San Francisco: Vietnamese Delights, Street Hikes and Lonely Alcatraz Nights

Although there is no actual entry requirement to wear flowers in your hair when going to San Francisco, I felt obligated to make some sort of effort. This was the last stop on the road trip extravaganza, after all. With no fresh blooms in sight at the grimy Megabus stop at LA's Union Train station, I made do with flower print leggings from the H&M sale and stepped aboard, ready to part-sleep the eight hour journey.

I arrived in the early hours, tumbling out onto the corner where I'd waved Leah goodbye a fortnight and a half ago amid crowds of merry students and hipsters dressed in their yuletide finest for SantaCon. My hostel was in North Beach, tucked in among tired nightclubs, depressing strip clubs and a grimy looking pizza/kebab shop that was surprisingly spitting out the most delicious aromas, even at eight in the morning.

I clambered up the narrow staircase, ready to plop into whichever bed I'd been allocated, but as is always the case, it was never that easy. The fat, beardy receptionist sweating behind the counter, who I just knew had a neat collection of perfect-in-their-box action dolls alongside his sticky hentai comics on his bedroom shelf, arrogantly denied me admittance. No check-in's until 11am.
I was knackered. I was having my period. I just wanted to sleep. Show some mercy, El Beardo. He stood steadfastly by his 'dems the rules' ethos. Frickin' jobsworth.
I was forced to hang about, drowsily looking through San Fran city guides in the common area and checking at my watch every six minutes, willing the hands to turn faster.


Restless and frustrated, I gave up at the 10am mark and went for a wander around Chinatown. It was here, at the unassumingly named Latte Express, that I found sanctuary in my first ever Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwich. A new love affair with a filled baked good was born.

Glazed cuts of hot pork, chicken or beef came encased in a warm flaky baguette, the savory flavours colliding with slices of pickled carrot, daikon radish, fresh cucumber and sprigs of coriander. A crunch of jalapeno brought up the rear while some sort of pate (of which I usually am not a fan) spread across the bread reminded me of herby stuffing (of which I am a massive fan) and warded off any creeping dryness. How had I not encountered the simple Banh Mi earlier in life? I found plenty of cafes and restaurants in the city that were vying for the title of Best Banh Mi in San Francisco and made a vow to try at least one every day until my flight back to Heathrow.

There are hordes of homeless in San Fran, thanks to the generous benefit system and heavy duty soup kitchens. Most city guides I'd read had waxed lyrical about the delights of the Mission district, with its graffiti muraled walls, scores of thrift shops and multicultural vibe. To be fair, you can find this sort of community in any major city. London has Brixton and Harlesden, New York - Brooklyn and Harlem.

Read between the lines and it simply means a quarter where the poor, spirited and colourful were forced to live, but in recent years has caught the eye of developers, yuppies and hipsters. I'm pretty certain there was a Whole Foods or Trader Joe's lurking about (the Waitrose counterpart) and if that's not a sign of gentrification, you and your skinny Cheap Monday jeans can take a hike. 

I walked into a ghetto Dickensian tableau the moment I turned the corner into the Mission. One of the homeless was aggressively shoulder smashing a Chinese tourist, demanding he hand over the 'money, drugs and hoes.' The poor bloke looked petrified, despite being half a foot taller, and slightly stockier, than the (most likely disease-riddled) tramp. His flashy camera quivered as he looked about for possible saviours to rescue him from this street madness. I wound the shoulder strap of my bag, already strategically placed in an anti-theft position across my body, tighter in my wrist. 

Apart from the murals and odd kitschy shop, there wasn't much else to look at or do down in the Mission. Not that I stuck about to explore. Charity shops and down-and-outs make me nervy itchy. The depressing hopelessness of all the poverty was enough to propel me out of there and back towards the twinkling lights of the city after a mere few hours. 

The next day, after a pit stop at Saigon Sandwich in the Tenderloin for a $3.50 grilled pork de-frickin-light, I headed east towards Haight and Ashbury. This is where the Summer of Love happened, where hippy central was headquartered and where the theory that peace and love would heal international conflicts was conceived. Men in parked cars murmured 'Hey grrrrrl, oh hey', as I wheezed past them.  It reminded me a lot of Camden; clouds of weed dancing above the pavements and shifty dreadlocked stoners anchoring street corners, except it was very hilly. Some streets were so steep in fact, it was in that bit in Inception where the pavements turn vertical as you walk up to them.

No trip to San Fran would be complete in my eyes without a trip out to Alcatraz. Trips to the former US fort and prison are in such high demand, visitors are advised to book up to a fortnight in advance to guarantee tickets, advice which I duly followed. I left it until the morning of my final day, taking an early ferry out of Pier 33 across choppy waters and under a suitably grey sky to the Rock. Alcatraz sits on one of the most hostile, desolate lumps of land in the world, at the mercy of violent waves rolling into the Bay and San Francisco's temperamental weather. 

Ideal for caging America's dirty and dangerous. 

 Although its life as a prison is long dead, you can't help shuffling around the damp cells mournfully, as if you yourself had been banished here for a stretch. The worst bit was when I was having a look around the isolation block and someone briefly closed the door. I'm not afraid of the dark, and it was only for a second, but it was enough to give me heeby jeebies that took at least twenty minutes to shake off.
The free audio guide that comes with a standard ticket walked me through the main facility, giving me facts and figures and former inmate accounts that explained in detail just how grim it was to live in such a place. Didn't seem that bad. The cells looked a mere hygiene rung below some of the motel rooms we'd had to sleep in when Leah and I had the car.

A recording of the experience of one former inmate said one of the worst things about the prison was its proximity to downtown San Francisco. When the wind blew the right way, it carried laughter and music from clubs in the harbour across the bay, over the rocky cliffs, right through the concrete walls, mocking the miserable jailed with the sounds of the free. Torture in itself. I could have spent most of the day rattling my plastic water bottle against the cell bars, muttering lines from the Shawshank Redemption into the shadows, but my flight was departing in the early afternoon and I had to get a wiggle on for my ride to the airport. 

I stood waiting to dump my swelled backpack at Virgin Atlantic's departures lounge, idly flicking through my photo album and looking back at three months in the most fascinating nation on the planet. Clam chowder, Elvis fanatics, leis, hurricanes and voodoo superstition, cowboys, ghost towns and deserted desert highways. Home simultaneously to the brave and free, and Earth's most notorious penitentiary. 

What a hot mess of a country.

Hey Hollywood!

Los Angeles is a peculiar one.

When I told people that I planned to spend six days there and my last three in San Francisco, I was met with a wary shake of the head and told umpteen times that I should have done it the other way round. 

But the hostel was booked and New Year's Eve fast approaching so there was no other choice but to buckle up, settle down and have a good time. 

I booked into USA Hostels Hollywood, about fifty metres from Hollywood Boulevard, it's streets lined with stars, armies of tourists, crack heads and the world's most decorated hobos. 

My room mates included a ridiculously upbeat Japanese nursery teacher and a Dutch girl who felt comfortable enough to sit me down later and regale in minute detail a recent INTIMATE liaison with a jazz-loving tour guide by the name of Doug. Doug the sex god. Why do people feel the need to unzip such personal secrets to me? I must have a trustworthy face. Another woman once whinged about her incompatibility with certain sanitary products as a result of a complicated labour following pregnancy. SHUT UP.

I woke up in the evening, in time to cash in on a hostel-run barbecue and have a look at the other guests. Arriving in a new hostel is like looking at an identity parade for disposable friends. They form a line, you size them up and select a partner in crime, you friendship expires the day one of you leaves. Perhaps a bit ruthless but completely true.

And it was at this juncture the hemispheres collided, the moons aligned, a butterfly in Chile fluttered its wings and I met my New Zealand double, Hailey. We were so alike, it was freaky. 

From her flicked black eyeliner, can't-be-arsed indifference with begfrienders, to the affection for leopard print to the chipped, glitter polish on her nails, to the beds and lockers (unallocated) in our rooms, we were the same. 

The weirdest thing of all was that she had done the exact same job in New Zealand to the one I'd left behind in London. It's not like our jobs, or even the sector we work in, are well known. It's the Diagon Alley of media. 

We swore a blood oath over cups of moonshine-spiked cocktails to knock about together the next day - Hailey's last and my first. I had heard about a World of Leggings on Melrose Avenue (rubbish and overpriced, so if you were considering going, don't) so we ambled in that direction, weaving past the hoardes of snap happy tourists outside Mann's Chinese Theatre and ducking tour hawkers screaming up and down the street for business. 

Los Angeles is so huge, with no nucleus or core, it makes it difficult to know the city. It's like a set of towns really close to each other but no one place, like Trafalgar or Times Square, where all the major events happen. There are Scientology Churches on every corner, adding to general air of surreality. The skies are circled by LAPD and tour choppers, giving you the sense of being constantly under siege and surveillance. 

Having already spent a couple of days around Venice Beach and Santa Monica pre-Hawaii, I had no urge to return to the shore, and Universal Studios held no attraction as a solo traveller so I spent most of my time wandering in and out of steam punk and vintage shops, being made to stalk celebrities around the gold-plated streets of Beverley Hills, exploring the hipster quarter of Silver Lake and gulping down the best sushi in the world. 

I was introduced to Kino Sushi by my perpetually-cheery Japanese room mate. The chef and staff cheer greetings - 'HELLO! WELCOME!' - as soon as you wander in off Hollywood Boulevard. I got a bento box which included spicy chicken teriyaki, sticky rice, prawn and vegetable tempura, miso soup, weird but tasty salad gunk and California roll sushi pieces, all for $12. Delicious. 

OooOoOooo I Can See Your Honolulu

Other than Graceland, Hawaii was the place I was most looking forward to visiting when planning this trip. Aside from New Orleans. And Memphis, of course. But Honolulu was capitalised, italicised, underscored and highlighted in BOLD in both my homemade travel schedule and my whirrly little mind.

It's the sort of place you daydream about while writing completely useless summaries about Anthony Worrall Thompson shoplifting cheese from a Tesco in Henley-on-Thames at 3.18 a.m on a Thursday morning. WHO CARES? It was probably only a cry for attention. He's not so hot these days, is old Ant. Anyway, back to my holiday hard-on.

HAWAII and all her pleasures; palm trees and sunshine-happy ukele music, warm sand and skilled surfers, grass skirts and ham and pineapple pizza. Bloody paradise. I remember doing a 30-second jig after clicking on the confirm button to book my flight and gurning like I was at my first festival for about four hours afterwards. Excited doesn't even cover it. I was champing at the bit to get out there.

It takes six hours to fly to Honolulu on the island of Oahu from LAX and the islands, the most remote chain in the world, is two hours behind Pacific Standard Time - basically making it the end of the world. I would be ten whole hours behind almost everyone I know. After waving goodbye to Leah and whiling away two days in grungy Venice Beach eating 7-Eleven pizza and catching up on the latest series of Dexter, I travelled to LAX at about 11pm the day before my flight to sit out the eight hours before I could board the plane and dream all the way to paradise.


For entertainment, I pretended to be Tom Hanks in Terminal and shuffled around the departures lounge mumbling emotionally in a made up language from a fictional country, before finding the softest piece of marble I could to try and snooze for a few hours before the check-in kiosks opened.
For anyone thinking about ever sleeping at the airport: if you can avoid it, do. If not, purchase an inflatable mattress. It is NOT easy nesting.

I got on the plane and tucked myself into my seat, finally falling asleep before the engines got going. My neighbour very sweetly shoved his soft, fat elbow into my face just as the islands came into view underneath us hours later, allowing me to lean all the way over from the aisle to the window to catch my first glimpse.

It was a photoshopped world I was staring down into, everything popping out in bright technicolour and looking sparkly and fun and happy and Aloha. Absolutely beautiful. 

Hawaii may be a stunner but its also one of the most expensive places I've been to. The starting price for most items seemed to be $10, and that was considered a good deal. With my bank account dwindling, budget was the order of the day. Google pointed me in the direction of Waikiki Backpackers Hostel, which had good reviews, and more importantly, offered travellers two UNLIMITED beer nights a week, for free. I was staying for ten days over Christmas, so this had to be taken strongly into consideration. They also offered a complimentary shuttle service from Honolulu airport if you were staying for four days or more.
Yes please.

bezzie mates

Two blocks from Waikiki Beach, the hostel is a former motel and each room has been converted into dorms that sleep four. You get your own kitchenette and bathroom in the room, which is pretty handy for storing supermarket-bought beer. At its helm is the owner, Charles, a well-built Nigerian man who used to be in the British Army and who reminisced with me extensively about England and J.D Wetherspoons' curry nights. You can't get a decent curry in Hawaii, it seems. Charles seemed pleased to have another British accent knocking about the place and as he left, promised to bring me a can of cider the next night.

I had managed to turn up on Tuesday, one of the free beer nights, so got stuck in chatting with my fellow hostellers and worked on becoming increasingly shit faced before we all piled into the minivan at 10 p,m and were driven to Moose McGillycuddy's, a ridiculously-named rowdy bar in the city where drinks remarkably, only cost $1 that night. NO BLOODY TAX ADDED ON, EITHER.


I waved my $5 bill like I was in Her Maj's inner circle, graciously buying drinks for my new chums and throwing out unique dance moves to the pop music under the strobe lighting. It was just like a school disco, except with lei's, mai tais and lots and lots of military personnel. I chatted with a Marine (there are a ton based on the island) and egged on a German girl looking at a bit of beef that had caught her eye across the crowded bar. A superb night out.

I'd promised myself I'd go surfing the next morning. Obviously I would have been a complete natural. However I failed spectacularly to wake up in time for the Early Bird Special ($30 for an hour's lesson on Waikiki - but only before 8 a.m) so ended up heading to the Dole Pineapple Factory on the local bus system, which took an hour and a half and very nearly robbed me of my will to live.

It took FOREVER going all round the houses and back again to visit the driver's grandma. I sassed quietly in the back, but not too loudly because I'm a scaredy cat and didn't want to get chucked off the bloody thing in the middle of nowhere. Also, I was in Hawaii and had no right to be moody about the slow-pace of everything.

The Dole Factory was horrendous, hugely overpriced ($8 for a packet of dried pineapple. What in holy hell?) and inexplicably, sold pearls in oysters at every corner. What do unshucked oysters have to do with the seeding, harvesting and distribution of pineapples? I may die before I find out.
Seeing as it took so long to get there, the least I could do was treat myself to a ride on the Pineapple Express, a fire-red train that takes visitors around the pineapple fields and explains the history of the factory in a neat twenty minute ride. The pictures would have been nicer if the sun had gotten its act together that day, but it didn't, so here's what I got:

no idea pineapple grew like that

this cockrel was trying to shake off the advances of a LUSTY peacock

I wandered back to the bus stop and waited for my ride home, stopping in a shopping centre to hear Hawaiian Christmas carols before meandering along Waikiki beach to the hostel. The cheapest drinks the local ABC stores (sort of like a Sainsbury's Local) sold was the same brand of Californian champagne I had toasted my 26th birthday to with Leah in Monterey. Seven bucks and it didn't taste like a urinal in a strip club. THAT'LL DO. 

I took my loot back to the hostel's teeny common area and shared it with my new room-mate, Martina from Sweden. Martina was on holiday with her mate Karin, who was fast asleep in our room, exhausted from the trek halfway across the world. She mentioned they'd hired a car for the next three days and would I like to join her and two other Swedes on a road trip to the east coast the next day?

Four Swedes and Abha packed into one rental car?

There is only one appropriate way to end this post, and it is with this video >>>

WE AT THA' SLATS! - Las Vegas

Las Vegas; a theme-park for adults, where the ride is a rollercoaster of your personal finances and thousands of dreams are crushed and reformed from a pile of smouldering betting slips in a heartbeat.

It's not for the faint-hearted, but even those who detest extensive neon lighting and unrelenting garishness will find a soft spot for this city of the perpetual weekend in the Nevadan desert.

Because we had the foresight to book about five months in advance, we were able to secure a room in OAP Central, The Flamingo on Las Vegas strip for about £115 for two of us for a four night epic.

We crawled into the city, our flame red Dodge Avenger inching past landmarks like the MGM Grand, New York New York casino and the legendary fountains of the Bellagio.

The pavements were crammed with all kinds of curious creatures that form the spectrum of humanity; it was like Noah's sodding Ark for delinquents. Tramps and vagabonds battling for supremacy over the bubble-gum stained pavements in front of McDonald's, rich kids sweating the previous night's champagne indulgence into the doorways of Gucci and Prada, studded motorheads chewing on leathery cheeseburgers at the Harley Davidson casino and bumbag-wearing retirees on holiday from their Florida sheltered accomodation, trying their luck at a game of craps and sucking faces after a few hours at Margaritaville. All were there, all were hopeful.

After throwing our stuff in our pink-fluff bedecked room, we headed out to join the masses, clucking in annoyance when small children and pensioners got in our way. Long gone was the slow, easy stride we'd picked up from the desert. We had a session to get on with. Didn't these slow pokes know there was FREE CHAMPERS to be had on the casino floor?

After submitting ourselves to a screening for the pilot of a TV show at the MGM Grand (the show, starring McLovin of SuperBad, was okay, but a little too try-hard with the jokes) we made it to the glitzy, ritzy and snazmattazmic Bellagio and slid onto the faux leather stools in front of the penny slot machines, trying not to flag down the gliding waitresses too enthusiastically.

I fed the machine a $1 note and slowly tapped the 'Place Bet' button, making sure the 1 cent light was lit. Finally, after losing a dismal 43 cents thanks to my paltry bets, my peripherial vision detected a middle-aged blonde woman picking her way towards me, red-lipsticked mouth stretched into a smile that didn't quite meet her eyes and order book at the ready.

'Drink, honey?' she asked.

'Yes please', I showed her my teeth and said in the hesitant Hugh-Grant-in-Four-Weddings-manner that foreigners associate with every Briton that ever lived, 'erm... Would it be alright if I had a glass of champagne please?'

'SURE! 'Course you can hun', she beamed, properly, genuinely now. 'You want the same sweetie?' she looked at Leah, who was aghast at my request for such extravagance. 'No problem, I'll be right back. Love that accent'.

living the high life

And that was how we whiled away the first portion of our evening in Vegas: playing the pennies but only as a front to attract more waitresses and their seemingly endless shipment of alcohol.

When our bums got sore and we tired of winning scraps on the machines, we made our way to Caesar's Palace where a suited and booted man named Jesus stood guard at the gates, armed with nightclub fliers for tipsy girls on a mission to spend as little green as possible. HELLO.

Despite our jeans and jumpers combo, Jesus flagged us down and furnished us with little pieces of card that entitled us to free admission to PURE, Caesar's nightclub, with free drinks until midnight. Now, under normal circumstances, we're not the kind of girls who go and do MTV-dancing in dark, anonymous nightclubs where banter is out of the question and the primary aim for most attendees is to attract a mate. But, open bar. 
A friend from home was also in town and planning to make a beeline for the same club later that night. So it made sense to go, load up and leave like the casual Cinderellas we were when the clock stuck twelve. How bad could it be?

ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS.

It was a master remix of a night out in Watford, Chingford, Newcastle and Glasgow rolled into one atrocious bump-and-grind session. The women wore tight bodycons (even those with a few extra lumps and bumps had ill-advisedly managed to winch themselves into one, doing that shallow, quick breathing thing to ensure their lung capacity stayed at a minimum and they didn't tear their side seams) with deep necklines. Ankle-breaker heels on, hairspray threatening to breach health and safety regulations, faces frozen somewhere between trying not to shart and utter disdain for anyone that dared to so much as glance in their direction.

Then there were the men. Oh, the men. Some of their shirts where buttoned lower than the girls' necklines, occasionally revealing a perma-tanned peck, but more often than not, a gristly moob. Their eyes hunted the women, searching, waiting for the first wobble that signalled the free drinks were working on lowering their inhibitions, and hopefully their pants too.

Leah and I commandeered a table at the edge of the dance floor and enjoyed our new powers of invisibility. We tried to get as many drinks to our table as we could, racking them up for when they would no longer be free and doing some fantastic comedy R'n'B dancing to the poorly DJ'd music. I bumped into my chum from home, Jeremy, who was thrashing out some shapes on the dance floor and adding his own rap to the smoke and music that swirled above our heads:

'Yeah we're in Vegas! Whaddya make of us? Yo, don't be hatin' on us! We're just happy to be here, don' want no freakin' fuss!'
(Or something along those lines.)

Leah bowed out at midnight but I stayed on for another hour, bouncing around the rooftop bar, paying a painful $10 per beer and watching Jez chatting up the laydeez, fall over and make me try on his glasses.

Then I headed for home, weaving my way out of the throng, through the casino, onto the road and into the Flamingo where I fully expected to open the door to a slumbering Gassonimator. SHE WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. Awol! How could this be? Perhaps she had been talked into a game of Craps, misunderstood the concept and required assistance and a well-planned exit strategy. Should I contact her relatives? The A-Team? Call a plumber?
No, it transpired that that evening, she was simply more double hard than me and had continued to happily trundle along the Strip, muttering to herself, ordering more complimentary drinks and writing abusive messages on Facebook.
What a trooper.

crab legs, prawns, grilled fish, salad, mexican rice, sausage

nachos, salsa, sesame ball, roast beef, bun

Food was the activity of the day, we decided when we woke up feeling bruised and confused the next morning.

Vegas, the most excessive city in the nation of excess, offers unlimited buffets for every tastebud, every wallet, every fancy.

A welcome pack from The Flamingo in our room contained vouchers for a discounted meal at Flavor's buffet located in Harrah's Casino, so we decided to head over and fill our boots.

sushi, fish, prawns

Snow crab, prawns, sushi, vine leaves, spare ribs dripping in chemically-enriched gloop, fortune cookies, fajitas and thick slices of honey-roast ham, it was all there for the taking. And boy, did I try. After all, there are children starving in Africa. I owed it to them to eat until it started to feel weird around my heart.

I managed three plates and then a dessert plate as well before I admitted defeat. In the battle against Abha and the buffet, this time, the buffet had triumphed.

watermelon adds balance

The next couple of days were lost to Vegas where most buildings have neither a clock or windows, travelling out to Fremont Street on the Deuce, watching free shows outside Caesar's Place and the Bellagio, gawping open-mouthed at cowboys in town for the Rodeo at the Convention Centre and catching Mardi Gras beads at the Rio casino. It was during Rio's Show in the Sky performance that a pudgy, scrunchied she-beast very nearly gouged out my right eyeball, such was her desire to take home some strands of the cheap gold beads herself.

Over the course of our stay, I found myself pushing more and more dollar notes into the slots, placing larger bets each time. There was no point playing a penny a go, you'd never win anything. No, to win big you had to bet big. TWENTY CENTS A BET. That was how I began rolling, Leah clucking in disapproval next to me but egging me on too. My risky stance paid off for a few jubilant minutes, taking my winnings up to a dizzying $15 before the House began to claw back the cash.

Hey ho, that's how Vegas goes. For small fry like us anyway. Leah had somehow managed to transform her 30 cents in credit to $5.45 in real cash and was buzzing with glee that she'd now be able to purchase her dinner as well as a pack of sanitary towels. Some people might have riches, others fame, we're happy with the smaller pleasures in life.

winning