Posts Tagged ‘Destinations’

Pattaya, Chonburi, Thailand

Monday, June 27th, 2011

Pattaya is a city built for fun on the northeastern coast of the Gulf of Thailand. It is situated in Chonburi Province around 150 kilometres south of Bangkok. In the Sixties, Pattaya was hardly known, but the American soldiers fighting in Vietnam started using it for R&R and it started to boom. Pattaya is most famous for its entertainment and its nightlife, yet in fact it has a lot more than that to give.

As far as only sport goes, Pattaya offers horse riding, swimming, diving, wind surfing, golf, tennis and jet skiing among others. However, unlike most sporting towns or cities, it does not start to go to sleep when the sun goes down.

The bars, restaurants, discos and strip bars begin to open in profusion at around four o’clock. The bars are of each persuasion to suit each niche market.

There are Welsh bars, American bars, Irish bars, Lady Boy bars and every other sort of bar you can think of. Likewise with the restaurants, there are specialized restaurants for each country. There are bush game restaurants, Chinese, Japanese, American, French, German and fish restaurants. In fact there are thousands of restaurants and bars all trying to be unique.

I am certain that you could stay in Pattaya for months without going the same bar or eating the same sort of food twice. This is just as well because there are representatives from every country in the world there as well. You will hear English, Russian and each European and Asian language spoken in Pattaya on an everyday basis.

Pattaya receives over one million visitors a year. Most of these visitors are men, and the local government is trying to do more to attract women and families by relocating the girlie bars back away from the beach.

Despite it being quite big, you can remain in your favourite part of Pattaya and find nearly everything you want near-by. However, if you do have to travel around, nothing could be simpler. Most people merely hop on a ‘Baht Bus’. These small open-backed pick-ups can be seen going about the city by fairly predictable routes once you understand the layout of the city.

The ‘fixed fare’ is ten Baht for as far as you would like to go on the route, although some drivers will strive to trick more out of you if you go a long distance. Thais pay five Baht. If you do not feel confident enough to forecast where the bus is going, you could get on one of the thousands of motorcycle taxis.

They are dearer at around forty to sixty Baht, yet they will go anywhere you like. Ask for a quote before you set off to avoid disappointment on both sides. If you do not want to hire a car, there are other choices. You could hire a motorcycle or motorbike. A motorcycle costs around 100 Baht a day at the cheapest, but beware the traffic in Pattaya it can be pretty chaotic.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several subjects, but is now involved with Songkran - the old Thai New Year. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Package Holidays to Thailand.

Decent Reasons For Having A Holiday In Hawaii

Saturday, June 11th, 2011

If you are planning your summer vacation and you are looking for somewhere where you can strip down to your bathing costume and swim all day and merely worry about it becoming too hot, not overly cold, then you should add a vacation in Hawaii to your short list.

A vacation in Hawaii is considered to be very costly because of the high profile it has in films and TV series like ‘Hawaii 5-0′, but it is pretty easy to find fairly reasonable holidays in Hawaii, if you do a little research. Search the Net for last minute package deals and if that fails, attempt putting together your own vacation from various cut-rate parts.

You may be pleasantly surprised how much it costs to have a holiday in Hawaii compared to a equivalent one in say, St. Croix, Barbados or even Florida. Look for actual hotels or guest houses in regions that are just outside the tourist traps and you will almost certainly get a better price. Lots of these hotels have their own web site and so offer seasonal or last minute discounts directly to private patrons.

Hawaii is one of the most beautiful locations in the locality and indeed in the world. The coast is famous for its natural beauty - the swimming and diving are renowned, but the hinterland is beautiful as well, if you like walking, riding or driving by jeep. There are magnificent volcanoes, waterfalls and forests.

Hawaii has been turned into a paradise for sports enthusiasts of all types. There is very little that you could choose to do and cannot on Hawaii. There is ample opportunity for most land, sea and air sports ranging from mountaineering, to diving to hang-gliding. You can rent Jeeps, mountain bicycles, yachts and even a helicopter.

Most visitors take a vacation in Hawaii for water sports such as swimming, diving, snorkeling, fishing and water skiing, but power boating and yachting or just sailing a dinghy is common enough too.

There are also many natural and manufactured historical sights to see on all the islands, but the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on Big Island is just about the most well-known although most of the smaller island such as Kauai, Lanai, Maui, Molokai and Oahu all have their attractions too. It is just a case of reading up on Hawaii before you go and trying to select a hotel in a spot that makes your interests easily available.

There are lots of web sites and books on Hawaii to help you with your investigation, but you can also travel around easily once you get there, so that you could have a week on one island and a week on another offering different hobbies as a specialty.

This can all be organized quite easily if you put your tour together yourself, but it might be more awkward if you attempt to patch two package vacations together. You will not regret your vacation in Hawaii whether you go alone, with the family or as part of a group.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on various subjects, but is now concerned with the Bikini Cup D. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Swimwear for Big Busts.

The Winter Sport Of Skiing

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Skiing is a very efficient way of travelling over long distances of snow and individuals have been using it as such for thousands of years. In fact, the first recorded example of skiing was found in Norland, Norway and it has been dated back to 5000 BC. Skiing has been used for rapid travel, hunting and warfare ever since then and probably before.

However, there are basically three types of skiing, namely, Nordic, Telemark and Alpine skiing. Skiing was made popular for the international market by Sondre Norheim in the late Nineteenth Century, which coincided with Europeans becoming more adventurous in their choice of foreign holidays - well, for the rich at any rate.

Telemark skiing was developed in the Nineteen-Seventies from his notions on skiing. However, the development of skiing techniques did not quit there. The Austrians, Mathias Zdarsky and Hannes Schneider were key in developing techniques further, although one cannot help thinking that the skiers of seven thousand years ago knew most of those methods way back then as well.

As skiing has become more and more popular over the last sixty or seventy years, so more and more skiing resorts have sprung up. There are skiing locations all over the world, but the most famous and well-liked are in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia and mainland Europe.

There are skiing locations in the Pyrenees on the border of Spain and France, in Croatia and in Italy, but the most famous resorts are in the Swiss and French Alps, which are actually adjoining. There are even skiing resorts in Scotland.

However, there are also equally good skiing resorts in the United States, Canada and Asia. Wherever, you go skiing, there are things that a skier needs to get in order to be able to ski. a skier needs warm clothing and skiing apparatus. If you are a frequent skier, then you can buy your own clothing and your own equipment, but for most skiers, renting is good enough. At least, if you rent apparatus you do not have to carry lumpy gear around with you.

Resorts have ski runs of different skill levels, but you can also ‘go off piste’, which means ski the wild, untended slopes. This is a great deal more dangerous as these slopes are not tended, cleared or manned, so there is more chance of an accident and less opportunity that you will be found if you be into trouble. Avalanches are also less well predicted for off piste ski slopes.

Skiing is a sport that anyone can learn, but it is not easy to master. The earlier that someone begins the better. Skiers take falls and older bones break more easily than younger ones. Beginners fall more frequently than experts, so it makes sense to learn how to ski while you are young.

However, do not let that put you off, it is only a warning to be sensible. If you have always wanted to learn to ski, then go for it, but please do yourself a favour and learn the safety rules of skiing too.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on several topics, but is now concerned with short ski breaks. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Ski Package Holidays.

How The NASCAR Starting Order Is Determined

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

All NASCAR races make use of NASCAR qualifying results to assist determine the starting positions of the vehicles in the race. However, it is not merely as simple as that because the starting positions are not only worked out by qualifying results.

Some starting positions are determined by previous results and a team?s standing, but in general, the qualifying results have the main impact on the starting positions of cars in a NASCAR race.

The starting positions for the qualifying races are determined by the luck of a draw or a sequence of draws. The order of the runs is from the lowest number to the highest with higher numbers having a slight advantage because the condition of the race track alters with use. The more frequently it is used the faster the track becomes.

The NASCAR teams send out their cars one at a time based on the numbers that they drew in the random draw. Each car is allowed a predetermined length of track to get up to speed and as it flies over the starting line it is given a green flag to indicate that the stop watch has been started.

Each sports car is allowed two laps to prove its speed; the faster time will be its entry into the qualifiers for the real starting positions. Drivers have different tactics for these two laps, but one common strategy is to make use of the outside lane of the track for the first lap.

This allows the sports car to travel more distance and therefore warm up more. The second lap can then be run along the fastest lines giving a lower qualifying time.

Another approach, albeit a less conventional one, is to forego the second lap because it reduces the strain on the car giving it a better chance in the final, actual race. This is a dangerous approach which not many drivers decide to undertake.

Qualifying results for NASCAR races are based exclusively on the length of time it takes to complete a lap. This obviously has to do with speed, but the actual top speed over a short distance is not taken into account.

If there is a tie for a place, times are compared down to 0.001 (one-thousandth) of a second. If there is still a tie, then the winner is the driver with the highest number of points in the season thus far.

The media tends to report racing results in miles per hour (MPH) which is certainly tracked, but it does not establish the winner. The winner is the one with the fastest lap time, which can also be converted into an overall speed.

Because the media report the results in this way, the general public has a tendency to think that the car reaching the highest MPH will be the winner, but that is false or at least not the whole story.

Sometimes the qualifying rounds have to be cancelled, most often due to very bad weather conditions, then the NASCAR qualifying positions are based on the owner?s previous amount of points.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on lots of topics, but is currently concerned with Gatso speed camera systems. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Laser Temperature Gun.

Skiing Destinations In Scotland

Saturday, May 7th, 2011

Scotland is well-known for being the home of the Highland Games and golf and it is famous for rugby and football and skiing. Skiing?, you may well wonder. Yes, it is a fact, Scotland has some of the very few resorts in the United Kingdom where you can have a holiday in a skiing resort. In fact there are several world class skiing resorts in Scotland. So, if you fancy touring Scotland, you can add skiing on your list for possible things to do.

Scotland is not just a beautiful country which not just has ancient cities, but it also has beautiful mountains, lakes and wildernesses and the Scots are renowned for their hospitality. The language is not a problem if you are an English speaker, nor is the food, if you prefer British food although there are always foreign restaurants close at hand as well.

One such Scottish skiing resort is Aviemore which is located up north in the Cairngorms in the Scottish Highlands. In fact Aviemore is a perfect example of a world-class Scottish skiing resort. There is fantastic skiing for the morning and early afternoon, fantastic food and fantastic night life. People come to Aviemore to ski from all more than the world often combining it with a trip back to the homeland.

You are certain to forget where you are after a couple of days in Aviemore. You could be on any of the world’s best skiing slopes but without the complications of foreign languages and foreign food that many individuals find a difficulty. Other activities available in Aviemore are: observing Britain’s solitary free-grazing herd of reindeer, hiking, mountain biking, water sports, horse riding and pony trekking.

In fact Scotland has four other skiing centres, if you do not ike to go to Aviemore in the Cairngorms. The are also skiing resorts at Nevis, Glencoe, Glenshee and The Lecht.

The Nevis Centre boasts skiing at 1190 metres (3,900 feet) and can normally offer skiing and snowboarding amenities until sometime in the spring. Besides the skiing, which caters to skiers of all levels of skill is the Gondola ski lift which affords stunning views on the way up. The dining and night life aspects of apres ski are well taken provided for as well.

Glencoe on Glencoe Mountain is Scotland’s oldest skiing resort which opened its first ski lift in 1956. Although the resort has been there for fifty-odd years, it is by no means old-fashioned. It does have a propensity to cater for the more expert skier. However, there are seven lifts and nineteen ski runs, so all skiers can find a slope for them. Look out for the run called The Fly Paper the most thrilling black-graded run in Britain.

Glenshee is the biggest skiing resort in Scotland and the UK with twenty-one ski lifts and tows and thirty-six slopes. Glenshee has been operating since 1957 and offers a training school too, although there is something for all levels of skiers.

The Lecht is Scotland’s smallest ski resort, but it also offers a longer skiing season. There are runs for all grades of skiers and some of them run for twenty kilometers. If the snow is a bit sparse, they have amenities to create their own at The Lecht.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a number of subjects, but is now concerned with short ski breaks. If you would like to know more, please go over to our website at Ski Package Holidays.

Berkhamsted Castle, Cornwall

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

The exact origin of Berkhamsted Castle is unclear. It was almost certainly built by Robert, Count of Mortain and Earl of Cornwall, who was the half-brother of King William I. Robert prospered from the Norman Conquest in 1066 and grew even more rich during the following years.

However, his son made a big mistake by backing Robert of Normandy against King Henry I. Henry confiscated the castle and its grounds and put it up for rent. A number of wealthy families rented it from time to time, one of whom was Thomas Becket.

Berkhamsted Castle is of the classic style for its age in that it is a motte and bailey castle. The motte is a tall conical mound of earth on which would stand the last line of defence, the keep. Two ditches surround the bailey with a rampart in between. The ditches may or may not have been full of water.

The motte and bailey and its keep were the ancient equivalent of a modern strong or safe room. If the outer concentric walls of the castle were breached, the family occupying the castle and their most trusted soldiers would flee into the keep and raise the drawbridge. Any would-be attackers now had to advance across open ground, in effect a killing field.

Then the invaders would have to traverse a ditch or a moat under heavy fire, climb across a rampart and swim another moat. If they got that far they would face a sheer keep wall with no windows doors or toe-holds whilst a withering shower of rocks and arrows showered down upon them from a vast height.

The keep at Berkhamsted Castle has been taken away quite some time ago. It has to be kept in mind that castles were symbols of foreign oppression and were fiercely hated by the indigenous locals. The first castles or forts really were Roman; then came, Saxon forts and castles and finally Norman castles - all owned by invading foreigners.

So once a castle was destroyed or badly damaged, it was not unusual for the locals to pillage the ruins in order to build a new cottage for their family or a new cowshed for their livestock. It was easier to steal the rocks from the rundown castle than quarry them themselves. So, the original rocks that made up Berkhamsted Castle are almost certainly to be discovered under centuries of plaster in the near-by local farmhouses.

Having said that, there are still sections of the original flint wall from the era of Thomas Becket’s occupancy of the castle. The bits of stone were almost certainly too small to be worth pinching.

The remains of three semi-circular towers flank this wall which ran from the motte to the bailey. They too lie in ruins although the foundations show what they were. There are also the ruins of a barbican at the north end of the bailey.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of castles in the United Kingdom. Most of them are in ruins but some are very well conserved and some are even still lived in, like Windsor Castle for instance.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a variety topics, but is now concerned with the bouncy castles for sale. If you would like to know more, please visit our web site at Bouncy House Rentals

How They Qualify For The Daytona 500 Races

Monday, April 25th, 2011

The Daytona 500 is money-wise the largest stock car racing event on the NASCAR racing calendar and it is also distinctive for the way that drivers have to qualify for a starting position in it.

The Daytona 500?s unique qualifying process was planned by the pioneer of NASCAR, Bill France, who also formulated most of the other rules and regulations governing the sport in the present day. He had two main objectives for changing the rules for the Daytona 500:

firstly, to boost income from the race because the site for the Daytona 500 is so expensive and secondly, to better prepare the drivers by making them have to meet the criteria under racing circumstances.

Bill France resolved to follow the standard set by other, shorter Daytona tracks, rather than use standard NASCAR qualifying two laps. He also determined to allow soft-tops and hardtops to take part in the Daytona 500 by putting them through a 100 mile qualifier which was to take place two days before the main race on the Sunday.

In 1969, the NASCAR authorities decided to move the qualifying races to the preceding Thursday and enlarged the qualifying distance from 100 miles to 125 miles. In 2005, this distance was again increased to 150 miles.

There has only ever been one year in the times past of the Daytona 500 when the qualifying races had to be cancelled and that was in 1968, over forty years ago.

One would anticipate the winner of the qualifiers to win the major event, but this is not usually the what happens. In 1962, the legendary Fireball Roberts achieved it and in 2004, so did Dale Earnhardt Jnr..

Nonetheless in the history of the Daytona 500, only eight drivers have had victory in both the qualifiers and the main event. The winner in the qualifiers has come second fourteen times, so if you want to gamble, that is a better bet.

Another interesting fact is that only once have the first and second places in the Daytona 500 gone to the winners of the two qualifiers. That occurred in 1995 with Sterling Marlin and Dale Earnhardt. In fact, things have not often gone well for the winners of the Daytona 500 qualifiers.

Thirty-eight qualifying winners have finished up in the thirty-first place or worse. The supreme misery however goes to Tony Stewart who is the only winner of a qualifying race in the history of Daytona 500 to have come in last in the actual Daytona 500 itself.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article writes on lots of subjects, but is at present concerned with Gatso speed camera systems. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Laser Temperature Gun.

Thai Visa Runs: Vientiane, Laos.

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

In order to be eligible for a twelve-months’ visa in Thailand, you have to have a certain amount of money in the bank: 400,000 Baht if you are married to a Thai and 800,000 if you are not married. (I have heard many times that two can live as cheaply as one, but never for half the price). Another condition is that that money has to be in a Thai bank three months before you need the visa.

This time my bank in Britain was slow sending my money to Thailand so I lost my twelve-months’ visa. There are a few alternatives open in this case but all need travel. My wife and I took the decision to go to the nearby Laotian capital of Vientiane, which is about 500 miles (800 kilometres) from where we live in northern Thailand, because neither of us had been there previously.

The bus goes from Phitsanulok, which is about 75 kilometres in precisely the opposite direction from Laos, that is south-east. Since the bus was departing at 22:00 there was no suitable bus to take us there and we had to book a taxi.

The journey to Phitsanulok took us four hours, because the taxi driver wanted to stop off and check that his mother was all right. He was not a real taxi driver, just a farmer with a car. There are no real taxis where I live and his mother was not sick, he merely wanted to take advantage of the fact that he was going to be passing nearby her village to check that she was all right.

None of that is unusual here, you take it in your stride as part of travelling through ‘the country’. The bus was spotless and comfortable and on time, which, to be fair, they often are. When it came to saying farewell, why wife’s daughter did not want to get left behind. Luckily, there was a chair left on the bus, so we took her along too.

The journey to Udon Thani was enjoyable but long; seven hours of meandering through the mountains of north-eastern Thailand, but in the dark so you could not see anything. Udon was cold - the first time I have ever been cold in Thailand in six years.

Although it was almost certainly around ten degrees Celsius, I have become acclimatised to a minimum of 20c and an average of 30c. We had no warm clothes and the daughter did not have a change of clothes at all. Nor a passport. And she had left at home her ID, which has to be carried at all times.

My wife rang a friend in Udon and she arranged a taxi to Vientiane, which is 22 kilometres over the border from Nong Khai, which is 50 kilometres north of Udon - a total of 72 kilometres. This time it was a shop-keeper with a car who wished to go to Laos to buy some duty-free cigarettes.

Once across ‘The Friendship Bridge’, we separated for a few minutes as I had to use a different path through passport control. My wife and her daughter were waiting at the other side for me, but the taxi had deserted us and gone home. I have no idea how the daughter got through without an ID, but I know money changed hands. Getting a taxi, a real one, from there to Vientiane was easy.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on numerous topics, but is now involved with Vientiane visa run. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Package Holidays to Thailand.

How Much Can A Truck Driver Earn?

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Are you looking around for a new job? Or have you ever wondered how much a truck operator earns? If the adverts in the truckers’ magazines are to be believed, it is easy to get a driving job paying $100,000 a year as an owner driver.

This may be true, but it is certain that you can make a good living by owning and driving your own truck. There are several valid reasons for this. There is a worsening shortage of people who are prepared to drive long distances and stay away from home for a night or more and yet more goods are being imported and so have to be distributed from ports to distribution warehouses.

Many owner operators like the lifestyle of being their own boss and not having anyone breathing down their neck. Owner drivers often take their spouse or their dog on journeys with them and a modern cab is more like a small caravan that a car.

There are three main sorts of driving job available in the truck driving industry:

The first is the owner driver or owner operator. This type of operator owns his or her own tractor - the cab part that pulls the trailer.This driver is frequently contracted to a haulage firm and is paid per mile and is at least partially responsible for fuel and repair bills. It is normally the highest paying trucking alternative.

The second is the company operator. A company driver does not own his or her own truck and will normally get a wage based on hours or miles. A company operator typically does not have the same level of control over his wages that an owner driver has.

The third sort is the independent trucker. The independent trucker is fundamentally a mini haulage company. He or she has to find the loads, deliver them, make sure he gets paid, repair the wagon and everything else that a boss has to do, but without the corporate support and regular loads that an owner operator has from his haulage company.

If you are interested in this kind of business, the first thing you will need is a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) in the USA or Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) License in the UK.

Most truck operators attend a truck driving school where they will be given intensive training on how to drive a semi, as the tractor-cum-cab is called. Training will be given on driving and the written part of the state examination. After graduating from the driving school, you will be able to apply for your CDL or HGV.

On the other hand, you may be able to get in with a large haulage company that runs its own in-house training programme. This is better still as it may ensure you a job with that company for a while and that will help you establish a financial record should you want finance to buy your own vehicle later.

Once you are officially authorized, you can rely on your training school to help you find a job, you could phone around, look on the Internet or go and get one of those truckers’ magazines where they advertise jobs at $100,000 per annum.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on lots of subjects, but is currently involved with truck sat nav systems. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Laser Temperature Gun.

Tips For Owner Truck Drivers To Save Money

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

Owner truck drivers have the same basic rights as any business owner, which means that they are permitted to deduct their operating costs from their earnings. The difference is in the detail. Every business works on the same essential guidelines, but within that framework, every kind of business is different.

A large proportion of non-business people do not understand how this works and to be honest, it does work differently in different countries. Here is a simple example: if you earn 400 and 100 is expenses and the tax rate is 25%, you will still pay tax: 400 earnings - 100 expenses = 300 profit x 25% tax rate = 75 tax.

Not as a lot of people think: 400 earnings x 25% tax rate = 100 tax - 100 expenses = zero tax.

With no expenses, the tax bill would have been: 400 earnings x 25% tax rate = 100 tax

Therefore, in this instance, you still need to pay for 75% of your expenses yourself. Obviously, the way to save money is to cut down on expenses. As we all know, this is easier said than done.

Since the truck is the largest single expense, you ought to begin there. Shopping around for the best deal is second nature when it comes to purchasing a vehicle, but it is even more important, when the vehicle is as expensive as a truck.

Regrettably, these are very hard times and many firms are going to the wall, but this does create opportunities to the owner-driver. There are tremendous deals on second-hand trucks, if you do your homework and have the truck thoroughly checked before you buy it.

You can off-set the interest you pay on the finance against profits, but you should definitely go for the best deal you can here as well. Try getting a better deal by bundling several insurances into one or try putting all your insurance policies with one broker for a higher discount. Or even do away with the broker (middleman) and go directly to the insurer.

Maintenance is cheaper than repair and it is deductible. It is also cheaper to take a number of common parts with you than be forced to rely on expensive emergency call-outs.

Fuel is a gigantic cost, so can you acquire a fuel card on the routes you drive? If not, pay for everything with a credit card that offers rewards, and pay off the card every month without fail. Pay by direct debit to make sure. Use it only for business.

Taking a shower can be expensive, up to $10 a time, twice a day. Having your own towel, soap and shampoo can bring this price down, but some garages offer free showers, if you buy a minimum volume of fuel or oil.

Eating healthily is also expensive on the road. This could make it a good strategy to install a refrigerator in your cab and fill it up where food is cheap and handy. Cutting down on fry-ups and steaks and eating more fruit would be healthier for most drivers anyway.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on various subjects, but is at present concerned with truck sat nav systems. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Laser Temperature Gun.