Where the bloody hell am I?

After a comfortable train journey from Waterloo, London to Bournemouth, I crashed at Al’s place, and have ended up spending 8 days there. What’s funny about that is that I planned on only staying a few days, but got far too comfortable in Al’s tiny English Flat. I spent a day visiting Salisbury, including an excursion out to Stonehenge, and Old Sarum which was a castle inhabited by William the Conqueror. Stonehenge was one of those shoe-in tourist attractions, where its fame outweighs its physical appeal when you finally get to see it. That’s not to say that it wasn’t worth the trip.

I made a day trip to Portsmouth to see the HMS Victory, Mary Rose, and a few other infamous British Maritime achievements. “The Spinnaker”, is a modern addition to Portsmouth, though I couldn’t see a huge purpose for it except as an attractive centrepiece for the harbour. Overall, Portsmouth Harbour seemed like a fairly trendy center for Nightlife and shopping, though if you ask Al, that is the only 'decent' part of Portsmouth.

One of my mates from Australia, Rocket, ended up giving me a buzz as he was in England. So he drove down to Bournemouth for a visit, and Al, Rocket and myself went into town, and had what was a fairly big night out. Started at 2pm, and finished sometime after daylight the next morning. Bournemouth has a huge nightlife, and quite a few 24hr licensed bars. Bloody good night! Also went for a few beers in Wimborne, which was a fairly quiet town, and then Poole, which again, seemed nice as a whole down by the Marina, but up close was full of, again quoting Al, Chav's, Pykies, Gypo's and Neanderthols. Nice.

So far I've spent a day in Kuala Lumpur, three days in London, and two days in Bournemouth, and this is my first entry. Probably not a good sign of things to come, usually people blog like mad early on and then get over it. Kuala Lumpur was worth visiting, though would be better as part of a trip around the rest of Malaysia, but I did go to Penang a few years ago as well.

London was great, and I would definitely like to check out a bit more in the future. I met up with a few backpackers at the St. Christopher’s, Hammersmith hostel, which isn't located nearby anything special, it is conveniently on the Piccadilly line from Heathrow, and two other underground lines as well.

So, Beth (Aussie), Rylan (USA), Meaghan and Alana (CAN), and I, had a couple of piss-ups, paid a visit to the British Museum, which displays a lot of ancient civilization relics, including the Rosetta Stone. The Natural History Museum had a large collection of dinosaur skeletons which was good. Other than that, we checked out Covent Garden’s for its attractive markets, which are great for good (but not necessarily cheap), and picking up some cheap novelty t-shirts. There was also a mad Aussie doing a street stunt show which pulled a decent crowd. Following that we moved on to Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, and then when the Canadian girls wore out, Rylan and I checked out Buckingham Palace then went for beers.

Beth mentioned she wanted to do the Trans-Siberian Express, which I had almost forgotten about, what with the shed load of other places I have to visit, so I'm looking at doing that in September. I'm slowly filling up the calendar over the next few months with an extremely rough idea of what I'm doing and where I'm going, and it's starting to look good.