USA - 8 cities in 5 weeks

Well, this update is very late. But finally setting aside some time to write it. Went to the US for 5 weeks during my final long summer vacation before starting work. First time in the US, so wanted to see all the major cities.

I achieved that - Boston, New York, DC, Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego - but I have many excuses to go back. It was a great trip, I met some really cool people and I'm really looking forward to my next opportunity to go back.

General tips for people thinking of travelling in the US:

• Book hostels early/before you go - there aren't that many of them and they get booked up early. Some people were forced to go elsewhere, others resorted to moving room every morning. So definitely worth planning ahead by at least two weeks.
• You will meet a lot of Australians and Germans - but they're all very nice :)
• Hostelling International hostels are generally very good (clean etc), but they don't allow alcohol and they tend to attract families or an older crowd from time to time.
• Food is not a problem, even for vegetarians. But it's unhealthy everywhere. Finding healthy food can be a bit of a challenge and/or is expensive. Sometimes you just want a Boots Meal Deal!
• The East Coast is hot and very humid...at least it was when I was there due to the heatwave. Vegas is hot but dry, so bearable. The West Coast is much cooler and comfortable, though San Francisco gets cold in the evenings so bring a hoodie/jacket for that.
• Vegas does have hostels. And the only one you should stay at is Hostel Cat. Craaazy good fun!
• Drinking laws vary from state to state.
• You don't need a car to get around the US. That is simply a myth. Getting from place to place by bus (Greyhound, Megabus etc), flights and trains is entirely doable.
• Things in LA are really far apart. But you can get buses and the metro. They just take a while so you may find you can only feasibly do one thing/location a day. A car is useful here, but not necessary.
• If HI New York hostel somehow loses items of your clothing, write a complaint email to the UK Hostelling International head office.

Boston

Monday 18th July

Wally's Jazz Cafe

Tuesday 19th

Tour of MIT
Brief look at Harvard
Pinkberry froyo
Harbour Cruise followed by a look at the USS Constitution

Wednesday 20th

Freedom Trail
MFA - Museum of Fine Art

Thursday 21st

Fenway Park - home of the Boston Red Sox
Church of Christian Science
Harpoon Brewery - including raspberry beer and some light summer beers
Prudential Center (sort of)

New York City

Friday 22nd

Patio Party and HI New York hostel

Saturday 23rd

All day walking tour: Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn Bridge, Wall Street, Ground Zero
New York Red Bulls vs. FC Dallas football (soccer). Result: 2-2
Webster Hall night club

Sunday 24th

Avenue Q musical, off Broadway
Workd famous frozen margarita

Monday 25th

Central Park (west)
Grand Central Station
Chrysler Building
Jake's Dilemma pub - $1 draft beers


Tuesday 26th

Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island Immigration Museum
Ripley's Believe it or Not!
NY Yankees vs. Seattle Mariners. Rained off half way through (thankfully!)

Wednesday 27th

Top of the Rock observation deck at Rockefeller Center
Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Natural History Museum
Delicious pasta dinner with Bridgette from Boston!

Washington, DC

Thursday 28th

Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
Capitol Building
Georgetown Tour + Uni + Haagan Daas ice cream

Friday 29th

White House
Washington Momument
US Holocoast Museum
Jefferson Memorial
FDR Memorial Park
Korean War Veterans Memorial
Lincoln Memorial
Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Saturday 30th

International Spy Museum

Miami (South Beach)

Sunday 31st

Beach

Monday 1st August

Rented bike and cycled along coast and around
Duck Tour
Night out at a ghetto bar

Tuesday 2nd

Nothing :)

Las Vegas

Wednesday 3rd

Dustin's Birthday at Hostel Cat: Limo, club (briefly), casino

Thursday 4th

Monte Carlo pool
Monte Carlo and MGM Grand Casinos with Zi No and 4 Wisconsin music teachers!

Friday 5th

Walked along strip visiting the major casinos
Chipotle for lunch
Rain Club at Palms Hotel - flamethrowers along ceiling and snow/foam, tott - lovely

Saturday 6th

Stratosphere pool
Absinthe show at Caesars Palace (incredible!)

San Francisco

Sunday 7th

Walked to and along Pier with Stephanie from Germany
Thai dinner with Guille

Monday 8th

Ferry around Alcatraz and up to Golden Gate Bridge
Chinatown
Chinese Tea Ceremony at hostel

Tuesday 9th

Cycled over Golden Gate Bridge
Bought A&F t-shirts
Pubs/bars in evening - which all stop serving alcohol at 2am because of stupid California drinking laws

Wednesday 10th

Rene & Steph hired car - drove over Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Park
Tacos - SF-style at the hotel

Los Angeles

Thursday 11th

Artwalk

Friday 12th

Venice Beach
Santa Monica Beach/Pier
Santa Monica Third Street Promenade
Rodeo Drive

Saturday 13th

Captain America with Danielle

Sunday 14th

La Brea Tar Pits (courtesy of Danielle's friend Hallie)
WWE Summerslam - seat upgraded for free, for some reason, to where the TV camera is. Commentary earpiece.

San Diego

Monday 15th

Tuesday 16th


San Diego Zoo
Pub Crawl, with Brydie


Wednesday 17th


Seaworld


Thursday 18th


Mission Beach
Pacific Beach
Pub crawl - Hard Rock Hotel w/ open bar for 2 hours


Los Angeles


Friday 19th


Amtrak to LA
Boba
Phone for Danielle...Android :P
Avalon Club

Saturday 20th

Museum of Psychiatry: An Industry of Death
Hollywood Blvd
Griffith Observatory - Hollywood Sign
LA Galaxy vs. San Jose Earthquakes football. Result: 2-0
In 'n' Out Burger


Sunday 21st


Universal Studios City Walk
Museum of Jurassic Technology
Third Street Promenade
Hooters
Santa Monica Pier + Beach
Jamba Juice
Taco Bell

Monday 22nd - Wednesday 24th

Crappy journey home, though involved one night at Ramada Hotel in Minneapolis.

Jamnagar

Our stay in Jamnagar was pretty chilled out. Well for my brothers and myself at least. Mum and Dad were shopping almost everyday lol. There isn't all that much to do in Jamnagar really, and to be honest we were happy to watch the Olympics all day! The time difference between India and China isn't too bad either, so we managed to watch quite a lot. Unsurprisingly, India coverage is a bit crappy. Numerous spelling mistakes, mediocre commentary and unusual choices of ad breaks; one of them meant we missed an entire penalty shootout :S

There were a couple of things we did do though. We went to the local fare, which I insisted we went to because I had some good memories of it from previous times I'd been to Jamnagar. The dodgy safety systems (or lack thereof) were still present, with the ferris wheel being particularly unnerving. The giant swinging boat was good fun. Neil and Nikhil were pretty scared so they sat on the opposite side to me and closer to the centre. But this turned out to be a bad decision as someone further up behind them ended up vomiting bucketloads. Thankfully most of the, er, fluids were blocked by others, but Neil wasn't completely lucky lol.

The best part was the 'Indian Daredevils' show. I have to admit, I was seriously sceptical of this. With a ridiculous name like that I really wasn't expecting much. But wow, these guys were mental. I'll get the video up asap, but basically they drove motorbikes and cars on a cyclindrical track...so they were practically horizontal, going round extremely fast, with zero protection. Amazing. And they were able to grab money from people dangling notes at the top. Seriously cool.

Other than that, we got suits tailored for ourselves and did some of the essential visits to relatives.

It rained most days. There were 2 days when it really poured down, leaving the streets a total mess. Mud, sludge and pools of water everywhere. Luckily it was dry on our last day when we went to the train station, and also dry when we reached Mumbai. All in all, we were pretty fortunate the entire 3 weeks as we missed the rain almost every time.

To Cochin and onwards

Sun 3 July: We have to endure 50km of windy roads, followed by some 'normal' Indian roads before we reached Cochin 3.5hrs later. We saw a couple of cool waterfalls along the way. The hotel, Riveria Suites, was reasonably good (but nothing compared to the two best ones we'd stayed in: Travancore Heritage and Backwater Ripples). We had a short tour of a few sights in the centre of Cochin. We went to Mattancherry Dutch Palace/Museum, which used to be Portugese before the Dutch raided it. (Following that, the British arrived and took over everything until Indepedence in 1947 lol). We also went to the coast (Arabian Sea) where we saw some Chinese fishing nets...they're huge! We stopped by a department store for mum/dad to look for some vases etc, but when we went in we realised it was basically Indian Harrods. It was SO expensive! Yes, even by English standards lol.

Mon 4 July: We went to the airport to catch our flight to Mumbai (I said a while back we were getting the train, I was wrong!). During the initial luggage scan, they made us open up one bag. The toy police car set of the scanner...but because there were batteries inside lol. Afterwards, we tried going through security to get to the gates. But this time mum wasn't allowed vases in her hand luggage. So we had to check in her bag as well. Turns out huge, brass vases could be used as weapons (actually they are pretty hefty lol). The inflight entertainment didnt work for neil or me...but we found out it ran on Linux. At first Bombay felt clean/civilised, but then we reached the area of our hotel. Same as it was 6 years ago. SO noisy, dirty and smelly. The place we were staying at was a community hostel-like building. But the rooms were falling apart. Really was a bit of a craphole. To give u an indication...we paid about GBP 1.50 per room for the night.

Tues 5 July: I had a surprisingly good sleep in the dodgy room. We took a trecherous journey to the train station (people were riding their bikes ACROSS the road in the OPPOSITE direction!). The train itself was reasonably good, and air condition. We set off at around 5.30pm.

Weds 6 July: I slept really well considering it was a train. It was only a few hours left before we arrived in Jamnagar at about 10.40am. My phone keeps switching off :( I dropped it from the bed whilst I was on the train so I've probably sped up its death. Seeing my family (mum's side) was really exciting. Feels like we don't really know them. It's really hot! Mosquitos have bitten me many times already lol. All the kids want me to dance with them for some crazy reason. I have so far resisted and will continue to do so lol. Updates may be thin from now, as I doubt I'll be doing much each day. I better go before I catch malaria!

The last 5 days

Managed to get online again, so here's what we've been up to for the last five days:

Tues 29 July: Arrived in Kumarakom at a hotel called Backwater Ripples. Another slick hotel! This one had table tennis and a chess set (I was swiftly beaten by Nikhil in both lol. Neil beat me in table tennis too. I suck!). We watched 'The Departed' in our room but had to go for dinner just before it finished. Very cool movie, will definitely watch it again. We met a really nice family from Manchester with 3 kids aged 16, 11 and 9.

Weds 30 July: We went to a bird sanctuary at stupid o'clock, only to find out that it was a 2km walk, and due to the constant rain, was a trek thru wet mud. We were told we had to leave at 6.30 otherwise the birds fly away. After all that walking, we barely saw any anyway! lol admittedly it was an experience, and neil's took a sneaky video of me trying to make the walk back more interesting. Here's me praying he doesn't facebook it. In the afternoon we went on a boat cruise. We went passed a school and it was sooo cool seeing all the kids getting excited because we were holding cameras and waving at them lol. Hopefully we brightened up their day (it was, of course, raining!).

Thur 31 July: We stopped by a tea factory on our way to the next place. Unfortunately the processing was shut off for the day because it was the anniversary of someone's death. Still, it was pretty cool seeing all the machines and tea leaves. We also went to a spice plantation. My mum recognised almost all of the spices/plants lol. It poured down with rain again so it was a little frustrating, but the guide was well-equipped with umbrellas for all of us. Neil, mum and myself went up to a tree house. Nikhil and dad didn't, with dad suggesting it wasn't strong enough for the 5 of us. Er, yes. We got to Cardamom County hotel, in Thekkedy where we met up with the Manchester family again! The hotel food wasn't great (for us veges at least).

Fri 1 Aug: Mum bought a huge frame made of different coloured woods to decorate our living room back home. We had to have it shipped to the UK (weight was 10KG!), so fingers crossed it'll get there. Neil, Nikhil and myself went on a 30min elephant ride! We missed out on the elephant with tusks, but still it was awesome. The elephant didn't waste much time going for a number 1, which sounded more like a waterfall underneath us lol. Not long after, it went for a number 2, but the surprising part was our elephant guide moving the 'fresh product' to the side of the track with his feet. He was only wearing sandles :| The road to Hotel Tea Valley here in Munnar was extremely windy, but the view was strangely like some of New Zealand. Dinner was pretty good, but it was challenging to ignore the billions of flies, mosquitos, ants and other insects around our food, on the table and on the ceiling. Yep.

Sat 2 Aug: Had an extremely bad night's sleep. The bed I was given was basically made of wooden planks with a very thin 'matress' on top. It was SO uncomfortable! I complained this morning and got it sorted :D Breakfast was crap. It was basically warm bread. Anyway, we went to Madupetty Dam, followed by speed boating along the lake created by the dam. It wasn't very speedy unfortunately, but we did see a wild elephant. After that, we went to Echo view point, which was nothing special. We went to another dam, and then a tea factory/museum. This was very cool. We tasted some AMAZING tea (some of you, including my gf, will know how much I like my chai lol). We were shown a demonstration of the tea making from the tea leaves to the final product. Then we watched a documentary on the history of the plantation. Really interesting. Afterwards we bought some much needed fruit. Passion fruit is delicious! Can't remember the last time I had it, but wow :D

Rain

Haven't had much time/internet access to update the blog, but I've been writing everything in a notebook so I'll update it properly as soon as I can.

Just thought I'd write this post to say that it's rained every day we've been here except the day we arrived in India. And by rain i mean pissed down!

Science & Technology Museum

I reckon we started with the best bit when we went to this museum: the maths!

Heh, it was pretty cool. All this nifty lil puzzles, only 2 of which i managed lol. The lady behind the desk showed us how to do all of them once we gave up (usually after about 20 seconds!). There was some cool Physics stuff too, some of which I'd done in lessons in year 12/13. Oh and apparently I weight around 200KG on Jupiter.

The Planetarium wasn't so great...there was really much on show. But nevermind, the rest of it was pretty cool. Tomorrow we move on to the next place. Crap I've forgotten the name.

(Btw I think I spelt Kerala as 'Kerela' in previous posts, I'm a bit OCD about this so my apologies lol).

Finally, much love to my gf :D xxxxxxxxxxxxx

First two days

So we've had a reasonably good first two days here in India. We landed at Trivandrum airport and had a long drive down to Kalyakumari in a very, very cramped car (we've got FAR too many bags!).

Surprisingly the hotel (Sun World) was nice and clean, and the food was good. We got there early morning slept for a few hours and then our driver for the 10 day tour (Anish) took us for a walk. We took a short ferry ride to a small island on which there was a temple (or a number of temples, we're not sure lol).

Afterwards we walked to the sea, finding ourselves and the most southern tip of India! The area was hit by that tsunami. Luckily it didn't seem to have been affected too badly, but we did see quite a lot of building work taking place.

Today we arrived at The Travancore Heritage in Kovalam. It's incredible! Massive green coconut trees everywhere, 2 swimming pools, huge rooms, a beach, good food...pretty awesome! We're here for two nights before we move on.

Apparently we're going to a planetarium tomorrow...should be interesting!

Edit:

Forgot to add that on the way to Kovalam we stopped at a 6.5 acre palace! It was made completely of wood, except for 1 stone section where they used to celebrate Navratri. The Royal Family in the 16th to 18th centuries used to live there. But then the British came and stole all the weapons...

India

I'm off to India tomorrow morning, although not as a backpacker. It's with family so I haven't had to put much effort into the planning/packing/preparing aspects lol.

I'm hoping to keep this blog updated whilst I'm out there but I don't know what internet access is like. We're doing a 10-day tour of Kerela in the south before getting a train to Bombay/Mumbai, and then another train to Jamnagar in Gujarat (south of Rajasthan). Total time away is 3 weeks and 2 days.

Really looking forward to it. I've been to India three times already but not really enjoyed it. I'm hoping now that my brothers and myself are older and slightly more learned that we'll appreciate the place a bit better.

I've got a list of things I need to get through today. Hopefully my next post will be from somewhere in India!

Cadbury's Gorilla Advert Aug 31st 2007

eBaying

I'm selling two things on eBay at the moment, both of which end tomorrow.

Sony Ericsson V640i (with speakers and a Vodafone SIM Card)
Western Digital Elements 400GB External Hard Drive

Skydive - Mission Beach, Australia

Finally got my skydive DVD uploaded...check it out if you're bored or in need of a laugh!

WALL-E

I saw a preview screening of WALL-E on Saturday with my brothers. It was brilliant!

The first half of the movie goes by with very few words at all. It's just so adorable and cute! I know I sound gay saying that, but it's ok because if you see the movie you'll be saying the same lol.

The animation is amazing too. It's made by the people to created Finding Nemo, among others. Definitely check it out if you can when it's released (in the UK anyway...it was released a while ago in the US).

Hoping to see Kung Fu Panda this weekend. Didn't know much about it but a search on imdb revealed an 8/10 rating which is impressive in my book!

I sold my Australia & New Zealand on a shoestring Lonely Planet for less than I would have hoped, but nevermind...I would have made zilch if it just sat in my room.

I sent back an FM transmitter I ordered from Amazon (iStuff AutoScan). It works really well if you're just transmitting to a hifi or radio in your house and you can sit the transmitter next to the device. But in the car, which is where I wanted to use it, its performance drops massively. It's understandable I guess, because there are so many radio stations that'll interfere with it. It became pretty unusable as I needed to leave it on the back seat for it to work some of the time (because the aerial is above the back seats). Ah well, I'll probably invest in a better headunit sometime in the future.

New Zealand Pics!

Finally got through all the New Zealand pictures too, so here are the links:

Part 01
Part 02
Part 03
Part 04
Part 05
Part 06

Australia Pictures!

Good reaction to the pics on facebook! Appears as though I've been flooding everyone's homepage with my albums everyday lol.

Provided links to the pictures in case you're not on facebook:

Part 01
Part 02
Part 03
Part 04
Part 05
Part 06
Part 07 - Fraser Island
Part 08 - Kroombit Cattle Station
Part 09 - Lawn Bowls
Part 10 - Whitsundays
Part 11 - Crocodile Farm
Part 12 - Skydive
Part 13
Part 14

Clearing up the confusion

Good friend of mine just made me realise that there may be a bit of confusion regarding the gf. Obviously you all care so very much so I'll try to fix that :P

Basically she's in Australia for 3 weeks with family and we just happened to be in Sydney at the same time for a day before I left :)

Cheers Duncan!

Home

After a painfully long flight I made it home at around 8.30 this morning. Was great to finally have my own space, see my family and just chill out without worrying about what I'm spending or if I can fart out loud :P

I dived straight into sorting out the student finance and uni forms. For some reason I felt calmer whilst driving than before my travels. Maybe it's because I saw the maniac drivers in Australia and didn't want to become one of them lol.

Tomorrow...I buy MGS4 :D

The Final Episode

So I spend most of today (in Sydney) walking up and down the same street. Many, many times lol.

Tried to see my gf, went to the supermarket, went back to see my gf, went to the supermarket, went back to the hostel, watched a movie, went back to the supermarket, came back to hostel, went to see my gf, came back to hostel...

Tomorrow...I go back to where the supermarket is! But it'll be to enjoy my last Hungry Jacks! :P

Flight is at 4.55pm tomorrow, fingers crossed there won't be any delays. I'll be home on Thursday (3rd July) at 6.40am. I intend to stay awake till it's actually time to go to sleep but after a 22hr45min flight that could be challenging lol.

Just sent my brother an email saying I'll see him soon..really can't wait now! I'm hoping to continue updating this blog (especially with India coming up), but for now I bid any readers (probably 2 of you lol) farewell from Australia and my travels!

Christchurch Part 2

I'm aware I haven't done a Christchurch Part 1 but I called it '2' because it's the second time I was there lol.

So I didn't do anything really! Just watched movies and chilled. Saw The Guardian (good movie!), The Whole 9 Yards (also good!) and Pitch Black (not so great lol).

The streets of Christchurch felt a lot like Harrow. Ok so there weren't ghetto rudes "kotching" at a bus station with their jeans below their buttocks BUT the shops and their arrangements reminded me of St Georges etc lol. Strangely there weren't many tourist shops. Tried finding that 'Sweet As...' t-shirt but no luck :(

Nevermind. I'm back in Sydney now and it's raining! I went to buy a bottle of 'natural mineral water' but when I opened it it fizzed everywhere. Bloody Australians. I'm here for 1 full day and then I leave on 2nd July. Looking forward to it!

Just read up about PS3 firmware update 2.4 hitting on 2nd July as well as DualShock 3 release the same day...awesome! :D

Flight screw up...

Ok so that title sounds a lot more dramatic than what's actually happened, but believe me the panic at the time warrants it!

Turns out that whilst I thought my flight to Sydney from Christchurch was on 1st July, it's actually on 30th June. Thank god I didn't decide to stay at Queenstown till the 30th! I called up to try a get a refund on 1 night's accomodation here at Base Christchurch (had to call Base Queenstown because that's where I booked/paid for it). Fingers crossed it'll come through. I've also added an extra night at Wake Up in Sydney. I'm just praying I've done it all properly this time :|

Anyway so I'm back in Christchurch, hoping to have a few chilled out, cheap days. A few people from my Kiwi bus should be here tomorrow night which'll be cool. Other than that I'm hoping to catch up on some reading (The Hunt for Red October).

Feels strange to be so close to the end of my trip. Strange in a good way though. Nikhil told about about Neil playing through MGS2 and now MGS3 (which he'll follow with MGS1, god only knows why lol). I'm envious!

Drinking

That sums up a large part of Queenstown life lol. The nightlife here is really good. Had a couple of big nights out with the people from the Kiwi bus and the standard route is this: drink in rooms/hallway, head down to altitude (the hostel bar) between 9 and 10 and drinks lots more, stumble over to 'the world bar' and attempt to get in. I have yet to be denied :D

So what else have I done here: indoor mini golf - really good fun and some crazy contraptions. Also saw a kiwi haka show after a gondola ride up. Really wouldn't want to face those Maori guys - they scare the shit out of me!

Today i went to Milford Sound. It was stunning! The waterfalls are probably the best part. We saw some bottle-nosed dolphins and seals too. The underwater observatory after the cruise recreated marine life from 2km deep, but it was actually only 30m deep. The explanation was pretty complicated but had something to do with it being a sheltered area and the mixing (or lack of mixing) or salt water and fresh water. A good day but the bus journey is pretty horrendous from QT. 4 hours each way, although it is pretty scenic.

Onto Christchurch tomorrow. 4 nights there, which is far too long I hear. But I don't really have a choice so nevermind. Will just chillout and try not to spend too much lol. Hopefully bump into the dubai guys, who taught me to say "ride my dick and spin on it" in arabic lol. Need to book a hostel for Sydney. Wake Up or not Wake Up, hmm....