parkrun on tour – 14 October 2011

I had to bring my run forward to Friday evening as we had a 5 am start on the Saturday to start our journey to Cambodia. It was just starting to get dark in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon) and this was a good time as all the locals seemed to be out exercising as well so I wasn’t the only runner for once. Mr Beet’s plantar fasciitis has been playing up, so he got the week off. While he was waiting for me he was accosted by Vietnamese tourism students who wanted to film him talking about his favourite food. So there is now somewhere a video of him explaining the component parts and nutritional value of a roast dinner. Cool photo of me with a backdrop of Vietnamese traffic to follow.

As promised

The parkrun world tour will continue in Cambodia.

parkrun on tour – 20 August 2011

Here are before and after photos of our parkrun in Shanghai’s Century Park last Saturday.  It was 35 degrees and for some stupid reason we ended up going out at 1pm.  Chris, our host in Shanghai, was persuaded to join me, and that meant that Mr Beet was socially obliged to join in on his first international parkrun so far.  Hooray!

We were the only runners in the park and were the object of some curiosity and amusement to the other park users.

I can’t access facebook in China, so if a parkrunner is reading this, perhaps you would be good enough to stick the photo of Mr Beet and me on the Greenwich parkrun facebook page.  Otherwise people will think I’ve been skiving.

McDonalds International Tour

I have been challenged (and indeed, sponsored) to eat a McDonalds in every country I go to.  Here is photographic proof of my completion of stage 1 (Japan) in Kyoto station (and McD’s took some finding I can tell you).

Souvenirs

As we are travelling for a whole year, we can`t get loads of souvenirs.  But we`ve picked up a couple of things from Japan that are easily transportable and also practical.

As you can see, the heat is getting to us, so I`ve opted for the pretty fan and Mr Beet has gone for a little towel.  Lots of people here always have a little towel to hand to wipe their sweaty faces, and Mr Beet`s face is one of the sweatiest around.  He`s delighted with his towel.  A wise man once wrote that the most important thing for a hitchhiker (or backpacker) is to know where his towel is.  Mr Beet is now inseparable from his and is much happier (and hoopier) as a result.

Sticky

I knew chocolate would melt, so I cunningly thought to bring little packets of sweets as emergency high-energy snacks.

Doh!

Countdown…

Days to go until my birthday: 16

Days to go until Glastonbury:25

Days to go until leaving work: 55 (34 working days)

Days to go until round-the-world trip: 65

RTW – Flights booked

Our round the world ticket has now been booked so this is actually happening and I can’t start panicking about all the other preparation that I haven’t done (item number one – renew passport).

With a bit of tweaking from the travel agent to make our trip fit into a RTW ticket (plus some add ons), and a last-minute change of heart swapping Southern Africa for South America, our itinerary now looks like this:

View Larger Map

And in travel guide form:

Obviously I was cringing at the thought of so many flights, having been so good about my carbon footprint in 2010.  Especially when the travel agent started saying things like; “actually it might be cheaper to fly back to London from Lima and then back to Los Angeles”.  How can it be cheaper to fly 9,700 miles than to fly 4,200 miles?  There should be rules meaning it is never cheaper to fly twice as far.