Ichaicha in London Part 1

Name of trip: Icha Icha in England 
Previous trips: Ten or so hours in Taiwan (honeymoon 2017) 
snowless in Seattle (December 2017) 
honeymooning in Hawaii (honeymoon 2017) 
scorching in St. Louis (summer 2017 wedding) 
Weekend at The Met (New York 2017) 
Dont Let Me Down, Georgia (May 2016) 
Texas two-step ( January 2016) 

Everything is expensive! It’s like bad weather and bad weather at New York or Silicon Valley prices.


People are polite! If I was at risk of being too negative: here’s something positive: most people are genuinely nice! In Mexico and China I noticed people giving the stink eye to foreigners or travelers or artificially nice to just get a tip, etc... it really seems that British people are nice to travelers, to the point where one can tell. That goes a long way in wanting to visit somewhere again, because really a country is a business in terms of travel: your country is your brand and you want people to have a good time and maybe even visit again! Every country gets some needed revenue from tourism, some more than others. 

I’m the digital age of the internet and people connected to everywhere, visiting places is becoming obsolete... there are thousands of YouTube channels dedicated to travel, the most famous tourist areas get visited again and again by so many people it’s really not necessary anymore to actually go somewhere. Food, you can get in your own local ethnic market; just go on YouTube for a week and you can go to all corners of the world, not just your select destination....... is what I thought before coming out this time. Certainly, it’s true that a lot of things can be done online, but there’s still nothing that beats actually being somewhere new, the sense of adventure that you engender when going somewhere new, the new stimulus open experiences, the wind blowing in your face, the smell of the ocean or food being made at a restaurant( or smoke from cigarettes in London!) , the choose your own adventure of making decisions on a trip, figuring out the subway system of a new city,  those experiences make a much more indelible impression in my mind, as opposed the superficial impression of another person’s travel experiences broadcast through YouTube, that draws me towards continuing to go on vacation....... no matter the cost (and yes London was pretty costly). 

Randomly selected for search out of England! Starting to think my name is associated with some international wanted man In Europe, I’ve been randomly selected both in Greece/Turkey but not in Asian countries. Luckily I had no drugs, no electronics, no smuggled goods, no money! Just a ticket out of the country as soon as possible, please!