them and they're not putting on a show for tourists, they're just heading from A to B. Unfortunately later on the in afternoon a storm kicked in forcing the local Amish farmers to stay indoors but while the sun was out we saw them everywhere. We felt a bit odd trying to take photos of them especially after we forced a young boy to hide behind the wheel of his buggy as Dan and I snapped away. After that we went to an Amish market and drove around the farms before doing an Amish house tour. The tour was really interesting and we learned all about the people and their beliefs and it really spun me out how different they live. When we got back to Philadelphia we drove downtown to try the famous "Philly Cheese Steak" sandwich. There are two places called 'Pats' and 'Genos' which have been competing for years and it's a tradition to back either one or the other. We had the original 'Pats' and had to order it by saying "Can I have a wit whiz" otherwise they don't serve you as a tradition…weird. Before it got dark Dan and I ran up and down the Rocky stairs before having an early night after our big day. We left Philly on Thursday for Washington D.C. to stay with my mate Matty who travelled with in Thailand in 2006. While we were waiting for our greyhound bus in Philly we decided to have a quick peep at the 'Liberty Bell' and pulled this map out to navigate our way there. It was a bad idea as we were standing in the Ghetto and next thing some guy came up to us and said we were crazy looking like tourists here. He said this is not Philadelphia it's 'Killadelphia" murder capital of the world as he rushed us out of the back streets to the shopping mall towards the bell. After that bit of action we said our farewells to Christine and jumped on another dodgy ghetto greyhound bus. Once we arrived in DC we immediately liked it much better than Killadelphia and when we finally arrived at Matt's house we really fell in love with the place. Matt lives in the bachelor pad of all bachelor pads in DC in a really nice area too. Once we got settled in we were given a beer and the grand tour of his huge mansion. After that I jumped in the shower and couldn't even find it because there were so many rooms I got lost straight away. Dan and I had a cozy room in the basement to ourselves and it was perfect to prepare for the 3 huge nights of partying we had ahead of us. We soon met Matty's mates who were are all top blokes as well and headed of to this rocking bar to party the night away. Dan and I were a bit dazed the next day after such a massive night out and at 5pm finally did our first touristy thing for the day and went to the spy museum. The spy museum was really awesome but we felt so guilty about not seeing anything else that we power walked to the White House and around all the monuments before it got dark. Our second night out in DC ended up being almost as big as our first night and we went to some more great bars. On Saturday Matt took us to the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery for the day which was awesome and the changing of the guard was a real highlight. On Saturday afternoon we had huge O.C. style BBQ party at the bachelor pad with a heap of people coming around to play drinking games in the back yard. The house had its own Keg fridge and beer pong table and everything you would want for a party house. The party continued later on Matt’s brothers’ rooftop overlooking the city lights in style before we hit some more beaut bars for night 3. Dan had to leave at 7am the next morning to head up to New York then fly to LA and I left later on at night on a bus to Savannah in Georgia. We had brilliant few days hanging with Matty and his mates and really got to soak up some American college party culture being at the house. It was sad to leave but had to be done as I took my overnight bus to Savannah. I didn’t know one thing about Savannah other than Christine’s Mum (or Mom in America) said it’s really nice so I booked my bus straight down. Without researching it too hard I soon realized they had no backpacker hostel in Savannah so I painfully had to stay in the cheapest hotel I could find for 45 bucks a night. On google maps the hotel looked close enough but once I arrived I realized I was staying way out in a real dangerous ghetto area. I ended up having to take a cab out there for 15 mins drive as the cab driver warned me not to walk around outside the hotel after dark. The hotel was nice enough but I would have preferred a hostel any day of the week. I was only there for 2 nights and both nights I locked myself in my room an hour before dark and just walked around in town during the day time. There was a very unreliable but entertaining public bus that connected me hourly with downtown Savannah. I seemed to always been the only white person on the bus and stood out like a neon light but everyone on the bus was so funny it was like a comedy show. Without a doubt each time I caught the bus I had 2 or 3 African American people listening to their music with their headphones in but dancing and singing out loud on the bus without a hint of shyness. Everyone seems to be very polite down in country Georgia and everyone is always saying ‘thanks mam ya’ll have a nice day now’. All I could think about being in Savannah was how much everyone talked like Forest Gump and that being one of my favourite movies made me just want to talk to everyone. I ended up finding out that Savannah is where all the bench scenes in the movie were filmed. My first day was very hot and tiring in Savannah and it didn’t really grow on me all that much. On my second day in Savannah I met up with an Irish brother and sister, Louise and Kian and walked around with them all day. We had a really nice day walking everywhere at I really started to notice how beautiful the town actually is. Savannah is the most haunted city in USA and up to 75% of the buildings are haunted. Savannah has a very bloody and disease ridden history and many battles have been fought in the town center in the past 300 years. The town centre has many of the original old building still standing and being lived in haunted by ghosts. It’s a very green town with lots of sweeping ghostly trees covering the streets and spooky old haunted cemeteries. One of the other great things about this town was the $1 pints they have in some of the bars which is a deal I haven’t heard of in years. I don’t think many Australians come through Savannah and my Accent seemed to stand out like I couldn’t believe. The barman like my accent so much for $1 I ended up getting 2 beers and half his meal and he refused even a tip from me. I also went to get a banana smoothie and the girl gave me 4 different kinds of smoothies for the price of 1 just because of the accent. On Wednesday night I left Savannah for Miami, Florida on another dodgy overnight greyhound bus ride. I left my bags at the bus station all day as I walked around in Savannah for my last day and saw the last of the sites. When I got back to the greyhound I was told they accidentally put my bags including my laptop and bus tickets on a bus to Miami 5 hours earlier. Knowing how dodgy greyhound is I had a fairly anxious night wondering if I would ever see my bags again. I was lucky once I arrived that I got my bags back and I’ve been in Miami Beach for the past 4 days having a ball. I’ll write more about that next time.

Woodsy

New York, New York

G’day all,

Well this past week or so has been a real rippa full of non-stop action. Our first stop out of Toronto was Niagara Falls. The 4 or 5 hours we planned to spend at Niagara Falls ended up turning into a quick run to the falls for 20 minutes before running back to catch the next bus. Niagara Falls was amazing and even though I had been there before it still impressed me as much as it did on my first visit. I was a bit worried as we headed to the US boarder because I know how tough the US immigration is, and my passport probably makes me look like a terrorist with all the countries I’ve been visiting. Luckily I ended up getting in without any cavity checks or strip searches and we continued on our overnight bus to New York City. We arrived first thing in the morning but within 2 hours we met up with Christine who lives here and were on another bus heading up to Boston. Our plan was to try and get tickets to the NBA Finals to watch the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers play later on that night. Once we arrived in Boston we relaxed for a bit then headed straight down to the Celtics stadium to try and buy scalped tickets for the game. Unfortunately the scalpers all wanted at least $350 a ticket and we couldn’t justify paying that. For the first half of the game we tried our best to get tickets but even at half time they still wanted $300 a ticket so we just went home heads down and empty handed. Dan was a bit sick with his wisdom teeth coming through so the following day Christine and I walked around Boston by ourselves for a look. We ended up finding a big NBA set up in the middle of the city where I got to have a shoot off with one of the Celtics players and see the championship trophy. The following day we headed back to New York where we went up to stay with Christine’s family in a town called Irvington about 40 minutes north of Manhattan. Christine’s parents have been awesome having us and making us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a real American experience. We even spent a few days at their holiday home on the beach on Long Island. We have been in New York for just over a week now and have been flat out sightseeing each day because there are a billion things you can do here. The weather has been so hot and humid all week that we have been sweating like pigs each day. On our first full day in the ‘Big Apple’ we went to Times Square, Madison Sq Garden (to watch a WNBA game), Ground Zero, Wall Street, and Chinatown. We were pooped after seeing all that in one day in the 35 degree heat but it was a great day. The following day we went to the famous Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and watched the Yankees play, and then we tried to see David Letterman being filmed but couldn’t get a ticket. We ended up being in the audience for another popular show here instead called the ‘Colbert Report’. It was pretty amazing to see this show being filmed live and it was so professional but I didn’t really understand all the American jokes. When the audience clapped and cheered I yelled out a big ‘yewwwwww’ each time as loud as I could and I heard my voice on the show when we watched it later on. This was my 2^nd time on TV that day as earlier on I was interviewed on the news for eating McDonalds. They were doing a story on how bad McDonalds is for you and asked me about it and I replied with ‘Nah I love it mate, it’s me favourite food, I eat if every day’ so I think they might have cut me from the news. On Tuesday we went to Christine’s holiday house on Long Island for 4 days and we loved it. Long Island is so beautiful and even the drive to the house was really nice. The houses are all really nice 2 story wooden homes with huge green lawns everywhere and US flags on each house. Christine’s place was a little wooden cottage on the beach just meters from the waters edge and it had so much character. We originally planned to stay 1 or 2 nights but in the end we loved it there so much we had to force ourselves to leave after 4 days of relaxing. Each day we went swimming down at the beach and enjoyed the nice hot weather. On our second day on Long Island we had a huge shopping day at the local factory outlet stores. There were so many shops to look at and I had to replace almost all of my clothes and shoes which were in tatters. I couldn’t believe how cheap everything was so I spoilt myself and replaced most of my mangy traveled clothes for $100 all up. On Friday we sadly had to leave Long Island and head back to NYC again. On the drive home we dropped past the infamous ‘Amityville’ horror house which was haunted and the horror movie was based on. The night before we watched the movie to get worked up for it and when we got there it really did send shivers down our spines knowing what went on there. The freaky thing was that we didn’t realize that it was actually Friday the 13^th and while we were there we got on TV for the 3^rd time for the week being interviewed on the news. They were doing a story on Friday the 13^th and all the scariest places on Long Island so they interviewed Christine as we took photos in the background. Later on in the day we went back to New York City and ended up doing a tour of Ground Zero and went to the museum they had there, which was really shocking and sad. It was amazing to see the size of the space the buildings left behind and to imagine what it would have been like to see the Twin Towers fall down. After Ground Zero we walked up to the Rockefeller Centre and up to Central Park for a gander. We will be here in New York for a few more days before heading down to Philadelphia and Washington DC later this week. Update ya soon,

Woodsy

Back to Toronto, my 2nd home

G’day all,
Sorry it’s been such a long time since my last update but I’ve just been having too much fun to get on with it. It’s been a great past week or two with non-stop fun and not a moment to ponder. After Morocco I caught the ferry back across to Spain and met up with Sean, Des, and Shane in Seville for one last night of partying together. I literally rocked up to Seville just before it got dark and met the guys at the hostel. They told me I had 10 minutes to get ready because we were heading off on a pub crawl so I didn’t have to for a shower or anything and headed like a feral. We had a pretty big night and drank a dangerous cocktail of various drinks included in the pub crawl. The following day I said my farewells to the guys and headed off alone to Lagos in Portugal. I knew I wanted to do some surfing in Portugal and Lagos had a nice ring to it so I blindly headed there with no expectations. Lagos is a small party town which I grew fond of the minute I stepped off the bus. There didn’t seem to be any Portuguese people in Lagos though as the whole town seemed to be run by young people from all over the world. I was met at the bus by a guy who took me to his hostel called the ‘3 Monkeys’ where I had a brilliant time. Within the first 20 minutes I was already booked onto a surf trip for the morning so I rested up for the big day ahead. Each morning I stayed there I had the biggest English breakfast and stuffed myself full before surfing. The surfing trip was more of a ‘learn to surf’ trip and everyone was pretty much surfing for their first time. I’ve grown up in the surf but have always body-boarded so surfing to me was fairly new too. Being the only Aussie on the bus, there were huge expectations on my shoulders to lead the way on the waves but I really had no idea either. We drove for almost an hour to the west coast of Portugal where we met some seriously nice waves and good weather. We surfed all day and by the end of the day I was starting to cut some moves on the waves and quickly booked myself onto the trip again for day 2. I had a great time surfing both days and can’t wait to get into it when I get back home now. I never really got to see much of the town of Lagos as surfing took up all my time but I had a little walk around just before catching the bus to Lisbon. I only spent one night in Lisbon and it seemed like a nice trendy little city but on Tuesday I flew off to London. It was nice to be back on a plane again but felt even nicer to be able to speak English for the first time in almost 3 months and be understood. People always say my accent is too strong and I end up finding myself trying to put on a bad American accent to get by sometimes. London was just a flyby visit to see my cousin Dave before flying off to Toronto, Canada on Wednesday. I was really excited to come back to Toronto as it feels like my second home and most of my best friends live here too. The weather was perfect when I arrived and I was met at the airport by one of my best mates Rob. My cousin Dan flew into Toronto a few days earlier and within a few hours we were all reunited at Rob’s new house drinking a few beers. Rob and Steve are my best two mates in Toronto and they recently moved about 5 houses away from each other in this really nice new area downtown. Dan and I have been in Toronto for the past week now staying with Rob and Steve and having a brilliant time catching up with all my footy mates each night with some quiet beers. On Thursday I showed Dan around town a bit, being my old home 2 years ago. We had a pretty casual day and went to the CN tower and soaked up the sun walking between the skyscrapers and china town. On Thursday night we went to footy training with my old team the “Central Blues” and found ourselves on the roster to play on Saturday. I couldn’t wait to play again and trained as hard as I could after no exercise in about 6 months. On Friday I wad so sore I could hardly walk and was wondering how I’m going to get through the game but after the warm up on Saturday I was good to go. It was a great feeling being re-united with my mates again and playing for my beloved Blues. We headed out to play a town called Guelph about 80km out of Toronto. On the drive out we traditionally listen to our pump up music as we cruised along the freeway to the game. The field was quiet rough and was layed in flowers and weeds and had a lethal looking cricket pitch waiting for us wanting to rip our knees up in the center of the field. We played really well in the first quarter and I got a nice hand pass off to Dan who kicked a goal and Rob kicked another. After that unfortunately we got goal after goal kicked against us and ended up losing by about 7 goals in the end. After the game we had a barbie and some beers before partying the night away downtown like the good old days. Dan and I planned to stay in Toronto for another week but after working out our plans decided we better leave for New York on Wednesday otherwise we will be behind schedule. The past few days I’ve been showing Dan around a bit more and we had a nice day down at the beaches in the sun. Last night we had some farewells drinks with Rob and Steve and today we head off to Niagara Falls then onto New York on a overnight bus from Buffalo. We had a really nice time in Toronto and thank Rob and Steve for having us but it’s time to move on. Next Stop….New York.

Woodsy

Back to Africa

G’day all,

The past week has yet again been full of travel action. Christine and I spent 3 nights in Valencia before heading off to Madrid. On our last day in Valencia we went to the Aquarium which like the IMAX, was also in one of the space-aged looking buildings and had a fair bit of ‘wow factor’ about it. The Aquarium was really awesome and it contained several huge Aquariums from different oceans around the world. The highlight was a toss up between the Dolphin show and the big Beluga Whales which you could see just inches away under the water. The lowlight was when some exotic bird shat all over Christine and I in front of a big Spanish tour group. After the Aquarium we went to the beach which was ok but nothing as flash as I expected. It was at least nice to see some sand again instead of pebbles. The following day we headed off to Madrid for a fly by visit to see Christine off at the airport and to see a big bullfight. After settling in to our hostel we headed straight to the bullfight arena which was a real experience and well worth the effort. The bullfighting ring we went to was huge and being the bullfighting festival at the moment, there was hardly a seat left in the whole joint. Although it was pretty gory, we were expecting it to be a lot worse and were more amused by the trumpet playing and the pooncey Matadors than the blood and guts. The crowd really got into it and Christine and I spent the whole time trying to figure out the rules and at the end we still didn’t get it. It seemed to be very traditional to the point where after the best fight of the night the whole crowd threw the Matador their hats and bunches of flowers and waved white flags. Disappointed by the lack of gore we expected at the fight, the following day Christine and I went to this ‘Body Exhibition.’ The Body Exhibition was really awesome and it had heaps of dead human bodies cut up and pulled to pieces in all sorts of arrangements. As much as I wanted to take photos it was prohibited and I would have felt too guilty but it surely was an eye-opener. The sickest thing we saw was probably the full skin of a man cut off his body and stretched out in a glass box. Christine flew out back to Ireland later on that day and I caught an over night bus to Tangier in Morocco to meet up with my best mates. Most of the ‘Club 43’ crew were doing a tour of Morocco and I knew they were in the country somewhere camping. The day I arrived I got on the internet and found they were heading into Tangier the following day on the Friday so I made plans to meet up with them. The bus ride to Tangier was a funny experience as I never realized how much Moroccan people worship their luggage. The bus was full of people down to the last seat and I, as per usual, was the only tourist on the bus. We had a large trailer behind the bus full of luggage plus the aisle of the bus was packed to the rim with extra luggage. I was prepared for the hustle and bustle of Moroccan touts once we finally arrived on Thursday afternoon and after Egypt I was relieved that they weren’t as bad as I expected. By the time I got off the bus and found a guest house, I was already asked at least 7 or 8 times if I wanted to by hash. Hash, as you may know is one of Morocco’s biggest exports, and Marijuana grows here in the mountains like gum trees do in Australia. Apart from that I was falling in love with Morocco very fast and all the hype I heard about how good Morocco is was all coming true. On my first night in Morocco I walked around until midnight looking at all the little stalls and getting lost in the medina. I instantly became a big fan of the fruit shakes and cheap food and my indulging habits kicked back in again real fast. On Friday I caught a taxi up to the bush to a campsite where my best mates Tate, Sean, Shane, and Des were staying on their tour. It was the last night of their 3 week Moroccan tour and I joined in on the action for the final night party. It was great to see the guys again and we sat around the camp fire drinking punch all night talking about all our travel stories. Tate was running short of time and had to leave on Saturday for Spain but the rest of the guys were pretty keen to stay in Morocco and come to Chefchaouen with me for a few days. Chefchaouen was only a couple of hours away from Tangier and is a really nice town to chill out in for a few days. The whole town is painted a nice light blue colour to keep the mosquitoes away and is perched up on the edge of the ‘Rif Mountains.’ Even though it’s a tiny town, it is full of little blue alley ways and we ended up being constantly lost. Chefchaouen is where most of the hash comes from in Morocco and the hash dealers line the streets everywhere. The funny thing is that Des looks like the ‘typical hippy’ with his long dreadlocks and everywhere we walked the hash dealers saw us a mile away and were running up to us from every direction. In Morocco they call Hippies, ‘Rustas’ so as we walked along we could hear ‘Hey Rusta Man’ yelled out everywhere so it became quite funny. We had all been travelling pretty hard for the past month or so, so we decided to just chill out and relax in Chefchaouen for 3 days and do nothing. On our last day in Chefchaouen it rained like cats and dogs but we were booked on a tour with a dodgy guide to check out the Hash fields. We walked up the mountains for about 1½ hours with the guide until we came across a scene very similar to what you may have seen in the movie ‘The Beach.’ The field was huge and it was full of Marijuana plants as far as the eye could see. It was something you don’t see everyday so we were pretty amazed. Later that day I split from the guys to head to Fez for a few days while they headed of to Seville in Spain together. On the bus I met this pretty hardcore traveller from the States called Jean so we ended up hanging out and exploring Fez together. Fez was huge and neither of us had a map and we were pretty much lost the whole time we were there. At first I didn’t see what all the fuss was about with Fez until we eventually found the ‘Medina’. The medina was the biggest labyrinth I’ve ever seen with the walls so high you couldn’t even see the sun to tell which direction is north. It wasn’t blue like the one in Chefchaouen, but this medina was just simply massive. Every little laneway looked almost identical to the next and it took us hours to find our way in and even longer to find our way out. In amongst the maze of miniature streets were these stinky but interesting tanneries where they dye all the leather. The tanneries stunk very badly of fat and off meat but were really primitive and interesting to see. We ended up being taken on a bit of a tour of the medina by some young kids who also took us to visit their home. The houses in Fez were huge dusty old mansions with nothing inside them but floor, couches, beds, and pot plants. The interesting thing was that they all had a huge gap in the roof which allows sun to come in through all floors, and when it rains they have to drag plastic covers over the big square hole in the roof. After a big day of walking around we finally got back to the hotel at 11pm. I left first thing the next morning travelled back to Tangier for a night and now I’m currently on my way to Seville to meet up with the guys again. Only one more week left of Europe now then it’s off to Canada, USA, Mexico, Peru, and New Zealand until September. Thanks to everyone with their comments left between this site, Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, and Travbuddy. I have been trying to as best as I can to reply but I’m also trying to get off the internet as best I can while travelling too, so thank you very much and apologies if I haven’t gotten back to you. To get blog update emails please send me an email to paulwood900@gmail.com and will put you straight on my email list.

Update ya’ll soon,

Paul

Pricey Fun in the Sun

G’day all,

Well my spending sprees and indulging have come to a sad end as I’m now back in expensive “Western Europe.” My final days in Eastern Europe were spent zipping through Zagreb in Croatia and Ljubljana in Slovenia to meet my friend Christine in Venice, Italy on Friday. I stayed at a nice hostel in Zagreb called Hostel Lika and a crazy hostel in Ljubljana which was actually in an old jail and people slept in the cells. Ljubljana seemed like a pretty cool place it was very underground and happening but prices were almost the same as Western Europe. I was shocked when I found out that a train to Venice from Ljubljana was almost 50 Euro and was only a few hundred km’s away. I was used to paying about a third of that in the countries I’ve been travelling through the past few months so I decided to go with plan B. It was a risk that paid off because I got to Venice for only 16 Euro by catching the train to the border then walking for half an hour to Italy then catching another train to Venice from there…you beauty mate. When I arrived in Venice I almost cried as my daily budget was smashed with the first 2 hours of getting to the train station. My copious spending on cans of coke, chocky bars, kababs, ice creams, and anything else that I was used to paying nothing for had to come to an end. On Friday morning I met my friend Christine at the bus station as she planned to travel with me for the next 2 weeks. It was a great feeling to see a familiar face again after 3 months of travelling alone. We ended up staying in a camp ground our only night in Venice to try to keep to our budget, even if it took us half the day to get there and back. On Friday night we walked around Venice until midnight and had an awesome time as the tourists had disappeared so we got to explore and get lost in all the little alleyways and canals without the riffraff. The following day we headed off to Milan to base ourselves for a night before hiring a car and driving around the Swiss Alps for 3 days solid. Milan was ok, nothing too flash but the Alps were something else. My first hour in the car was one terrifying experience as I haven’t driven for yonkas and they drive on the wrong side of the road over here. Within my first 2 minutes of driving I almost turned onto the wrong side of the road and was driving so slow that everyone was tooting me. We were trying to be so cheap by not using the toll roads so we tried to navigate our way to Switzerland by using a compass and a dodgy map. It took us 3 hours to go the first 50km and we were still in Italy at night fall after leaving Milan at 10am. Christine just about used her whole camera battery on the scenery before we even got to Switzerland. We drove along this beautiful lake heading to the border but the road was also a racing strip for sports bikes. At one stage this smartarse overtook me and 1 minute later we drove past him and his girlfriend who had come off their bike and were sitting next to it injured on the ground and she looked pretty angry at him. Our non-toll roads ended up taking us to this ghost town literally on the peak of one of the Alps where we realized that we had to drive back 2 hours after the road was blocked due to an Avalanche. Although we wasted a lot of time and effort by not taking the toll roads we had a wild adventure cruising around the hairpin roads up and down cliff faces and through endless tunnels. At one stage the road got so wild we actually drove around a hairpin corner inside a tunnel inside a cliff with a 200m drop waiting on the other side. We slept in the car both nights in Switzerland and on our first night we freaked each other out by telling ghost stories and ended up getting hardly any sleep. On day 2 in Switzerland we ended up buying a toll pass and made a lot of ground and visited Zurich, Bern, and even went to another tiny random country called Liechtenstein. The highlight of the day was when we went to the Jungfrau region and saw the most amazing scenery you could ever imagine. It was picture perfect with green flower filled fields, cliffs with waterfalls shooting over them, rivers flowing through the valleys, and snow capped mountains in a 360° view. We planned to take a cable car up to the top of the mountains but after finding out it cost 60 euros we decided we were happy enough with the view we had. We drove around the Alps for a few hours but each road we came to ended up being closed due to Avalanches so we ended up taking the Autobahn towards the Italy border for our last nights sleep. While looking for a nice place to sleep the night, we thought we found a good spot until the police car in front of us arrested a man so we drove around a bit longer. We headed back to Milan the next morning but caught a train to Nice in France almost straight away. The weather in Nice was beaut when we arrived and we immediately loved the place before falling asleep for the rest of the day. On our second day in Nice we rented a scooter and rode along the coast line to Monte Carlo and Monaco and had a ball. In Monaco they were setting up for the Grand Prix so we rode around the track on the scooter and kept riding until sunset. Before returning our scooter the following day we decided to zip over to Cannes but ended up being caught on the 130km/hour Autobahn and had to ride in the emergency lane and get off at the first exit. We ended up spending 3 nights in Nice and really enjoyed ourselves there and on Friday night we caught the bus to Spain. We had to change busses in Barcelona on the way to Valencia but that was where our good luck and fun came to an end. Somehow while we were sitting on a bench at 6am waiting to book our tickets some guys stole Christine’s handbag without either of us seeing a thing. After asking the man sitting next to us if he’d seen anything he finally told us that he saw two guys take the handbag and walk in opposite directions. There was nothing we could really do other than report it to the police and think about how I would have loved to given the guy a ‘Darwin Coat Hanger’ if I had seen him do it. We arrived in Valencia yesterday afternoon and it has been raining ever since. Today I turned 26 and we celebrated last night with a few cheeky Sangrias while fireworks were coincidently going off at midnight for Mothers Day. Today we walked around the city and found this really cool area with space aged buildings and watched an IMAX film about the Swiss Alps and recognized all the mountains in it.

Happy Mothers Day,

Woodsy

Chilling in Croatia

G’day all,

Well after a hectic past few months of fast pace travel I decided to have a bit of a chill out week in Croatia and just hang out with Alex and Tom. Croatia isn’t the cheap place I was hearing about years ago when I was travelling Europe but is still cheaper than Western Europe. We arrived in Spilt on Monday night after a long enough bus ride from Sarajevo and decided to indulge a little at a budget restaurant. As much as I tried to indulge my cheap traveller instincts couldn’t go away as a left over half bottle of red wine from the patrons before us ended up being our little drinks for the meal. We had a pretty wild thunderstorm on Monday night and had a nice sleep in before heading out to the island of Hvar on Tuesday afternoon. Our last mission before heading to Hvar was to find a much awaited Mcdonalds meal which we were craving and talking about for days beforehand. We only had a few hours in Split and spent a good 2 hours of it searching for Mcdonalds which we eventually found to our delight. We arrived in Hvar late in the arvo on Tuesday and found our hostel before walking around for a bit and going back to cook up some dinner. Tom was feeling quite sick as he had been all week so Alex and I decided to head out and see what the much talked about night life was like on the island. Hvar is supposed to be the “Ibiza of Croatia” however we must have gone there at the wrong time of the year as there were about 5 people out in total. On Wednesday the three of us rented scooters for the day and we had a ball cruising around through the little villages scattered all over the island. The scenery was amazing in every sense of the word with the roads weaving in and around mountains following the coast line of crystal clear blue water. We ended the day watching the sunset over a horizon of small islands and just went back to relax in the hostel for the night. We were so tired after our big day of riding we only had energy to eat breakfast cereal for dinner and had had so many bowls I was almost spewing up milk for the night. The next few days after Hvar the weather really picked up nicely and it’s been in the mid 20’s and sunny every since. On Friday I sadly parted ways with Tom and Alex for the last time as they were flying back to England and I headed south to the beautiful town of Dubrovnik. The bus ride down the coast of the Adriatic Sea was something special and really gives you an appreciation of Croatia’s beauty. I arrived in Dubrovnik late at night so I just located my hostel and some cheap pizza then had an early night. On Saturday I had a bit touristy day walking around the old town of Dubrovnik taking many photos. Dubrovnik is so pretty it’s actually breath taking but the swarms of annoying ‘tourist tourists’ really gave me the shits and I decided to shoot back up to my favorite Bosnia again on Sunday. I did enjoy myself in Dubrovnik but it was quite overpriced and way too touristy for my liking. The one great thing I did do however was walk around on top of the 2km of city walls surrounding the old town and it was brilliant. With under 3 euros worth of Croatian Kuna left to my name I took to the supermarket with my cheap calculating brain on fire and ended up leaving with 1L of red wine, 2 packets of crisps, a packet of pretzels, and a dip. I spend Saturday night watching “Wolf Creek” and drinking wine with another fellow Aussie staying at the hostel and had a nice chilled night in. Sunday morning was an early start for my bus to Mostar in Bosnia and I pretty much slept the whole way. Alex and Tom told me about this fantastic hostel they stayed at in Mostar called “Majdas Rooms” so I decided to stay there. The hostel has only been around for 18 months and is run by this really nice lady Majda and her brother Bata and their mother. Bata picked me up from the bus station and before I knew it I was drinking Bosnian coffee and eating cake then I was straight onto a full day tour of countryside around Mostar. Bata is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met and the tour was more like a stand up comedy performance than tour. It was an action packed day where we went to a fort, then horse riding, then to a huge waterfall, then to some town where the Virgin Mary was seen, then to a cave where this river runs out of before having a feast of a meal at this nice restaurant. When I said a feast I meant it, this “Bosnian mixed grill” was a vegetarian’s nightmare. It had basically every type of meat in the world you can think of thrown onto one huge platter. Yesterday the weather was perfect and I had a really nice day walking around Mostar relaxing and taking in the beauty of this town. Mostar is very war damaged just like Sarajevo and equally if not more beautiful. The old town in Mostar is so pretty with dozens of turquoise coloured streams flowing under and around the cobble stoned streets down to this amazing river. The highlight of this small town is the bridge ‘Stari Most’ and it’s just so visually impressive you could stare at it for hours and not get bored. It’s only a small bridge but it sits 27m above the river and people jump off it for money into the 6m deep river (as in video). Apparently it’s pretty dangerous to jump off it and many people get injured or even die if you don’t know how you jump perfectly. Every year ‘Red Bull’ hosts a diving competition off the bridge as an extreme sport and it is supposed to draw the crowds in. I had a great time in Mostar and the hospitality and fun generated from the hostel really made my time so fun here. This morning Majda found out they won the award of “Best hostel in Europe 2007” and she was very excited but it was also well deserved with all the extra effort they put into this hostel. I think Bosnia is Europe’s best kept secret but I can see tourism taking off 10 fold over the next few years so if you want to see this place at it’s peak GET HERE NOW!! It’s everything you would want in a destination it’s beautiful, cheap, historical, has nice weather, and the people are so friendly and hospitable. I’m currently heading to Zagreb in Croatian before zipping through Slovenia to meet my friend Christine in Venice on Friday.

Update ya soon,

Woodsy

Bloody Mad Week

G’day all,

How can I explain my past week other than saying it was just plain crazy. In the past 9 days I’ve been to Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, and now I’ve just crossed the Croatian boarder as I type so I guess you could say I’ve been gunning it. The craziest off all my experiences in the past week actually happened hours after I wrote my last blog update. Ok so here’s the story bare with me. Firstly I’m on the overnight train from Serbia to Bulgaria happy as Larry enjoying the whole cabin I had to myself and was expecting a good night sleep stretched across my bench seat. I had previously read in my bible the “Lonely Planet” how I should be careful on these overnight trains as there have been occasions where travellers have been gassed with sleeping gas in their cabins and had their backpacks stolen while they’ve been sleeping. With that in mind I had my window down and had my bag locked and was feeling comfortable enough to zone out for a bit. Shortly after midnight a big unit of a man in a leather jacket strangely enters my cabin out of nowhere on this empty train and looking really suss. He puts his bags down, slides the window up, and told me to go to sleep before heading out of the cabin for about half an hour. I was starting to be very suspect after I saw him look through the air-conditioning duct with a torch then walk past several times and look through the window at me to see if I was asleep. After a while I started to feel very sleepy whether it was in my mind or not and decided bugga this mate I’m getting out of here. I slide the window back down, switched the light on, then stood outside my cabin with my head out the passage window. I was determined to stay away all night with the light on and window down reading my book to stick it right up this blokes clacker and ruin his plans. After about half an hour he comes back into the cabin with some full bin bags, a tool kit and a mini ladder and tells me to shhhhhh as he winked at me. He then changes into some old clothes, puts a plastic bag over his head and puts some leather gloves on and I’m think what the! He was a big intimidating guy not worth messing with and when he next pulled out a screwdriver, unscrewed the screws on the light, and pulled the fluro light off the roof in the cabin and asked me to hold it and the screws I wasn’t going to argue with him. As I unwillingly became his new partner in crime I noticed him get his knife out and cut open the bin bags and pull out hundreds if not thousands of packets of cigarettes. He then climbs his ladder and stuffs the packets into the insulation of the roof under the light as I cheekily say “cigarettes expensive in Bulgaria aye?” He then looks back at me sternly as I nose laughed and swallowed deeply as he says the not so relaxing word of “Mafia” back at me. After spending a good while completing his crime which was now ‘our crime’ 3 other large scary men come into the cabin and help him put the light back on the roof. They then ask where I’m from and I’m telling myself lie Pauly lie but the honest goob I am has to be tell the truth and say “erm Adelaide, Australia” Luckily that was the end of that and soon after we crossed the Bulgarian boarder and had our cabin checked by boarder police and passed the test. They soon ripped the light back off the roof, received their goodies (as in my cheeky photo), and got off at some random stop in the country side leaving me alone in the cabin with the light resting on the bag rack. It was an interesting night to say the least and I ended up having no sleep at all and when I arrived in Sofia in Bulgaria and found my hostel I ended up sleeping like a chronic fatigue sufferer for the rest of the day. I only spent one night in Sofia and didn’t exactly love the place so I decided to head up to Albania as soon as I could. My only problem was that Macedonia was in the way and I needed a visa for it so I decided to whip down to Thessaloniki in Greece then head on to Tirana the capital of Albania. It was an exhausting was to get there but the only way to get there and it meant I had another overnight train followed by an overnight bus the next night. After arriving in Thessaloniki I locked up my backpack at the bus station then decided to fill in my 13 hours between transportation walking around the city. Thessaloniki ended up being a great surprise and I had a brilliant day walking around the city in top weather. It was an amazing city on a cove of the northeast coast of Greece overlooking a snowcapped mountain and on a hill with streets flowing down to the dock. The city is scattered with ancient Greek ruins everywhere between a maze of streets filled with fancy clothes shops, cafés, markets and parklands. It seemed to be a very fashionable city with metro sexual Greek Gods and Goddesses wining and dining and frappe drinking along every café lined street. The day passed fast and I slept like a baby on the bus to Albania apart from the grilling passport check at 2am and I arrived in Tirana at about 6am without accommodation. As a self confessed adrenalin addict I was in my element as I’d never met anyone who had been to Albania before in my 8 years of travelling and didn’t know a single thing about the place. Following my bible and a compass and some nifty vibing, I located a hostel in the old communist area and slept on the porch for 4 hours until it opened and I could check in. There was no tourist information, tours, or maps of the city and it had been completely untouched by our globalized world which was a very refreshing feeling. I almost felt like I was the first tourist to ever enter the country as I walked around and saw nobody but Albanians living their Albanian lives in their own Albanian style. It is yet to be ruined by tourism but you can tell it’s just around the corner in months and years to come. I didn’t do a great deal in Tirana apart from admiring the originality of the place and walking past big plain communist style buildings. There is a few areas in Tirana where the buildings have now been painted into happy techno-colour works of art using buckets of paint and every colour under the rainbow. The amazing this about Albania is that there are bunkers everywhere. The government built 700,000 bomb proof bunkers around the country from the 50’s until the 80’s just waiting for the invasion that never came. I spend two days in Tirana and then decided to wing it through Montenegro to the war torn capital of Sarajevo in Bosnia. There is no direct coach, train, or highway linking the two capitals together so I ended up catching 4 minivans and busses over 15 hours and 3 countries overnight to finally arrive in Sarajevo. My style of travel is to do no research on where I’m going and to wing it without knowledge of what is ahead of me. My strange travel method paid dividends when I arrived at this random bus station on the outskirts of Sarajevo and had to catch a taxi 15km into the town. I had no idea of the beauty that was appearing before my eyes as we drove towards the main town and weaved between the ‘Sound of Music’ looking green hills scattered with cute village cottages. The sun had just woken up for the day and I was in ore of the unexpected visual bliss I was witnessing. I again found myself a hostel as soon as I arrived and booked myself onto an 11am tour of the city and the famous tunnel of Sarajevo. The tour was incredible as I knew I was in a recent mass war torn city but didn’t know much about it apart from watching the news in the mid 90’s and seeing many tanks and soldiers. I learnt all about the attack from Yugoslavia but never realized the extent of it and the about fight the Bosnians gave to keep their city and their lives. The story of the tunnel was brilliant and the tour of the surrounding hills was incredible seeing fields still covered in landmines and destroyed buildings. The city itself was nothing like I imagined as without exaggeration every single building had at least 5 or 10 to thousands of bullet and shell holes in it. Everywhere you looked are bullet holes in walls, windows, doors, roofs, bridges, churches, and even the odd car still. Apart from the scars of war on display throughout the city the general feeling and scenery or the city is like no other I’ve been to, it’s a real gem of a place. On both my days in Sarajevo I went strolling around the hillside getting lost in the labyrinth of small windy roads and footpaths weaving between the lush green cemeteries and amazing views of the city. Walking around the cemeteries you could see the effect of the war as almost every headstone you could see the date of death was been 1992 and 1995. Yesterday I met up again with my mates Alex and Tom and we just chilled out in Sarajevo before bussing it down to Split in Croatia today. I’m a little unsure what the plan is from here but I guess I’ll see wherever the wind blows me.

Feeling lucky as always,

Paul

Winging it South

G’day all,

Well my past week has been great fun as I finally had some really cool guys to travel with and we have been having a ball. I only ended up spending a night in Bratislava as I’ve already been there before and was just using it as a base to head to Budapest in Hungary. I was feeling a bit sick and lonely and for the first time this trip and I went through a bit of a rough patch for a couple of days. Once I arrived in Budapest and settled into my hostel things started to turn around for me as I met these two great English guys Alex and Tom and we had a great laugh together. My crook stomach wasn’t letting me drink for the first few nights but Alex and Tom became my Doctor and Mother and fed me medication and cooked me dinner and I was back on track again in no time. We had a pretty eventful week together and although we felt slightly hung over most days we still managed to do and see loads. Our first outing was to the Turkish Baths which almost turned into a full day event. The baths were great fun although all it’s only really a bunch of heated swimming pools, spas, and saunas, surrounded by some really nice old buildings. We just relaxed all day watching the old men play chess in the hottest bath, testing out limits in the saunas and cold pools, and trying to fight the world pool by swimming against it. By the end of our bath experience we were so zonked we could hardly open our eyes so we went back to the hostel for a snooze and an easy night in. The following day we all went to the holocaust museum which again brought back all the Auschwitz memories then the guys convinced me to go caving. They did the caving trip the day before I arrived in Budapest but when they said it was extreme I wasn’t prepared for what was ahead of me. I caught a couple of buses out to the caves and got all dressed up in hardhat and overalls and was lucky to be grouped with a bunch of extremists like me who wanted to do the hardest caves. The start wasn’t too bad as tight as it was but then came the big squeeze where for the first time in my life I felt like a fatso. This was basically a crack under a rock where I had to try and get through and it was as tight as a fishes…ankle. I lay on my tummy with my arms out front and wiggled my way through until I was stuck and could not move forwards, backwards, left, right, up, or down. All I could do was feel my lungs be wrapped around by solid rock. I was only stuck for about 40 seconds before I sucked my guts in and was pushed through by the instructor but that was enough for me to start panicking. It was a bit embarrassing being stuck when everyone else made it but I also embarrassed myself about 20 minutes later when I couldn’t twist around and fell down out of this hole onto my hands (as in picture) Budapest seemed like a pretty nice place but after 3 nights I was ready to move on and see somewhere new. Alex and Tom were heading to Serbia next too so I decided to let the good times roll and tag along with them. We partied the night away on our last night in Budapest then amazingly got up for midday to catch our train to Belgrade in Serbia. Once we got on the train the adrenalin kicked in and we were on a natural high and were yelling stupid things out to any farmer, cow, or chicken for half the ride to Serbia. Serbia and Belgrade had a whole different feel to it compared to Hungary and arriving in on the first night was almost a bit eerie. As the train was pulling in to Belgrade we could see yards of slums and squatters sheds lining the train track and angry looking graffiti on every wall. Belgrade soon grew on us the next day as we walked around and went from war ravaged filthy buildings to a very nice cosmopolitan shopping and restaurant district. The city is very much alive and well and thriving with young people indulging in fancy outdoor restaurants and bars. The nightlife is great in Belgrade too with many cool club and pub ideas. In our two nights partying we went to a club in a 9 story building, various ones floating on barges in a river, one that was set out like a theatre, one that looked like a cave underground, and a pub that I swear is just someone’s house. There is not a great deal to do tourist wise in Belgrade apart from look at the fort and the military museum so we spent most of our time just indulging at the restaurants. Yesterday we went to a local football (soccer) match to fill in a bit of time and had a very interesting time watching the crowd light flares and chant their songs in Serbian. There was only a small crowd at the game but they were all crammed into the one section and boy was it loud. It was very well guarded by policemen with bats and shields galore but it did make you wonder how rough the crowd could potentially get. Today my fun times with Alex and Tom ended as they went to Montenegro and I’m off to Bulgaria. The weather has been great here the past few days and I can proudly say I’m walking around in shorts and a t-shirt finally. Today there was some kind of festival on in Belgrade and many people gathered in the parklands at the fort and were dancing to folk music which was a good laugh (please check the video it’s a classic and look at the short ladies enthusiasm compared to the lady on her left)

Update ya in a week,

Woodsy

Busy week in Eastern Europe

G'day all,

Well the good news is that I haven't been mugged yet, the bad news…that would have made a cool story hey. The blog almost came to a grizzly end the day after my last update as I slipped over and threw my laptop down a whole flight of stairs and watched it bounce on every step. I was lucky it didn't follow my travel adaptor which fell down 3 stories and almost killed someone sitting on a couch at the hostel. I've been flat strap traveling for the past week and have gone from Vilnius in Lithuania to Warsaw and Krakow in Poland and now I'm currently in Bratislava in Slovakia. Vilnius was a pretty cool town in the end and I felt pretty safe during the day and stayed indoors at night. It's quite a medieval town and has some really nice buildings and streets and this crazy area called Uzupis. Uzupis is a small area of only a few streets wide which sees itself as a separate country from Lithuania. It even has its own constitution, police uniforms, and passport stamps and is run by a bunch of nutty artists. On April 1st each year (which happened to be the day I was there) they have a celebration as their Republican day which is a bit of a joke but they guard the bridges and put stamps in your passport that day and it turns into a bit of a party. I really wanted one of these passport stamps but I heard some bad stories about people getting caught out on it explaining it at the Russian boarder so I decided to keep my butt safe and not get one. One cool thing I did was head out to this beautiful town called Trakai about an hour out of Vilnius for a day trip. The weather was nice and warm with blue skies and the town was so amazing to walk around in and had this great castle on an island which you can go out to. It was a nice change to be out of the snow and into some sun but this pretty town will still blow anyone way no matter what time of the year it is. My next stop was Warsaw in Poland but I only had one night there before heading to Krakow. Warsaw is a very big and spaced out dirty city which was pretty much completely rebuilt after WW2. It was quiet exhausting walking these long, straight, and endless roads but once I got myself a tram pass it made things a bit nicer. The old town in Warsaw was rebuilt quite well but the rest of the city is quite plain. I went to this amazing museum all about the Polish resistance to the Nazi invasion and ended up spending hours there being blown away by the sheer scale of the War and how much was involved in it. Krakow was my next stop and it was a much nicer smaller city and has a nice character about it. On my second day in Krakow I did an all day long trip out to the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp. Auschwitz was the biggest and toughest mother of all the concentration camps where 1.5 million people (mainly Jews) were exterminated and worked to death during WW2. I've been to Dachau concentration camp in Germany 6 years ago but that was nothing compared to the magnitude of Auschwitz. This place blew me away at how large and how brutal it was and the mass production gas chambers they used put shivers up my spine. Just walking around the place you could still smell the death in the air and it had the eeriest feeling. The whole concentration camp has been made into an amazing museum where everything has been kept original but they added some gripping massive displays of the prisoners' shoes, clothes, hair, toothbrushes, prosthetic arms and legs, shaving brushes, and suitcases before they were executed. This was only a small selection of what they had left but every article including the hair took up a huge room each from the floor to the ceiling. I did a 3 hour tour which was the only way to see this huge place without getting lost and I thought it was brilliant in a sad way. I'd have to say that it is a must do for any Europe trip and really shouldn't be missed because it really is simply mind blowing. Although parts were destroyed by the Nazis, it is generally in really good condition and you can see almost exactly how it was during the war. Yesterday I went to see something that was also very interesting which was the "salt mine" in Krakow. This mine has been running since the 13th century and is 125 meters underground and has 300km of underground tunnels and stairways and 40 underground chapels. It's been made into a bit of a tourist attraction over the past 40 years but is still really interesting. They have many statues carved out of hardened salt and the most amazing thing is the huge chapel they have about 90 meters underground and everything there is carved into and out of the salt. There was even a bar down the bottom at 125 meters and a big sports hall. This morning I had to run around Krakow and see all the city sights before catching my 10am bus to Bratislava in Slovakia. I'm staying at a really nice hostel tonight so if you don't hear from me again you know why. (yes I'm talking about the horror movies Hostel 1 and 2.)

Keep your comments coming,

Woodsy

Snow, snow, and more snow in the Baltics

G'day all,

Ok so where do I start other than another busy week crossing 3 countries and going from snow to 10 degrees and sunny. My time in Tartu was an interesting one for me being from Australia because it snowed for the whole 4 days I was there. Sure I’ve seen a little bit of snow before but I’ve never seen this much so it was pretty exciting for me. I loved just walking the streets and treading my way through this nice fluffy white foreign stuff but at the same time I kind of missed feeling a stable ground under my feet. The winter in Estonia pretty much never came to the amazement off all the locals however it sure kicked in right in the thick of spring when I was there. The local Estonians were almost as excited as me about the snow as it had been a completely dry winter. I think many must have thought I was weird as instead of walking on the stamped down paths I often tended to head out in the knee deep snow and wad my way through it getting my jeans wet. Anyway that’s enough about the snow. I spent my first night in Tartu staying at this really nifty new hostel which had just been opened but unfortunately they only had a bed for me for the first night. I was lucky though because I met the great guy on the bus Jaan who set me up with some fellow couchsurfers to stay for the next 3 nights. It was so nice because they were all Estonian students and lived in this really nice house with a sauna right in the town and we all got on really well. Due to the weather I didn’t actually see a great deal in Tartu apart from the snow but it was a really nice safe town to be in. The one really cool thing I did was go to the University and look at the anatomy museum. I’d never seen anything like this before and it was so in your face and gruesome. There were walls and walls of bits of dead peoples bodies in jars from head to toe and had every disease and disorder you can imagine. There was more flesh in there than a strip joint and more bones than a catwalk model but the one thing that really shocked me was when I saw a mans full head with his scalp cut off in a jar. On my last day in Tartu the guys took me for a sauna in their house. It was unlike an Australian sauna as this was a non clothing event and was almost 100 degrees Celsius. It was a bit embarrassing getting the kit off in public but hey when in Estonia do as the Estonians do yeah. I couldn’t believe how hot it was in there and after a while I did the very Estonian thing of running outside and jumping in the snow nude. My skin was so boiling hot after the sauna that being naked in the snow was actually really nice and it didn’t feel too cold at all. The only real embarrassing thing was that I was in the public and anyone could have seen me especially the house full of girls next door. On my last nigh we decided to go out and party being the big night out in the week and the girls from next door came over for some drinks. They were all like models and I found it hard to look them in the eye after my naked rampage through the joined backyard just hours before. We had a great night and at 6:45am the next day I had to drunkenly run for my bus to head to Riga in Latvia. I was sad to be leaving the nice, friendly and hospitable people of Estonia but at this rate I wouldn’t see much of Europe. I only spent 2 nights in Riga to speed things up but I really enjoyed my time there. Riga has a different feel to it compared to Tallinn but it still has a nice charm about it even though it’s much larger. I found myself getting lost over and over again even with my map I didn’t know where I was half the time. Riga was covered in snow when I arrived but by the end of the day it was half gone as the weather really warmed up. Snow was melting off all the rooftops and large chunks were hitting me from 5 stories up everywhere I walked. It was kind of cool though because I felt like was in a computer game trying to dodge all the falling snow and trying to keep my health at 100%. I hung out with some really nice people in Riga and it was a good change having friends to do some sightseeing with. On our last night we went up to the “sky bar” which overlooked the city and sunk some cocktails while watching the sunset. One cool thing in Riga are these bridges where all the newlyweds attach an engraved padlock to them so there are thousands of padlocks everywhere. On Saturday I caught the bus to Vilnius in Lithuania where I’ve been for 2 nights so far. It does seem like a nice town too but there are a few sketchy people about and my friend got mugged on Saturday night so I’m very cautious walking around here now. Anyway I better go see some sights so I’ll have something to write about next time.

Woodsy

From Desert to Snow

G’day all,

Well she’s been a busy week of travelling this past week heading from the desert in Africa to the snow of the Arctic in just a number of days. I first flew into London and stayed with my cousin Dave for a couple of days to adjust and get some cold weather gear together before heading north. It was good to see Dave again and we went out to the famous “Walkabout” pub in Sheppard’s Bush to get me back into the rhythm of London life. I found it really hard going from the cheapness of Egypt to the high prices of London but the relief of not being hassled was a nice change. On Tuesday I flew to Helsinki in Finland where I stayed in a hostel inside the Olympic stadium which was pretty cool. There seemed to be nobody to speak English to there so I just went off strolling around Helsinki myself. Helsinki is a nice place but it’s probably a bit bland I’d have to say. It was also quite expensive so I had to stick to my London ways and try not to spend any money. The weather was freezing cold and it was snowing so I pretty much stayed in the shopping malls walking around Helsinki and even indulged in some traditional Finnish food…..McDonalds. I was expecting Finnish people to be friendly but I found myself being ignored by the locals when asking for directions on the street and when ordering my McDonalds meal the girl yelled at me and said ‘Wait a minute will ya’. On Wednesday I caught the ferry to Tallinn in Estonia and have been there for the past 4 nights. Tallinn is the capital of Estonia and is a big party town on the Baltic Sea. I fell in love with Tallinn the moment I got into the old town area and saw the beautiful cobble stoned streets and ancient architecture. I stayed at the Tallinn Backpackers hostel right in the middle of the old town and soon realized how friendly Estonians are and how much they loved to party. We had a great mixture of people staying at the hostel and I clicked with everyone really well once I sat down and said hi. Before I knew it I was in my party clothes and had a beer in my hand. The one crazy thing I found about Tallinn was that every single girl looks like a supermodel. There are no fat people, no ugly people, and nobody seems to have any imperfections. On my first night we went to a popular club here called “Hollywood” and I felt like the ugliest person in there as everyone looked like models. The next 3 days after that feel like a bit of a blur as all we did was head out each night and sleep in each day. I did get to have a nice look around Tallinn at the end though and walked around the town in amazement at how awesome everything looked and how nice it was walking around in the snow. I had a funny moment when I walked down to the lake which was frozen and watched ducks trying to walk on the ice as they looked like Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk. Yesterday I took a bus to another town in Estonia called Tartu which is a big university party town. Everyone seems to be so nice here and if you ask for directions they seem to walk you to where you want to go rather than point in the direction. I think I’m sick of partying now but I’ll have to see how long I can last before heading to Riga in Latvia.

Hung-over again,

Woodsy

Southern Egypt

G’day all,
I’ve just had another hectic week of hustle and bustle travel in Egypt. I think I’m what you call ‘templed out’ now and if I see one more flam’n pyramid, temple, or tomb in the next week I might have a mental break down. Luxor, like Cairo took a good day or two to grow on me as it’s so in your face and touristy and your just get tossed around like a piece of tourist meat between the conmen. Sometimes travelling alone in a country like this can be really tough battling the crowds of touts waiting for you to walk past. I’m beginning to realize that walking as fast as you can and ignoring anyone that tries to be friendly to you is the only way to survive in touristy Egypt without wasting half your day having pointless conversations and bartering over prices. The temples in Luxor however make up for all the crap you have to put up with as they are so amazing and look even better at night when they are lit up. Luxor, just like everywhere in Egypt is covered in piles of rubbish, festy goats and cats strolling the streets, tortured donkeys pulling carts full of gas cylinders and crops, and dirt roads with huge uncovered holes. The other funny thing about Egypt is that once a house is completed the owners start paying tax so everywhere you look there are houses that were finished 20 years ago but still haven’t got the top floor built and have metal rods poking out. After getting lost without a proper map in Luxor on my first day and walking aimlessly in the wrong direction for hours in the boiling heat I decided to take a tour of the West Bank on day 2. We started early on our tour and headed straight for the Valley of the Kings, followed by Valley of the Queens, and the Temple of Hatshepsut which was really interesting but the heat again was a killer. It was really awesome seeing all the paintings and carvings inside the tombs and in one tomb was even a mummy of a little baby. I was knocked out after being in the heat all day climbing through the valleys so I had a powernap and then went out to Luxor Temple and the mummification museum for a gander. The temple was really cool to see at night and I took a load of great photos and the museum was pretty snazzy too. On Monday morning I went Hot Air Ballooning over the Valley of the Kings and absolutely loved it. I’m not scared of heights by any means but heading off up into the sky was a bit frightening looking over the edge of the straw basket. I was thinking geez this better not drop out of the sky as I crossed my fingers and hoped we’d get back down again with a nice slow descent. Once we got up though I loved it and we flew over little villages and could see all the farmers working and animals walking around (as in video). I made it back to the hotel in just enough time to catch my train down to Aswan for the second stage of my southern leg of Egypt. Soon after arriving in Aswan I found my self a cheap $1 a night bed then went for a stroll along the Nile and the Souqs. The cool think about Aswan is that it’s so close to the Sudan boarder and everywhere you look are really tall African looking people called Nubians. The Nubians are much more chilled than your average Egyptian, whether it’s a cultural difference or its got to do with the amount of weed they seem to smoke each day I’m not sure. The thing to do in Aswan is to take a Felucca (Egyptian sailing boat) ride up the Nile towards Luxor for a few nights. Almost all the captains of the Feluccas are Nubian and they stand along the Nile waiting for you to walk past to bargain a voyage with you. As hard as I tried to not get ripped off again, the Nubian man Joe managed to get the better end of me with his swift dodgy sales skills and I got gypped once again. I started my Felucca ride on Tuesday afternoon after an intensive 12 hour bus tour down to Abu Simbel, Aswan Dam, and Philae Temple in the morning. I started my tour at 3:30am and was shoved into a crammed mini van on a shocker of a fold out seat with no back support and was really regretting getting out of bed. We had to travel down to Abu Simbel in a police convoy because we were heading towards the Sudan boarder. It was an amazing sight to see this huge row of dozens of tour busses driving down together. Lucky for me I sat next to a bunch of cool people and we had a good laugh at how dodgy everything was. Abu Simbel was amazing and worth the trip down, Philae Temple was also very good but Aswan Dam was boring as hell. The minute I got back to Aswan I jumped straight into a taxi and caught up with my felucca boat which had already been sailing for about 3 hours. I felt like a ‘Big Brother’ house intruder joining the boat hours after the trip begun but soon realized everyone was really awesome and we all got on like a house on fire so I was very happy. The feluccas are meant to have no more than 6-8 passengers but I was number 12 on ours (not including the 3 staff) so it must have been a bit of a shock when I popped out of nowhere and joined the crew. It was such a great feeling finally relaxing and cracking a beer watching the sunset as we sailed up the Nile. It was so tempting to jump in for a swim but after learning about the nasty bugs swimming in the Nile we stayed firmly on board. We anchored the boat next to a sand dune for the first night and were chased by wild dogs before having a Nubian meal and an early night. Day 2 of our Nile adventure was fantastic and so relaxing as we just sun baked and talked all day as we cruised up through a heap of Nubian villages on the palm tree lined Nile. The highlight of the day was when we pulled over to the side and went for a walk through this ghost town Nubian Village where this little old lady invited us into her mud brick hut for a look. We couldn’t believe the inside of her place as she lived as if it was 200 years ago and everything was so old and handmade and ancient looking. She looked just as shocked to see us and could do nothing but laugh in amazement at us being in her village and home. We anchored just out from the temple of Kom Ombo for our last night of the trip and spent the last day driving back to Luxor in another crazy mini van and visiting temples along the way. Back in Luxor I was still yet to visit the incredible Temple of Karnak which was the best of the lot. I ended up renting a push bike and rode along the Nile to the Temple and got there in about 20 minutes. Karnak was WOW so huge and mind blowing and the Hypostyle Hall with its 134 massive pillars was amazing. It’s funny because they have tourist police everywhere armed with AK47’s to stop any corruption at all the sites. Sometimes they are the ones sneaking you into a roped off area for a sneaky photo in exchange of a tip which just shows how legit this country is. There seems to be AK47 machine guns everywhere in this country but it’s strange because you start to become immune to it in the end and even when there was one sitting under the passenger seat of our tour van we chucked at it rather than freaking out. Anyway I ended up making back to Cairo in one piece on the train and today I flew back to Dubai where I’m just waiting for my plane to London as I write. I ran out of money in the end of my Egyptian stay and was lucky to survive the past 30 hours on $2 so that was quite an effort I thought.

Walking like an Egyptian,

Woodsy

(ps don't forget to click on the images to enlarge them)

Chaotic Cairo

G’day all,
There’s only one problem with Egypt….too many bloody Egyptians. They would have to be the most friendly and finely trained conmen I’ve come across I’d have to say. They are so good they almost put you in a trance to hand over cash before you even realize it, then half an hour later you shake your head and realized you paid triple. Every street you walk down you are a target with “Where you from my friend”, “What’s your name”, “Can I help you”, “Welcome to my country”, or even “G’day mate”. Just when you write them all off as scammers and you begin being rude and evasive to them you meet one that acts exactly the same but just wants to know about you and say hello and nothing more. My first impressions of Cairo was ‘this place is bloody mental’ but after a day or two it kind of grows on you in a funny way and you begin to like it. Apart from maybe India it would have to be the dirtiest polluted place I’ve ever been to. Every building looks like it was built 60 years ago and not cleaned or maintained since. There is layer after layer of greasy dirt on every wall, floor and shop window you see and when you try to breathe in you feel like you are in a cave so much dust sucks into your lungs. Almost every car looks at least 30 years old and has huge dents on every panel and trying to cross the road, well that’s another story. The traffic is probably worse in India and Vietnam but they are mainly motorbikes and rickshaws while in Cairo every single car looks completely un-roadworthy, no lights are used at night, and everyone just swerves around the road ignoring any lane that was ever painted on the road. At night you can hear a million car horns no matter what time of the night it is and the street lights are so badly lit that you can just see the outline or cars until they occasionally flicker the high beams to indicate a near car crash. I’m not saying all this in a bad way because this is what makes Cairo such an exciting city and that’s why I’m beginning to love the place. I’ve been staying at a backpackers downtown called “Dahab Hostel” which has the dodgiest lift you’ve ever seen but a great chill out atmosphere on the roof top full of European travellers. Back to that lift… now that’s something else. It looks like something out of a horror movie and is swinging through this cage between a spiral stairwell by this rusty old cable, so much character and a bloody good rush. On day 2 in Cairo I went to the Egyptian Museum which was so huge I ended up power walking through it just to make sure I saw everything before my legs collapsed on me. It was really awesome though seeing all the mummies and tombs and gold and jewels but it was so poorly displayed for what it was. Yesterday I went to the Pyramids and no matter how many fellow backpackers warned me not to do a tour because you get ripped off, I still managed to get conned into a tour by a smooth Egyptian man. I was so annoyed with myself for getting ripped off when it was my one and only plan that day to not get conned into a tour, that it put me in a bad mood and I didn’t even enjoy the pyramids. What I did to however was something very Aussie, and I went back and conned the conman. I went back into his office wearing my “www.paulwood.blogspot.com” t-shirt and told him I work for Tourism Australia and Lonely Planet and told him he lied to me and ripped me off and he chose the wrong person to pick on. After having a little talk to him I ended up blackmailing him into giving me 70 Egyptian pounds back and returned to Cairo with a smirk on my face. Late yesterday I went to Islamic Cairo which is a very interesting part of town and is full of tiny little laneways loaded with bazaar markets, mosques and tiny little assorted work shops. I got so lost it took me hours to get home and I ended up catching a taxi because I walked 45 minutes in the wrong direction. Today I left Cairo and took a bus 6 hours south to the coastal town of “Sharm el-Sheikh” which is on the Red Sea and is world famous for its scuba diving. I didn’t do my research too well though because I now realize I feel very out of place here. I swear I’m the only backpacker in the town as this is where all the rich Italian and Russian middle aged tourists come to dive and the backpackers go to another town about 85km away called Dahab. Everything here is 5 times more expensive than Cairo but at the same time it looks like such an amazing town I have no regrets coming here accidentally but will catch the bus to Dahab tomorrow. The town is situated on a nice little cove with crystal clear waters and is surrounded by these beautiful desert rocky mountains. There is a really nice market in the middle of the town and this outdoor restaurant that is chiseled into the edge of a cliff and lit up by lights. On Monday I will be busy doing a Scuba diving course for 4 days to get my PADI certificate in diving so I will update you after that.
Keeping it cheeky,

Woodsy

Fun in Qatar

G’day all,

Well I’ve just had a brilliant week with my 2^nd Cousin Barbara in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Barbara showed me around all week and organized a very eventful time for me. I arrived in Doha last Wednesday at 2:30am where Barb picked me up from the airport and drove me to her home and I got a nice sleep in. Qatar is not the dangerous Middle Eastern country I first imaged when hearing of it and instead it’s more of smaller and better organized version of Dubai. Like Dubai there are many brand new fancy skyscrapers and housing developments sprouting up everywhere however it seems to have more of an authentic cultural feel to the place. The local Qatari drivers seemed to have the same disease of pushing everyone out of the way and have a mindset of being in a rush to go nowhere. Qatar is a tiny country but amazingly the second richest country in the world with all their oil reserves and after spending a week here you can really notice it. A percentage of the profits from oil revenue is equally divided between the local Qatari people resulting in nobody needing to work unless they feel like it. It's a safe statement to say that the rich are filthy rich and the poor and rich here. The workforce seems to consist mainly of Indian, Nepalese and Philippino workers whilst the big super malls are loaded with local Qatari people with their designer, watches, glasses, shoes, jewelry, mobiles, and perfumes everywhere to be seen and smelt. It’s an interesting sight seeing these peoples so well off and so immaculately groomed sitting at Starbucks with their friends filling in the day chatting away so care free. Friday and Saturday are the weekend days here and Thursday night is the busiest night of the week for doing anything. I was lucky to have timed my visit while the Doha women’s tennis competition was on and on Thursday Barb and I got to watch Venus Williams and Maria Sharapova play for free. It was awesome, the Government seems to pay for everything here and we got to sit one row from the front and watch first class tennis without paying a penny. After drooling over Sharapova we got a good night sleep for Friday was our big desert day. Although I went 4WDing in the desert last week with Rob in UAE this time was much more extreme (as you can see in the video). At first I thought our crazy driver was just joking about going down the first mega dune but nope as I found out this was just the start of many steep and speedy dune descents. We had a ball and the adrenalin rush was sweet as gunned across the dunes at up to 140km an hour and felt like we were going to roll on a number of times. It felt as if we were just sliding down these massive dunes and half the time it looked like we were under the sand looking out of the window. We drove to the Saudi Arabia border and as we neared you could see the boarder police cruising around the sand dunes on their miniature dune buggies. The day ended with a camel ride and some local food and lots of loud Arabic music to dance to in the car. On Sunday I went out to the school Barbara is working at and had a tour of all the class rooms and got to meet all the little kids. Now this was a very interesting experience because all the teachers were women and every time I turned to head up a new hallway Barb had to yell out “Warning man in the school cover up”. It is Qatari tradition to completely cover your face to any men other than family so I felt like a real pervert walking around and almost seeing the girls’ faces. After a few hours of feeling like a criminal in the school Barb drove me to the local mall which again blew my mind it was so amazing. This mall had a Venice theme and every shop looked like a Venetian building with a canal running up the centre of the mall and Gondolas floating up and down under Venetian style bridges. On Monday night we went on a boat cruise around the coast and had a good look at all the skyscrapers at night which was really cool seeing all the fancy lights at night. Yesterday was my last day in Doha so I went for a nice walk through the (markets) and ended up being a thobe (traditional Qatari mens gown) and Barb and I had a laugh as we dressed up and took some photos in all our Qatari clothes. Barb took me out to the Ritz Carlton for dinner for my last night and we feasted on a smorgasbord of Arabian food. It was so fancy in there and I felt a little out of place being a scummy backpacker but it was a nice experience. All in all I had a great time in Doha and it’s definitely going to be big tourist destination in the future but it was nice to see it before the tourists start flocking to it. I’m currently at the airport in Dubai waiting for my plane to Cairo so I’ll update ya all next from Egypt.

Keep it real,

Woodsy

Dubai the city of the future

G’day all,
How would I wrap Dubai up in two words? Bloody Amazing. Well I’ve just spent a few sensational days in Dubai, the super city of the future. What more can I say than mind blowing, super-modern, space aged, fast, perfect, and perhaps even fake. My first impressions of Dubai were a little different to this as I was caught in traffic jams, surrounded by poor Indian and Pakistani slaved and underpaid laborers, and stuck in a backpacker hostel that nobody had heard of miles out of the city centre. After introducing myself to the first westerners I saw at the hostel I found myself within an hour drinking pints at an Irish Pub for the 4th straight night. The next day me and my new mates Andre and Simon headed to “Wild Wadi Waterpark” right next to the famous sail shaped 7 star hotel the Burj al-Arab. It cost an arm and a leg to get in but once you walk through the gates and see this massive artificial wave with a huge pipeline screaming out ‘surf me’ you can understand why. Growing up in the surf, I couldn’t wait to give it a go and I got so excited that I didn’t jump on the wave properly and got sucked backwards off the back of the wave (as in the video) and it was highly embarrassing. What made it even more embarrassing was the fact the Jamaican surf instructor heard my Aussie accent and built me up as a professional surfer. After my embarrassing moment there we then tried out the many slides we had to choose from. Thinking we were going to be climbing steps all day I was amazed to find out we were jet propelled in uphill slides in rubber tubes and didn’t have to do a thing to get to the top of the hill. One of the slides goes down in complete darkness and another one shoots you down the hill at 80km an hour from a terrifying height which makes you feel very close to getting airborne and hitting the car park with a splat. We had an awesome day at the water park and got there first thing in the morning and were the last to leave when the park closed. We got very sun burnt too but had a ball. On my final day in Dubai I decided I better actually do some site seeing so I did a jump on jump off double-decker bus tour which was really the only way to see Dubai. This is when I really gained my respect for what has become of Dubai and what it will become in 10 years time. Dubai was nothing but a sand desert 60 years ago before it became a tiny fishing and boat making village until 30 years ago when they discovered oil and now it’s the fastest growing city in the world. The old part of the town is nothing but a dingy, old, dirty, traffic jammed, cluttered mess but the new part of town feels like you’re in the 2100. The architecture seems alien-like, the malls look like a set from a movie, the cars are worth more than houses, all the bus stops have air-con, the beaches are perfect, and everything seems to have a different theme. They are building the fastest, tallest, and grandest, of everything in the hope to make this the number 1 tourist destination in the world in years to come. Only 20% of the people in Dubai are actual Arabians and they don’t seem to do any of the dirty work except for driving down to the ATM to pull out wads of cash to go shopping for their 4 wives in their brand new Ferraris. As you drive down the roads all you see are sweaty, hot, predominately Indian foreigners building these skyscrapers everywhere you look. Meanwhile the government gives local Arabian couples a huge beach front mansion for free as a wedding gift with a nice wide driveway for their collection of Lamborghinis. The city is starting to look like Manhattan and it’s only just begun. Only a few of the building have actually been complete whilst if you look around you will see a horizon of cranes and construction sights as far as the eye can see. Even more impressive than the buildings I found were the malls. Each mall has a different theme and these things would give Paris Hilton cardiac arrest they offer so much choice and quality. One mall in particular really impressed me as I’ve never seen something so perfect in my life it was pure stunning. All the buildings were made of sandstone and were styled like something from Santa Fe. They were surrounded by canals with crystal green water and bridges with gondolas like Venice but right in the near distance was the Burj al-Arab poking out over the clear blue sky. On the waters edge were a sting of cafes and restaurants and all the customers looked like movie stars. As you can probably tell I was pretty impressed. One other thing I’ve noticed about Dubai is there is no homeless people and no unemployment and if anything there is a lack of people to be employed. Anyway that’s a wrap up of my time in Dubai. Next update is from Doha in Qatar. Enjoy the pics and videos and leave us a comment.

Woodsy

The Trip begins... Stage One- The Middle East

G’day all,
Well the big 7 month trip has begun and my first stop is the United Arab Emirates. I left Galway on Wednesday and spent Wednesday night in London with my cousin Dave before Flying to Dubai Thursday morning. I decided to give this couchsurfing.com thing a go and I had an Aussie guy called Rob meeting me once I arrived in Dubai and I have been staying on his couch for the past few nights. He met me at this massive mall in Dubai where we sat down and had dinner together overlooking skiers sliding down an indoor ski slope in one of the many hi-tech super shopping malls they have in Dubai. Rob actually lives in the city of Abu Dhabi about 2 hours away from Dubai. I was pretty excited to finally be in the Gulf and driving through Dubai at night on the way to Abu Dhabi was a sight to see in itself with the crazy sea of futuristic skyscrapers surrounding these huge 10 lane highways weaving throughout the city. After arriving in Abu Dhabi we decided to go for a couple of cheeky beers at one of the big five star hotels in town. Abu Dhabi itself is a large skyscraper filled city which also has just been built over the past 30 years and just seems like a smaller version of Dubai. It was a weird feeling being warm again and wearing a t-shirt after being in Ireland for the past 9 months freezing but that joy wore off on Friday when we visited the desert. Rob is an Aussie lad working here as an engineer and I was lucky enough to get him at a time where he has 2 days off work and a company car with free petrol. We decided to head to Liwa on Friday, which is the largest sand dune oasis in the world where some dunes are 300m in height. The drive was long, straight, sandy and very hot as we headed almost to the Saudi Arabian border. We couldn’t believe it when we got there as it just looked like something out of a movie with beautiful white untouched sand dunes reaching out to a bright blue sky. After driving around the dunes for a while and passing some camel farms we arrived at the end of the road and without much luck tried sliding down the dunes in a cardboard box. Next thing some bloke in a 4WD comes cruising up to us and offers us a drive through the dunes which was great fun. At times it almost felt like we were going to roll over and at the end of our ride we went down this massive hill which was a good adrenalin rush. The man then offered us to rent his sand board which we jumped at the opportunity although it wasn’t as fun as it seemed. After 20 minutes we gave his board back to him as we were so hot and tired we couldn’t walk up the dunes anymore. I slept the whole way back to Abu Dhabi before sleeping some more then having some more cheeky beers with Rob and another couch surfing buddy from Sweden called Kristofa. We ended up going into this weird Arabic club afterwards where we all felt so out of place as a room full or Arabs stared us up and down as they smoked their pipes. As we tried to sit down a man ran over and told us it’s reserved so we sat in the back room and sucked back one more cheeky beer before heading home. Yesterday Rob took me to one of the most amazing thing’s I’ve ever seen before, the ‘Grand Mosque’. It’s a brand new mosque which is just being completed now and I honestly found it more impressive than the Taj Mahal. It blows your mind just the size and the design of the thing but even better is when you get inside. As you walk inside there sitting in front of you is the largest carpet and the largest chandelier in the world. The carpet took 600 women 1 year to make by hand and the chandelier stands 6 meters long. It was definitely a must see and will be a big tourist attraction in years to come. The other major attraction in Abu Dhabi is the Palace which was closed to tourists yesterday. I found out today reading the paper that they had a huge auction in the Palace yesterday where a car number plate with the number 1 on it was sold for nearly 20 million Aussie bucks. They seem to have more money than sense over here and as you look around I don’t think you could see anything more materialistic apart from perhaps Hollywood or Beverley Hills. The shopping malls here are amazing and are so spotlessly clean and are seen as old if they are over 5 years in age. It’s a weird combination of the world here and it’s quite odd seeing a queue of Muslims with all the gear on lining up to order their Mc Arabia meals at McDonalds. There are also some nice beaches on the cities edge where it was a surprise to see men wearing speedos and women wearing bikinis after being told not to wear shorts around as people look at you like your naked. Apart from that and all the modern buildings there is not much else to see and do in Abu Dhabi but it’s a nice experience all the same. So far couch surfing was a huge success for me and Rob was brilliant in showing me around and having me stay with him for the past 3 nights and we got on great. Next stop….DUBAI!!!

Keep it real,

Woodsy

1 MONTH TO GO !!!

G'day all,

Well there is ONE MONTH to go until the adventure of a lifetime begins. I have booked flights to Dubai in the Middle East for Feb 14th where I will begin my travels for the next 7 months around the world. This blog will be updated at least twice a week and will include pictures and videos each time and plenty of laughs. Add www.paulwood.blogspot.com to your favourites and spread the word to your friends and families and we can share the adventures with everyone. ...Update ya all in Feb :)

Pauly

Working Hard in Galway

G’day all,

Well it’s been a hectic past few months since my last update with much working, partying, socializing, footy kicking and site seeing. “Race Week” ended up being as crazy as it was hyped up to be with the whole town wall to wall with tourists for the whole week. Each day everyone went to the races and each night the whole main street “shop street” was blocked off and turned into one huge outdoor pub. All the bars gave their patrons plastic beer cups so they can take their drinks out onto the road. It was one absolute huge week long party. Our house has also started falling apart since updating you guys last with my Cousin Dan’s roof collapsing, water from the shower dripping through the kitchen roof, rats running across our living room floor and across my hand while I slept, and parts of the walls falling off. It has also been getting very cold lately and as it’s so expensive to get heating over here we all sit around the lounge room in our thermal underwear, beanies, gloves, and scarves each night laughing about how nice our house is. One thing that’s been helping us get through the bad weather is our huge games of footy we’ve been having at least once a week. Sometimes we have up to 10 or 15 people all tackling each other in the mud and rain and we play until it is dark. We’ve been inviting anyone we can to join us in our games but as the weather has been getting colder and darker our games are starting to fizzle up now. Another update to our crazy household here is our new French/Spanish/Irish hippy mate Des who came to crash on our couch for a week and is still here 4 months later. He is the funkiest guy you can meet with dreadlocks shooting out of his visor and his matching primary coloured clothes. Every time he plans to move on we talk him into staying longer and now he works here full time and loves kicking the footy more than any of us. Our Kiwi mates and Dan have now moved on and are travelling around Europe at the moment and our other mate from Adelaide Shane lives in Dan’s room now. Before the crew went travelling we had a really great day out at the Aran Islands where we rode bikes around all day through beautiful scenery and admired the views of these incredible cliffs. There islands are almost unchanged for hundreds of years and everyone still speaks the Irish language over there and ride around with horse and cart. I also now have been working 3 jobs with my day job and 2 night jobs doing promotions, one for one of the big nightclubs here called GPO and also promoting the Aussie beer “Carlton Cold” in bars on my nights off. I really love doing the promo jobs and it’s the easiest money as all I have to do is talk to good looking girls all night and put stamps on their hands and get paid for it. Through doing my promo jobs I also met these great Adelaide girls Amy and Alex who have become good mates of ours for about 2 months now and we hang out most days and all party together each weekend. It was Halloween a few weeks ago and boy was it a massive week. Even about 10 days before Halloween night there were people dressing up all over the place and the event went for a week long. None of us could believe the extent of trouble people went into making their costumes and Halloween night was huge with not a single person to be seen without being dressed up. Sean, Tate, and I all dressed up in “Nuclear Radiation Suits” for Halloween and spent about 5 hours making them. Our night was so huge that by the time we got home again at the end of the night our suits were just a few pieces of shredded cloth left on us. I’m planning on heading off to go travelling again in February at this stage with the rate I’m saving money at. So far my plans are to first head to Dubai and Qatar in the Middle East then spend a while in Egypt before heading off to travel Eastern and Southern Europe, North America, Mexico, the Bahamas, Peru, and New Zealand for 7 months before heading home again in September next year.
Anyway that’s about all for now,

Ooroooo

Woodsy

Galway, Paul's Way....…All Settled In!!

G’day all,

It’s been a while since my last blog update but I’ve been in Ireland for almost 2 months now and I’m finally all settled in with a full time job and it’s all going to plan so far. It’s been an extremely busy past couple of months with lots of job searching, footy kicking, partying and visitors coming in and out of our bachelor pad house we call “club 43”. My cousin Dan moved into our place about a month ago and since then our house has been the centre of partying and our social life in Galway with a weekly and sometimes nightly gathering of pre-drinks and laughs before nights out on the town. I first got a job here doing bar work for one of the big hotels. It was pretty nerve raking because I know sweet bugger all about working behind the bar and was thrown into the deep end because I’m Aussie and they assume every Aussie lives in a pub. The hard part was I couldn’t understand half of what the Irish people were ordering nor how to make it so I had to wing it the best I could. I had to walk 45 minutes each way to work in the rain and it was getting really tough but was so glad that just before my 4^th shift I got another job working only 5 minutes away from my house. For the past 6 weeks I’ve been working as a salesman in a fancy home store selling all sorts of cooking gear and loving it. I don’t know much about cooking at all or selling stuff but I find that I can get away with anything with my accent and my customers just love asking me about Australia. Everyday I get the same thing over and over and over and over again: Where are you from Australia or New Zealand? What brings you here to this weather? How long are you here for? What do you think of Galway? Why Galway? When did you get here? All my work mates just laugh every time I get asked because I just switch to auto pilot and say the same old lines back each time. I was given a real fancy pancy suit for work too and had to get my hair cut to look the part so now I’m clean cut Paul instead of backpacker Paul. Everyone I work with is super nice and we are always having a good laugh or “good craic” as the Irish say. If Galway had good weather it would be the best place on earth but I’ve never seen such depressing weather in my whole life. It is supposed to be summer here but it seems to rain and drizzle every single day and night. We did have one good week where the weather was around 25 and sunny for about 7 days straight but now it’s back to winter weather again. The town itself though is amazing and it is a buzz every day and the night life is unreal. You can literally go out any night of the week here and find a packed bar or go on a pub crawl. A few weeks back we went and saw the famous Australian stand up comedian Carl Barron do a gig at the local pub and had a great night and all got to meet him and get photos with him. At the moment I’m a bit partied out though if that’s possible as for the past few weeks I had two of my best mates in the world Rob and Dan come over from Toronto in Canada to visit for two weeks. They left last Friday but WOW was it a big few weeks while they were here. We pretty much went out every single night of the week for two weeks while I worked full time during the day each day. We had such a great time and we did a couple of trips with them. Tate got his work car one day and we all drove down to the “Cliffs of Moher” which were awesome and the weather was great that day. In the second week I had two days off and we all got a rental car and drove down to Cork where we stayed the night and partied. The following day we went to the Blarney Castle and then drove to Cove to see where the Titanic left the wharf for the last time before sinking. It was so good to see the boys again and we had quite a few kicks of the footy while they were here too. At the moment it’s just me and Sean alone in Club 43 as the Canadians have gone, Dan and Shane have gone to Egypt for the week, Kate has gone to New York and Tate has a new sales job roaming around the country side. We also still have our Kiwi mates here and these two legend Melbourne guys I met in India Scotty and Pud to party with. Towards the end of July Galway is going to be going crazy as the arts festival is on and then the much talked about Race Week. Race Week is supposed to be absolutely mental as a million people come to this town of 70,000 for a big horse racing festival. All the locals tell me I won’t believe how crazy it is until I see it so I’m looking forward to that. We had an interesting bit of publicity in our street over the past month. About a month ago a dead mans body was found chopped up in pieces in a freezer in our street only about 10 doors away from our place. Apparently he was killed about 4 years ago and he was a drug dealer.

Thanks about all for now,

Woodsy…..having a ball in Galway

The Ireland leg begins…..

G’day all,
Well it has been a while since my last update mainly due to either not much happening or too much partying. My best mate Tate came and joined Sean and I at the “Kings Arms” on the Saturday before we headed off to Ireland. It was a huge celebration for the 3 of us to be finally re-united after not being together for 14 months and we really showed the English how to party that night. There were champagne corks flying left right and centre and we all ended up singing songs and wrestling until the early hours of the morning in front of a pub full of amazed English onlookers. On the Tuesday we got our 1 pound (+ about 30 pounds of extra charges) flight from London to Dublin on Ryan Air. We expected the worse as we heard the flights were really dodgy and disorganized however surprisingly it all went smooth as a jar of vegemite. I was so glad to finally be making progress again in the trip as doing nothing and being too cheap to do anything in England was doing my head in as I felt so helpless. Once we arrived in Dublin we found a cheap hostel, looked around for a bit, then sniffed out the cheapest we can eat and drink. We spent 2 nights in Dublin and all we really did was party and sleep in. I did get to meet up with a good friend of mine Elise who I met in Thailand last year so that was really cool. Dublin was a cool city but it was still way too expensive and big for us boys so we got a bus out to Galway on the Thursday. My cousin Dan met us at the bus-stop when we arrived and he let us crash on his floor for the first few nights until we settled in. I was also really excited to find out that our Welsh friend Kate who travelled with us through Thailand and Cambodia was staying with Dan. We instantly fell in love with Galway as the city has such a good feel to it. It’s so pretty and happening, and it has a great buzz about the place. After planning to have a quiet one Thursday night it ended up being another blinder as we also partied with Dan’s kiwi housemates Dom and Victoria and his other Adelaide housemate Shane. On Friday it was my 25^th birthday so we made it 4 nights out in a row. After spending 2 nights on Dans lounge room floor we were pretty keen to find our own place. On Saturday we hit the jackpot as we got a place right in the town for only 55 euros each a week and moved in instantly so we were thrilled to bits. We were so happy with our place we ended up throwing a house party and had everyone over for drinks before heading out on our 5^th night out in a row. The night life in Galway is fantastic. There are pubs and clubs everywhere you look and they all seemed to be packed out. In Ireland it’s illegal to smoke in pubs and bars now so it’s really weird seeing all these people standing outside the pub in the cold for a smoke. The past two weeks have been really fun however so costly and the alarm bells for my cash flow situation are ringing very loudly. Since Monday I’ve been on a job seeking rampage walking the streets of Galway with a pile of resumes under one arm handing them out everywhere. Today I got so desperate I noticed a tanning salon and an adult book shop advertising for full time positions so I had to blush and suck it up and hand over my resume to them. We’ve been in Galway for 5 days now and apart from the weather…We all love the place!!!!

That’s all for now,

Woodsy

G'day video test

G'day all just testing this video, click on it to view it if it works. This is me on the swing in Vang Vieng in Laos. I tried to do a Napolean Dynamite dance move off the swing and ended up stacking it bad into the water ripping my necklace off. If it's all up and working I'll try and get some more videos up,

Woodsy

also check out my myspace I've got heaps of pics up from the trip on there now

www.myspace.com/paulwood900

dfjao

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G’bye India, G’day Pommy Land

G’day all,

Well it’s been a strange old week going from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the most expensive countries. My last few days in India were pretty tough on me and by the end of my time there I was quite happy to be flying to a civilized country again. I spent the last two days in Jaipur before heading to Delhi and flying to London. Jaipur was an interesting city with lots of history and some really cool mountain forts but again it was a tourist haven and overrun by professional rip off touts. I only really had one full day in Jaipur and two nights so I organized a rickshaw driver to take me on a tour which worked out well. Half way through my tour the rickshaw driver asks if I like music and I said “bloody oath mate” he then proceeds to crank “I’m a Barbie girl” up full blast. The funny thing was that he thought he was so cool by doing so but anywhere else in the world and he would have been laughed at. The highlight of the day was watching a turban headed Indian bloke play his flute to an angry cobra to make it dance and watching it try and bite his hands. He then asked me to pat the cobra as it had its venom sack removed. It was still pretty scary but I had to do it being the Aussie I am. It was all good until it turned its head and tried to bite me on the wrist. Later on that night I had another interesting experience when I was randomly taken to jewelry by another dodgy rickshaw driver and almost scammed really bad. The jeweler wanted me to smuggle about $30,000 worth of gems into London to escape a 250% tax fee for them. They said I would earn 5000 pounds ($12,500 AUS) if I did it but I was like bugga that I’m not ending up in jail as much as the offer was tempting. You really have to watch your back over here and be wise because you can get into big trouble by making a bad decision. I had a really tough 8hr train ride back to Delhi from Jaipur in this over crowed train in boiling 45 degree heat and I was so glad when we finally arrived. I had a few hours in Delhi before flying to London and in that time I met my first Aussies in over a month. It was so nice to speak to an Aussie again and we had a good laugh about India. The flight was pretty hectic to London as we had some pretty bad turbulence and this fat Indian man fell asleep leaning on me for 9 hours. I was so happy to be back in a civilized country again and it was the most surreal feeling not being hassled, ripped off, and not watching where I walk again. I just couldn’t believe how clean the air felt compared to India and there was even hardly any rubbish to be seen. The downside was that just the price of the bus to get to my mate Sean’s pub 20 minutes away from Heathrow was about the same as what I’ve been living off for a whole day in India. It was so great to see Sean again and we talked and laughed all day even though I was so tired. He has been working in this cool pub in London for a few months now and he’s coming over to Ireland with me and my best mate Tate in a week. On my first night staying at the pub they were flat out busy and I was asked if I could work so I ended up working until close. I’ve been in Twickenham or Twick’n Ham (Aussie accent) for almost a week now and to be honest I only just came out of my culture shock from being back in a normal country a couple of days ago. I spent the first 3 or 4 days here laying in bed mainly because it was just really hard to cope with adjusting from two completely different cultures and I felt so drained from India. On Saturday night Sean and I and the gang from the pub headed out into Central London and partied the night away. I was trying to be as cheap as I could but still chewed through 100 bucks just by drinking supermarket alcohol and buying 1 beer and 1 entry fee and catching public transport. We ended up taking about 300 photos that night on Sean’s camera and got so many great photos. Anyway that’s about all for now.

Ooroo from sunny London.
Woodsy…….go Adam Gillcrest you legend 149 off 104

Pushy Pushkar

G’day all,
Well I’ve spent the past three nights in the small town of Pushkar in Rajasthan and have just arrived in Jaipur by train today. I took a first class train from Jodhpur to Pushkar and it was such a nice experience. I had air conditioning, leg room and even peace without a hundred people trying to sell me things while I try to sleep. Every train station over here is full over homeless people and it’s such a shocking sight every time I catch a train. There are often hundreds of dirty, diseased, and often limbless peoples laying on the ground looking half dead begging for money. You also see many people with no legs wheeling themselves around on a skateboard with blooded bandages on their scabbed up hands. It’s also common to see people with huge infected open wounds on display with dirt and flies buzzing around their cuts and gashes. One thing that hits you when you come to India is that you should never complain about anything as just to live in Australia makes you the feel like the richest person on earth. The poverty and quality of life over here is beyond shocking and believe me we have nothing to whine about ever. I didn’t know what to expect from Pushkar as I’ve heard so many things about it yet knew not a thing about the place. The town is very small and it’s all based around a holy lake called Pushkar Lake. Surrounding the lake is 52 ghats and 400 white temples. The town in total has 1000 temples and the population is of Pushkar is only 14,000 people. So basically it’s a pretty holy place and apart from the lake there is sweet bugger all to do but chill out. It’s a weird mix of very religious Hindus and Hippies in this town and 1 blonde haired Aussie wearing a Crows guernsey. When I first arrived I found some nice cheap accommodation then went for a stroll to check out the lake. As soon as I got down there some fake priest tried to rip me off so I was too scared to go back for another 2 days. The next day I had 2 Gypsy girls shake my hand before starting to draw a henna tattoo on my hand and wanted a lot of money for it. The town didn’t sit too well with me as everyone tries to rip you off so badly. They often do it by being so nice then making you feel guilty and then scamming money off you. They are so good at it they almost brainwash you. Apart from the lake there was nothing to do so I just chilled out with these great Israeli guys and a really cool older English bloke for the next 2 days. All we did was chill out by the swimming pool and hang out on hammocks so it was really nice just to do nothing for once. The one cool thing about being in Pushkar at this time of the year was that it has just become the wedding season here. Each day there is about 70 crazy weddings going on around the place and if you thought Greek weddings were big you should see an Indian Wedding. Hundreds of people dance like jack hammers up and down the street all night as Indian dance music beats the night away up full blast. The ceremonies are huge and whole palaces are rented out and packed for the night. Last night I finally braved the lake again and bought this “passport” thingo which is really a bracelet which tells the scammers to leave you alone and it worked. It was really nice by the lake but the water looked like green pea soup. If the Ganges is septic this lake would have been 10 times worse. They have everything from snakes to floating body parts to weird fish jumping out of it yet people still bathe in it. Today I went to this Brahma Temple and almost got scammed again. I was so annoyed that I don’t think I’m going to really miss pushy Pushkar. It’s not just Pushkar that’s like this it’s the whole of India but I found Pushkar was the worse of all. It is impossible to not get scammed at least a few times over here. Everyone is after commission from guest houses and dodgy travel agents. The taxi or rickshaw drivers tell you “oh there has been a train crash you must take the bus now” or “that guest house burnt down in a fire but this one is good and cheap” or if you just ask to be dropped at a landmark like the clock tower they will say “which clock tower”. The whole country is so corrupt and without the Lonely Planet travel guide book I would be stuffed trying to get around. Every Indian business is so desperate to get their name into the Lonely Planet as it boosts their customers 10 fold. I’ve recently found a method of getting one back on the Indian scammers. I now tell them I’m an editor for Lonely Planet on a research trip searching for things to add to the book. So far it works a beauty as they go from trying to rip me off to them being honest and giving me the best deals. If I’ve just been ripped off I tell them afterwards and leave the buggers with a few sleepless nights. Not long now and I’ll be back in Pommy Land.

Keep it real…Woodsy

India…..I love it, but I hate it……but I love it!!

G’day all,
Well again it has been just a massive few days in India. How can any day not be massive in this crazy old country? If I could put India in 3 words it would almost be impossible but I would have to choose crazy, spiritual, and colourful. I think in any one day in India just walking the streets you could see 1000 things that would just blow you away and things that could only happen in India…that’s why I love it here. I think life without India again is going to be so uneventful but I’m also kind of looking forward to normality again. Anyway enough of my daydreaming back to the past few days. My short 44 hour bus ride from Kathmandu to Delhi ended up being pretty close to torture but finally arriving felt so good again. I met this cool Japanese/French bird named Naomi on the bus so we kept each other sane by just cracking jokes for the whole bus ride as nobody else spoke English on our so called “tourist bus”. The highlight of the bus ride was seeing a UFO out of the window and watching it for a good hour or more. I first spotted this strange cigar shaped bright light out of the window and thought it was moving but couldn’t be sure as the bus ride was pretty shaky. When the bus stopped for petrol I watched this light hover up and down and left and right for a good 10 minutes and I was so pumped when I realized this thing ain’t human. It bounced around the sky like nothing I’ve seen before and moved so fast and silent and smooth that I can honestly say I’ve seen a UFO now. We had to stay a night on the border of Nepal and India as the border didn’t open until 6am. The hotel we stayed at was so rank and ever since that night both my hands and my feet have thousands upon thousands of tiny bite marks all over them and it’s really annoying me. I stayed a day in Delhi before catching an overnight train to Jodhpur in the desert state of Rajasthan towards the Pakistan border. I was very close to missing my train as my cheapness almost got the better of me. I spent too long bargaining with the rickshaw drivers until it got to the point of ‘pay anything now and leave or miss the train’. The rickshaw driver went nuts to get me to the train station on time hitting two pedestrians and a straw cart on our 20 min thrill ride. I arrived at the train station at 8:45pm, the same time the train was due to leave. I then ran to Platform 16 assuming it was mine and launched myself into the moving train Tom Cruise style pushing everyone out of my way and pulling myself and my 30kg bag into the train. Luckily it was the right train however I was about 9 carriages away from where my bed was waiting for me and I was stuck in the standing refugee section for a few hours until the train finally stopped again. Anyway I’ve been in Jodhpur for two days now and it’s an incredible city to be in. It’s called the “Blue City” as many buildings are painted sky-blue to apparently keep the insects away and to keep it cool (as it’s so bloody hot here- many 50+ days) Towering above the sea of ancient blue buildings is a huge 125 meter old fort called Meherangarh. I found the fort almost as impressive as the Taj Mahal and it was a top surprise as I pretty much just came here to see the blue buildings. I spent a fair few hours exploring around the fort and they had a great audio tour included too. It took me ages to find my way back to the guest house as this town looks like something out of a “Where’s Wally” book with a million identical alleyways in a labyrinth of boxy blue buildings. If yesterday was hot then today was boiling. I think it would have been close to 50 degrees so I decided to spend the day in style…in the Great Thar Desert! I vibed my way to the bus station and caught a government bus to the desert town of Osiyan, 65km north of Jodhpur. I was the only tourist I saw all day and being on this crowded bus with a heap of Indians staring at me, I felt as uncomfortable as a fart in a spacesuit. One bloke started taking this piss out of me and saying stuff in Hindi to me in front of everyone then they all laughed at me. The only comeback I could come up with to make it even was to whip out some hard Aussie slag that they had no chance of understanding. I had a little chuckle and nose laugh to myself as I came back and said “settle petal, pull out the big guns shirley ya flam’n galah, think ya top brick don’t ya, ya dopey mongrel…so suffer in ya jocks…ya tool…now rack off ya clown”. I felt like I had the whole of Australia behind me at the time so I had nothing to lose however I think he must have thought I was from Antarctica or something with a language like that. It was one more crazy bus ride to add to the collection but I finally got there and boy was she stinking hot. The town was dusty and tourist free and full of Indians with turbans on their heads, white gowns and tweaked moustaches. After drinking about 3 litres of water I found a little kid that could take me on a 2 hour camel safari through the sand dunes so before I knew it I was smack bang right in the middle of the Indian desert sitting high on a camel. It was such a great feeling being the only tourist or person even to be seen riding a camel through this surreal sandy desert. It was like something out of a movie it was so picture perfect but I was guttered that my camera was broken. As we approached this tiny desert village I was amazed as this mini tornado whipped through the village out of nowhere and almost ripped the roofs off the huts. It hung around for almost 5 minutes and got within about 20 meters from us as it roared and zigzagged around violently ripping up shrubs, sticks, and dust, and spinning them at least 50 meters into the air. I’ve seen many whirly winds before but nothing like this. It made such a loud noise it sounded like a V8 and would have easily been strong enough to pick me up and perhaps the camel too. I was almost in a state of shock but this kid seemed to think nothing of it as it happens all the time here but he said they are very dangerous if you get caught in one. He also said he has been picked up and thrown from one before. I was surprised it didn’t rip the roof of this hut it passed right over but I guess they are designed to withstand mini tornados and they looked quiet strongly built. I had a cup of tea with the local village then rode back through the dunes into town again. After a looking at a couple of ancient temples I was buggered and caught the bus back to Jodhpur again. Tomorrow I head of to the Hippy town of Pushkar so I’m sure as eggs will have more crazy stories to add from there.

Oorooo Cockatoo…Woodsy

PS: Incase your wondering I scabbed another travellers photos for the blog :)

Insane times in Nepal

G’day all,

Well I’ve been in Nepal for almost a week now and let me just say the past few days have been absolutely mental. I’ve been hanging out with some more pommies this week Charlie (www.the-littlesthobo.blogspot.com) and Mel who I met on the way to Nepal. We arrived in Nepal last Saturday night from India on a bus ride that I’ll never forget. The road from India to Kathmandu is known as one of, if not the most dangerous roads in the world as it winds between mountains and has a huge 200 odd meter cliff to the side without barriers and that’s not to mention the crazy drivers too. We were doing all ok until we hit a huge storm and marble sized hale scattered all over the road making it wet and icy which made me nice and relaxed (yeah right). Just as I was picturing in my head what it would feel like to slide off a 200m cliff the bus slammed the brakes on and got a bit sideways as we almost had a head on with an oncoming vehicle. I was a big nervy after that but we ended up getting to Kathmandu a few hour late due to the weather. When we arrived the bus driver tried to slog us another few bucks to take us to “Thamel” the main backpacker area so we did the Aussiest thing (my idea of course) and bolted as soon as we got our bags off the roof because we had already paid a hefty sum just to get here. It was a good rush but we ended up being too scared to walk down the road incase they saw us so we hid for a while until the coast was clear to look for a cheap guest house. I met up with my other English friends Gemma and Louise again for the first few days but they have since headed off to hike Everest base camp. We all fell in love with Nepal instantly as the people are so friendly and honest and the atmosphere here is fantastic. Kathmandu is a place every backpacker should visit there is so much to see and do here and the shopping in amazing too. I spent the first three days shopping for imitation Gore Tex jackets as they are about 7 times cheaper than if you got the real thing back home and pretty much the same if not better quality. I ended up buying a real rippa for 40 bob after three days of sniffing prices so it was finally time to do some sightseeing. This is where the trip got interesting and let me tell you I had the most amazing day of my travelling life on Tuesday April 10 2007. It started a little something like this. I woke up at 5:30am and caught a cab to the airport to do a 1 hour flight over Everest and the Himalayas. That all went to plan and it was so great to see it all in front of my very own eyes. It was very costly but had to be done being a once in a life time opportunity. When you see the whole mountain right in front of your eyes you really can appreciate how big the beast is and how hard it would be to get to the top. When I got back to the guest house Charlie and I decided to rent motor bikes and go for a cruise for a few days and get lost in some tourist free villages in the Kathmandu Valley. Our first stop where we planned to stay the night was an ancient town called Bhaktapur. Around 4pm we finally got the bikes and I had no choice but to give this big Harley style beast of a bike a whirl as all the scooters were gone. I had never ridden a motorbike with gears before or one this powerful so I was half excited and half soiling me undies about it. The bike rental bloke nervously waved us goodbye as I rode around in 4th gear and half stalling as I couldn’t figure out how to figure the gears out. By this stage it was peak hour beyond crazy Kathmandu traffic and I was concentrating so hard on my gears that I lost Charlie. We had no plan if we lost each other but after 3 hours of no sign of Charlie I decided he must have gone on without me so I thought I’ll try and find this town myself. Before I got out of Kathmandu it was dark and I still couldn’t change gears nor find the light switch on the bike (which I found hours later when I finally arrived) It took me a good hour or two to nut my way to Bhaktapur and without lights I used my indicator, horn and the occasional high beams to navigate myself through the dark, traffic filled and streetlightless roads. When I finally got there I found out there was this massive festival on (for Nepal New Year) and all accommodation was full and I still had no idea where Charlie was. After checking my emails with still no word of Charlie I decided to try and find a place. Luckily I got chatting with this local bloke who jumped on the back of the motorbike with me and directed me to a place I could find a bed for the night. He ended up giving me a tour of the town and told me all about this festival. The town looked so old and medieval and had no lighting just Nepalese people everywhere cooking and playing music. The festival was very ancient and it is about good luck for the new year in growing crops. The lower and upper sides of the town compete for good luck by having a massive tug of war with this huge ancient wooden chariot thing in the middle. Sounds boring yeah I know but at night the festival turns into a fighting festival where thousands of locals throw rock at each other. My new local friend warned me not to go anywhere near the fighting as it gets too violent and dangerous but with my adrenalin already pumping I couldn’t resist. I first saw this medieval street lined with at least a hundred riot police and my 60 minutes side of me came out and I wanted to get some good photos. The police turned all the lights off in the town to keep down the rocking throwing down to a minimum but from what I could see it couldn’t have got more extreme. The rioters were throwing anything from bricks to rocks the size of oranges constantly all night back and forth hitting anything in their way. Every now and then one side charged the other side and you saw hundreds upon hundreds of people running for their lives and diving out of the way and sprinting up these little alleyways. The sound was incredible it just sounded like and looked like something out of gladiator. I built up a bit of courage and dodged a few rocks to get a good close up photo for the blog before the charge began and before I knew it I was caught up and being trampled on by hundreds of stampeding rioters. I got up on my feet again and ran for my life before falling 2 meters down this old ancient bath and smashing my camera and my body hard against the stone hurting myself pretty badly. I then managed to climb myself out of the bath and I stupidly ran into a corner and trapped myself with all the rock throwers coming my way. It was so scary but all I could do was just run out of the corner and run for my life down this alleyway. I had enough by that stage and was pretty shaken up and dragged myself back to the safety of my guest house to clean up my cuts and bruises and have a think about how close I got to disaster. Apparently every year 3 or 4 people die in this festival so I felt pretty lucky to get out alive and in one piece. Apart from destroying my beautiful camera and tearing my jeans I also bruised my kidney, hurt my ribs, stuffed my knee, and cut up my elbows and my knees. The next morning I was in so much pain I couldn’t get out of bed but once I finally managed to roll myself off the bed I went to the chemist and got some handy drugs and walked around all day and felt 50 times better by the end of the day. Later in the day I met up with Charlie finally and we laughed about our crazy night as he had a very similar experience. The scary thing about this festival was that I didn’t see one tourist the whole time and I stood out like a neon light in this crowd. The Nepalese people were so nice to me and felt so bad that I got hurt in their fight and couldn’t apologize enough to me. It really was my fault though as I was just being a sticky beak and should have known better. Charlie and I went for a beautiful country ride today to this town called Nagarkot with Himalayas views and got ourselves lost in the country side through a heap of little villages and arrived safely back in Kathmandu before dark. Tonight it is New Years Eve in Nepal and it’s going to be a big party. In Nepal years it's going to be 2064 tomorrow so that makes me 81 turning 82 in a month. I can’t wait. I’m feeling much better now apart from my camera being smashed and I think next time I will stay away from any kind of riots. I’m just spewing I didn’t get any good photos for the blog before my camera got destroyed. Update ya next from India again. See ya round like a rock to the head.

Woodsy (Alive…just)

Varanasi and the Ganges

G’day all,
Well I have just spent the past 3 days in Varanasi, one of the most amazing and holy places I’ve ever seen. I met these really great English people on the train from Agra to Varanasi Tom, Gemma, and Louise and I’ve been hanging out with them the whole time. Tom headed off to Bombay and I’m meeting up with Gemma and Louise again in a few hours in Katmandu in Nepal. On the train up to Varanasi we had to chain our backpacks to our sleeper beds so nobody could steal our stuff during the night. I think I also may have kept one eye open whilst sleeping too because apparently many backpackers get their bags stolen on the trains over here. Once arriving in Varanasi we quickly fought our way through the pack of hungry rickshaw drivers and found a really nice new hotel to stay in just off the Ganges River. When we arrived we were so dehydrated and hungry and so I bought a bottle of water, a coke, an iced coffee, a mango juice, a sweet lassie, not to mention my latest stable diet of chips and fried eggs. We first went for a walk along the Ganges and came across our first “burning ghats”. The burning ghats are where they publicly cremate the fresh dead and spread their ashes and remains in the Ganges as a way of freeing them from their sins and enter Nirvana (heaven in Hindu). We thought that maybe it’s done privately inside a building but we were well wrong. We first saw this fire with logs and what we thought it was a pig being cooked. As we got closer (like 2 meters away) we realized it was the top half of a dead man on fire and charcoaled with his hands clenched tightly (see 2nd picture and look carefully at fireplace). It was so freaky and we were almost in a state of shock as we didn’t expect to see what we saw. Apparently they do hundreds and hundreds of cremations each day and some of the burning ghats burn 24 hours a day. Depending on the price and quality of the wood it can take anywhere between 1 and 4 hours to cremate a person. Before we knew it we were invited to watch another cremation as they brought out a fresh body, dipped it in the Ganges and placed it on a pile of logs right in front of our eyes. We watched for a good 45 minutes as the body went from fresh meat to charcoal chicken. The weird thing was that they had 5-10 year old boys running the cremation and they poked and prodded the bodies with sticks until they crumbled away to a little chunk of charcoaled meat is left and it’s thrown into the Ganges. They hit the heads and arms of the bodies until they either snap off or disintegrate and at one stage we watched this mans skull being smashed into two by this tiny little kid. The locals talk about the cremations as if it’s nothing and they push you around to have a better few and get in close as you can to see it better. The worst part was when the second body sizzled to a point where the skin on the dead mans belly exploded and his guts popped out of his chest and lay there out in the open. Apparently the Ganges has magical powers and it stops the bodies from smelling bad while they are being cremated. The weird thing about that is it’s so true, you couldn’t smell and hair or nails burning at all. What was even worse was and perhaps slightly in bad taste that it actually smelt not too bad at all and it actually brought on cravings for a nice Aussie barbecue of snags, chops and rissoles. Apart from the burning ghats there were a million other things happening on the fascinating and colourful walk along the Ganges. What don’t you see? There was everything from kids playing cricket, people doing washing, kites flying, people scrubbing water buffalos and cows in the water, to even raw sewerage being pumped straight in across the footpath and into the river. The water is supposed to be so polluted it’s rated as septic yet you see the locals swimming in it, bathing in it, and even brushing their teeth and drinking it. Each night there is a big ceremony along the Ganges with thousands and thousands of people watching drums being played and acts performed whilst candles are floated down the river in the background. Apart from the whole cremations thing I found it to be quite a romantic town. On our second day in Varanasi we did a 5:30am sunrise boat tour of the Ganges which was really nice and had one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen. I think the highlight of the tour was seeing this mangy dog chewing on the remains of a burnt human body it had pulled out of the river. There are thousands of people bathing at sunrise and you see many really old people waiting to die bathing to bless themselves. Varanasi is also famous for its silks and it’s pretty much the best place in the world to buy a silk scarf or a bed cover but it also means a million dodgy Indians trying to sell you fake silk to rip you off. One silk shop we went to had photos of the actress Goldie Hawn all over the walls as she is a regular customer there. It is very dangerous after 8pm in Varanasi so we all got back to our hotel each night before dark and relaxed and indulged in the fantastic food the hotel cooked. Food and accommodation is so cheap here you can live like a absolute king and eat and drink pretty much whatever you like (apart from beef) for under $3. On Friday night we caught an over night train and two busses up to Katmandu in Nepal. I’ll update you all next from the land of Everest and friendly people.

Woodsy

Welcome to India

G’day all,
Well I have been in India for 4 days now and mate what a 4 days it’s been. I don’t think I have ever seen such a crazy crazy crazy place in any one stage of my eventful life so far. I flew in to Delhi on Friday night and was so determined to not get ripped off that I followed my Lonely Planet guide like a bible. At the airport I met this cool bloke from Taiwan named Leon who was heading to the backpacker area too so we caught a bus from the airport together. We were the only foreigners on the bus and were welcomed to India with a friendly sign on the backs of the bus seats saying “LOOK UNDER YOUR SEAT THERE COULD BE A BOMB RAISE ALARM EARN REWARD”...... I was like yeah welcome to India Pauly. I finally found myself a room after dragging my titanic sized backpack through this dodgy backpacker come cow lined street for a good half hour. I was so relieved just to put my bag down and relax for a bit when I got there. My room was pretty Elizabeth/Hakem West ghetto but for 6 bucks who’s complaining right it’s India. After settling in I went for a stroll around town and slid me thong through a nice fresh cow borrie (although part of me still thinks it may have been an old Indian mans curry from last night). The next morning I met up with me mate Leon to go check out the Red Fort together. We bargained with a few rickshaw (tuk-tuk) drivers until we eventually got this poor old Indian bloke to ride us there on his cycle rickshaw for 40 Rupees ($1.20 Aus). We thought it was just around the corner but didn’t expect it to be 30 mins of hard slogging in the heat away. I swear I felt so sorry for this poor old bugga slaving away for us with no gears on his bike. He was sweating like a pig and had to walk it at times because he was too exhausted to peddle. I ended up chipping him a 100 R for his hard work and he nearly fainted as if he had won the lottery. This place makes Cambodia look rich. I’ve never seen anything like it and if you came here let me tell you it would blow your mind and open it at the same time. Heading into the Red Fort the men and women had different lines for the security check. I was patted down as you do before being groped in the privates and was left in a state of shock. I mean if it was a nice looking young lass then no dramas but not this slimy old Indian man with a big grin. The fact he had a shiny machine gun strapped to his back forced me to take it like a bitch and just walk on in with a nose laugh and a red face. The Red Fort was pretty snazzy but no where near as entertaining as just walking down an average street in Delhi. We caught the metro back to our street and I had never felt so stared at in my life on that train. The Indian people just eyeball you up and down as if you’re wearing a bikini and they have dark sunnies on. I really don’t know whether I feel famous or intimidated but I guess I should stop telling them I’m Shane Warne’s younger brother. On the walk back from the metro we saw a body wrapped in cloth being carted down the road 1 meter from us and that’s when I realize this aint no Burnside Village. The other funny thing you see here everywhere is cows just roaming the streets everywhere and just crossing roads and standing on medium strips just staring at the traffic. On Saturday night we checked out New Delhi which was much more civilized than Old Delhi and it was actually nice and clean and they even had bins, lawn, and footpaths. Yesterday I caught a train up to Agra, the home of the world famous “Taj Mahal”. The train ride was kind of interesting as I had another Indian bloke staring at me for 4 hours straight. I felt like clocking him one in the snozza but what can you do hey. Every 30 seconds someone walks up to you trying to sell you something in the most high pitch Hindi voice they can manage. Everything from toy machine guns to zips were offered to us and even Indian lady boy beggars popped in to say G’day. It would have had to been around 40 degrees yesterday but luckily I managed to find myself a nice room fairly fast once arriving in Agra. They cool thing about my hotel here is they have a roof top restaurant overlooking the Taj Mahal and it’s literally only a few hundred meters away from it too. After a powernap I went for a stroll and ended up playing cricket with some Indian kids in a side alley and almost hit a 6 over the fence of the Taj Mahal. I couldn’t believe how many monkey are just roaming this town. On each roof sits sometimes up to 8 or 10 highly active monkeys. On they way back home there was a power black out (about the 7th since arriving in India) and Agra become somewhat scarier with all these monkeys swinging off buildings everywhere and jumping from roof top to roof to over your head in pitch black. After a disgusting green curry I had an early night as I woke up at 5:30am today to watch the sunrise over the Taj Mahal. The gates opened at 6am and I was one of the first ones in for the day. The beauty of this palace is quite amazing and to see it in real life and watch the sun come up over it is an experience that has to be done. After stressfully and finally getting the famous photo with the Taj through all the tourists I got myself a guide and learnt all about the history of the Taj which is almost as amazing as the look of it alone. I spent a few hours there then chipped some Indian kids a couple of bucks to take me on a Camel ride to the Agra fort which was also really impressive. I was absolutely buggered after that and came back to the hotel and slept for hours and through a lazy 4 black outs. I got up just before dark and went for one of the craziest and coolest walks I’ve ever done. I decided to walk away from the tourist area and get myself lost in the labyrinth of alleyways they have in Agra. The further I got away from the Touristy area the more amazing it became. I became an instant celebrity as literally 40 to 50 Indian kids and Adults would swarm around me at a time and want to shake my hand and talk to me as if they’ve never seen a white man before. One man pulled me up on stage at this street concert and presented me with flowers as a gift and said “Welcome to my country my friend”. Everywhere I walked people waved and smiled and stared at me and 2 out 3 people would ask what my name was and want to shake my hand. It was an incredible experience but also makes me glad I'm not famous because it gets so wearing after an hour. Well it’s a full moon tonight and I'm about to go up to the roof top to look at the Taj being lit up with the moon light. Tomorrow I take an overnight train to Varanasi to check out the Ganges River so I that should be really cool. Update ya all from there troops.

Woodsy....safe and well in Agra, India

Laos And Bus From Hell

G’day all,
Well I’m currently on the train back to Bangkok after a few fine days in Laos and a 24 hour bus ride I will never forget. After arriving back in Hanoi from the boat cruise I pretty much jumped straight onto a 22 hour (ended up being 24 hours) bus ride to the Capital of Laos called Vientiane. This bus ride has a bit of a reputation as being the “Ride from Hell” and bugga me did it live up to its reputation. It started off all being fine as we got onto a brand spanking new bus and had a nice smooth 4 hour ride down the coast of Vietnam. This is where the fun stopped as I had to switch busses to head west to the Laos border. The bus we switched onto was chockablock full and me being the lucky last on the bus had to join the cue sitting on a 20cm plastic stool in the isle of the bus. After 10 minutes my back started aching. After an hour my back was killing me as I couldn’t lean back unless I wanted to fall off my chair. This English guy and I started to count the hours down until we would arrive and when we worked it out to being a good 17 hours we started to panic. After about 2 or 3 hours I tried to stand up for a bit to give my legs and back a rest before this Vietnamese mongrel told me off and I nose laughed and said sorry mate and sat back on my torture stool. The thing that really ticked me off was that the driver had 6 helpers who did sweet bugger all and took up all the seats, one of whom had his hammock stretched across the baggage holder and I wasn’t even allowed to stand up because it was “too dangerous”. It was impossible to sleep and a few hours after we crossed the border some people got off and I finally got a seat just a few hours before we got there. I felt like the queen with my new seat that I could actually lean back on and soon fell asleep. After a few minutes of sleep the tyre by my window exploded and it sound like a bomb going off and almost gave me a heart attack. So we finally arrived and I immediately took to Laos as the people were so nice and friendly and it was such a nice change after being in North Vietnam. There wasn’t much to do in Vientiane so I just chilled out with my English mates from the bus and we all spoiled ourselves and had a massive expensive pizza each. The next morning I jumped on a tiny 4 hour bus ride north to one of the coolest places I’ve even seen called Vang Vieng. Vang Vieng is this tiny little town sitting amongst these amazing limestone cliffs and this beautiful flowing river. This town is a hit with the backpackers as it’s so chilled out and it’s famous for tubing down the river through a sea of bamboo bars. When I arrived I just walked around and took in the strange atmosphere the town gave off until the sunset and then had an early night. The next morning I went on a cave and tubing tour which was so cool. We went through 4 caves including a water cave which we tubed through on a tractor inner wheel tube. After lunch we did a 3km tube ride down the river which was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. The river is lined with bamboo build bars every 100 meters and they pull you in with a bamboo stick to come and buy a beer from them or take it down the river with you. Almost every bar also had a massive swing or zip line for all the customers to launch themselves from frightening heights into the river. I did it twice and it was such a great rush. I got a bit cocky after my perfect first jump and tried a “Napoleon Dynamite” dance move in the air on my second attempt. It didn’t pull off too well and I ended up face planting it in front of a good 50 odd onlookers. It didn’t tickle either being from such a massive height. We arrived back into town just before sunset and I chilled out with a few of my new mates from the tour and had some more beers. The town goes into shutdown at 11:30 at night and everything shuts and it pretty much turns into a ghost town. I’ve heard rumors about tourists being marched to bed by machine gun if they stay up after 11:30 so I made sure I was back to my $3 a night bungalow in time. I found out Laos is the most bombed country in the world and apparently in the South (which is scattered in land mines) many kids die each year from trying to sell grenades to tourists as war memorabilia. Well it was a short but sweet visit to Laos and I would recommend anyone to come and visit this amazing country. Tomorrow (Friday) I fly off from Bangkok to New Delhi in India so I’m really excited about that. That’s all for now legends. Update you next from the land of curry, camels, and cow worshiping.

Oorooo
Woodsy

Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

G’day all,
Well today is my last day in Vietnam as I’m catching a lovely 22 hour bus ride to Laos tonight so yeah I can’t wait for that. The train ride up to Hanoi was kind of cool because for once I got to lay down for 2 days and sleep rather than sit upright on a bus seat. I got the cheapest bed I could manage and saved 20 bucks but it meant being thrown down the back of the train into the refugee section rather than with my mates in their soft bed 4-bed rooms. It was a little hard trying to speak English to my new Vietnamese mates but we all smiled at each other and did nose laughs for the 40 hour train ride so that got awkward after the first 2 hours. I arrived in Hanoi at 4:45am and it was pissing down with rain and I had no Lonely Planet and no accommodation. I got ripped off by a taxi driver who promised me cheap accommodation and ended up dumping me if front of this guest house in the middle of the night which also tried to rip me off. They tried to make me pay for that night (4hrs until checkout) and the next one for $20 US and I had a little argument for a good 20 mins with my new Vietnamese enemy and said “Not today mate your bloody loss not mine”. I then jumped back out into the rain in my ripped up cheap poncho and went for a beautiful 2 hour rain walk in the dark with my 30kg backpack and waited for the sun to come up. I had no idea where I was but after sitting down for an hour I finally built up the strength to find the backpacker area and saved myself 10 bob and celebrated with a nice sleep. Hanoi didn’t start growing on me until later on that day as the fact every man and his dog tries to rip you off and they laugh in your face about it really was getting to me. In Thailand and Cambodia people still try and rip you off but at least they are nice to you and smile. The Vietnamese just seem to snarl and laugh the more they rip you off as if they hate tourists with a passion. After my little powernap I went for a stroll around town and ended up taking a motorbike tour around town in the rain to get all my sightseeing out of the way. The guy took me to a few museums and temples and this cool prison where they held some of the Americans during the war. Before dark I went for a walk along this lake and then found this great little café called the “City View Café” where I sat for a few hours and looked over this busy intersection and watched the sun set and the lights come out. I took some great photos of the traffic from up there then had an early night. Yesterday I left first thing in the morning to head up to “Ha Long Bay” on 2 day 1 night boat tour. It has been amazing and so worth the money. Ha Long Bay is one of the natural wonders of the world and when you get here you can see why. It has about 300 odd beautiful rocky islands scattered everywhere in a 360 degree view as the boat cruises between them all. We also went to this fantastic cave on one of the islands which was so massive I couldn’t believe it and it also had really cool coloured lights lighting up different parts of the cave inside. The other cool thing we did was take a little boat through this cave until it reaches a lagoon inside one of the beaches so that was also very nice. We slept on the boat last night and I hung out with a heap of cool tourists from all over the world. I ended up pulling out the laptop and showing them all some “Aussie Rules” highlights and then we ended up watching “Crocodile Dundee” before heading to bed. The people running the boat tour are also evil and have even switched off the power to save money so my dunny wont even flush. I just left them a nice little present in the dunny so I’m sure they will enjoy that when we arrive back to shore in a few hours (a generous tip). At the moment I’m still on the boat heading back to Hanoi where I say for an hour before jumping on my 22 hour bus ride to the Capital of Laos whatever it’s called (I’ll figure it out when I get there). Anyway that’s all for now I’ll update ya all from Laos if they’ve invented the internet yet over there yet.
Cheerio Woodsy

Vietnam.....Yep!

G’day all,
Well I’ve been in Vietnam for a few days now and I’m really enjoying myself here. I took a 2 day boat tour down the Mekong River from Phnom Penh in Cambodia to Saigon in Vietnam and arrived in Saigon. I’m still hanging out in Saigon with all the people from my tour and we have been really enjoying this crazy busy city. There are 10 million people living here and just about everybody owns a scooter or motorbike so you can imagine just thousands upon thousands of bikes weaving around each other like a swarm of bees. Saigon was the Americans base during the Vietnam War and about 2 hours drive from here is where most of the jungle fighting happened and where the Vietnamese soldiers hid in the Cu Chi tunnels. Yesterday we visited the Cu Chi tunnels and I learnt a lot about the Vietnam War and it was so bonza mate. Once we arrived we watched a short video explaining what happened then we went out into the woods and saw the tunnels. The Vietnamese were so smart and beat the Americans with pure genius. They set so many gruesome booby traps in the jungle all layered with bamboo spears to inflict massive damage to the Americans and many of them meant instant death. The tour was really good and I learnt so much about what went on in the war and I couldn’t believe the extent of the bloodshed. We also got to go down in the tunnels for a good 100 meters and it was so small I could hardly crawl in the things. At the end of the tour I got to feed my new addiction of shooting huge guns by firing a few shots off from an M16. That was my hit for the day satisfied but my new hobby is really training the old cash flow from me. We went out last night to a disco and I just couldn’t believe how many dirty old men there were staring up and down at all the young Vietnamese girls as if they were a piece of meat. It was really gross watching their grotty little smirks on their faces as if they could take any of them home by handing over some generosity. Today we did a tour of the city which was really cool because we went to so many places. We first went to the Presidents Palace which was really cool to see because they had heaps of neat rooms and also many rooms which were used for war strategies with details maps on the walls and radio control stations etc. We then went to the National War Museum which was amazing because it has so many crazy photos from the war and US Army vehicles on display. It was really bad to see what the effects of Agent Orange did though because there is about a million Vietnamese still suffering from the effects of the chemicals. Every day I’ve seen people with limbs shrunk from birth defects either walking or dragging themselves along on a skateboard down the footpath. In about an hour I’m off on a 2 day straight ride up to Hanoi in the North of Vietnam on a sleeper train so that should be a bit of a painful trip. Update you all from up there ya flaming mongrels. Go Alf!

Woodsy

Struth……..Cambodia mate!!!

G’day all,
Well we have been in Cambodia for a week now and let me tell you this place is a real eye opener. Out of all the countries I’ve travelled through over the years this has got to be the most war torn and poor I’ve come across. Once we crossed the Thailand/Cambodia border it is amazing the diversity between the two countries as soon as you pass immigration. It went from bitumen roads and a 5 star casino to dirt roads, armless and legless beggars, twisted corrugated iron shelters, and dust absolutely everywhere. Once crossing the border we caught the bus from hell. It took us over 6 hours to drive about 150km to Siem Reap. The road was the worst I’d ever seen it was full of dusty lumps and bumps and at stages we were doing 10km an hour just to get through it. The bus was also a load of rubbish as my seat collapsed backwards into this Japanese guys lap if I leant back and when we turned a corner my seat tipped sideways. So yeah it was great fun leaning forward for 6 hours. By the time was arrived in Siem Reap we were covered with dust but were pretty stoaked when we got a nice hotel room for $2 bucks each. On our first day in Siem Reap we all got motorbike taxis each and had a bit of a tour around the town and went on this really cool boat cruise through the floating village. The floating village had a floating school, police station, basketball court, and even a floating pig farm. All the locals have a boat instead of a car and completely live their lives on the water. Siem Reap is only 20km from the temples of Angkor which is one of the 7 wonders of the world and struth it’s so impressive. The next day we spend a whole day looking at Angkor, which is surrounded by a mote and has 1000 odd ancient temples dating back to 900AD. Angkor is unbelievable each temple is so different to the next. My favourite temple was the one they filmed Tomb Raider in which was covered in tree roots and vines and was in the jungle. After 3 days in Siem Reap we caught a crazy 6 hour bus ride down to Phnom Penh, which is the capital of Cambodia and is much more developed. I couldn’t believe how dodgy the main highway was as the bus was constantly beeping at kids riding bikes in front of the bus, cows randomly running across the road, and cars and motorbikes heading straight at the bus on the wrong side of the road. When we arrived in Phnom Penh we were surrounded by a million men trying to push us to their guesthouses and in the heat of the moment our Welsh friend Kate had her purse stolen and lost all of her ATM cards and cash. So I guess you could say we got to a rough start here. Yesterday Dan and I had a crazy day. We did a tour of Phnom Penh which covered a shooting range, the killing fields, and the S-21 torture prison. We jumped in a tuk tuk which took us 20km away from the city into the countryside where we arrived at this dusty old shooting range. This guys brings out a menu of what we can shoot which include AK47s, M16s, rocket launchers, and you can even throw a grenade for $30 US. We ended up shooting a semi automatic AK47 machine gun and a Russian K54 pistol. It would have to be one of the best things I’ve ever done in my travels and Dan agrees. We had so much adrenalin running through us and we were so nervous that all we could do was shake and laugh. I went first and ended up shooting the ground instead of the target and Dan hit the roof. I did much better with the pistol though as I got 3 head shots and 1 body shot from 4 shots. I would have loved to throw the grenade but I had a feeling with this dodgy country it would probably blow up in my hand and I’d lose some limbs. Apparently for $50 you can blow up a cow with a bazooka and for $2 you can shoot a chicken with a pistol. We then went to the killing fields where 20,000 Cambodians and foreigners where tortured and their bodies were thrown in mass graves during the Khmer Rouge days of the 70’s. We saw clothes and bones still sticking out of the ground and it was a real sickening scene. We also learnt that babies were swung by there feet head first into trees in front of there mothers and thrown into mass graves. It was very eerie but probably not as eerie as the S-21 prison we visited next. This was an old school converted into a torture prison. There were torture beds and cells throughout these depressing old buildings and blunt weapons like spades and pick axes scattered in the rooms used for torture. There was still blood all over the floors in blobs and smears and it was so freaky. Tomorrow Dan and Kate head back to Bangkok and I’m off to Vietnam alone so that should be interesting. See ya round like a barrel of an AK47.

Woodsy

Phuket, Phi Phi, and back to Bangkok

G’day all,

Well we have finally arrived back to Bangkok after many long bus journeys and many days swimming, motorbike riding, kayaking, and partying –not to mention spending way more than we planned. After Koh Phangan we had a very long day of busses and ferries to get across to the west coast of Thailand to Phuket. In Phuket we spent 2 crazy nights in Patong beach dodging "lady boys" on a hourly basis and hanging out with our new friends Gordan and Lim from Korea/Canada, and Tim from Melbourne. In Patong we decided to rent another motorbike and check out some of the other beaches in Phuket and also see how the progress is going with the Tsunami clean up. It ended up being one wild ride and 5 times worse than Koh Phangan as the traffic is so crazy it would have to be classed as stupid. All you can really do is just ride in a straight line and hope nobody clips you as they wiz pass you at 80km down a standard street. Before taking our bike back we saw this 50 year old American man with this absolute beast of a lady boy who was so old and blokey it was a joke…but made a good laugh at the same time. We then checked out some Thai kick boxing or MyThai as they call it here. It was the cheapest of touristy things to do but it was very interesting and worth the money. Also fighting was a World Champion Aussie guy who cleaned up his Thai opposition in about 3 mins but was highly entertaining as we all supported him with the old Aussie Aussie Aussie theme when he came onto the ring. After another late night of sucking back 7-11 Chan beers we had an early 6am rise as we took the ferry out the Koh Phi Phi or Phi Phi Island. This is the most expensive part of Thailand but the beauty and atmosphere of the place is amazing. The streets are lined with little fruit shake and Thai pancake stalls along with many restaurants and bars. There are no cars on the island only taxi boats, bicycles, and metal trolley carts. This island was destroyed by the Tsunami of 2004 and there are still many parts being rebuilt but it’s buzzing and packed with tourists and it’s very hard to get cheap accommodation. On our first night we stayed in this little basic bamboo bungalow but then we moved to a much better room for the same price on our second night. After a big discussion how we are going to start budgeting better and lower the price of this trip we had a few drinks and ended up throwing 100 baht notes around like 5 cent pieces and had a massive expensive night. We did end up meeting these cool Welsh girls named Kate and Amanda their Irish mate Paddy or Steve who we hung out with for the next few days. We ended up kidnapping Kate and she is now in Bangkok with us and coming to Cambodia with us tomorrow morning. On our second day in Phi Phi we decided to be cheap and Kayak out to Phi Phi Lay where the beach was filmed instead of take a boat tour which cost 3 times the price. Little did we know our 3 hour return trip would take about 3 times longer than that and we arrived at sunset and ended up getting towed back to the main island at dark. It was a fun but tiring adventure but we laughed about it all the same and still had a good time. We just arrived into Bangkok from Phi Phi this morning after a crazy 13 hour bus trip of which kept mysteriously stopping every few hours to steal our belongings out of the carrier. Today I met up with my good Thai friend Lack and we had lunch together and it was very nice to see her again. As mentioned before we head off to Cambodia tomorrow so we are just gearing up for another 15 hour bus ride.
Update ya all in Cambodia,
Woodsy

Koh Phangan and Full Moon Party

G’day All,
Well we are currently on the island of Koh Phangan having a wild time. Last night was the full moon party and boy was it a huge night. We arrived down here 3 days ago and having been chilling and partying the whole time. We are loving the cheapness of this country and are living it up like kings on this paradise island. I met up with Tate on our first night here but he had to move on up to Chang Mai as he was running out of time so he missed the full moon party. Yesterday we rented a very fast scooter and have been cruising around the island on that for the past 2 days. It took a little bit to get used to being so zippy and the cars being so crazy over here but we have it down now. Today we went for a ride around the island and stumbled across an elephant farm by accident so that was a nice little surprise although the elephants didn’t look all that healthy with their pale yellow trunks. There was a good 10000 people at the full moon party last night and Dan and I managed to stay together for a good 45 minutes before losing each other for the rest of the night. We have met heaps of cool people on this island and everyone seems to be from different countries so that keeps it interesting. Another exciting thing we did was peal back a meal of lovely bugs a good half hour ago. Yep we have a nice selection of bugs including cockroaches, grasshoppers, maggots, and a caterpillar not to mention some chicken feet and possible dog. It was not the best meal I’ve had before and I’ll try to put a video of me dry reaching up soon. Tomorrow we plan to head off to Phuket to stay at Patong beach for a couple of days before heading down to Phi Phi Island then to Cambodia and Vietnam for a few weeks to catch some war history.
That’s all for now chilling out in the hammock in paradise,

Woodsy

Alive in Bangkok

G’day all well the trip has began and we are both alive and well in a dodgy “Guest House” on Khao San Rd and yep we are feeling like guests in our overpriced 5 buck a night accommodation. The trip was going well with a flock of rellies at the airport for the traditonial farewell and we didn’t miss our flight or anything until we got to Sydney. In Sydney we boarded our plane and sat in out seats then I realized I didn’t have my passport I had dropped in somewhere. After a frantic search and a bit of a backtrack to customs I found it camouflaged on the carpet under my chair. What a pelican hey!! So that was a good adrenalin rush to start the trip off. We arrived in Bangkok around 10:30 at night and caught the shuttle bus to the main tourist strip and found out bed for the night. I then took Dan for a nice stroll down Khao San Rd where we were confronted by a million dirty old Thai men wanting us to go to their “massage” place for a “happy ending” and “looooong time”. We kept walking and got a Tuk Tuk driver to take us for a bit of a cruise around the district before dodging a few rabies infected dogs and screaming cats and finally getting that sleep I’ve been hanging for about a week now. We have had a pretty crazy day today. Dan and I cruised around in a Tuk Tuk for free all day on the trade that we visit three tailor shops and pretend we are interested so the tuk tuk driver gets free gas vouchers. He ended up taking us everywhere including a big golden buddah statue, a golden mountain temple, and also some lucky temple where we had to pray and tried not to laugh. In 40 mins we head off on a overnight bus to Koh Phangan to the worlds biggest beach party "The Full Moon Party".....again. Should be great. So that’s all for now all safe and well and having a ball.

Woodsy

1 WEEK TO GO!!!

G'day all,

Well there is only 1 week until lift off now and I'm having a little going away doo this Saturday night. It's going to be at the "Elephant" just off Rundle Street from 10pm on Sat Feb 24. If you can make it thats great if not I seriously won't be offended at all. Whether there is 2 people there or 100 people there I'm still having a bloody good time and so will you. Please add my blog to your favourites and keep your eyes peeled for regular updates on the trip. Also please leave as many cool and interesting comments as you can, I want to make this blog interactive to spur me on to make this trip crazier than it already is going to be. Also don't forget to Check out my myspace (click here)Extra
Bloody Oath,
Woodsy

One Month Til Launch Off!!!!!!

Before I say anything please check out my myspace:
www.myspace.com/paulwood900
and add me as a friend or whatever too

G'day all my fellow pellicans,
Well it's time again, time to finish this trip that never got to be finished. It's almost been a good 6 months of being back home in the land of kangaroo roadkill, over-cooked lamb chops, chicken salt, crab sticks, and bogan mullets. Since I've been back I've pretty much mastered the art of being a professional dol bludger, partied every sat night with my best mate Tate, met heaps and heaps of new cool people, and finally gotten over that cow of an ex girlfrind of mine. March 1 the adventure is all about to start again and this time it's going to be in style. I'll write more often, have more cool stories, and make this blog way cooler and funnier than it ever was.

YEAH BABY THE MOJO IS BACK!!!!

Yo check it first stop Bangkok, then it's Dublin and around the world!!!!

.......Starring Tatus, Seany Boy, Dan the Man, Davo Ford (Haven't asked him yet), and of course me......the boofhead.

Well I'll update ya all soon ok. Don't forget to look at the my space.

Oooorooooooo

and see ya round like a champas cork

Pauly Party Time :P

Back Home In Aussie

G’day all,

Well I’m back home in little old Adelaide and as always it feels bloody weird to be home. The worst thing is that everything reminds me of Holly again. My last week in Thailand was pretty cool but I thought of Holly a lot which kind of spoilt me trying to enjoy myself. I had only a few days back in Bangkok before heading up to Chang Mai to start my jungle hike. I headed up to Chang Mai with my American mate Matt’s friend Zach who is also a legend and from Washington DC too. We walked with two groups of people on our three day hike. The first group were all annoying Korean girls who wore heels and took hand bags with them. Zach and I had an entertaining time watching them slip over onto their arses and sliding down muddy slopes because they couldn’t keep their feet. On our first day we first did our elephant walk which we found quite cruel. These mongrels that ran the joint slashed the poor elephants’ heads with a knife when they misbehaved then and also whacked them in the head with a big sharp metal hook to steer them. Apart from that is was good fun and we enjoyed our ride. After the elephant ride it was time to walk and our 2 hour walk ended up taking 4 hours thanks to our not so talkative Korean mates. After walking through rice fields all day we finally got to a little self sufficient village where we were greeted by a tribe and had an early nights sleep in a bamboo hut. On the second day we split from our Korean mates and met up with these cool English dudes and a nice Danish sheila for the rest of our hike. We could actually talk to these guys and they were good fun. We pretty much just walked all day long and saw a few spiders. At night we had a bit of grub and played this cool card game all night whilst having the odd Chang beer. On our last day we had a bit of a tough jungle walk and got lost for a good hour and had to cut our way through vines to find out way back to the track. We eventually got to this big waterfall where we swam and got pounded and massaged and almost drowned by the thick waves of water. It was then time for our bamboo rafting adventure and that was wicked fun. We went down a few light rapids for a good hour or more before finishing at this pond where we jumped off some rocks in the water and it was great fun. The trek was really cool and I ended up seeing a couple of snakes and a heap of spiders and lots of great scenery too. When returning to Chang Mai I had only a couple of hours to see the sites and all I really saw was this sweet old Buddhist temple that was almost reduced to rubble it was so old. I got the whole back seat of the bus for the ride back to Bangkok and ended up having a pretty good sleep. My whole last 2 days of Thailand were spent shopping until I couldn’t shop any longer. I spent so many hours looking at funky 3 buck t-shirts that I froze up and hardly bought any thing at the end because it gave me a massive headache. Everything is so cheap in Thailand that it’s almost worth it just coming there for a shopping holiday. My flight home was a bit of a shocker because the air conditioning in the plane was stuffed and it was pretty much 30 degrees and humid for the first 2 hours of the flight. I had a fair old crowd at the airport welcoming me home and it was a nice touch after such a rough few weeks of my life. Well that’s all for this trip, I hope the blog wasn’t too boring for you, watch out for my next trip whenever and wherever it will be.

Thanks for your support and reading,

Pauly

Paulwood900@gmail.com

Back to Bangkok

Back to Bangkok
G’day team well I’m back in Bangkok again and struth ruth has it been a massive few weeks. Thanks to everybody’s support again I bounced back and actually had an awesome time down in the South of Thailand. In Patong, Phuket I met some awesome guys who I traveled with for the past week. They are Matt from the USA and Tom from England and all of us are traveling along and hit it off really well and have partied every night away since we met. I think Patong is the only place you can walk down the street and be molested by 20 hot Thai girls when your just trying to mind your own business. Even guys with girlfriends walking down the street are groped by these model like Thai girls right in front of their girlfriends. They also have these she men called "Lady Boys" (see picture) everywhere in Thailand and you would not believe how much they look like women. Most get hormone replacement when are little kids and it is almost impossible to tell what sex they are until you hear them talk. On our last day in Patong we hired so surfboards and took to monsoonal surf. It was good fun to get back out in the ocean apart from all the Tsunami debris floating in the water. At one stage I duck dived under a wave and got a bag wrapped around my face. When I saw clothes floating in the water I dry reached then spewed up into the water it was gross. Patong was the craziest place any of us have seen and we all had withdrawal symptoms when leaving it for Phi Phi Island. We got a real bargain of a deal to get to Phi Phi Island which was much cheaper than catching a ferry and included a free day tour, snorkeling, and Thai meal for lunch. Our travel agent ended up being a lady boy too and when we stood up to leave she bend over the desk and groped us all. We just pissed up laughing because where in the world would you see that happened, what a shock. We had so much fun snorkeling on our tour of Phi Phi that I nearly drowned, I was laughing so much at Tom having coral fights with fish. Phi Phi Island was definitely one of a kind. The water was the nicest, lightest, and clear electric blue I’ve seen and with its white sand and 360 degree mountain views it was just something you have to see. The island was completely destroyed by the Tsunami 2 years ago and is still being rebuilt. Some locals had signs out the front of their stalls thanking people for saving them and pulling them out of rubble and the Tsunami. They were all so thankful to still be alive and had the biggest smiles on their face you could ever see. Our first day on Phi Phi was absolutely bucketing down with rain and it took a lot of courage to venture out to explore the island. The island is full of little milkshake and hamburger stalls in a maze of little alley ways. The cool thing about this island is that there is not one car or motorbike. You see the occasional bicycle riders swerving to miss you but that’s about it. At night the island comes alive and the Thailand party continues. There are a few bars on the island and they are all really good. Almost everywhere you go there is fire dancing and after a few drinks it is extremely impressive. For about 5 bucks you can buy a bucket of whiskey, red bull, and coke mixed together with about 20 straws in it. Both nights we were there we partied the night away until the sun came up and just chilled out on the beach. There weather is really funny over here, as it’s the wet season it pours down with rain for about half an hour then stops and 30 mins later it’s hot and dry again until the next day. On the ferry back from Phi Phi I met this really nice gorgeous Thai girl and we talked for ages, it would be way to easy to fall in love over here as the girls are so pretty, nice, smiley, down to earth, and have the best personalities you can imagine (perfect). We took an overnight bus from Krabi to Bangkok last night and it was the second bus in a row we’ve caught that’s broken down. Lucky it started again and we finally arrived on time. The cab drivers try so hard to rip you off over here, it’s bloody hard work getting from A to B without getting ripped off. This morning I went to catch a cab and when I arrived at my destination the cab driver was saying he didn’t have the correct change so wanted to round it up. Lucky for me with my Aussie cheap vision I saw he was hiding the correct change in his other had. I said to him "that’s bull twang ya mongrel I just saw it in your other hand" he nearly fainted and tried to push me over. I got my money back but was so close to clocking him one in the process. Anyway I’m here in Bangkok for 2 days then I’m going to pop up to Chang Mai for some hiking during the week then flying back to Adelaide next Saturday. Thanks again for all my emails everyone it’s so great of you, and sorry if I haven’t got around to writing back I would if I had the time and money but again I really appreciate it.
C ya round like a lady boys hormone tablet,
Pauly

Fulla Beans Mate!!!

G'day you bloody legends,
Well I'm feeling heaps better than I was last time I updated you. Everyone has been so awesome supporting me through this and I really appreciate it guys. Sorry to everyone that has sent me emails and I haven't responded, the internet is too expensive over here so I just have to rush every time I'm on it but I'm totally overwhelmed by everyone being so supportive. Well I'm currently in Phuket in a awesome party town called Patong and having a ball here. The tsunami of 2004 really smashed this town up bad but it's pretty much rebuilt now and mate is it sweet fun here. You can shop to you till you drop here party all night and everything is so cheap and the people are so nice it's almost weird. Today I had a good old chin wag with some of the locals about the tsunami and I ended up getting a tour of all the effected areas. It was so interesting and I saw parts of the island today that almost looked untouched to how it was when just happened. There were smashed up houses and debris everywhere but the people were so happy and it kind of inspired me to get over any of my problems and keep my head up. I switched on the telly this morning and was pleasantly surprised to see the Crows game live. I was so happy about that that even though we lost I didn't care. I also got an Amarni suit custom made for me today so now I can look rich even though I'm so povo at the moment. On Tuesday I'm going to whip over to Pi Phi island (where the movie "the beach" was filmed) for a couple of days. Apparently it is just absolute paradise over there and not 1 car on the island. Well that's about it for now old son. Thanks again to everyone out there who helped me so much this week, I really don't know how I would have managed without all the support I've got. Even the travelers over here have taken me under their wing and I've been hanging out with some great people. The other night I met some really nice Irish chicks and I ended up crashing at there hotel room with them. We told ghost stories all night and right at the height of our story telling the power went out and everyone screamed it was bonza fun.
Talk to ya soon ya galahs
Pauly Wauly

Heartbroken and Shocked

G'day there my true friends,
Well there has been so major developments in my life since I've updated last. As I mentioned before the main reason for me heading home was to be back with my girlfriend Holly. Well on Sunday I found out that she has cheated on me and slept with and gone off with another guy so I have been left totally heartbroken, angry in shock and it has pretty much destroyed my trip. So thanks for being so low Holly it's great to know the true person you really are you dodgy *%#^. Apart from crying non stop in a fetal position for the past 3 days and walking around like a zombie I've been trying my best to move on and not let this destroy my trip. Last weekend I met this really awesome young American guy called Jonathan and he had been traveling with my all week and he's a legend. On Monday night we left Bangkok for the south of Thailand to the island of Koh Phangan. It is the most beautiful place I've ever seen here it's absolute paradise. We have a beach front bungalow literally 5 meters from the sea and it is just breath taking and only costs up 5 bucks a night. It's a little wooden bungalow with a hammock on the porch a double bed and a bathroom with a shower and toilet and it's bloody unreal. Last night we went to the biggest beach party in the world called the "Full Moon Party" and it was awesome and I chatted to chicks all night long. It was such a massive night there was a good 10,000 party goers partying until midday today. All the girls here are super hot and just look like models and are really nice not to mention they walk around topless on the beaches too god bless it. Tomorrow I head off to Phuket and Jonathan goes back to Bangkok so hopefully I can keep my spirits up when I'm traveling alone and enjoy what's left of my trip. So that's by heart smashed news for now. I would like the thank my best mate of all time Tate who called me mobile to mobile from Australia for a good hour or more when I was in a really bad way and really lifted my spirits. So cheers old son and respect brother. If anyone sees that Holly girl around be sure to throw some rotten tomatoes at her and give her some cheek like she deserves.

Cheers,

Paul heartbroken and totally messed up in Thailand