Last day in paradise

Well this is the final day and I must say that I have had a typical holiday for me, and thus totally not what anyone else would have done.

By spending time with my friend, and letting her show me how they live I experiences things that few tourists would ever do.

Everyone knows, or will tell you, that it takes months or even years to fully understand a place, its politics and its culture.

This is true.

But if you want a closer glimpse in just a few short days then my advice is definetly to do the following.

1) Go shopping for food in the local markets
2) Find a McDonalds or other fast food joint and study both menu & customers
3) Watch a movie at a local Cinema ( regardless of film type or language )
4) Go obscure souveneir shopping
5) Use the local public transport system often
6) Visit both the rich and the poor side of town
7) Get a local corner-shop-style meal
8) Watch a sport ( any ) in a local bar and see how their supporters behave
9) Get a hair cut
10) Befriend a local and if possible meet their family & friends

As much as possible all this should be done by a small group, NOT a organised all-inclusive package holiday, and whenever possible try to talk or speak in the local language.

Of course, most people go to other places for the sun, the sea, the sex, the clothes shopping and the sports, and that's fine for most people, only... "I'M NOT MOST PEOPLE".

Watching a hotel full of Dutch supporters paint the town orange regardless of their team losing at football was a joy to behold.

Being taken in to a friends house and knowing that if they come to your country you can return the favour gives me an enormous sense of well being.

Eating locally caught fresh fish by the beach, with the head and tail still attached, is a luxury I have never had before.

Trying to see how good or bad, or impossible to find, just a simple thing like a hand fan or thimble make shopping an experience in itself.

So many memories that I cannot put them all down on paper.

At the start of the week I regretted coming, but now I am fully glad that I remained.

Santo Domingo .. A Different World

I left Puerto Plata (Port Silver) by bus with my friend to go her city, which was the capital of Santo Domingo.

The island has no trains, so it was either bus, fly or take a long boat round the island.

The trip down the island was almost 5 hours long, although the coast itself was surprisingly confortable and offered some welcome respite from the heat.

All the way down we passed through long stretched of shanty towns which had sprung up , im guessing, due to their location to the road.

I couldn't see any other reason why they would be there.

Every now and again we would pass something that looked like it was a modern building, only for it to be surrounded by many broken down and falling buildings, even the roads were coming away in such large chunks that it would be easier and quicker to just replace them than try to repair them.

Once we got to Santo Domingo the story was a little better, as it looked like Old Spain. Plenty of fancy architecture, cathedrals, proper plazas, roads, and taxis that were cars and not motorbikes.

It seems that to go anywhere in this country the quickest way is by taxi, and too it is also cheap if you are a local. With my friends help I have taken over a dozen rides in taxis which have cost almost nothing, but I am sure that if I was on my own or with other 'non-local' tourists the price would have been through the roof.

The hotel here in Santo Domingo was central to the main highstreet, thus ideal for travelling but also due to the heat (as the construction included many open air vents) very loud during the day.

By the end of the second day I have to admit that all the Spanish talk is now just overly loud noise as my brain have given up taking in anything new for awhile.

It will be great to just laze on a beach and catch a bit of a tan tomorrow.

Apparently there is a law that is very sexist, in that no local women are allowed to enter a hotel (futher than the reception) without identification.

It seems that in an effort to curb its own criminal elements problem, a male guest can only invite a local woman into their room once per visit and only if they have the proper ID - which gets attached to the guests file until they leave.

The law is suppose to stop men from preying on local women night after night and also to protect them from theiving local pickpocketers who run off with their wallets, passports, cameras or whatever they could get their hands on.

For me, all it has done is prevent my friend from accompanying me into my room at the end of each days travel to discuss the next day. Plus of course we can't just escape from the heat and watch a movie with a pizza or anything.

It may be the law, but I find it very irritating.

There are also only 3 McDonalds in the entire capital city of Santo Domingo and about only 7 on the entire island, and its much the same story with Burger King, Taco Bell or Pizza Hut. The McDonald wasn't worth it (the burger salad was a huge and pathetic looking lettice leaf) and the inside decoration was naff as well.

The Caribbean Sucks

The second day started worse than the second. Still unable to get much sleep and this time the solo mosquito managed to find my left hand a suitable dinner invitation a few times.

Lacking any air conditioner in my room, meant that I had the huge fan blowing all night and this combined with the constant motor cycles nearby were the main reasons for my lack of sleep.

The heat again started at about 7am and then again the rain came down around lunchtime and did not let up until about 8pm.

Despite the weather I did manage to get a few emails off, find a truly universal plug adapter so that I could recharge my mobile phone and got a few postcards to send when I get back home - as I never trust the foreign postal service of places I'm staying in.

Sosua is a run down and tired little town. Much like Penang, but far less developed, far less friendly from the people, and of course much smaller as well.

I once said that all anyone needs to do is spend a little bit doing up Penang, well to do the same for Sosua first of all you would need something to begin with. However looking around there isn't a lot there to provide as ground zero.

With no other english speaking guests ( not even the almost obligatory Auzzie backpacker ) I decided to try and find a few people who might speak english in the many bars that seem to be the only other places for tourists.

During the day the place was still either hiding from the heat or the rain and even the bars only had a few german speaking tourists to watch the world cup.

As it got dark around 7pm I decided to try the local night life but wasn't surprised when it was as dead as the day life. I finaly got to a place where there was a few people that could speak english however I had not read the hotel small print before I left.

Apparently the area is also meant to be dangerous with substance users, gangs and women-of-the-night heavily affecting the region.

So although it being only 8pm, when I somewhat naively invited a local to share a few drinks with me in my hotel, the prices being a lot cheaper, I did not expect the spanish inquisition from the hotels night porter. Neither did i expect, or was prepared to, pay extra for a second person for the duration of my entire stay and sign them in with proof of all their legal documentation.

And all for a few drinks cos I was lonely in a foreign country and wanted to talk to someone in english ... I ask you ... what is the world coming to?

And have I told you about the power cuts ... frequent and always irritating.

Well that's enough for now, got to go.

Caribbean Rainy Season

It is a rather bizarre time to visit the Dominican Republic, its rainy season - but here I am anyway.

You will be kept awake at night by the single stray mosquito that has managed to get inside your room, woken at various times by different cockerells who cant seem to agree on a time to crow and then the mid morning heat keeps you awake.

If you got out of your hotel you will find plenty of motorcycle taxis, some with as many as 4 passengers, but noone travelling more than 15 miles per hour.

Plenty of locals wearing jeans while you are still struggling to walk about in just a pair of shorts. But from about 1pm you understand why.

It starts with the finest droplets of misty rain. Then after about 20 minutes it gets a little heavier. Another 20 minutes later it starts getting heavy enough to hear on the corrugated roof and the occasional clash of distant thinder.

Then another hour and a half away it is still going and going, not getting any lighter or heavier, just persistent. Around 5pm ( 4 hours later ) it might finaly have stopped, which is good at it has taken most of the heat out of the day.

This quiet and sleepy town seems even more isolated as I am here on my own, since my friend has not been able to meet me yet, and I have been reading "The Day Of The Triffids". For those unfamiliar it is one of the original end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it master pieces of fiction where the hero wakes up in hospital to find that 99% of the people around him are either dead, missing or mysteriously blind with no logical reason.

So far I have seen a few nice locals, a few shops worth visiting more than once but no fast-food-chain-stores ... no McDonalds, Burger King or Taco Bell ... which is a mixed blessing.

As far as watching live football in the caribbean, unless its a home team your just as likely to want to watch it in your room as in the bar or in a local pub, they show the games but noone really cares what happens.

It is even worse if you have the misfortune to be watching it with American commentators. Despite putting the effort in, and even having a team compete, they still are a loooong loooong way behind the BBC and you wish that they would stop making stupid comments or obscure comparisons.

Qel Calor - Caribbean es mucho caliente

Hola mi amigos

Well, I wont put all this entry in Spanish, but for those who do know a bit that was saying "wow what heat - the caribbean is very hot"

Arrived safe and sound, despite my Doncaster hotel being miles away from the Airport.

Here it is all hot and sticky weather, humid and wet ... just the kind
of thing to take my mind away from things back home.

Dont want to take up too much time on the hotels only laptop, so here I will leave it, except that its nice and friendly so far.

Adios mi amigos con besos y abrazos

Glasgow & Loch Ness

The rest of day two was alot better than I could ever have expected.

I met up with a new friend who offered to take me around and show me a few sights and sounds of Glasgow.

Shopping, rock music pub, cinema, restaurant and tattoo parlour were all the places which we visited for a day the likes of which i will not soon forget.

The more I wandered around the more that I found that Glasgows soul was not non-existant but far more subtle than I first expected.

There were no tartan kilt wearing men or drunken louts hanging around in bars or having bad harmony singing contests at the top of their voices. Russ Abbott has done them a great disservice in his comedy show of yester-year.

The prices of everyday things were reasonable priced regardless of this being a major city.

Back in the hotel it was a one more quiet night when I went to bed at about midnight, and gone were all my big bets - so no more dreaming of riches galore. The three world cup results had officially killed off all my chances of winning more than what I put in.

The next morning I arrived early to be at the coach pickup point for the trip to the Highlands and Loch Ness. It was very low key and unassuming but the trip did have about a dozen or so of people from all around the world.

Although I did have enough confidence to sit next to a girl that
caught my eye from the get go, as it did often stop at places for a stretch-your-legs break, it gave me a chance to open up conversation and it turned out she was a delightful girl from the french city of Quebec, Canada.

Plenty of towns with unbronouncable names come and gone, and I learned that "Inver" means in the mouth of the river ... so Inverness is the town in the mouth of the River Ness.

The other part of the coach tour was listening to a running commentary in any language you wanted. I did try some in Spanish, but it was just too fast and too obscure to understand. When I switched ot English I realised why, as it was all about the many bloody massacres and murders that fill the Scottish highland historical timeline.

<<Hardly the kind of thing you would learn about in the basic spanish phrasebook, ha ha.>>

Also a few songs and their origins, like "Take the High Road" or "Donald Wheres Your Trousers" broke up the hours of driving. The trip was a 450 miles round trip.

The only thing that upset me a bit on the journey, was that the roads were all tree lines on both sides and so it was almost impossible to take any photos from the coach window as we drove by, without just getting a blur of green.

Touchdown in Glasgow

Touchdown in Glasgow Prestwick Airport and my first thooughts were, wow ... no customs.

I'm not sure cos of if it is not an major airport or anything, but when I got off the plane there were no places to check through, no baggage reclaim desks, just a small warehouse size building where we got off and after going round some ramped stairs right into the main ( only ) terminal.

"Welcome to Glasgow" ... erm, indeed.

The airline pilot told us that it was 14 degrees outside, so much
lower thatn london, no surprise. Typically as I wandered around the terminal I overheard a few saying that it was gloriously sunny yesterday, always the way eh!

It was nice to see a few soveneir shops where I could grab a t-shirt, plus the obligatory keyring and thimble for the peeps back home ( and
they know who they are ). Shame I couldn't find any pigs!!!

<< .. This keyboard is really naff, and in order to save time I have
given up trying to spell things right as almost every other key is hot wired into a few others and I've yet to complete a sentence without a few mistakes that are not of my own making .. >>

Glasgow city does not seem to have a soul as other towns have. This is not surprising since everyone who knows Scotland has told me to go to Edinburgh and not the capital, but this for me is nto the way I do things.

Although the true country can only be seen through its art, its people, its history and its geography is the capital city if so removed from the rest of the country then this in itself says something about the place.

I had to struggle to find any kilt maker shops, and only in my own hotel have I seen anyone wearing them. The street, even the main
shopping streets, are nowhere near as busy as the ones in london and this makes the side streets look almost deserted by comparison.

The McDonald in the centre of town had nothing on the menu to suggest a more scottish flavour (like a mcmcdonald burger, lol) but they certainly did know how to make a strawberry milk shake.

The only thing that angers me a little is that I deliberately walked in and stayed meters away from the counter to decide on what I wanted to eat, yet their staff still shouted over to me to come over and order. What kind of morons are they? If i am ignoring them and still
staring up after only walking in for a few seconds it is clear that I am not yet ready to order, so why hassle me!

There were plenty of bars and restaurants showing big tv screens to watch the football, which is a bit weird since they are not in the finals and also refuse to support england in their efforts.

I had a few bets which all got blown out when the evenings games were played. It truly is a mugs game, betting, as even with trying to
spread the bets over as many different results as possible the first three still managed to have results which were so random that all hopes of a big accumulator win were dashed before even half the results were in.

I mean, when was the last time in a world cup finals game where you saw 3 red cards in one match !!!

My hotel is a bit away from the town centre and up a bit of a hill. The rooms are basic but clean and only the tiredness of my flight over made me not want to go out and explore more.

The first day was just spend relaxing and dozing, plus cursing the Yanks and the Ghanaians.

The second day started with a clear head and nice scottish breakfast, which was almost identical to an english breakfast. I was expecting porridge oats, haggis or at least black pudding but nothing more than
a standard bacon, eggs, tomatoe and an ommlete!

Its a cold and drizzly day today, so with my big trip to loch ness tomorrow, I am just going to do more relaxing. Glasgow seems to be almost shut down on a Sunday, so not much else to do.

The waitress in this coffee internet cafe made me a wonderful hot chocolate and spent ages on the pretting it up with whipped cream and
then dusting it with coco powder. If only she had the brains to NOT put a lid on it afterwards, and now its all stuck to the underside of the lid. Scottish brains eh, cant beat them.