The Wanderings of busman7

Being somewhat knowledgeable on busing, having spent 25 yrs in the industry, it was interesting traveling in different countries buses.

Note that in Europe I have only ridden on a few shuttle & city buses so any comments are not about buses there. Have yet to make it to South America or Africa.

There is normally 6 classes of inter-city buses in use the world over.

1) the Luxury Coach which is comparable to 1st class airline seating & service, used on both, line runs & charter service Found in Mexico, Central America & SE Asia. Have never seen it in Canada, US or Australia.

2) Coach found the world over, even in the poorest nations used by tourists & wealthy locals.

3) older coaches usually with “tourist bus” written on them but used mainly by middle class locals & a few back packers. These are a pretty good & cheap way to travel & meet local people on day trips, not recommended for overnight travel.

4) the local intercity bus can be old coaches, city buses in Asia or American school buses in CA. These are basic but cheap transportation carrying passengers, goods & chickens (hence the name chicken bus)

5) trucks, vans & pickups that fill in the needs for transportation to outlying areas that the buses don’t service or in addition to city buses.

Used the luxury bus a couple times in Mexico when I first started my trip but soon learned there were less costly alternatives out there that were nearly as good, of course they didn’t come with the A/C waiting room & free toilets.

For any overnight travel or even a long days travel your regular coach is the best bet with A/C & reclining seats they are a pretty comfortable way to travel. A bit more expensive than the lower classes but nothing that’s going to break the bank.

WARNING!!! Some sadist came up with the idea of the sleeper bus in which you find 2 levels of pens in which you can NOT stand or even sit up properly, there is barely room to lie down & unless traveling with a partner they give a whole new meaning to get to know your neighbor. Don’t want to even think what would happen if one  was involved in a serious accident. These monstrosities are best avoided like the plague!!

Your “tourist” bus can make for some interesting travel as they tend to have no seating capacity, there is always room for one more, so there are stools & make shift seats in the aisles. They also tend to stop at the cheaper roadside restaurants (not a bad thing), eat what the locals do & soon soon any with a smattering of English will be practicing it on you, cool. However night time toilet breaks tend to be roadside with women to the left, men to the right. The 38 hr trip from Delhi to Kathmandu, while an experience is NOT recommended nor the overnight run from Vientiane to Hue, which carries more freight than people but hey they are survivable.

Your local buses are the cheapest, most interesting, most crowded, never get filled as there’s always room for 2 more. Normally in CA a few rear seats are removed to allow easy access for larger items, like a vendor taking his helado (ice cream) cart to the next town & selling some of his wares during the trip. Don’t have to worry about getting the wrong bus as in addition to the sign on the bus the drivers helper/fare collector always announces the destination at every stop & also at the markets where bus changes are made meets all incoming buses & even helps you with your bags.

When traveling past the bus routes or even on some busy routes an even cheaper, option is 2 ton truck or pickup with benches for passengers along the sides with freight in the middle which run on a loose schedule. Although the benches can be hard, the natural A/C always works great, just hope there are no dirt roads on the route as huge amounts of dust get mixed in with the A/C but hey you wanted to experience life as the locals live it!

You also find Collectivos, vans or pickups which leave when full.

6) the shuttle van, normally 12-15 passenger vans that due airport shuttles, tourist trips to out of the way places or between cities where bus service is erratic. The major problem with these is that when the manufacturer set the seating he failed to consider that they would be used to transport back packers with their packs but the operator figures it holds 12 so he sells 12 tickets which makes things a tad crowded. Except for airport trips I have learned they are best avoided. Also I believe that in Thailand a person must prove he’s crazy before he’s hired & they’re best avoided all together.

My favorite way to travel is now by boat/ship, didn’t care for it at the start but am now a convert. I don’t mean cruise ship, have seen too many of the sheep from them at the park in Antigua where they have been let loose from the flock for 1/2 hr to get their picture taken by the fountain. I mean ships that transport real people from point A to B.

Ferries are a really cool way to travel, especially overnight, just take your own food with you as they make up for the relatively cheap fare but make their profit on  the obscene food prices. Then you have the river boats from which you get an entirely different perspective of the country. Two trips really stand out, the 2 day slow boat down the Mekong from Huai Kai to Luang Prabang in Laos, tip sit in the back on the benches, to meet more people.

The second which Lonely Planet does it’s readers a great disservice in recommending they don’t take it (as if the the whole $2.40 the government receives in tax is going to make a difference), it also takes hard cash away from the vendors who sell food on board! Is the slow boat down the Ayeyarwady River from Mandalay to Bagan which takes you past villages & scenes straight out of Kipling’s time & was a highlight of the trip.

The 3 day trip through the Mekong Delta from Saigon to Phnom Penh was also well worth the money & beat the heck out any road trip by bus.

Although my Australia trip was on the whole a disappointment, The 2 nights on The Spirit of Tasmania wasn’t. it turned out to be one of the highlights of that adventure, as did the tiny portion of Tasmania I got to see.

My recommendation is that time permitting make use of ships, trains or buses over planes whenever possible as looking at clouds from 30,000-40,000 ft gets monotonous after awhile, like about 5 minutes!

This month, shall get to compare flying to Alaska to returning by ferry, stay tuned.

Have traveled on numerous variations of the usual planes, trains, buses & automobiles, horse drawn carriages, ships, ferries & other sorts of watercraft. To the not so usual hot air balloons, double decker buses, London black cabs, elephants, camels & dugouts.

When it comes to planes Greenland Air’s Airbus on the route from Greenland to Copenhagen is the economy class hands down winner, by a country mile over any airline I have flown. They haven’t heard of “cattle car” seating which is prevalent on most others. The food, which would put some restaurants to shame, is impressive, also an economy class winner in the industry with top notch service.

Their Dash 7’s on the local short hauls are also good with excellent flight crews. The only draw back is they’re a tad expensive but one normally gets what they pay for when it comes to airlines. The notable exceptions being Qantas & Air Canada both of which are on my, NO fly, avoid like the plague list.

JAL which still uses all female stewardesses instead of the other “politically correct” airlines with their mixed crew of “flight attendants” (at least on the NRT-DEL run) seems a touch above the other carriers I have flown this trip with AA, BA & LAN being in the middle rank with a tad more leg room, competent, courteous flight crews, airport check in & flight centre personnel. Then comes Cebu Pacific, Air China, Air Asia & Thai air who have good personal but whose seating falls into the “cattle car” class.

Finally down at the bottom you have Qantas whose SIN-PER flight was tolerable but the best thing that can be said about their “cattle car” affiliates, including Jetstar (who refused to check my bag through) is that by some miracle the planes didn’t fall out of the sky!

Could write a book about my train travels during the past 10 months but shall just give a quick overview here. As anyone following this blog knows, I have travelled by train in England from Newcastle to Birmingham, EXPENSIVE, then a cheap (tad under 20 GBP) from Birmingham to London & return, both trips fine.

I then traveled from Oslo to Vladivostok (except for a few miles on the Sweden/Finland border where there is no train but your ticket covers the bus), via St Petersburg (awesome city) & Moscow (hmmm) with a jog down to Ulan-Bator (wish I’d had 3 weeks instead of 3 days). An absolutely fantastic trip, I highly recommend, in full or any part.

Next was Lhasa to Beijing, a 2 day jaunt from the highest station in the world to a not so nice, heavily polluted city with very few redeeming features, on a train using sleeper cars, built by the Canadian firm Bombardier. The worst designed that I have traveled in but don’t if the Canadians or Chinese were responsible for that blunder, which took away from an otherwise fine experience.

Trip from Hue to HCMC (Saigon) full day + night in a coach seat was nice as was the day trip on “Railcar” from Bangkok to Chaing-Mai, also the hop from Bangkok to Surat Thani. All good trips, interesting with no problems & coach seat with the exception of the 2nd class non A/C sleeper from Bangkok to Surat Thani.

More interesting was the day time run from Yangon to Mandalay followed by the amazing hop, in the mountains, from Hspaw to Pyin U Lwin in Myanmar. The “Jungle Line” from Gemas to Kota Bharu Malaysia is also pretty cool, although not the “incredible” trip Lonely Planet makes it out to be. Also when they sell you the ticket in KL & tell you the train from Gemas doesn’t go all the way to Kota Bharu but you have to change, do NOT believe them as it merely stops for 20 min about 1/2 way, changes numbers, then carries on. Guess nobody told the KL ticket sellers that!

Now for the fun part. To get to Thailand by train from Kota Bharu Malaysia it is necessary to take a taxi to the border crossing at Sungai Kolok then a motorcycle taxi to the station. Of course if you had believed Lonely Planet or the Canadian governments web site you never would have taken the trip anyway as you would have been afraid of tripping over all the heads rolling down the street. Fortunately there is a voice of reason from “the man in seat 61” website that puts the problem in perspective, if you stay around long enough you might possibly see some violence but to just pass through it’s extremely unlikely. However it was interesting traveling on a train patrolled by soldiers in body armor & passing stations with sandbag bunkers.

At Hat Yai the soldiers faded away. Now I had spent the night in Hat Yai a week previously, not knowing how (supposedly) dangerous (at least according to our illustrious Canadian government), as the multitude of Chinese tourists there for the Chinese New Years holiday sure weren’t concerned & it actually seemed safer to me than south Oshawa in the evening. Oh well what do myself + a few thousand Chinese that were there know, compared to the Canadian simple serpent, that has likely never ventured away from his home province, that wrote the advisory?? Bottom line was that after an enjoyable, overnight train ride in coach (no sleepers when I checked in but 2 min before we left one became available for an extra 400 Baht, NO way Jose am I paying 400 Baht for a 2nd class sleeper berth), especially when coach was only 600 Baht, I arrived in Bangkok without incident!

Another fabulous train trip is the, 3rd class only trip from Bangkok’s Thonburri Station to Kanchanaburi, the home of The Bridge over the River Kwai. A 3 hr ride for a measly 100 Baht. If you go on to Namtok you actually cross the bridge, if not you can take a tourist train for 20 Baht on a 20 min ride across +  a couple miles down the line. Have been there 3 times & done it both ways on both trains + walked across. If you should find yourself in the area make sure to stop in at “The Red Neck” bar, on the tourist strip by the river & say Hi to Jimmy & the boys. Should really spend a night in Namtok but I didn’t know that at the time & had to get back to Bangkok. Oh yeah make sure to visit the Hell Fire Pass museum & monument, which was erected by the Australian government, on the old railway line in the area. Can also reach Hell Fire Pass via local bus  from town. Also there is a very good museum on the “Death Railway” in Kanchanaburi, right across from the war memorial cemetery.

Only one line in Borneo & it was closed for repairs when I was there. However traveled from Jakarta, where you can see locals with no money who can ride on the roof of the electric trains for free, free but scary, to Banyuwangi (Manyar  hotel good + cheap near ferry docks) & the ferry to Bali. It’s a 2 day trip with an overnight stop & train change in Surabaya. You also get an idea of just how poor the country is when you see the rice farmers harvesting the crop with sickles & threshing it by hand, hadn’t seen that since Myanmar. That said the railway & equipment are in good shape & had no problems other than the schedule is just there for looks & trains arrive when they arrive, no big deal for a traveler, don’t think locals pay much attention to the clock either. The second leg through the coastal hills was cool.

Took the Qantas (YECH) bird from Singapore to OZ & a cross continent (Island depending on who you listen to) on the Indian Pacific + north from Adelaide on the legendary (overrated) Ghan to Alice Springs, red seats full for the leg to Darwin & finally the Overland, Adelaide to Melbourne (where I had dealings with the Qantas rep from HELL!!

Bought a backpacker rail pass for the Great Southern network which was a great deal for coach seats but sleepers were out of the question at $300/night DUH talk about rip-off!!

Biggest scam I heard was the $3,000.00 cost of a platinum ticket on the Ghan for the 2 day trip from Adelaide to Darwin! That’s more than The Orient  Express charges for the 2 days from Singapore to Bangkok. Sorry OZ but the Ghan isn’t in the same league as The Orient Express, not by a country mile.

Trains were OK, service not bad but comes with a simple serpent attitude of not really caring, all in all not impressive. Glad I took the trips but they don’t measure up to 3rd world/emerging nation, standards!

New Zealand was another matter with my experience on the Overlander being bad from the get-go, when you had to wrestle your luggage down 2 escalators then walk the length of the platform to check it. NOT an impressive start to a trip fraught with problems brought on by poor maintenance. That said the train crew was great. Once on the south island the train performance was good & the crews still great, scenery was also much better.

The worst, by far, trip was on Euro rail from Copenhagen to Amsterdam! There was a night sleeper on the run but what’s the point of a train journey in a new country in the dark? So chose to do it during the day which meant 6 train changes with NO luggage check, have to keep it with you which really adds to the fun when there are no seats, chicken bus Euro style. Absolutely ridiculous in supposed  first world countries!

Have also traveled from Montreal to Edmonton, many snows ago when the line was still operated by CN & done a couple short jaunts on Amtrak in the US.

Some trips were more scenic, others like the Trans-Siberian were real eye openers into the countries visited & showed how we have been misled by our governments & media about how things really are. Never in my wildest dreams would have thought Siberia would be home to major cities & enormous tracts of farm land or  the entire 7 day trip would be on a dual track, electrified line or that Indonesia would be utilizing such antiquated farming practices.

With the exception of the day from hell on Euro rail, all were enjoyable, enlightening & well worth the money. Hard to pick a best but the run from Hspaw to Pyin U Lwin through the mountains of Myanmar tops my list!

Still to come is a rail trip from Anchorage to Fairbanks in Alaska.

During my 11 month sojourn I have slept in all sorts of accommodations & on a variety of conveyances running the gamut from Hostel dorm rooms to 4* Hotels & even a Bangkok apartment, from train sleeper berths to economy class on Pelni ships, from the dreaded sleeper bus to seats in a variety of classes of planes, trains, buses & ferries.

Although I have stayed in some nice & expensive hotels like the Hotel Hans Egebe in Nuuk which only cost $352.00/night or the Beijing Novotel for a mere $118.00/night, they were not my favorites. Not sure what I will have to say about the Motel 6, I just booked in Anchorage for the insane price of $142.00/night but OMG $142 for a Motel 6 comes to mind!!

So from amongst the hodge-podge of hostels, hotels, motels, resorts, camps & bungalows, my trip favorite & cheapest at $5.00/night, is the Thoun Sunset Bungalows at Don Det, in the Si Phan Don (Four Thousand Islands) archipelago of the Mekong River, where I could relax, with a cool one, on the veranda overlooking the Mekong at sunset. Life was good there for 6 days & proved that one can be truly happy in a bungalow on stilts with a squat toilet, cold water shower & the generator was only turned on for about 4 hrs from dusk until 10-11 in the evening (depending on the customers in the restaurant/bar.

#2 was the Ger Camp Timari in a national park 2-3 hrs outside Ulan-Bator Mongolia, where for the 2nd time on the trip I experienced utter silence (1st was in the Illusiat Ice Fjord in Greenland). Here we stayed in a Mongolian Ger heated by a wood stove, so the evening was nice & toasty but a tad chilly in the morning getting dressed for the walk to the communal toilets. However looking out over the desert, at the star filled evening sky, in complete silence, was an awesome experience!

#3 was the couple days spent at the Chitawin Lodge just outside the Chitawin National Park in the Nepalese Jungle, yes Nepal is more than Mt Everest & highland trekking. Another basic accommodation but the early morning  was spent floating down the river in a dugout in search of crocodiles & other jungle critters, followed by a shore hike to an elephant breeding farm. The afternoon brought an elephant ride in search of the elusive rhino, which we did spot along with the unusual sighting of a sloth bear. Again a quiet evening listening to the noises of a jungle night.

#4 would be my home stay (2nd time) with same family in Antigua Guatemala, 500Q ($65)/week meals included, for an upstairs room at the back of the courtyard where I can see Volcan Fuego in the distance. Quiet, not bad food & only a short stroll to Parque Central, the market etc.

#5 is a toss up between 2 very different hostels, each with it’s own special charm. El Roble in El Salvador, only a 10 min walk from the deserted Playa Diego, run by a family that you become a part of for your stay & the Motherland Inn 2 in Yangon where there is a homey atmosphere, friendly staff & guests who congregate at the outside tables to compare notes where to go next & what to do. Again cheap rooms with a good free breakfast served from 5 am if you have an early plane, train or bus.

#6 the Luna Rossa beachfront hotel on Boracay Island Philippines where Mario, the Italian owner & his wife also treat you like one of the family. Free internet, Food a bit pricey but good, however there is a Mexican bar next door with a more or less permanent happy hour & cheap eats. Just off the beach, a bit is a nice local place with super cheap breakfast. Up the beach is the rowdy & expensive night life & overpriced restaurants.

#7 takes us down under to a more expensive motel on Australia’s Gold Coast, the Tower Court Motel in Hervey Bay. Priced at $85 it’s cheap for the area especially considering that’s for a kitchenette unit, there’s a pool with ocean front across  the street, restaurants not too far away. The owner is a super guy who picks you up at the bus station & the tour operator to Fraser Island picks you up at the door.

#8 is half way around the world, the Stadion Hostel in Helsinki Finland, while not cheap at $55/night is good, clean & you meet lots of travelers, it’s also on the tram line making for cheap access to trains, attractions etc

#9 the City Hostel in Reykjavik Iceland is a new, popular place & at $35 for a dorm a fairly normal price, also the bus goes past the door & town pool a 2 min walk away. They sell reasonable food or cook your own. Super friendly & helpful staff & free wifi.

#10 is the Hotel So in Christchurch NZ at $88 is a bargain for the area, has everything you need, central location & free internet.

#11 back to OZ & the Brisbane City Back Packers hostel, only hostel in OZ with free internet, or so they claim, only one I stayed at anyway but no free breakfast or even coffee. Dorms in the $30+ range but privates at $105 a tad dear. however a central location, walk able to downtown, the transit centre, hop-on-off bus etc.

#12 another toss up between 2 Indonesian bungalow style motels, the Manyar in Banyuwangi at $22 & the Pulestis in Kalibukbuk at $11 both with free breaky, nice rooms & in town. Pulestis only a 3 min walk from the beach while Manyar is about the same & only 5 min from the ferry dock to Bali.

#13 the Hotel Palomestari in Kemi Lapland could be anywhere in northern Canada if it wasn’t for the labels on the bottles at the bar. Similar structure, similar typical northern customers. Weird!! but cool.

#14 The Grand Kartika in Pontianak Indonesia, where the equator runs through town. At $41 not a bad deal for a safe Navy owned hotel on the river & a short walk from the ship dock where I boarded for Jakarta. Good restaurant & even had a couple staff that spoke some English.

#15 Finally Bangkok & the 13 Coins Airport hotel with free internet, good food, COLD Tiger beer. An American manager + a super Indian customer relations person.

#16 last but not least comes the Delta Floating Hotel on the Mekong in Vietnam where we stayed the last night of our 3 day boat trip from Saigon to Cambodia. Price was included with tour but was different & pretty neat!

When it comes to sleeping while traveling, top marks would have to go to ferry cabins, followed by train sleeper compartments, all pretty much the same for comfort. Then would have to come the Pelni ship economy class, a bit hot but at least you can lie down & renting a mattress was only 50 cents + could stay on deck where it was cool until the other passengers were mostly asleep & you were tired enough to sleep through most anything, also there was a shower, so not really to bad for $13/night food & transport included.

Guess next would be the Ocean Recliner seats on The Spirit of Tasmania followed by train seats, 2nd class recliners that is. Think would have to give bus recliners the edge over economy airline seats & that’s normal planes. Bus is definitely better than airline “cattle car” seats.

Then comes the Asian version of intercity buses with non reclining seats that are closer together than school bus seats & they can be a challenge to try to get sleep in but are still superior to the dreaded sleeper buses which have to be the worlds worst ever invention!!

All in all it’s been an enlightening 11 months & goes to show for happiness, the simpler the better + way cheaper. My $5.00 bungalow with it’s porch overlooking the Mekong in Laos was by far superior to the overpriced hotel in Nuuk & $347.00 cheaper. Go figure LOL

1) Greenland

2) Iceland

3) Tibet

4) Nepal

5) Borneo  (including Brunei)

6) Guatemala

7) Myanmar

8) Laos

9) Malaysia

10) Indonesia

Runner-up Thailand

2nd runner-up Mongolia

No such list would be complete without the most disappointing, which were;

1) China

2) Costa Rica

3) Australia

My travel style runs the gamut from hostel dorms through B&B’s, home stays to the occasional pampering at a 4* hotel with the odd night spent in a seat on planes, trains, buses, ferries, now & then a shared ferry cabin or train compartment. Even a couple nights economy class on a Pelni ship.

Also I don’t stint on excursions that I really want to do like the great $250.00 AUS hot air balloon ride at Alice Springs which I considered well worth the money as opposed to the $250 + cost to go out in the middle of nowhere desert to see a big ole red rock, highlight of that trip was the singing dingo at a roadhouse a couple hrs out of The Alice.

My costs might not be typical but here they are;

1) Myanmar & Laos tied at           $23.00

2) Thailand                                   $24.00

3) Nepal                                        $32.00

4) Russia      (9 days on train)     $40.00

5) Cambodia                                $43.00

6) Vietnam                                   $48.00

6a) all Central America               $48.00

7) Philippines   (14 days Ocean front     $56.00

8) Indonesia **                          $59.00

9) Malaysia  **                           $75.00

10) Finland *                               $81.00

11) India                                     $82.00

12) Brunei **                             $99.00

* not including Euro rail Scandinavia pass

** all on the Island of Borneo—a must see!!

hasn’t changed much in my 13 month absence.

Bounded by the government offices to the north, the cathedral to the east, the magnificent Palico de Captaines y Generals on the south & banks , shops the cafe Condesa & El Portal (the best coffee in the world), Pargue Central is still as beautiful as ever or perhaps even more so as it’s the rainy season & everything is greener. Rain usually comes for a couple hours in the evening or overnight, in my week here have only had a couple short showers in the afternoon.

The park is the focal point of life in Antigua as it’s pretty much in the center of town & is traversed daily by students going to & returning from school, a place for locals to relax, shoe shine boys plying their trade, the carriages patiently awaiting tourists to tour the town & of course a center of commerce (illegal) for the indigenous vendors selling their trinkets to the multitude of tourists that flock there to take a picture of the famous fountain in the parks centre. It’s also the center for community events most every weekend.

Most importantly it’s the meeting place of the growing ex-pat community where every morning business is conducted, information exchanged & of course the worlds problems solved! The weekly ex-pat get together at the Cafe Condesa still takes place where those not frequenting the park on a daily basis plus any visitors meet.

There have been some subtle differences in town, with 4 of the ex-pat community having passed on, hotels, posidas, opening/closing or merely changing ownership & names. However the good teachers are still giving lessons in a different venue or privately. Seems to be more of a demand for English teachers, as is the case the world over, so job prospects look bright.

As I was walking around the south end of town the other day figured I would take a stroll past my old apartment, as one of my neighbors had mentioned that he was going to move out of his 2 bedroom into it when I left & I wondered if he might still be around. Low & behold, as I approached the building he came out with a big smile & a hola, after a bit of catching up we went to the corner cafe, for lunch & a cervaza, where the waiter recognized me. At that moment I realized I had truly come home & decided that (providing a job is available) I will make Antigua my home base & do my further travels from my little slice of paradise!

With that decision made it’s time to get serious about the job search so I have put my name on a couple sites, gotten a cell phone with an Antigua # & ordered business cards. CV was done in Bangkok so it’s merely adding my picture to it & that’s taken care of. The printer where I am getting my business cards done also gave me a lead on a local school employing English teachers what I gather does not now have any native English speakers on staff.

Hoping to get down to El Salvador for beach weekend the first of July with Darren, Seka & family at El Roble near Playa Diablo.

Then it’s North to Alaska on the 5th where I will get the train from Anchorage to Fairbanks followed by a bus & riverboat trip to Dawson City in the Yukon where another bus will take me through Whitehorse & Skagway to Juneau & the ferry to Bellingham Washington. Doing this part independently as cruise/tour prices are insane. Then bus or Amtrak to Portland for a meet with Chris from BootsNall.

While in Portland check on a cheap flight to Hawaii???

Then it’s on to Vancouver for a couple days then a cheap West Jet flight (all RTW segments used up) YVR-YYZ.

ps to my TEFL classmates in Bangkok I shall undoubtedly to my favorite city in the world & check in with you at some point!

It seems strange looking at an airline ticket & seeing your flight arrives at it’s destination 4 hrs before it departs but that’s just on paper & the strangeness of the reality takes a while to sink in.

Monday June 14 dawn you get up in the morning at the Hotel So, a hotel run on a concept so simple that it makes you wonder what took so long for someone to implement it. They simply asked people, younger, educated, business/tourist traveler, by the looks of the clientele.

The rooms are small but with an innovative design so they don’t look or feel cramped + they have a built in counter/desk, mini fridge, coffee maker, hairdryer, iron & free Wi-Fi or wired hi-speed  at a cost. Also there are laundry facilities available, gym, sauna & free use of computers if you didn’t bring your own. A virtual concierge/tourist info station, restaurant/bar with meals (for that part of the world) that can also be packaged to take to your room but no room or bell boy service.

Everything is operated as “green” as possible including FREE plug-in for charging your electric car.

After breakfast the super shuttle to the airport (that you booked the day before from the programmed lobby phone picks you up & you are driven out of the city past parks where the grass is white with frost on the 20 minute trip to the airport where you catch the 1hr 20 min flight to Auckland on Jetstar’s cattle car Airbus.

Arriving at Auckland’s domestic you pickup your bag, that they refused to check through (code share with the illustrious Qantas) & walk it over to the International terminal where the nice folks at Air New Zealand, providing the check in  services for LAN manage to check it through to Miami, then after a 4 hr layover at 16:40 you board a nearly full Airbus for the 10 hr 45 min flight to Santiago de Chile.

After dawn comes & goes once more you arrive 20 minutes early, to sun shining on the snowcapped mountains surrounding Santiago’s Art Mer airport, at 11:50 on the morning (once again) of June 14. After only a couple hr wait we board another LAN Airbus, 1/2 empty for the 1 hr 45 min jaunt to Buenos Aires.

5 hrs & supper at an airport restaurant with free Wi-Fi we board an American Airlines Boeing for the 8 hr 41 min ride, passing over Cuba at dawn of the third real life day but only the second colander day.

Then the fun begins with the Homeland Stupidity BS. First comes immigration, only transiting through the airport for hrs (Chile & Argentina never bothered with the BS) then get checked bag. Now had it been checked through would have only been a matter of walking it a couple hundred yards & giving it back again (kind of senseless exercise but it’s called Stupidity for a reason) however since it was checked the day (actually 2) before that was a no-no! Had to drag it to another concourse to recheck then 1/2 way back again to drop off through security again, never left the airport but well, you never know. Now since it’s good ole paranoid Y’all land it’s off wid de zapota’s (shoes) or off wid yore head (ain’t a free democratic country great??

Just about all the 3 hr layover is taken up with this nonsense, then we get to board another packed Boeing for the 2 hr 40 min zip, 9over Cuba again to Guate where I catch the 1 hr  shuttle to Antigua & home, shower, have lunch my old Spanish teacher  check out Parque Central where I find another Canadian from BC & catch up on some of the past years news.

Life is good!! 🙂

On the whole the New Zealanders that I have met both here & in OZ have been more open & friendlier than their Aussie counterparts. Only doing a brief sojourn through a bit of the country so not much to base my limited experiences on but shall pass on my feelings (which may not be typical) anyway.

Was not impressed with Auckland (a feeling confirmed by others I have met) & the first leg of the train journey was fraught with problems, while not really a hardship were unavoidable if proper procedures had been followed by maintenance. Have to give the train crew top marks for the way they handled the situation & an interesting side note is there was an inspector + a couple personnel from head office on board. Their reports should be interesting reading.

Ferry crossing to the south island was nice as was the, incident free, second leg of the very scenic train trip  which I had the pleasure of sharing with a retired Kiwi train driver who started on steam trains, a very interesting & informative afternoon.

Considering the cost of the NZ dollar, prices here seem a touch lower than OZ which is good news.

A cold, damp, drizzly & windy day here in Christchurch so staying in catching up on my blog, checking expenses & have laundry to do so won’t be able to experience more on NZ. However after adding up my OZ expends can’t afford to stay in this part of the world any way.

Staying at a really cool innovative hotel here in Christchurch, they asked travelers what they wanted, listened & came up with a nice comfortable hotel at an extremely good price, hope the idea catches on. Check it out at;  www.hotelso.co.nz

Have a full couple of days ahead as I leave Christchurch tomorrow (Monday 14th) morning, fly to Auckland, by Jetstar, the last Qantas related flight, then onto Santiago with LAN, where I arrive the afternoon of Sunday the 13th (International Dateline) then to Buenos Aires, again with LAN, where I catch an AA flight to Miami (an example of Qantas innovative routing (flucking morons)), followed by another AA flight to Guatemala City where I catch a $10.00 shuttle home to Antigua.

Been a while since my last entry but a combination of insane internet rates + not much new to add has kept me quiet.

The overnight trip on the “Hound” down to Sydney was uneventful, turned out that the set down (drop off) was at the train station so only a matter of taking the escalator up to the platform & check in for the afternoon train back to Adelaide. Even Sydney tends to shut down travel agents on weekends so couldn’t accomplish a few trip details that I had planned during the layover, other than that the city was full of people in a big rush to go nowhere, not hard to see why even most Aussies don’t like the place.

The IP to Adelaide & The Overland to Melbourne were up to the usual Great Southern Rail standards & good trips.

Due to the lack of any inkling of how to civilly treat customers by Qantas airline personal my time in Melbourne was spent dealing with the incompetent morons they employ finding a flight out of the country. Even though I held an open RTW ticket from One World for a flight SYD – HNL Qantas refused to find me a seat until over a month later. Ended up changing my itinerary at a cost of over $1,000.00 just to get to hell out of the country, to which I shall never return & add Qantas to Air Canada on my never again fly again list.

Due to the BS with Qantas I didn’t have time to explore Melbourne which seemed to be an interesting city.

Did it again, by believing the weather man (no more reliable here than Canada) cut my trip to Tasmania, which turned out to be the best part of Australia, short & only got a small taste of that interesting island.

All in all the Australian experience was interesting & glad I did it as now it’s mystic is gone & now I can see it for what it is without wondering if I had missed something. Basically one can see everything, be ripped off at tourist traps & abused by large corporations,in North America, that Australia has to offer without the expense of traveling 1/2 way around the world.

Shall post the average daily costs in a bit but they are too scary to add up now, really bad when a decent hotel room is cheaper than a private in a hostel!!

So as it’s a cold, windy day with a bit of drizzle here in Christchurch I decided to stay in, catch up on my paper work & do laundry. My costs in Australia for the 33 days I was there come to a total of $7,000.00 AUD. Could be off a couple hundred either way as didn’t keep track to the penny.

Food averaged $30/day & accommodation for 21 nights averaged $70with the majority being in hostel dorms, the other 12 nights were spent in bus, train or ferry seats. Train sleepers at the ripoff price of $300/nite were out of the question. Other expenses were train pass $590, bus pass $709, ferry Tasmania $151, various tours $775, taxi’s $139, internet approx $100, laundry $30, extra-plane fare extorted by Qantas to get out of OZ $1034 + an exorbitant phone bill at the Mercure hotel in Melbourne to American & Qantas airlines of $67.70. The cost of flights to OZ on the RTW are over & above this amount.

All in all a total of $212.12 per day, compared to my daily cost of $48.00 in Central America (Spanish lessons included) it has to be one of the worst deals I have been caught up in in a long time. Didn’t spend much more than that my entire 6 months in SE Asia (including my TEFL course) so NO way can I justify that cost for the experience or recommend a visit there to anyone!!

Brisbane turned out to be an interesting place with excellent tourist services including the City Tour Hop-on-off bus with use of the City Cat service on the river which gives you unlimited rides from 9:00 am – 5:pm on the bus & midnight on the cat, all for only $35.00.

Also BootsNall has published an article of mine at; http://www.bootsnal.com/articles/10-06/karma-or-coincedence-in-bangkok.html

Now up to 27,858 hits on my blog 🙂

Did an amazing trip to Fraser Island in Queensland yesterday where I saw a rainforest growing on a sand dune. Anyone interested in nature, ecology & Eco-tourism should put a visit here high on your list.  Go to;   fraserisland.net