Grand Cayman

So we got up early to catch the hotel shuttle to Chicago airport, and caught the 7-40am flight to Charlotte Airport, and from there to Grand Cayman Airport, only a couple of hours away. We were greeted at the airport by a couple of Cayman guys playing caribbean music at passport control, and this summed up the chilled back nature we were going to get well into on the island. We then met my uncle, Easy Deezy, who took us back to his apartment where I would stay, as well as another apartment next to his that Grieve and Walmo had to themselves. We got settled in, hit the beach and had a swim. You know, chilled stuff like that. We then watched some basketball and had dinner at a local sports bar, before Easy took us into town so we could have a look around the nightlife Cayman had to offer. The few bars we found looked alright, however Grieve and I in our (awesome) basketball shorts and trainers weren't going to get in to anywhere. So we caught a taxi back to the apartment, and hit bed. Today has included sunbathing, sleeping in late and TV. However Grieve and I did play a couple of sets of tennis, and Walmo went for a quick swim so we did do SOMETHING. Almost. Tomorrow however we plan to check out Georgetown.

Kansas Part 2 and Chicago

Thursday started off slowly, as the girl we were meant to meet had apparently forgotten she had a soccer match that day...I don't think she realised she was missing out on meeting THE English. So we decided to get out of the house anyway, with Grieve going to play 5 a-side soccer with Steve on this team. Walmo and I however decided to go to the local YMCA, which had its own basketball court. After playing basketball for 2 hours, waiting expectantly to play against some "G's from the hood", we got our chance and made a good name for English Basketball. And white guys. We came back in good spirits, as Grieve had scored 2 in his game, and got changed quickly before Millie picked us up for the college party. Pre-party beer pong was followed by a typical college party, and finally we were known as "The English" to everyone there, with various people coming up to the three of us saying "Hey aren't you that English guy?". Indeed we were. A fun night ended with a group of us going to a diner aptly named "Chubbies", where we had a very early morning full American breakfast. Friday was once again a very late get up, however we had the Kansas Royals baseball game in the evening. After the three of us once again schooled some Americans at basketball at the YMCA, we got ready for the baseball. It was a great atmosphere when we turned up, with many people arriving way before the game to have a few beers and set up barbecues in the parking lot. The beginning of the game raced by without any result, however it soon picked up, and we all began to get more and more into it. Grieve helped the cause by buying a Kansas City Royals top, with the player's name "De Jesus" on the back. With that, we became die-hard Royals fans, any announcement was met by the three of us shouting "Royals!", with the team shortly racing to a confident victory over the Colorado Rockies (Rockies suck!). After waiting around for the traffic to disperse and soaking up more of the atmosphere, we headed home. Saturday was our last day in Kansas, and we spent most of the day checking out a museum downtown about an American ship that had sunk in the 1850's in the Missouri River. While interesting seeing all the things they had salvaged from the wreck, we couldn't help laughing at our very eccentric tour guide whose stories involved what seemed like (Walmo esq) dance moves. After checking out the open market, we headed back to get packed before having a final meal with Steve's family. After that it was time for the MEGAbus to Chicago City, which proved to be an easy journey despite the fact that each of us got a total of only about an hour-ish sleep each. Chicago greeted us at about 6am, and we soon found the train to take us to the airport, and from there we caught our hotel shuttle (well, banged up van) back to the "O'Hare Garden Hotel", where we dumped our bags. However, on arriving there we found a "Hooters" resturant right next to the hotel= dinner sorted. For those of you who don't know what Hooters is, it is a standard American restaurant with the difference that all the waiters are girls, and these waiters don't exactly dress formally. Internet it. We then bought an all day train pass for $5, before going to check out Chicago city centre for a few hours, including the Navy Pier and the Trump Building. Pretty tired from the night before, we called in a day later that afternoon (after some basketball kit shopping of course). We got the train back to near our hotel, and after a quick power nap we headed to Hooters to "watch" the basketball game on that night. We then hit bed pretty early as we had to get up around 4-50am the next day for our flight to Grand Cayman.

Leaving Utah and on to Kansas City

So after our late get up on the Sunday morning, we secured some more chilling time at George's before tidying up and heading out to the Salt Lake City Airport Inn in the late afternoon. After checking in George drove us into SL city centre, where we said our farewells (to him and the tank of a car we had become accustomed to driving) before heading to the main Mormon Church to see what was going on down there. We spent a good few hours there, being approached by many a "sister" trying to teach us more about their faith, while also wondering whether we would like to get into the religion any more...we didn't. However besides some of the absurd Moron stories and our inital laughing fits at some of our own Mormon jokes,we did all find it pretty interesting. After wandering around the city centre, seeing the Utah Jazz basketball stadium among other things, we headed back to our Airport Inn for what amounted to about one and a half hours of sleep before we had to get up for our flight to Kansas. Depsite tiredness however it was an easy flight, with one change at Denver, and once we were at Kansas City Airport we were greeted by Steve (who, Walmo and I decided, was extremely alike in almost every way to Grievzy's Dad Gary!) Once in the car we had a quick drive through Kansas City, Steve knowing more about it than our tired brains could take in (or probably our awake brains for that matter) On arriving at the house, we met the family, including Donna's (Steve's wife) parents. After chatting with them for a few hours, we made ourselves comfortable and hit bed early. Our first news on Monday was that various people had heard of our arrival, and were keen to meet "The English Guys". So after getting slowly out of bed on Tuesday (we had got into KC late on the Monday), we met a friend of the family called Millie. The day consisted of us being shown around Kansas City by her, before going to her house, meeting her sister and other friends, and Grieve and I becoming undisputed Beer Pong champions. Good day. Wednesday was another late start after a strenuous night the day before, but after getting some breakfast we decided to check out some of the Kansas City culture. So the three of us and Steve went to the Negro Baseball and American Jazz Museum. After being accompanied down the street by a (nice enough) guy from the museum encouraging us to come experience the jazz scene at 2am that night, we thought it best to head back, as we had a barbecue at a one of Steve's family friend's houses. Although it had begun pouring down with rain, it was a fun night, as we met two of the boys of the family around our age, and with the added contingent of their friends we had a brief look around the local plaza, before seeing a film. After sharing some of our Asia stories with the two brothers, we headed back to Steve's, looking forward to meeting more American "fans", as well as the college party that awaited us tomorrow.

Park City, Utah

'Arches National Park' proved to be yet another haven for endless photographs of impressive rock formations (most arches.. due to the name). With Walmo still being camera-less; Felly and I perfected the art of walking up to a sight and taking a snap (or even occasionally doing drive-by photos) whilst many anorak wearing men spent minutes with their flashy professional cameras to get exactly the right zoom and angle. A look of bewilderment would often grace their face as a young Brit would seem almost careless to the quality of his photos (rest assured that our photos are tip top). We then hit Uncle G's Chevrolet Suburban for the 6 hour drive back to Grieve HQ USA in Park City (just outside Salt Lake City) - With George catching up on his sleep in the back; Felly bore the brunt of the driving, clocking around 4 hours of driving time with me taking on the responsibility of co-pilot (choosing the music). We reached Park City well in time for dinner, and after a brief cameo appearance from Auntie Trish (who was flying out to LA the next morning to see Catherine) we went for a bit of grocery shopping before going to bed.

The next day we thought it was best to go back to basics and practice the art of 'chilling'. Playing some xbox360 and watching basketball on the TV - it was a less than strenous day. We went and got some pizza for dinner and the 4 of us chilled some more... George more and more getting the hang of it!

Friday was invariably more constructive. The tripod left George to do some work and we drove down to Main Street, Park City in 'the tank' to see a near deserted city centre (as it was low season; the ski season and finished and the summer season was yet to begin). Being the only tourists there we felt slightly more in place as we traversed the shops for a short while before driving on to the 2002 Winter Olympic Park which was even more ghostly. We blitzed through the museum and checked out the ski jumps before heading off to our next must-do attraction: Wal-Mart. Walmsley who had never been to a Wal-Mart before was less than impressed and claimed that the Baldock Tesco was bigger. We then refuelled at Taco Bell (another American fast food chain we wanted to tick off our list) before heading back to the house. The evening consisted of a few beers and a game of Monopoly... Felly won the game with myself coming a respectable second. George posed little threat in 3rd place... and Walmo.... well he might want to rethink doing Economics at university.

Today we decided it was time to do some exercise... we drove down to Wal-Mart; bought a basketball and hit a local park for many games of 1-on-1 basketball (winner stays on) the lack of oxygen in the air due to the altitude definitely took us by surprise as we were all gasping after a few minutes. Being the true lads we were.. we soldiered on for a few hours and called it quits when Walmo got a black eye for being stupid enough to think he could beat me at basketball. We got back to the house, iced Walmsley's eye... played xbox for a bit and went out and got some takeaway Arby's for the four of us. Tonight we played another game of monopoly.. this time I secured victory.

Tomorrow we're going to stay in an airport hotel in Salt Lake City in preparation for our 6am flight to Kansas City where we're going to stay with my dad's best man - Steve (and family!).

San Francisco, Las Vegas and Utah

After seeing "nightmare on elm street" we got our stuff together and said our farewells to Catherine and LA. We caught our bus with little problems and after our many strenuous rides in South East Asia there was little to complain about. However, our bus arrived at San Francisco at 5am instead of 9am. This left us with alot less sleep than we intended and stranded at San francisco bus station till stores started to open. After trying to sleep on the bus station floor to kill time and get some valuable sleep, we were soon told to get up of the floor or leave. Therefore we decided to hit the city and head down to the piers until we could be picked up by Ian (a Grieve family friend). With it still rather early in the morning there was little to do but eat and sit in an american diner burning time till eventually we were kicked out. As things started to open and no hope of being picked up by Ian until 4ish, we decided to hit alcatraz an island which had served as a high security federal prison until the 1960's. After checking out the cool views from the island and the eerie prison cells we headed back to mainland for some food and to meet up with Ian. We eventually met up with Ian, after a long day walking up and down the piers countless time, who drove us over the famed Golden Gate bridge and to his supposed small suburban town (population 60,000) just outside San Francisco. It was not to hard to settle down in with the family who kindly put us up for the night. Especially with comfortable seats, tv and a basketball court just a short walk away. The next day we slept in till midday due to a nackering day before and quickly caught a ferry in to San Francisco to see the rest of the city. After catching a tram through the centre of the city we spent the rest of the day walking around and just checking out the sites. Seeing a gay rights march, China town and little Italy. Catching a ferry ride back we spent the remainder of the evening chilling back at Ian's and getting ready to wake up at 4am for an early plain flight.



Las Vegas and Utah

We arrived at the airport early in the morning and headed to the United Airways check in desk. After giving our details we were told that our information could not be found. As we all started to panick and think maybe we had booked some dodgy flights on the internet we look slightly closer at our tickets. To our great relief they said US Airways and not United, obviously it was to early in the morning for our brains to function. The flight seemed almost 10 minutes with me passing out as soon as i sat in my seat. However, we were all excited to be waking up in vegas and caught a shuttle to Hotel/casino Excalibur on the Strip. With us waiting to be picked up by Grievzy's Uncle "George Grieve" and age being a major issue we didn't spend to long in any casino. We walked down the strip with all our baggage (looking a bit ridiculous) and checked out the famous casinos such as Caesar Palace, where we got a bite to eat, and ended up at venetian hotel/casino watching some basketball playoffs. George Grieve then picked us up in his chevrolet suburban and drove us all the way to Zion national park in Utah. We checked out some of the views by car and then procceded to find some food and a lodge for the night. Waking reasonably early for a big day of sight seeing and trekking. George guided us into Zion national park and took us on a moderate trail to Angel point. However, with George telling us some true stories of men getting hands trapped under bolders and cutting them off to survive, i was a bit skeptical of what lay ahead. But the trek proved fun and the view at the end was spectacular. We continued on through the national park and saw more impressive sights with my poor english being little justice for what we saw. With some great photos we had to get moving as a long drive lay ahead, if we were to get to Bryce Canyon (another national park in Utah). We arrived at Bryce National park and drove round checking the views which just seemed to get better. With another big day ahead of us we decided to find a place to stay which turned out to have an all you can eat buffet. Like usual we tried to make the most of our money and stuffed ourselfs to the point where we could hardly moved. We woke up the next day to our great suprise with heavy snowfall. This left us skeptical if we would be able to trek round Bryce National and check the famous hoodoo rock formation. Hanging around the hotel the weather started to clear,thankfully. Therefore allowing us to proceed with a quick trek around the hoodoo rocks. The weather continued to change from snow to sun which made the trek even more astonishing along with the alien rock formations. There was once again a big drive ahead of us, so we started our drive to arches national park taking turns driving the chevrolet...sweet. Arriving there every hotel/motel appeared to be full and after a worrying period we found a single spare room. Tomorrow we have a day of seeing the sights of arches national park.

CHAPTER 2- Los Angeles

So the next stage of our trip has begun-America. We set off early in the morning of Saturday May 1st towards Heathrow, our bags full of clothes rather than mosquito nets and over-sized medical kits. After an easy check in, we had a few hours wait before we got our flight to LA airport. While we were slightly down about not being able to stay with Grievzy's cousin, we had a few ideas of where we were going to stay. We ended up, after a long wait for a shuttle bus that never came, in a hostel near a place called Inglewood, very near Compton as we found out. After getting checked in, we had our customary chilling period, before decided to take a power nap before possibly meeting with Catherine Grieve. However, after waking up at 4am the next day it was clear that wasn't going to happen, and so after a few more hours sleep we got up early, and heading to a place called Santa Monica, meant to be a "more agreeable" place (to be fair we were kept up a lot of the night by sirens in this Inglewood area). The day was mainly made up for us walking around the beach area, checking out the famous Santa Monica Pier, before heading down to another beach area called Venice Beach. We also managed to find a a bunch of classic "Gs" playing basketball on outside courts. Finally after going lobster red on the beach, we hit a cafe to wait to meet Catherine Grieve and then take a ride through the Hollywood area in her blue hummer, which made us feel pretty damn cool. We then had some lunch in the Beverly Hills area, and with our best British accents we explained our sleeping situation near Compton. We were then all good to stay at Catherine Grieve's that night, which was great. We headed back to "the ghetto" (though everyone who lived in LA thought it was a really rough area, we hadn't really experienced that bad side) to get our stuff, then hit Catherine G's place. That night we chilled on the rooftop pool in LA, before heading out to get some food. Monday, we headed out to get some food, before walking around for 3 hours trying to find the CBS studio to try and get on a live audience for a show. However, once we found it, there was only "The Price is Right". Still, we had walked around a lot of the surrounding area of Hollywood, checking out the Walk of Fame and other sights (and Grieve and I really thought we saw Johnny Depp). We hit back home for an extended chilling session, and a Pizza Hut delivery. Tuesday and Wednesday our main attraction was hitting Universal Studios to see what that was all about, with such rides as "The Mummy" ride and the "The Simpson's Ride". The two days were good fun, however our faces took a hit, sunburn-wise! Yesterday night we headed to a small gathering at one of Catherine G's friends houses, which was good to meet a few other people from LA. Today we are heading off to San Francisco on a night bus, having seen a lot of the cool sights around LA, including today seeing "Nightmare on Elm Street" in the Chinese Theatre, the place where a lot of the premieres come out in Hollywood.

Macao and Hong Kong

After a 3 hour coach journey we arrived in Hong Kong to be greeted by Hilary and her sister Jil. Straight away we were to get an hour long ferry ride (aptly named 'Turbojet') to Macau - the Las Vegas of Asia. We got picked up by Jil's boyfriend Sergio and his friends in their sports cars - as if it was a scene from The Fast and the Furious. We were escorted in their Japanese tech sports cars through the three Islands of Macao (Macau, Cotai and Taipa) where we looked in awe at the huge neon lights illuminating the giant casinos and surrounding streets. We went for a barbeque where once again we encountered a language barrier - Sergio could speak pretty good English but his friends, such as Wa Jai, couldn't really speak any. Nonetheless we had a good meal - then we checked into our hotel for the 2 nights. From then it was time to hit the casinos - we started at the Grand Lisboa casino before visiting Wynn, MGM Grand and L'Arc casino. Walmo, Felly and I all tried our hands at blackjack, with various different results - I was worst off by being down about 80pounds. At about 4am we decided to call it quits on our casino-crawl and went to bed.

About 12hours later we woke up and went go karting with our boy racer escorts. This was followed by a quick tour of the streets of Macau and a visit to their main historical site - the frame of a cathedral that burned down.. this was coupled with the fact that Hilary and myself might have lost my camera by leaving it on top of the car - fortunately it was left in the back seat of one of the cars. After a Portuguese style dinner we went for a round of bowling - with Mr. Fell coming out with the best score of the day. Afterwards we headed to the Grand Waldo casino followed by the gigantic Venetian casino - where I went on to practically win all the money back I lost the previous night. Once again we lost track of time after a busy day and went to bed again quite late.

The following day we got a ferry ride back to Hong Kong where we went to the police athletics championships to watch Hilary's mum, Sandra, in a cheerleading contest. After her team won the event with a beautiful rendition of Steps - 5, 6, 7, 8 she took us back to the Kowloon side of the river police headquarters where we were gifted with some great police 'stash' - including two polo tops and another t-shirt. With the knowledge we were going out that night with Hilary's friends, we insisted we were to be taken to a cheap place to buy some reasonably nice clothes (compared to the tracksuits/swimming shorts we've continuously been wearing prior to HK). We each bought jeans and a shirt in the market area of HK, called Mong Kok (meaning Crowded Corner), then finally reached Hilary's house outside of the city in a residential suburb called Sai Kung. We had a family meal and then proceeded to encounter 'Ladies night' in the area of Wan Chai. The next day was a bit of a write off, where we mainly watched films on Hilary's projecter screen, but in the evening we went to the Hong Kong yacht club for dinner courtesy of one of Hilary's friends and then it was time for Ladies' night in the area of Lan Kwai Fong! Again, the next day we literally lay about the house and did a little swimming in the pool. We went for a 3rd night out in a row but for the first time we actually had to pay for drinks rather than get the girls to give us their free ones as sadly there were no Ladies Nights going on in the city. After spending Wednesday, Thursday and Friday all witnessing the nightlife - Saturday was actually an open house at Hilary's, as her parents were having about 40guests over. It was really well done with a massive spread of food and drinks - however once again there was quite a language barrier with many of the guests, and moreover we couldn't join in their gambling games as we had absolutely no idea how to play (some sort of mixture of cards and dominoes it seemed). We ended up spending most of our time with some family friends who spoke English and Hilary had a couple of English friends over too.

Today was probably our most productive day since arriving on Wednesday. We went down to the Sai Kung marina for a dim sum breakfast. Then we travelled to a place known as 'Monkey Hill' which was exactly what the name suggests. We walked up a hill which had loads of monkeys around... however quite a few of the monkeys can get quite violent and protective of their territory/family... so when I tried to sneak up to a big monkey that was lying on a picnic table to get a great photo of a chilled out monkey - said monkey became distinctly less chilled, got up and ran at me and Hilary - we both ran off and it took Felly and Walmo a little longer to realise what was going on - and Walmo was hiding behind our newfound alpha male Felly who was waving a stick in the direction of the monkey who'd gone bananas (no pun intended?) whilst rapidly backing away. The monkey then stopped chasing us (perhaps because I decided to put my camera away) and as we all sighed in relief the monkey suddenly started doing some crazy war dance and then ran at us again. This time we decided not to hang around (it was arguably the biggest monkey we encountered) and walked down the mountain extra cautious of the cute monkeys who now menacingly lined the road. After this adrenaline fuelled experience we went to another part of Mong Kok to do visit the night market, then went to the harbour where there is a fantastic view of Hong Kong from across the river. We then walked down the Hong Kong walk of fame (where famous residents have their handprints in the ground) before retiring back to Hilary's - watched the epic Lord of the Rings 2 on the massive projecter screen then everyone went to bed and I wrote this.

It's now hit us how we're going to be back in England in 3 days! Do we really want to go back?