Parlez-vous Francais? Oui!

"London to Athens" Contiki Tour, June 2011, Post #1

Actually, the real answer to that question is "non". Forgive me, I shouldn't tell lies in my blog titles.

Following on from my previous post, we finished up our brief stay in London on June 10, 2011. I can remember waking up on the first day of our Contiki tour and panicking that we had slept in. It was bright light outside, and we had planned to get up at 4:30am. But this was just me not being used to the crazy sunrise times in the UK: bright daylight and 4:30am are two things that simultaneously occur in a British summer, apparently.

In any case, we weren't late, and we got to the meeting point for the tour and checked in. At 7am, the bus departed and headed south for Dover, where we would catch the ferry across to our first stop, Paris.

A City That Needs No Introduction

Going back a little over 4 years to June 2011, I had been in my new job, travelling the world, for almost 3 years. As you can imagine, by this point, I'd amassed quite a few frequent flyer points. So, it was time to travel somewhere and not bring my tool kit with me! I blew about 200,000 points on return flights to London, and set foot for the first time in the UK.

Taiwan: My Home Away From Home

You're probably starting to think that I spend a lot of time in Taiwan. Well... that's true. For the last 1.5 years, I have been dating a local (Avy), so I have a bit of a bias towards visiting her! Unfortunately, my work doesn't take me there particularly often, but I can usually pick up my own cheap-ish flights when I finish in a job in Thailand or Vietnam, for example. Now that we are engaged, my other half will eventually move to Australia, so I have to take advantage of her tour guiding while I can!

Royal Seasons Hotel

I sat here, trying to come up with a more interesting title for this one, but I have failed to do so!

Following on from my previous post, I had a job in Taichung during the 2nd-last week of October. As I'd mentioned, this was smack in the middle of Bike Week in Taichung, so hotels were full to the brim. However, I was very lucky to snag a room at the Royal Seasons Hotel.

Taking it Easy in Taichung

On 17 October 2015, we found ourselves in a bit of a predicament. Originally, my girlfriend and I had planned to head away for the night to see a famous traditional town in northern Taiwan called Jiufen. However, on the day, we struggled with long lines for buses and trains, and eventually decided not to go. So then, we began trying to book some accommodation very last minute for the night in Taichung. The problem was it was Taichung Bicycle Week (which seems to go for, like, 17 months), and so the masses of foreign bicycle industry companies had descended on Taichung and booked out all the decent accommodation well in advance. It took a bit of scrounging on TripAdvisor and CTrip, among other websites, but we eventually found a place to crash for the night in Taichung Ease Motel.

A Little Taste of the High Life

It's been a while between posts! But I had a bit of a lull in my work travel over the past two months or so, and as such, I didn't really have a lot to write.

However, this morning, I rolled out of bed at about 4:20am to head to the airport - ahhh the joys of travel to Asia! When I arrived at the airport, I lined up in the fancy-pants queue, as I'm now a One World Emerald member. I asked the Cathay check-in staff member if there were any exit rows available - gotta put my 6'3" legs somewhere. He smirked a little as he handed over my boarding pass, explaining that I had been upgraded to Business Class for the flight through to Hong Kong.

Well... I suppose that will do!

A Little Seaside City Called Kimitsu

A couple of hours' train ride around Tokyo Bay lies the small industrial city of Kimitsu, in the Chiba Prefecture. Formed towards the end of the Second World War, it relies heavily on its port industries, namely fishing and the massive Nippon Steel factory - the latter of which is my reason for coming here. I have visited several times over the past 5 years or so, but my exploration of the area has been quite limited. I never have a car to get around, and my limited skill of high-school Japanese makes wandering into a restaurant a bit of a daunting task. However, on this occasion, I had a little help from my customer and translator in seeing a bit more of what this part of Japan has to offer.