Hours of Fun

I am soon to be off the blogging circuit for a week or two as I am heading off on holiday, first to Cyprus and then to Wales for a week of sun followed by a week of rain to cool my sun-burn. 

The Hadrians Walk event seems to be in full promotional rage at present, so one of the first things I need to do when I get back, is to whip team Bandicoot into shape. We are at present at around 18 interested parties I think, and I may just stop the recruitment activity at that (in order to preserve my own sanity whilst doing the organising).

So whilst I am away, I will leave you with a great game which was brought to my attention in Riga. It goes as follows:

1. Loosen your cheeks and shake your head from side to side as quick as you can
2. Take a photograph of yourself
3. Hold amusing props such as fists / cricket bats / beer bottles close to your face
4. Repeat for approximately 5 hours until you get a good photo

Our best result after hours of practice is below:

The Rock Star's Tribute to Michael Jackson (Latvia Style)

Complete with random drunken girl.

This was actually a brilliant bar we went to on a couple of nights.

On Latvia

I have just got back from a 5 day trip to Latvia and am now in recovery mode. At the moment this involves trying to de-tox by drinking water and eating celery, though this is not working so well...

Riga is a brilliant city however - full of contradictions. On the bad side, the influx of stag-do's into the country as assisted by Ryanair's cheap flights (I may prepare an entire blog post about my feelings for Ryanair) has meant that the city is full of sleazy joints where attractive women feign interest in you to trick you into buying £500 bottles of champagne. The hostel I stayed at has a whole list of clubs and bars that 'you cannot go into or you WILL be robbed'.

This has led to a bit of bad blood between the Latvians and the English and we struggled a little bit to get to see the real city. We weren't helped by the fact that there were seven of us, and we were drinking, and we were loud!

I have kind of decided that I will try to veto foreign stag do's arranged by my mates, as I really think it can affect a place.

On the good side we did managed to do some cool things, like get ourselves into a Latvian nightclub on the 6th floor of some old soviet bloc concrete building, we had some great food and managed to get out of the city to some of the beach resorts which were absolutely fantastic. And unlike when we went to Prague 5 or so years ago, we managed to completely avoid the stags (except in the airport), and by Monday the stags had all disappeared. So it can be done!

Riga is beautiful and boasts some of most beautiful people you will ever see anywhere (and I've been on a fair few different continents). Just don't go where the stag do's do.