tantramar

Language Leg-ups

Teeny little tip here. 

When in China get your hotel or whoever to give you a wedge of these 'take me to' cards. Taxi drivers speak no English and pointing at things in books doesn't get you that far either. These cards are gold dust.

Magnetic Travel

I think the bus takes about 45 minutes, the train takes 8 minutes. Not really a choice is it! I was recently in Shanghai and of course I was pretty keen to take the Maglev train, being as it's the only commercial one in the world. Maglev trains are pretty cool. The fastest speed recorded in China for this one was 501 km/h (311 mph). Pretty damn quick.

MAGLEV, or magnetic levitation, is a system of transportation that suspends, guides and propels vehicles, predominantly trains, using levitation from a very large number of magnets for lift and propulsion. The technology has the potential to exceed 4000 mph (6437 km/h).

I only got to travel at 300km/h. Beggars can't be choosers.

As you can see, at 300km/h a few little animals didn't move out of the way fast enough.

St Catherine's Monastery

I was in Egypt over Christmas and although I mostly just swam in the sea looking at the fish and coral I did take a little trip up to St Catherine's Monastery.

The place has some serious history being one of the oldest functioning Christian monasteries in the world. It's at the foot of Mount Sinai, yup the place where Moses came down with the ten commandments. The (alleged) burning bush is there too (pictured left) although I think it's just a cutting now!

The place is stupidly hard to access, in the middle of the desert. It took bloody ages to get there. This makes it all the more impressive realising how hard it must have been to undertake building it, in the 6th Century!

Apparently the scientific thinking about the burning bush was that it was natural gas escaping from the ground that had caught alight. That's why the fire never went out. Science can solve all questions don't you know, well most of them.

There's a Flickr set here if you want to see more pictures.

Iberia

Lessons in Flying 1 – Don’t fly Iberia. Damn they were rubbish. It was like going back to 1985.
To get to Costa Rica I had to fly to Madrid, change and then fly to Guatemala where we sat on the runway for an hour and half and then on to San Jose in Costa Rica. The main section of the flight is something like 12 hours and you don’t get a TV in the seat in front or any choice of entertainment. Every time they landed, taxied or sat on a runway they played two songs over and over. One I think was Enigma and the other was a bad cover of The Rolling Stones track ‘As Tears Go By’. Easily the worst flight of my life. Avoid Iberia at all costs.

Ryan’s Baggies

I think everyone agrees that flying Ryan Air sucks but sometimes when they give you gin in a bag it’s bearable. Honestly, gin in a bag!

Tips On Flying

Fly Emirates, they are brilliant. All the drinks are free in economy – who does that? There is a sweet controller in the back of the seat in front of you. With it you can play computer games, make phones calls (if you’re rich) and select films (100+ titles) to watch whenever you like. You can also pause the films to take that all so essential toilet brake after nine Gin & Tonics. They also give you these cute stickers to put on your seat to inform the cabin crew of your feeding requirements. I‘ve never had such good service on a 7hr flight.

Not Again

OK, I’m willing to concede to the fact that the shower is a good way of ‘cleaning’ yourself. But seriously, a jug? That’s a lousy idea, plus you still need towels. Who wants to walk round damp for hours? That would be nasty. This was in a Pakistani restaurant in Kamara in Dubai. Good food, bad toilets.

Warm Welcome In Dubai

So I come into my hotel room in Dubai and the TV is on – presumably left on by housekeeping. This is on the screen – I’m not even kidding. The bell hop rushed to turn it off but I stopped him and they do what you say here, which is nice.

Dubiously in Dubai

I’m off to Dubai today, the land of sand and excess spending. I don’t know when it was ever called Dubayy, but this globe is about 25 years old and some of the countries on it don’t even exist any more.

Bag That Bag

When flying, my biggest worry is not the plane coming down, but my luggage going to Honolulu, when I'm not. So when I saw my bag in the middle on the tarmac recently with not a baggage car in sight, I was you could say, a little concerned, thankfully though, everything turned out sunny in the end.

The Up North Trip

I recently went on a short trip to Edinburgh where I found some goodies, which I'll be displaying over the next few days. But to start with here is a Scottie dog lying on some tartan. You couldn't stage it better.