So we were on our way to La Linea on the Costa da Sol in Spain, we arrived in Malaga late afternoon, so we decided to take a taxi for an hour, see where we ended up, get a hotel for the night and continue the journey next day.

After about 45 minutes we came across a nice little spot called "Farnngino", well maybe not, to this day i still cant get my head around the name of this place, suffice to say we found a nce hotel  which I will call Hotel YarraMarra, again, couldnt get my head around the name so thats what im reffering to it as:)

Having refreshed, taken a walk around the beach and checked out some shops we dcided to head of for dinner, we were recommended a little restaurant/bar about 10 minutes from the hotel in taxi, so off we headed. Seafood is fantastic in Spain, if your into fish, make sure you try Longastino if you ever get to Spain, like a Prawn on steroids. Having eaten, had a few beers and generally enjoying ourselves for awhile, i decided to head back to hotel, with a bit of a stomach upset, so I told the guy I was travelling with I was heading off and he decided to stay a little longer.

Walking outside I found a taxi and asked the driver to take me to Farringino, he says ok and starts driving, i slip into the back seat and enjoy the ride and the cool breeze, about 30 minutes later I ask the driver where hes taking me (remembering it only took 10 minutes to get to the restaurant) He says just round corner, ferengino, ok great so i get out look around, couldnt see my hotel but recognised the beach and started walking down the beach towards the hotel.

I walked

and i walked

and i walked

but could not see my hotel, so i ask some people also walking on the beach, Do u know where hotel yaramarra is in farengino, they just pointed up the beach so i continued to walk, starting to get a bad feeling in my stomach that maybe Hotel yarramarra and Ferengino was not the right pronounciation...

so i walked

and i walked

and i walked

and 3 hours after the taxi driver dropped me off i was still walking down the beach (later found out that the Costa Da Sol is basically one stretch of beach that goes right down the south coast of Spain..)

About 3am in the morning i cam across a young guy fishing on the beach, he comes over to me and asks me for a light for his joint, I had a spare lighter so I gave it to him and he thanked me and asked me if I needed a ride anywhere. Ahh my saviour, even the thought of riding on the back of his Moped motorcycle could not deter or dampen my relief over finding some help. Yes Senor I tell him, I am trying to get to my hotel Yarramarra in fernegino.

Ahh he says I know, get on back of bike and we go, about 3 minutes into the bike ride the bike ran out of gasoline so it was another 20 minute walk.push till we found a Gas Station, I paid ffor the bike to be filled up and we are off and running, Im sitting on the back of a cut down lawnmower of a motorbike with a stoned little spaniard driving and we are roaring round Spain and i still have no idea where we are:(

About 30 minutes later he stops and tells me Sorry Senor I can not find your hotel. i will ask a taxi driver, so we find a taxi, they talk in Spanish for about 5 minutes and he comes over and says Ahh I know your hotel we go.

A few minutes later he stopped, pointed down a small road and tells me my hotel is just around the corner. Thank you  I respond you have saved my life, how much would u like for taking the time to bring me here I ask as I pull a pocketfull of cash out, peel of 20 euros and give it to him, No Senor, you have filled my bike up there is no need to pay anymore.

Wow what a nice guy:) So he is all smiles and I am all smiles and he tells me about the Spanish custom they have....so at 4.30am in the morning the little spaniard had me doing some kind of customary dance in the middle of nowhere on a deserted street, but it was fun:)

After the dance, he gets on his bike and i start walking off o my hotel, he gives me a smile adn wave and dissapears off into the sunset, I go to grab a ciggarette and woops, my cigs must have dropped during the dance, so I walk back to where we had our dance and no cigarettes.

hmmm

I check my pockets, no cigarettes, NO MONEY:(

The guy had just pick pocketed me for about 300 Euros and I now had no cash:(

So Im thinking well at least I got back to hotel...WRONG, no hotel, nothing familiar and now i started to panic, im stuck in a foregn country with no money and no idea of what my hotel is called or what city it is in, in fact I dont even know where in spain I am, considering it was nearly 5 hours before when I left the restaurant.

I walk around in a daze thinking what am i going to do, and i spot a taxi sitting on side of road, so i have a last check of my pockets and i find a solitary 50 Euro note, so i look at the taxi and i look at my 50 Euros and realise this is it, if this 50 Euros dont find me my hotel I am history lol. I ask the driver to take me to hotel YarraMarra in Ferengino, he says ahh ok we go.

Off we go, 30 minutes later he tells me that he cannot find my hotel and i nearly burst out crying:(

He stops at a taxi rank and starts talking to another driver, suddenly for the briefest second I heard them mention soemthing that I remembered from Fernegino so I am doing cartwheeels, backflips and highjumping over taxis YES i scream that is where I want to go.

They looked at each other said something in spanish and started laughing. I arrived back at my hotel at about 530am (about 6 hours after i left the restaurant), the guy i was travelling with had contacted police and hospitals as i had not turned up lol.

Handy Tip, if your in a foregn speaking country, make sure you note the address and name of where you are staying and keep it very safe and secure on you at all times.

I have many fond and not so fond memories of Antigua, funny things from the gay puppy "tiga" to being bodily thrown out of the airport which wasnt quite as funny however the embarrasement factor was quite high. One thing that started off as a joke ended up becoming a part of Antiguan history. Had just moved to a very nice house on a new development, was very peacefull and the house was fantastic considering some of the places I had stayed in, the house was the only house on the street which was so far not named.

One of my businesses was an internet Resource site for webmasters to learn about building websites, the site name was an acronym for something but was shortened down and fondly reffered to as Condom. One day standing on the balcony entertaining some visitors someone came up wth an idea that as the street had no name and as we were the only people living on it we should throw up a temporary road sign, Condom Drive.

A piece of wood was found, hammer and nails at the readdy we printed in nice proud letters Condom Drive and took the sign down to the end of the road and hammered it into the power pole and after some hearty pats on the backs for a job well down and some funny what if scenarios we forgot about it.

2 Years later, they took our old road sign down:(

2 Months later a man came around with a nice shiny offical Antiguan Govt road sign and placed it where our old sign used to be.

The new name of the road, and the name that will forever be a part of Antigua...

Condom Drive:)

So ive been to Czech Republic quite a few times, one of my all time favorite places, mostly I just visit Prague however I have been to the neighoring town of Brno, famous for hosting a round of the world 500cc Motorcycle GP. Another thing Brno is famous for is the submerged city, on the outskirts of Brno is a big lake, in the middle of the lake you can see a church steeple sticking out of the water, this used to be the town of Brno, a very heavy winter followed by the thawing created some devestating floods, wiped it out and it has remained submerged ever since.

Back to Prague, one of my first visits to Prague was to meet up with a friend and business associate that lives there, I took one of the guys from the office and we went for a few days, we found a nice little hotel close to our friends residence and settled in. The final night of our visit, the boys went out for a night out and i wasnt feeling to good so stayed at hotel and despite the very interesting "vocals" coming from the room next door, in fact i guess at stages they could have been in the next country they were that loud..but i digress...

I had fallen asleep but was woken when my co-worker got back to the hotel, having imibibed in a little to much fine czech pilsener, had let the door slam shut scaring the shit out of me, off course I had to abuse him for 5 minutes before getting back to sleep. In he morning when I got up and he was still sound asleep i walked to the bathroom and noticed the door open, of course I had to abuse my coworker for leaving the door open so I started yelling and he woke up and said but yoiu yelled at me last night for slamming it...wooops

He jumped out of bed, and all his stuff had gone, wallet, camera, phone etc, funnily enough nothing of mine was touched, we deduced that as my side of the room was so messy whoever had robbed us didnt want to take the chance of tripping on something and waking us up.

Danny never got his stuff back and we were sure it was done by staff at hotel, we took it as a timely reminder to be more carfeul when travelling and wont froget that just because your staying in a nice hotel it does not mean all the staff are as nice.

So my first trip to Spain and I am off to big bad Barcelona to have a bit of a look around and do a bit of business, took one of the guys from the office and off we went.

What a city, love the spanish way of life, so laidback, relaxed and full of fun, plenty of things to do and plenty of stuff to see, first full day there we took the toursit bus thing around the city for some good old sightseeing, the one thing that really has stuck with me from Barcelona was turning some corner and being greeted by a magnificent palace, the King of Spains house more to the point, wow, ive seen palaces and ive seen palaces but that one in Barcelona rocked my world, just the sight of it will live with me for ever.

Once business was conducted, sightseeing done, parties partied, it was time to return back to UK, we arrived at airport and proceeded through immigration at which stage the guys phone i was traveeling with rang, while he answered he gave me our tickets and passports to show to immigration, the phonecall turned out to be for me, so he handed me the phone, i put the tickets and passport down and we walked off to do some duty free shopping.

About 15 minutes later standing at chashout at the duty free shop they asked me for my passport...uhoh...fast dash back to immigration, no passports, no tickets, retraced steps from immigration to dutyfree, no passports and no tickets lol...

We had 45 minutes to board the plane but they wouldnt let us board without passport or tickets lol, in the end we had to get special permission from the Home Office in UK to travel without passports and the BA let us fly without tickets.

Just made it on plane on time, never got passports back, prob on the black market 5 mins after i lost them.

1. New Zealand

2. Alaska

3. Gibraltor

4. Czech Republic

5. Dominica

New Zealand got number one, cos its my home country, it really is an amazing country, friendly people, great scenery, clean air, very outdoorsy kind of place

Alaska, wow, midnight sun, inside passage, glaciers, white water rafting, amazing wildlife, really an incredible place.

Gibraltor, history, caves, monkeys, shopping, so much stuff fits into such a small place.

Czech Republic, incredible old bohemian architecture, Centrum Sqaure, bridge over danube, amazing view of the castle and cathedral. A really beuatiful city if you like architecture, old buildings and gorgeous girls.

Dominica, Island paradise and really amazed to find half of the island covered in rainforest, will never forget standing on the edge of the rainforest, one step in was getting rained on one step out sunshine..

So the Dutch are a pretty friendly group of people, and the red light district of Amsterdam is normally frequented by rather stoned but generally friendly tourists and backpackers.

Having Amsterdam as one of the places towards the top of my list of places I wanted to visit i was ecstatic to finnaly arrive in Amsterdam for the first time, since then i have returned many many times.

I love Amsterdam, I love the coffeeshops, window shopping in the RLD, funny old lopsided buildings that look like they are about to fall over and the general hustle and bustle of the Amsterdam tourist district. One of my all time favorite cities filled with some great memories.

Back to my first trip, having landed, got to my hotel and immediatly proceeded to Dam square to buy myself a bong (water pipe) I set off to explore some of the coffeeshops, check some menues and partake of some fine Ducth weed. The first place i went to was Babas on the main street of Dam Square, a little Pakistani place that looked interesting, walking up to the counter my lips were wet with anticpation of buyiing my first "deal" legally lol. The owner gave me the menu and i was like a little kid in a candy shop.

I was greeted with such wonderful names like White Widow, Purple Head, Big Bud, Nepalese hash, Indian Hash, Orange bud, Super Haze, OH MY GOD I was in heaven.

I sniffed the purple head and it smelt like nectar from the gods so I paid the man his 20 Guilders and grabbed my little baggie of purple, filled my pipe with water and sat down to get royally stoned, after a while I moved on and found what became my favorite resting place, the GreenHouse, great coffee, great people and great pot, again I checked the menu to find a whole new bunch of orgasmic sounding marujuana varieties and names, chose a couple, paid the man  and set myself up at a table and got more stonder.

Having acclimitised myself to Amsterdam i ended up mostly at the Greenhouse and mostly at openeing time, 9am, i love it at that time in the morning, people are just starting to get up, streets are quiet, city is quiet and its just a great time of the day to get stoned and relax. About 4 days into the stay, i had been to the Greenhouse early and was just having a drug induced wander around the quiet streets.

There was just me, a few girls in the windows and a guy walking the street towards me. As he gets closer he asks me if I am english, having said yes he calls me over and puts his arm around me. "English, do not turn around, there is a man with a gun behind you and if i signal him he will shoot you, give me your wallet", being so stoned, i didnt really comprehend so I turned around, couldnt see anyone and walked away from the guy telling him a few choice words as I left, how dare he ruin a good high like that:(

I was so upset, i followed him, found where he was and went and found some Police, took them to the guy and they arrested him, I shit myself when there was a second guy with him tho. I accompanied the Police and him to the station to file my report, as it turns out this was the 36th time they had arrested the guy for same shit.

Weirdest thing was sitting in a police station with a plastic bag containing 1 water pipe, 3 baggies of marujuana and some hash and not being worried about jail time lol.

Recently we went to Russia on business and a funny thing happened on the way from the airport lol. We landed in Moscow, middle of winter, freezing minus 20 bone chilling degrees. We were expecting to be met at the airport and taken to our hotel but we did not see the cars waiting so decided to take a cab. (cars had been stuck in traffic and were running late as it turned out)

After conducting negotiations with the "friendly" official taxi guy in the terminal he led us outside to the taxi stand and made a call, telling us our car was on its way. There were 4 of us plus bags standing in the freezing cold and to our horror we saw this shitbox little Lada come round the bend hoping it wasnt our car...it was...the driver got out of car and as he opened his boot we were horrified, having heard all the "russian stories" to find the boot sharing space with a pick axe and shovel.

The driver somehow managed to fit our bags into the boot of the car and we all squashed inside this ancient piece of automobile equipment, driver wound his window DOWN, planted boot and we rocketed off down the icy road, rocketing being a very subjective word:). It soon became apparent that the drivers window was not the only thing creating an icy draft.

Sitting in the back we looked to the floor of the car and to our surprise we could see the road, yep car had a bloody great hole in the floor. Having come to terms with the hole in the floor relatively quickly we soon realised that the driver actually had zero visibility, his windscreen wipers were moving but they were not actually touching the windscreen. 20 scarey minutes into the journey the driver stops, reaches down and grabs a bottle of water, gets outr of car, and as he pours the water on with one hand, he pushes the windscreen wipers onto the window to clean them lol.

We eventually made it to the hotel, greeted by a gaurd at the gate with machine gun ( We were staying at the Presidents Hotel, owned by the president of Russia and aside for me and my riffraff colleagues, its normmly used by visiting diplomats etc. Guard, normally used to mercedes and bmws saw our lada, started laughing and let us past the gate.

Was an interesting trip to Russia, maybe more later.

From my "Joys of Antigua" memory bank.

Where to start lol, Antigua is an island in the Carribeans and it is a major gateway into the West Indies, courtesy of an international airport and it is a calling spot for cruise ships, Antiguas claims to fame are they have 365 seperate beaches, one for each day of the year (incidentally, Dominca another island in the West Indies, which also has a rain forest, has 365 rivers) One of the legend West Indian cricket players, Viv Richards, was born there, going to jail can kill you, going to hospital can kill you.

Amtigua has no natural reources, the food is all imprted on a plane two times aweek from the states and the water is desalinated sea water.

So my earliest memory of Antigua was the roads, there is a pot hole every few feet, main problem is that it rains so much as soon as they repair a road it rains and washes the repairs away, unfortunately some they tried to fill with concrete so the potholes are a nightmare, it was nothing to get 1 or 2 punctures or comptelely ruined tyres in a day

Another memory was the lack of water, the deslaination plant was always breaking down so you could go days without any running water, one year over the xmas period the water was turned off for 6 days, no running water at all, the only way to get water was to wait for it to rain and run outside with buckets and catch it running off the roof.

One of the houses I lived in  the mains electricity was not earthed, so was alot of fun cooking, if you touched the pans and pots with anything metal you used to get electric shocks lol.

There used to be a guy that wandrered around the village, living on the streets and he whenever he needed money he would just come round to the house and stat cleaning the car, next thing he would knock on the door and want to be paid lol, was never a problem cos he always used to carry his machete around with him :) He also used to mow the lawns, but not with a mower, he would get his machete out and cut the lawns using it and he did an amazing job lmao. Quite often would be working on puter at 2 or 3am because it was so hot and couldnt sleep and out of the blue this guy would kock on the indow and want some food or something:( Scared the shit out of us :)

So I was invited to Romania for a bit of business and a bit of pleasure and sightseeing. Really looking forward to seeing Draculas Castle and learning a bit about Vlad the Impaler.

For those of you who dont know Vlads story, he was a king of Romania and during his reign he only got invaded once, cant remember by who, he defeated the invading army and as warning for anyone else contemplating giving it a go he decided to take all the prisoners and the entire length of the road to his castle he had poles made with one end sharpend, he then impaled all the survivors of the invading army and he lined each side of the roads with the poles.

It took days for the soldiers to die, the pole had to enter there body through there asses and exit it through there heads...He left the poles up and no one ever tried to invade him again...

But anyway, was really looking forward to the trip, I had booked my tickets, arranged to meet people at the airport when i got there and I head off to the airport, the trip was about 1 hour from home to airport and about 3 hours from London to Bucharest, I land and head to customs and immigration.

Guy in immigration box looks at my passport and asks me where my visa for Romania is, I reply I dont need one Im from New Zealand ( I had checked visa crap out with airline beofre i left) , you do require a visa sir please come with me...

LOL

I follow him to a room and him and the other guys start talking to each other and looking at my passport and I dont know what is going on. Finnaly one of them comes to me and asks me to follow him, so I say was i right about the visa and he tells me no lol. So I then ask him if i could pay any of them to let me stay and he tells me no, so im following him around this cooridor and we come to an XRay machine for my bags but im looking just past and its a public area so im thinking great, hes letting me leave, he xrays my bags and askls me to follow him,.

We walk directly across the public area and come to the exact same arrival lounge i just landed at, he walks me up to the counter, they issue me a ticket and he puts me on the plane.

3 hours later im back in london and because i didnt have a car lined up i had to catch a taxi which cost me 125 quid lol...

The airline got a £2,000 fine for letting me fly without a visa and the worst thing about it all...

The day i travelled was the day the law changed about Visa's, if i had left the day before I could have got my visa at the airport in Romania:(

Some of my memorable and once in a lifetime events.

Swmming with Dolphins in Mexico

Hanging with the Monkeys in Gibraltor

Riding a camel in Morroco

Whale watching in Alaska

For such a tiny place, Gibraltor is over filled with history and it is such an interesting place I would recommend it to anyone to visit at least once, a good tour around Gibraltor will take you less than a day and then the rest of the time can be used for some awesome duty free shopping, Jewelry, Cigarettes, Booze, Leather and Electronic equipment are the Gibraltian specialities.

For thiose of you not familiar with Gibraltor its basically a rock that sticks out of the ocean on the Spanish border, over the years it has been owned by a few different countries and at the moment it is a protectorate of Britain. The rock is a maze of tunnels, used by the infantry over the years to guard against invasion and there is also a huge cave in the middle of the rock that has been turned into a stage for musical concerts, the accoustics are second to none and the huge stalectites and stallegmites must be millions of years old.

On top of the rock is a clan of Barbary Apes that swam over from Africa years ago and never returned, there is now a few hundred of them and they live at the very top of the rock, one of the Apes who the locals call Michael will actually give you a high five if u give him a few peanuts, other than that u have to keep your eyes open because they love to jump on you and if u are carrying peanuts they will mob you till u give them what they want lol

The picture in my profile is one taken with one of the apes in Gib.

Ive been to Paris a few times now but I am still looking for an enjoyable experience unfortunately, one time in Paris, a business associate and I were there for biz over a three day period, arriving at the airport we were met in the terminal by taxi drivers, needing a taxi, we chose a guy and prcedded to follow him to his taxi, which we assumed would be directly outside the terminal.

Wrong, the guy dragged us thruogh the carpark for about 10 minutes till he found his car, I asked my associate (who spoke French) if he could find out what the detour was about, taxi driver flashed his license and we arrived at car, he took us to our hotel and charged about 70 Euros for the journey, it wasnt till later that we found out this meet and greet taxi service in Paris airport is run by the mafia and they charge 2 or 3 times normal fare.

Checking into hotel I placed my cell phone on the counter to fill out the hotel registration form which took me all of about 2 minutes, when I went to get my phone I find it missing, never to be seen again.

That night we were at a loose end so we asked a waiter in restaurant if he could recommend soemthing to do that evening, he told us to try the Pigalle area, famous for the Moulon Rouge, the French have a different name for it we discovered next day and that is The American Trap, I have my own name for it...PigHole

We waled down the street until we saw an inviting sign telling us to check out the dancing girls, paying the 20 Euro entry each we prceeded thru the front door to find a dingy tiny smelly filthy club area, we were given a free beer each (comes with the entry fee) and we took a seat while we hurried to drink the beer and get out of the place.

Just as we were nearly finished 2 girls appeared out of nowehere offering "special" services, all we wanted to do was get the hell out of there, the place was so small there wanst even room for dancing girls and we saw no point in staying, however the girls asked us for a drink to which i told barman to give them a beer each.

Barman brings out two big glasses of something obviosuly NOT beer and we got up and went to pay the bill....

Barman hands me a bill for 450 Euros for the two drinks, to which I started yelling as many french sounding obscenities as I could think of at the time while my associate started talking french to the guy and im like no way Im NOT paying that when all we asked for was beer.

I told my associate that he should stay and try and negotiate the bill and I would go and find some Police to intervene, as im leaving a monstor steps out of the shadows, looks at me like death and tells me in broken english that I no leave club till bill is paid to which i uttered a few more obscenities and then proceed to walk thru the door, i was grabbed by big guy and thrown back into the club and told i would NOT be leaving till bill was paid...

Couldnt get my wallet out fast enough lol, paid it and went and found police, cutting another long episode short, neither local police ond uty that night, nor a visit to the local police station and then a further visit to Police HQ next day resulted in any joy, they simply dont give a toss and as we later found out, every one of them is being paid to NOT do anything, we foudn this out by reporting the inaction to Police Internal Affairs.

End result, Paris sucks, I learnt some expensive lessons and after a few more visits i am still trying to have an enjoyable experince in France.

New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, USA, Canada, Antigua, Dominica, StKitts, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Panama, Mexico, Alaska, Spain, Gibraltor, Morocco, Portugal, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Romania, Czech Republic, Russia, UK

I have spent the last 20 years travelling the world, I have lived in a number of countries and visited many more, this is my blog about my travels, it will feature my observations and funny moments from half a lifetime of endless wandering.