Latest Travel News

Travelling through films is an amazing way to experience a place without even needing to leave the comfort of your own home. It is definitely not a substitute for travelling, but perfect to get inspiration, ideas and insights. I remember when I saw Gorillas in the Mist when I was about 11-years-old and how fascinated I became by Dian Fossey, the scientists who spent almost two decades of studying the mountain gorillas in Africa’s rainforests. Since then I have always wanted to go mountain gorilla tracking in the rainforests of Uganda or Rwanda.

Continue Reading »

Day One inPhuket
Hey everyone,

Hope you are all well. For the last 2 weeks, Phil has joined me on my adventure which has been lots of fun! Our original plan was to head to Malaysia and the Perhentian Idslands to do some diving, but the arly onset of the monsoon season scuppered those plans. So our plans were changed and we somehow ended up heading for Thailand. I meyt Phil at Kuala Lumpur airport in Malaysia where we spent one night, along with Charli, another English guy I’d met in Singapore. The following day we all caught a flight to Phuket in Southern Thailand where we met Blue, who I had been traveling with for a while in Indonesia. After an adventurous taxi journey we stayed a night in Phuket before taking a bus and ferry across Thailand to Koh Samui in the east.
Continue Reading »

Karen and Colin - two travelbugs

Guys engraving Buddhist scripture at a small temple by the Killing Cave
Continue Reading »

Whilst I took a break from revising I wanted to write this in Boyana .Wouldn’t accept password so went into my supergran addres.Never read blogs once on the net but couldn’t resist a look over them. Fascinating what you forget!!Nice to have permanent reminder - but in reading them I discovered that i Continue Reading »

Jimmy SchneidewindSo this entry was actually hang written the night before I am posting this, so if you still feel like my quality of writing sucks, I guess I have no excuses this time.

Continue Reading »

The European colonizers of South America wiped out entire indigenous populations with what we know in the UK as the “common cold”… well now it seems those ghosts of the Americas past are eventually getting their revenge on an innocent group of European students in La Habana. Almost everyone has had some kind of flu-stomach-fever virus… I wont go into too much detail but several of my friends have tested out the highly acclaimed Cuban health system… Corina was “lucky” in that she got to go to a private clinic (basically for tourists, in Miramar, the district where all the embassies are) although this was in the middle of the night with a fever and after being rejected from a Cuban hospital. Tomas on the other hand got to stay a couple of nights in a public hospital. He’s German and I think she shock of the difference between the private health system he is used to and the Cuban one jolted his body into sorting itself out… after he was tested for dengue and if I’m correct was put on a drip. No-one knows what was to blame… was it the refrescos naturales made with unboiled water? Was it the now highly suspicious and definitely avoided “vegetarian” (but specializing in pollo - chicken) restaurant? Defrosted ice cream? … the possibilities are endless but I think it wasn’t food poisoning but a nasty Cuban bug that our feeble (or just unadjusted) bodies cant fight… although I have to say (proudly but with fingers crossed!) I had some of the symptoms but managed to get rid of them in a day with the help of some Ibroprofen and sleep. Get me.
Continue Reading »

Roomie and Me again
Cinque Terre is supposed to be one of the most beautiful areas of Italy, and since we couldn’t go when it was warm and packed with tourists Allison, Joe, Kaitlyn (yes she spells her name the same way as me) and I jumped on a train this Saturday and went anyway. It was incredibly beautiful beach and cliff shoreline, but really really chilly. After our meal of seafood and pasta we decided that despite the cold we wanted the full Cinque Terre experience and put on our bathing suites and jumped in the water. It was beautiful and felt wonderful (definitely not as cold as Lake Michigan). We were probably the crazy American kids, but it was definitely worth it. Joe and Kaitlyn got stung by jellyfish which left huge welts, and when we got out we were soaking and freezing! I bought some warm clothes, we got a coffee and then hiked up to a monastery near where the modernist poet Montale is buried. We didn’t have time to hike all five towns but it was worth the day trip!
Continue Reading »

Sea lions
So I’m writing this from the Intercontinental in Santiago rather late at night as I can’t sleep since its hot and loud. Well, it WAS hot. Now it IS loud. Because they still have their system set up for winter in this tower, despite the fact that spring (summer?) is here. As such… the ‘ac’ which was already on in the room made it super hot inside despite being set on 15 degrees. We came in late, dropped our bags off and then went straight to dinner. We came back to the sauna. Now we have the window open, which is slowly cooling the room down, but, well, gives us all the sounds of a city on a Saturday night.
Continue Reading »

Howard & Hilda Bentley

Continue Reading »

C.F.

Jiuzhaigou
I arrived Jiuzhaigou from Songpan after a 3 hour pretty painless ride. I had a hotel booked, but at last minute the hotel/hostel backed out and I showed up to look for a three night stay. A lot of the hotels were fully booked or looked a little suspicious. There are a zillion hotels in Jiuzhaigou. I ended up at Jin Long Harbor for 800 rmb a night, which is a complete rip-off in hindsight. The hotel claims to be a 3* hotel, but it should be like 2.5*. Oh well. It worked out fine and I’m alive. I stayed in Jzg alone that night and visted the park by myself the next day.
Continue Reading »