The Indian province of Goa has over 70 kilometers of beautiful beaches and excellent cheap food. That combination kept me in my beach hut two weeks longer than planned. India's transportation network kept me there another two weeks. Flying in and out of Goa seems relatively simple, but leaving by land proved exceedingly difficult. When I finally decided to leave and head … [Read more...]
Barcelona Hides Its Bus Stations Well
When the bus pulled over in a pitch black residential area on the outskirts of Barcelona and the driver practically shoved us out the door, we knew for sure we had missed our stop. We had tickets on a night bus to Madrid and had decided to take a city bus to the long distance bus station, because we didn't want to pay for taxi and getting to the station by bus seemed easy … [Read more...]
Fat Man on a Little Bus
I started this series on annoying tourists a while back, figuring I would pull from my virtually endless supply of material and add to it from time to time. It's been a while since the first post, so I've decided to add a second and write about a Chinese guy I got stuck next to on the 22 hour bus ride from Lanzhou to Dunhuang in China's Gansu Province. I've also decided … [Read more...]
Welcome to Shwebo Mr. ATM
The next two hours were pretty uneventful and even relatively pain free, since my knee caps had been thoroughly liquefied by this point. We did pass a road construction site on the way and had to wait for a bit as a group of slaves broke up rocks with hammers and placed them into the roadway by hand. I know, I know--they are not slaves, they are volunteers. You see, … [Read more...]
Arrival in Mandalay
Once at the station, we boarded our bus to Mandalay and it actually was quite luxurious compared to the one we were just on and just about every other bus I would ride for the next month. The main perk you get when you pay more money is one seat per person and the fact that the bus doesn't stop to pick up every single man, woman, child, dog, chicken and goat standing by the … [Read more...]