Barry’s Five Rules of International Travel

  1. I will not eat anything rated higher than 1,000 on the Scoville scale during the 24 hours preceding take-off
  2. I will do everything in my power to avoid police attention in countries where they write in their own special alphabet
  3. In countries where security guards routinely carry machine guns, I will not carry anything more valuable than a machine gun
  4. I will not attempt to upgrade the OS on my laptop, nor the firmware on my iPod, iPad, iPhone, or iAnything during the 24 hours preceding take-off
  5. I will not attempt to use superglue on the day that I am due to fly

That is all.

Dear Old Blighty

Southport Pier

A week in Southport would once have seemed the dullest of destinations.

But having now lived in a variety of elsewheres for about seven and a half years, I think I’ve spent long enough away to appreciate what can be a surprisingly pleasant town.

Perhaps absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I’ve no doubt that I’d be bored silly if I were to spend years, or even months actually living there again, but yet a week was not quite enough.

I hadn’t been back to England for almost two years, and quite aside from family and friends there was so much more that I’d missed without even realising it.
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Busy busy

Busy

I am useless at this, aren’t I?

One thing I have learned is that there’s nothing worse than announcing a hiatus in terms of guaranteeing a total loss of audience, as well as any faint hopes of making time to write – a friend recently wrote in an email that he’d “stumbled across your blog (which I must confess to thinking dead)”. Whoops.
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Happy New Year

Long Beach, Koh Phi Phi

I spent New Year’s Eve on Phi Phi Don, which was pretty cool. Travelled down there for a week with a friend from England and relaxed amongst the bars and beaches, although the mood was slightly tempered by some pretty horrific sunburn acquired in between my arrival on the island and my purchasing some sunblock. If you have an Irish complexion (thanks Mum), sunblock is your friend.

Altogether I managed two weeks away from work, and even squeezed in a night up in Vientiane before Christmas.
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