Where did our Greyhound bus go?

What exactly is the best way to travel America? I'm sure thousands and thousands of people have asked themselves this question when planning their grand adventures across the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Could it be the quick and reliable, yet expensive option of internal flights? Well, maybe not that reliable anymore; especially in light of the American Airlines incident earlier this year, which saw a man who PAID for a ticket get forcibly removed from the aircraft because the AIRLINE had overbooked the flight.

Thieving bastards.

So, in short, even buying an actual ticket for an ACTUAL flight doesn't secure you a stress free journey these days!

But it wasn't the fear of American security dragging us off of planes by our hair that ruled internal flights off our US itinerary - it was the fact that we are cheap as fuck and still haven't been able to shift that backpacker's shoe-string budget mentality from the forefront of our minds.

By far the cheapest option was the ol' Greyhound Bus Line, which I've certainly heard mostly terrifying mixed reviews about over the years. But hey, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and all that!

When booking Greyhound buses, you can either book a standard Economy ticket or pay a little extra to book an Economy Extra or a Flexible Ticket, which secures you priority seating; meaning you're more likely to get on the bus you want rather than have to wait for the next one if it's busy. Going against every fibre in our frugal bones, we booked Economy Extra tickets because we wanted some peace of mind that we'd actually get on the buses we'd booked (lol, keep reading to see how this worked out for us) and that we'd get to sit next to each other.

The worst experience we had was  - unfortunately - our very first one, our journey from Boston to New York in the aftermath of the Boston Blizzard (AKA Storm Imafuckupyourholiday). Basically, on our second day in Boston, we (and millions more) were hit by one giant fucker of a Northeastern Blizzard which reaped havoc on several North East states; grinding public transport to a halt, forcing businesses to shut and generally just making life a living hell.

Our bus wasn't meant to leave Boston until two days after the bulk of the blizzard had stopped, so we were optimistic the roads would be back open and that Greyhound would have resumed service as normal by this point and a quick glance at their website confirmed our bus was on time.  Amen, maybe things were going to turn around for us. 

In all honestly, we were looking forward to leaving Boston behind. It is a beautiful place that I'd love to go back to one day, but the blizzard coupled with being robbed wasn't exactly the start to the holiday we'd wanted.

However, it soon became clear that the universe wasn't done with us yet.

Our bus never turned up at the Greyhound station.

An authoritative looking lady in a fluorescent jacket broke this devastating news to a queue of disgruntled passengers at 11:01 (our scheduled departure was 11:00) and let's just say that it did not go down well.

One raging man even went as far as to shout, "this is going to be WAR!" and for a brief moment I felt like I was in 1970s Vietnam.

Ah, Americans.

We never actually got an explanation as to where our bus went or why it didn't show up - I can only assume it got buried under an avalanche somewhere - what we did get, however, was a complimentary Greyhound bus ticket that would be emailed to us at a later date. Make it rain!!

HOWEVER, as is life specifically our lives, we never actually received our complimentary tickets.

That angry man was right, it was going to be war and Greyhound were about to get torched on Yelp, especially as we'd booked tickets to see the New York Knicks that night and I wasn't going to miss out on that game for NO MAN.

Luckily - and I say this lightly as had we actually been lucky we would have got on the bus we'd paid and booked for - New York is a pretty major route from Boston and it wasn't long before the next bus turned up. I waved my Economy Extra ticket (someone's doing well) in the air and scurried onto the bus quicker than a New York minute and for the first time, it felt like we'd won. YEAH, FUCK YOU, UNIVERSE.

On the whole I'd say that our Greyhound experience was a good one for the following reasons:

• We got to all our destinations...eventually
• The driving we experienced didn't give me constant visions of my death, much dissimilar to our experiences in Malaysia...
• The buses were clean, comfy and made for great napping opportunities between cities
• Our shit didn't get stolen
• 2/3 of our buses were on time
• It was a nice way to see America. You see a tonne of highways mostly, but it's still nice to watch the world go by.

And had it actually worked, the free wifi would have made it onto that list too.

A Blizzard in Boston in MARCH and a Lost Wallet

SO, with our USA trip we decided to spare no expense, nothing was going to ruin this trip in anyway. No bad hostels, no getting lost, no sickness, no worries. 

Ha. 

Cue the Nor'Easter Storm Stella which has left 44,000 people without power, cancelled 5000 flights and generally inconvenienced tens of millions of people in the North Eastern region of America.

And incase you haven't worked it out, we are two of them. 

During our first full day in Boston three questions really kept making their way to the front of my mind: 

1. What exactly is a Twinkie?

2. How noticeable is my accent?

3. Is this snow really going to be that bad?

Now as you can see the Storm really wasn't a priority to me, it was just so hard to envisage. A bad storm in the UK means that some fence panels might get blown over and once every few years all the schools get shut because it snowed for 20 minutes the night before.

It began with the news channels, telling us that this storm was going to be the worst the US had seen in many years, advising people to stay indoors and be prepared to sit this one out. But you know, it's all fake news anyway so we didn't worry too much. 

At one point a homeless guy told us to prepare for the snow as it was going to be a bad one. That was a little concerning, but we got approcahed by a lot of homeless people that day so thought maybe it was a coincidence. 

But we felt that on the off chance that this storm might be half as bad as they said, we decided to head to a Target store and buy some food and drink to tide us over in our room until the next day. 

Our storm survival kit consisted of: 

2 x Bottles of Diet Dr. Pepper 

2 x Bananas 

1 x Box of seedless grapes 

1 x Box of raspberries 

2 x Pots of cereal 

1 x Carton of milk 

1 x Box of Mac 'N' Cheese 

1 x Bag of apple slices 

1 x Box of hot chocolate sachets 

2 x Slices of cheesecake 

Pretty much all the things Bear Grylls would recommend. 

The next day we woke to the more very dramatic news reporting. Although this time it wasn't fake. This storm was actually a pretty big deal. Airports, roads and schools were shut. Stores were selling out of food as people stocked up on essentials and power cuts were becoming more and more frequent. 

We resigned ourselves to staying indoors for the entire day, buoyed on by the fact that on our previous days visit to Target I had invested in a $20 Macbook to HDMI lead so that we could reap the rewards of the shining golden Utopia that is American Netflix. 

5 minutes of searching proved one thing: American Netflix is nothing more than a polished turd. 

80% of the programming is identical to the UK and the remaining 20% is just so painfully American: Skin Wars, 9 Months That Made You and Hostage To The Devil, to name a few. 

Okay, so an all day Netflix binge was off the list. So we did what any other normal person would do in that situation; we consumed 90% of our food and drink supplies before 11am. 

But we made the time fly pass by at a noticeable speed by doing a home workout, watching random episodes of TV series' hoping to get hooked on one - we didn't - and of course staring at our box of ready-to-go cheesy pasta. 

What was the cheesy pasta like you may ask? Well, if you ever come to America and are craving a meal that smells like regurgitated Wotsits and tastes like underwhelming disappointment then look no further than the Kraft Mac 'N' Cheese. It was truly god awful. 

In a desperate attempt to salvage the dire situation, we decided to partake in the oldest of American traditions: ordering take out pizza. Unfortunately, we also observed one of our oldest travelling traditions at this moment: that I had lost something vital - my wallet.

The next two and a half hours were spent conducting a forensic level investigation of the apartment, which included: emptying the bin three times, turfing out suitcases and scouring through every snowflake of snow on the balcony outside. By the time we finally accepted that the wallet was up and gone, the pizza place had shut. Luckily the chances of anyone else in the Boston area finding it are as slim as me finding it thanks to the 7 inches of snow that are probably covering it.

P.S for Brits, it turns out a Twinkie is a swiss roll on crack. I hate swiss rolls.

If Satan Owned a Hostel

Burnt.

Nearly 6 months on and I am finally getting some thoughts down about our time on Langkawi island.

Is that because since then our lives have turned upside down and writing about your travels from 7,858 miles away in-between your 9-5:30 shifts is pretty depressing? Partly.

But mainly it's because only now am I calm enough to really explain to you the immense hideousness that pounced with an unparalleled savageness to leave us desperately F.U.C.K.E.D.

*Exhales deeply* 

From the top then...

We had just arrived on Langkawi island after this journey form hell and to say the hostel that welcomed us was poor would be an understatement. In fact it would be an utter fucking lie. This place was without the worst hovel I have ever had the misfortune to lay eyes on, let alone sleep in.

Now I know you're probably thinking that Emma and I must be a right couple of flowery wimps that can't even stand a single night roughing it; that no one can have SO much bad luck. I really don't know what to tell you but that the universe does really just hate us that much.

Still don't believe me? Let me paint you a picture, and in the interest of fairness, I'll paint it in my best Homes Under The Hammer voice:

The entrance to your main street hideaway begins by picking your way through the forgotten rubbish and cigarette ends still present from the once popular restaurant situated on the ground floor.

The stairway is gated for safety but will forever be unlocked for the easy access of guests, stray animal and possibly murderers. The stairs themselves are narrow and steep but the rough concrete and graffitied walls give a feel of authenticity and rawness, which in my experience is a rarity outside of public toilets.

At the top of the stairs you'll find another large wooden door which is also - you guessed it - forever unlocked. The reception desk is staffed with a relaxed, Caribbean attitude where someone might come and speak to you or they might just sit in the chair opposite you on their laptop and ignore your presence until they are ready. Who knows!? The possibility of it all is exhilarating.

Once you've finally been acknowledged, you're in for the grand tour. Firstly the washroom facilities: two showers and two toilets between about 30 guests. One great thing to note is that one of the toilet cubicles also hosts a shower, so if you ever need to shit mid-wash, you don't even need to towel off. The other shower and toilet are regrettably separate but they do have a little bonus of their own: they are plastic porta-cabins.

Now you might not initially think that is a great bonus, but I'll let you in on a little secret; we all know that when you turn the water off after a shower the first thing you notice is how cold you are and how you wish you could just stay in the warm water. Not a problem inside the porta-cabin. The plastic design keeps every ounce of heat inside and creates a miniature gas chamber sauna, which maintains a toasty warm temperature even after your shower. Just what you need when it is 35°C outside and 85% humidity.

A 24 hour self-service buffet is on offer: all the toast and jam you can eat, unfortunately neither of these are vegetarian due to the colony of ants which has infested the bread that has been left by the properties one and only window, which is jammed open permanently for the fresh air coming off the alleyway behind it. 

The common room maintains the Devil-May-Care attitude towards design, comfort and general appeal by teaming old shipping crates and thread bare rugs with tattered cushions and a sticky concrete floor, which you really get to feel the benefit of as you're not allowed to wear shoes inside. 

The common room also comes with free to use dog eaten board games, one out of tune guitar and warm beer, which is only 250% more expensive than the ice cold variety you can get in the shop 30 yards from the hostel door.

The common room and bedroom are separated by a thin cloth, meaning you can rest your head at night to the steady sounds of commotion and the quiet theological debate of other young and opinionated guests for which hostels in general are so well known. The separating cloth however also represents a change in decorative themes as the stairs, common room, kitchen and washrooms are rough and ready, with a pinch of the underworld.

The bedrooms, however, take on an entirely new vibe; behind that thin hanging fabric lies without doubt the best imitation of a disaster struck poverty ridden hospital I have ever seen. 

It is truly outstanding. 

The eight bunk beds are situated within arms reach of one another to promote conversation, awkwardness and disease through the large corridor that houses them. The lighting here is dim and dingy evocative of a New Orleans Jazz house, or the inside of a coffin with the door left a crack ajar. 

Whilst there is no air conditioning in this room the owners have thoughtfully glued high powered desk fans to the walls and above each bed, and ceiling to turbo charge the musky air directly at you at all times. 

You know what I think of when I walk around this place, potential. 

The potential to be the worst fucking experience of my life, and it did not disappoint. 

Unfortunately I'm just too livid to tell you what happened next right after thinking back to this place. You'll just have to keep all of this in mind when you process the next sequence of events, which when you add it all together is truly horrifying, or truly hilarious, depending on your sense of humour and how much you care generally for human life. 

Cruising Under the Age of 60: is it worth it?

I'm going to be honest here and say that we booked our Caribbean Cruise in a pure haze of desperation and misery. We had been back in the UK only a couple of weeks after our supposed six-month backpacking adventure had been cut short by about five months due to my granddad's sudden and unexpected death. Our flights home, which we assumed would be covered by insurance, as it did clearly and explicitly say in the policy wording they would be, were - you guessed it - not covered (surprise). Why? That's a story for another day, really, but in short, when you're thousands of miles away and you hear that someone you love has just died, be sure to ring the insurance company to pre-authorise your return trip home because they can, and will, fuck you over if you don't adhere to this little clause.

BUT WHATEVER. 

It's just money.

I'M OVER IT.

At least that's what I'm telling myself just so I don't have a complete and utter mental breakdown...

Anyway, back to our mental state of mind in October: we were pretty down and out about all this and had already resigned ourselves to rejoining the 9 to 5 lifestyle again, but before we were willing to start bashing out our CVs on Reed, we decided to have one last big blowout; one last fuck you to the heinous bitch of a universe that had ruined our trip.

What was the most convenient, least stressful and best value for money experience we could do as soon as possible?

The answer: a cruise.

I'm not going to lie, when I saw the price of a cruise I did think "why the fuck did we ever even bother with backpacking?! We could have just cruised for four months solid and never had to worry about ANYTHING."

I mean, of course I'm glad we did go backpacking and if things hadn't worked out the way they had, I fully believe we would have stayed... buuut, with a cruise you have your own room, your own bathroom (in my opinion the real deal breaker) as much food as you could ever want, bars, a gym, pools, more bars, and a way of getting from A to B without ever once having to haggle with a taxi driver...the list goes on.

So, on the surface, cruises are a pretty sweet deal if you want an easy, food-fuelled, stress free existence for a couple of weeks, however, they do attract a certain clientele.

Old people.

Which, of course, is great for them. I can only dream of one day being able to retire and have enough spare pension floating around to blow it up the wall on cruise after cruise! (Fun fact: At the rate my pension fund is going, it'll be a treat to afford a loaf of bread.)

Anyway, we did have some reservations about spending two weeks in the confines of a ship with what was mostly going to be, an older crowd, but in the end we weighed up the options and came to the conclusion that mentally, we are both already about 80 years old - we like an afternoon nap, both own slippers and are currently going up and down this great nation seeking out the perfect cream tea (i wish this was a joke) - so we should fit in fine.

We booked the cruise.

It was a bit of a shock to the system having SO much money come out of our accounts in one go, but hey ho, it's not like we were ever going to see 9 different Caribbean islands for free. 

Yolo.

The good
I have to say, as a holiday, cruising is pretty decent. It was just easy from start-to-finish. Our flights were included in the price; when we landed we were taken on a shuttle bus straight from the plane at Barbados Airport to the cruise ship - we didn't have to go through security or anything.

The food was amazing. It was basically all you could eat and there were times that we would have a three course dinner in one of the restaurants, still be hungry and then just go up to the all-you-can-eat buffet for a second dinner. Thank Christ for that gym to work off all that guilt the next morning, huh?

The room was super comfy and was cleaned daily. At first we felt bad that our steward was cleaning our cabin twice a day; so we tried to subtly tell him not to bother by never putting the "clean my room" sign in the door, but it didn't work and he would clean it anyway. 

In terms of seeing the Caribbean, I would say cruises are a mixed bag. If you want to see a lot of islands in a short space of time, it's good, but obviously you really don't have a lot of time in each place, so you really have to make the most of it to feel like you have really visited the place. We generally pottered around the ports, visited the beaches, drank at the bars and had a wander about, but if we were to ever do it again I would make more of an attempt to hop in a local taxi or go on a local day tour (MUCH cheaper than the ones offered by the cruise line) to see some of the less - I'm gonna punch myself for saying this - but touristy areas. Also when the cruise ship docks and you have 3,000+ British tourists hobbling about scrambling for bars, cafes and most importantly, WiFi, you're gonna wish you were in a different area of the island.

Daniel Craig spotted in Barbados

The sunshine was lovely and some of the best moments were just spent on deck in the sun, reading a book and sipping a cocktail. Callum probably won't agree with me - as he has an almighty fear of boats and the open ocean - but there's something really special about being out at sea where all you can see is the blue sky touching the furthest point of ocean in the horizon.

The bad (but not that bad)
The lack of WiFi. Was. A. Struggle. I know, what a first world problem to have. How did I cope? Sometimes it was nice not having any connection to the outside world, but sometimes, like during the U.S FRICKING ELECTION, it would have been nice to have some access to the internet to see what the world was saying about the Republican victory or how much much people were slating Trump.

When you finally get that WiFi

As I mentioned before, you really don't have all that long at each port, but the cruise line does offer a variety of excursions you can go on, of course, all of them look amazing but they are super over-priced, which really limits how many you can do. We only did one: a snorkeling experience in St Lucia which set us back a cool £50 each. A bit of a steal. I would still say it was worth doing though, as it was the only excursion we did on the holiday, but in terms of value for money, it was a fucking rip off. You can get much cheaper days out locally when you're off the ship, sadly we weren't brave enough to try them out because if you don't get back to the ship in time, then that's tough shit and it will leave without you. And to be honest, this was just the kind of thing we wanted to avoid, so we played it safe.

Callum hated the formal nights and would rather have stayed in and ordered room service than be told how to dress. I, however, love any excuse to dress up, so loved these nights.

As for the drastic age gap between us and 95% of the other passengers on board, it really wasn't an issue. Sure, it would have been nicer if they didn't constantly drag their deck chairs onto the running track on the deck because they had no fucking clue what it was and sure, it would have been nice if they could move faster than 1mph, but we're all going to be old and slow one day!

Two weeks was probably the most time I'd ever like to spend on a cruise as I did begin to feel a bit cooped up towards the end. However, I guess this was partly due to there not being too much we could do on board, other cruise lines like Royal Caribbean seem like they have a bit more variety in terms of on-board activities. We saw one ship pull up next to us at the port in St Maarten and it had a rock climbing wall, a golf course and a LEGIT running track that people couldn't just substitute as a place to sunbathe.

Overall
Overall, I would say that cruises are worth it if you want an easy and relaxing break and aren't too concerned about really experiencing a place. 

Yeah, they have a pretty bad rep for mainly being a holiday for older people, but we really loved it. Maybe we really are retirees at heart?! We saw so many beautiful places in such a short space of time, had great food every day, gorgeous weather and never once had a care in the world. What more could you ask for?

Deep down, we would have rather seen a bit more of each place, like we did when we were backpacking, however, this isn't always possible and it would have probably cost us about 5x the price to arrange internal flights, accommodation and taxis.

So yeah, if you're thinking of booking a cruise, go for it! We definitely don't have any regrets.

Why Aren't We Travelling Anymore?

Okay, so some of you may have noticed there has been a significant lack of posts in recent months and I guess it has taken up until now to really explain why.

Anyone who follows us on Twitter will know that my granddad sadly passed away in October last year following a motorcycle accident, a mere 3 weeks after we had begun our trip. We had just got to Penang when I heard the news and as you can imagine, I was devastated. I never got a chance to say goodbye as it was all so sudden and unexpected; I was upset for my family - my nan, my mum, her siblings - and all I wanted was to be at home with them, to attend the funeral and to grieve in the way that anyone wants to when they lose someone they hold so dear. 

Suddenly my whole world was turned upside down. We'd spent months and months saving every penny we had for this trip, but as soon as I heard the news I knew I wanted to go home; all of a sudden all the money and time we'd put into travelling didn't matter any more. 

When my mum told me the news that night, I said I'd come back home and she said not to; that my granddad would have wanted me to live my dreams and have fun. But that was the issue. It wasn't fun anymore. The nanosecond I heard that news, every ounce of fun was sucked out of the future of the trip (I know that sounds dramatic, but that's how it felt). How could I let myself carry on, galavanting from beach to beach, sipping cocktails and having a selfishly good time when everyone I cared about was grieving at home? At the end of the day you only get one family, whereas you have your whole life to travel.

Callum and I spoke for hours on end about what we should do; either way we didn't want to make any rash decisions only to live to regret them. I knew deep down that I wanted to go home, but it was Callum's trip too and I didn't want him to feel like he had to. I said that I would go home for the funeral, and come back in a few weeks to meet him (i know right, what a stupid fucking idea that would have been - I mean, travelling back home alone via 3 flights over the course of 24 hours would have been great fun for someone in as an emotionally fragile state as I was at the time) but he said "no way" and that he wouldn't let me do that all by myself. He's a good egg.

In the end we decided to come home and within 3 days we had landed back at Heathrow to drizzly rain and freezing temperatures. Despite that, I was glad to be home; it was nice to see all my family at such a difficult time and I'll never forget my granddad's funeral and what an honour it was to have been there to say goodbye.

At the time, we thought we'd end up back in Asia in a month or so to finish the trip, but as time went on we became more and more DONE with the whole thing. We'd quit our jobs, said goodbye to our friends and family, left for what was meant to be the adventure of a lifetime but all it did was make us realise how much we have at home that perhaps we didn't appreciate enough before. We had some great times travelling, I mean some really great times: watching the sun set from Marina Bay Sands as the Singapore Grand Prix roared on from the roads below, drinking cocktails in the Sky Bar in Kuala Lumpur and swimming in Langkawi's clear blue waters, but coming home made it feel like a chapter had been shut and I think we both knew it was over.

In short, we didn't end up finishing the trip; instead we booked a two week Caribbean cruise, mainly because we thought FUCK IT ALL. And I have to say, what a turnaround our lives had in the space of two months. One second we were washing clothes in a ratchet sink in one of Singapore's worst hotels, the next we were dressing up for the cruise's black tie night and drinking our body weight from every cocktail on the menu - something there was NO CHANCE IN HELL of doing travelling because we were on such a tight budget.

I'm not saying the cruise was better than travelling as they were both fun in their own way, but it was definitely what we needed after such a stressful few weeks. 

Summary: I would describe our travelling experience as an abject failure on every level, but hey, at least we tried - we said from the start things were bound to end in disaster and they did.