Posted on January 8, 2012 by Robert Beal
Al and Ruby
Having spent the first part of my month in Vietnam at Hanoi and then visiting the south of Vietnam, I returned back to Hanoi on Christmas Eve to spend Christmas and New Years with my brother. Hanoi was by now quite cold relative to other parts of my trip. In fact the coldest so far by a long way, the average high around 14-18C whereas most days of my trip have been 25C+. I was also confident enough to ride around regularly on the Honda Win100 although still quite slow compared to Al. After New Years I went to see the World Heritage site, Halong Bay and see my brother teaching before flying back to Hong Kong.
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Posted on January 5, 2012 by Robert Beal
I have for many releases (since Mint 6 or 7) been a Linux Mint user. Previous to that I was an Ubuntu user (since 6.06 Dapper). I switched from Ubuntu to Mint for a number of reasons. The cleaner designer and generally better theme. The MintMenu which I found worked very well and far better than the standard and rather dated Gnome menu’s in Ubuntu. Also Mint was more stable than Ubuntu despite being forked from it. I switched across my desktop and laptops, as well as my parent’s desktop and laptop. During all of this time I often played around with other interfaces, (Avant Window Navigator being my favourite) but generally stuck with Gnome2. This all changed when Ubuntu/Mint progression came to a crossroads…the switch to Gnome3 or Unity from the trusty old Gnome2.
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Posted on January 4, 2012 by Robert Beal
Hanoi sunset by West Lake
I decided to leave the bicycle in storage in China while going to Vietnam as a respite from cycling. I would also be spending Christmas and New Years there, so wouldn’t have a chance to cycle much. Flying to Hanoi wasn’t the cheapest option but the alternate option of doing a 22 hour bus ride (with Chinese size sleeper berths) was beyond me. I had already clocked up over 30 hours. Getting there turned out to be something of a nightmare. Upon leaving China, Jingwen (who was coming to spend Christmas with my brother and I) was stopped and not allowed to depart. Feeling awful in my decision, I left her standing at immigration and still took the flight. I felt bad as it wasn’t the most pleasant experience for her first trip out of China. It took her an additional week to get everything fixed and purchase another flight before she made it to Hanoi.
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Posted on December 21, 2011 by Robert Beal
Yongxing
Firstly, this isn’t my whole opinion, rather part of it. Nor does it apply to everyone. On a difficult day when I’m feeling negative the points do resonate with me more than normal but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the positive side of travelling. Just in the last half a century travel has become much more available, so much so that everyone is doing it… or so you’d think. If so, you’d be wrong. Also just because “everyone” is doing it, does that make it right? Are we abusing travel? Seeing and meeting many travellers and the impact they have on the areas they visit (myself included) has left me somewhat pessimistic. Could travel be a bad thing?
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Posted on December 21, 2011 by Robert Beal
During my time in Japan I met a American-Korean guy called Mike. He was an interesting character who firstly liked to do CrossFit sessions wherever he travelled to see how it differed (and also to keep in shape), and secondly, got to many of his destinations accumulating and using air miles. Simply put, current travel was helping fund future travel. We’ve both written articles for each other’s blog (mine being Cycling Across The World – Troubles And Tips). Here is what Mike wrote for me…
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