Although a lot of you have given up reading this blog due to inactivity (thus won’t read this sentence, and hence I am waffling before I’ve even started), for those that have not, here is (a full 5 months after I was there) the final installment from my Round the World Trip.

A week away from the end of the trip I wasn’t expecting much from the briefest of stops in the United States but in reality it was a great end to the trip. Before leaving the Cook Islands we managed to watch Michael Moore’s Sicko and Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. What better way to prepare myself for a visit to the good ol US of A?

If you’ve not seen An Inconvenient Truth, watch it. The increased awareness about Global Warming was very evident to me upon returning to the UK after a year away, however the film brings up some shocking facts. Al Gore seems infinitely more capable man than a certain Mr. Bush so much so that you can only wonder what if… Early on in the film while on the topic of that infamous election farce and said president, an American girl got up and left the room, muttering “this is too depressing to watch”. This and the recent conversations about American Policy I’d had with a lovely American couple in the Cook Islands had me fired up and ready to visit the land of the free.

Arriving in Los Angeles, the contrast from remote desert island to throbbing metropolis was quite incredible, especially given the views we were afforded from the plane.

With only a couple of days to see LA we only had time to have a bit of a nose around those places so well known from the movies and television: Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. One of the most striking things about LA was the number of Hispanics. More Spanish is spoken than English. Every bus, shop and restaurant found us speaking Spanish to the locals. Fine by me, but it seemed quite strange that the only place on this trip where we spoke Spanish was in a country who’s official language is English.

It wasn’t long before a few little annoyances started getting to me. I’d been using my Nationwide card to withdraw cash from machines all over the world without paying commission. Even in Laos, where the guide books report there to be no cash machines, we were able to withdraw money without charges yet here in the US I was charged for every single transaction.

On our last day in LA we wanted to spend some time wandering about the city before catching our Megabus to San Fran in the afternoon. We’d hoped to drop our luggage of at the station and pick it up just before our bus was due to leave. For security reasons we were unable to leave luggage without a valid train ticket. The bus ticket was not enough… Therefore we had to pass five hours waiting for our bus at the station instead of making the most of our time there. Something that was so simple in India, for example, was not possible in America… That’s progress for you.

While I’m on the topic of annoyances, I may as well go all out… Why do all dollar bills look the same? Differentiating between the different values requires close attention. No different sizes or colours. How do blind people cope?

Most annoying for me though was the compulsory tipping… If a service is bad or the food is crap, why should I be obliged to give a 10% tip. It just seems wrong to me. I know that waiters and waitresses are paid a pittance and make most of their money from tips, but compulsory tipping just seems a bit of a contradiction.

While we were there a British friend of a friend found out the hard way what happens when you don’t tip. After being overcharged for a cab he refused to tip the cab driver, who then speed off with all his luggage still in the cab including his laptop, ipod and all his clothing.

Wandering about the concrete grid world that was Hollywood was quite entertaining. We also managed to get ourselves invited along to the filming of a TV program, the “Chelsea Lately” show. It was free and we figured it would be good way to get a feel for what this place was all about. Upon arrival at the studio we realised most of the crowd were actually being paid to be there. In fact, many of the people were professional audience… That is they sign up and get paid to sit and watch shows, clap, cheer and laugh. The people around us were evidently from some of the poorer neighborhoods and it has to be said, pretty damn stupid. Eavesdropping on some of the conversations was quite amusing… Two ladies who had just met were discussing their respective boyfriends. Woman 1 was saying to woman 2 that her man sounded good for her and things were going to work well out until she found out that said boyfriend was a Sagittarius. Upon discovering this she seemed to be suggesting that he was the root of all evil, was not good for her at all and she had to get away from him as soon as possible.

The filming of the show was absolutely ridiculous. “Canned” laughter is something that always annoys me in TV shows, yet here we were sat in a filming studio awaiting the show to start when they set up especially to record our laugher. We had to snort, snigger, laugh loudly, from left to right and from front to back… all with nothing more than a cue of “laugh now”… Afterwards we were told how great we were and that our laughter was going to be used on several shows.

The show itself was pretty rubbish. One of these cheap late night shows where by an attractive blond generates (false) laughs by taking cheap digs at celebrities. Still, we got a free DVD out of it and an insight into how this industry works…

Moving onto San Francisco, which although a much nicer city, was quite concerning to see the number of homeless and “crazy” people on the streets. We’d not seen so many beggars since the likes of Cambodia! In fact only India surpasses the place. It was incredible how the city changed as you walked a few blocks. One minute you are on the busiest upmarket shopping street in the city, two blocks later in a run down area surrounded by homeless and drug addicts. We later found out that many of those wandering the streets are Vietnam Vets. Apparently Regan closed some pretty big asylums nearby letting them all out on the streets. The land of the free, the land of opportunity…

While wandering the streets it was positive to see quite a lot of people campaigning about some of the current issues like Global Warming and the current stance of the Bush administration towards Iran…

www.codepinkalert.org | www.stopwaroniran.org

While in San Francisco, I managed to meet up with Kenny, a good friend of mine who I worked with at Sun Microsystems during my placement year. We’ve always got on very well, partially due to our love of Drum & Bass and memories of raving in the 90s, confirmed a few years back when Kenny came to stay in Spain for a week or so.

Catching up was great and it was pretty interesting to hear his views and experiences of living in America. He’s enjoying it and has no plans to come home yet but is frustrated by the segregation and racism that still exists along with the narrow mindedness and government policies. A friend of his was explaining to me a little about the US economy, half of which I couldn’t get my head round, but apparently they are pretty reliant on the belief that the Euro will crash and enable to build the dollar up again. They also have so much money in the Gulf that they cannot afford not to burn oil. Apparently the economy depends on it which is a massive issue given the problems of Global Warming. It kind of explains the childish comments from one of the Republican candidates when quizzed about the Kyoto agreement: “When China does something so will we…” What if whole of Europe said the same as the USA. Besides, per person, the US is by far a worse polluter than China. Even Australia has now signed Kyoto Agreement with their long overdue change in government, the only developed country bar the US not to do so.

We responsibly got away from the doom and gloom of the current political and global climate by drinking more and going and dancing away to some filthy Drum and Bass… Great to get the body moving again but I had to share in Kenny and Wayne’s thoughts that its not what it used to be. It all sounds the same with no bouncing base lines, verging on the lines of (god forbid) techno… all part of a progression that and I fear Renegade Hardware have a lot to answer for. I can’t knock them though after one of my best nights in Bristol was an awesome Renegade Hardware night at the Trinity Centre eight years ago.

Despite its problems, San Francisco is a very cool city. We spent our last couple of days of our year long trip doing the standard tourist things and we were blessed with great sunshine and none of the infamous San Fran fog. We managed to ride the Cable Cars, see Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge and Fisherman’s Wharf. All very nice, but not much to write about, so take a look at some pics instead.

One final thought… Only in America can you take an unnecessarily large, uneconomic, ugly and pointless vehicle and make it larger, more uneconomic, uglier and even more pointless…

And so, with just a transatlantic flight back to London, ended our trip around the world. 12 months, 13 very diverse countries. Some incredible experiences all of which are taking a long time to sink in. Hopefully this blog has served to illustrate what we’ve been up to, however I look forward to sharing a beer with you and telling you more…

Oh, and I returned looking a little different to when I set of 12 months previous…