Mattias the illegal immigrant

I am now slightly worried for my tourist card. All visitors in Mexico should possess a tourist card while in the country but the bus I was on just went straight across the border (only stopped for checking luggage and at the bus terminal on the other side) and there were no passport controls or places to get the card. I am not entirely certain about the rules but it may mean that I am in the country illegally. There are now two alternatives; either I try to contact the immigration office and ask them to have a card issued or I pretend like nothing and hope that they wont check it when I exit the country. I read that there may be a fee involved for lost tourist cards so it will almost certainly not be for free. Or maybe a few years in a Mexican prison would do me well. To be continued…

The journalist Nick Ellena lodging in a Mexican prison.

Sven-Land

Finally I arrived to Sven-land. Since the English FA was stupid enough to fire one of the greatest managers the football world has ever seen it was hard to watch McLaren’s England lose to Croatia in the last game. It was hard because I watched the game together with English people and suddenly I wanted to make the biggest smile I’ve ever made in my life. But I also didn’t want to be killed. We have seen God’s punishment for the mistreatment of a world-class manager.

Now I am in the new Sven-land, Mexico. I am certain Mexico will qualify for the World Cup 2010 in South Africa and with good management and a decent draw they may actually go quite far. Viva Mexico.

Sven-Göran Eriksson with his new jersey, Mexico-style

The Passion of the Christ

Time for departure to Mexico. I left the hotel in LA at 10 am on Thursday morning. The trip to Los Mochis lasted for over 30 hours and I only checked in to my Mexican Hotel at 5 pm on the Saturday. At least the bus had ample leg space and it was a super deluxe class compared to African buses. During the day it was very hot in the bus as the air conditioning didn’t quite keep up with the gazing sun and during the night it was very cold in the bus as the air conditioning was on full power at all time. I have seldom felt so fresh after a shower as I did when I arrived in Los Mochis. The bus from Los Angeles was also delayed so my two hour transit in Tijuana was reduced to a mere 15 minutes. I only saw the inside of the bus terminal and nothing of the drug dealing outside.

The funniest thing about the bus journey was their choice of films. On the Saturday morning we got to watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in Latin/Aramaic with Spanish subtitles on all five bus monitors. I thought it was a bit brave as there were lots of small children on board and in Europe, parents would definitely be opposed to let the children watch over one hour of non-stop tasteless human torture. Even I felt disgusted at one point; that is a very sick movie I tell you.

Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ"

Tijuana

While in Mozambique, I was warned about the Tijuana border crossing by the project leader who had spent quite a lot of time in Mexico. He said that Mexico is beautiful and that all places could be visited. There was only one rule; avoid the Tijuana border crossing. This is the place where all dreg hang around; all from people smugglers, drug dealers, drug smugglers, hijackers, robbers, rapists, pimps and everything else you can think of. If crossing the border on foot you may be assaulted if unlucky and you should by no means buy something from anyone.

If you would be stupid enough to buy illegal drugs on the Mexican side, you are in deep trouble as the drug dealer may (after having sold it to you) tip the police that you are carrying drugs and he will earn some extra money on the reward.

Tijuana is the cheapest place to cross as it’s the closest crossing from Los Angeles and it is also the most busy border crossing in the world. Lot’s of people make it across the border without trouble by using normal precautions but if you are looking for trouble, any kind of trouble can easily be found. While on the other side you can get buses to almost anywhere in Mexico.

With this in mind, I purchased a through-ticket (probably more expensive) from Los Angeles to Mexican Los Mochis, which should save me from all the hassle at the border. Los Mochis is also located a bit more to the east so I though the bus should use another border crossing (Nogales cross looked more direct). I could however not stop smiling when I looked down on my ticket and it said I had two hours transit in Tijuana Central.

Grand Canyon

Something that has to be seen while in the area. I am not really sure about what to write about it. I am sort of speechless. Not really speechless of excitement from having seen it, its more like emptiness “á-la-was-that-all?” Now I have to say that Grand Canyon was extremely beautiful and impressively big. And it is fantastic watching how the rivers have cut through the earth, revealing geology worth billions of years and it is bizarre glazing down on the Colorado River deep, deep down beneath the cliffs. An incredible experience but was it extraordinary?

I have always thought that visiting Grand Canyon should be out of this world. This is the place where the ancient native Americans lived close to the earth, filled with wisdom of life, the universe and everything. And this is the place where the history of earth is displayed billions of years back, a quite grotesque thing to imagine. Something told me that standing there on top of it, staring out over the landscape, observing the forms and shapes of the cliffs and gazing out over the birds flying over the canyon beneath you would tell me something. It would allow me to take in the ancient wisdom and I should suddenly know the answer to everything. But I don’t; that’s where the emptiness comes from.

There are many ways to experience Grand Canyon but just standing on top of it was not good enough. If anyone is thinking of going there, please consider one of the following two options; either do rafting along the canyon, there are trips available between one to eleven days (the time it takes to raft along the whole thing) or stay in the canyon a night or two camping on the bottom. Don’t do a helicopter fly-over or walk along the rim; only then can the truth be revealed.

Gus Hansen and Barry Greenstein

Gus Hansen, “The Great Dane”, is known for his aggressive play in tournaments. This strategy of playing lower ranked hands and with a great talent at the poker table has proven to be a great success.

Gus Hansen

Barry Greenstein, a native of Chicago, was taught the game of poker at a very young age by his father, a notable Army card player. Barry is somewhat of an oddity among poker players, donating all of his winnings to charity, earning the title of the "Robin Hood" of poker.

Barry Greenstein

Mattias in Las Vegas

Las Vegas is truly fabulous. There cannot be another place on earth like this and everyone should go here at least once. Las Vegas has a population of about a million, most of who are employed in the tourism sector, serving the 42 million tourists (and increasing) who come to Las Vegas each year.

The only reason Las Vegas exists is that the place happened to be half way between Salt Lake City and San Bernardino, where a fort was once built as a stopover on the “mormon corridor”. The city was established only 100 years ago by residents in the Las Vegas Valley. At that time, the valley had a total population of 30 people. Then you could become a major of the city with only 15 votes.

Another interesting fact about Las Vegas is that it gets around 10 cm of rain each year. This is not even enough to keep grass alive so every tree, every grass field, every park etc in the city is generously watered every day.

Las Vegas is famous for “The Strip”, which is the entertainment street where all the fancy hotels and casinos are located. There is an incredible amount of money involved here and the hotels spend absurd monies on design, decoration, luxury, size etc, all to attract the richest and fanciest customers. All hotels do of course have in-house casinos, at least 10 restaurants, numerous bars, cafes, shops, health spas and so on.

At only one intersection, where the hotels New York New York, Tropicana and Excalibur are located, there are more hotel rooms than in the whole city of San Francisco. Only the hotel New York New York can host 9000 guests, served by 6000 employees.

So what did I do in Vegas then? Except from walking around in the fancy hotels, enjoying the Las Vegas Strip, visiting casinos and admiring all the luxury everywhere, there are mainly two things I’m proud over;

1) At the hotel Caesar’s Palace, I visited a poker room. In poker rooms, the cheapest tables are normally at the entrance and the further in you walk, the higher are the stakes. In a dark room at the back of the hall, they were playing stakes of ¼ million dollar per person and at the table sat Gus Hansen and Barry Greenstein, two of the world’s greatest poker stars. Particularly Gus Hansen is big. We were able to stand at the door and watch for a while before the staff told us to get out of there if we were not going to play.

2) In Vegas, you normally lose your money but I managed to beat the casinos of a total of $30 (not too much I know but it’s the principle of winning). I was particularly successful on the Roulette.

The hotel "Luxor", built like a massive pyramid

The hotel "New York New York", imitating famous sky-scrapers on Manhattan

The hotel "Paris" claims that "everything is sexier in Paris".

A street inside "Paris"

Mattias in Hollywood

There are a few places any visitor to LA should see. However, none really impressed me, except from one. Tourists normally visit places such as for example St Monica (uptown beach area), Venice Beach (where Baywatch was recorded), Hollywood (with its walk of fame and Chinese theatre and others), Sunset Boulevard (where all the fancy restaurants and nightclubs are located, often owned by Hollywood stars), Beverly Hills (expensive shopping), Disneyland (classic) and Universal Studios (worlds largest film studios). The only place I didn’t pay a visit was Disneyland California and the only place I thoroughly liked was the Universal Studios. Hollywood was an OK place but crowded by tourists who all go crazy and fight about having their pictures taken with the tiny Hollywood sign (many many miles away) in the background. And it is hard to enjoy the walk of fame with thousands of tourists who go hysteric every time they see the name of someone they have seen on TV. Anyway, Hollywood is the second on my list and the conclusion can be summarised as follows:

If your name is Kevin Kay or similar it is likely that you will end up in Los Angeles on “speed-tourism” with only a few hours to see the sights. Here is what you should do: Screw St Monica, screw Venice Beach, screw Hollywood, screw Sunset Boulevard, screw Disneyland, screw Beverly Hills and only go to Universal Studios and spend a whole day there. If you have two days; on the first day do a beach in the morning, Hollywood in the afternoon and in the evening, go to a restaurant and/or club on Sunset Boulevard. Spend whole of day two in Universal Studios. If you are Kevin Kay in 5-6 years or more, you may need to stay another day to do Disneyland.

And from Hollywood you need freekin' good binoculars to see the bloody sign. In this picture its about 4 pixels wide. Have a guess...

Sunset over Pacific LA

After a horrendously long flight from South Africa to Los Angeles via Heathrow I finally arrived safely in Los Angeles, California in the evening, just in time to see the sunset from the plane. After calling the free airport shuttle I was soon in the hostel which I carefully had selected. It was a great place that had free wi-fi internet, free pool, free daily champagne party, free breakfast, free all-you-can-eat food between 18:30-19:00 and free shuttles to airport, transit centre, beach and shopping centre. All for only $18 a day. Excellent.

English Annoyance

I was glad to leave all bus problems behind me and as soon as I exited the South African border in Johannesburg, I expected everything to go smooth like an oiled flash. I only had to cope with the English, who always do their best to annoy travellers in any way they can. No exception this time.

I used my last South African Rand-coins to stock up on a few drinks in the airport as I had a long wait at Heathrow. I tried to be clever and do it after the security control where they also check for liquids. About 10 hours later I was about to find out that even if arriving from international flights you have to pass another security check before getting into Heathrow Terminal 5. And no drinks allowed again. I had to sit down and finish all my drinks in the corridor. Lucky I didn’t buy that tax-free Whisky-bottle that was on sale in Jo’burg; that would have been significantly harder to finish.

Next task was to post a couple of books I didn’t fancy carry with me to Americas. One was particularly urgent as it was a library book from Basingstoke; which I had managed to renew online every couple of weeks without anyone filing a reservation (touch wood). I brought with me franked envelopes so it was just to put in the postbox.

When entering terminal 5 I was about to find out the next annoying thing; Royal Mail has fiddled with the postboxes in all London airports. They have mounted something in the hole that only makes it possible to post items that are 3 mm thick or thinner. And have you ever seen a Lonely Planet book thinner than three millimetres? Not even LP Farnborough would fit in there if it existed. To get it posted, I had to ask British Airways to escort me out to England, then take a train to terminal two, which had a post office outside, then take the train back and finally go through the !*&%*$ security again.

Pip, another super-annoying british person.