If you are the average police man from Colombia. Getting shitty money every month (around AU$ 300). You and your colleagues invade a drug lord's house and find this little room...

(big green pile = USD$100, Red = 500 Euros, Purple = 100 Euros)

What would you do?? Travel? Entertainment?

From http://abandapodre.blogspot.com/

My first trip on Cathay Pacific was a pleasant one. Leaving Sydney at 10pm, the airport was very quiet and I had checked in online so had no queue to dump my bags.

Being rather tall I wanted to see if I could get some exit row seats, however this isnt an option you are given online, so I asked at check in.

[More]

Helsinki is a great place, very quiet. Very small. As we only had an evening and one morning we went to both cathedrals and in to Stockmanns department store - although we were disappointed at the lack of the promised xmas window display. I think this was because there was a lot of building work.

We used the local bus to get to the airport - brilliant service, and cheap.

This year we decided to head out of Australia for Christmas and head back to the UK to see friends and family. Our tour will last just shy of 5 weeks and we will take in Tokyo, Japan and Helsinki, Finland on the way to the UK, Las Vegas and San Francisco on the way back.

The UK leg will include the main Isaksen-Loxton haunts of Lincoln, Leicester, Midhurst and Burgess Hill.

We discovered that the cost of a return to London was approx $300 AUD less than a round the world ticket, so we decided that it would be daft not to take the time and go to some places we have never been before. Helsinki and Tokyo are 2, on the way back from London we will be going to San Francisco, South Lake Tahoe, and Las Vegas for 5 days. Then back to Sydney in January.

So we have just been away to New Caledonia for an extended weekend, more on that later but in the mean time I had to get this out.

For international arrivals to Australia in Sydney (Kingsford-Smith) airport as you come to immigration and passport control there is a Duty Free section on the right. The passports queue is generally about 30 mins wait, although I have spent an hour waiting in there.

However if you buy Duty Free (cheapest item there was a Toblerone at about $13) you can get fast tracked down a separate route to the front and only have to wait about 2-5 mins. This causes much consternation from the hordes of people in the regular queue.

Brilliant!

Being a tall bloke at 6 foot 5 inches I have a few nightmares on flying. As a general rule I cant get into standard economy seats without spreading my legs into the aisle and into my neighbours seat. If that happens I am never going to sleep. Its funny though that I drove an Austin Metro for many years with my knees around my ears and no complaints!

I think this is a common problem now in our world that is getting generally taller, especially in developed countries. Unfortunately airlines are restricted by money and dont put in less seats to make our lives more comfortable. If you really want to get comfortable then get into Business or First.

Its also pretty difficult to get an exit row seat now too. Virgin actually charge a fee to allow you to get an exit row seat. On a recent flight I had with them, the rows were empty and the cabin crew simply moved people into those sets before take off "because we have to have people next to the exit" in case of an emergency.

My experience pretty much relies on the staff at any point in the process to take pity on me and try and find me a decent seat. However I found a site recently and this should help me get the advantage a little bit.

Check out Seat Guru - a directory of airlines, their planes and the seat layouts with hints on which seats are the best to try and prebook. It currently covers 29 airlines and all of their craft, seat pitches (leg room to the seat in front), width and other peoples comments on seat choices.

We spent the weekend away by driving north to some places we had never been. The first 2 nights we spent camping, thats not the interesting bit, it’s just a very different deal out here to the UK, and it goes something like this:

Bring a 4x4 and trailer, with 2 kids (optional). Erect 2 large tents and put a secondary fly sheet over the top. Empty 4x4 into covered space under your fly sheet that joins the neighbours exact same set up. Set up chairs, table, barbeque ($600 4 burner with rotisserie and 50lt gas bottle), hoist solar panel into the air above fly sheet using trailer as base, and hook up to various electrical items you brought (Lights mostly as daylight savings is no longer with us, perhaps even TV). Pull out enormous Esky (cool box) with nothing in it but beer and road kill. And yes, you read it right, we encountered a 4x4 with two people sat behind it one night bathing in the glow of the TV!

Don’t forget of course to get the surf boards, body boards and bikes off the roof of the 4x4. Sit back enjoy a beer, and shout at the guy next door with his bongos and incessant guitar playing. Did I mention that you should inflate your matress using the air compressor you plugged into the solar panel?

I just returned from the UK having been over on some family business. Being 6'5" and not very rich I have to fly economy and hope that the nice check in people will allocate me a decent seat in a bulk head or exit row so I dont end up with some disfigurment after 13 hours on a plane.

On my way out of Sydney the lady was kind enough to allocate me an exit row seat all the way to Hong Kong and then on to London. At check-in in London on my return journey I was informed that it would cost £50 per sector (£100 in total) to allocate exit row seats. You can imagine my reaction.

Last I knew you couldnt pre-book them as they needed to ensure the occupier of that seat was healthy and fit on the day of travel as they are required to open exit doors in an emergency. Fair enough.

Now heres the bit that gets me, soon after the passengers were settled in, the crew promptly set about asking people to move into the exit rows seats. There would appear to be some operational requirement to have people in the exit row seats on take off and landing.

To me this seems like shameless profiteering from an otherwise spotless airline.

We went to Melbourne with Stu and Ellie this weekend, stayed 2 nights and saw a bit of the town. Heidi and I had our first go on one of those Dance machines – which was incredibly funny, and a lot of fun! We watched most of the rugby games, and this picture is of Stu and I having a race on a horse racing machine (I was crap and Stu won!)

So we came over here to see the other end of the country. And of course watch the rugby! We stayed in Fremantle, in a backpackers place. It was all good – we took a little trip up the river into Perth – which is a very nice place. Visited the zoo, and generally hung around the place.

Well, we had a great few day in Perth. We stayed in Fremantle and amongst other things took in the England vs South Africa game - that was a nail biter!

We took a look around perth and found this interesting little figure in an oriental shop window. One wonders!

We didnt get great weather while we were there, which was a shame, but it was a nice place. We took a river cruise up the river from Fremantle to Perth. Visited Subiaco to see the game. Went to the Aquarium - which has a HUGE shark tank.