Once a month during the high tourist season, there is a giant congress of travelers on a small island on the east coast of Thailand called Ko Phagnan. In the summer of 2005, along with my traveling companion Nic, I set my scopes on this congress which is better known as the Full Moon Party. This tale is not only of the full moon night but as well as the amazing island that is kind enough to cater to such a debauchery filled event.
A short distance from Buenos Aires is the small little country of Uruguay. Widely known as the most popular vacation spot for all the Argentinos as well as an easy hop, skip, and a jump for travelers to extend their visa duration. I convinced my traveling companion, B, to join me as we embarked on what ended up being a 1500 km road trip around the south-eastern heel of the country. As usual I made no prior arrangements and was really only armed with stories and suggestions that I had heard from people I had talked to. These stories mostly consisted of “Everything is booked and you will not find anywhere to stay.” and other methods of saying pretty much the same thin since it was the high season.
I love foosball… it can appear to be extremely haphazard and frantic to many people watching. But there are moments in a foosball game where…
This entry was pulled from my travel journal from Europe summer expedition 2003…
July 12th
For Justin, Jen, Mike, and myself, this was our first hard day of travel. An outrageously uncomfortable Ryan-air flight to Pau in the south of France. Get lied to by a taxi driver who said there was no buses to the train station. Our first encounter with the impatient French while trying to buy and then change our train tickets.
Six years ago traveling through Europe I heard about this event called Tomatina which was described to me as a giant Tomato fight. At some point I saw some travel TV show at the Tomatina and at that point it made the list of things I had to do before I depart this Earth or at least settle down in some white picket fence house with 2.5 children and a golden retriever. In the summer of 2008 I made my pilgrimage and here is the story of how it all came to be…
I show up in Buenos Aires and I am antsy for some racing action on mi bicicleta. I go online and look for whatever I can find and come across a very helpful website at http://www.infobiker.com.ar. I look on the calendario for wahtever I can find and see that there is a race in a province of Buenos Aires in a city called Olavarria. Perfect! So I am staying in the province of Capital Federal in the state of Buenos Aires. Olavarria is in it’s own province in the state of Buenos Aires. This basically means that the place I had to go was 350 kilometers from where I am living. No matter, I was committed.
I seem to be having quite a few dreams recently where I am being chased either by some sort of evil force or as if I am a fugitive. Last night I had one where it seemed we were in a mountainous area which reminded me of my buddy Len’s old house at Lake Nacimento. Pretty much the yeah buds group was having a great party and then it all turned sour and I needed to run. I successfully got away through a hidden gap I knew about in the fence and when I got through the other side I was captured indicating that someone had ratted me out.
In most of the cars here and in Brasil and possibly most of south america, there is always a fire extinguisher. Many times a rather large extinguisher. All I can figure out is that there is a large propane tank in the back of the taxi’s which I suppose could be considered flammable and likely at some point in the past, a child and un perro pequeno were trapped in a burning wreckage outside of some politicians house screaming for a fire extinguisher. That politician then became rich with some legislation and a friend in the fire extinguisher industry.
First of all, I love this country. I knew I did when I visited this place 1 year ago and I am glad to see that I picked wisely. Granted there are still some 193 countries I still need to visit. I am glad that I have decided to make my first offshore residency here. I have a friend who happens to be in town right now, A Mr. John Finch, who describes this place rather succinctly. “They have everything that we do, just not as good.” This is very accurate but I am sure there numerous things that can be traded back home.
