In August/Sept, I went on a work trip to San Francisco Bay Area, to work in our companies product development team. It was a pretty good experience, but 2 weeks really isn’t enough. On the way, there was a few flight stuff-ups which resulted in me spending the night in Washington D.C. So I made the most of it by doing some site-seeing. I saw the White House, Capitol Building, Abraham Lincoln Memorial, George Washington Memorial, Thomas Jefferson Memorial, and some others that I just can’t remember. Anyway you can check my washington photos out here on flickr.

So then I finally got to San Francisco, and stayed about 30 minutes out down at Redwood Shores. Heres some photos of our headquarters and of the area. From there I worked by day, and checked the area out by night and weekend. I stayed in the Hilton in San Francisco city on the weekend. I saw Santa Cruz, Napa Valley, Mavericks (although there were no waves), Half Moon Bay, and probably some other things that I’ve forgotten by now! You can check out photos from San Francisco here on flickr.

So since I was heading that way back to London, I decided to take a trip to Denver to stay with my Aunty and Uncle, Niel and Alice. They live in Golden which is just in the Rocky Mountains. So that was a chilled out few days, with one exception, the big mountain climb. Mick and I decided to climb Mt Bierstadt which is about 14000 Feet. To get an idea of how high this is: Denver is about 5000 feet (1 mile above sea level), Niel and Alices place is about 7000 feet. For Mt Bierstadt you start at about 11000 ft, and go up to 14000 ft. Thats 4.26 Kilometres above sea level! So it took us about 2 hours to reach the summit. Every few steps you are really tired and you need to rest. Eventually we got there, and the view was amazing. At the top, you are very dizzy. After signing the register, taking some photos and videos etc (see below), we took a 1 hr walk back to the car. Both of us were feeling like absolute crap at this stage! Probably some form of altitude sickness or something.

The next day, I took a trip to Vail (ski resort for millionaiires) to check it out. It’s a really nice town but theres no snow in summer. Would love to go back one day in winter.

So that was the trip over, and it was time to head back to the UK for the move to London, which I’ll write about in the next post! Bye bye USA.

Driving across Golden Gate Bridge:

And… driving down the worlds most crooked street, Lombard Street.

And … Riding the famous Cable Cars. This vid is a bit jittery, its pretty hard to hang off the side of a moving cable car, with people moving all around, and take a steady video!!

• Stayed and worked in Leeds for a couple of weeks. Leeds is a cool city. Lots of old buildings, good restaurants and clubs. Shame I didn’t really know anyone out there!
• Have done bits and pieces of work around London. Getting to London from Reading is a major pain in the arse. The trains are packed, and the tube is HOT.
• I went to Munich, Germany for a training course! For those that don’t know, Munich is in southern Germany (Bavaria). Its famous for Oktoberfest. I truly love Bavarian food and beer!! Half roast duck was awesome.

So thats about it in point form. As for whats coming up, I’m going to USA (San Francisco) for 2 and a half weeks. I’m going to be working at company headquarters, which is in the Silicon Valley area. Its about time I got over there! Some work, some play. I’ll let you all know how it goes!

When you get frisked by security in German airports, you stay frisked …

I flew through Munich to Nice (Southern France), then onto the Mercure Country Club.. its a very cool place in the hills near Nice, Cannes and Antibes. I was there for a training course, but it felt more like a holiday!

When I got there I realised I had forgotten to charge my camera battery, and hadn’t brought the charger. I think the photos weren’t meant to be. More on this later.

Monday started at a lazy 1:30 pm where we met everyone, and had some presentations. Then we all boarded a bus to go to a seafood restaurant on the beach in Antibes.. this was the first of what was many many seafood dinners! Wasn’t long before we were craving red meat! One of our crew from work, a crazy russion guy, drank way too much and started acting quite the public nuisance. He didn’t show up at all Tuesday. Very poor form. Wednesday evening, a few of us went too Cannes, where we wandered down the beach, had dinner somewhere, then found a pub to watch the footy (soccer).

Friday it was time to leave Sophia Antipolis and head to Nice town, where I had booked a hostel. I checked into a 6-bedder there, but nobody was in the dorm. So I went down for a swim at the beach, and walked around the town looking to buy a battery or a charger. In the end I found a place to charge my battery for me. Excellent! I went back to the dorm, and found a couple of kiwi lads in there. We promptly went down the shop to get some drinks to play ‘drink poker’ in the common area. There I met another aussie guy from Melbourne who was in our room, and a few others from around Europe. After heaps of drinks we all went out and hit the town.

Saturday, waking up with a slight hangover (more tired really), me and Dave (the aussie from melb) decided to go to Monaco. We went there, and had a pretty cool day! We walked heaps of the famous F1 Grand Prix track, and through the tunnel. We went swimming out and took water photos of us with the city / mountains in the background. Some ladies thought we were crazy taking our camera in the water. I guess they eventually figured it was water proof and we weren’t that stupid!

Saturday night was back to the hostel, and more drinks with the same crew and some others that had joined. Then we all headed down the beach, where there was a big party but you had to be wearing all-white to get in. That was the last known whereabouts of my brand new $500 camera with all the awesome Monaco photos on it Was it lost, or was it stolen, I guess we’ll never know. A facebook group, ‘I lost my camera with all my photos whilst traveling‘ has since popped up in support of people like me. You can find it here. Cheers Skippy!

Sunday I spent the day down the beach, in the police station attempting to file a police report, walking around Nice old town and up the cliff to get an awesome view of the city. It would have made a great shot

Then I hit the airport to head home. Once there, I found that our companies travel agent had cancelled my flight. I had earlier called him to ask if I could change to an earlier flight and was first told yes, then told no. Don’t remember asking him to cancel my flight and leave me stranded? So with no chance of getting on the plane ( the previous flight had been canceled so the waiting list was 50 person long ), i attempted to book another flight which I ended up getting on British Airways. Lucky, as I had to be back to London by the morning to get my flight to Leeds. Which I actually missed But thats another story and you’re probably bored by now.

I guess I’ll have to go back to France and get some more photos!

Check out the video sequence which sums up the day.

1. Starting off… I suck

2. Pulling my head in, and making the call

3. Nailing it

My first stuff-up was bound to happen. I had been out pub-crawling around London Bridge area, and since I was still recovering from the heavy night before, I pulled the pin and decided to go home. So I got on the tube to Paddington, then on the 11:30pm train to Reading. When the train left I set my alarm for 20 minutes because I knew it takes about 25 minutes to get to Reading. Next thing I know, I woke up and the train had stopped at a town named Swindon. Too far. So I got out, and was then informed by the helpful train station people that there were no trains going back to Reading that night, and the next one was 8am in the morning. Its times like these when you really realise that you are a LONG way from home (perth, australia) …

I went for a walk around town looking for a hostel to camp at, and found none. I found some hotels but none had free rooms. Then I found the clubbing area which was spewing drunk lads and ladies into the streets. Eventually I found a bus station that had a service to Heathrow (via reading), leaving at 3:30 am. So 3 hours to wait, I wandered the streets a bit, and feared for my life because of all the drunks around. I saw 2 fights, and several women crying on the street. Sounds like a quality place huh.

So eventually I went back to the bus station and proceeded to freeze my ass off for 2 hours until the bus came. Yes I’m a dumb aussie and didn’t have enough clothing on. I’m just glad I decided to bring my jumper with me when I went to London that day, but it still wasnt enough! The bus dropped me on the outskirts of Reading around 4 or 4:30 AM. At that point I realised I didn’t know the number to call taxis here, so I started walking. About 1 hour later I crawled into bed, about 5 1/2 hours later than it should have been, and passed out

Well I’m here in the UK… and its a long time since the last update!

I finished up work in Australia, ran around like mad trying to organise myself, but I was slightly distracted by the good surf in my last week at home). Then I boarded Singapore Airlines to Singapore, then boarded an A380 (the largest passenger plane in the world) for the trip to London.

Since we stopped over in Singapore, I picked up a bottle of Bombay Sapphire (bombay duck according to fielder!) and a new Olympus shockproof / waterproof camera, a 1030 SW.

Then it was onto an A380 which are the largest passenger aeroplanes in the world. I believe Singapore Airlines are the only ones to have them yet, but I could be wrong there. The flight was fairly uneventful, just long and uncomfortable! The A380’s have a really cool entertainment system which I think is based on Mythtv or windows media center, or something like that. There was about 108 on-demand movies to choose from! I had heard Singapore Airlines was the best airline in the world but I think Thai Airways kicks its ass in the food department.

So I arrived in London at 5:30 AM, and quickly found myself a coffee as I was slightly struggling. I was being picked up by Gus who is a new colleague of mine, and who I am currently staying with. Gus picked me up, and we headed off to Reading. Gus is into paragliding and was heading out that day. Even though I was seriously jetlagged I decided to go check out the paragliding. It looks pretty cool, and I think I’ll give it a go one day soon.

Check out these photos on flickr.

Saturday night, while even more severely jetlagged, we went for a bike ride so Gus could show me around town. I ran into Mike from Perth on the street, who is working over here. We ended up going to the Hop Leaf pub for a few pints. I had a second wind! Eventually I got to bed around midnight, absolutely exhausted, and passed out.

Sunday I met up with a friend in London, and we went to Hampstead Heath park since it was a nice day. Drinking Fosters in the park, awesome. People were swimming in the pond there but it looked pretty dirty to me.

Monday I started work. I’ve got a new Nokia E51 phone, and a Dell Latitude D630 laptop. Finally I’ve got a dual-core. The last few days have been spent getting myself set up on the systems here and trying to organise stuff like bank accounts.

Work is looking a bit quiet until I get onto a project. No idea where that might be!

Well thats it for now.. More to come soon!

It is a novel written in first person. He was a prisoner in a max-security prison in Australia, and managed to escape and get to India where he lived for 10 years in Bombay. While there he did some crazy and amazing stuff. I believe most of the experiences he describes are true although he has invented the characters and dialogs.

The book has made me want to go back to India. I went there in 2006 for 1 week for work.

I recommend this book to anyone and everyone.

His website is: http://www.shantaram.com/ and you can read more about him at wikipedia.

Charlie

We left Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and took a bus to Chau Doc, where we stayed a night. From there, we were supposed to be on the fast boat to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. We got on the slow boat. It took 3 hours to get to the Cambodia border. Then we waited about 4 hours waiting for another boat to pick us up. Then that boat took many more hours and finally we got a bus into Phnom Penh. We were originally supposed to arrive at 2pm but we arrived about 8:30 pm or so.

In Phnom Penh we saw several museums, and the killing fields. Its a very sad place. Then we went to some dodgey army barracks and Skippy fired an AK. At this place you could throw hand grenades for $35 US or fire a rocket launcher for $200 US. It was so dodgey.

From Phnom Penh we flew to Siem Reap where unfortunately i was very sick We spent two days exploring the temples of Angkor Wat. They are truly amazing but you get a bit bored of temples after two days. I was attacked by a monkey but i managed to kick it in mid air as it launched at me.

From Siem Reap we flew to Bangkok where we took an overnight train to Surat Thani, then a ferry to Ko Panghan for some party time! We stayed at Dew Shore bungalow which was really cool. Here we met the girls, Wados, and the Roarster!

The highlight of Ko Phangan was the full moon party on xmas eve at haad rin beach. It was the biggest and coolest party I’ve ever been. Lots of wierd stuff happening. Just google it.

The other highlight was scuba diving at Sail Rock, with our space cadet instructor Herman the German. He lost us all in the first few minutes. Long story. The diving at sail rock was excellent. Lots of coral / fish life, and the water was so clear. The only downside was that there were so many divers from different boats, it was hard to find your own people!

From Ko Phangan we cheesed it over to Ko Samui for some relaxy time. At this point Sarah joined us. We really didn’t achieve much here, just chilled out and drank lots of big Changs. New Years eve was awesome.. spent on the beach drinking cheap cocktails, shooting off lanterns and fireworks, then dancing it up at green mango club.

From Samui it was off to bangkok for the final part of the trip. We didnt really achieve much here except seeing some entertaining shows and eating lots of Phad Thai! Amber and I did a cooking course which was really cool.

Well then it was home time. The flight was long and somebody was vomiting. Excellent. I really didnt want to go home. I love SE Asia!

Back to the real world..

First day at work, and I’m sent to Korea that afternoon. Great. Not even 24 hours at home I hope my vegetable patch survives.

We started in Bangkok for a night. Then we heading into Laos, where we started in Vientiane, then headed to Vang Vieng, which was just awesome. Then it was back to Vientiane and a flight into Hanoi. From Hanoi we went to Halong Bay, and Cat Bah Island. From Hanoi, we took an overnight train to Hoi An, and spent a few days there. Then we flew to Saigon.

Right now we are about to go check out the wave pool. Then tomorrow we head off to Chau Doc then into Cambodia, where we will first go to Phnom Penh then into Siem Reap. After that, its party time in Ko Phangan and Ko Samui.

Heres some highlights from the trip so far:

• Eating food / drinking at the open restaurants on the Mekong River in Vientiane, Laos
• Tubing down the river in Vang Vieng, Laos. Stopping at Bars along the way, and swinging on flying foxes.
• Beerlao
• Staying overnight on the boat in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, and staying on Cat Bah Island. We had a great bunch of people on this tour and had a wicked time!
• The snake restaurant in Le Mat, Hanoi. They killed the snake in front of us, then we drank the blood mixed with rice wine, and bile mixed with rice wine. Then they prepared the snake in many different ways.
• Hanging out in Hoi An, with its ancient streets and red lanterns at night. So cool.
• Shopping in Hoi An. Lots of Tiger singlets!
• Crawling through the Cu Chi Tunnels near Saigon (Ho Chi Min City).
• Firing an AK-47! Only 5 rounds, but it was worth it.

More updates as soon as possible!

Charlie