Everyone has one so why not..

[claypole]

Yeah going to the Southern Hemisphere in the winter ftw. I am planning on Aus/NZ first couple of months of next year. I am trying to do it to coincide with the England cricket tour of NZ next year.

Hmmm food for thought, thanks for alerting me to that 

I did this in 2007/07 - saw side bottoms hat trick in the Hamilton test. Tickets were just stupidly cheap - I think from memory the test in hamiltonwas like £30 for 5 days. One dayers in Christchurch were cool - so small and we had a great night where we dank with team after I came back from loo to find my mate advising Collingwood on one day strategy - he was a top bloke who didn't tell Huw to f*** off and instead asked us to join them. Happy days. As ray will tell you - I think I get more excited than him when we discuss travelling on Skype, best year of my life by a country mile

[Woodsey]

Yeah going to the Southern Hemisphere in the winter ftw. I am planning on Aus/NZ first couple of months of next year. I am trying to do it to coincide with the England cricket tour of NZ next year.

Hmmm food for thought, thanks for alerting me to that 

I did this in 2007/07 - saw side bottoms hat trick in the Hamilton test. Tickets were just stupidly cheap - I think from memory the test in hamiltonwas like £30 for 5 days. One dayers in Christchurch were cool - so small and we had a great night where we dank with team after I came back from loo to find my mate advising Collingwood on one day strategy - he was a top bloke who didn't tell Huw to f*** off and instead asked us to join them. Happy days. As ray will tell you - I think I get more excited than him when we discuss travelling on Skype, best year of my life by a country mile

There isn't a single thing that excites me more tbh. Gotta have my 3 or 4 trips to random places every year, life wouldn't be worth living otherwise 

I'm deliberately staying single at the moment so I can keep doing it and not planning to change that any time soon 

[mondatoo]

Yeah going to the Southern Hemisphere in the winter ftw. I am planning on Aus/NZ first couple of months of next year. I am trying to do it to coincide with the England cricket tour of NZ next year.

Hmmm food for thought, thanks for alerting me to that 

I did this in 2007/07 - saw side bottoms hat trick in the Hamilton test. Tickets were just stupidly cheap - I think from memory the test in hamiltonwas like £30 for 5 days. One dayers in Christchurch were cool - so small and we had a great night where we dank with team after I came back from loo to find my mate advising Collingwood on one day strategy - he was a top bloke who didn't tell Huw to f*** off and instead asked us to join them. Happy days. As ray will tell you - I think I get more excited than him when we discuss travelling on Skype, best year of my life by a country mile

There isn't a single thing that excites me more tbh. Gotta have my 3 or 4 trips to random places every year, life wouldn't be worth living otherwise 

I'm deliberately staying single at the moment so I can keep doing it and not planning to change that any time soon 

Yeah, that's my excuse too.

[mondatoo]

Yeah going to the Southern Hemisphere in the winter ftw. I am planning on Aus/NZ first couple of months of next year. I am trying to do it to coincide with the England cricket tour of NZ next year.

Hmmm food for thought, thanks for alerting me to that 

I did this in 2007/07 - saw side bottoms hat trick in the Hamilton test. Tickets were just stupidly cheap - I think from memory the test in hamiltonwas like £30 for 5 days. One dayers in Christchurch were cool - so small and we had a great night where we dank with team after I came back from loo to find my mate advising Collingwood on one day strategy - he was a top bloke who didn't tell Huw to f*** off and instead asked us to join them. Happy days. As ray will tell you - I think I get more excited than him when we discuss travelling on Skype, best year of my life by a country mile

Haha, this is actually true, pretty com.

[Woodsey]

Yeah going to the Southern Hemisphere in the winter ftw. I am planning on Aus/NZ first couple of months of next year. I am trying to do it to coincide with the England cricket tour of NZ next year.

Hmmm food for thought, thanks for alerting me to that 

I did this in 2007/07 - saw side bottoms hat trick in the Hamilton test. Tickets were just stupidly cheap - I think from memory the test in hamiltonwas like £30 for 5 days. One dayers in Christchurch were cool - so small and we had a great night where we dank with team after I came back from loo to find my mate advising Collingwood on one day strategy - he was a top bloke who didn't tell Huw to f*** off and instead asked us to join them. Happy days. As ray will tell you - I think I get more excited than him when we discuss travelling on Skype, best year of my life by a country mile

There isn't a single thing that excites me more tbh. Gotta have my 3 or 4 trips to random places every year, life wouldn't be worth living otherwise 

I'm deliberately staying single at the moment so I can keep doing it and not planning to change that any time soon 

Yeah, that's my excuse too.

Yeah, well I've done the marriage thing and I'm not in any rush to repeat it.

[mondatoo]

Ahhh Safari's my fav subject, fire away mate 

Do the prices vary much from country to country ? Thinking about it last night might do a month in three different places, something like: Kenya, Uganda and Ghana or something like that.

[mondatoo]

Interest rates are so meh - usually I'd obviously say get a cash Isa for first 11k - you an put just under a £1k a month in April - March and check best rates on money supermarket - will be loads of deals to get you in March

Personally, I max out 30k in premium bonds - great for poke players, bit of a sweat, I returned 5% last year although I think overall payout is about 2% - your money is really accessible in a few days but not instant so you can't tilt degen it and obv tax free.

My plan is to put in the $4k bonuses which will be every 3/4 months then bonuses from 100k/200k milestones as well as topping up as I go.

[Woodsey]

Ahhh Safari's my fav subject, fire away mate 

Do the prices vary much from country to country ? Thinking about it last night might do a month in three different places, something like: Kenya, Uganda and Ghana or something like that.

Yes vastly, not sure about those countries though. You seem to have picked the 3 countries I haven't been to, anywhere south of there and I can be of more help.    Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa etc

What sort of trip you planning? Solo? Prefer with a group? Depending on how adventurous you are you might be better going on a group trip, I can at least direct you to some useful sites if you let me know.

[mondatoo]

Ahhh Safari's my fav subject, fire away mate  

Do the prices vary much from country to country ? Thinking about it last night might do a month in three different places, something like: Kenya, Uganda and Ghana or something like that.

Yes vastly, not sure about those countries though. You seem to have picked the 3 countries I haven't been to, anywhere south of there and I can be of more help.    Zambia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa etc

What sort of trip you planning? Solo? Prefer with a group? Depending on how adventurous you are you might be better going on a group trip, I can at least direct you to some useful sites if you let me know.

Planning a solo trip and hope to meet loads of people along the way, as far as being adventurous; well I plan to do things outside of my comfort zone.

Thought this site looks good, this is basically the sort of thing I wanna do whilst in Africa...

http://www.originalvolunteers.co.uk/destinations/kenya.html?gclid=CNPJ0tmE-a0CFZIifAodOmeDug

Maybe teach them how to 24 table  

[Woodsey]

Ok I know bugger all about the countries you have mentioned, but hit me up if you do go to the ones further south. These are the sorts of sites I use to get ideas of what's possible and worth doing and the kind of time frames needed to travel them. They normally travel slightly faster than I prefer so add 30% to do it at a leisurely pace. You could even join a shorter trip in some places just to hook up with some travellers for a week or two.

http://www.exodus.co.uk/

http://www.dragoman.com/

http://www.intrepidtravel.com/

For safaris these guys are the nuts but are pretty expensive, but you can pinch ideas from them.

http://www.expertafrica.com/

Also get a copy of this magazine for ideas and reports of what others have done and for ideas.

http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/

You will need to research Africa pretty carefully as safety can be a bit hit and miss. Same with getting around, if you have to use local buses etc make sure you do your homework and don't just randomly go places. And silly things like where you can cross borders etc as the guide books can be out of date sometimes and you can get to a border and find it closed. There will be africa travel forums somewhere, I'd suggest looking at those, I get tons of info off other forums for other destinations I go and the info is normally bang up to date, guidebooks are usually at least a year out of date as soon as they are printed, they are good for general info about what to see and do, but less reliable for places to stay and how to get around and prices etc.

[Woodsey]

Just spotted that some of those go through Angola, a few guides I have met that have been there tell me its a really beautiful country.

[mondatoo]

Cheers Woodsey.

[mondatoo]

Games today : 230
Profit today : $635.86
Games total : 2346
Profit total : $7760.67

35's

Games today : 20
Profit today : $433.54

Current balance : $2441.08

January Summary

I'm pleased with how I've started the year and glad to be able to grind off my own roll, only negative is running bad in 35's but very standard. My volume has been ok, could definitely be better but since I had a bit of a longer break I'm pretty happy with the effort I've put in, although playing Sundays is a must and I haven't played one yet so that needs sorted. I've earned just over 14k vpps so slightly below pace for fading McD's for a week but nothing too desperate, yet. Bring on February.

[GreekStein]

Wii just caught up on a lot today.

Congrats on a great month. Run hottt on your own dime and keep up the volume! A lot of the monies you win between now and when you go travelling will go a lot further in some of the countries you'll go to than they do over here.

Pretty sure just about everyone I know knows what ROI is. It's a relatively standard term, no?

+1 to what Simon Galloway said - just snap say 'I'll tell you what I made this month if you tell me what you did'. If they call your bluff just say a figure around about the same as theirs. If they don't, np.

It's a lose lose situation otherwise imo. If you lose and tell people, they'll not think you can do it for a living. If you're winning a chunk, you're a showoff.

Also, you mentioned Bangkok for Thailand. I know a lot of poker players who live in Thailand now - a lot of great guys. Several have lived between Phuket and Bangkok and it's pretty much universal that Phuket is better. Woodsey..?

[Woodsey]

Also, you mentioned Bangkok for Thailand. I know a lot of poker players who live in Thailand now - a lot of great guys. Several have lived between Phuket and Bangkok and it's pretty much universal that Phuket is better. Woodsey..?

No right answer really, depends what you want from a place and if your a beach person or city person blah de blah, I'd choose Chiang Mai if it were me.