‘Huntin’ bucks and drivin’ trucks’ - So Long, Uncle Sam

American lad: "I like the way you roll your r's"
Scottish lassie: "Why thank you, it must be my high heels"

(As told by an elderly American gentleman)

A deep red sun set behind the skyscrapers of downtown Philadelphia as the good ship M/V Rickmers Singapore sailed past, heading down the Delaware River and out to sea. We were leaving the US.


I stood out on deck and thought back to the last few months during which we’ve travelled across this huge country, from the coast of California to the docks of Philadelphia.

It’s taken us over 5,500 miles, through seventeen different states, from the Tex-Mex border to New England, from the Deep South to the Midwest.

When we first arrived I was slightly apprehensive, recalling the disappointments of my previous visit in 2001. In particular I remembered the dominance of the corporates, the chains who seem to have taken over many a place, steamrollering over the local features and quirks which give a town or region it’s own identity, the differences which that add up to make it unique, distinct and of particular interest to the visitor.

Riding the Greyhound along the interstate it was easy to think that the whole nation had succumbed to this, the view dominated by an endless procession of chain motels and identikit burger chains. It could have been anywhere, Maine, Missouri or New Mexico. Same, same, same.

Yet off the highway it was a very different story. For there is not one America, of course, there are many, and exploring the variety on offer, discovering these different worlds with their own distinct identities has been a great pleasure, full of adventure and surprises.

We have wondered at amazing landscapes, from the saguaro-studded deserts of Arizona to the frozen lakes of Minnesota, from the mountains of Tennessee to the swamps of Louisiana.

We’ve walked in pristine national parks bursting with biodiversity; we’ve seen wild turkeys, eagles and beavers; and visited both the start and the end of the Mississippi, one of the great rivers of the world.

We’ve been wowed by the cities, from the French quarter of New Orleans to the East Village of New York, the fine skyscrapers of Chicago to the history streets of Boston. We’ve watched Ibsen in Minneapolis and viewed Monet in Chicago; we’ve hung with hipsters in Austin and hobos in Nashville.

We’ve partied at Mardi Gras and slept in Liz Taylor’s old Hollywood home; we’ve drunk moonshine with rednecks and basked in homemade hot tubs under the stars.

We’ve ridden the Greyhound and the lonesome railroad; we’ve sped in a Porsche down in Texas, and paddled a canoe in North Carolina.

We’re taken a musical odyssey and found great sounds galore, from street jazz in New Orleans to blues in Chicago. There was zydeco in Jackson and country in Nashville, rock ‘n’ roll in Memphis and mountain music in the Smokies. We found polka in Minneapolis and Motown in Detroit; visited Elvis’s Graceland home and found Johnny Cash‘s last resting place.

We’ve tried burgers and fries, hash browns and links; kolaches, knish and Vietnamese pho; beignets and gumbo, po-boys and crawfish; collard greens and cornbread, black-eyed peas and BBQ ribs.

And there were ramps and catfish, walleye and wild rice; clam chowder, lobster bisque and buffalo wings; Philly cheese steaks, doughnut holes and pretzels; food from a dumpster and acres of pizza.

We’ve washed it down with a wide range of beers, many local, all delicious. We supped Dogfish in Boston, Dead Guy in LA, Honkers in Chicago, Summit in Minnesota, Lone Star in Texas; Abita in Louisiana; Yazoo in Nashville, Yards in Philadelphia...

We’ve lived through a thousand films, the quintessentially American: paper bags for your ’groceries’; steam escaping from vents in city streets; stoops and fire escapes on brownstone buildings; bow-tied academics on Harvard campus; white picket fences and red hip roof barn; state troopers and police cruisers; huge firetrucks and burly heroes; yellow traffic lights hanging on wires; ‘city limits’ signs on the edge of town; neat clapboard houses with a basketball hoop in the front yard; workshirts with name badges on; people with the ‘Jr’ suffix; retro-style diners…

But it was the people of course, which stick in the memory. There’s been the good, the bad and the quite clearly mad.

Thanks to our common language, our shared history and perhaps most of all the wonders of couch surfing, we have been able to get closer to Americans than people in other countries and nearer to finding out what makes this huge country tick.

We’ve stayed with nurses and hipsters, Spanish surgeons and Argentinean biochemists, musicians and teachers, students and stock market traders.

They’ve put us up everywhere, from bordello-themed rooms down in New Orleans to log cabins high in the mountains; from terraced houses out in the suburbs to crash pads in the middle of downtown. We’ve slept on couches and mattresses, floors and even a massage table.

We’ve made friends with strangers who’ve welcomed us to their town, memorable characters such as Wers-leh ‘White Lightnin’ the blues guitarist’, ‘Durl’ the bus driver MC and ‘Mow-reece’ the tram driver, who just digged my boots.

They’ve come from all backgrounds: rich and poor, vegan and carnivore, Democrat and Republican (‘you‘re liberal?! Get outta my house!’). There’s been hippies and hawks, rednecks and poets, veterans and protestors, gay, straight, black, white and all shades in between.

We’ve met Mexican labourers and Chinese chefs, Baptist preachers and Vietnamese microbiologists, tatooed ex-cons and Senegalese cabbies, Native American croupiers and Cajun waiters, drugstore cowboys and Puerto Rican plumbers, whooping frat boys and rednecks in Dodge Rams, ‘huntin’ bucks and drivin’ trucks’, flying the Southern Cross.

Given this range of backgrounds it should be hard to define what being an American is - you could ask them and they’d never be short of an answer. Perhaps therein lies the actual answer, for we found that Americans always have questions and are never too shy to express their own opinions.

There’s little English reticence here, and perhaps a greater certainty in their beliefs. Opinions are often more polarised and on controversial issues it seems never the twain shall meet: abortion, same-sex marriage, the right to bear arms...

I found the latter particularly difficult to understand: on several occasions I was shocked to discover the nice, sane person we were travelling or staying with was packing a piece. ‘Because I need to protect myself,’ I was told. From what? Other people with guns?

I just bit my tongue. Coming from a mild, rather phlegmatic country I find it hard to comprehend such a mentality. There are some issues I guess where we will have to agree to disagree.

There were benefits to being English here though and after several months of enjoying American’s most generous hospitality I can no longer argue that the ‘special relationship’ is purely one-way. We have often been quite overwhelmed by people’s kindness where people would go out of their way to help or to offer advice to someone from ‘the old country‘.

Many a time a local would prick up their ears upon hearing our English accents and soon the questions would start flowing, from the usual about the royals, the weather and the Beckhams, to those about the UK economy, their favourite British bands and how I sounded like Hugh Grant.

I learnt a great deal from these little encounters, and gained a real insight into people’s everyday lives, the lives that make up America. They seemed to enjoy this too, such as the fellow in a Mississippi sub shop who insisted on stumping me my meal in exchange for a natter.

And here I would sway between loving and loathing, buzzing on the good points but perplexed by the bad.

There’s still things there I find hard to understand: an obsession with the big and the energy-intensive; the gross disparities between rich and poor; a blind obedience to the flag and an unquestioning reverence for ‘patriots’; a poor public transport infrastructure (in some places non-existent); rampant obesity and the fast food culture...

But one thing stood out here above all else here: religion. It seems that in America the zealots shout louder. I lost count of the number of signs I saw warning that we were ‘all going to hell’ or the amount of insane rants I heard on the radio.

There’s a sizeable portion in this country who subscribe to this, and are not afraid to show themselves. We came across them throughout the land.

Back in New Orleans they stood out in Bourbon Street, amidst the maelstrom of drunks and debauchery with their hellfire grimaces and their placards of sinners: ‘sports nuts’, ‘pencil neck weak kneed gutless men’, ‘rebellious women’, ‘witches’, ‘pot smoking little devils’ and, bizarrely ‘used car dealers’. Come on now, you can’t condemn Frank Butcher…

It all left me aghast and disturbed. How did this happen? ‘Well what did we expect?’ one American said to me, ‘after all you sent over all the puritans‘.

He had a point, and I guess for every Thomas Paine and William Penn there must have been a boatload of religious nutters seeking a new land where they could express their free opinion (or empty their guns into armadillos).

Back then it was a land of opportunity and today it still struck me as such - a land where, if you go for it, you really can ‘make it’. The ‘American dream’ lives on, and millions still come here in search of a better life.

It’s a ‘can-do’ culture where people work hard and seem less likely to say ‘no’. It never took us much effort to enter a new place and find someone who could fix our laptop or give us a ride to another town.

Standards of living seem generally higher and for many life is comfortable. Or should I say was, until the economic bubble burst.
Perhaps they grew too comfortable and complacent as the world’s top dog; certainly many are now learning the hard way that economic fortunes can go down as well as up.

Can they turn this around? Of course they can, and they’ve got a nice fresh young chap at the top who they hope can do just this. Returning to the US, just after Obama took power we felt a
palpable wave of relief amongst the people we met.

‘Hope‘. It's a good slogan for the US.

I hope to return myself one day. Keep the cheesesteaks warm.







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It takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry

We left our sunny, idyllic retreat in the North Carolina mountains and headed north, destination Chicago. Back to the real world. People, traffic, roads...and the dreaded Greyhound bus.


I braced myself as we entered Knoxville's Greyhound terminal, knowing what to expect. The waiting room presented a depressingly predictable picture: grim-faced broken people looking forlornly into their future through a miasma of poverty, anger, body odour and rubbery takeaways.

They were the same sad characters of previous encounters: the heavily tattooed thug, just out of chokey; the struggling young mother, cursing at her unruly child; the lost, lonely Mexican, hunched up beneath his cream plastic cowboy hat; the red-eyed hobo, two weeks shy of a bathtub; the sullen scrawny redneck, desperately drawing on his last Marlboro...

Over at the counter the same miserable, monosyllabic staff moved slowly behind the counter, scowling at this pitiful ragtag of humanity. From high up on a wall the same old scare stories screamed out from Fox News, where hysterical reporters brought news of an 'Alabama bloodbath'.

These places must surely be some of the most miserable places in this great country. If there is a hell then surely the condemned travel there by Greyhound. Not then, the kind of place you wanted to spend a minute more than necessary. And tonight the bus was late.

The passengers were becoming restless. A slightly unhinged-looking hick standing nearby huffed heavily and said loudly to no-one in particular 'Call George and have him order me a boddle of Ger-ray Goose.'

I shared his irritation. We had a connection to make in Cincinnati and, whilst we had left ourselves an hour and twenty minues to makes the two miles between train and bus stations, we were starting to wonder whether that was enough.

Half an hour ticked by, 45 minutes, then an hour. Finally our carriage arrived.

The driver, a squat little man sporting an ill-fitting jacket which flapped around him like a penguin with sudden weight-loss, could offer like reassurance that he would make up any of the time lost. He snarled at us from under his ragged smear of a moustache: 'what were you thinking of, only leaving that amount of time to make your connection?'

I was gobsmaked. I still can't find the words to describe such a service. So instead I'll leave it to Tanis, a friend of our back in the mountains: 'It is pitiful, lowbrow, and ultimately chavish.'

An hour late, we boarded the bus and headed out into the gathering darkness, chugging up the Interstate and over the Kentucky border. We passed large brown tourism signs for horse racing, the state's famous 'bourbon alley' and even for a local restaurant, 'Colonel Sanders Cafe - KFC birthplace.'

Sadly no local delicacies for us, as we headed on to the town of London, pulling in at a Burger King. Different London, same plastic restaurant, same cardboard food. Once more we were prisoners of the Greyhound and the Interstate: dull, lifeless, predictable.

Except for one thing: this being Kentucky the god-botherers were also in evidence. The Ten Commandments hung from in a frame over the counter; leaflets at every table asked 'Do you know for certain that you will have eternal life?'

Keep eatin' them burgers...

Back out on the road the religious zeal continued. 'Jesus can turn March madness into pure gladness' a church sign proclaimed. Clearly the 'buckle of bible belt', which we had been told we were entering upon arrival back in Nashville, is rather large indeed.

It provided little comfort to us in our current predicament - time was against us. The air temperature was dropping (38F / 3C); our anxiety was rising. Would we make it?

An hour later the traffic started to thicken and the sky suddenly lit up with the glare of a million lights: Cincinnati, our transfer point. The bus rolled downhill towards downtown, crossing the Ohio River, the state boundary between Kentucky and Ohio.

An historical faultline along which the nation was divided during the Civil War it also marked a transitional point for us - we were leaving the South behind and entering the North. I had little time to ponder the significance of this before our bus pulled into the terminal. 45 minutes late.

The empty streets of Cincinnati were soon speeding past us as our taxi headed to the train station. Our friendly Senegalese cabbie gave us a potted history of the city's background before we pulled up before an impressive but decidedly empty-looking building. Dim lights shone from inside but not a soul moved.

'Are you sure this is the train station?', Lara asked nervously.

We heaved our bags out, entered a cavernous entrance hall and gasped in the gloom. It was a fabulous art deco interior, replete with marble pillars, ornate lettering and huge murals depicting stages of the region's development.

This was bizarre. All this grandness and yet no people. A landlubbing Marie Celeste where time had stood still and people had moved on. It was a museum (quite literally), not a train station.

Finally - right at the back - we found it: a modest little sign pointing to closed door 'Amtrak.' We walked through, entering a small art deco waiting room and a completely different travel experience. A friendly fellow behind the counter was only too happy to serve us and the other handful of passengers who sat around on handsome wooden benches.

Sensing our bemusement he outlined the history of the station. We were sitting, he assured us, in a station that once saw 200 trains a day (400 during World War II), a key stop on the rail lines heading east and west. Today that service has been radically reduced. To just one. Six days a week.

I was gobsmacked. How could this be? The railroads, once the glory of America, the vital arteries which opened up the West, traversing mountains and deserts and defying Indian attacks in order to carry freight, passengers and freighthopping banjo players, now reduced to this. One train a day? It wasn’t even a skeleton service.

Despite this ignominious decline, our Amtrak employee obviously took pride in his work, recounting the sad story of the railways as he personally escorted the small group of passengers down onto the platform.

We shivered in the cold as he told us of the establishment of Amtrak, the back in 1971, created out of the nationalisation of the private rail companies. As he told it, the company was deliberately neglected by a government which had decided that rail had no future, hoping the passenger service would simply wither and die.

The next year, 1972, Cincinnati station saw its platforms reduced from twelve to one. The future looked bleak and the line itself would probably have disappeared if it weren’t for the determined efforts of an influential Senator from West Virginia.

Today the service still runs, leaving New York and chugging slowly westwards, arriving at Cincinnati at 1am, not ideal for the locals but thereby allowing said Senator to appreciate his beloved West Virginia countryside during daylight hours. A small price to pay surely for preserving this vital public service.

It was a small train as well, composed of only three passenger carriages, a dining carriage and a sleeper. The ever-helpful staff escorted us to our seats and we sank back into the huge, comfortable seats, luxuriating in our acres of space, two seats apiece - a decent mini-bed for the rest of the night.

The onboard atmosphere couldn’t have been more different to the Greyhound and its paranoia, pent-up aggression and hopelessness. It was friendly, relaxed and surprisingly jolly at such an hour.

Train and bus: they couldn't be more different experiences in the US, yet another example of the great extremes which characterise this country.

I found myself wondering how could this supremely wealthy nation, rippling with massive economic muscles, swaggering with technological might, could have such a poor public transport system.

They had built the railroads through hostile terrain and opened up the West, erected lovingly-designed buildings and inspired many a romantic song but then somehow they abandoned them, convinced that rail had had its day and roads were the answer.

Was it down to the American love of cars and the power of the auto industry? Did it stem from a personality trait buried deep within the American pysche? The desire to be independent, free from government intervention, the master of their own destiny? Or is the country simply too big to cross quickly by train?

I still didn’t have the answer as I woke up hours later, the bright winter sunshine crowbaring open my heavy eyelids and flooding my vision with the flat icy cornfields of Indiana. They stretched on morosely for mile after mile, the relentless monotony broken up only by clumps of bare trees, chunky red barns and grain silos, dark shadows against the swirling snow.

The scenery was't the only thing to have changed during the night; the accents were noticeably different too, the drawl of the mountains now supplanted by a nasal twang. ‘Howyoodoin’?’, a lady enthusiastically greeted us. The intonation was unmistakable - we could only be drawing in to one place: Chicago.

Soon the small towns gave way to one long urban sprawl, the sidings crowded in on both sides and we drew in to ’the Windy City’.

Chicago. The hub of the country’s railway network, a city that grew upon the iron road, its astonishing population boom driven by the expansion of the railways and the industry that followed it.

Another train station echoing to former glories, and a huge, grand waiting hall straight out of The Untouchables (which indeed it was). I felt I were back in a museum again rather than the nerve centre of a modern, fully functioning public transport network.

Entering the street outside the station looked rather an anomaly, squeezed under the towering, sleek skyscrapers, hidden away like an embarrassing old uncle. It was light years from Japan, even aged in comparison to home. Would they ever catch up?

Back on the Cincinnati platform we’d been assured there was a chink of link at the end of this long, dark tunnel: Amtrak enjoyed its highest-ever passenger numbers last year and President Obama has already announced more investment in train services.

Is this the first step towards a resurgence of the railroad? On behalf of all Americans who don't own a car I truly hope so: as our experiences have shown it takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry*.

*With thanks to Bob Dylan







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Louisiana - Bubba this, Bubba that

Another day, another city, and another regretful farewell to a town tempting us to stay and dawdle.

We were even sorrier to turn down the many kind offers from Austin’s friendly locals.

These ranged from borrowing our host's beautiful E-Type Jaguar and cruising the backroads to ‘going out to the ray-aanch' with another local 'getting loaded n’ going hun’in armadillos with my AK-47 and crazeee shee-eet. ‘

Another time.

Now we found ourselves in the company of another friendly local, a jovial local journalist called Kate, heading for the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans and even more excitable than us.

We zipped along a quiet country road, past pecan plantations and water towers, their spindly shapes sticking out of the earth like grounded sputniks. Large hawks on sat brooding on fenceposts and the smell of skunk hung in the air.

We headed east, past ranches studded with oak trees, their bare branches silhouetted against the pale early morning sky. It was strange to be back in a world of seasons; oddly familiar and comforting.

We stopped at a roadside café, filling up on kolaches, Czech pastries, and 24 oz buckets of coffee, before hitting the road once more. The freeway rose up ahead of us and we ascended the flyover, its pillars baring the lone star insignia.

Back to the billboards:

“Get the trucking job you deserve”

“18 wheeler wreck? 1-800 Lawsuit”

“Cowboy. Your all -American dealer”

A couple of hours later Houston hove into view, its skyscrapers glistening in the sunshine, greased in Texan oil. The fourth largest city in the US, it took a good hour to pass through, and still Texas stretched on and on.

The scenery had changed by now into one dominated by petrochemicals, a land of oil refineries and chemical plants, powering the economy and poisoning the residents.

Flames shot from the top of tall chimneys; others billowed plumes of white smoke. We kept the windows wound up and grimly considered the fact that not for nothing is this region nicknamed ‘cancer alley.’

Finally the border came up and our first sight of a confederate flag, flying proudly from a house. Solong Texas, hello Deep South. Or rather, so Kate reliably informed ’Where Y’at?’

I was eagerly anticipating visiting Louisiana; it's a state with a distinctive identity all of its own, quite seperate from its neighbours and the US in general.

Food is always a good indication of such changes and, round these parts, the menu had turned distinctly fishy.

It was ‘Bubba this’ and ‘bubba that’, just like Forrest Gump had told us, before we pulled into Steamboat Bills for lunch.

Shrimp gumbo, crawfish pistolets, po-boys and drinks with more ice than a Greenland glacier. The accent was different too, with a liberal peppering of ’y’all’ in every sentence. This was cajun country.

Suitably sated, we picked up our first beads for mardi gras, the cherished souvenirs thrown out by floats and begged for by the crowds (purple for justice, yellow for power, green for faith) and headed on.

Lake Charles offered more refineries, along with rusty train trucks at sidings carrying ‘high grade octanes’ and the odd 'nodding donkey' pumpjack sucking up oil beneath the swampy surface.

Above them stood adverts for ‘www.myhurricaneikeclaim.com’ and 888-IKE-CLAIM-4U’. Burning carbon and unnatural weather events: was the irony lost on them?

The freeway turned into a huge elevated section, soaring over swamps and bayous, Foot-thumping cajun music blasted over the radio and I started to mentally revise my French vocabulary. How do they pronounce the French words around these parts?

We soon sped over the Mississippi, a large bridge affording us views of state capital Baton Rouge, the capitol building in the foreground, flaring gas behind.

Lara changed the frequency and a preacherman came across the airwaves, mellow Hammond organ in the background.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a bottle of Jack Daniels in your hand” he smoothly purred, his speech speeding up as he continued, “it doesn’t matter if you’re about to snort a line of cocaine. Jeeeeeeesurrzz’ll save yer!’

He had worked himself up into a frenzy by now.

‘Hallelujah! Hot dang he luuuves yer!’

We left these reassuring words hanging in the swampy air behind us and headed on to New Orleans, ‘The Big Easy’.

Another raised freeway, this time water all around us. A cluster of tall buildings rose up out of it some way ahead: New Orleans.

We swept down off the flyover, their posts now bearing French-style fleur-de-lys and into the French Quarter.

Already the party was in full swing, and the parades were up and running. Time to gather a few more beads and, somehow, find a bed for the night.

“My friend can put you up”, Kate offered “We’ll put you in the bordello room“.

Welcome to New Orleans. Happy Mardi Gras!

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Burgers to burritos: from the US into Mexico

Mexico. What’s all the fuss about? Or rather should I say what is all the concern about?


One week in to our trip and we haven’t been mugged or kidnapped, robbed at gunpoint or fallen foul of the drug gangs.
Nor have we been smashed to smithereens in a bus crash, stranded at the bottom of a remote ravine or abandoned in the desert, left to the jackals.

We haven’t even been stricken by food poisoning, overcome by urban smog or ripped off by one of the millions of the mythical, duplicitous Mexicans who supposedly live here and prey on unsuspecting gringos.

Nothing. Nada. None of the terrible fates of which many of the folk back in the United States predicted for us once we‘d left the protective mantle of Uncle Sam‘s realm.

On the the contrary, it’s all gone quite well. Mexico, this land of supposed barbarous savages, is - whisper it - actually rather a nice place.

I’m almost disappointed. I’d half expected to be shooting it out with bandoliered bandits besieging our train or at least making an appearance on the news, a grainy image of the two of us entering some shadowy pickup, the last known whereabouts of the most recent gringos to go missing in this dangerous nation.

I’d anticipated perhaps even a reunion with my old mucker Michael Buerk on 999. I could imagine him relating our mishap, his voice full of tension, “It was a decision which proved near fatal…”

So what on earth were all those Americans we met talking about?

(I should stop and correct myself here: by ‘American’ I mean of course US citizens; Mexicans are rightly sensitive about this, as the graffiti on a wall in Mazatlan pointed out “From Canada to Argentina we are all Americans”).

It’s early days into our visit here but this country seems wonderful. It’s warm and sunny, colourful and lively, the locals are fun and friendly, the food new and tasty and a welcome change to the predictable, plastic fare north of the border.

There’s fantastic colonial architecture, squat men in cream plastic cowboy hats, strange-looking Tarahumara Indians and more bushy moustaches than a Handlebar Club convention.

Despite the worries which were stoked up in us by our American friends, this country seems far more relaxed and enjoyable. We have encountered few of the up-tight neuroses which we did in the US, the buttoned-up paranoia which seemed to pervade our week there.

Like a conversation with the folks back home much of the talk in the US seemed full of financial worries, forecasts laden with doom, people fearing for the future.

The golden grins and confident swagger I experienced during my previous visit there seven years ago have been replaced by furrowed brows and TV channels full of adverts and advice on how to cope with the credit ‘crisis’.

The unimpeachable confidence of the CEOs has been punctured, the car companies crawling to the Capitol with their begging bowls in their hands.

Some even now openly fret that the tides are changing and the US supertanker is sinking as other vessels hove into sight over the horizon.

Can a change of captain set them back on course? We’ll find out when we return in February.
By contrast the people of Mexico, not a country which has by any means escaped the ravages of the ‘global financial crisis’ seem happier than their neighbours to the north.

Is this due to the different social makeup, where life is more family-oriented and less atomistic? Is it something to do with the differences in the ethnic makeup, cold-blooded Anglo-Saxons as opposed to warm-blooded latinos? Or is it because they’ve got less (in terms of material possessions) to lose?

Whatever it is, it’s been fascinating to witness these contrasts as they emerge and watch the atmosphere change as we’ve headed south, approaching and finally hopping, over the Mexican border.

Back in Los Angeles, from the minute we stepped off the boat, we saw strong hints about what was to come, from the food and the language, to the buildings and the people.

We passed through former Mexican territories in the South-West of the US, from California, through Arizona and New Mexico to Texas, areas which were often so hispanic in character one could be forgiven for thinking one had already crossed the border.

Combined with the powerful US political and economic influence in Mexico itself, this makes for an interesting cultural mix.

Dodge Rams and decaying old buses, Madonna and Mariachi, burgers and burritos, desperate poverty and opulent affluence.

This is born from a fascinating history between the two countries, full of friction and fury, exploitation and expropriation, revulsion and revolution.

Mexico is the only country which has fought on US soil; the US-baiting exploits of legendary revolutionary Pancho Villa is lovingly documented in his old stomping ground of Chihuahua.

This tension continues to this day, the US irate at Mexico’s seeming inability to police its borders, powerless to prevent the drug barons and people smugglers slipping over into US territory, Mexico fuming at US ‘imperialism’ and bullying tactics.

Yet both countries need each other: the US provides jobs, Mexico the workforce.

Without Mexico states such as California and Arizona would struggle to operate, few of their citizens wishing to carry out the menial work undertaken by many impoverished Mexicans.

Without the US, the income of millions of Mexicans would take a massive dive.

We travelled with thousands of Mexicans heading home from the US for Christmas. Passing through the state of Michoacà n we learnt that half of the population had emigrated north, the emigrants sending home some $2bn every year.

Despite this awkward relationship, one in which we found citizens of both countries needed little encouragement to condemn the other, both countries are inextricably bound to each other, condemned to dance an uncomfortable tango towards greater equality.

And like many awkward relationships there is a third party here, one from a very different part of the world - Spain.

Though the colonists left a long time ago their legacy remains. I was surprised at how quite how strong this legacy is, the visible reminders of the old colonial ruler far greater than those in other former European colonies we’ve visited such as Hong Kong (formerly British) or Vietnam (formerly French).

This was apparent from our very first port of call in Mexico, Chihuahua, a dusty city up in the dry mountains of the far North.

We found it a stark contrast to the US: grand colonial edifices, carefully laid-out plazas, streets designed for walking, not driving.

Though the architecture is impressive it is perhaps something else that the Spanish introduced that sets our new location apart from our previous - religion.

As a deeply Catholic country Mexico is crazy for Jesus and Mary. Their images and icons are everywhere: in shops and restaurants, in homes and hostels, on buses and trains, placed in tiny roadside shrines and daubed on huge mountains.

At this time of the year these are accompanied by Christmas bling. Lots of it.

Massive Christmas trees dominate town centres, their boughs laden down with garish decorations and garish lights twinkle from every building; parents stagger along pavements, weaving past elaborate nativity scenes, their arms laden with mountains of presents.

The beautiful ornate churches we visit seem to be permanently in the middle of one service or another, the masses drawn to prayer in the build up to the big day.

Jesus’s birthday is clearly A VERY BIG THING. I’m looking forward to it and seeing how Mexicans celebrate Christmas.

That’s if we aren’t blown up by a cracker, or knocked out by a falling piñata, or poisoned by an undercooked turkey, or crushed by a falling Christmas tree or….

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The temples of Angkor

When visiting Cambodia the famed temples of Angkor usually perch at the top of any visitors’ must-see list.

And rightly so. Angkor must have a strong claim to truly be the 'eight wonder of the world'.

These massive, crumbling complexes, hidden away in the jungle just outside the town of Siem Reap have wowed generations of visitors and inspired many writers to put descriptive pen to paper.

So I’m not going to have a go myself. Instead we thought you might find the following tips of use when planning a visit to Angkor.

Transport

Hire a tuk tuk driver. It’s a fair drive out to the entry gates to the temple complexes and the sites themselves cover huge area.

Plus it’s likely to be hot- very hot - making walking considerable distances between the spread-out sites unviable for all but the masochistic. We hired our tuk tuk driver, the lovely Mr Pea, for a cost of about $10 a day.

Alternatively you could hire a bicycle, but be prepared for a soaking - from sweating and/or , if it’s the monsoon season, tropical downpours.

Climate

Beware of the heat. Angkor can get very hot. Only the most ambitious tourists choose to plod around in 30-plus degrees during the middle of the day, so try and visit sites in the morning and later afternoon, sticking to the shade during the hottest hours.

Even better, do like a tuk tuk driver and take along a hammock to sling up between two trees when it all gets too much!

If you happen to time your visit during the monsoon, like us, be sure to get back to Siem Reap before the clouds open for their daily downpour. Your driver will know when this is.

There is nothing quite as wet as chugging through a thunderstorm in a tuk tuk.

Provisions

Winnie the Pooh need not fret - there is plenty of food and drink on sale around the sites - this is Cambodia and you can be sure that wherever you go kids and women will be chasing you with bottles of chilled water and fresh fruit. "Hallobananamisterpineappulllll?"

Tickets

A pass to all the sites is not cheap for foreign visitors, particularly those on a tight budget. You basically have two types available to you: a one-day pass ($20) or a three-day pass($40). There is no two-day pass.

One day is simply not enough to visit more than a few sites and you’ll regret not spending more time there so we suggest you plump for the three-day pass.

However, not that if, like us, you are all templed out by the end of day two then you simply have to wave goodbye to the third day you’ve paid for (they take your photo and print it on your pass so you cannot sell it on).

Guidebook

There is so much to learn about the history of these sites. You can only start to appreciate this with a dedicated guidebook. These are hawked by street vendors and bookshops all around Siem Reap and the temples themselves.

Try and buy one from one of the many amputees (victims of landmines) who are trying to make a living. $5 is a reasonable price.

Religion

Brush up on your knowledge of Buddhism and particularly Hinduism before you visit. Both were imported from India so anyone who has visited India will notice the striking similarities.

Many of the temples of Angkor were built when the Khmers followed the Hindu faith, so even a basic knowledge of this religion and its various gods helps.

Sunrises

If you choose to view a sunrise over one of the temples be prepared to get up at an obscenely early hour.

Be sure to neck a couple of Khmer coffees before you leave your guesthouse - I don’t know what they put in them but it certainly wakes you up.

Which sites to visit?

There are so many temples to visit that it’s quite bewildering working out where to start. Everyone will have their own particular interests but we found the following sites particularly worth visiting.

Ta Prohm
Built somewhere between the late 12th-late 13th century and ‘discovered’ by the French in the 19th century, this site is unique in that it was the only one the colonialists left in pretty much the state they found it in.

This was a deliberate decision by the French so that visitors could see for themselves the impact that the natural world has on mankind’s creations if left to get on with it.

The result is absolutely stunning - you walk through a fantastical world of crumbling ruins and massive tree roots, where seedlings have grown atop the masonry and literally taken over the building like something out of Day of the Triffids. Spellbinding.

The Bayon
Situated in the very centre of the ancient city of Angkor Thom, the dilapidated ruins of this temple are striking for the number of massive faces built into the masonry.

No-one seems to be able to agree on quite how many faces there are looking up on each of the four-sided towers but its well over 200.

Weather-beaten and decorated with lichen these faces remain strangely powerful; all-seeing big brothers for the Khmer empire.

Also notable for its bas-reliefs, featuring thousands of individuals figures, generally having a good ruck in one of the various Hindu tales.

Angkor Wat
To many the Daddy of them all, although I’m inclined to disagree. But then I was dragged out of bed at 4.30am to come and see the sunrise here only to find another five hundred other grumpy tourists already there all fighting each other for a view and a people-free space at which to aim their little digital screen.

But don’t let that put you off. Angkor Wat is spectacular and, once you’ve left the crowds behind you are free to wander the cloisters and extensive crowds, with little interruption.

Designed as an entire microcosm of the Hindu universe, featuring a quincunx of towers and the most ambitious carvings you’ll ever see, Angkor Wat is an architectural marvel you won’t forget.

Even if Angelina has long since packed her hotpants are headed off to Africa.

Phnom Bakheng
A crumbling old edifice atop a hill which affords wonderful views across the flat landscape.

With the huge, grand old flights of stairs leading up to the top in a state of severe disrepair we walked up a deserted track skirting around the hill in order to reach the temple.

Be warned: whilst most temples have some sets of steep and exceedingly narrow steps, Phnom Bakheng’s are particularly challenging.

Preah Khan
Another temple seemingly succumbing to the vegetation where, like Ta Prohm, Strangler Figs and Silk Cotton Trees threaten to outshine the buildings themselves as the star attraction.

Crumbling masonry, intricate designs carved into the Sandstone, fragile stone lintels propped up by groaning timbers, massive heaps of rubble: Preah Khan’s got it all.

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