So comment back if you are in the area and feel like meeting up, I’m around People’s Square…

Mark and I met while traveling around Europe & Africa and then later we traveled around Canada and the United States. So many stories about what we got up to will make the blog in the coming months while others will only live in our memories.

This most recent adventure was not as wild, no seatbelts were stolen, no firearms were used but we did have at least one mad scientist moment and some other classical things that only happen to us.

While Mark doesn’t exactly live in Manchester it was a 30 minute train ride to his city of Stockport. The first adventure in the weekend came at the train station at the airport as when I put in a 20 pound note into the ticketing machine I thought I just hit the jackpot in Vegas. As unknown to me the train ticket was less then a pound, but the machine only gives out coin change and those 1 pound coins are heavy. So I was standing in front of this ticketing machine as it spit out 19 large coins which landed 6 inches below into a metal tray. So in my usual fashion I raised my hands and proclaimed I won! Yes I still have a bit of Vegas in me and even more immaturity.

I won’t go into all the fun we had over the weekend, but I did manage to get some really great t-shirts as I had no idea the British were big A-Team and Atari fans. I also picked up a really unique STIG shirt, something for the racing boys to enjoy.

Mark and I also did some culture things. First we hit the Stockport museum, which after we went through are rethinking the “hands on” aspect of the museum. How was I to know that the boxes on the wall where not secured to the wall, or that the fake vegetables where not meant to be actually used. This museum also made me realize how old I have become as they had a exhibition about the toys from the past.

Sadly for my kid at heart many of the toys on display were ones that I used, it breaks my heart to think kids these days are looking at my toys in a museum and saying “dad you used to play with that”. One toy that I had completely forgotten about was the Action Player, which was a movie in your pocket. You had little cartages that held a movie that were inserted into a battery operated player, come to think about it, this was the first portable movie player.

The second thing we did was visit the bomb shelters and for this trip Mark’s girlfriend joined us. I have to say I don’t think I have been into a bomb shelters before and while these were interesting they didn’t have the Doctor Evil touches I was expecting. No big red destruct buttons and no concrete or steal at all, as this bomb shelters where dug out of the sandstone. At the bomb shelters I behaved myself other then not knowing the men’s washroom wasn’t actually a washroom.

I do recommend checking out the museum and the bomb shelters, but if you can time it the first week in the month the bomb shelters have an in-depth tour, that you need hard hats and headlamps for as they lead you deep into the bomb shelters, which I think would really be something fun for the kids or kids at heart like me.

Mark and I also managed some time to go and see Bruno, a true English classic. Ok its not a classic nor does it have much to do with England other then “Bruno” being from England. It was an interesting movie, enough that I’ll pickup the DVD when it comes out as it came make you laugh, but it’s not for everyone. One of my favorite parts of the movie was the line “I am so straight that in my house I bricked up the back door”.

I’m on the flight back home, not so looking forward to the rest of the week but it does lead into the weekend and this weekend as most I really looking forward to. Plus its now only 3 weeks away till my trip back “home” to Asia.

After a few eventful days and nights in the Philippines I am on the plane heading back to Singapore for my last couple days there. The Philippines was great and it was made even better by an incredible bunch of people.

My first evening in town Mr. SEO of the Philippines took me out with his group of buddies, which included Abe who is one of the top bloggers in the Philippines and the rest of his close blogging pals, who by the way are the organizers of Philippine Blog Awards. Also out for the evening was Google Philippines new county manager and a couple of her stylish friends. So all in all it was a restaurant full of SEOs, Bloggers and general Internet geeks.

It sure was nice to see that the Internet community in the Philippines is very close both in business and in friendships. If they keep it up, I can see the Philippines being the leader in SEO/Internet market for the Asian region. The Philippines already well known for Internet content developers and outsourced customer server centers.

After the night on the town I did what comes naturally, I left my hotel at like 6am to get on another plane. See there was some management of a very large (but unnameable) Internet company out from the United States and Marc scheduled at the last minute a weekend away from Manila for all of us. So my buddy and I with these two managers headed off to Boracay an amazing Island way the heck in the middle of nowhere.

It was funny as one of the American managers noted that he had to take a taxicab, bus, plane, van, boat, and finally a motorbike all within 2 hours just to get to our resort. My trip had one addition to that adventure, as my route to the airport included a visit with the local police as it turns out a one way street in Manila really means a one way street.

But it was all worth it as we all had a great time, racing around in dune buggies, parasailing and generally enjoying sitting on a beach doing nothing. My personal favorite was the racing around with the dune buggies, as they let us loose on this small town/village and I more then enjoyed myself while I helped out the civil engineers by clearing some tree’s and other debris from the sides of the roads (you can sure get a dune buggy sideways at 40km/h).

Sadly it all had to come to an end, but a couple of us including myself will be feeling the effects of a little too much sun for the next several days. Its strange to think that this time next week I will be walking into the office of my new job, probably wearing 4 layers of clothes and having no idea when the next time I will be laying on a beach just watching the world go by.

Well to the Philippines and the all the great people supporting the Internet industry there I hope we all meet up again but till then keep up the good work. Ok inside joke time, to our wonderful tour guide, I hope that with our next trip we can complete the James Bond tour, minus the fitness section.

Well I just finishing up a 2 day stay in Seoul, South Korea. Seoul is interesting, very costly, along the lines of Japan costs (I have later found out that South Korea and Japan are very similar in culture and style), but minus the Japanese system and cleanness.

I for the most part enjoyed the city/county. I managed to get a tour of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), which was interesting. I’ve seen the boarder between Mexico and the US and while not exactly the same the DMZ shares many characteristics, like long fences, barb wire and a general sense of displaced people.

The most notable thing from this trip was in my hotel room (ok maybe not the most as I still really loved the DMZ and cherish my barbwire souvenir). Now we have all seen mini bars and I had though the most advanced mini bar system was those that as soon as you take the bottle out of the fridge a computer send notice to charge you for the item. Well here in Seoul they’ve gone further, as in Seoul they have installed actual vending machines within the rooms (see the photo). These 4 and half feet by 2 and a half feet machines sit in the rooms just waiting for you to get hungry or need a bottle of wine and the get this when you turn off all the lights the machine wishes you a goodnight sleep. While not something I expect in a 5 star hotel these hotel room vending machines are effective. My only problem was I didn’t have any money small enough to buy a drink and it doesn’t give back change.

If anyone is coming to Seoul and going on the tour of the DMZ, bring along a large marble. You’ll understand when you are walking back out of the tunnel and if possible record the event and let me know how far it goes down (nobody took this suggestion so far, but the slope is just crying out for someone to roll something down it).

Got to go, as I am just at the airport waiting to get on the plane and head to Vancouver and within 48 it is the 48th country that I have traveled to. I am hoping that #49 is Cuba as really interested to see that country and understand better about its culture and government. Will keep you posted as to which country becomes #49.

Well it was really nice to be back in a humid and hot climate, even if it was just for 3 days. This trip was for corporate reasons and I spent most my days and nights working. It wasn’t all bad as it did allow me a chance to meet some really talented people.

It also gave me even more hope for the future (lets say the people I met are rare in Ft. Lauderdale as it is more a rich retirement city then technology boom town). Lets face it is sure will be nice to have the potential to do some remote office work down here in Florida during the winter months.

Fort Lauderdale is surprisingly full of canals and it has the nickname the Venice of the West, but unlike Venice there are huge 150 foot yachts. The city is really flat as there are very few large buildings and it makes it nice as even from the 10th floor of the office you can see for mile and miles around. Also the amount of money and high-end social life around downtown makes for interesting people. To give you an idea we had breakfast at a place that had Dom Perignon on the menu, while I have had some expensive meals in my time a $299 breakfast would have been a first.

The Fort Lauderdale beach was something odd as it had a very steep drop into the water, almost like they pile the sand 2 or 3 feet higher on the beach then the tide can support. But the beach was nice and Dave (my fellow co-worker) and I where able to get a little wet the first evening.

The other evening was all work for me as I needed to complete a website review and training seminar for the SEO team here in Florida and now I am at the airport waiting for my flight. Hopefully next trip I will have at least a day to relax but actually at this point I am so happy to be heading home as in just a few days I will have an official place to call home.

In the next couple weeks I will be planning out my trip into China for SES, but it is looking like I will arrive in Asia on the 19th and depart around the 26th depending on the request from management in terms of looking at developing out things in Asia. So I will let you all know when that is confirmed and looking forward to seeing you all again soon.

Last weekend my buddy Troy and his Wife, who where on their honeymoon from Thailand stopped by Guelph and we decided to explore the region. This was my first time having guests in Guelph, so we headed up to Niagara Falls. This was the first time for Troy’s wife and me seeing Niagara Falls. Tory had been before but he was only a kid so it was a great new experience for us all.

We went on the Maid of the Mist, which is the boat that takes you into the water within a few feet of the falls, it was really wet and amazing. Really need a waterproof camera (yes everything gets very very wet, take a look at my shirt in the photos and I was wearing a full rain suit) to properly recorded it but we did get some good photos and even better memories.

We also went to a haunted house (everything around Niagara Falls is a tourist trap, tons of amusement park style crap), wasn’t much fun but the Tunnel at Ripley’s Believe it or Not was a lot of fun. If you’ve never been in one of these tunnels basically, you are in a dark room in which the walls rotate around you. Because your brain sees the walls moving it things the whole room is moving and you begin to feel like you are rotating. Then your body tries to compensate and actually forces you are off balance when you walk. It is so weird as really no matter how to try to fight it your brain overpowers your logic and reality and you end up walking funny and often hit the side of the rails (I often think back to this and wonder how many things if like are just our brains tricking us to do something that is no real).

Business took me up to Halifax on the Friday before Canada Day and I decided to stay till the Monday and celebrate Canada Day in Halifax along with some friends from Genie Knows.

I came into Halifax (really my first trip to Halifax as the last trip was not so pleasant and ended with me leaving just as quick as I arrived) to talk some business with Genie Knows (who later would hire me to handle their SEO and UI for several projects) as well as celebrate the launch their vertical search engine for the gaming industry (which is no longer online). The business talks went great and the evening of celebrations even better (this was my first time actually getting to play a lot of xbox 360 and my first ever time playing with a wii).

Spending a couple days walking around and doing touristy things in Halifax (the city is very small, probably one of the smallest cities in Canada) was enough to get a good sense of the city. Taking time of a tour of Alexander Keith’s originally brewery was interesting and worth a few hours of time if you make it to Halifax. Overall there is a lot of history and a lot of culture in the city, but is small. Being small for me was nice but some people won’t like that there is not much to do other then bars after 10pm (lucky when I moved to Halifax they started a basketball league, which took up a lot of my evenings).

On Canada Day I went to the home of the founders of Genie Knows and spent it with their family, it was a really amazing time (the founders have a big family with lots of kids, so its really nice feeling to see such a lot of family bonding). They are such nice people that you feel like your part of the family and for me it was the best Canada Day I can remember for a long time, well it also was my first Canada Day in 7 years (the only other Canada Day I can remember is when I was 15 or so in Vancouver and watching the fireworks from the airport).

I did enjoy Halifax, recommend staying at the Westin (which is in an old historical building), great location and rates, but you need to get a harbor view room (later when I moved to Halifax I got a corner apartment right on the edge of the ocean, was really amazing watching all the big ships come and go). The Marriott was also nice, closer to things and the casino but the rates jumped and they actually didn’t have room for me and my colleagues. Although I did enjoy Halifax I took an earlier flight back to Toronto/Guelph as after you’ve walked the downtown/harbor area for 3 days straight there isn’t much new to see (it is not a city you book a week of tours in).

So I am back in Guelph, just getting ready for another blitz of a week, just looking forward to the middle of the month as will be going camping with some colleagues from work and for me camping is always an amazing time.

UPDATE ON POST:

One thing I failed to mention is that Halifax also houses an amazing museum Pier 21 about all the people who immigrated to Canada from Europe in the early 90’s. If you had grandparents or parents that came from Europe they more then likely came into Halifax and you can often find their original signatures in the log books and if you are really lucky you can find them in the many photographs around the museum. I couldn’t spell the last name of my grandparents so I wasn’t able to look them up, but one of my coworkers did find information about his.

Last weekend went camping and white water rafting on the Ottawa River. It was great to get back camping and the white water rafting added even more elements of fun. The only thing that slowed down the fun on the weekend was the 8 hour bus ride from Guelph to the camp. Its makes spending 12 hours on a plane seem like heaven as on the bus there is no one feeding you snacks, even less room to walk around and limited entertainment.

We arrived at the camp Friday night and started up a fire and just took in the night. It is really nice to look up in the sky and see all those stars. The following day we hit the water and had some amazing hits and rapids, we did flip once and went swimming a few times. It was my second time white water rafting and was as enjoyable as the first. The most enjoyable part was dropping down a 15 foot waterfall, we all survived and nobody flips on that one.

That following night was great as we where all tired and ready for a nice relaxing time around the fire. We ate some marshmallows and hotdogs as we chatted about life while watching the flames dance in the fire.

The next day I took a lazy day and ended sleeping half it away as was a little sore and “someone” gave me a red bull the night before and I wasn’t able to sleep till nearly 3am. Most of the group headed back out on the water and had a great day. Then it was back on the bus and another 8 hours back to Guelph.

If you are interested in heading out to the Ottawa River for some white water rafting the company we used was HorizonX and they have a website: http://www.horizonx.ca/

UPDATE TO THE STORY:

There were video and photos from the rafting, I will be posting the photos and videos here so that those that came can watch and relive the adventure and give the rest of you readers more reasons to get out and enjoy some white water rafting.

What an interesting week I spent in Europe as my really good friend Steven (not me) was getting married. Since I travel around the world a lot this friend and I have something unique in that over the last 5 years we have seen each other and kept in touch regularly which is very rare for him and me (2 years later we still are keeping in touch, a record for me). But we both lived in Thailand and ended up working in the same ecommerce company, so even when I moved over to Singapore it was easy enough to get back to Thailand and say hi.

So my friends wedding was on Saturday and I arrived Monday so I got the joy of helping plan and setup for the wedding, makes me rethink doing it for myself. But before I could even arrive in Belgium I had issues and almost didn’t make it to Europe at all.

What happened was I went to check in at the airport as I had booked the flight Toronto to Brussels via London but when I gave my passport to the lady at the counter she looked at it, asked if I had any other passports with me (I’m not some international spy so like normal people I only have 1 passport) and then she walked off. I was like WTF is going on she just took my passport and left. A few minute later she comes back and says due to the condition of my passport I can’t fly to London. My passport had been washed along with my jeans 4 years ago, but over those 4 years I have flown around the world without issue so I was surprised that this lady at Air Canada was telling me I can’t fly because of it.

Now she sent me over to her supervisor who then talked to there supervisor who said no to going to London but yes to going to any place else in Europe. So now all they had to do is find a route to Brussels that didn’t land me in London and still got me there on Monday. They did end up finding me a flight via Germany and while it was still in business class the plane didn’t have the cocoon seats that my other flight had and was something I was really looking forward to trying out. But oh well at this point was just happy to get on a freaking plane.

My friends wedding was small mostly just family and the ceremony was kept just to the city hall event as they didn’t want to have a big event in a church. It was really nice to sit there and see too people make such a big commitment to each other, since I had known them both for a few years I was really happy that they are together and further connected in this way (ok now they are separated and having problems, but at that point on that day it was great to see them together).

During my time in Belgium I didn’t really do much other then some brief shopping trips and sleeping in till 2 everyday. I hope to get back to Europe again and see some other friends in Germany and UK, but will get a new passport before I attempt any travel back to Europe actually will get a new passport this next month as I only have 1 page left for visa’s and I don’t really want to be told by that I can’t get on a plane because they don’t think its pretty enough.

Holidays for me often are not so much fun as usually I am far away from family, but this year for Thanksgiving I headed off to Cuba. Even going alone to Cuba it ended up being great as I’ve never been and had always wanted to go and see a true communist country in operation.

I booked myself at the Hotel National de Cuba in Havana (rated one of the world’s most famous hotels) and if you ever heading to Havana I really recommend staying at this hotel. It has so much history and is such a unique hotel it alone is worth the trip to Havana. If you are staying there ask for one of the ocean view tower rooms, as you will get 2 nice large windows with a view of the ocean and a view of the city. Out of the hundreds of hotels I’ve stayed at this is defiantly one of the top, not only for its history but the value as it was really affordable.

I only spent 4 days in Cuba but I managed to get all over Havana and even got a day trip to the beach in Varadero. It was such an interesting country as they really are unique as without capitalism and without the American influence it has really created a culture unlike anything I’ve seen before. While Cuba is poor it actually maintains a higher level of wealth then countries like China, Thailand or the Philippines as while those other countries all have much more wealth they also have much more visible poverty. Now I not saying that Cubans are rich or not poor, just saying that while they are poor they are not sleeping on the streets, using sheet metal as walls and visually malnourished.

The trip was short but it was just enough time to get a little bit burnt and long enough to forget about some of the issues back here in Guelph (where I was living when I wrote the post) and while I didn’t take my laptop with me I did stop off at an internet cafe for a quick efix.

Next week I’m heading off for to meet with some new corporate prospects and maybe even make a trip back to my hometown to visit with some old friends before I start back into the next big thing.

When I started traveling around the world in 1998 I was one of the few people that had a digital camera and lucky for me as now I can share those photos with you. Here you will find photos from all over the world, in the future I will hopefully be able to organize them within the album by country and by date/trip.

Also you can add comments directly to each of the photos. This is done by clicking on a photo and then entering the information via Google’s Picasa. You are also welcome to download and use any of these photos, share and enjoy!

Photos Public Hosted Here: http://picasaweb.google.com/www.misc.info/Travel