Category: Travel

Learning to Walk Across the Street in Vietnam

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date September 17, 2015
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The traffic on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City was one of the most fascinating things I saw during my recent trip to Vietnam. I took more pictures and video of the traffic that I did of anything else. The first thing that you notice is the number of motorcycles and scooters. They are everywhere. They weaved in and out of traffic and around the van we rode in. We were told that the middle class had about a seven year period of growth in this part of the country and that the bicycles had been replaced by scooters. We were also told that the taxes on cars were extremely high, effectively tripling the cost of a car. This was intentional on the part of the government to try and discourage people from buying cars. The streets could not accommodate more cars. They were putting in subway systems to try to help.

Travel

Motel Hell in Huntsville

“I’m sure the Huntsville has many fine hotels. This is not one of them…”

In June of 2011, I took a trip to Huntsville, Alabama. There were several odd things about the hotel and the neighborhood where we stayed that I recorded in a series of posts on Facebook. The quote above is the first post that made on this trip. There were several reasons for this.

We had a hard time booking a hotel room for this trip. There was some sort of soccer tournament going on in Huntsville that week that had all of the nice hotels booked. We were going to be in Huntsville for two nights and couldn’t find a place with available rooms for both nights other that one hotel that I was not that excited about. I showed pictures of this hotel to the guy that I was travelling with. He said he had good experience with this hotel chain in other cities and thought we would be ok. We weren’t.

Mexico Travel

The Pyramids of Mexico

In October of 2003, I was traveling in Mexico on business. Any other time that I had been to Mexico on business, I had traveled to a U.S. border town and crossed over for the day. For this trip, we were supposed to travel into Mexico City. I was traveling with two other Americans. One was on the flight with me. We were supposed to me the other man at the airport in Mexico City. He worked for the company we were visiting. He was going to meet us in the airport but we were unable to locate him. The plan was for us to meet him and take a 2 hour bus ride to Santiago de Queretaro, a city that is northwest of Mexico City. We waited for a while but finally decided to go on to the bus station in the airport. But we didn’t know our way around the airport. I don’t read Spanish but the guy that I traveled with did. It didn’t matter. We couldn’t find the bus station. We were walking by a cab stand in the airport and I guess we looked a little too lost. A man asked if he could help and we asked for directions to the bus station. He asked where we wanted to go. We knew better than to go with him but was very insistent that we go with him. He promised he could take us wherever we wanted to go. We were able to get away from him and we finally found the bus station. We hadn’t found our third traveling companion but we decided to proceed on to our destination.

Muscle Shoals Travel

Muscle Shoals Trip – Part 3

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date April 13, 2014
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After eating, I had considered just going home but I knew that the Alabama Music Hall of Fame was just right up the road. I decided to stop off to at least see how much it was to get in and look around the lobby. There was a very nice older woman in the lobby who told me the price was $8. She was also relatively vague about how long it would take me to get through it. I decided that it would be worth the time and money.

Muscle Shoals Travel

Muscle Shoals Trip – Part 2

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date April 11, 2014
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After I completed my tour of the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, my next stop would be at the FAME Studios. FAME is the place that started it all for the music scene in Muscle Shoals. It was started by a man named Rick Hall. He is still active in the day to day operations of FAME. Any of the other studios that had success in Muscle Shoals were, in one way or another, spin-offs from his studio. Aretha Franklin recorded her first successful album there. Wilson Pickett also had several hits that were recorded in this studio. The Osmonds, Mac Davis and Jerry Reed are among the names of famous people that recorded at this studio.

Muscle Shoals Travel

Muscle Shoals Trip – Part 1

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date April 8, 2014
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About 3 years ago when I was traveling to Huntsville, Alabama, I went through Muscle Shoals. If I had ever been through there before, I hadn’t noticed it. I remember hearing about Muscle Shoals and the “Muscle Shoals sound” as it related to some of the music I heard when I was growing up. But I couldn’t tell you what that sound was, who made it, or what made it so special. When I got to Huntsville, I did a little research and found out that many of the songs I listened to when I was growing up were recorded in the this little town on the Tennessee River. I had a chance to drive back through and drove by the original building that housed the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio on the Jackson Highway. I knew from my research that they weren’t doing tours. It also looked like the place was practically abandoned. From the research that I did at the time, it seemed like this building was in a constant state of limbo as far as who owned it and what was being done with it. At the time, there was a website that had a lot of information about the recordings that were done at this studio. As of this writing, that website is no longer active. It’s also hard to find a good source of information about the history of this facility on-line. I follow a page for the facility on Facebook. Late last week, they posted information that said the building would be open on Friday and Saturday. I thought this would be a unique opportunity to visit a bit of music history. I was also going to be available to go on Saturday. In my research, I also learned about another historic studio in Muscle Shoals called FAME. Many major artists recorded there as well. I later found out the FAME was the studio that started it all in Muscle Shoals. I also found out that they were going to be doing tours on Friday and Saturday. This would give me even more reason for my trip. This will be the first in a series of posts about my trip to Muscle Shoals and it will focus on the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

Travel

Riding the Train in Denmark

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date March 21, 2014
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The first train trip I ever took was in Denmark. I flew into Copenhagen and took the train to Odense which is about 2 hours away. I had never been to Denmark before and was on a business trip with a friend. She was travelling there from business in Germany and I was coming directly from the United States. She had visited this business in Denmark before. At the train station, we purchased our tickets and went to wait for the train. I looked at the ticket and we had an assigned seat and car. My friend told me not to worry about that because these trains were never full and it didn’t matter where we sat. When the train arrived, we go on the car closest to us, found seats across from each other and started catching up with each other. We didn’t work in the same facility and hadn’t seen each other in a while so we had a lot to talk about. Someone came by and checked our tickets and nothing was said about where we were sitting so everything was ok.

Restaurants Travel

Dessert in Singapore

I have written about my trip to China before. I have talked about Chinese tea and being chased by monkeys. I haven’t mentioned that this two week trip also included a visit to Singapore. When they told me about a visit to Singapore, I didn’t have a good feel for where that was in relationship to Hong Kong or any of the places we were visiting in China. In my mind I had it lumped in with China. As the trip grew closer, began to study the geography of Southeast Asia more closely.

When you find Singapore on the map, looks like it should be a part of Malaysia. Singapore is both a city and a state on the tip of a peninsula that includes part of Malaysia and Thailand. Cambodia and Vietnam are also very close. It is about a 4 hour flight from Hong Kong.

Travel Vacation

Vacation Music

When I was a kid, my family would take vacations to Panama City Beach. I think it was right before the second trip that our family bought a new station wagon. This vehicle featured an 8-track tape player, something that our family never had before in the house or in a car. For what I would imagine was at least a ten hour trip, our family had 3 tapes. Each tape lasted about 45 minutes at best. One was from a local gospel group called The Jones Family that we knew personally. There was also a recent hits compilation like the K-Tel releases. This particular tape was a K-Tel type knock-off, poorly put together and probably no royalties going to the artists or original record companies. It included two songs I specifically remember that were big hits at the time, Maria Muldaur’s “Midnight at the Oasis” and Ray Stevens’ “The Streak”. This 8-track was a loaner from some of our neighbors. The third tape that we had was another loaner called “Jerry Lee Lewis Sings Country Music Hall of Fame Hits Volume 2”.

Travel

Peoria

Post author By elvisgumby
Post date July 5, 2013
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I was on my first trip to Peoria. I woke up and was getting ready to leave to come back home. I was in the process of getting cleaned up and ready to leave the hotel. At one point, I have used the toilet and it overflowed. Not a big mess, but there was lots of water in the floor. I used towels to contain the water to the bathroom and mop up the water. I thought I did a pretty good job of cleaning the place up and continued to get ready. While I was shaving, the phone rang. I answered and it was the front desk. The lady said, “Mr. Wheeler, are you having problems with water in your room?” I said yes but I thought that I had contained it. She said, “Well, the water is leaking through to the room below and the electrical room is right below yours.” I assured her that I had gotten the water up and that it wasn’t still running. This seemed to be enough to ease her concerns and she let me go. I went back to finish shaving and getting ready. A couple of minutes later, the phone rang again. It was the front desk again. The lady said, “Mr. Wheeler, I’m going to come up there and check on the room.” I said, “Look, I am naked. Give me 5 minutes and I’ll be dressed and out of here.” They let me clear out of the room before they came in. I never heard anymore from the hotel. And I never stayed there again.