Las Vegas, NV - Death Valley, CA

I wasn’t looking forward to visiting Vegas as much as I now know I should have been. I included it on my itinerary mainly because it was ‘there’, in relatively close proximity to the Grand Canyon. 

What a city.

I arrived mid afternoon, after the temperature had cooled to 42c. I stayed at the Golden Nugget which isn’t one of the more obscenely extravagant resorts in Vegas, but still felt ludicrous compared to UK hotels, for example, the pool had a water slide which went through a shark tank! My 19th floor room overlooked Fremont Street, and had an objectively quite average (but, after days of washing from a water bottle with a bar of soap which I seem to be allergic to, subjectively brilliant) shower. I rinsed off the layer of dirt which I’d hoped was a tan, filled the bin with ice, and started drinking whilst getting ready to go out. 

I started my evening in the Golden Nugget casino. I left without much less than I started with, but I think I made a net profit when the free drinks are factored in. From there I watched the light show in Fremont Street, and then boarded a party bus for a lap of the city. From there I went to the Bellagio, the Venetian, and ended up getting free entry to a pool party at Encore. The bag search to get into this party was the most thorough I’ve ever had, and the guy who got me free entry seemed to think there’d be a problem getting my EpiPens in, but it turned out to be fine. His concern over the adrenaline issue, and the extent that he went to to explain its purposes to the door staff, was actually really helpful because it detracted their attention away from my bottle shaped breasts and allowed my vodka to stay in my bra. I’m very glad that plan worked out because it was $25 (yes, twenty five dollars) for a single and mixer, the robbing bastards. 

The pool party was immense, and unlike anything I’ve ever been to before. Officially there was a strict ‘no drugs’ policy but the extent to which this was enforced seemed inversely proportionate to the amount staff were tipped. I was sitting on the edge of a pool fully clothed, and a drunk Norwegian guy fell over and knocked me in. I left soon after, but even at 1am it was so hot that I dried out in half an hour. From there it was back to the Golden Nugget, via Stratosphere, for a tad more gambling.

As I didn’t expect to fall in love with Vegas as much as I did, I didn’t really factor a hangover into my travel plans. At 8am I was in the hotel lobby, still pissed, waiting to get on a bus to Death Valley. Also in the lobby was one of the guys I went to the pool party with, and got an Uber back to the hotel with. He was researching the phone number for the nearest British Embassy, having already called Encore, Bellagio, the Uber driver and half the people we were out with last night to ask if they’d seen his passport. He should have called me, because he gave it to me at the pool party to put in my bag. He clearly had no memory of this and it took a lot of effort to control my urge to exploit that fact for my own amusement, but I managed to because he looked so feeble, worried and hungover. 

Although the air conditioned bus to Death Valley was a good environment to sober up in, it didn’t prepare me for the heat outside of it. It was 46c (yes, forty feckin six degrees Celsius) and I realised I made bad choices. At no point during marathon training did I have sweat pouring out of me in the way I did today, but the beauty of the desert made up for it. 

I’ve now pitched a tent at the foot of some hills in Bishop, near to some gorgeous hot springs, and ready for an incredibly early night.

Love Emily x

Los Angeles, CA - Grand Canyon, AZ

Los Angeles, CA - Grand Canyon, AZ

Country #46 (an embarrassingly late entry), = USA.

I arrived in LA on Saturday, and stayed at a great hostel in Santa Monica for 2 nights.   Whilst there I did nothing particularly noteworthy, just chilled on the beach and had lunch with a UK work colleague who was also in the area. 

On Monday I went to Joshua Tree NP, and on the journey there the natural beauty of North America became apparent. I always loose perspective when huge numbers are involved, and all I’ll take from being told how many UKs could fit into Texas (for example) is “it’s bigger”. But when you’re in USA, particularly driving through countryside, you start to appreciate the scale of the vastness a bit more. Everything is bigger, mainly because there’s space for it. You can drive for hours and not see a town or another vehicle, in a way that isn’t possible in the UK. 

From Joshua Tree I set up camp just outside Lake Havasu City, right on the banks of the Colorado River. It was 36c so I enjoyed a swim in the open water, again, something that isn’t possible in the UK. Lake Havasu City is strange, in that there’s the original London Bridge right in the middle of it, with a ‘British theme park’ type feel to the place. 

After inwardly sniggering at the American replication of Britishness I swung by the Grand Canyon - my main reason for choosing this route. My guide suggested we put paper bags over our heads in the car park and form a sort of conga, ushered along in the right direction by her, which I agreed to. She lined us up against a railing, counted to 3, and told us to remove the bags. I’m so glad I agreed to make myself look silly for 5 minutes because removing that bag meant I felt the full extent of awe at the Grand Canyon in one go, rather than catching a glimpse from the horizon and then seeing a little bit more as I got closer. Again, when massive numbers are involved, I struggle to appreciate scale. I knew the Grand Canyon is 200 miles long, and the name very much implies vastness. What I didn’t expect was there to be nothing else on the horizon, only Canyon which was obscured by more Canyon. I hired a bike and cycled around some of the rim, hiked the Bright Angel route, and watched the sunset at Yavapai Point. I then camped underneath the stars, and woke early this morning to take a helicopter flight over the Canyon. 

As I write this post I’m on a bus en route to Las Vegas, where I’ll be for the next couple of days. 

Love Emily x

Brussels; Belgium

Darryl and I have birthdays quite close together, and we’re now in the habit of clubbing together and buying each other a mini break. This year our birthday treat was a long weekend in Brussels, because we both love beer and chips.

We flew from Manchester, which we will never be doing again. The hotel we stayed in the night before we flew (Manchester Airport Britannia) knocks Birmingham Apollo off the podium for the Shittest Hotel We’ve Ever Stayed At Together prize. It’s only redeeming feature was the price, which was cheaper than a mid-stay in the airport car park, and literally hundreds of people had reasoned a night there and a return Uber fare to the airport was a better option than paying for parking. Consequently, when we turned up on a Friday evening, we had to make our own parking space on the periphery of legality. Inside the hotel was phenomenal, mainly because it had been decorated in the 80s and left to rot ever since. Wall decorations were nailed to the wall to prevent theft, and there was an urn glued to the windowsill (ashes not included). Like hell were we eating at the hotel restaurant, so we ordered pizza, ate it in bed, and watched a documentary about Beverley Allit. 

It was not a pleasant stay or a restful night sleep, and we were both tired and grumpy when our alarms went off at 5am. We ignored hotel convention and drove ourselves to the airport, and parked at terminal 2. Unfortunately our flight departed from terminal 3, which was 2 miles away and there are no shuttle buses connecting the two. We couldn’t get an Uber (probably because they were all at the Britannia) so got a Hackney cab, much to the drivers amusement. 

We landed in Brussels, got a bus from the airport into the city centre, and found our hotel, which unfortunately appeared to be in a ghetto. There were bags of rubbish all over the pavement, accompanied by a rotten smell. Expectations of the hotel were suitably lowered, which meant we got an even better surprise when we got upgraded to a suite overlooking fountains. 

We ditched our bags and went to explore the Grand Place, and were apparently the only tourists in Belgium unaware that the Tour de France was departing from Brussels that weekend. We saw the launch, and started on the beer. It probably should have been telling that TripAdvisor’s 4th Best Thing To Do In Brussels is ‘go to Luxembourg’, because we found there wasn’t much to do aside from drink and chortle over a statue of a urinating boy. We visited Delirium Cafe both nights, and on Sunday evening we stayed in our hotel bar way past closing time. Eventually we took the hint and retreated to our suite. Once back in the room, Darryl said something uncharacteristically sweet, along the lines of “I don’t ever want to be with anyone else”.  I laughed and replied “well you’d better marry me then”, to which Darryl said “alright” and fell down on one knee. I hadn’t twigged that he was proposing and instead thought he’d fallen over, so I got down on the floor too, and now we’re getting married. 

The next morning felt almost one night stand-ish, in that I had a hangover and the awkward task of trying to work out if the other person, in the cold light of day, wanted what had happened the night before. We gave each other the option of blaming it on beer but agreed it’d be a nice thing to do, and went ring shopping. 

The flight home was delayed because of Ryanair’s cabin crews collective inability to count. After half an hour on the tarmac they announced that there was a positive discrepancy between the expected vs actual number of passengers on the plane, and between them they all got a completely different headcount. Eventually the mystery was solved: an off duty crew member had taken a spare passenger seat on the plane but confused everyone by helping with the counting but not including himself in the numbers.

We landed, got an Uber to the wrong terminal car park, and successfully gambled on Darryl’s car battery starting.

Love Emily x

Seoul, South Korea

The final post of this trip comes from the 420 from Heathrow to Nottingham. This is because there was no time for my usual leisurely and beer-y departure lounge writing ritual in Seoul, and that’s a cock up entirely of my own making. 

Let’s re-cap on the sleep situation: Thursday night (Suzhou) was in a scuzzy prostitute-infested hotel and I must have got 3-4 hours sleep. Friday was spent at Disneyland, and I got less than an hour of sleep on my Shanghai-Tokyo flight overnight. Early Saturday morning I arrived in Tokyo, fell asleep on the train into the city (probably for 45 minutes), and overnight I flew to South Korea and didn’t sleep on that flight either. On Sunday I arrived in Seoul, dropped my backpack off at my hostel reception (more on this later), and joined a tour to the DMZ which departed at 07:45. No sleep there either. When I (finally; full story below) arrived back at the hostel at 18:00 I was disgustingly sweaty and the sort of exhausted I’ve never felt before even after 7 years of shift work, which I guess can only truly be appreciated after getting 5 hours sleep in 42 hours. I had ‘a little nap’ and woke up at 08:14, which would have been fine, but my flight to London was at 10:35, the airport is a 60 minute train ride away, and I’d emptied my backpack on the floor in an unsuccessful attempt to find clean pants. I made it to the boarding gate as it closed and made the flight by the width of a ball-hair.

Reading about that solid sleep might fool you into believing that this was a nice hostel. It was not, but I didn’t really pick up on it when I was dropping my backpack off in the morning. I’d noticed it was up a pretty grotty alleyway that smelt of fish and had weird men starting at me, but nothing too bad. I arrived in that 5th floor room (no lift, obviously) exhausted, sweaty and broken - and had a little cry when I saw what I’d signed up for. The air conditioning was unplugged, which was probably for the best, because you wouldn’t have wanted the amount of water dripping out of it mixing with electricity. The stains on the wallpaper hinted that this wasn’t a new problem. The room had no window, and the duvet cover didn’t completely cover the duvet which meant the stains of miscellaneous origin were very obvious. I was trying to persuade my subconscious mind not to ask questions like “how did they manage to get THAT stain THERE?!”, purely out of fear for the answer, but that positivity only lasted until I saw the first flea. And that’s how tired I was, that I stayed (sleeping on the top bunk to minimise contact, obvs). 

The de-militarised zone (DMZ) tour was good, but possibly would have been better if I wasn’t on the edge of hallucinating from tiredness. I got as close to the North Korean border as it’s possible to get from the south (and possibly closer than is advisable), and saw the stark contrast between the two nations from an observatory at the top of a mountain. The DMZ runs through countryside so there’s very little comparative architecture between the two Koreas - only nature, which I expected to be identical, but wasn’t. My guide explained that the nuclear sanctions imposed on the North had affected the country so greatly that they had to use any available fuel to survive, which included every single tree right up to the border. Next I visited Dorasan train station, which is right on the border and, theoretically, connects South Korea to China, Russia and Europe via rail although no trains currently cross the N/S border so it’s futile and empty. I also walked through one of the tunnels dug under the DMZ from the North to invade the South. 4 of these tunnels have been discovered and there are suspicions that there are still more to find, or even more currently being dug. 

As I said, the tour was good, but not good enough to override my tiredness. After being dropped off in central Seoul afterwards I was running on a kind of empty I’ve never been before. I was in a different part of town to where I’d joined the tour and had no idea how to get back to my hostel. I figured the metro would be my best bet. I walked for almost an hour to find a station (no mobile data, and no map) and working out where I needed to be and which line I needed to get there took another half hour. Next came the ticket buying, which was scuppered because I didn’t have any Korean currency, the ticket machines only accepted cash, and no ATM would accept my Monzo card. I loitered outside a Starbucks to steal sufficient WiFi to order an Uber, failed, and inwardly cried. I walked the 2.3 miles back to the crappest hostel in the world in 32 degree heat, dragged my backpack up to the 5th floor, and outwardly cried.

Tokyo; Japan

I arrived in Tokyo early this morning (Saturday) after a poor nights sleep in Suzhou (Thursday night) and no sleep yesterday (early start for Disneyland and flying overnight). Predictably I was knackered, fell asleep on the train from the airport to Tokyo Centre, and overshot the stop I needed. My hostel in Tokyo is a lesson in looking closely at website photos well and truly learned. My key criteria were location and price, so I knew quality would suffer. What I wasn’t expecting was a ‘capsule’ instead of a room - this capsule is the size of a single bed with a mattress filling the floor, is about a metre tall, and has a pull down blind in lieu of a door. The capsule wasn’t what surprised me most about this hostel though! Under no circumstances are shoes to be worn anywhere inside the building - this message was shouted at me before I got to the reception desk to check in. There are lockers by the reception to leave your shoes (I cannot be trusted to carry them to my capsule), but you must leave the locker key with reception. 

Aside from the slightly over zealous no-shoe enforcement, the people of Tokyo have been genuinely lovely. The city is clean, orderly and organised, and definitely makes it into my top 10 favourite cities in the world. I visited Shiba park, and watched the sun set from the top deck of Tokyo Tower. 

It’s definitely a fair substitute for staying with my mates in Shanghai. Next stop - South Korea!

Love Emily x

Shanghai; China

I’m writing this post from Shanghai departure lounge, waiting for my flight to Tokyo. This morning I got a bullet train from Suzhou to Shanghai, and then went to Disneyland. I’ve never been to a Disney park before, and it’s never really appealed, but I have to say it was brilliant. The attention to detail is amazing and even I, a fairly cynical adult, felt a little bit of the famous magic. Before leaving the hotel I noticed local prostitutes had put their business cards under our door, and you could really see what you’d be getting from them.

Visiting Disneyland definitely took the edge off leaving China, or more accurately some people I’ve met here. I’m (briefly) going to Japan and South Korea but most people I’ve met are staying in China for longer. I’ve never met a group of people who clicked so well and so quickly, and I struggle to believe we’d only known each other for a week, even when the traveller’s ‘accelerated friendship’ is factored in. Part of me worries that I’m going to make this trip the standard which all future trips must compare to, inevitably be disappointed, and forever ruin my favourite hobby - but a larger part of me thinks “how brilliant that I’m able to meet strangers in a foreign country and feel like they’re old friends after a week; let’s see what other great people are out there”, and I’ll definitely be keeping in touch with these guys. Still, I felt gutted this morning so thank you Walt Disney for cheering me up!

Before taking this trip, I’d had it in mind that this would be my last ‘big’ adventure and then I’d settle down/save for a house/try out some adult-ing, but now I know I need to keep on doing it. It’s the best feeling in the world: throwing yourself into a totally alien environment, making yourself vulnerable, and putting your trust in complete strangers; knowing if it’s not fine then at least you’ll have good stories - although hopefully you’ll get both. But after it’s over it’s quite hard to return to ‘real life’ with people who knew you before, and who won’t notice how those experiences have subtly changed you. I find it harder to come home after each trip away and I don’t yet know what the solution to that is. 

China has surprised me. There are nods to communism all over the place, but the country has the feel of a capitalist one. If I didn’t already know about the restricted access to sites like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp then I don’t think I would have noticed any censorship at all - and WeChat is so widely used in China that most people don’t even know there are Western alternatives that they’re prevented from accessing. Of those that do, it’s laughably easy to get round the restrictions with a VPN, which I even managed to install on my new phone from within the country. On my experience of the country itself, I could be fooled into thinking China is a capitalist democracy like many others in the West - which I guess raises some more questions about propaganda and censorship. 

Time to try and get an hour or two of sleep now, because I’m bloody knackered,

Love Emily x

Suzhou; China

Last night was another sleeper train night (Xi’an-Suzhou) which was even more fun than the last, but with a far worse nights sleep. More ¥5 (50p) beer got cracked out, and the mother of all games of Never Have I Ever got played. It was a great night which ended when we got told off for making too much noise. That was definitely where the fun ended, because the beds were too short to lay straight but too narrow to lay in the fetal position, and the train had a very poor AC system and a driver with a heavy right foot. 

Before I left Xi’an I went shopping with my German tandem buddy to buy a new phone. Walking to the shop and buying a phone took less than 30 minutes, but we then spent a further 2.5 hours trying to find our way back in some pretty heavy rain. 

Today I went to the ‘Venice of the East’ in Suzhou, which was essentially just a canal, although it did smell similar to Venice. We sat on a terrace drinking beer, which would have been lovely on a sunny day, but unfortunately it was chucking it down harder than it had been in Xi’an the day before. Conceding defeat on al fresco drinking I went to my hotel, which is not a classy establishment and smells as seedy as it looks. 

Love Emily x