We have a new winner

Flores :: Guatemala

A postscript: the best single day of diving in my life. Ever.

Places: Caye Caulker & Flores.

Coolest thing I did: The. Blue. Hole.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Breaking the PADI limit of 18m isn't actually that hard, so long as you play by the rules.

If you couldn't care less about diving you can probably stop reading now.

The wake up call was at 5am, which was actually the first time I've been up early enough to see a sunrise in quite some time and the one that lights up the sky over Caye Caulker was a perfect melange of reds and yellows. Not a single cloud in the sky and enough to make me remember to go back to the hostel and grab my camera. 5am starts really don't agree with getting my brain into gear.

I'd see pictures of the Blue Hole on postcards all week (put it into google images) and to be honest when the boat first slows down after the 2 hour trip from Caulker to get there you can't quite make out what you're looking at, but you do notice a large patch of water that's a much deeper blue than the turquoise around it. What you're looking into is a sink hole 100ish m deep which was probably formed when an underwater cave collapsed on itself about 50,000 years ago. I'd dived something similar off Dahab, in Egypt and was a little annoyed at half of Russia being already in the water by the time we got there. At this time of day (say 9am) there was one other dive boat and those guys were already on their way out, massive smiles on their faces. That bodes well.

The dive consists of a drop to a sandy ledge at 10m, then a quick descent to 35m where there's an overhang of stalactites that you can swim under to exactly 40m. For those of you who dive that's pretty much the far edge of the PADI tables and more than double the limit for Open Water divers, which of course we all were. The diver masters were very professional and did tell us that doing this as the first of 3 dives was pushing the tables as far as they'd go but they were always sure to corral us to the right depth at the right time and to make sure we did our saftey stops. Very impressed with the skill, but if you do come, bring your own dive computer. I told the time by counting in my head and wasn't 100% sure the mechanical dial on the gauges were very acurate.

Enough physics and technobabble.

The highlight of the dive, besides the eerie feeling of floating through caves or being suspended in blue light is the reef sharks that seem to congregate at about 20m down, where the water temp drops most suddenly. I'd say we saw a dozen swimming around us and one got so close that it bumped one of the diver masters tanks. A unique experience and the icing on the cake for this one.

The two other dives of the day, at Half Moon Wall and The Aquarium could have been the best to dives on any other day I've done so far. Eagle Rays, Turtles and more reef sharks were the highlights. While none of the three dives have topped individual dives I've been on at home or in Egypt, the whole day combined was probably the best I've ever experienced. If you're out in Belize, make a special attempt to do it.

As an aside, lunch was on Half Moon Caye, which is a bird sanctuary, but more interestingly (I thought) a coral caye much younger than some of the others, so much that you keep tripping over rocks that have a brain pattern or rows on parallel lines and realise what you've stubbing your toe on is dead coral that hasn't had time to be worn down yet. Quite something else.

Right, in Guatamala now, but I'll save more for next time.

Go slow

Caye Caulker :: Belize

Is it possible to be any more laid back?

Places: Belize City, San Pedro and Caye Caulker.

Coolest thing I did: Saw many, many stingrays whilst snorkeling and managed to not get Steve Irwin-ed in the process.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Belize is far more like Jamaica than Mexico. It's hard to find Spanish speakers and people who generally don't like Bob Marley.

Should you ever be in a position to arrive in Belize City by land here's a tip, don't arrive on Sunday. After Mexico, where everything is open pretty much all the time it was a bit of a shock to find that arriving in Belize practically the whole country is closed on a Sunday, no restaurants, no corner shops, nothing. That would have been fine had I not decided to walk the 800m from the bus station to find a guest house. Turns out I was not only the only white guy walking the streets with a backpack but the bus station (well, really a field where buses stop) was in the most ghetto part of town. As it was only the young, male and destitute walking the streets of what could be described as a shanty town (the sign saying "Welcome to Belize City. pop 70,000" was hidden partially by jungle) I got everything from nasty stares to pretty aggressive requests for change. Not the best start. Add to that the guest house looked like a gaol and it wasn't the best first impression of a country. I only really stepped out to get money from the ATM to pay the woman that owned the place and even that was a bit of a trial. The second I went behind the glass doors to use the ATM about 5 blokes started hanging around waiting for me to get out. I ended up sucking it up, stuffing the money down the front of my pants and attempting a bit of a stare down as I passed through the middle of them all to get back to the guest house. Scary stuff.

Thank God the next place I went sucked me in so bad I'm already 4 days overdue leaving. I took a speed boat out to Caye Caulker, which is a sandy topped coral island perched right on the world's second biggest barrier reef (after our very own in Oz) lacking roads and any kind of stress at all. The whole place has a very Caribbean feel as the inhabitants are mostly descended from the same slaves that were brought to the British Caribbean (Jamaica mostly) and English and Scottish pirates that took refuge here in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was nominally part of the Spanish colony of Neuva Espania with Mexico and Guatemala but due to it's reef that helped hide risk happy pirates and hinder pursuit by the Spanish navy the place took on a very criminal, independent feel. In the end the Poms made it all official and claimed it as a colony (and made an effort to stop the pirates flogging all that Spanish gold), giving this little stretch of jungle and reef a very different feel from it's neighbors. For one thing, all that Spanglish I've been mangling for the last 3 weeks isn't needed. Some Mexican looking types (Mayan refugees from some colonial war or another, mostly) do speak Spanish, but pretty much only to each other.

The island's unofficial motto is "Go Slow", which is posted all over the place. If you first get here and rush around looking for somewhere to stay with a great big pack on your back everyone is pretty forward with giving you this advice. After a while it takes you most of the day to walk the 800m of packed sand road that divides the island, going suitably slow. It's the kind of place where you have to take it down a few notches otherwise you'd go nuts with boredom. The biggest dangers here are being hit by golf carts (there's no cars) or being hit with a coconut falling from a tree. Hectic stuff.

So, what do you do here? Well there didn't used to be a beach but a hurricane in the 60s cut the island in two and created a small swimable section of beach at the south end of the new gap, which is called the Split. There's not much sand there but there's a disused concrete dock that's been turned into a bar so you can sun yourself on that if you like. They've dropped picnic tables into a foot of water so you can sit in the water and write postcards or drink beers or whatever you like. Fish swim around your ankles and you can go snorkeling right off the beach.

However, that wouldn't be doing it justice. The water is like glass, warm as a bath and there's a bigger coral reef than Egypt's to explore. This makes the diving some of the best you're ever going to do, and that's before you try the Blue Hole (which at the time of this writing I'm one day off doing myself). There's an abundance of sharks, turtles, rays, eels and the like and the coral, while not nearly as good as that in Oz, is still amazing. Even if you don't dive, you can get on a half day boat cruise that takes you to some snorkeling spots that are amazingly abundant for being not even 1km offshore and only a few meters deep. I'd recommend it as a place to do your dive course if you don't know how, it'd be 5 days well spent even if you decided at the end of it all that diving isn't for you.

I'm having some trouble leaving, to tell the truth. I was seriously going to try and do some exploring of more of Belize but I've been enjoying this all too much. I did think about splitting my time between Caye Caulker and the much bigger San Pedro which is a 15 min boat ride away but I'm kind of glad I didn't. We spent our surface interval between two of the dives I did one morning walking around San Pedro and it was big enough to have cars and tarmac roads. Totally not the scene I'm looking for at the moment.

So tomorrow I'm taking my final chance to do the 3 dive day they do out to the Blue Hole (look it up on google, it's spectacular), including a personal deepest for me of 40m. I'm a little anxious but excited at the same time. Everyone who's done any diving on this island I've spoken too has claimed it to be the highlight, and from what I've seen so far then that's a huge call.

After that, I'm going to have to put some km between me and Belize if I want to not have to tear through Guatemala. Swapped my left over pesos and and Lonely Planet of Mexico for a Guatemalan LP and some Quetzals with a bloke I went diving with the other day so I'm all set.

Musica en vivo!

Playa de Carmen :: Mexico

Getting mostly wet.

Places: Cozumel and Playa de Carmen.

Coolest thing I did: Really didn´t do much but dive over and over again.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: So tequila is of such good quality you can actually drink it neat without lemon and salt.

Tomorrow Mexico is going to give way to Belize and as a result I´m in Playa de Carmen, which is pretty much baby Cancun. Lovely white beach running into turquoise water but totally geared up for extracting the maximum USD from everyone here. I spent a bit of time in Cozumel depressed about the whole thing, but in the end I´ve decided that I´m encroaching on the cruise ship holiday maker´s turf and shouldn´t be too judgemental or concerned about the whole thing. Most of Mexico isn´t like this, as the last three weeks have shown me, and having all the cruise ships dock in one place is better than having more baby Cauncuns popping up all down both coasts. After all, the Mexicans would be mad not to try and get as much money out of the Yanks as they can, it´s just the result of the differing incomes being so close together that it´s possible for the smart Mexicans to expoilt the different and get ahead.

It didn´t take me long to work out how to avoid the touts and those-who-wear-floral-shirts-without-irony and pretty much make my way between dive boat, cheap taco house and hostel. I found a pretty good operation to go on two dives with every morning and despite it being a fairly wild time to dive here I had a pretty good warm up for Belize. The same barrier reef stretches from the Yucatan all the way down to Honduras so every dive is along coral reefs and in bath warm, crystal clear water (if you dive, we were getting something in the order of 40m visibility). The highlights were rays, turtles and barracudas, the last of which I don´t think I´ve seen anywhere else. It was good to get back in the water and do some fairly shallow and easy dives, but this time of year there´s big problems with the currents shifting suddenly. As we´re going from dry season and building up for the hurricanes right now the weather patterns affect the currents minute to minute and on one dive we had to abandon the whole thing when we saw divers being washed 30 to 40m off the edge of the wall we were supposed to be following by currents ripping through gaps in the coral.

The scene on Cozumel is pretty much drunk day trippers from cruise ships or getting underwater. The hostel crowd was divided into people who were diving, learning to dive, instructing divers or who pretty much got the hell out of there on the first day. The waterfront in town goes for several kilometres in both directions meaning there´s no beach to lie on any more and after you´ve been conned into hiring a moped to cruise around the island you realise what a pain in the arse it is to even go for a swim. It´s well worth staying on Cozumel if you dive or snorkel and not at all if you don´t. Unless you do enjoy doing body shots off Texans in Senor Frogs. Then you´d be ok too.

I have to say Mexico has exceeded all my expectations as a place to travel and you could quite easily spend several months here. I´ve only had a small taste of it all and I could see how people spend half a year following the surf down the Pacific or diving their way from the tip of the Yucatan all the way down the Carribean. That also discounts the nightlife of Mexico City, or the relaxed vibe of the colonial towns in the highlands, both of which I encountered lots of travelers and ex-pats in for the long haul, either volunteering or learning Spanish the hardcore way.

While I found the people very warm and easy with their "amigos" or "buenos" I do feel like this is a country that is always going to be a bit tense with itself under the surface. The fact that the police at all levels carry machine guns and the army is deployed through much of the highlands shows theres something going on with the diverging incomes and the feeling that while Mexico overall is growing into a full fledged developing nation there´s a frustration with those being left behind. A country that has exported an estimated 15m people north of it´s border in the hope of getting ahead of those left behind farming the dustbowls of Northern Mexico shows there is still a lot of people being left out in the cold. Any country with a history so full of revolutions as this one doesn´t lend to having it´s people grumble quietly forever. I think Mexico is a country with lots of potential to continue to improve it´s place in the world, but it´s always going to be at least a little behind it´s northern sibling, with all the tensions that brings.

So hopefully I´ll be writing the next one of these from somewhere in Belize.

Kilometres y Ruinas

Cozumel :: Mexico

All the temples you can eat. And a beach too. Very Mexican.

Places: Palenque, Merida, Chitchen Itza, Tulum and Cozumel.

Coolest thing I did: Had all-you-can-eat steak for 5 pounds. Still digesting it.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: .

I wasn´t expecting much of Merida, after arriving at 5am and finding at town that has not much going for it besides a colonial town square I was ready to write it off and move on. I´m glad the thought of getting back on another night bus talked me out of it. On Sunday the main square (I´ve since found all town squares are called Zocalos, not just the one in Mexico City) is shut down to vehicle traffic and people wander around all day and night soaking it all up. I spent the evening in a cafe in yet another old colonial building eating and watching a band play. The best bit was when old couples would just be walking past, stop and start dancing samba or the cha-cha in front of the band. Happened all the time and was very cool to watch. It turns out that Sunday night in Merida was one of the best so far in Mexico. Serendipity is tops.

Merida was the one break in my mad dash to see south central Mexico´s main Mesoamerican sites in 3 days. I´d left the Banksey-esque stenciled streets of San Cristobal with the full intention of staying overnight in the jungle near Palenque but arrived early enough in the day to work out that was going to be a bit of a pain in the arse so I left my bag in the bus station and booked a ticket on the next night bus. From what I´ve heard since I would have been sleeping to the sounds of guitar struming hippies and howler monkeys so I´m kind OK with my decision.

Palenque is the best of the Maya ruins I´ve seen. It´s still pretty much set right into the jungle and even though the main buildings have been partially restored in some places it´s still cool to see some with trees growing out of the middle of them and vines running down their side. Lots of pyramids, some with the temples on the top still intact and even with inscriptions and stellae that haven´t been carted off to the Louvre. I´d say from what I´ve seen if you´re going to see just one of the ruins out here then this is the one to go to. There was things I liked about Teotihuan and Chitchen Itza better, but overall this one is hard to beat. It´s also where they dug up King Pukal, whose Jade death mask you see in the museum in Mexico City (though they´ve since transcribed his name from the heiroglyphs as King Sun Shield II or something. I think they might be a little too literal in their translations...). Or rather as I just found out, a replica of it. Apparently the real one was stolen in the 80s and never found. Keep you eyes out on eBay, you never know.

I think another thing that I liked about Palenque was the noticable lack of Yank in the air. I arrived in Chitchen Itza about 11am and already the busses were disgorging their American daytripper bounty from Cancun. It´s hard to position yourself between the herds and still get good pictures without being interupted by such soundbites of wisdom as "I bet that´s old" or "what do you think they made it out of?". I kid you not, I heard both.

Chitchen Itza has a couple of very cool things about it. The best is the main Pyramid, that has been restored to it´s former glory so there´s no imagining about it. There´s these big serpent heads at the base of the stairs and during the equinoxes the shadows in on the stairs make it look like the body of the serpents are either climbing the stairs or going down them. That must be pretty cool to see. The other thing is they have a big domed building they think was an observatory. To think this was about the time my anscestors were busy rapeing and pillaging convents all up and down the Irish coast and that´s a pretty cool thing. All the sites are big on architectural tricks you can do with the alignment of celestial bodies.

Tulum doesn´t have the prettiest of ruins (in fact, they´re pretty crap compared to the others) but it´s all about location. Tulum was the only one of these cities that was inhabited when the Spanish arrived and it´s a walled fortress perched right on the cliffs of the Caribbean so all you´re pictures have white sand and turquoise seas in the background. That alone makes up for the fact that it´s much smaller than Chitchen Itza and thus the ratio of Yank to surface area is much higher. They travel in packs and a guide in broken Spanglish is trying to tell them something they could read on the plaques on the ground if they weren´t all blocking them. Deep sigh. I did see a big iguana right up close, making me look like a top notch nature photographer instead of really luck that it sat still.

I did a fair bit of reading about Mesoamericans because it´s been alomst impossible to get ahold of books in English and I ran out of things that aren´t the Lonely Planet to read quite some time ago. It seems that the two main groups the Spanish encountered, the Aztecs and the Toltecs were pretty much just a bunch of blood thirsty bastards that had taken over when the far more advanced Maya had collapsed about 500 years earlier. Both were big proponents of human sacrifice (there´s a platform in Chitchen Itza whose sole purpose is to make pyramids of the skulls of your defeated foes on) and the afore mentioned ball game. I reckon they should hold a soccer match in the reconstructed ball court at C.I., the accoustics are incredible and it would be pretty cool to watch from the temples overlooking the court. You wouldn´t even have to sacrifice anyone at the end, it´d just be fun.

Tulum was a revelation. The beach is what you expect Caribbean beaches to look like and I managed to get myself a cabana on the beach for two days to enjoy it. After my mad dash through temple land to have a nice pristine white sand beach to lie on and bright blue water to swim in right outside my door was pretty cool. The cabanas are slowly being replaced by big hotels so coming back in a couple of years might not be as relaxing, but I´m sure by then someone will have discovered another old fishing village just down the coast to replace it.

Today I´ve surfaced in Yankland. I thought steering clear of Cancun would have kept me away from the Yanks but I´ve been via Playa del Carmen to the island of Cozumel and I´m a bit depressed by all the rednecks drinking giant Margaritas outside Senor Frogs. I´m hoping things get better once the cruise ships pull up anchor for the night and I get to start some diving tomorrow. The second biggest barrier reef in the world awaits and it´s nothing but azure waters from here to Belize.

Me trae la cuenta, por favor?

San Cristobal de las Casas :: Mexico

Surf, Cervezas and Colonial Churches to come

Places: Peurto Escondido & San Cristobal de las Casas.

Coolest thing I did: Saw wild monkeys. Monkeys are always cool.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Spanish for "retired" is "jubiladas". It makes sense, I´d be bloody jubilant too if I never had to work again.

Up until this point my intercity bus travel had been done on the ultra swish directo buses, which go where you want without many stops, have air conditioning and even give you tickets for you bags in the bottom just like on a plane. The trip from Oaxaca to Puerto Escondido on the coast was nothing like that. I paid about 2 pounds for the trip and that should have been my first tip off that it was going to be different. That and the fact everyone else on the bus was Mexican could have also been a clue. I ended up on what was an old American school bus, painted blue, which went the long route, and works on the idea that you just drive a set route and stop wherever anyone wants to get on or off, until you get to the end. You can also use it to transport produce, but that involves haggling with the bus driver to work out how much, say a 50kg bag of onions costs to take and dump on the side of the road in the next town. 200km took about 9 hours.

That may have sounded a bit like bitching, but it wasn´t for two reasons. Firstly, it was a wonderful insight into how poor Mexicans (ie most of them) get around and do business, and it was possibly the most breath taking bus route I´ve ever been on. You go through the mountains on roads right on the cliff edge and the views are spectatular. Every now and then you catch a glimpse of a ribbon of asphalt winding it´s way up or down the side of a mountain through the forrest and realise that´s where you´re going. When you finally break through and see the Pacific Ocean the sight is something else to behold. The fact the whole trip along the coast (say the last hour) was at sunset was truly special. Great 9 hours spent.

Puerto Escondido is the most touristy (and thus the most acessible) of the towns stretched along Oaxaca State´s surfable middle stretch but you´d hardly know it. The main strip is lined with cheap places to eat and stay and not much else, even if they do have a supermarket and an ATM, which other towns like Zipolite apparently still lack. Still, Pte Esco has one thing that all these other towns lack: Playa Zicatela, which is the home of the Mexican Pipeline. The lines of waves come in one after the other and curl off to break in perfect symmerty almost the whole lenght of the beach. The fact that I did not see one person try to ride it, even the Mexicans tells you how advanced a wave it would be to ride. Still, the town is full of Aussies walking around with a surfboad tucked under their arm (mostly learning for the first time...) at least looking the part.

Going for a swim with the sun setting over the bay is pure pleasure and I pretty much switched off for a couple of days, staying away from the two biggest attractions which are surfing and game fishing, either of which would have been nice to have a go at but I´m not that fussed at the moment. Plenty of more opportunities to be active later in the trip. I also learned that Spanish for fish is Pescado, which allowed me to eat fish. Seafood was top notch if you were willing to stretch your budget to 3 or 4 pounds a meal. Tough life, this.

I took my first overnight bus (back on the directos, so I got my own reclining chair and thus some sleep) to arrive early in the morning in the mountain town of San Cristobal de las Casas, which is kind of a prettier version of Oaxaca, but with a much different native flavour. The town is in the heart of Chiapas country, making it the home of the antigoblization movement, the Zapatistas. It was only in the 90s that armed insurgents led by a certain Subcommandante Marcos (why he didn´t at least make himself a commandante is beyond me...) took control of the public buildings in the town declaring that the just come into effect NAFTA free trade treaty with the US was going to make the indigenous population of the area even more impovrished and that they weren´t having it. The army had to be sent back in to take control. This means theres lots of people with guns on the street here most of the time. If you can ingore that fact then it´s a very nice, laid back place.

Churches, do you want churches? It´s got loads of them, bright colours, dull colours, up hills, in squares, recently renovated or run down, they´re all here. I think I pretty much just wandered around town and every time I saw a church I took a picture of it. There must be heaps.

Luckily the town has a none too meanacing feel too it and is a nice place to just relax and take it all in. It´s also good day triping country. I went on a day trip to the Cañon del Sumidero, which is an easy hour on a minibus away. It´s basically tearing around this great big Canyon in speed boats looking for animals to harass. I saw vulture-looking birds, crocs, iguanas and best of all, monkeys. I felt a bit sorry for the crocs, as the biggest on was sitting on a massive pile of plastic bottles. Lets just say garbage disposal hasn´t made much impact on rural Mexico, where they tend to just burn it all in big piles or chuck it out of moving vehicles. Sad really. The canyon trips all unfortuately include a side trip to a nearby town that really doesn´t seem to have taken to the massive influx of tourism very well. We didn´t want to be there (because it´s unattractive and everyone is surly) and they didn´t want us there (because we're unattractive and surly, no doubt. A complete waste of an hour, bar the fact I did have a pretty good hamburger for about 25p with a coke. The local mayor must get a kickback from the tour operators or something.

I think by talking about this to a few other people who have been traveling Central America more than I have recently that anthropological experiements in tourism have widely failed in this part of the world. It´s like someone has decided that rich people from the West want to go and gawk at how the indigenous population live (ie. mostly poorly) and said people actually want to be looked at in this way. I´d say they want the money but they don´t want to be a tourist spectacle. I´m sure I´ve raved about that before, but going into remote villages and being force fed local handicrafts isn´t finding "The Real Mexico". People here drive cars, ride on buses, have satellite TV, can get antibiotics when they´re sick and watch football. I quite often think we´re looking for something that just isn´t there.

I´m off to the temples in the jungle for the next stretch, which I´ve been quite looking forward to. Everyone I´ve spoken to coming the other way speaks especially highly of Palenque, the next stop. More to come.

Muy Bien

Oaxaca :: Mexico

The first week of the Central American jaunt

Places: LA, Mexico City & Oaxaca.

Coolest thing I did: Watched what can only be called a Mariachi parking lot in action.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Prehistpanic Americans used to play a kind of soccer using only their hips and forearms. If you broke certain rules you got decapitated. Pleasant sounding bunch.

After a brutal three days of planes and beds (Brisneyland, Sydney, LA and then Mexico City) I arrived in the Mexican capital and was rather pleasantly surprised. I´d been a bit primed to find it dirty, crowded and dangerous, and while it is the first two, it´s an easy enough city to deal with and chock full of interesting stuff to look at. I found that my trying to learn Spanish from a book before I came didn´t survive my first contact with people who actually speak Spanish, but with a mix of the dozen words I can remember and a healthy does of Spanglish ("Whereo areo los underpantos") I´m getting by fine.

The first thing you notice about the heart of the city, it´s main square which is called the Zocalo is that while it may have seemed cool to build your new city on the heart of the city the people you just conquered, it may not make good engineering sense. All the main buildings, including the Catheral, appear to be sinking in certain places. Apparently the leader of the Spanish Conquisadors, a bit of a devious bastard by the name of Hernan Cortes, wanted to prove a point so he had the cathederal built on the site of the main temple of the old Aztec captial. Turns out thats a pretty bad foundation and walking around inside now is slightly vertigo inducing.

My favourite bits were the murals that seem to be the thing to commission if you´re working for the Department of Culture in Mexico. There´s some massive ones inside the Presidents office building, which they nicely let you go in for free and have a look at, showing the whole history of Mexico. There´s also a great one inside the Art Nouvea/Deco Palace de Bella Artes that had originally been commissioned for the Rockerfeller Centre in New York, but looking at it you can see why the Rockerfellers weren´t so keen on it. It´s about the battle between Capitalism and Communism and you can guess which ones are the baddies. If you keep your eyes open you end up spotting murals bloody everywhere.

If you do go to Mexico City, do go to the Anthropological Museum, which is full of heaps of Prehispanic stuff made out of rock. I liked the great big Olmec heads and great big heads of the feathered serpent God (whose name starts with a Q and I can´t be arsed finding out how to spell so I will call Frank). The building itself is also very cool to look at, with the upstairs windows covered in these honeycomb looking strips. Its also worth doing because at some point you are going to go and look at pyramids somewhere in Mexico and knowing a little about what you´re looking at helps. There are signs in English too, which I haven´t seen since. The highlight are the death masks, kind of made in the the Egyptian style but out of jade.

My best nightime experience so far was walking down to Garibaldi Square after dinner to see what had to be a hundred guys dressed like matadors playing trumpets and guitars and the like. I´m not sure why they congregate there or if they were getting any money out of it, but you can buy a cheap beer and sit there and watch the chaos. I especially liked the ones who got sick of the square and stood on the median strip playing trumpets into oncomming traffic. On the way back I also got the treat of seeing the cops standing in the entrance to a strip club watching soccer with the bouncers while there was three guys handcuffed to the rails in the back of their paddy wagon.

One other spot worth mentioning is Condesa, which is pretty much like another country. It´s a posh suburb a short Metro ride away from where I was staying and it was a strip of nightclubs, cafes and restaurants that could be in any upmarket street in the world. The biggest shock is just how un-Mexican most of the people there look. You expect people to be Americans but when they open their mouths it´s pretty obvious they speak Spanish and come from around there. Instead of crumbling rusty old hunks they drive the latest model yank tanks (think Escalades and Navigators). It´s eye opening that what we´d consider a fairly normal upper middle class exists in a city where most of the population live in concrete block houses clinging to the side of the mountains.

So far my ruin visiting has been limited to Teotihuacan, a pretty impressive set of pyramids just outside Mexico City. They are in pretty good nick, considering the age and history of the place, with the Temples of the Sun, Moon and Feather Serpent, Frank all accessible and climbable. One thing you do start to appreciate is that the Prehispanic Mexicans were a pretty bloodthirsty lot with a whole load of reasons to sacrifice people. I wonder how they decided who was going to get the chop, so to speak. That´s a conversation you wouldn´t want to be having with middle management ("I´m sorry Bob, you just haven´t been showing up on time and we´ve noticed your guarding of the granery is getting sloppy. We´re going to have to sacrifice you to the Sun God. Sorry about that, mate").

My second destiation on this trip has been Oaxaca, and the biggest problem with getting here was working out how to say it (for the record it´s Wah-ha-ka) so I could buy a bus ticket. It´s up in the highlands and very hot during the middle of the day which tends to enforce siestas. Which isn´t a bad thing. It´s the kind of place to come if you don´t mind moving from meal to meal and taking pictures of churches to break it up. It´s the kind of colonial town you think of when you imagine Mexico during the day. At night, it´s a different story. Due to the fact it´s the home of Mexico´s most renowned Mescal (Tequila´s dirty little sister, which has had one less distilation) and that tends to make you go a bit stupid on the shots. I´ve found it easy to be adopted by Mexicans to be paraded around the bars and clubs. I do sometimes feel like their retarded friend, not being able to say much except "My name is Steve".

I took a day trip to the Zapotec (a kind of Mexican Indian, apparently) villages up in the Sierra Norte, which is a coule of hours north of Oaxaca. Lots of hiking involved and with the change from 1500m in Oaxaca to 3200m in the moutains you do feel like breathing isn´t really doing much for you. The guide was local and spoke no English so it was hard to tell him set a bit less of a cracking pace. At least I wasn´t the slowest of the two gringos on the trip. There was a poor bloke my age who wasn´t exactly Ukraine´s fittest man. I swear he could have had nose bleeds and you wouldn´t have noticed from all the sweat pouring off him. There was lots of clambering up rocks and looking over sheer cliffs but very pretty all the same. As a bonus we also got the local bus on the way back, with half the seats taken up by produce going to town. Luckily no chooks.

So far, so good. I´m having a bit of a Japanese experience again, as it´s hard to blend into the background when you´re a foot taller and several shades lighter than everyone else. It´s not been as hardcore on the hassling and begging as I´d expected but I´ve yet to hit the tourist hotspots in the Yucatan yet. Still it was nice to walk around pyramids without being chased by blokes wanting you to ride their camels.

Scaly and warm

Darwin :: Australia

On being a "bus tourist"

Places: Sydney, Darwin, Litchfield, Kakadu & Katherine.

Coolest thing I did: Saw real live Crocodiles in the wild

Coolest thing I didn´t know: .

When you’re and Australian living in a foreign country people tell you all about their trips to Ayer’s Rock and the Top End with an expectant look on their faces like you know first hand what they’re talking about. You nod sagely at their discussions of butter thick air and scaly, dangerous wildlife but really, you’ve got no idea what they’re talking about. The reason, of course, is most Australians seem to go and see half the world before going and visiting their own back yard. I’m pretty firmly in that camp, but due to my brother taking a job in Darwin over the last 6 months I have had the prefect excuse to see some bits of Australia’s Top End that have up until now only been known to me via National Geographic.

Darwin itself is a tiny place that’s trying very hard to get a whole lot bigger. Almost half the buildings here seem to be in various states of incompletion, cranes perching on the exposed ribs of half build multi-storey buildings. They tell me it’s a combination of increased military presence and the resources boom (you can see refrigerated tankers carrying Liquefied Natural Gas pulling out across the harbour) that’s causing Darwin to stretch at the seams. The lucky thing for Darwin, as opposed to a place like, say Dublin that’s been going through similar pressures of growth is between the Japanese Imperial Forces and Mother Nature Darwin has pretty much a clean slate to build on. As late as 1974 90% of Darwin was destroyed by Cyclone Tracey, giving you lots of room to put in nice wide roads and big high density buildings.

Still, it seems that even a 5 min wait at the lights or any whiff of not being able to get a seat at a restaurant causes Territorians to claim the place is getting way too crowded and going to the dogs.

People don’t come here to see Darwin, they come here to see the big name national parks. I’m up here at the very end of the wet season and most rivers no longer have defined banks, but have spread out onto the flood plains. I decided that even though I’m nowhere as fanatical an angler as my brother and Dad I got up at 3am to go fishing with them on the lower reaches of the Mary River. Despite my reservations about launching boats into Crocodile infested waters IN THE DARK(!) it was an experience to see a blood red sunrise coming up over endless water punctuated by the very tops of trees. Our attempts to catch the sport fish de jour, Barramundi, didn’t amount to much but we did have a fun day tearing around in the boat and catching fish too small to legally be kept.

I especially liked the real world encounters with Salt Water Crocodiles. You’d spot them slinking off the river bank into the water (down the river more, where there actually were defined banks) or a pair of reptilian eyes floating just above the surface. We got probably our best look at one when my brother cast a lure that got caught on a tree not too far from our boat which caused a crocodile that had been lurking under the water to race towards it. There was some debate at whether it was worth trying to get a $15 fishing lure away from the crocodile but with a bit of casting lines in the water to lure the croc away we did manage to get it back. Amazing animals to see up close.

We did also get to see some wallabies, some dingoes and even a snake on the way in, which you don’t really get to see on the tours because the animals tend to avoid the heat of the day when most of them go.

The next two days were a blur of going on bus tours with my Mum to Kakadu and Katherine. I remember why I don’t like bus tours now, there’s just too much logistics into getting everyone on and off the bus to look at every little thing, have a wee or eat something. While we covered a massive amount of ground in two days it was highly frustrating. Still, at one point I did have to laugh at the self-superiority of a younger group who came on a tour of the same places in a cover truck rather than a bus. Their guide would say “just wait for the bus people to move on…”. Seriously, I don’t care how young or old you are or how rugged you vehicle looks, if you pay someone to do all your thinking for you when you travel, you’re in the same boat. Man, that superiority gets on my nerves.

Right, back to the sights.

I liked the two boat cruises the best, one over the Yellow Waters of the South Alligator River (so named because the bloke who found it wasn’t much of a zoologist) and the one through the salmon pink cliffs of the Katherine Gorge. The wet season is the wrong time for seeing the big animals like Crocs and Buffalo by the water but it does attract a whole lot of bird life and things like turtles. Both tours were taken by part-Aboriginal guides, and both were very funny blokes. My favourite one liner was when the guy taking us down the Yellow Waters was late getting us back and said his boss always told him to apologise to groups if he was late. “Sorry. There, that didn’t take 220 years to do, did it?”. Classic.

I also like the cave paintings at the Nourlangie Rock, and even more I liked the fact that while the guide would happily give you his interpretation of what he thought they meant, he admitted that no one really knew and anyone who claimed otherwise was full of crap. I found that very refreshing.

I think was surprised me most about the landscape is that it wasn’t as desolate as I’d been led to believe by David Attenbourgh. While the trees are spread far apart there is grass about a meter tall covering everywhere, making it all look quite lush. I’m told that the way they know the wet season is over is that grass is knocked down by strong winds but still, it was a nice sight to see some life out there.

Documentary watchers will know that there’s been a bit of a debate about whether the Aboriginals were hunter gathers in the strict sense or whether their abundant use of fire to alter the landscape on a massive scale could be considered a kind of agriculture. They used to burn large swaths of grassland in a fairly ordered pattern to try and encourage new plant life and the migration of animals in search of new food.

Actually, you get told lots of these kind of legends where, with hindsight, it turns out the natives were right. One that sticks in my mind was that the people of Kakadu have referred to the area around the Ranger and Jabaluika uranium mines as being cursed lands, which could have been explained by the presence of radioactivity. Or that the area around Nourlangie is rich in ore, probably explaining the large lightning strikes in the area the Aboriginals had identified. While all these are impressive I'm wondering about all the tales they told that haven't been substantiated or have turned out to be plain wrong. Maybe we're being dazzled by a very small section of stories that were right but they suffer from survivorship bias and most of them are either wrong or unlikely. Still, I wonder how much knowledge that took centuries to build we're still losing because we don't at least try and collect all these stories. Who knows, maybe BHP could be looking for exploration rights in all the Aboriginal cursed lands. Stranger things have happened.

I think you don't quite appreciate how different things would be if you came back in the dry season except if, like my parents, you'd been here in both. They told me I'd be very impressed by the magnetic termite mounds, so called because they are big, flat, tombstone looking things that align with magentic north. I would have been, only the grass was so long I could only see the very tops. I did see some of the other, rougher looking Cathederal type termite mounds, but I never really did see the magnetic ones. Maybe I'll come back and see it all in the dry one day.

In fact, I'd say this few days has done nothing but whet my appetite to do more travel in my own country. I've been so focused on seeing the world I think I got a bit blind to how far people come to see Australia and how very unlikely they are to be disappointed. Maybe when I grow up and come home I'll try and see a whole lot more of it.

Cyprus Hill

London :: UK

This years vitamin D fix

Places: Pafos, Coral Bay, Polis & the Akamas Peninsula.

Coolest thing I did: Loads of beach crawling

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Aphrodite was apparently formed from the foam of some other God's testicles. Just try picturing that as a Disney cartoon.

London has had a terrible summer this year. Utterly horrific. Coldest May on record, followed by the wettest June and July and hardly a sunny day to speak of. So I was mostly looking forward to this trip simply to get some sun. I've since been accused of acting like a Pom as all I've been going on about since I got back was how good the weather was. It's made me realise that this is in now way the holiday I would have taken had it been my call, but there's no harm in something different now, is there?

The holiday involved more of an inventory than I was used to, you know, 8 people instead of one, a 4 bed villa and 2 cars (instead of no cars) all parked just north of Pafos, tourist hotspot of the west coast of Cyprus. I think the hardest thing for me to adjust to was getting into the rhythm of 7 other people who wanted very much to unwind, 3 of whom I'd never met before. I'm used to traveling around a lot on holiday (I reckon in a week I'd normally have stayed in 5 different places and seeing a whole lot of island) so the idea of lazing about the pool until a late lunch and then getting out to see a little bit more of the local area was a big adjustment. However, I think all this forced relaxation did me well.

The Republic of Cyprus feels Greek, everyone speaks Greek, the food is pretty much all the meatier bits of Greek food and people pretty much all look Greek. Which means you have to stop yourself from referring to your present location as Greece. The countryside should be a bit of a giveaway as it's much drier and more rugged than anywhere I've seen in either the Greek Islands or on the mainland (someone used the term 'moonscape' at one point) and once you get out of the two touristy build ups in Coral Bay and Pafos itself it's all very undeveloped.

We took day trips to both sides of the Akamas peninsula on the very north western tip of the island, which was difficult in places due to the very un-rugged nature of our Renault Scenic minivan. The completely empty stretch of beach at Lara bay can be overlooked as you eat grilled chicken and pork are spectacular, even if a little bit un-swimable due to some heavy undertows. The opposing side, with the town of Polis is a proper working village complete with old stone churches and flagstone capped squares you can sit after a hard day on the beach and drink coffee you can stand a spoon up in. All very relaxing.

The most touristy thing we did was go and have a look at (and even climb) the Rock of Aphrodite. It's supposed to be the birthplace of the goddess of love, prostitutes, marriage, war and a few other things, who obviously casts a large shadow of Cyprus by the fact practically everything on the island is named after her in some way. The coast dramatically plunges into the blue sea and big rocks jut out of the water and the dark sand beach. The legend goes that if you nude up and swim around the rock 20 times at dusk you'll look 20 years younger. I don't know if I want to look 10 again. I reckon maybe it's for the oldies.

I came back from the trip quite happy to have eaten my fill of meat and seafood, to have a bit of a tan and to have not done very much but swim in pools or beaches. I do, however, have a slight feeling of restlessness due to not having even come close to a column or Turkish town the whole time I was there. I think Cyprus is somewhere I could revisit to take a better look at on my own terms, but I think I needed a good relax and dose of sun more than anything else this time.

I saw you coming!

London :: UK

Well, what do you do with your old power stations?

Places: Tate Modern

Coolest thing I did: Resisted the urge to yell out at the top of my lungs It's just a stack of bricks!

Coolest thing I didn´t know: They replace the installation in the main turbine room of the Tate Modern every year. It's kind of cool when it's empty.

OK, so I know I don't usually write about touristy things when I'm not on the road, but I haven't been to the Tate Modern in London since the very first month I was here last time (May 2000, back in the Dreamtime) and it's the most touristy thing I've done since I've been back. That and I don't go to see modern art very much and had some thoughts about it all.

For those who aren't familiar, the Tate Modern is the gallery the British government built out of a disused power station on the south bank of the Thames in order to house it's ever growing modern art collection, thus also freeing up more space to show all that pre-20th century stuff the Tate Britain had in storage somewhere. The building itself is very cool, with one half left completely open 5 stories up and the other with lots of galleries on various levels. The collection revolves a fair bit, because that's the thing with modern art, people keep making more of it. Once you draw the line and say "right, everything made after 1900 is modern art" then you've got one collection growing faster than the other. Dissected cows and poo in jars aside, I don't mind a bit of modern art, especially the older stuff. Which I know is a bit of an irony, bugger off.

What I like most about going around modern art galleries (it's something I first noticed in the MOMA in New York) is watching the people looking at the art. There are three main grades: clueless-but-open-minded (this is where I fit), dragged-there-by-significant-other (this is where I used to be) and self-proclaimed-expert (god help us all). The first grade tends to take a look at the piece of art, scratch their head a bit and then read that little sign next to it to try and figure out what the bloody hell it's supposed to be. They then read it, look back at it and then they either have a eureka moment when they figure out why this pile of egg cartons is called "monument to the soul" or they close off their faces and mumble something about it being crap. You can sit in the Tate and watch most of the room around you reading the signs and pretty much none of them actually looking at the art. The second grade involves someone who really, really does not want to be there but are doing it because they are either at the start of a relationship and trying to impress someone, or are well into it and have been dragged there against their will. These people can be made out by their eye-rolling, sighing loudly and the need to sit down every 5 mins and hold their head in their hands. I once ended a promising relationship because I would have much rather had a pint than drag myself through another room of canvases painted grey. Oh, how times change.

The last kind, of course, is the true believer. You can see them rapturously staring for hours at a stack of house bricks trying to work out how many formations are possible because that's what the artist intended when they got 50 grand for a stack of house bricks. Thankfully, this kind of person is rare, but they are fascinating to watch, but not for too long. It's all you can do to hold off the urge to run over and slap them when they pontificate to their rather bored boyfriend about the torrent of ideas flowing from three white lines on a blue background.

Despite the negative tone I've had all through this, I do think there are some clever things done with modern art. I read somewhere that modern art is supposed to shift some of the work of thinking about a piece of art from the artist onto the viewer, kind of outsourcing the ideas so they give you enough space to look at something and make up your own mind about what it means. Sometimes, you probably think of something the artist didn't intend, and that's probably a bit of a success. I like the idea of that, even if the reality doesn't always meet it. I think for me to appreciate something like that, the artist has to meet me half way. They have to do something that's actually a bit clever, and obviously clever before I can get anything out of it. People keep telling me Andy Warhol was a genius for taking crates of soup cans and putting them in an art gallery, and I'd tend to agree, but not for the same reasons. If someone can attract enough stooges to pay lots of money for something they could have got for nothing then he is a branding genius. That's not really my bag when it comes to art.

I think the trouble these days is all the new stuff that's being created is being looked at by proper art people, who tend to have a hive mind like appreciation for what's good art. I'm waiting for the day when someone points out that the emperor has no clothes and the British government just paid 75 grand for half a cow. What arty types tell us we should be liking, and what most of us like seems a world apart. I that tastes change, and I'm sure they said the same thing about Picasso and Monet (and probably Da Vinci, in his day) but unless I'm missing something, so much modern art is leaving too much to interpretation. I'm willing to be open minded, but I'm not going to admit that 6 canvases painted brown in a room is all that inspiring. Call me uncultured.

I can't help but think of the sketch on the new skit series from the cast of the old "The Fast Show" which is called "I saw you coming". It's about a small antique/art shop in Notting Hill that sells to rich, pretty and thick women. The proprietor says things like "this particular piece of wank is rather popular with your kind" and "it cost me nothing, but as your husband just sold his media company I'm going to have to price this at 50 grand", followed by the women whipping out their chequebooks. It works better on TV.

The best thing I reckon I saw in the Tate was this giant egg thing with a big bit cut out of it's side and a black shiny interior. As the viewer was standing right in front of it you can see a beam of light that is reflected from the roof that moves when you watch it. The little sign tells us this beam of light is the art, and an object in it's own right. Even though it sounds wanky, I did see what they artist was trying to do. More of that, less of the piles of old mattresses (the smell is supposed to be challenging the viewer about the wastefulness of consumer society. Oh SHUT UP!)

The fun house mirror

Tokyo :: Japan

A bit of a quick sum up.

Places: Tokyo

Coolest thing I did: Saw a shopping centre with a zoo in it. A zoo I tell you. Are these people mad?

Coolest thing I didn´t know: In Japan Astroboy was known as Mighty Atom. I think their way is cooler.

So tomorrow I leave Japan and I have to say it's more than lived up to my expectations. I wasn't sure what to expect from the whole thing but from the mountains of snowboarding to the piles of history, I've had a ball. Of all the places I visited I have to say Tokyo is my favourite. Many people have told me they liked everything except Tokyo, but I get the feeling that this is what life is like for the vast majority of Japan's population, which is strikingly urban. I guess I feel more comfortable in big cities myself.

While I learned more than I ever wanted to know about Buddhism, Shinto, Japanese history and the like it's been the vision of the future and just watching the Japanese do their thing that I've liked the best. Watching them go about their business I get the idea that these people have childhoods that extend far longer than ours. I've seen women in their 20s walking down the street dressed as French Maids (apparently French maid is the new Schoolgirl for those who like to dress up), grown men paying $USD800 for one of those old game and watch machines, shops stuffed with comics and readers of all ages, shops that sell models of everything from Godzilla to Transformers and all the patrons are older than me. I swear these people are all kids!

From what I've read the post-War building boom has fueled an economy where everyone works hard and then has to find something to spend all their money on. I've mentioned the consumerism but there also seems to be this need for novelty, and to have a collection of something, no matter if it's vinyl records, porno comics or foot high robot models. Everyone needs a massive amount of novelty. Work and spend.

The cultural relativists will tell you that it's a shame that these people are losing the rigid culture they once had, that their national character is being replaced by a monoculture that stems from all that is evil in the US system. I tend to disagree with that. You only have to take a look around Tokyo for a day to recognise the inspiration for a fair deal of the West's popular culture, design and fashion. Thought we probably are gaining a global culture, it's not all one way traffic. I get sick of know it all guidebooks and backpackers scoffing at those who eat McDonalds here and don't experience the culture. You just have to look around to see the Japanese aren't hung up on these things, so why should we be? They are both embracing and extending the global culture of our generation so it would be foolish to go looking for "the real Japan" (as someone in the hostel put it to me) because Tokyo IS THE REAL JAPAN. The small number of people living in little farming hamlets and cultivating rice with a bullock cart are doing so because that's what the tourists want to see. I am personally more interested in what Japan is, not what it was.

I was sitting in a bar in Shibuya last night (the Insomnia Lounge, you walk around barefoot because it's all shag carpet, choice!) and a couple of guys sitting next to me at the bar stuck up a conversation with me. One of them was born only a week before me (1977 and all!) and does exactly the same kind of work as me, not only the Sun Unix geekery but the EMC and Cisco as well. So here I am, confronted with what my life would have probably been like if I was born to Japanese parents. It made me realise how lucky I am to have the life I do. These guys said they thought I was a musician because all the IT guys in Japan wear suits 6 days a week (because they work 6 days a week and often Sunday from home). They were stunned to hear I've lived in so many countries and just take time off to travel between contracts and countries. Both are barely out of Uni (that's how it works here) and should have been married 2 or 3 years ago, according to their parents. They work, then go out drinking 3 or 4 nights a week to go looking for girls. The studio the bloke my age lived in apparently has enough room for a single bed, a sink/kitchen/bathroom and a clothes rack. They also get paid about half what I do, even though this is the most expensive country I've ever seen (and I've seen a few).

Before this trip I was starting to question whether my life of drifting around is starting to wear thin and should I be thinking more about a career and becoming more settled. I think Japan has shown me just what a society based on the extreme of career and consumption looks like and it's made me more resolute that I've not wasted the last 7 or 8 years. That could have been me working 6 days a week, 50+ weeks a year with little to show for it. If nothing else this trip has given me some perspective on things and I'm much happier with life.

Right, I've enjoyed Japan but it's nearly time to fly back to Dublin. St Patricks Day awaits!

Big city, bright lights

Tokyo :: Japan

Spend, Spend, SPEND!.

Places: Tokyo, Nikko & Kamakura

Coolest thing I did: For about 30 mins I was the coolest white bloke in Tokyo. Then more white people showed up and I was no longer.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The three wise monkeys live in Japan.

So I'm back from the country to the big city. On the Shink
I spent far more time looking out the window that on the trips down and
I found out a couple of things. One is that from Kobe to Tokyo (and I
imagine even further north) there is no end to the urbanization as it
goes from skyscrapers to suburbs to heavy industry and back again
several times. It's staggering to think just how many people they've
fit on this island. I also saw Mount Fuji and at this time of year it's
probably as close as I'm going to get as they tend to discourage people
from climbing it when it's covered in snow and avalanche prone.
Spoilsports. Now all my pictures (taken from a train moving at about
200kph) are all blurry and have telephone poles in the foreground.

I chose to return to Tokyo for the weekend instead of going south some
more because despite all the party work our group did last time around
I felt there was more to be found. And was there ever. I'm staying in a
hostel in Asakusa
(because they are all there, because it's cheap and dodgy) so if you
want to hit the better places to go out the only option is to stay out
all night and wait for the subway to re-open at 6am. My first night I
headed out alone to Shibuya in armed with nothing but one address (from the Time Out webpage
) of a bar and some high hopes. Thank God it all worked out. After
trying a few bars around ｔｈａｔ seemed to be filled mostly with salary
men I wandered through darkened alley ways until I found the place. It
was an unnamed bar, all painted red with chandeliers on the ceilings and
most importantly, no other white people. Up until this point I'd either
been in seedy bars with all Japanese people or places haunted by Westerners
so for the half hour I sat there with some very cool looking Japanese
people I ｈａｄ no hope of communicating with I felt very hip indeed.

As
it turns out this place appears to have recently crossed over into
ex-pat land from being mostly Japanese and it wasn't long before the
other Westerners started showing up. They were a quite good mix of
Antipodeans and Europeans and the Japanese English speakers who started
showing up seemed to be happy to mix with us. I ended up with a handful
of Japanese kids, a French girl, some bloke from Brisbane and his
Japanese wife and a Dutch girl in some nightclub halfway between Shibuya and Roppongi until about 9am. Great night out but I ended up being woken up by some friendly old ladies on Asakusa because I'd obviously been snoring on the train.

Saturday
was a bit different. I met some Canadians in the hostel who took me out
when they went to meet up with a Japanese DJ who they'd befriended
earlier in the week. Like South Africans, most Japanese seem to think
they areDJs. He told us to come out to Ikebukuro to a party he was playing at and while we were waiting for him outside Ikebukuro
station to pick us up we decided to make good use of a giant Kiwi we'd
brought with us. If you think I get stared at in Japan being just over
6ft tall, you want to see the stir someone who is 6'10" causes. People
were coming up to be photographed with him, and one bloke even put his
girlfriend on his shoulders and they were still shorter than him. It
was seeing the reactions on the kids faces when they first spotted him
that was the best.

The party turned out to be in a tiny club on the 6th
floor of some back alley building and we were a little concerned that
our party (which had added a couple of random Japanese people by this
time) doubled the crowd. However, everyone was very nice, even if they
spoke about 3 words of English between them, and as the night went on
it got much closer to packed. Great night out but the back to back all nighters took their toll (I'm 30 now, after all) and it was a very long ride home at 7am.

I spent the first couple of days back in Tokyo mostly retracing my steps
through the shopping districts to join the super-consumerism that makes
Japan famous. Many acrobatic feats of design have been achieved by the
retailers of Japan and some of the shops are just cool to go and look
at, no matter what the sell. I did, however, seem to have a hangover
induced
lowering of sales resistance and ended up with far too many new
T-shirts. For those who have time you want to take a look at the shops
aroundAoyama and just gawk at all the glass and chrome, even if you don't buy anything.

In my geekier days I used to read far my sci-fi than I do now and a reoccurring theme in the 80s was this idea that in the near future the urban dwellers would all live in arcologies, giant buildings that contained work, home and play all under one roof.
Trust the Japanese to have started building them. The development of Roppongi
Hills is residential-entertainment-retail extravaganza that just has to
be seen to be believed. I've since been told there is a newer
development in Shiodome that puts RH to shame so I guess people do
really want to live, work and shop in the same place. I wonder if this
will catch on in the West at all.

I have also spent some time doing some more cultured day trips from Tokyo to balance out all the Blade Runner city scapes I'm seeing all day and night otherwise. The town of Nikko
has some temples and shrines in it so I set out to see it and despite
some screwing up of trains (the further off the beaten track you go the
less English there is) I managed to get out there in time to see the
main temples. The highlight is the one with the original carvings of
the three wise monkeys (hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil) on
it. I was kind of glad it turned out to be a half day as Nikko was way
up in the hills and it was snowing when I got off the train. I wasn't
at all prepared for that so I was bloody freezing by the time I got out
of there.

Today was spent going the other direction, to Kamakura to see　a giant bronze Buddha.
That was pretty cool. I also saw lots more shrines and temples, but to
be honest they are starting to kind of just merge into one temple in my
mind now. They were still very nice temples and shrines. I especially
liked the one with all the Shinto demons and rulers of hell in it. I
guess in all religions, like all good stories the baddies get the best lines.

Back in Tokyo for the last stretch now, as I'm flying back to London on Friday.

Auschwitz II

Hiroshima :: Japan

A bit of a downer, really.

Places: Hiroshima

Coolest thing I did: Saw the trees that not only survived the bomb but are still growing.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The Hiroshima baseball team is called....the Carp. Seriously. Go Carp!

History is a funny thing. It's hard to know where the truth lies when things are told from people's imperfect memories, and it gets even worse when governments and their money get involved with preserving it. While I know both the Japanese and Germans have been very, very apologetic over their actions during the Second World War (and the Allies less so) it's hard to be objective when walking around the monuments and museums of Hiroshima (all which inevitably have the word Peace in their title somewhere).

The narrative in the Peace Memorial Museum tells the story of a city that built itself up as a military power during Japan's rise as a world power during the first half of the 20th century to a point where during the final stages of WWII it was the southern command of the Japanese army and the point where the defence of Japanese soil would probably be directed from. The war was pretty much lost at this point but (if we are to believe the story we're told by the Allied Powers) Japan was ready to fight to the last man to repel invasion. The bits I found most enlightening were the things you didn't expect to be shown.

Extracts from the diaries and letters from such luminaries as Einstein, Roosevelt, Truman and Oppenheimer tell the story of the Manhattan project and the lead up to the creation of the atomic bomb. We find out the Americans deliberately wanted to see the effects of a nuclear weapon on a functioning population and did not want to give any advantage to the Germans, who they suspected were far advanced in building their own atomic weapons. As a result as early as 1943 it was decided that mainland Japan would be the target of the first atomic weapon and as bombing raids started on Japan itself there would be none to take place over possible atomic bomb targets. The Americans specifically wanted to use this weapon at least once, both to dispassionately observe its effects and to warn all future foes (which would eventually mean their allies, the USSR) of the power they held.

In the end, geography and good weather conspired to pick Hiroshima. The target was a bridge which happens to be two bridges meeting in a T shape (easy to sight visually for the bombardier) and to prove this was a scientific endeavour, two other planes launched recording equipment to collect data. While it's unfair to make comparisons to the Nazis experiments on Jews it does seem to stem from the same mentality.

The impact point (hypercentre) is marked with a small granite memorial you could almost trip over so as to not take away from the A-bomb dome a hundred metres away. A Czech designed government building on the river front survived the blast with it's stone walls and the framework of it's dome intact. This has been kept in the same condition as it was after the blast, as a reminder of what took place. Of all the memorials it's the least contrived and I hope the one that survives all the rest.

As the single biggest geopolitical event since the invention of gunpowder it's hard to predict what would have happened had the Americans warned the Japanese of the existence of atomic weapons, or had they demonstrated the power to them. In the scale of human life lost in WWII 150,000 is a rounding error, but it was the impact of killing them in this way that may have ended the war when it did. It seems the US were indeed hell bent on using it. Would the Japanese have actually fought to the last man, thus extending the numbers of Allied casualties? Would the Soviets have paid as much attention and kept pushing on with conventional warfare in Europe if they suspected the US unwilling to use such a terrible weapon on actual people? Would there have been the relative calm of the Cold War or would we have had another World War by now? No one would disagree that the horror that Hiroshima and Nagasaki endured should never be repeated, but can we be so sure the alternatives would have been no worse?

Nothing in my travels has made me think about what evil people are capable of like this has except for the memorial at Auschwitz. It seems that World War II was indeed humanities Whoa, Whoa, WHOA! moment when we realised that we were plumbing the depths of what humanity could do. While the second half of the 20th century was not all sunshine and lollypops compared with much of the rest of human history it's been relatively peaceful. The biggest problem is we now have so many nuclear weapons we could destory the planet many times over. I don't think that's a problem beyond solving, but places like this need to exist to remind us why we need to solve it.

Shrine me

Hiroshima :: Japan

Being a super tourist in the future.

Places: Kyoto, Nara, Himeji & Hiroshima.

Coolest thing I did: Breathed incense smoke and drank water to make me somehow holy.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Japanese people don't seem to mix wasabi in their soy with sushi.

While Kyoto is a modern, happening town with all the mod cons you'd expect from a big Japanese city you really only go there to see old stuff. It's bloody well full of old stuff. There's shines for the Shintos, temples for the Buddhists and even a castle if that floats your boat.　The fact that UNESCO have gone mad over classifying everything in sight tells you it should be good stuff. Of the many temples I saw I rate the one covered in gold leaf (the Kinkakuji Temple) and the one with a view over the city (the Kiyomizudera Temple) the best to look at. I also rated walking along the rather grandiosely named Path of Philosophy (even though it was named Path of Philosophy (even though it was, in reality a footpath next to a canal) to the Ginkakuji Temple (which is also called the Silver Pavilion despite them never raising the capital to actually cover it in silver).

While I thought the Temples and Shrines were very nice to look at, I also enjoyed the rituals. For free you can wave incense smoke over you for some reason, and catch water as it dribbles off a roof and drink it. I have no idea why but everyone else was doing it so I did too. The other rituals seemed to involve buying things (bits of paper with stuff written on it, bits of wood with stuff written on it) and trying them to walls/trees/clothes lines. I'm sure the Catholic church would be jealous that some people can get away with selling redemption for cold hard cash without causing a major schism in their church.

My trip into Japanese nightlife was severely curtailed by my reckless need to arrive in a new town on a Saturday afternoon having not booked anything. The only hostel I could get into was well located for the tourist stuff but was like a barracks for tourist stuff but was like a barracks for it's rigidity. At 10.30pm sharp the doors closed and at 6.40am sharp a siren sounded and everyone had to get out of bed. This meant while I went out for dinner every night and sampled a few random bars, I was usually doing my Cinderella act right as things were picking up. Still, after the previous two weeks a few days off wasn't the worst thing that could have happened.

On a totally unrelated note I'd like to nominate the sushi train concept as possibly the best lone eating experience possible. Sit down and the waiter does nothing else except bring your beer. You pick plates of food off the conveyor belt going around in front of you and you're charged by the plate at the end (including a yellow plate for each beer). The chefs work right in front of you so you know it's fresh and they just make whatever they feel like. I tried to not just stick with the white boy stuff of salmon on rice and I tried all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. Still not sure what the bright blue fish was though...

I broke up my stay in Kyoto with a day trip to Nara to see, yep, more shrines and temples. They have this big park where the deer are so populous that they just pretty much ignore cars/buses/people and go about doing as they please. There was an option to buy deer biscuits to feed them but after watching a group of deer chasing some Japanese schoolgirl around after she ran out of them I thought it wise to pass.

The highlight of Nara is the Todai-ji Temple which has a massive bronze Buddha and a couple of smaller gold Buddhas in it. I like it when people make really big sculptures of stuff like that. There were also these huge statues of pig headed guardians that are supposed to scare of thieves. Those were also rather impressive.

While Temples, Shrines and giant statues are all very impressive I found I quite like Japanese gardens. Of these, the best are the Zen gardens, which are kind of like gardens on the cheap. You have sand, rocks and a bonsai or two and then you rake patterns in the sand. It'ｓ a very pleasing aesthetic and all very Zen. Man. I also learned that the minimalist aesthetic of Zen came about because the Japanese were a really poor country so couldn't afford all the trappings of other religions and philosophies. Rather simple explanation, and very cool if it's true. Some yank grad student told me that so it might be rubbish.

Post-Kyoto I caught the Shink (yeah, I'm calling it that now) to Hiroshima with a quick stop over in Himeji for the day. Himeji is a tourist spot because it has something for the boys and something for the girls. Next door to each other is Japan's only surviving castle that hasn't been totally reconstructed out of concrete and a huge Japanese garden next door. The castle is well worth the visit, very imposingly martial. My favourite bit was the annex built for one of the Princesses that went to live there. She married the Diyamo of the castle and they apparently had a really nice marriage, until a rival came along and took the castle and killed her husband. She then married the new Diyamo and just got on with it. Resilient lass.

So I got into Hiroshima this afternoon but I've done nothing but look for an ATM that will take my card. Here's a lesson kids: pretty much no banks in Japan will give you money, except for the post office. I now remember reading the post office is Japan's biggest bank, but I didn't realise until I'd walked Hiroshima end to end that they are also the only ones that take foreign ATM cards. Trick for young players.

The future is full of tiny little people

Kyoto :: Japan

And things come in vending machines.

Places: Furano, Tomamu, Kamui, Asahikawa, Tokyo & Kyoto.

Coolest thing I did: Sat nude in a hot bath in the snow.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The list is endless...

There was once a bloke called William Gibson who used to write science fiction novels but now writes novels set in the present that relate almost as closely to technology as his old ones did.　His first great claim to fame is to have invented the term "cyberspace" about 15 years before the general population had ever heard of the internet. His other great claim to fame is to have told us that Japan is the future. This may not seem like much of an observation now but it was a big deal in 1980.

If Japan is still the future then the future is filled with tiny little people who are very nice. People like me may have some problems in the future as I may have some problems in the future as I'm pretty much covered in bruises, bumps and scratches from running into things because everything is too small for me to use. This seems to cause the Japanese no end of amusement.

My trip here so far has consisted of three very different parts, two involving big groups of people and one not. The first part was snowboarding in the very northern island of Hokkaido. Unlike the rest of Japan, Hokkaido is quite cold and doesn't have a whole lot of people in it. It also has some moderately high mountains on it, which means you can ski on it too. All credit to my mate Law for organising 20 odd people to come away together and have a ball. We were based in the town of Furano which is nestled at the base of two ski fields with some fairly long runs that were just about perfect for someone of my ability. Add to that some fresh snow early on in the week and that there were no queues for anything, even on the weekend and you have a recipes for some very enjoyable boarding. We also sampled a bigger field called Tomamu, which was better for the elite but a bit of a pain for us amatures, and a smaller one at Kamui. Kamui was wrecked for us by blinding snow above the treeline and pelting rain below it. This was a pity as it seemed rather nice.

The nights consisted of freaking out the proprietors of restaurants by showing up in a massive group in the off season and eating all their food. We saw some very good just in time inventory control, mostly involving getting your dad or brother to come by with more beer or wine. The drinking was a bit harder, as most of the bars were empty but with persistence it was possible to sniff something out. I found by sticking my head in the door and covering my obvious counting of the patrons with a "good evening, how are you doing?" worked. We had some top nights, including Law's birthday karaoke extravaganza, which according to witnesses can only be described as feral. Our rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody may have contributed to that.

Not all the days out involved snow. We did an afternoon to an Onsen (hot bath to you lot) up in the mountains that was all outdoors and all naked. The segregation of the sexes probably helped more people participate and I'm finding I'm getting a bit adicted to just sitting in pools of hot water. This was probably the best one we did as it was in a natural setting at there was massive chunks of snow falling the whole time. It does wonders for the aches and pains of snowboarding too.

We did another day trip to Asahikawa and it's nearby zoo. While I wouldn't be a zoo person I did think the spectacle of them having Emperor Penguins walking past the crowd was pretty cool, as was the tank that let you see polar bears both above and below the water. I did think that keeping African animals like Rhinos and Lions in the snow seemed a bit wrong. The town of Asahikawa was memorable mostly for lots of Japanese girls giggling at us doing pretty much anything (eating with chopsticks, drinking beer, walking...). We also happened into a Panchinco parlor, which is something that has to be heard to believe. It's basically slot machines that take ball bearings as money. When you finish you swap your winnings for prizes, which you then take around the corner to a "pawn shop" to exchange for cash money. The sound of torrents of ball bearings running through hundreds of these machines at once it deafening and something to behold.

I kind of liked all the time we spent on the bus in Hokkaido (and there there was a lot of it) if for nothing else than watching snow covered fields with mountainous backdrops pass by. It's barren but beautiful country.

After a day of travel we made it into Tokyo, city of the future. Having only spent a couple of days there I only have a quick impression of it all but looking out over it from the heights of the Metro Offices it feels a bit shapeless with these wide streets and buildings stretching shapeless with these wide streets and buildings stretching out until they hit the bottom of Mount Fuji. Down on street level you can walk for ages and find nothing but the chance for consumption, and that's what people in the future do best. I spent a day walking from our hotel in Shinjuku to Harajuku, through Aoyama and down to Shibuya seeing nothing but food, advertising and retail. For a country that's been in the economic doldrums for the last 1 been in the economic doldrums for the last 15 years they sure do like to spend.

From street level you are amazed at just how clean and ordered everything is. Yellow lines to divide the footpath, no rubbish anywhere and a subway system that tells you when the train is coming down to the second (I know the Tube does that in London too, but the difference is in Tokyo the estimates are invariably right). What strikes you is despite being the home of automation Japan is a very labour intensive country. All this stuff works so well because they employ so many people to do jobs no one would bother with in the West. When you see a guy in a uniform and white gloves whose only job is to make sure the road is clear when the bus comes around the corner every 15 mins you know that bus isn't going to get held up.

I left my 20s　somewhere in Roppongi. This was careless of me, I know. After a nice group BBQ for dinner the group tied balloons to me and we headed for Roppongi, a red light district that makes Vegas look like Disneyland. The bars we mostly full of white guys in suits and we mostly full of white guys in suits and Brazilian prostitutes so we kind of stood out a bit. It was a huge night and probably not a bad way to see in my 30s. Needless to say the balloons didn't survive the night.

The group departed Japan for their various countries and jobs yesterday so I got on the super fast Shinkanzen train (Bullet train to the peons) to Kyoto. It says something about current politics when all I knew about the place was there was a treaty on carbon emissions signed here. I'll save the tales of looking at shrines and temples until next time, as I've been shrines and temples until next time, as I've been typing on this stupid kanji keyboard for far too long. The place I'm doing this is called a Manga cafe and it's basically a place where nerds hide. My booth has a PC with the internet and games, a playstation 2 and a plasma TV in it. Should I tire of playing games I can read backwards comic books in Japanese (many with covers that would make Larry Flint blush). Should I need more energy I can order food, and should I start to stink I can shower. How long do people spend down here?

More soon. Konichiwa bitches.

Non Touristique

Dublin :: Ireland

In search of those elusive French bastards.

Places: Paris and Reims.

Coolest thing I did: Saw lots of Champagne in chalk caves.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: Oscar Wilde died of Acute Menegitis.

After my last mid-winter visit to France about 5 years ago I promised that my next trip would come at a time more congenial to sitting around in cafes and making things like parks generally more visitable. However, when Mark, Dee and I were trying to work where to go away for our last family gathering in Europe together none of the usual Ryanair stag-do venues were really appealing. Without a general idea of what we wanted to do (except for one request to go to the Champagne region) we booked ourselves in for a cheap flight and split hotel room and were away.

With one of the wildest spates of winter weather on record hitting Europe on the same day as we were to depart we spent most of a Thursday night at a pub in the airport in Dublin waiting for our plane to come and get us from Paris. This turned out to be not too bad a night out and probably helped calm the nerves a bit when it came time to fly into what should have been a pretty choppy flight. By the time we got into the hotel at around 1am we all pretty much had moved from drunk into hangover and a night out was off the cards. Mark and I did discover that food wasn't too hard to come by, wolfing down something called a King Sandwich each before bed.

While the hotel itself had some issues with hot water the location between Place Republique and Rue Oberkampf was pretty much unbeatable for everything we wanted to do. With a fresh morning to work with it was a brisk walk to Gare L'est just up the road and onto a train bound for Reims. The goal was home of Verve Clicquot but Reims itself turned out to be a nice old town as well. There's a staggeringly large Cathedral there, which I've since found out is pretty famous which we took a look at, even though we weren't supposed to be too touristy on this trip. I know I've seen about a million churches, but the scale of this one is just something to behold.

Our tour of Verve started a little late, but I don't think Mark would have held out through the whole thing. A rather serious bunch of people were standing around being told of the history of numbers of bottles shipped to St Petersburg in the time of Catherine the Great when we walked in. By the time the map of the Champagne region was lighting up to tell us where they got most of their Pinot Noir from I could see lots of eyes glazing over. It wasn't until they took us down into the ground that the whole thing became worth it.

Verve own 24km of caves that have been tunneled out of the soft chalk that lies under the entire region and apparently these have the perfect conditions to store industrial scale quantities of sparkling wine in all states of completion. Apparently some of these caves go back as far as the Romans and each House has it's own set down there somewhere to do all the blending and aging that goes into making every rapper and teen heiresses favorite tipple. You walk past pallets of unlabeled bottles in each cave and when each individual cave is numbered in the hundreds (we started the tour at cave 251) you get some idea of how big an operation it is. We were shown a video (projected onto one of the walls, making an interesting impromptu cinema) of the 10 people whose job it is to taste every single batch to work out what gets blended together to make the finished product. The staff seem pretty loyal, if you stay longer than 10 years you get a cave named after you and there were a lot of plaques commemorating past employees. I guess I'd be a far more loyal employee if that was my job too.

After the standard tasting in the gift shop (ah, winery tours...) we decided we'd take our time getting back to the station and visit a few more places for some tastings, but when some young Americans coming out of the Tattinger House told us we'd have to do the cave tour again we decided against it. We were, however, aghast when the same young Americans told us they'd done the tour but not bothered with the tasting. I still don't get it.

We started off in one of those smoke filled tabac/cafe things for a beer but pretty soon descended into the madness of going into bars and buying champagne from the bottle. At an average of about a bottle every 20 odd minutes between three the result was rather predictable. Apparently tourists are out of season at the moment, as we got some rather funny looks from all the French speakers in the bars, but we didn't care too much. It was much better than being at work on a Friday afternoon.

The train back to Paris was sometime around commuter o'clock so we seemed to stand out a bit by being the only ones drinking champagne out of the bottle and who had obviously been through several previous bottles. I attempted to teach Dee and Mark how to play the card game Arsehole properly, but at that stage I was pretty much having to make the rules up as I went along. It showed.

Here's a tip, don't just go into a Parisian restaurant at random and order stuff off the menu at random. While my pre-chewed looking omelette did taste alright, Mark somehow ended up with a liver sitting in a plate of brown gravy. He seemed to take it rather well.

After the day we'd already had we decided it was better to just go directly out, so we set off in the direction of Rue Oberkampf, which I'd been informed was a good place to go out. With much wandering it became clear navigation had gone out the window. We wandered towards the bottom of Canal St Martin and it was only once we were heckled by bunches of dudes sitting in the middle of the park and witnessed someone kicking the utter crap out of a bus stop that we realised we might have gone the wrong way. Thank God there is a map about every 5 metres in Paris so we could have a few more attempts at getting to the right place.

After this Friday night on the Oberkampf I can endorse Paris as a primo nightlife destination, but not a cheap one. At somewhere in the order of 6.50 EUR for a half pint of beer it was never going to be a cheap night out, but man, was it a good one. We went to a handful of bars at different points down the street and any one of them would have sufficed for a night out. Despite what you keep hearing about the rudeness of the French everyone was beyond friendly. The bars are also the kinds of places you long for in Dublin and could never exist anymore in Sydney, usually intimate in size and experimental in decor and music choice. Table service is the norm and you actually feel rather cool just for being in them. After a while you also start forgetting you couldn't see the roof through the smoke and you're passively putting away about a million cigarettes a night. Someone told us they were cutting out indoor smoking in 2007 but I'd daresay it's going to have a much harder time getting through France than it has elsewhere. Smoking just seems to be something they do. All of them.

Once Dee had enough (this can be forgiven with the day we'd already had) somewhere in the order of 1am Mark and I found ourselves holding court at a long table in the heart of the Oberkampf. In the preceding 4 hours we befriended Frenchmen (and Frenchwomen), Moroccan drug dealers and Ivory Coastian bouncers. Very good atmosphere and a cracking night out. So good, in fact that despite being about 2 mins walk from our hotel we managed to almost get into an altercation in a taxi queue outside the Pere Lachaise cemetery, which was so obviously in the opposite direction in hindsight that it's hard to figure out how we got there on foot. Bien!

So while Mark suffered through a whole day of the sweats and KFC, Dee and I went back to Pere Lachaise (well, first time for her...) to go look at where they stuck Jim Morrison. Jimmy's grave is yet another example of the Mona Lisa Syndrome (ie. everyone standing around saying "I thought it would be bigger...") but it's still cool enough to go and see. I've seen pictures of the graffiti from the olden days when it was on every American's must do list and even though it's now less impressive, it's still probably a good thing they cleaned it up. I thought the final resting place of Oscar Wilde, which has been marked by the kisses of many lips, was much better to look at.

That was one of two seriously touristy things we did. The other involved dragging out very hung over selves up all those stairs leading to the top of Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur sitting on top of it. Sitting up there at night was possibly one of the best things I did the first time in Paris and it was just as good during the day. I think Dee was impressed too. We then spent the afternoon nominally walking towards Notre Dame, but really just meandering around the winding streets. We probably would have made it all the way to the river if the heavens hadn't opened and we didn't need to go and rescue Mark from his three piece feed.

Having heard Canal St Martin was the new Oberkampf, and in light of what it looked like the night before we decided to have a bit of a look around during the daylight hours. What we did see was something like a refugee camp, with rows and rows of tents lining each side of the canal. I'm not sure if it was a policies statement or proper homelessness. After a bit more lazing around a smart looking cafe up there we decided that we'd go back to Oberkampf for round two.

Our second night involved less lunacy that the first, but it was still a hell of a night out. We went to three bars, again, none of which you would expect to find in Dublin. The first was a cozy affair with lots of people around 10 years our junior sitting around what had to be the worlds lowest tables drinking cocktails, smoking their little hearts out, and occasionally yelling at a game of yhatzee that was spiraling dangerously towards rowdiness. It does seem that the French think nothing weird of card games and the like being played in ultra cool bars on a Saturday night. The second place we went, a sort of bar/art sales room with painted skateboard decks on the wall for sale, we were sitting across from another bunch playing cards. Try that in Bungalow 8.

The last place we went was probably the most eventful. We saw a bloke that looked like Ryan Girdler (formerly of the Penrith Rugby League team) probably knew nothing of this 'Rugby League' of which we spoke. There were two girls dancing on the bar whom we later found out were Americans. We should have figured this out by the stripper moves they were putting in, or probably more likely when one of them reached up, stumbled and pulled a fair part of the air conditioner out of the roof. I'm sure the bar tender would have cared had he not been so obviously on something that he couldn't focus on you to get the money once he'd reached down to get your beers and looked back up, despite you being a) right in front of him and b) exactly where you were when he looked down 15 seconds previously. Said American girl also made quite a river of vomit in the toilets (which seemed to be unisex in every bar and restaurant in Paris) according to Mark, who also got to see the spectacle of the French people all going nuts at her.

All in all, a great three day weekend away, and very little serious tourism done. For all the attention going to the ultra cheap destinations that were once on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, some of the old gems like Paris and Berlin are getting forgotten. It's a pity, as these places are famous for a reason.