If Jeremy Clarkson made Nightclubs - York Club, Dubai

So I booked into a random mid-level hotel (York International Hotel) here in Dubai, as I stop over a couple of nights en route to Singapore. The first night, arriving at 2am I went straight to sleep but I did notice the next day there were various bars, restaurants and clubs around the venue, so I ventured down the 2nd night to see what was on offer...

First stop was an 'Asian Club'. This basically meant that I sat and drank a beer, and a row of pretty young Indian girls sat on a stage looking bored, and one was up dancing. I'm not quite sure what was going on here, maybe someone can help - it sure seemed strange that a bunch of fat rich looking indian guys  would want to just sit and watch girls dancing in some kind of Indian style dancing all night. Who knows, maybe they were there to buy more wives, maybe it was all just a bit of good fun...anyway, bored out of my skull after two pints, I headed down to the York Club, downstairs. This was a very different kettle of fish. As soon as I got in, fifty sets of eyes were on me, smiling gappy teeth in the dark. Yep, you guessed it, skanky hookers. I went over to the stage, and a Japanese girl band were rocking it out to 'Breaking the Law' by Judas Priest. Jeremy Clarkson lookalikes were in frantic air guitar competitions. One finished off with the drunken 'spin' on the dancefloor - you know it - you've probably done it, when you're dancing with a lucky lady, have been downing shots all night, and you have it in your head that making a little spin around on the dancefloor will be a good move, but actually 50% of the time you end up falling over and looking stupid. I noticed actually the dancefloor was full of drunken 50 year old blokes, with some of the most awful dance moves you could ever dream of. Still, with AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' coming on straight after, they were in Top Gear heaven. I felt kind of sorry for the prossies though. This place must be a kind of place where hookers end up when they get too old, clapped out or just not sexy enough to be in other places, so they trawl around here, looking desperate, trying to catch Jeremy Clarksons in between downing shots, hoping they won't notice the fact they are more than ready for the prostitutes knackers yard.

Anyway, all in all it was a good fun place, albeit bizzare. I met a chubby Georgian girl who was just a normal tourist and so I enlisted her as my DHD (desperate hooker defence) and watched the clazy japanese girls, who seemed to even have choreographed dances for Led Zeppelin numbers...

And I just noticed the hero of last nights show, the craziest air guitarist of the whole club...mr dancefloor spinner, furtively sneaking out of the hotel looking like a total wreck (it's 2.30pm the next day as I write this...) and probably wishing he'd stayed at home...

The Spirit of Adventure - Ukraine, Moldova...and Trans-Nestria

What I love about traveling are the daily interactions with random strangers, especially the experience of how people treat other people in a position of vulnerability. Last night, when driving home from a cave monastery in deepest (read African level roads) Moldova, I scraped the rental car off a giant kerb at a petrol station in the middle of nowhere, and got a puncture. Sure, the rental company took complete advantage today, and blamed me for all sorts of other fictional scratches (and suddenly the insurance doesn't work anymore and no one remembers how to speak english except the words 'problem' and 'money')

 But, to take the silver lining from the cloud, that night as i drove off cursing, some complete random stranger flagged me down as I trundled along the track, told me I had a puncture (which we hadn't noticed at all) and fixed it in the dark, in the middle of nowhere, just like that. I have no idea who he was, and never will, but that, i'd prefer, to be my memory of the incident, rather than goons trying to do me over, which sadly is often the foreign view of Eastern Europe.

In Ukraine it was the same - a very kind random couple, went out of their way to help me find the 'secret' bus ticket office, to buy the bus ticket from Odessa to Kiev. It was no easy matter, I can tell you, even for them. It's an endearing part of being in post-soviet countries. People are expected to just 'know' this kind of thing - no adverts, no info. and certainly no english.

Anyway, such is the fun and the spirit of making random trips. Good souls can make your day, and goons can ruin your life, but all in all, it's the same the world over, and thats what keeps a mans faith in humanity.

Trans-Nestria, the infamous non-country east of Moldova, was, i'm afraid, a washout. It was totally safe. No big nuclear weapons auctions. No post-soviet ghost town. No armed guards at every corner demanding bribes and passports. Perhaps the guys who tell of having problems there are simply dickwads. We filled in the form, paid about $1 for the mini-bus from Chisinau (the capital of Moldova) stopped at a kind if kiddy-on checkpoint/border crossing, showed the passports, went to Bender Fortress (a giant castle, with a quite interesting history among various battles between Swedes, Ottomans, an Russians) got a bus to the capital, Tiraspol, ate a pizza for about a dollar. Took a photo of Lenin (the only soviet thing we found), got bored after realising...ah thats it then, and went home to Moldova. So its basically like a Narva with less blonde people.

Eastern Europe is full of honest, good people. Its just than none of them are in the government. Nations of lions are led by inept corrupt donkeys. Road needs fixed? pocket the money. Your people need schools? Build a football stadium. Not enough hospitals? Buy some new limousines for the cabinet. Welcome to Eastern Europe, Africas role model...

Next move, is an overnight train, tonight, to Kiev, then the long flight east. We had a 5.7 richter earthquake two nights ago here in Chisinau (a lovely but boring city, by the way) my rudely built building wobbled like it was made of cardboard, but fortunately just for a few seconds. Thank God Tokyo is built to withstand these things...