Vietnam - Skyfall

Traditional chicken heads, just like at Morrisons

Late last night we stopped off for some street side snacks, and even though we avoided the deep fried chicken head cuisine, the consequences were still as expected and Tim has lost a lot of weight and also condemned the bathroom. They seriously need to open a branch of King Kebab over here or it's only going to get worse.

Getting up was easier today mainly because neither of us could sleep despite necking Vietnamese sleeping pills. It turns out that our body clocks aren't easily fooled and that we do need to get smashed every night! Either that or we stop drinking four pints of vodka & red bull every night!

We needed to book our trips up today so we took our plans to the concierge to sort it out. This involved booking some motorbikes for a few days, a speedboat tour and hopefully a flight to Cambodia.

Shortly after booking the bikes for 3 days and finding where to stay out of town, the concierge gave us an invite to their NYE BBQ. When we explained that she had just booked us out for that period so we couldn't go she looked like she was going to top herself so we've changed our plans to make sure the staff have a good party.

Panorama goodness

We visited the tallest building in Saigon and went to the sky deck, it was quite impressive,you could see for so far that Tim tried to call in an air strike on the murderous American embassy.

On the way back we stopped regularly just to abuse the Aircon as the humidity is energy sapping. It was then time for an afternoon kip to sort ourselves out.

Our plans for Cambodia seem to have been scuppered, we have two choices, either pay a ridiculous amount of money and fly or spend 12 hours on a coach each way. It's a no brainer really, screw you Cambodia!

Later in the evening we went to JJs for food. It was good, and suspiciously American. We asked for some onion rings which they didn't understand so we described them and they had a go. Fair play to them, they were some kick ass rings. Upon leaving, our suspicions were confirmed and it was owned by a capitalist bastard American, so Mark pushed the tables over and Tim torched the kitchen.

The usual bar crawl followed and we decided to watch the Chelsea game. All of the ozzies are typical glory hunters where Mark is just rooting for his fantasy team which seem to be doing terribly.

On the way home we stopped by the cheap bars  where you sit on six inch high plastic garden furniture not even suitable for gnomes (although the been there is about 40p/bottle). The guys next to us were complete idiots, the one thought he was a cached version of Trip Adviser and basically told everyone who would listen about how well traveled he was and how he was an expert and his mate had just imported a yellow Ferrari etc etc. His mate was wearing a dressing gown because apparently he'd been "kidnapped" from Hanoi earlier in the day. Tim said that he looked like the karate kid...only gayer. They stopped talking to us then.

No more beers now, time to go back to the hotel, although Tim decided that he needed to stop off for some noms at a guy with a cooker attached to the back of his moped selling some baguette/pate/pork/ham/dog sandwich. It's only a matter of time before we have to evacuate this floor of the hotel.

Vietnam - Walking

Mark did some research and found some bars in another district that are meant to be good so we took a stroll across town. It turns out that the bars are nice but they're empty and expensive, nearly English prices! So we hot footed it back to the land of sub £1 beers double time.

On the way back we found some bars with people in, but it turns out that they're all prostitutes and we are in that district again. Saigon is split into districts and we're told that one is best for tourists, another best for living and another best for crime. Tim wants to know which is best for monkey knife fights but apparently there isn't a district for that.

He's got money to burn

We walked past someone having a little fire in the street, on closer inspection he was burning money. We asked him why and didn't quite understand him, but it was something about the afterlife. Stupid Vietnamese, he's still alive!

It's extra humid tonight and still 28c at midnight. After a lot of walking it's time to cool off with some cold beers.

We're jammin'

After several beers and cocktails which included drinking vodbulls from jam jars we met a guy from England. We investigated further and he was also from Birmingham, where abouts? Kings Norton. Really? Which road? Burford Park. You're shitting me. He basically grew up in the road next to where we did. Small world!

We spent the rest of the night with Robin, our new Brummy mate and rolled in about 3am.

The next morning we woke up to find that it was actually well into the afternoon, we'd just missed breakfast by half a day.

As a hangover cure we decided that a KFC was in order, so Google Maps was in order. So we found out that no wonder the murderous Americans had trouble getting lost, Google Maps is wrong, maybe we should have tried Apple maps instead but we'd have probably have ended up in Cambodia.

After a long long walk and asking many people we finally found the hallowed ground of KFC, which was good as Tim was ready to kill someone as he hadn't had his regular food intake. Vietnamese KFC appears to use smaller chickens than the rest of the world and are also scared of giving you more than 3 chips each. Still we were good and didn't complain like the good brits we are.

Fed and watered we walked to the war remnants museum. This has entire sections dedicated to what bastards the Americans are and how they are war criminals. Next time I see an American I'm going to spit in his face!

After playing with the rocket launcher and mini gun we took a long walk back to the hotel as dusk dropped, very nearly getting run over several times.

We are local celebrities though as people stop to have their photos with us. We think it's because we're tall but it might be because it's because we're so good looking :)

After all the walking we decided to have a massage, not that sort of massage, we weren't in the prossy district! It lasted an hour and involved them walking on our backs cracking vertibre with their toes.

A quiet night followed involving more walking, this time to the night market where there are hundreds of stalls all selling the same crap. Tim was very disappointed that there wasn't a donut stall like the markets back home.

We've only been here 3 nights and the street peddlers know us by name now. I think by the time we go home we'll have put their kids through college. 

Vietnam - First night & tunnels

We headed out for our first night in Saigon fresh from a power nap. We stopped outside a bar at the end of our street and that 3 second pause was enough for an army of waiters to surround us, move two chairs behind us and Jackie Chan us into the seats. A guy from the bar next door gave us a leaflet which nearly started a bar vs bar fight, and the leaflet was quickly ripped from our hands and thrown away.

After a couple of local beers we had a game of pool. Bars of England take note, the pool tables are free to use. We both played pool about as well as Steven Hawking on a trampoline, as the games went on for hours. Some other people asked for a go and our game took so long that they'd ordered their food and were halfway through their meals before we'd finished.

Despite us having to be up at 7am in the morning we decided to start on the cocktails and swiftly worked our way from bar to bar, although saying that, the cocktails are served in the world's smallest glasses.

All the bars play 80s and 90s rock, Spenno would be right at home with his air guitar here.

As we went further down the street the bars got seedier, the bars marketing reps had offers such as "one beer, one punani, two beers, two punani". After that every bar had a bunch of local girls calling you in.

We carried on until we found a prostitute free bar and sat down for a drink only to be immediately surrounded by prostitutes!

We fled the scene after a couple of quick drinks and made our way back to the normal bars where Tim got talking to a guy about knives and Mark got leached by a visa hunting girl. Tim found out that they sell switchblades here with torches on them so that you can see who you're stabbing properly while Mark called the embassy to arrange the necessary paperwork for his new wife to travel back to Blighty.

A few more cocktails and we had to call it a night to ensure we would be alive in the morning.

Eating soup on the back of a bike

Six hours later the alarm woke us and we were very much not alive, Tim drunkenly staggered to the shop for supplies which involved him getting a few cans of fake Red Bull. It wasn't great but it did the job, so we had a quick free breakfast and got on the bus to the Cu Chi tunnels, our first excursion of the holiday.

After a two hour journey we arrived at the tunnels with our guide and he made us watch a propaganda video about how the evil Americans murdered women and children, blew up hospitals and fought a losing battle, you know, a bit like Afghanistan. The tunnels were tiny but we crawled through them on our hands and knees, got a little bit lost but emerged safely. It's a good job we'd laid off the pies!

War preparations

It was then time to shoot stuff, we both had a go at shooting evil bastard Americans with an AK47 and a fully auto M60. The other thing we learned was how to make deadly traps, we both can't wait to get home and build some protection around our homes, although we must remember to inform the postman.

It was good fun and very interesting, they should make a film about the war... 

Vietnam - Day 1

Today, me and Tim started our much awaited trip to Vietnam. Enough of all this Christmas stuff, we're in pursuit of some warm weather, and if we can help stop the spread of communism and free some POWs while we're at it then all the better.

It was an early start, 5am on Boxing Day as we headed to Gatwick, we'd paid to park on someone's drive which turned out to be a field (I didn't think they had fields in London either!). Tim's nice new shiny white trainers are no longer shiny or white.

Once at the airport Tim asked everyone remotely involved in the operation of the airport for an upgrade. It did work though and a pair of legroom seats were ours for the 12 hour flight ahead.
Mark had his last meal at the airport taking the opportunity to grab a burger before starting his two week diet trying to find something other than noodles and rice to eat.

Our pilot was a bit of a ninja and made up an hour by utilizing some shortcut or something, so we touched down after 11 hours of not sleeping properly which made it 6am local time, we were a little tired to say the least. We went through passport control first which was lucky as it seems that the customs man decided that he'd let his family through after us, and he has quite a lot of family! At the carousel we waited for ages for Tim's case, in fact we were starting to panic a little and then Tim realised that his case was one of the first off and it had been going round and round for about 15 minutes.

We'd done a lot of research into which cab firms to use as quite a lot of people will try to rip you off, we knew what firms to use, how much to pay and how to handle it. This all went out of the window as as soon as we walked outside we'd agreed an extortionate price with some old dude to get in his clap trap of a car that would give Rover a run for their money on shitiest car ever made. It looked like it would fall apart.
2 minutes down the road, it fell apart. After a crunching noise on a gear change, the car slumped to one side and we looked out of the side window to see one of our wheels rolling off down the road, we officially had 3 wheels on our wagon. The cab driver didn't see the funny side so much as we jumped out and hailed down one of the proper cabs that were on our white list.

The rest of the journey to the hotel was just as interesting as the rules of the road that we're used to went out of the window. Traffic lights don't mean anything, one way roads are not one way, and no one has right of way!

We made it alive to the hotel by about 7:30am, but we couldn't check in until 2pm, so the ridiculously thin woman on reception recommended all of her families restaurants for us to go and eat in to kill the time. We decided to see the sights and went for a stroll. This however meant crossing the roads, which is no easy feat, we'll do a video on this over the next few days as it involves a blind leap of faith. You sort of wait for the traffic to thin a bit and then step out, don't look at the cars and bikes flying towards you, so long as you maintain a constant pace then they'll go around you. If you stop or change direction however, you're dead.
By 9:30 we'd seen all the sights of Saigon, some church thing, a post office, Reunification Palace and so on, but that was ok, the next 4 hours would be spent fending off the street peddlers who try to sell us sunglasses despite us already wearing a pair each. There are also a lot of shoe shine people who constantly want to clean Mark's once white trainers, one look at them and you can see the shame on their faces and they really have a need to clean them!

We stopped for our first authentic meal. Tim had some spring rolls in a sauce and Mark ordered some bread and chips, well at least he would have but they decided to ignore his order and just kept bringing him forks instead while Tim stuffed his face. Eventually after reordering, his food turned up (with another fork) so we tucked in.

An interesting theme throughout the day has been how Mark has been treated like a second class citizen compared to Tim. Taxi cab drivers, hotel staff, waiters, etc immediately rush up to carry his luggage or pander to his pretentious needs while Mark is left standing there and has to fend for himself

Back at the hotel we were finally allowed into the room which is ok but a little small with no space for clothes, so we'll be living out of our cases for two weeks. The towels are also so small that you can't quite wrap them around your waist, although after Mark's diet, that shouldn't be a problem - on a positive point it will prevent Tim from indulging in his hobby of towel whipping anyone in the vicinity.
Sleep is needed now, it's been a long double length day, so we're allowing ourselves a couple of hours to catch up before having the traditional first night out which involves getting completely smashed. 

Last day

Tired, hungover and miserable. That pretty much describes us all this morning. We'd got in about 2am a little worse for wear and it was now 8am. Stupid mornings!
We have to be in Santander for 2pm and it's a four hour ride on the motorway not including any stops, so we needed to get moving.
We opted for a simple breakfast to avoid yesterday's cheese incident so croissants it is.
We were soon on the road and somehow for the first time during the trip we didn't get lost. Steve did try his best to sort this out though and we had a few last minute trips across the chevrons.
There are a lot of signs along the motorway about deers jumping into the road yet we didn't spot any signs for giant eagles diving in front of you to pick at the roadkill.
It's got to be said that even the motorways in Spain are stunning. Some of the views are fantastic as we cut through the mountains and passed the ocean side towns.
We got to the ferry with loads of time to spare, eventually rocking up at 1:59. Mark did a John Terry and took the lead with 200 yards to go to claim credit.
On the boat Tim and Mark parked up while Steve had to leave his bike hanging off the back of the ferry.
We slumped down for some food and looked out of the window to see a bunch of dolphins chasing us, Tim wanted to get his fishing rod out.
We took part in a pub quiz and scored quite badly but still ended up winning as we were the only team to take part! Our prize was some Brittany Ferry playing cards, but we were more pleased with actually winning something. Next up was a talk from Orca about dolphins and stuff. It was death by powerpoint and Steve and Mark dozed off. Tim doubted some of the guys facts and wanted to argue it out with them.
10 days of booze and crap food were catching up with us so we introduced a two deck rule for any trips to the loo. Let's just say that deck 10 is now off limits to anyone with a sensitive nose and leave it at that.
There was another cheese incident for tea when the stupid French chef forget that we didn't want any and then tried to fix it by scraping it off. Tim kicked off and we got some fresh burgers although they turned out to be more like cat food burgers in the end.
The nighttime entertainment consisted of another quiz, a sports quiz, a men vs women quiz, a quiz on the quizzes and then an impressions Quiz. The impressions were very bad, in fact most of them comprised of him saying the characters name as part of the impression?
It was then time for sleep as we were all struggling to keep our eyes open.
Writing this now, it's the following morning and after breakie there are three more quizzes before docking in a couple of hours. 1220 miles covered.
Thanks for reading!

Day 9 - smashed

We enjoyed a well earned lie in today. Mark and Steve then went to get breakfast. They found bacon sandwiches, and ordered 2 without cheese and one with. Back in the room they were chuffed with their findings and handed out the sandwiches. It turned out that all three had cheese and Tim had a little sulk.
While getting the breakfast they were approached by random drunk people. One came over to inform us that there would be no more rain while another asked if we were in Pamplona. Crazy town.
Some girls came to the apartment to inspect it and were surprised to find it quite clean and tidy. Luckily Tims room had just started to smell normal!
We thought it would be good to give the bikes a run so headed back to the pyrenees, this time without the luggage. We blasted along and stopped for some lunch. Tim ordered a burger without cheese obviously and of course it came with extra cheese, all those Spanish lessons have paid off. It's not really his fault though as the genius waiter couldn't even understand "Coca Cola".
We then jumped back onto the bikes and found that the police had set up some speed guns just where we'd been blasting it earlier, lucky escape!
We found a nice spot and did some videos of the bikes which we'll put on YouTube once we're home.
On the way home Tims radio fell off the bike meaning that we no longer had any comms. Mark found the radio later but we don't think that it's repairable.
Back in Pamplona we got changed for the mobile Hawaiin transvestite party held by the Posse. This involved free booze, beer bongs and drunk people, good times.
Mark and Tim went to the bull fight which was very odd. The whole bull fight thing comprised of 8 fights, but after the second one it pretty much descended into a big food fight. Two tips if you ever go.
1) don't sit in the sunny side, you will get wet.
2) don't sit next to any hot girls as people will throw buckets of booze over them.
We stayed for a couple more fights until we were soaked with sangria and went back to the Hawaiin party which was now just a party. Steve was quite drunk and was hanging out with some Scottish guys wearing kilts. Steve said that he could confirm that they were not wearing underwear. Tim and Mark wanted to go back to the bull fight!
We then had lots more drinks with the Posse and went to the park to watch tonight's fireworks. Tim somehow managed to sleep through them but this gave him enough life to stay out drinking for a couple of more hours.
We were quite smashed at this point and had found ourselves in a fairground that we didn't know existing. They did sell chicken though so got a load of those and pretended we were in Nandos. Steve put on an impromptu puppet show staring a prawn and then danced like he was in Swan Lake in front of a live band.
We met back up with the Posse and stumbled around until we decided it would be a good idea to find our way home. Tim got us all lost again, when we checked the map he had gone in the complete wrong direction, if he had have carried on, he'd probably be in Madrid by now.

Day 8 - Torros

We woke at the crack of dawn, it was the morning of the bull run. Soon we would be being chased by a dozen 100 stone, 35mph horned beasts.. We dressed in the traditional outfits and waited at the town hall with the other two thousand runners. After an hour a firework went off signifying that the bulls were out and swarms of people started to run in panic. We knew to stay still, to wait until they were close which didn't take long. In seconds they were here people around pushing and shoving, it was chaos. Most of the bulls flew past before you knew it but you had to keep running, there could be more. One came alongside and fell, a dangerous situation as they can get disorientated, luckily this one picked itself up and carried on. A few seconds later and the sprint had slowed but a glance over the shoulder showed another bull behind. Once it was passed we ran the rest of the course and into the bull ring, by this time they were in pens and people celebrated in the middle.
That wasn't it though, after a few minutes the entrance was closed and many of the runners had gone over the safety wall to safety. Tim and Mark however stayed for the next event. They would now let several baby bulls into the arena one at a time with rubber ends on the horns. These would then charge around trying to throw people up in the air whilst we had to see how close we could get. Mark got within about 2 foot but luckily had his running shoes on. Tim mainly pushed other people on the floor. One guy jumped onto the head of the bull, something very frowned upon. The crowd jeered like in a scene from gladiator and when he fell off he was kicked and punched by those around him for about a minute before being dragged off by the guards. Only in Spain is this legal!
Once that was over we needed breakfast so found somewhere quickly before they all filled up. We ordered some ham thing with bread which we found out came with a free bottle of wine. So at 8:50 that pretty much set up the rest of the day.
We roamed around the city for most of the day and stopped at midday to watch the drunks in the park. One was trying to play his guitar that didn't have any strings while another took about 10 minutes to stand up only to face plant the floor immediately after all without spilling a drop.
Wherever you go in Pamplona there are lookee lookee men trying to sell you hats, watches or sunglasses. Literally every 2mins one comes over. Mark got annoyed and told him that he was the 80th one and to go away, which prompted the lookee lookee man to call him a racist.
We met a few others had a some beers, Kieron thinks he is Ewan McGregor but is actually more like the guy from Police Academy who shouts everything.
Later while sat on some grass having a beer some old girls wanted their photos with us, we realised then that they thought we were the local drunks :)
In the evening we went to King Kebab to see if it was as good as back home, to be fair, it wasn't bad, but the true test would be how much toilet time it would produce.
We watched the fireworks again, this time we sat in the middle of a dual carriageway. We had a great view and the display was better, but we missed the sound from last night's courtyard. Towards the end I think Tim took control of them as they appeared to just get bored and let them all off at the same time.
On the way back to the apartment, Tim let off some fire crackers and smoke bombs that he'd brought without anyone knowing and got a few cheers from the locals.

Day 7 - Switchbacks

An early start with another great hotel breakfast. We left Biarritz following Tims directions that came with a guarantee that you can't get lost. However after literally one road we were stuffed.
We stopped at a war graveyard for some pics on the way out which proved to us that France did actually have an army.
The roads soon got good with some fast sweeping bends and traffic that jumped out of our way.
A quick pit stop for food was needed and Mark had his best meal of the holiday, sausages and chips.
We then found a bike shop to finally fixed Steve's bike it turns out that the chain lube we'd been using was cleaner! We would have been better taping a Greggs sausage roll to our chain.
It was then time to hit the Pyrenees which were the best roads ever. Lots of swichbacks with stunning views but also quite dangerous as Tim and Steve nearly went into an oncoming truck.
Unfortunately it had to end and we rocked up into Pamplona for the party.
We felt a little out of place as we walked to the apartment in our leathers sweating our tits off while literally everyone else was wearing white and red. We soon got changed and felt like we were dressed for cricket.
Buffalo Bill led us on a tour of the bull run course and scared us with stories of people getting gored. But we felt well prepared for the big event the next day.
After a few beers the party was in full swing and Mark got his hair set on fire by a man dressed in a bull outfit that fired fireworks at people.
We tried to get to the fireworks and successfully fought our way through the 83 brass bands that were competing for our ears in the narrow streets. When we did get there it was the best fireworks show ever, loads of massive fireworks exploding around the buildings which deafened us. They do this every night so no wonder Spain is broke.
We had an early 1am finish as we had to be up at 6am for the run.

Day 6

Steve woke up to a hangover that he couldn't explain and it was only when Mark reminded him that he'd drunk beer, wine, mojitos and rum that he found it was justified. Mark and Steve went to Tims room to get him only to find it a health hazard to enter, and we feared for the maid unless she has a hazmat suit.
We had prepaid for breakfast in the hotel between us this was 27 euros, imagine what sort of awesome food we were expecting for that! So we were a little disappointed when we got half a baguette and two croissants between 3 of us and a thimble of oj each. You don't even get a plate.
Now that we were full we had a good walk around town including going out to see a lighthouse and finding a pub that also sells knives.
The Roxy women's world surfing championships were on, but our timing wasn't so world class as they were just packing up as we arrived.
We set about looking for lunch and Tim has now reviewed all 189 restaurants in Biarritz. We settled for a nice beach bar and grabbed some burgers. We didn't leave a tip and this came back to bite us later as Tim had left his hoodie there which the staff later denied.
On the night we went back to the bar that serves out of the front windows and got talking to the Biarritz rugby team (past and present). The one guy looked like Del Bosque of international football fame. Whilst talking to him we found some money on the floor so we brought some drinks for everyone including ourselves of course. One of the rugby players shook our hands and mostly crushed them in the process, we found out that his name was 'so so' but we thought it best not to tell him that this translated to 'a bit shit'.
Steak and ribs for tea before a subdued night out which included watching the sunset from the top of the Radisson and then we navigated home using Mark's glowing red neck.

Day 5 - The long ride

It was always going to be a tough ride today with Google saying 8 hours journey time not including any stops or getting lost.
Several seconds after leaving we got lost, something that would happen a lot. It was also raining quite a lot and Mark had lost one of the radios.
It stopped raining fairly soon and the roads dried out letting us make up some time and then we found the D145, a 30km stretch of breathtaking B road which was devoid of cars and had some great corners. There were fields of sunflowers and vineyards lining the roads. The only snag was that at one point just around a blind corner there was half a ton of gravel across the road!
We had some grub in a small town, although they served us the biggest pizzas ever.
Back on the bikes Steve then spotted a giant eagle and thought it was going to eat mark, it should have had one of our pizzas instead.
Within the next hour there was a knocking noise from Steve's bike so we spent a while trying to figure that out while the temperatures steadily rose to a little over 30c.
We never did find out what the knocking noise was but we carried on regardless and soon had to stop for a drink to cool off. At this point after nearly 6 hours riding we were about half way so we opted to scrap our 'no motorway' policy and just gun it to Biarritz.
We made good time even when we went through a hail storm and we were quite brutal with our filtering.
We eventually arrived after about 10 hours on the road including stops for rests, drinks and tolls.
Biarritz is quite a fun lively town with the bars all heaving and the people friendly. One bar is like someone has converted their lounge into a pub and they serve beer out of the front windows while playing the Dire Straights album in the background.
For dinner Steve managed to have another great meal, Mark had another pizza (still can't understand the menus) and Tim had a duck.
It was here that we found out that Tim has a goldfish memory as he couldn't even remember going to Vannes just two days ago and refused to believe we had gone there until shown photographic evidence.
A few bars later and Tim and Steve were drinking home made rum as recommended from a now very happy bar man. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off for one more drink only to realise that it was a gay bar, time for a cool sharp Harp!

Day 3 - La Rochelle

The day started with a difficult choice; €15 for cornflakes & toast in the hotel or go to the local cake shop - guess which won?

We then embarked on the journey to La Rochelle, the trip that we all forgot to arrange, strange since we've only being planing the trip for 6 months - we blamed Steve for this mishap when he was out of earshot. Two things soon became very apparent 1) there's a reason that Mark does't take the lead on rides after almost causing a crash after 10 seconds & 2) the French don't get the concept of road signs, they don't show the road that your on & don't tell you where to go so pretty much useless. The Speculation on this is that it's preparation for when the Germans invade next, anyway needless to say we got lost a lot. A 3 hour journey took around 8 but was worth it with the stunning country roads.  On one occasion we ended up on a ferry to traverse a river that we didn't want to cross.

Elsewhere on the journey we had difficulty finding food (Tim needs regular feeding to avoid having a tantrum), one place gave us menus then when we ordered said that the kitchen was closed! We ended up having Galattes which are like a burnt Crepe so not that good, who said French cuisine is the best? Also we stumbled across a wicked beach with static kites in the shape of witches, Super Ted & other random characters...

The Biking report is excellent with fantastic country roads so maybe getting lost is a good thing!

La Rochelle seems great, lovely harbour, great bars which close @ 7am& amazing food. Good job we're here for a couple of days!

Random award of the day is the brick house that we saw in the middle of a river.

Special moment of the day goes to Steve for saying 'let's head for the harbour, you'll know it because that's where the boats are parked' - duh!

Day 4 - losing count already

Woke up in sunny Last Rochelle and had our normal cake breakfast. Mark has turned French and just had a French stick. Afterwards we roamed around the town checking out the shops and markets while avoiding the dogshit that lines the streets.
We stopped for lunch and Steve and Tim had salads (although Tim said that he would deny this later), while Mark had chocolate crepes. We climbed up the fort and one guide told us that it was built to keep the British out...  Well in that case it was rubbish as we'd walked straight in!
Later we had a game of mini golf where Steve got quite competitive and had a PGA official on the phone every time Tim played a shot to ensure he wasn't cheating. At one point he was seen counting the dimples on the balls to ensure that they complied. Mark could only hit the ball as hard as possible which isn't the best on most holes. Steve was later seen ordering his winners trophy on ebay.
Following the La Rochelle open we headed to the beach and sat around until the rain turned up. On the way back to the hotel Mark found a sweet stall that sold extra large giant cables and brought enough for the guy to pack up his stall and head home.
As we wandered around the town we noticed a guy dressed like a Ghostbuster who's sole job is to ride around on a scooter cleaning up dogshut, boy that guy has his work cut out.
We went out quite early and grabbed some cocktails
Later at the restaurant Tim got up to look at a picture of some food and spilled his drink all over his ipad, he wasn't concerned though and carried on drooling as Steve and Mark tried to clean it up. If this wasn't enough, the next time he got up he knocked over his empty glass and smashed it.
Steve had taken out some superglue to fix his flip flops and later at the bar he got his phone out and realised that the glue had leaked all over it, so now it is permanently stuck to the side of his head.

Day Two

<p>"the ferry will focus in one hour please depart your rooms", bit of a rude way to wake us up Frenchie. Anyway we struggled to get ready in our matchbox room especially Tim who for some reason had unpacked his entire luggage and then had a strop when he couldn't find anything. <br>
Once we docked we headed out and was stopped by security although it turns out this was just so that they could ask Steve about his bike.<br>
Once in the town we roamed around to find some breakfast but nowhere opened until 9:30,Tim had another strop and we ended up having some cake, not a bad result! <br>
On the road we headed to Dinan but the rain ruined any chance of a nice ride. Dinan was a nice place, very picturesque and after a look around and getting more wet we left for plgfchkyt (we don't know what it was called). Here we stopped for noms and found that there are about a million stray dogs roaming around the place. The sun came out and we managed to dry our things out a bit before heading out towards Vannes.<br>
Mark turned on data roaming on his phone and after 2 mins received 4 texts. The first said thanks for roaming we will tell you when you have spent 2 pounds. The second said that you have spent 2 pounds, the third said that you have spent 7 pounds and the forth said that you have spent 12 pounds. At this point Mark turned off data roaming!
Apparently it's quite easy to get lost in France, in fact we did this quite a lot including going the wrong way down a motorway slip road and then Steve put the hammer down by pulling off some crazy moves through traffic. <br>
We eventually arrived and checked in before heading out for a quiet beer... After a few quiet beers we started looking for somewhere to eat, a task that would eventually take us 3 hours. The problem was that we had no clue what the menus say, so we'd go to the next place, then every 10mins someone would need the loo so we would go to a bar to use the 'wc'&#160; but would then have to buy a beer there too. After 3hours we went back to the first place we looked at and had a bunch of steaks. <br>
Back to the room now, sleep is needed.

On our way

The journey started well, Mark and Tim left to meet Steve at the petrol station. Unfortunately when he rocked up his luggage was already falling off, probably because he brought his bungee straps from pound land and they looked more like elastic bands!
After bodging it back together we headed towards Portsmouth on a typical English summer's day. That's right, it pissed it down.
After a couple of hours we were soaked through but pretty close to the port, Tim however, needed the loo so he took the lead and tried to find somewhere to stop. Obviously the best place to find a toilet is a local council estate of which we went to several of. After a while he found a wall and ran around the corner only to find a giant Tesco. Problem solved.
After a quick KFC (Steve's first ever) we boarded the ferry. Steve managed to get his bag run over whilst unloading so we hurried off deck to the luxury accommodation.

As it happens, shoe boxes are slightly larger than ferry cabins. It's so small that we had to take it in turns going in there. Luckily we needed beers so we went on a pub crawl around the boat. We would have stayed in the main bar except there was a husband and wife entertainment squad on the stage. This however was nothing compared to the white James Brown tribute act that came on later. We ended up in the yaught club after we'd found Tim again who got lost every time he went somewhere on his own.

Pamplona Trip - Prologue

Today is the start of another holiday, and as normal I'll be posting about it right here.
This trip is with Tim and Steve and sees us motorbiking it through France, down the west coast and into Spain. Once in Spain we head to Pamplona for the San Fermin festival aka The Running With The Bulls. For those of you who haven't heard of this, take a look here:

Once we've finished getting new 'speed holes' we head to Santander and get the ferry back to Blighty.


Although France is only a stones throw away (although I'll be careful not to throw any stones, wouldn't want them surrendering again), it's been a few years since I've been there and my knowledge of the language extends to a couple of swear words and 'chips'. All sorted then.


The bikes we're taking aren't exactly suited to 10 days travelling as all three are sports bikes which have about 2cm of luggage space. It's fair to say that we've had to improvise a little with our baggage!


The bikes we have are an MV Augusta F4 (Steve), Suzuki GSXR 750 (Timmah) and a KTM RC8 (Mark). Stay tuned to the blog for stories, pics and maybe the odd video, see you all on Friday 13th!

Zombie Boot Camp

I found myself stood next to 7 comrades, all dressed in our camo uniforms, with armour on our knees and elbows. We wore riot helmets and carried batons and riot shields, the sort that lock together. A scream went out and our visors went down, they were charging at us...

This was just the basic training, we had to learn how to use our gear, the infected were close and we had to fight like a team if we were to have any chance. Most of us had large 'Armadillo' shields that create an impenetrable wall, while others had circular 'Captain America' shields. These guys were the snatch squad, while we were holding back our adversaries, the snatch squad would steam through and apply the batons with extreme prejudice.

Following riot training we were off to the firing range, we'd need guns for this and we had to learn to fight in our environment. After a couple of shots on the range we were learning how to extract from vehicles and fire while advancing on our enemies.

The training was exhausting, health and safety was out of the window, we sat down for a breather but it turns out we didn't have time. The infected had broken through!

Our squad jumped in a transit and screamed to the compound, it was outdoors and strewn with rubble, as we got close the sirens went on and we flicked our visors down. The van screamed to a halt and we piled out. The Armadillo squad of 4 set up ahead of me led by Spenno, they took a knee so that the snatch squad that Tim led and I was part of could see over them. The snatch squad was armed with a baton, shield and semi-auto M4 carbines.

We saw one, it was walking slowly towards us. We let rip with the M4s but he didn't go down. More were spotted on the roof tops, throwing bottles and tyres at us, some came from behind so we ditched the guns and went in.

Zombies are relentless foes, they grab, claw at you and they take a pummeling. One of our team was down, zombie on top of him, three of us tried to pull it off, but it was too strong. We laid in with the batons until it stopped moving and freed our comrade, he was ok. Just.

We quickly rallied and moved around the compound, more came, we fought. One threw a barrel at Tim as we charged him with our shields, these monsters could fight! The journalist who was with us got too close, we watched him go down and rushed to assist. The zombie didn't last long but it was too late. We watched as the journo spasmed and then blood came from his mouth. He was now one of them.

We pushed forward and formed another solid wall. Our CO ordered me and two others to clear some portacabins, we kicked the door in and climbed over the overturned desks. Three infected came at us, the fighting was brutal and real, elbows flew batons swung, then one got on my back. I fell out of the doorway and managed to throw him off.

We fought valiantly but it was no good, we had to retreat, the van was only 30 meters away, we'd have to make a dash for it. I turned to Spenno and he was screaming at me, he had a zombie on his back. They fell to the floor and we laid in, this was the toughest zombie of all and we were exhausted. My baton was used so fiercely it broke, others came and helped and eventually the zombie wilted. Spenno was in a bad way though, he might not make it.

We rushed to the van, diving in the doors, the zombies were chasing and trying to climb through the windows, the driver punched it and we managed to get out.

This was our first of two encounters of the day, we'd lose more before the day was out. RIP Spenno.