Melbourne / Aussie Millions Trip Report

After an overnight flight from Singapore, in which I didn't get any sleep despite traveling business class, I arrived in Melbourne, Australia at 7:30am feeling extremely tired.

I looked forward to getting out of the airport and to my hotel for some sleep before playing the first event of the 2011 Aussie Millions that evening. I had ran good with airports so far on my travels, with no flight delays and zipping through immigration at each stage. Some butch Aussie Sheila was about to change all that.

In almost all countries what happens at immigration is you hand over your passport, they stamp it, you collect your suitcase and you GTFO. Apparently what happens in Australia is you hand your passport over to butch Sheila and she looks at you and says "Are you alright? You look ill".

I told Sheila that "I just flew overnight from Singapore and didn't sleep.". She looked surprised "ohhhh, oh, you've been in Asia?". I said "Yes, I got off the flight that just landed from Singapore, along with everyone else in the queue." She shouts for assistance "Bruce, BRUCE, come over here, this guy has been in Asia!".....

Bruce takes me to one side and starts with the 10-15 minute interrogation:

Bruce: "Hmmm, so you were in Singapore? What were you doing there?"
Me: "Oh, tourist."
Bruce: "And where were you before that? I see a stamp from Malaysia."
Me: "Yeah, I was in Malaysia."
Bruce: "What were you doing in Malaysia?"
Me: "I'm a tourist"
Bruce: "What's this stamp, Liban?"
Me: "That's Lebanon"
Bruce: "Oh really, when were you in Lebnon?"
Me: "Before I went to Malaysia."
Bruce: "Why were you in Lebanon?"
Me: "I'm a tourist"

I was losing the will to live at that point. He starts asking me about why I'm planning to stay "as long as 15 days" in Australia, like 15 days is something out of the ordinary for a visit to the country. Given that the Aussie Open tennis was on for the length of my stay I told him that I will be watching the tennis and playing some poker at the Crown. He then asked me to show him my tickets for the Tennis, which I obviously didn't have because I was just going to buy them at the stadium, and he made a big fuss over that.

I couldn't understand what the hell was happening, and why they were putting me through this crap. Eventually the bastard let me go and I just wanted to grab my suitcase and GTFO. Oh no. I had to wait a full half hour for my suitcase to appear on the carousel, then as soon as I picked my suitcase up two guys in uniform were standing either side of me, telling me to go with them.

I then had to go through a massive interview and full search. The bastards took my suitcase apart in front of me and they examined, X-rayed every single thing, as well as test for traces of narcotics. They were even looking at the photos on my camera, trying to find out what I was up to. I had 8 different containers of vitamins and they tested all of those for drugs. The whole ordeal took 2 hours, then after they couldn't find anything dodgy about me whatsoever they let me into their stupid, overpriced, at the peak of an economic bubble that is about to burst, country!

I got to my hotel only a few hours before I had to play poker, so didn't get much of a rest. Here is a quick room tour of where I was staying at Skylounge Apartments:



So the first event I played at Aussie Millions was a NLHE Double Shootout on PokerPro electronic tables, which are a bit of a fail. The concept of electronic tables is a nice one but the touch screens were just so damn insensitive. I had to press on it a certain way and often multiple times to get it to do what I wanted. TILT. My table was very soft, except for a few recognisable pros, including Rupert Elder. I ran pretty good to get heads up with a 2:1 chiplead versus an old English guy who played 100% VPIP and 0% Fold to C Bet. He wasn't the ideal opponent to be card-dead against. Eventually the stacks were even and the blinds were shallow, he raised, I shoved with JJ, he called with AQ and hit an A on the turn FTW. GG. So close to a final table and a cash at my first attempt :(

I went back to the hotel for a long sleep then straight back to the casino to play the PLO event that I was very much looking forward to. Unfortunately it was full-ring playing 9 or 10-handed. I'm not too fond of playing full ring PLO, it playing much better short-handed. I was really card dead and missed every flop all the way through and couldn't make anything happen because so many players seen every flop that there was always someone holding the nuts. Eventually, when stacks were shallow I jammed for about 2/3 of my stack with a suited rundown over a raise and bunch of callers. The original raiser snap re-jammed, and obviously had an AAxx hand, but I was well committed obviously. I was something like 40-45% to win but couldn't make it happen unfortunately :-(

That day was my birthday, which sucked. Sucks being in a foreign country, where you don't know anyone and getting your ass kicked at poker on your birthday.

Another day, another tourney. My third tourney in three days was another NLHE Shootout event but this time on real tables. This one only lasted a few levels for me. I lost almost half my stack early after I raised with AK, got 3bet, and shoved. The guy called for 35-40bbs with pocket 9s and won the hand. And I lost the rest after that when I raised JJ, got 3bet, and shoved. The guy called with AQ and won. Story of my life, I get it with plenty of fold equity, being the aggressor, and someone calls looking for a coin-flip, gets their coin-flip and wins it. SIGH!

Since I busted so quickly the day was still early, in the late afternoon. I decided to cheer myself up a bit by taking a trip to Melbourne Zoo. I've been to tons of zoos around the world, it's a good way to get outside, do a bit of walking and see some cool creatures!



The next day I was feeling good and went to play the NLHE 6-Max event. I started off playing really great in this event and had quadrupled my stack up pretty early, to be the, or at least amongst the chipleaders. I was getting a lot of attention from Poker News and one of their bloggers was writing down hands I played and including them in the live updates.

My table was extremely soft and we were playing 5-handed because we had a dead stack blinding off at our table, strongly rumored to belong to Phil Ivey. I had a guy to my right called Dennis Huntley who used to be some big porn king in Australia. He made Australia's first porn movie and owned some adult shops. We were friendly and chatting a lot so it was a fun table to be at. I was having fun and constantly increasing my stack so I was having a ton of fun in this event.

Near the bubble I got into a huge pot that would have equaled a bit chip-lead or at the very least top 3 in chips. I had JT spades, was pre-flop aggressor in position and got flatted by BB and UTG, Flop was J98 with 2 hearts. It was checked to me, I bet, got check-raised, and jammed in my stack. He tanked a full 5 minutes at least, and decided he was going to call me with AJo, and he obviously held. I hate how he played AJ there, when he makes his call he's doing horrible against my range, but he was ahead and he won, so congrats to him and gg to me. Again I was the one to shove, with a ton of fold equity and actual equity in the pot, just to get called and lose the hand.

Looking for non-poker things to do, so as not to make my trip to Australia a totally miserable experience, I did a walking tour of Melbourne which was a great way to see the city:



So I was hoping my first success at Aussie Millions would be in the AUD $10,600 Main Event. I actually got really unlucky with the table draw with the few seats either side of me willed with young Scandinavian and American online pros. There was one complete fish at the table, who was reading a poker book, at the table, as he played the main event. WTF? Reading a book on how to play poker, while playing a 10K, seriously? I took a sneaky little photo:

Well I wasn't card dead in this tourney at all. I kept making very strong hands but they'd always be second best. I lost a big pot where i 3bet TT pre, flopped a set, turn and river completed flush and straight draws and guy leads into me and I have to fold. In the second level I only had 6000 from the 20,000 starting stack, but I easily could have went broke before that if I had played less conservatively.

On the very first hand of Level 3, where it was BB200 with 25 ante, a Scandie raised the button, his Scandie friend in the SB flatted, and I shoved from the BB with 66 for 30BBs. Scandie in the SB called with AQ and flopped the A.

G f'ing G.

I was really gutted. I now had 5 free days, that I had originally planned to go visit Sydney if I busted the main event on day 1. But since I was running bad, and hadn't been able to play much online so far in the year, I decided I would just stay and grind online from my hotel for 5 days. It didn't work out well for me, I had 4 sessions in a row where I ran miles bellow all-in ev and lost most of what I had in my account. I attempted to run my account back up playing $114 SNGs. I played in 25 of them and cashed in 2. 2 and 3 outers crushing me left, right and centre. G f'ing G to my bankroll.

I just tried to find more non-poker things to do to take my mind off the heart-breaking poker results.

A great experience was visiting Melbourne Aquarium that is near the Crown Casino. I loved the penguins!



And I had a full day out at the tennis. I got a premium seat ticket for Rod Laver area for a day that included the Women's Doubles Final and Murray vs Ferrer in the Men's Semi Finals of the 2011 Australian Open.



I celebrated 'Australia Day' at an outdoor concert at Federation Square. That was fun.



6 days after busting the Main Event at the Aussie Millions I was back to play the Bounty Feature Event. This event is NLHE and has one pro per table who is designated as a bounty. I had Team PokerStars Pro - Tony Hachem on my direct left who was our table's bounty. I've met, played and chatted with Tony before, live and online, so we got on well and had a good laugh, until I doubled up through him. I 5-bet shoved KK pre and he called with JJ and for once in my entire life I won a pot. Unfortunately he had me slightly covered so I didn't get the bounty, and then he was on my left with a crippled stack. I ended up min-raising and limping into most pots because he was so short stacked and the bounty was significant. It wasn't to be though, they broke our table table!!!!

The new table wasn't so kind to me. I turned 2 pair versus a flopped set and was lucky to only lose 2/3 of my stack. I ended up busting when I raised and got called, flopped 2 pair with A8 on A83 and got check-raised. I shoved it in and he snapped with AK, but I couldn't fade the K for the 60bb pot and my tournament life.

On my last day i played the Turbo NLHE event and got close to cashing before a battle of the blinds versus a Scandie, where we got it in pre and his JT owned my AQ with a T on the river. So 0 for 7 in cashes at Aussie Millions, not what I was hoping for.

I left Australia disappointed and headed off to Bali, Indonesia to relax for 4 days.

Singapore Trip Report

After taking the first class bus from Malaysia, the immigration point at Singapore took 5 minutes, nice and easy. No sooner had I passed through into Singapore than it started raining very heavily. It barely stopped raining the whole time I was in Singapore unfortunately :(

I checked into a cool little boutique hotel, kinda expensive and small, but otherwise excellent. I was unpacking my suitcase when I got a phone call from Team PokerStars Asia Pro and Asian Player of the Year - Bryan Huang, who invited me out. He was good enough to take me on a tour around Singapore with his beautiful wife Summer and his mother in law who had also just arrived in Singapore. It was a great way to see a lot of Singapore and learn about it's history and culture in a short period of time.

What I find interesting about Singapore is how many different and diverse cultures live there, and live side by side happily. A good example of this I saw was a huge Islamic mosque, that is right next to the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, Sri Mariamman Temple, where people go to pray that they don't get diseases or to be cured. We stopped there and had a look inside:



We then went for dinner with Bryan's mother, father and brother at Jumbo Seafood. Pretty much everything I ate there I had never tried before. When the chopsticks were handed out Bryan looked at me and laughed "don't worry, we'll get you a fork and spoon. I kept asking "what is this?", "what do I do?", "which parts do I eat?". Bryan's wife Summer was laughing and said I was like an alien who had just landed on earth hahaha.



So that was a great day, thank you very much to Bryan for his hospitality. Unfortunately for the next few days there were constant huge storms so I couldn't do anything outdoors at all. A lot of the stuff I had planned to do, like a walking tour, I just had to forget about. Struggling for indoor stuff to do I took a trip to the Singapore Art Museum.



On my last night in Singapore Bryan put me in touch with his friend Hansel who took me out to a club with his friends, which was awesome. Or at least I think it was awesome, because I have almost ZERO recollection of what happened that night.

I hadn't eaten much for 3 days, we got bottle service and I stared drinking Vodka straight. I remember that much. The rest of the night is a total blur. The next day I found a ton of photos on my phone, and just flicking through them laughing hahaha.

I've no idea how I even got back to my hotel or anything that night, or how I even knew which hotel I was staying at or street or anything. It was 3pm the next day before I was conscious, and I was supposed to have checked out at mid-day. So I ended up having to pay the hotel an extra $100 to check out late. Luckily my flight to Australia wasn't until night time.

And off I went, to Melbourne, Australia, to play the 2011 Aussie Millions poker festival.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Trip Report

I flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from Lebanon where I was doing a lot of sightseeing and playing a little bit of poker. The journey had a stop-over in Dubai, but we would continue the journey on the same airplane, so it was nice and easy. We were given a transit-pass to go into the departures lounge for a while, then back onto the plane.

Dubai airport was really nice and they provide free WiFi. I was wishing I'd did a few days stopover in Dubai but hadn't considered it until that moment.

When I got to Malaysia it was very early in the morning. The airport is a fair distance from the centre of city but there is an express train, so I took that option. It was very fast, clean and quiet, and even had free WiFi. You would think by 2011 this would be standard, but some countries you go to you can barely even get a decent internet connection in your hotel room, that you have to pay for, never mind free fast internet on a moving vehicle.

I got to my accommodation at the wonderful Traders Hotel around 7am. I thought that there was no chance of me being able to check-in that early but I was really nice to the cute girl at hotel reception and she said "well, maybe if you can wait 1 or 2 hours we can have a room ready for you." I told her that wasn't a problem and asked if there was somewhere for me to eat breakfast. She showed me to the lovely buffet that they have and I tipped her $5 US, which is a small amount of money but to someone living in Malaysia it's probably a big deal.

So I was enjoying their buffet. Their chefs that will make you stuff fresh including smoothies and yogurts with the fresh ingredients of your choosing. Really nice! I had only been eating for about 3 minutes when the girl from reception walked in and came to my table. She handed me a bunch of stuff and says "Here is your room key sir. Your room is ready and your luggage has also been taken up to your room for you." Epic win, I was able to get into my room, sleep and wake up by the time that I was officially supposed to be able to check in!

The Traders hotel was very nice and I've given you guys a little room tour in this video:



The first thing I did in Malaysia was look for somewhere to get my laptop fixed. I quickly learned about Low Yat Plaza, a massive technology mall over 7 floors, so took a trip down there.



After sorting out my laptop I tried out one of the restaurants on the ground floor. For the cheap price of $4 USD I got a pepper chicken steak with egg, rice, noodles, vegetables, soup and a can of coke. The meal was delicious. I almost felt guilty paying so little for it!

I was mega happy to have a working laptop again and being able to blog and play online poker. My first session of the year on PokerStars was a nice winning session at 2/4 PLO. Happy days.

My friend Bryan Huang noticed from my facebook status that I was in Kuala Lumpur, so he put me in touch with his friend Darren Yoon, another poker pro. I went with Darren to Zook which was a really nice high-end club. I was able to walk straight in with Darren past all the people waiting in line outside.

I had a lot of fun with Darren and his friends, and afterwards they took me to this little food stall where I had the best chicken and rice ever. I dunno if it was because I was super drunk and hungry, but it tasted out of this world. Omnomnomnom.

Thanks to Bryan for putting me in touch with Darren and thanks to Darren for being such a great host.

The next day I noticed the weirdest bruise on the back of my leg. It was just the weirdest shape and I can't even remember how it happened. Must certainly be a UDI (Unidentified Drinking Injury)!

Really weird huh? But nowhere near as weird as the bruises that ended up on my back after I went for a massage and returned with a back that looked like a pepperoni pizza.

What I got was some Asian massage technique called 'Cupping', where the woman put these vacuum suction cups on my back. Although my back looked a mess I left feeling great, and it only cost $12 USD for the 1 hour massage.

Other cool things I did while in Malaysia included a visit to the KL Bird Park which is like a zoo for big ass birds.



I had so much fun in Malaysia that I stayed there a day longer than I was supposed to. I had booked and paid for a flight to Singapore, but decided to write that off to spend the extra night in KL. My friend Darren recommended that I take the first class bus to Singapore, that only takes 5 hours and is very comfortable and cheap.

I was so glad that I chose this option over flying. The bus was very nice. Downstairs was a lounge with big screen TV and upstairs had 16 big reclining massage seats with video and games on demand, power point for laptop and hot meals brought by a stewardess. The view from the window was great, passing by lots of little villages and countryside. So much better than dealing with the hassle of an airport / flying.



The immigration point at Singapore took 5 minutes, nice and easy.

Check out my Singapore trip report.

Lebanon Trip Report

After celebrating the new year in Prague with my friend and brother, I headed off to Lebanon alone. For some reason I couldn't convince anyone to come to Beirut with me. I guess most foreigners knowledge of Lebanon only goes as far as knowing about fairly recent wars and would assume that it's a dangerous place to visit. In fact Lebanon has been totally safe for more than a couple of years is a beautiful country with a diverse culture and many great places for travellers to visit. It was one of the 'must-visit' countries on my travel itinerary.

I took a flight with a short stop-over in Budapest. Hopefully I will return to Hungary in the near future to see more than just it's airport.

I landed in Beirut at around 3:10am, about 10 minutes late. The taxi that I had arranged through my hotel was waiting for me and the driver made it clear that he was not happy that I was late. I tried to tell him that 10 minutes is standard variance for a long flight but he just huffed and puffed. When we got to the hotel I said "it's 25 American dollars, right?" He replied by saying "yes, but you were late, I had to wait for you!". I told him "No worries, I will give you a tip, here is $30, is that good?". He snapped at me "It is ok, but it's not good."

I tried to pay him but he wouldn't take the $20 note because there was a slight crease down the middle, which is completely standard. He made a real fuss over examining all the 20's I had and choosing the most unspoiled one. By this time it was approaching 4am and I was NOT AMUSED!!!!

So this was the first Lebanese person I met, great first impression to give to someone visiting his country, what a true hero he is. One of the worst things about visiting any country is dealing with taxi drivers. Guaranteed to be unfriendly and to try every trick in the book to scam you.

I went to sleep as soon as I checked into my hotel and woke up at mid-day. I just got ready, picked up a map that was in my room and headed out into downtown Beirut, not knowing where I was going or anything. Just strolling around the city. That probably isn't the most advisable thing to do when you are in a city for the first time to be honest.

A lot of the buildings downtown are really decrepit and there's even buildings covered with bullet holes from the previous fighting. However I stumbled upon a really nice campus that belongs to the American University of Beirut. I was able to walk straight past the security guards at the gate by walking beside a group of students returning to the campus. I would make a good James Bond! :)

The campus was a really nice contrast from the run down city outside. Very beautiful with some very nice buildings, areas to chill, cats running around everywhere, big sports field and right on the sea front. I took a walk around and ate some nice food in one of the restaurants. People were staring at me as I ate. Yes, I stuck out like a sore thumb hahaha, oh well.



After leaving the campus and taking a walk along the sea front I happened upon Hard Rock Cafe, which is my favourite restaurant chain. I wasn't even looking for it. It was like IT found ME. Even though I had already ate I couldn't resist and went in to stuff my face with those delicious fajitas. Omnomnomnom.

After leaving Hard Rock it was absolutely lashing down with rain. I tried to cut back through the university campus to get back to my hotel but this time the security guards wouldn't let me pass. I tried to find alternative way around and that proved to be impossible. The traffic on the roads wasn't moving at all, but I still looked for a taxi. When I found one, he wanted to charge me $15 USD for a ride that should be $2-3 USD. I never let myself get taken advantage off so I started walking in the rain.

I then saw 2 students come out of the university and asked them to help me. They tried to sneak me in but we got stopped by the guards. Then they said that we were just going to the gym which was right next to the entrance so we got in, pretended that we were going to the gym and then I was able to freely walk back through the campus and out to my hotel. Easy game!

That night I went out in the city and had a few drinks and some delicious Lebanese food, but got an early night to prepare for some epic adventures next day.

I booked a tour as part of a small group with a guide. First thing in the morning we drove out of the city into a village and stopped at a cafe to try some local made cheese which was excellent, and then onto the town of Anjar where there are some ruins from the 8th century.



We then headed off to Baalbek where there are ruins of temples that are much, much grander and better re-constructed. It is a truly awesome place to see with your own eyes, at times jaw-dropping. For such an amazing place there were not too many tourists walking around and being noisy like you would see at ruins in Greece for example.



We spent a lot of time in Baalbek. The weather was great, clear sky, no wind, about 16C, so I was walking around with a T-shirt on. The tour guide was wearing a big jacket and kept asking me if I was cold. She said "I feel cold just looking at you!". Only 2 days ago I was in Eastern Europe dealing with extremely sub-zero temperatures, the weather in Lebanon certainly felt like T-shirt weather to me.

We were then taken to a 5-star restaurant and given a huge table full of Lebanese food to share between us. It was glorious, all sorts of delicious meats, pastries and dips, most of the food being very healthy too.

After our bellies were full of lovely Lebanese food we went to visit Chateau Ksara, which is a wine company with its base on top of some old caves that were found in the 1800's. The caves are used to store the wine. So we got a tour around the caves (I took some video but it was worse than useless given how dark it was down there).



We were then taken for some wine-tasting.

I tried about 6 different wines, all delicious. I think when you taste wine that you are supposed to swill it around in the glass, sniff it, sip it and spit it into the sink thing. What a waste of good alcohol, I just gulped it down! :-)

Of course, straight after the tasting they led us into their shop to try to sell us some of their wine. I think everyone bought bottles except me. The wine was nice but I hate anyone encouraging me to buy stuff in that manor so I didn't buy any.

All in all a great tour, lasting the whole day, from dawn til dusk. You'd think I'd be tired after all that? Hell no! I took a trip to Jounieh to visit the Casino Du Liban where they spread the unlimited texas hold thems. It's quite a taxi-ride from downtown Beirut to Jounieh, about 45 minutes. By the time I got there it was after 9pm and I had get up early the next day to fly to Malaysia, so I wasn't impressed at all when I had to register to get in the casino and the whole process took more than half an hour.

The casino was really grand and nice, like something you'd see in a James Bond movie. Everyone was dressed in very smart shirts and suits, then there was me - dressed in a hoodie and jeans that haven't been washed since I started travelling a couple of weeks ago.

There were only 4 tables of poker running, (this was a Friday night) - 3 tables of 2-5NL and 1 table of 10-25NL. Everything in the casino is played in US Dollars. I had to wait forever to get a seat. I was railing the games and every seat at every table was filled by an Arab guy, no westernerns at all in the games, with everyone playing LOOOOOOOL bad! The 10-25NL game looked even softer than the 2-5NL tables, but I didn't have enough hard cash on me to play it without buying in short. All the games were being played very deep - the buyin restrictions are min 50BBs and max 300BBs.

A seat finally opened up at 2-5 and I was rewarded for my patience with QQ on my first hand dealt. Of course some guys doubled me up with ace high, ty ty. The game was wild, someone was getting felted every single hand, and they'd just rebuy another 200BBs like it was nothing. An old Arab gentleman at the table busted and rebought 3 times in 3 hands. It was simply ridiculous, a standard hand would be, 2/5 Blinds, one guy open raises to 30 preflop, another guy pops it up to 100, various donking around until they eventually show down with J9 and A6.

I didn't play a single hand for 25 minutes, just waiting for a good hand like a nit, when I picked up AQ and made a nut straight versus a lower straight to stack a guy for about his 5th time this orbit. And that was that, basically played 2 hands, and won the maximum. I couldn't stay any longer because I wanted to get some sleep ahead of a long flight the next day. But just that one hour in the casino more than paid for my whole trip to Lebanon, flight / hotel + everything else. Easy game.

Next stop on my travels - Malaysia!

Prague, Czech Republic - Trip Report

I didn't know much about Prague, or the country of Czech Republic, but travelled there on the advice of my friend Eric who thought it would be an awesome place to celebrate the new year.

I arrived on 30th of December with my brother Dean, staying at the Hilton in the old town. I'm guessing that the hotel staff are big fans of mine because not only did they check us in 4 hours early, but they upgraded us to an executive room as well, nice! Here's a quick tour of the hotel room:



Arriving in town so early in the morning gave us a whole day to mess about in the snow and check out the city. Since it was -18c, the messing around in the snow part didn't last too long! After getting over the shock of the blisteringly cold weather, the first thing that hit me was how old and well preserved everything was. Beautiful buildings dating back centuries have been well maintained and preserved, and look amazing. How they all survived the US bombings during the second world war intact I have no idea.

I noticed how there were an abnormally large number of casinos everywhere that I went. Walking the length of one long main street I noticed at least 10 casinos. I guess the Czechs love to gamble, or maybe they are there for the tourists of which there are plenty. Even at the coldest time of year scores of tourists from all over Europe come to visit Prague during the new year period.

We spend a lot of time just looking around this amazing city, diving back to our warm hotel room every so often to thaw out. At night we visited the old town square where there was a large market, perfect for a bit of roasted pig and hot wine, yum!



The city is very lively in the evening, with many restaurants and bars lining every street. Nothing is done on a grand scale, almost every restaurant and bar is small and cosy, but there's plenty of them. When going out to drink we would often have 1 or 2 drinks in one bar then move onto another, which was a great idea and we didn't even feel the cold after we got a few drinks in us.

However, what is a beautiful and pleasant city during the day and early evening time does become a lot more shady at night. After about 9pm all the main streets in the old town are lined with African guys trying to get tourists into the many lap-dancing clubs that exist and also selling drugs on the side. Being offered drugs everywhere you go doesn't make you feel like you're in a safe city.

As we left our hotel on the first night to go drinking there was a guy just standing against a wall. As we walked passed him he approached us and asked us if we wanted some weed, which we declined and were then offered “some Charlie then?” (slang for Cocaine), because sure, if we weren't into smoking weed we'd sure as hell be into coke right?

After brushing that guy off, we walked another 25 meters and were approached by another guy and were this time offered free entry into a strip-club, and then when we declined we were offered drugs. Another 25 meters walking and a third guy with the same offer.

This became a theme of the trip. It was impossible to walk down a busy street at night without being hassled many times to go to a tittie bar or buy drugs. It kind of reminds me of my travels to Egypt when in the tourist areas the local shopkeepers are like flies around shit hassling you to come into their shop. At first you are polite and just say “no thanks” and keep walking, then the more you walk and the more you are hassled, sometimes aggressively, you just end up point blank ignoring these bastards, which just annoys them and they shout or make rude remarks. In my opinion, if you are going to make a career out of standing on the street hassling people then be prepared to get ignored, a lot!

One late evening my brother had to use an ATM machine and 2 of these sketchy guys were in-front of us using the machine. One turns around and offers us drugs, “no thanks”, then a strip-club pass, “no thanks”, then a prostitute, “no thanks”, then asks if there's anything else we might need? I reckon if I needed anything shady at all this guy could probably get it for me, including a gun. His friend was talking ages using the ATM so I kept talking to him. I asked him where he was from and he said Nigeria, he came over to Prague to work. When I asked if he meant “to hustle” rather than “to work” he took great offence for some reason and turned round to help his friend use the ATM machine. Then I figured out what they were doing, they had a German bank card and were trying different PIN numbers at the machines. Clearly they had watched some unfortunate tourist enter his pin number earlier and then arranged for him to be pick-pocketed or robbed.

I've no idea why the police don't just arrest all these guys and deport them. When they are dealing drugs so openly they should be very easy to catch. It feels very much like organised crime is behind it, with bribes being given to the police, how else could such criminal activity occur so blatantly?

On our first night we ended up visiting KARLOVY LÁZNE which is the largest nightclub in Europe. It has 5 floors with different styles of music. The venue and music was solid but unfortunately it was a complete sausage-fest inside, and for that reason I rate it as a 1 star club [*---].



The next afternoon, on new years eve, we spent the afternoon doing a panoramic tour of Prague using Segways. This turned out to be a great idea. The Segways are really easy to ride. Neither myself or Dean fell off once, which is more than can be said for the French girl that was part of our tour group, who skidded on some ice and hilariously fell arse-over-tits on the ground. I was right behind her when it happened, her boyfriend and the tour guide looked shocked and worried, my brother just laughed, and I just stood there and said dead pan “In Soviet Russia, Segway rides YOU”. We got to see about 9 hours worth or walking around in about 3 hours worth of Segway riding, so it was well worthwhile.



That night my buddy Eric from Miami flew into town and we had a few drinks in the hotel, before heading out to celebrate new years eve. We hadn't planned what we were doing yet, so I suggested we start of with some cocktails and a meal at my favourite restaurant chain, Hard Rock Cafe - love those fajitas! We then drank in some bars until it was close to midnight, before drinking in the streets and enjoying the awesome fireworks. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!



On our way back to the hotel, two prostitutes approached myself, my brother and my friend. They got very close to us like leaches and just kept saying “sex, sex”. I walked away pretty fast but Dean and Eric stood talking to them. I waited a minute for them but they wouldn't move and I was bursting for the toilet so I walked the final 100 meters to the hotel on my own. My brother didn't get back to the hotel for another half hour at which point he told me that one of the whores had stolen his wallet, they had gone looking for her and ended up fighting with some German guys. Sigh.

Unfortunately, lying in bed on new years day, my video card on my DELL XPS laptop died, which was a huge, huge beat. It's impossible to replace without getting a direct replacement from DELL shipped for something scandalous like $600, and since I'm travelling it's pretty tough to get something shipped to me anyway. I did go looking for replacement laptops that day, and went to the biggest IT store in the Czech republic. My only requirements for a laptop is that it has a 17" screen and 1920x1200 resolution, but they only 2 laptops with that spec, and the cheapest was $2500 and came with a Czech keyboard and OS. So I did not buy.

How do I get over a beat like that? A trip to Hooters of course :-) Delicious food and hot waitresses, a perfect combination. My buddy Eric was having the time of his life.

With no chance to play online poker, I decided to spend a night playing live poker. I went to the Banco casino. After registering at the front desk with the rudest little girl ever to work in a customer facing job, I headed upstairs and played in the only game that they had running, 25/50 crowns NLHE. The "poker room" was hilarious, everyone looked like they were a regular there, they all chatted with the dealers, played online poker on laptops while at the table, eating their dinner at the table etc. Including one massive guy who sat and ate a whole massive pizza like it was a snack.

The first hand I played I picked up JJ. One of the regs raised UTG, the whole table called, and I 3-bet in late position. Initial raiser called, I flopped top set on the flop, all the monies went in, and I hold against whatever hand he had. Why can't poker be this easy all the time? The guy I doubled up through was the same glutton that was omnomnoming the pizza at the table, and just looked like he spends his whole life sitting in the casino making a modest living playing marginally better poker than the other guys who frequent the joint.

Across the table was some guy 10-tabling MTTs on PokerStars on his laptop while he played about 2 hands per hour live. This guy was such a noob that he didn't even have his tables resized or anything, they were just all over the place, so tilting!



I ended up getting stacked later on and decided to call it a night. I got stacked by someone who worked there, who took off his tie, sat down to my left, started playing and within about 5 minutes stacked me in a cooler hand. So I wasn't exactly thrilled about that. I didn't see anything physically to suggest that I was set up, but having a dealer there that is dealing to his friend/colleague..... it just puts that suspicion in my mind. So I didn't reload, I just left. Better safe than sorry.

It wasn't exactly a warm and welcoming place for a foreigner to go play anyway, even though the game was definitely soft. I surely could have picked a better casino to play poker in. Oh well.

I left Prague on January 4th in search of some warmer weather, and took a flight to Beirut. Be sure to check out the upcoming trip report.