Ahhh, Travel

A long travel saga about Democratic Republic of Congo.

Short form: Belgian couple sells everything, takes two years off, travels through much of the world from West Africa to Mongolia.

As for DRC, well, I think the beginning of the saga says it best: "The Michelin is a pretty good map but it has a few known flaws. One of the biggest flaws is probably the "Route National 1" in DRC.. as we are soon to find out..."

Long, worth a read, and quite a tale of adventure. Not my cuppa, granted.

As an example, when they were told they were under arrest:

"It is rather disturbing that I can say that I know what to do in such a situation. First thing to do is to remain calm and - politely - deny that you are under arrest. This may sound strange, but it is a simple test and always worked for me."

Also:

"2) Coca-cola company: If there is ony thing you can find anywhere in the world it is Coca-Cola. They should know how to get their goods in the country. We had no response on mails, so we called them up. Their answer was pretty short: They do not have a distribution network outside the major cities in Congo 8O And it proved to be true, Congo is the first country we have visited were Coca-cola is hard to get once you leave the major cities."

And:

"Sitwrap:

-Our car was sitting on ferry - a ferry we hoped would not sink now
-The ferry was not running
-The ferry did not have batteries
-By attempting to start the ferry, our batteries were now flat
-Our car was not running
-We could not push our car off the ferry as the ramps were damaged.

If we wanted to charge our batteries, we needed a running engine and a functional alternator.

We had to push start our Landcruiser, and we had to do it on the few meters of space we had on the ferry."

If you don't read the whole thing, the wrapup post has some great things to ponder.

DHS Shutting Down Rap Blog Sites

Hat tip to pds_lit:

"[T]hese rap blogs weren’t selling any music. They weren’t selling DVDs. In fact, the only thing you could accuse them of selling was ads -- hardly big income, definitely not enough to turn a profit. They aren’t even close to the biggest music downloading sites out there [and it was clarified they didn't host content in the article]. So why were they targeted?

The DHS seems to be tiptoeing in the music pool, testing its boundaries and seeing what it can get away with."