Chisinau...The City that Italian Sex Tourists Forgot (thank God)

I would love to tell you all about the tourist sites of Chisinau, Moldova, but to be honest, there are more tourist sites in Scunthorpe.

However, Chisinau has really grown on me. It's pretty old school, but that also means 1 euro coffees, safe streets, taxi drivers who don't rob you, and no fat people.

I'm staying in the 'hotel cosmos' which, as you can see from the website just arrived out of 1982, and could be describe as 'retro soviet'. I just noticed the 3 old ladies who sit downstairs every night and say hello to me are actually the 'house prostitutes', who while being very pleasant, have plainly have been there since the hotel opened. I wonder if they are the only people alive to have been in every single room?

I've had a pretty interesting time here nevertheless, mainly due to the very nice local people i met here. It's not easy to get lost, as the centre is basically one long street with a macdonalds in the middle.  haven't seen anything costing more than $10 in the whole city. I have a suite for $30 here (although to be fair thats the going rate for rooms) and i'll put in here later some of the restaurants i've been to.

The first thing to do when you get here is walk up the main drag. Watch out as you will probably bump into lamposts checking out the most beautiful array of local girls, rather than the nothing special architecture (with some interesting exceptions like the presidents palace and some other cool sovietsky style stuff) There are a couple of lovely parks with free wifi and a street back is the National History Museum of Moldova which is quite a bizzare little place which has a large furniture shop in the middle of it, which you initially think 'wait a minute what kind of exhibit is this?' Babushkas follow you round switching on the lights and off again when you go in and out of rooms, and there is a pretty amazing wrap round montage of some war or other.

I rather stupidly got my ATM card stuck in the cash machine today in a casino where i was having lunch. Moldovan Casinos are probably not the best places to lose your atm card, but i'll have to make do with the winnings for the rest of the trip. I'm not quite sure how I will pay the hotel though on top but some kind of solution may well present itself. Between a final Moldovan wine fuelled night out on thursday, sneaking out of the hotel without paying, and visiting Soviet breakway republic Trans Nestria on Friday, there are sure to be some kind of adventures ahead...

If you don't hear from me again, you know roughly which prison i'll be in then....

ps photos WILL follow!!!

The 'American Bicycle' - 'Irish Heritage District' South Buffalo, New York

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There's nothing particularly wrong with South Buffalo. It's a collection of average looking houses on average looking streets in an average looking American town. With silly Gaelic street signs so plastic paddys can pretend they're Irish not American (actually I have seen some black guys with ginger hair though !)

But thats the tragedy - it is American....sooo American, and in every wrong way possible. The people are generally very nice, but I'm flabbergasted daily by the wholesale accepted ignorance of the populace in little slices like of the western world like here, where it seems the past 30 years just slipped by without any change whatsoever (except their diet, of course) Anyway heres what's been happening this week...

An 'American Bicycle' yesterday in the supermarket 

Travel Smart! - I walked into the bank down here yesterday, and the teller had never seen a foreign passport (or been overseas.) She had to spend 20minutes looking over it in detail with the bank manager to check I wasn't one of those ther 'Al Queedas' you hear about on the TV.

Nutrition Concious! - Tonight, as I was starved and food options are limited here, I ate a pizza in 'Wise Guys' Pizza. An enormous fat guy waddled in and waddled out with a box the size of a small car, quite possibly all for his own consumption. There are more vegetables for sale in a Glasgow Chip Shop than down here, believe me. But sadly it seems there are no proper restaurants (unless you count Macdonalds, Taco Bell, or dodgy looking faux Irish Bars.) I really have no idea why only two thirds of the American Population are overweight - where the hell does the other 1/3 eat to stay normal ?? (what an awful statistic though)

The infinitely more sophisticated cuisine of Buffalos 'East Side'

Bike Friendly, how progressive! - And if, you have the impudent cheek to cycle around, especially at night, even if you have a helmet and lights, every third car peeps their horn at you, as if to say 'Get off the f*n Road!'   Haven't these guys down here seen bikes before? I suppose it is Friday night after all so obviously they're in a rush to drive home from the bar to beat their wives.

Anyway, I'll take a proper cycle round the neighbourhood tomorrow and along the 'Seneca Bluffs' and see if i can find an oasis of non-corn syrup monsanto'd up food somewhere, although i'm pretty doubtful since i'm not quite sure if the internet even got here yet.