Travelling Trappies

Sawasdee from Thailand. Well we’re having a pretty relaxing time here in Thailand – lounging around and drinking cocktails 🏖️ 🍹. After landing in Bangkok after our very long trip, we were pleased we’d paid a little bit more for a very comfortable apartment with a kitchen, plenty of room, a nice pool and close to bars and restaurants. I picked an area that said it was lively but was not a backpacker area - Sukhumvit. What it was, in fact, was a not quite red light district but definitely a bit seedy, popular with middle-aged and older European men.  In fact, I was one of the few non-Thai females we saw at all during the 7 days. Male tourists made up about 95% of the tourists! The bars all have lots of young Thai women outside encouraging you in. They then chat with the men, play pool/cards/connect four with them (they love their games in bars & restaurants over here), and encourage them to buy them a drink (which was the most expensive on the menu). The premise being you’...

Ahlan (أهلاً) from Egypt. Apologies, this is a bit of an epic blog as 2 weeks in Egypt feels like about a month as there is soooooooooo much to see.  Leaving Alexandria we headed to Giza – a fairly grotty town but with the Great Pyramids of Egypt and the Sphinx on its doorstep, it’s a must for any visitor to Egypt. If you can, stay in Giza itself in a hotel with a view of the pyramids - there are quite a few of them. We had a view from both our bedroom window and from the rooftop terrace where we had breakfast, so we could see dawn, sunset and the light show from the comfort of our bed 😊. Pick a hotel with a restaurant as where we were there were no restaurants within comfortable walking distance and there weren’t really any footpaths, the roads were covered with garbage and it all felt a bit dodge. You can use uber to call taxi’s to take you anywhere you want to go.  We just stayed two nights, so we had a packed day heading first to the Egyptian Museum and then the Pyramids....

As-salaam 'alykum Well you know you’re back in Africa when the taxi looks like it’s held together by sellotape, road rules are really just suggestions and taxi’s plus people follow you along the road trying to give you a lift/sell you something! I had kinda forgotten about the constant harassment you get here!  But more about that later.   Our taxi from the airport When I last wrote, we were picking up a car to head to Canakkale for a few days to visit Gallipoli and Troy. It was a bit of a haul getting down, half of which seemed to be going round the outskirts of Istanbul!! But we arrived to our apartment, which was in a great location, had cheap parking round the corner and a lift. In keeping with our budget, like the hotel in Istanbul, it was fairly basic, but serviceable and we found a small grocer round the corner to grab some essentials. Canakkale has, I think, the most coffee shop/bakeries I’ve ever seen and they’re open till midnight and packed with locals. The bars on ...