As was rather obviously hinted at in the previous update, my travels have come to an end. After 4 months, 40,000 miles, 8 countries, 14 flights, 40 different lodgings (not including overnight buses or sleeper trains) and enough foot-longs to make a mile-long, I'm safely back in Blighty, being fed & pampered at my parents' house in York.
A big thank you is due to everyone who has taken the time to follow my insignificant little musings. I am very glad & grateful for the various messages of encouragement and approval which have come my way since I've been blogging. I met lots of friendly and interesting people while I was away, but even so, when you're travelling alone in far-off places it's nice to know that people are thinking of you back home.
I'll leave the whole blog available online, but there will be no further updates after this one. However any future travels of mine (probably next summer at the absolute earliest) will hopefully be documented here in the same way. I'll try and make a bit more effort on the photographic front next time though.
In the meantime, does anybody know if there are any jobs going?
Wednesday, 17 September 2008
Monday, 15 September 2008
Bangkok, Thailand
Monday morning in Bangkok. Sunlight breaks in through the blinds, and I slowly come to waking life in my upper bunk bed. Elsewhere in Bangkok, the protestors are still barricaded inside the Government House complex - although 'barricaded' is perhaps overdramatising it a little, given that the 'barricades' have plenty of gaps, and indeed I myself wandered through one of those gaps for a look around yesterday. See pictures. The government is undoubtedly corrupt - he who pays the piper calls the tune, and all that - but at the same time the 'protest movement' is very obviously nothing like the spontaneous expression of people power which it pretends to be. Someone somewhere is paying for all these protestors to have free food, water, medicine and toilet facilities. Indeed I understand that they're actually being paid hard cash just for the protesting itself.
Monday afternoon in Bangkok. Smoke drifts upwards and out of the common room window into the street. At times it's sunny, and at other times the rain is torrential, but the muggy heat is everpresent. Swigging water at regular intervals, I lounge on a sofa; I've been out for a Subway, and now I'm sleepy from the food and the heat. People are coming and going, checking in and checking out...I find myself dispensing helpful travel-related advice to those who are newly arrived in SE Asia. (The fact that I'm much older than most of them seems to give my advice more credibility than my actual travel experience to date can really justify.) Some of my fellow inmates are gap-year students who are too young and flighty to feel homesick; others are older people who seem, for whatever combination of reasons, to be travelling more to get away from their old lives and homes than to seek out new ones. I suppose there are some people who just never really put down roots. After four months on the road, and for all the fun and relaxation and stimulation and experience I've been lucky enough to have along the way, I'm now more sure than ever that I do have roots, and that a trip abroad for me is like a night out - no matter how long it lasts or how good it is, you still want to come home at the end of it.
Monday evening in Bangkok. There's a night out on the cards. It sounds tempting, but then I've already had enough Bangkok nights for one summer. And anyway, Sunderland are playing at home on Saturday.
Monday afternoon in Bangkok. Smoke drifts upwards and out of the common room window into the street. At times it's sunny, and at other times the rain is torrential, but the muggy heat is everpresent. Swigging water at regular intervals, I lounge on a sofa; I've been out for a Subway, and now I'm sleepy from the food and the heat. People are coming and going, checking in and checking out...I find myself dispensing helpful travel-related advice to those who are newly arrived in SE Asia. (The fact that I'm much older than most of them seems to give my advice more credibility than my actual travel experience to date can really justify.) Some of my fellow inmates are gap-year students who are too young and flighty to feel homesick; others are older people who seem, for whatever combination of reasons, to be travelling more to get away from their old lives and homes than to seek out new ones. I suppose there are some people who just never really put down roots. After four months on the road, and for all the fun and relaxation and stimulation and experience I've been lucky enough to have along the way, I'm now more sure than ever that I do have roots, and that a trip abroad for me is like a night out - no matter how long it lasts or how good it is, you still want to come home at the end of it.
Monday evening in Bangkok. There's a night out on the cards. It sounds tempting, but then I've already had enough Bangkok nights for one summer. And anyway, Sunderland are playing at home on Saturday.
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| Inside the Bangkok protestors' compound (1) |
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| Inside the Bangkok protestors' compound (2) |
Thursday, 11 September 2008
Siem Reap, Cambodia
After a short and sweet bus ride - short and sweet by the standard of some of the interminable nightmares I've suffered in the past few weeks - I am now in Siem Reap, a place which justifies its existence by being quite close to the 12th-century temple city of Angkor Wat, Cambodia's foremost tourist attraction, which at the time of its being built was the largest public place in the world. It's become a time-old cliche for tourists and travellers to get there before dawn and watch the sun rise over the ancient stones and the misty moat surrounding them...I'm not a fan of following the herd, but I couldn't think of anything else that would be original, so I set my alarm for 4.30 and toddled bleary-eyed down there along with everyone else. (I'd already woken at 2am to see if the England match was on the telly. It wasn't. Rats.) Sadly the weather was drizzly and completely overcast, so instead of shimmering sunbeams and iridescent reflections, I just saw a sky which changed imperceptibly from mid-grey to light-grey. Profound. And it was $20 in!
The place is very impressive, certainly much more so than any of the temples I saw in Thailand, but on the whole I still have to say I haven't been especially overwhelmed by Eastern temples in general. There are undoubtedly certain areas of learning and morality in which I think Eastern cultures are superior to our own, but I wouldn't add architecture to that list. I find most of the temples rather gaudy, too fussy and ornate, and effeminate rather than feminine. Given the choice, I would much rather look again at the memorials in Washington DC; or, for that matter, Durham Cathedral.
Nonetheless, I did take some pictures at Angkor Wat, and a picture update will follow as soon as I can be arsed. Hope all is well back in Blighty. Y'all wish me luck in trying to find somewhere I can watch SAFC get beat, as we always do at Wigan, on Saturday...wherever I may be...
The place is very impressive, certainly much more so than any of the temples I saw in Thailand, but on the whole I still have to say I haven't been especially overwhelmed by Eastern temples in general. There are undoubtedly certain areas of learning and morality in which I think Eastern cultures are superior to our own, but I wouldn't add architecture to that list. I find most of the temples rather gaudy, too fussy and ornate, and effeminate rather than feminine. Given the choice, I would much rather look again at the memorials in Washington DC; or, for that matter, Durham Cathedral.
Nonetheless, I did take some pictures at Angkor Wat, and a picture update will follow as soon as I can be arsed. Hope all is well back in Blighty. Y'all wish me luck in trying to find somewhere I can watch SAFC get beat, as we always do at Wigan, on Saturday...wherever I may be...
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
My bus into Cambodia was much better than my bus into Vietnam. Only 6 hours or so, proper air conditioning, and all the windows remained intact. Because I was with a reputable bus company, I trusted them with my passport at the border, and they did all the necessaries with aplomb (and for free).
Phnom Penh is a charming city, with real character. Sometimes in places like Bangkok and Saigon there's a jarring contrast between the 'real' or 'indigenous' parts of town on the one hand, and the newer high-rise buildings and tourist havens on the other. But most parts of Phnom Penh retain all of their 19th-century charm, both the temples and the colonial-era buildings, and if you overlook the beggars and the touts (even more tenacious than in Vietnam) it's just a really nice place to wander round. Best of all, the weather is cooling off a bit right now, and so I am feeling a lot more comfortable, and also I'm relieved of the obligation to think up another piece of sweat-related alliterative simile.
Another good thing about Cambodia is that you can use dollars just about everywhere. After Laos (15,500 kip to the pound) and Vietnam (29,000 dong to the pound) it's nice, even for an amateur maths geek like me, to be able to drop all the zeros and have a nice simple menu: beer $1, pizza $4, etc etc. This internet cafe is costing me 50 cents an hour.
Yesterday I visited the Tuol Sleng museum in town, and tomorrow I will take a tuk-tuk out to Choeung Ek. (Today was sacrificed to worshipping the great god Immo De Um, at the great white porcelain temple.) Both places commemorate the Khmer Rouge genocide which took place between 1975 and 1979. As with the museums I visited in Saigon, there is no squeamishness about describing (and often showing very direct photographic evidence of) exactly what happened in these places. Above all it's another depressing reminder that all of the great genocides of the 20th century were not carried out solely by swivel-eyed psychopaths - the actual killing was mostly done by ordinary people like you and me. And Pol Pot died in his own bed in 1998, at the age of 73. (And, incidentally, Pol Pot was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris).
I set my alarm for 4am this morning so that I could watch Murray v Federer in the US Open final. I'm not normally the biggest follower of tennis, but on this particular occasion I did feel it was my patriotic duty. Therefore as an Englishman I was highly pleased to see Murray get completely turned over. Mint.
Latest update on the Newcastle United managerial vacancy: ha ha ha, he he ho ho tee hee, chuckle chuckle!
Phnom Penh is a charming city, with real character. Sometimes in places like Bangkok and Saigon there's a jarring contrast between the 'real' or 'indigenous' parts of town on the one hand, and the newer high-rise buildings and tourist havens on the other. But most parts of Phnom Penh retain all of their 19th-century charm, both the temples and the colonial-era buildings, and if you overlook the beggars and the touts (even more tenacious than in Vietnam) it's just a really nice place to wander round. Best of all, the weather is cooling off a bit right now, and so I am feeling a lot more comfortable, and also I'm relieved of the obligation to think up another piece of sweat-related alliterative simile.
Another good thing about Cambodia is that you can use dollars just about everywhere. After Laos (15,500 kip to the pound) and Vietnam (29,000 dong to the pound) it's nice, even for an amateur maths geek like me, to be able to drop all the zeros and have a nice simple menu: beer $1, pizza $4, etc etc. This internet cafe is costing me 50 cents an hour.
Yesterday I visited the Tuol Sleng museum in town, and tomorrow I will take a tuk-tuk out to Choeung Ek. (Today was sacrificed to worshipping the great god Immo De Um, at the great white porcelain temple.) Both places commemorate the Khmer Rouge genocide which took place between 1975 and 1979. As with the museums I visited in Saigon, there is no squeamishness about describing (and often showing very direct photographic evidence of) exactly what happened in these places. Above all it's another depressing reminder that all of the great genocides of the 20th century were not carried out solely by swivel-eyed psychopaths - the actual killing was mostly done by ordinary people like you and me. And Pol Pot died in his own bed in 1998, at the age of 73. (And, incidentally, Pol Pot was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris).
I set my alarm for 4am this morning so that I could watch Murray v Federer in the US Open final. I'm not normally the biggest follower of tennis, but on this particular occasion I did feel it was my patriotic duty. Therefore as an Englishman I was highly pleased to see Murray get completely turned over. Mint.
Latest update on the Newcastle United managerial vacancy: ha ha ha, he he ho ho tee hee, chuckle chuckle!
Sunday, 7 September 2008
Saigon, Vietnam
The official name of this place is of course Ho Chi Minh City, but most of the people seem to call it Saigon, and indeed it appears as such in several official places, not least the railway tickets and timetables.
Hue was fantastic. Of all the places I've visited so far on this trip, it's probably the one I'd single out as being a recommendation I could make which people might not otherwise know about.There are a few tourists to be seen in Hue, but not all that many, and you only have to turn a couple of corners to get away from them completely. I walked over to the north side of the river and presently found myself in the Vietnamese equivalent of Jacky White's Market, wherein I soon became quite a focus of attention, though it was of course all friendly. It's easy to relax when you're a head taller than everyone around you.
I visited the Forbidden Purple Palace, from which the whole of Vietnam was governed by the Nguyen dynasty between 1802 and 1945; then the Ho Chi Minh museum, which was full of adoring multitudes of Vietnamese paying homage to their country's saviour and guiding light...not. I was the only person there. I also visited a highly reputable establishent of software purveyance, and picked up an entirely legal copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for just under $1.
On the whole Vietnam is much less Westernised than Thailand - there's no McDonalds, no Starbucks, although I did see one single KFC in Hue and another one in Saigon. And there are hardly any cars: it's all mopeds and scooters and bicycles. (This actually strikes me as a much more efficient and environmentally friendly way of moving people around, compared to our sacred Western model of huge gas-guzzling 4x4s with one person in each vehicle.) Cycle rickshaws are popular in Vietnam, and I've used them quite a few times; once, at night, I persuaded my driver to swap places so I could have a go. I managed to get a decent speed up, although I dare say he weighed a good two or three stone less than I did and so I had it relatively easy. The passenger seat is in front of the driver, rather than behind it, and so riding in these rickshaws sometimes feels like being in a runaway wheelchair in a Carry On film or something.
I left Hue on the overnight sleeper train on Friday night, shortly after midnight, and arrived in Nha Trang at lunchtime on Saturday. The train cost about $26, which isn't bad for a 400 mile trip when it saves you a night's hotel bill too. Sadly Nha Trang turned out to be a complete shit-hole; it has a reasonably nice beach, with islands in sight, but everything was ludicrously overpriced and there wasn't anything to do or see. The highlight of my day was getting my head shaved by a street barber, who used an interesting hand-powered pair of clippers.
Anyway, after one night in Nha Trang, and a brief dispute with my hotel there over their laundry bill (I hope it was an honest mistake that they charged me for washing 4 dresses), I got a train yesterday to Saigon, and here I am. I got off the train at about 9.30 last night and wandered off in search of a hotel; it gradually dawned on me that I was well out of the 'touristy' area (even the hotel receptionists spoke no English), but hey, that's the point of travelling isn't it? In my hotel room I stayed up long enough to watch Andorra 0 England 2 and Andy Murray winning his first 2 sets against Raffle Noodle.
Saigon is a very lively place, very friendly, with plenty to do. The average age of the Hot Backpacker Chicks round here is n-n-n-n-n-n-nineteen, ha ha ha. The old American Embassy, from which the last helicopter famously departed in '75, is no longer there; but there are lots of museums which show in detail how the peace-loving Northern armies were welcomed rapturously by the people of South Vietnam, apart from the thousands of them who were rounded up and shot, and the millions more who were prompted to try and raft it to Hong Kong. But I digress.
Overall I'm very impressed with Vietnam. With hindsight, I think the problem with Nha Trang is that they're trying to develop a tourist resort which relies on rich foreigners shuttling between their luxury hotels and the beach, and not really bothering to explore. But Hue and Saigon are both great fun, so long as you can tolerate the ceaseless stream of hawkers and touts who assail you with every step you take; it's even worse than Bangkok. They offer you motorcycle rides, drugs, and women (in that order). For all that I keep getting offered weed, there isn't much evidence of it - I never seem to smell weed or see anyone smoking joints. Although charlie seems to be everywhere, ha ha ha.
My only gripe with Vietnam is that it's too darn hot for me. I'm sweating like a brittle-boned badger in a basket of bloodhounds. If I ever come back it will have to be at a different time of year. In all three places I've stayed so far, I've been going back to my hotel at regular intervals just to sit under the aircon and cool off for a while, flicking TV channels and always ending up watching bizarre politico-religious Vietnamese soap operas ("Father, I have been promoted to Deputy Commissar of the Northern District. Let us make offerings at the temple." "Leave it out, Ricky, who's gonna watch the bleedin' stall?")
One last thing, regarding Kevin Keegan. Ha ha, ha ha ha, ah ha ha hee hee tee hee ho ho. Thank you.
Hue was fantastic. Of all the places I've visited so far on this trip, it's probably the one I'd single out as being a recommendation I could make which people might not otherwise know about.There are a few tourists to be seen in Hue, but not all that many, and you only have to turn a couple of corners to get away from them completely. I walked over to the north side of the river and presently found myself in the Vietnamese equivalent of Jacky White's Market, wherein I soon became quite a focus of attention, though it was of course all friendly. It's easy to relax when you're a head taller than everyone around you.
I visited the Forbidden Purple Palace, from which the whole of Vietnam was governed by the Nguyen dynasty between 1802 and 1945; then the Ho Chi Minh museum, which was full of adoring multitudes of Vietnamese paying homage to their country's saviour and guiding light...not. I was the only person there. I also visited a highly reputable establishent of software purveyance, and picked up an entirely legal copy of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for just under $1.
On the whole Vietnam is much less Westernised than Thailand - there's no McDonalds, no Starbucks, although I did see one single KFC in Hue and another one in Saigon. And there are hardly any cars: it's all mopeds and scooters and bicycles. (This actually strikes me as a much more efficient and environmentally friendly way of moving people around, compared to our sacred Western model of huge gas-guzzling 4x4s with one person in each vehicle.) Cycle rickshaws are popular in Vietnam, and I've used them quite a few times; once, at night, I persuaded my driver to swap places so I could have a go. I managed to get a decent speed up, although I dare say he weighed a good two or three stone less than I did and so I had it relatively easy. The passenger seat is in front of the driver, rather than behind it, and so riding in these rickshaws sometimes feels like being in a runaway wheelchair in a Carry On film or something.
I left Hue on the overnight sleeper train on Friday night, shortly after midnight, and arrived in Nha Trang at lunchtime on Saturday. The train cost about $26, which isn't bad for a 400 mile trip when it saves you a night's hotel bill too. Sadly Nha Trang turned out to be a complete shit-hole; it has a reasonably nice beach, with islands in sight, but everything was ludicrously overpriced and there wasn't anything to do or see. The highlight of my day was getting my head shaved by a street barber, who used an interesting hand-powered pair of clippers.
Anyway, after one night in Nha Trang, and a brief dispute with my hotel there over their laundry bill (I hope it was an honest mistake that they charged me for washing 4 dresses), I got a train yesterday to Saigon, and here I am. I got off the train at about 9.30 last night and wandered off in search of a hotel; it gradually dawned on me that I was well out of the 'touristy' area (even the hotel receptionists spoke no English), but hey, that's the point of travelling isn't it? In my hotel room I stayed up long enough to watch Andorra 0 England 2 and Andy Murray winning his first 2 sets against Raffle Noodle.
Saigon is a very lively place, very friendly, with plenty to do. The average age of the Hot Backpacker Chicks round here is n-n-n-n-n-n-nineteen, ha ha ha. The old American Embassy, from which the last helicopter famously departed in '75, is no longer there; but there are lots of museums which show in detail how the peace-loving Northern armies were welcomed rapturously by the people of South Vietnam, apart from the thousands of them who were rounded up and shot, and the millions more who were prompted to try and raft it to Hong Kong. But I digress.
Overall I'm very impressed with Vietnam. With hindsight, I think the problem with Nha Trang is that they're trying to develop a tourist resort which relies on rich foreigners shuttling between their luxury hotels and the beach, and not really bothering to explore. But Hue and Saigon are both great fun, so long as you can tolerate the ceaseless stream of hawkers and touts who assail you with every step you take; it's even worse than Bangkok. They offer you motorcycle rides, drugs, and women (in that order). For all that I keep getting offered weed, there isn't much evidence of it - I never seem to smell weed or see anyone smoking joints. Although charlie seems to be everywhere, ha ha ha.
My only gripe with Vietnam is that it's too darn hot for me. I'm sweating like a brittle-boned badger in a basket of bloodhounds. If I ever come back it will have to be at a different time of year. In all three places I've stayed so far, I've been going back to my hotel at regular intervals just to sit under the aircon and cool off for a while, flicking TV channels and always ending up watching bizarre politico-religious Vietnamese soap operas ("Father, I have been promoted to Deputy Commissar of the Northern District. Let us make offerings at the temple." "Leave it out, Ricky, who's gonna watch the bleedin' stall?")
One last thing, regarding Kevin Keegan. Ha ha, ha ha ha, ah ha ha hee hee tee hee ho ho. Thank you.
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| Er...independence, please (Saigon museum) |
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| Part of the Imperial Citadel in Hue |
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| Ho Chi Minh Museum speak English! Is nice! |
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| Hue, by day |
Wednesday, 3 September 2008
Hue, Vietnam
Currently slumming it in a very nice hotel with posh swimming pool and air con and cable telly. ($12). Hue is quite lovely. Getting here was a different story though.
Vientiane showed very little charm - every tourist/traveller I met there displayed a distinct aura of unimpressed-ness with the place - so I was ready to get out after just one night. Accordingly, I bought a bus ticket yesterday and it departed from Vientiane's southern bus station at 7pm. It had been sold to me as a 'tourist bus'. I suppose it was a 'tourist bus' in the sense that the Round Robin in Pennywell is a 'tourist pub', or in the sense that Baghdad is a 'tourist hotspot'. But it did at least have a crude but effective system of air conditioning. I sat back and read my book and relaxed.
About two and a half hours into the journey, as we were trundling & bouncing through the south-eastern Laotian countryside, my peace & tranquility were rather rudely interrupted by a loud CRACK as half the glass panel by my right elbow shattered into a million pieces, all over my lap and the surrounding floor. About two seconds after that, there was another CRACK, and the rest of the panel went the same way. As I was already aware that the border areas of Laos and Vietnam are in many places under the direction of drug syndicates, and with yesterday's AK47 guy in mind, by the time this second scattering was completed I was already out of my seat and crouching down in the aisle. A Japanese couple opposite me, who were the only other non-locals on the bus as far as I could tell, did likewise, and the poor girl looked quite terrified.
Anyway. The bus stopped, and both the driver and the local passengers seemed much more concerned with putting in place some temporary replacement for the window than they did with any potential hails of bullets from outside the bus. We stopped shortly afterwards, and when I thought it through, I realised that it could hardly have been bullets, because a) nothing inside the bus displayed any signs of having been hit, and b) the glass panel in question was a small sliding panel of only about 10 inches by 4 feet, which had been travelling at 40mph, and I imagine it would have taken an Olympic-standard sniper to hit the same window twice at night. Evidently there had been some kind of structural failing or weakening and the glass had just given way. Fortunately I did old Blighty proud by not squealing or blubbing or anything - although I did indulge in accepting the kind offer of a cigarette from a local. They're 25p a pack here.
As dawn broke we got to the Vietnamese border. A plain-clothes guy came onto the bus and demanded money from me and the Japanese couple for 'stamping passport'. They paid up, but I told him to sling his hook (in polite sign language). In due course I got my passport checked by the actual authorities and there was no need to pay anything, so I was glad I held firm. However, inevitably, the world of scamming did catch up with me eventually. The bus stopped at 11am, in a quiet little settlement on the main road, and the driver said to me and the Japanese couple 'this Hue' and gestured vehemently for us to get off. Again,the Japanese couple complied without questioning, but I could tell that something was up - I knew this was the Hue bus, and that everyone on it was going to Hue, so why was this a stop for foreigners only? Sadly I was alone now, and nobody spoke any English, and - this is the worst part - I looked around at the locals and said 'Hue?', pointing downwards to indicate 'here', and I got a succession of shifty nods and half-hearted smiles. By this time the driver had already grabbed my bag and was marching to the door. Needless to say, when I joined the Japanese couple outside, there were shifty-looking guys with motorbikes telling us 'we take you rest of way to Hue, twenty dollar' (my whole bus ticket had only been $19); and when I took it on myself to walk a few hundred yards back along the road, I found a sign stating 'Hue 17km'. Could have been worse, I suppose. But it was obvious what the deal was: bus driver abandons foreigners to motorbike gang, bus driver gets cut of the 20 dollars each they have no choice but to pay.
I walked back to where we'd been dropped off, and the Japanese couple (all politeness and excessive wealth) paid their 20 dollars each without demur. Well, I thought, f*ck that. I walked off again, and the chief motorbike guy trundled after me on his moped. 'I take you Hue. Twenty dollar. No bus here, no hotel'. He was right - there wasn't even an internet cafe or a shop - and he wore an expression of intense self-satisfaction, in the sure and certain knowledge that he was getting his twenty dollars either way.
Had we been in temperate climes, I would gladly have walked that 17km, backpack and all, just to prove a point. Only four hours' hike at most. But it's 32 degrees C here (I just checked on the BBC website). So I walked away from the motorbike gang, with them laughing at me and following at a distance all the while, and flagged down a random passing moped who agreed to take me into Hue; he didn't speak any English, but he knelt down, picked up a twig, and wrote out the numbers '100,000' in the dust. Trusting that this meant Vietnamese dong and not dollars (there are about 16,500 dong to the dollar) I readily assented, and off we went. And here I am! Fun as it was, I like to think that I will keep the moped-hitching to a minimum in my future travels.
So anyway, I got myself this very nice hotel, and then went out for a bite to eat. I got a club sandwich and a Coke and a water for less than $5. When I got back to the hotel I realised that the cute little Vietnamese servingwench had given me too much change - indeed, I'd come out of there with more money than I'd gone in with. Not wanting to join the ranks of the scamming scumbags, albeit by a sin of omission rather than commission, I was all set to go back to the restaurant and hand back a few notes. However my good intentions were not reciprocated by the club sandwich in question, which suddenly announced itself as having journeyed through my digestive system without condescending to be digested, and after a brief but unpleasant Bathroom Episode I considered all my obligations to that restaurant to be discharged in full.
This is a long one, isn't it? As the bishop said to the actress, etc. Anyway it's now 2.50pm and I'm going to give the midday heat a bit longer to disperse before I step outside again and explore Hue. Who knows where I'll go next? Who knows if I'll be able to get back into Thailand before they have another military coup or two? Who knows if Kevin Keegan is going to officially de-toy his pram once more? Tune in next time to find out!
Vientiane showed very little charm - every tourist/traveller I met there displayed a distinct aura of unimpressed-ness with the place - so I was ready to get out after just one night. Accordingly, I bought a bus ticket yesterday and it departed from Vientiane's southern bus station at 7pm. It had been sold to me as a 'tourist bus'. I suppose it was a 'tourist bus' in the sense that the Round Robin in Pennywell is a 'tourist pub', or in the sense that Baghdad is a 'tourist hotspot'. But it did at least have a crude but effective system of air conditioning. I sat back and read my book and relaxed.
About two and a half hours into the journey, as we were trundling & bouncing through the south-eastern Laotian countryside, my peace & tranquility were rather rudely interrupted by a loud CRACK as half the glass panel by my right elbow shattered into a million pieces, all over my lap and the surrounding floor. About two seconds after that, there was another CRACK, and the rest of the panel went the same way. As I was already aware that the border areas of Laos and Vietnam are in many places under the direction of drug syndicates, and with yesterday's AK47 guy in mind, by the time this second scattering was completed I was already out of my seat and crouching down in the aisle. A Japanese couple opposite me, who were the only other non-locals on the bus as far as I could tell, did likewise, and the poor girl looked quite terrified.
Anyway. The bus stopped, and both the driver and the local passengers seemed much more concerned with putting in place some temporary replacement for the window than they did with any potential hails of bullets from outside the bus. We stopped shortly afterwards, and when I thought it through, I realised that it could hardly have been bullets, because a) nothing inside the bus displayed any signs of having been hit, and b) the glass panel in question was a small sliding panel of only about 10 inches by 4 feet, which had been travelling at 40mph, and I imagine it would have taken an Olympic-standard sniper to hit the same window twice at night. Evidently there had been some kind of structural failing or weakening and the glass had just given way. Fortunately I did old Blighty proud by not squealing or blubbing or anything - although I did indulge in accepting the kind offer of a cigarette from a local. They're 25p a pack here.
As dawn broke we got to the Vietnamese border. A plain-clothes guy came onto the bus and demanded money from me and the Japanese couple for 'stamping passport'. They paid up, but I told him to sling his hook (in polite sign language). In due course I got my passport checked by the actual authorities and there was no need to pay anything, so I was glad I held firm. However, inevitably, the world of scamming did catch up with me eventually. The bus stopped at 11am, in a quiet little settlement on the main road, and the driver said to me and the Japanese couple 'this Hue' and gestured vehemently for us to get off. Again,the Japanese couple complied without questioning, but I could tell that something was up - I knew this was the Hue bus, and that everyone on it was going to Hue, so why was this a stop for foreigners only? Sadly I was alone now, and nobody spoke any English, and - this is the worst part - I looked around at the locals and said 'Hue?', pointing downwards to indicate 'here', and I got a succession of shifty nods and half-hearted smiles. By this time the driver had already grabbed my bag and was marching to the door. Needless to say, when I joined the Japanese couple outside, there were shifty-looking guys with motorbikes telling us 'we take you rest of way to Hue, twenty dollar' (my whole bus ticket had only been $19); and when I took it on myself to walk a few hundred yards back along the road, I found a sign stating 'Hue 17km'. Could have been worse, I suppose. But it was obvious what the deal was: bus driver abandons foreigners to motorbike gang, bus driver gets cut of the 20 dollars each they have no choice but to pay.
I walked back to where we'd been dropped off, and the Japanese couple (all politeness and excessive wealth) paid their 20 dollars each without demur. Well, I thought, f*ck that. I walked off again, and the chief motorbike guy trundled after me on his moped. 'I take you Hue. Twenty dollar. No bus here, no hotel'. He was right - there wasn't even an internet cafe or a shop - and he wore an expression of intense self-satisfaction, in the sure and certain knowledge that he was getting his twenty dollars either way.
Had we been in temperate climes, I would gladly have walked that 17km, backpack and all, just to prove a point. Only four hours' hike at most. But it's 32 degrees C here (I just checked on the BBC website). So I walked away from the motorbike gang, with them laughing at me and following at a distance all the while, and flagged down a random passing moped who agreed to take me into Hue; he didn't speak any English, but he knelt down, picked up a twig, and wrote out the numbers '100,000' in the dust. Trusting that this meant Vietnamese dong and not dollars (there are about 16,500 dong to the dollar) I readily assented, and off we went. And here I am! Fun as it was, I like to think that I will keep the moped-hitching to a minimum in my future travels.
So anyway, I got myself this very nice hotel, and then went out for a bite to eat. I got a club sandwich and a Coke and a water for less than $5. When I got back to the hotel I realised that the cute little Vietnamese servingwench had given me too much change - indeed, I'd come out of there with more money than I'd gone in with. Not wanting to join the ranks of the scamming scumbags, albeit by a sin of omission rather than commission, I was all set to go back to the restaurant and hand back a few notes. However my good intentions were not reciprocated by the club sandwich in question, which suddenly announced itself as having journeyed through my digestive system without condescending to be digested, and after a brief but unpleasant Bathroom Episode I considered all my obligations to that restaurant to be discharged in full.
This is a long one, isn't it? As the bishop said to the actress, etc. Anyway it's now 2.50pm and I'm going to give the midday heat a bit longer to disperse before I step outside again and explore Hue. Who knows where I'll go next? Who knows if I'll be able to get back into Thailand before they have another military coup or two? Who knows if Kevin Keegan is going to officially de-toy his pram once more? Tune in next time to find out!
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| Missing bus window, at the Vietnamese border the next morning |
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
Vientiane, Laos
Sunday night was a bit depressing, on account of SAFC getting hammered 3-0 at home by Man City. Bah. I watched the end of the first half in Luang Prabang, but I had no hope of watching the whole thing because Chelsea v Spurs and Aston Villa v Liverpool got in the way. Premiership football is wildly popular over here; when the locals find out you're English they always want to know if you're from 'Lipoo' or 'Manesta', or even 'Chessee'. I tell them where I'm from and they say 'Aaaahhhh...Sunneran' and I'm not sure if there's actual recognition there or if they're just being polite.
Yesterday I caught the 8am bus south to Vientiane. The total distance is only about 150 miles as the crow flies, but the crow option isn't available, for tourists at least, so I spent 11 hours on that bus. However it was comfortable and the scenery was amazing. The photo on the front page of this blog isn't one of mine but it's exactly the kind of thing I spent all of yesterday looking at. The mountains and vegetation are unlike anything I've ever seen, in both shape and colour, and it was almost like being on another planet. The road was too bendy and irregular (we spent a lot of time in first gear) for me to read, but I was content to swig water and stare out of the window. It was amusing to see how they negotiated all the potholes and mudpits - in many places the road was barely fit for pedestrians, let alone coaches. There were more than a few audible scrapes of metal against tarmac.
Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world. The people in the touristy towns like Luang Prabang are relatively comfortable - shiny new scooters are everywhere, and the Premiership replica shirts worn by the kids look genuine enough. Once the bus was out in the sticks, it was a different story; and so this became my own first encounter, albeit from behind glass, with real poverty. Real, $1-a-day, thatched-hut, subsistence-farming poverty. But the bus kept going.
We also passed a tiny little wooden hut, with an open face to the road, in which there sat a young guy wearing a polo shirt and shorts and holding an AK47. No uniform, no cap, no badge: just an AK47. But the bus kept going.
Anyway, it was 7pm and dark when we got to Vientiane, one of the world's smallest capital cities (only half a million people and not a skyscraper in sight). I got another cheap and cheerful hotel room and then went out for a beer & a bite with Jeff (American diving instructor, living expat in Thailand) and Dita (German university lecturer trekking through South American and Asia).
Today I'm going to wander round Vientiane and then sort out my next destination. Sadly I'm still sweating like a fat lass in a latex leotard, even though I haven't worn anything more than T-shirt and shorts in nearly a month, and I haven't slept under sheets in a week. But at least the Beerlao is nice!
Yesterday I caught the 8am bus south to Vientiane. The total distance is only about 150 miles as the crow flies, but the crow option isn't available, for tourists at least, so I spent 11 hours on that bus. However it was comfortable and the scenery was amazing. The photo on the front page of this blog isn't one of mine but it's exactly the kind of thing I spent all of yesterday looking at. The mountains and vegetation are unlike anything I've ever seen, in both shape and colour, and it was almost like being on another planet. The road was too bendy and irregular (we spent a lot of time in first gear) for me to read, but I was content to swig water and stare out of the window. It was amusing to see how they negotiated all the potholes and mudpits - in many places the road was barely fit for pedestrians, let alone coaches. There were more than a few audible scrapes of metal against tarmac.
Laos is one of the poorest countries in the world. The people in the touristy towns like Luang Prabang are relatively comfortable - shiny new scooters are everywhere, and the Premiership replica shirts worn by the kids look genuine enough. Once the bus was out in the sticks, it was a different story; and so this became my own first encounter, albeit from behind glass, with real poverty. Real, $1-a-day, thatched-hut, subsistence-farming poverty. But the bus kept going.
We also passed a tiny little wooden hut, with an open face to the road, in which there sat a young guy wearing a polo shirt and shorts and holding an AK47. No uniform, no cap, no badge: just an AK47. But the bus kept going.
Anyway, it was 7pm and dark when we got to Vientiane, one of the world's smallest capital cities (only half a million people and not a skyscraper in sight). I got another cheap and cheerful hotel room and then went out for a beer & a bite with Jeff (American diving instructor, living expat in Thailand) and Dita (German university lecturer trekking through South American and Asia).
Today I'm going to wander round Vientiane and then sort out my next destination. Sadly I'm still sweating like a fat lass in a latex leotard, even though I haven't worn anything more than T-shirt and shorts in nearly a month, and I haven't slept under sheets in a week. But at least the Beerlao is nice!
Saturday, 30 August 2008
Luang Prabang, Laos
I stayed in my Chang Mai hostel for one night - the next morning I caught a tuk-tuk into town, a bus to Chiang Rai, another bus to Chiang Khong, a tuk-tuk to the riverside (the Mekong river serving as the border between Thailand and Laos), a boat across the river to Huay Xai, and after various exchanges of paperwork and US dollars I had my Laos visa. Stayed Thursday night in a very nice little hotel for $6. My room had a fan rather than air-conditioning: I tried a little experiment, on going to bed, in that I tried just sleeping naturally without even the fan. It lasted about fifteen seconds and then the darkness and humidity combined to such an extent that I physically couldn't lie there any more. I'm not especially claustrophobic, but it felt like being under a warm, damp blanket. I turned the fan back on and that just about made it tolerable.
Yesterday I got on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. It's a two-day journey; the boat holds about fifty people and trundles along at something like 10 miles per hour. It stopped in Pakbeng last night, where I got another cheap & charming hotel ($4), and a fabulous curry ($2), and a big bottle of beer ($1). Beerlao, it's called, and it's pretty nice; which is just as well, since it's just about the only alcoholic beverage on sale in this country. Although they do sell whiskey too, or at least I hope and pray that's what the menu was referring to with its use of the words 'Big Black Johnny'. Another feverish fan-assisted sleep last night, and then the second half of the boat journey today, and here I am in Luang Prabang. Fingers crossed I can find somewhere to watch all the footy at 9pm tonight! And fingers even more tightly crossed I can find somewhere to watch Sunderland play tomorrow.
The boat journey itself was pleasant enough. The Mekong is a very muddy brown colour, with quite a strong current, some waves, and the occasional languid whirlpool. I read my various books, talked to a few people, and spent quite a while just leaning over the side of the boat and watching the jungle go by. Needless to say, I couldn't for the life of me get 'The End' by the Doors out of my head. I was on the left hand side of the boat both days and so now there is a distinct disparity of skin colour between my two arms, which looks rather silly.
Speaking of silliness, on the boat today a polite Frenchman (potential oxymoron there) asked me if my book was 'about ze magician'. The book in question was 'David Copperfield'. Well, you would assume he was joking, but he looked quite serious, so I kept a straight face and explained that the book was written in 1850. And that was the end of that conversation.
I've finally managed to take some more photos, so have a look if you're interested.
Yesterday I got on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. It's a two-day journey; the boat holds about fifty people and trundles along at something like 10 miles per hour. It stopped in Pakbeng last night, where I got another cheap & charming hotel ($4), and a fabulous curry ($2), and a big bottle of beer ($1). Beerlao, it's called, and it's pretty nice; which is just as well, since it's just about the only alcoholic beverage on sale in this country. Although they do sell whiskey too, or at least I hope and pray that's what the menu was referring to with its use of the words 'Big Black Johnny'. Another feverish fan-assisted sleep last night, and then the second half of the boat journey today, and here I am in Luang Prabang. Fingers crossed I can find somewhere to watch all the footy at 9pm tonight! And fingers even more tightly crossed I can find somewhere to watch Sunderland play tomorrow.
The boat journey itself was pleasant enough. The Mekong is a very muddy brown colour, with quite a strong current, some waves, and the occasional languid whirlpool. I read my various books, talked to a few people, and spent quite a while just leaning over the side of the boat and watching the jungle go by. Needless to say, I couldn't for the life of me get 'The End' by the Doors out of my head. I was on the left hand side of the boat both days and so now there is a distinct disparity of skin colour between my two arms, which looks rather silly.
Speaking of silliness, on the boat today a polite Frenchman (potential oxymoron there) asked me if my book was 'about ze magician'. The book in question was 'David Copperfield'. Well, you would assume he was joking, but he looked quite serious, so I kept a straight face and explained that the book was written in 1850. And that was the end of that conversation.
I've finally managed to take some more photos, so have a look if you're interested.
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| Mekong riverboat |
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| Mekong riverboat |
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| Pakbeng - view from breakfast table |
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| Huay Xai village |
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| View from Huay Xai hotel (distant mountains invisible due to poor photography skills) |
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Some of you may have noticed in the news that there have been uprisings and insurrections and all manner of general manifestations of bolshie behaviour going on in Bangkok. Is another military coup in the offing? Or are the proletariat going to seize the levers of power for themselves? Observing these events with my characteristic mix of fearlessness and impetuosity, I immediately booked myself a bus ticket out of Bangkok to Chiang Mai, some 440 miles to the north.
All joking aside, I was already intending to leave Bangkok anyway. Slight change of plan though - I was going to head east and anti-clockwise, but after drunkenly consulting with a few people I have instead opted for going north and clockwise. See a map of SE Asia for clarification if required. With my recent unfortunate scam episode in mind (see a couple of entries ago) I have decided to avoid all 'package' deals and just buy single tickets and accommodation as required. That's the best way to travel: just improvising it all as you go along, armed only with hard currency and one's own initiative.*
Another overnight bus up here - about 10 hours, much shorter than the last two - and I am now safely ensconsed in the Spicy Thai hostel in Chiang Mai. Bed, breakfast and free internet for £4 a night. Mint. Overall Chiang Mai is much smaller, cheaper and generally more pleasant than Bangkok. It's still unspeakably hot though, and I can't avoid breaking sweat even before I'm dry from my (cold) shower.And the lass on reception is Yet Another Geordie. For f***'s sake! How many times? This particular Geordie does at least have the virtue of belonging to the 'hot female' subdivision of the species, but nonetheless, no amount of taxonomical pedantry can change the fact that I still haven't met a single Mackem on the road. Surely something's got to give.
One more thing - and not wanting to tempt fate or anything - but after 3 weeks in South East Asia I have still yet to experience any kind of gastric problems, or toilets without paper. My fingers are crossed (while hoping not to be called upon for anything else relating to this topic).
*(and a sheet of paper containing the words 'TAKE ME TO THE BRITISH EMBASSY AT ONCE OR GARY GLITTER GETS YOUR DAUGHTER'S MYSPACE PASSWORD' translated into every known Asiatic language)
All joking aside, I was already intending to leave Bangkok anyway. Slight change of plan though - I was going to head east and anti-clockwise, but after drunkenly consulting with a few people I have instead opted for going north and clockwise. See a map of SE Asia for clarification if required. With my recent unfortunate scam episode in mind (see a couple of entries ago) I have decided to avoid all 'package' deals and just buy single tickets and accommodation as required. That's the best way to travel: just improvising it all as you go along, armed only with hard currency and one's own initiative.*
Another overnight bus up here - about 10 hours, much shorter than the last two - and I am now safely ensconsed in the Spicy Thai hostel in Chiang Mai. Bed, breakfast and free internet for £4 a night. Mint. Overall Chiang Mai is much smaller, cheaper and generally more pleasant than Bangkok. It's still unspeakably hot though, and I can't avoid breaking sweat even before I'm dry from my (cold) shower.And the lass on reception is Yet Another Geordie. For f***'s sake! How many times? This particular Geordie does at least have the virtue of belonging to the 'hot female' subdivision of the species, but nonetheless, no amount of taxonomical pedantry can change the fact that I still haven't met a single Mackem on the road. Surely something's got to give.
One more thing - and not wanting to tempt fate or anything - but after 3 weeks in South East Asia I have still yet to experience any kind of gastric problems, or toilets without paper. My fingers are crossed (while hoping not to be called upon for anything else relating to this topic).
*(and a sheet of paper containing the words 'TAKE ME TO THE BRITISH EMBASSY AT ONCE OR GARY GLITTER GETS YOUR DAUGHTER'S MYSPACE PASSWORD' translated into every known Asiatic language)
Sunday, 24 August 2008
Bangkok, Thailand (still)
Yes, I'm still here. I've got all my visas & stuff sorted out but Bangkok is kind of growing on me and I don't really have any reason to hurry away. I was thinking about heading east yesterday, but I didn't want to be stuck on a TV-free bus while the footy was on, so I stayed here to watch it. And then I thought about heading east today, but on awaking I had a monster hangover (not entirely unrelated to Spurs 1 SAFC 2) so it's been put back another day.
Actually I still have a monster hangover as I write, so I think I'm going to go back to bed right now. That's all folks!
Actually I still have a monster hangover as I write, so I think I'm going to go back to bed right now. That's all folks!
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
Bangkok, Thailand (again)
Kata Beach was very nice but unfortunately I rather overdid the attempted surfing thing and so I ended up with so many bruises and aches and strains that I had to call it quits for a while. I'll try it again before too long.
On Saturday night I went back into Patong to watch the footy. Kata is nicer than Patong but I adjudged Patong to be a more lively place in which to continue my rather forlorn search for fellow Mackems, a search which still remains sadly unfulfilled even after three months on the road. Needless to say I did bump into a Geordie, a whole family of the ****s in fact. I left that bar in a hurry, and settled for watching SAFC 0 Liverpool 1 (boo hiss boo) somewhere else, with two guys from Brisbane and three lasses from Northern Ireland.
I got scammed on the way back up to Bangkok. I bought a bus ticket in Phuket town, and my journey back up started out with the same whirlwind of tuk-tuks and random vehicle changes that the journey down had ended with. There were a few things which didn't seem quite right, but I'd had the same impression on the way down and that went OK. Sadly this time my little suspicions were justified. After a carefully-executed series of transfers and ticket changes and general bewilderment, I suddenly found myself abandoned at some provincial bus station,and the ticket I needed to go on to Bangkok was no doubt even at that moment being sold to someone else. If I'd really had my wits about me then I could probably have found my way back to the last 'ticket office' and threatened to call the police etc etc. But the total cost of the fraud to me was no more than about five quid. And they did at least have the decency to abandon me at the actual bus station. So I just bought another ticket, and got to Bangkok OK in the end.
Right now - and loth as I am to abandon my blog habit of not dropping too many clues as to my next destination - my passport is in the custody of the Vietnamese Embassy while they sort out my visa. The Embassy itself is a tremendous monument to 21st-century communism: dingy as hell, and none of the pens work. But the wretched failure of their outdated economic dogmas does at least mean that things will be even cheaper for me there than they are here. In the meantime I'm back in Bangkok, still sweating like Salman Rushdie in a Saudi sauna, and flaking slightly from sunburn on my newly-exposed scalp. But the beer is cheap and the company is good. Hope you're all having as good a time there as I am here.
On Saturday night I went back into Patong to watch the footy. Kata is nicer than Patong but I adjudged Patong to be a more lively place in which to continue my rather forlorn search for fellow Mackems, a search which still remains sadly unfulfilled even after three months on the road. Needless to say I did bump into a Geordie, a whole family of the ****s in fact. I left that bar in a hurry, and settled for watching SAFC 0 Liverpool 1 (boo hiss boo) somewhere else, with two guys from Brisbane and three lasses from Northern Ireland.
I got scammed on the way back up to Bangkok. I bought a bus ticket in Phuket town, and my journey back up started out with the same whirlwind of tuk-tuks and random vehicle changes that the journey down had ended with. There were a few things which didn't seem quite right, but I'd had the same impression on the way down and that went OK. Sadly this time my little suspicions were justified. After a carefully-executed series of transfers and ticket changes and general bewilderment, I suddenly found myself abandoned at some provincial bus station,and the ticket I needed to go on to Bangkok was no doubt even at that moment being sold to someone else. If I'd really had my wits about me then I could probably have found my way back to the last 'ticket office' and threatened to call the police etc etc. But the total cost of the fraud to me was no more than about five quid. And they did at least have the decency to abandon me at the actual bus station. So I just bought another ticket, and got to Bangkok OK in the end.
Right now - and loth as I am to abandon my blog habit of not dropping too many clues as to my next destination - my passport is in the custody of the Vietnamese Embassy while they sort out my visa. The Embassy itself is a tremendous monument to 21st-century communism: dingy as hell, and none of the pens work. But the wretched failure of their outdated economic dogmas does at least mean that things will be even cheaper for me there than they are here. In the meantime I'm back in Bangkok, still sweating like Salman Rushdie in a Saudi sauna, and flaking slightly from sunburn on my newly-exposed scalp. But the beer is cheap and the company is good. Hope you're all having as good a time there as I am here.
Thursday, 14 August 2008
Kata Beach, Phuket, Thailand
After a few days in Bangkok I decided it was time to move on, so I got a bus ticket to Phuket. I had romantic imaginings of bumping around in a 30-year-old camper van with no roof or suspension, but in fact this was a quite plush air-conditioned coach with DVDs for our viewing pleasure. Or at least it was for the first 12 hours or so; after that, those of us who were Phuket-bound transferred to a people carrier thing and that took about another 6 hours. All in all it wasn't too traumatic, as there were food stops along the way, but I think I'll probably fly back.
I ended up in Patong Beach, which immediately struck me as a Thai version of Benidorm. It's a nice beach and obviously it was sunny and hot, but it was massively overcrowded and full of fat sunburned English people (like me) and not really what I'd been aiming for. I suppose I should have known that Phuket was more of a touristy than a backpackery place, but it was still a disappointment.
In fact I found myself having one of those moments of doubt - why have I travelled all this way just to sit in a pub with obnoxious fellow Brits, with noise everywhere and me sweating like a Jewish transvestite in a mosque mensroom? Why am I here? It almost made me feel like packing up and going home, until I remembered that 'why am I here?' is a question I had been asking myself everyday at work for the past umpteen years and was the reason why I came out here in the first place. Anyway, one of the great things about backpacking as opposed to package holidaying is that you can up sticks and move on any time you feel like it. So I did. I got a tuk-tuk to Kata Beach, just to the south, and lo and behold - it was like being in a different world, like going from Benidorm to Monaco.
I've spent all of today learning to surf. I got the hang of the theory pretty quickly, andI did stand up on the board on several consecutive occasions, but my instructor had been working me pretty hard and I hadn't realised just how much physical exertion is involved, especially in the arms (for paddling and for hauling oneself up into a standing position), and before the day was half over my arms were starting to wobble in the way they do when you try to do one press-up too many. But I stayed out in the water, just getting used to the board and gauging the waves and generally soaking up the sun.
So anyway, after a hard day's surfing, it's now off for a nice Thai curry (about £2) and a beer (£1) and then back to my deliciously comfy hotel room (£8). Tomorrow, hopefully I will have regained the use of my arms and will go back down to the beach for a bit more surfing. I will also take some pictures.
Football on Saturday!!!!!
I ended up in Patong Beach, which immediately struck me as a Thai version of Benidorm. It's a nice beach and obviously it was sunny and hot, but it was massively overcrowded and full of fat sunburned English people (like me) and not really what I'd been aiming for. I suppose I should have known that Phuket was more of a touristy than a backpackery place, but it was still a disappointment.
In fact I found myself having one of those moments of doubt - why have I travelled all this way just to sit in a pub with obnoxious fellow Brits, with noise everywhere and me sweating like a Jewish transvestite in a mosque mensroom? Why am I here? It almost made me feel like packing up and going home, until I remembered that 'why am I here?' is a question I had been asking myself everyday at work for the past umpteen years and was the reason why I came out here in the first place. Anyway, one of the great things about backpacking as opposed to package holidaying is that you can up sticks and move on any time you feel like it. So I did. I got a tuk-tuk to Kata Beach, just to the south, and lo and behold - it was like being in a different world, like going from Benidorm to Monaco.
I've spent all of today learning to surf. I got the hang of the theory pretty quickly, andI did stand up on the board on several consecutive occasions, but my instructor had been working me pretty hard and I hadn't realised just how much physical exertion is involved, especially in the arms (for paddling and for hauling oneself up into a standing position), and before the day was half over my arms were starting to wobble in the way they do when you try to do one press-up too many. But I stayed out in the water, just getting used to the board and gauging the waves and generally soaking up the sun.
So anyway, after a hard day's surfing, it's now off for a nice Thai curry (about £2) and a beer (£1) and then back to my deliciously comfy hotel room (£8). Tomorrow, hopefully I will have regained the use of my arms and will go back down to the beach for a bit more surfing. I will also take some pictures.
Football on Saturday!!!!!
Monday, 11 August 2008
Bangkok, Thailand (continued)
Bangkok is great. All the women seem to want to have sex with me! Admittedly they also seem to expect payment in return, but I find it flattering nonetheless. Obviously there is always the problem of trying to suss out exactly who's a woman and who isn't. When out walking, by day or by night, I've taken to playing a little game where I assess the probable ladyboy-likelihood of every female-looking Thai person I pass. 100%...50%...95%...0.00001% (maybe I'm paranoid but somehow I can never quite get it down to zero. I hope this neurosis doesn't follow me back to Blighty and extend to Western women).
I feel a lot more settled here now. I've sussed out the currency, who to avoid and who to ignore, how to use the Skytrain and river boats, etc etc. I've used the taxis quite a bit, and I did have one ride in a 'tuk-tuk', just for the experience. To my shame I've still yet to bother learning any of the language, but I find one never fails with the tried-and-tested method of simply using slower and louder English while gesticulating mysteriously.
I've sampled a bit of street food. It started off badly when I bought something which looked like a sausage...well, it was a sausage, but God only knows what was inside. I don't think it was pork or beef. It might have been some combination of fish and vegetables. I threw it away. But I then got a couple of kebabs, and then a rice cake, and they were OK. My digestive system is as yet untroubled. The 7/11 next to the hostel does toasted sarnies for 22 baht (34p), and bottles of water are only 7 baht (11p), which is handy cos I've gotten through dozens as you might expect.
Most of the last two evenings I've spent checking out the night markets, Suan Lum and Patpong, which creak under seemingly endless pirate DVDs and dodgy 'massage' parlours but are nonetheless extremely safe and friendly places. After Suan Lum, I walked round the corner to check out the kick boxing stadium, but the 'tourist' price was something like 1500 baht (23 quid). I have no interest in paying over the odds to sit in a crowd and watch untalented sportsmen slug it out. I get enough of that at home, after all.
Incidentally, for those who don't already know, your correspondent has now gone from 'going bald' to '100% bald'. Yes, I got myself skinned in Melbourne. But the public announcement had to wait until I had acquired post facto parental approval for this decision, and I delayed the seeking of said parental approval so as not to risk spoiling a parental birthday! All is well now though.
I feel a lot more settled here now. I've sussed out the currency, who to avoid and who to ignore, how to use the Skytrain and river boats, etc etc. I've used the taxis quite a bit, and I did have one ride in a 'tuk-tuk', just for the experience. To my shame I've still yet to bother learning any of the language, but I find one never fails with the tried-and-tested method of simply using slower and louder English while gesticulating mysteriously.
I've sampled a bit of street food. It started off badly when I bought something which looked like a sausage...well, it was a sausage, but God only knows what was inside. I don't think it was pork or beef. It might have been some combination of fish and vegetables. I threw it away. But I then got a couple of kebabs, and then a rice cake, and they were OK. My digestive system is as yet untroubled. The 7/11 next to the hostel does toasted sarnies for 22 baht (34p), and bottles of water are only 7 baht (11p), which is handy cos I've gotten through dozens as you might expect.
Most of the last two evenings I've spent checking out the night markets, Suan Lum and Patpong, which creak under seemingly endless pirate DVDs and dodgy 'massage' parlours but are nonetheless extremely safe and friendly places. After Suan Lum, I walked round the corner to check out the kick boxing stadium, but the 'tourist' price was something like 1500 baht (23 quid). I have no interest in paying over the odds to sit in a crowd and watch untalented sportsmen slug it out. I get enough of that at home, after all.
Incidentally, for those who don't already know, your correspondent has now gone from 'going bald' to '100% bald'. Yes, I got myself skinned in Melbourne. But the public announcement had to wait until I had acquired post facto parental approval for this decision, and I delayed the seeking of said parental approval so as not to risk spoiling a parental birthday! All is well now though.
Saturday, 9 August 2008
Bangkok, Thailand
This is where it starts to get interesting!
On my flight from Melbourne to Bangkok, about 9 and a half hours, the guy next to me had excessively loud music on his headphones throughout the whole of the flight, and not only that but he also felt compelled to hum along, loudly and in falsetto, to every single song. Grrr. I hate people. In my own inimitable fashion, I had completely failed to make any kind of real preparation for Thailand, other than having the address of my hostel scrawled on the back of a business card. Fortunately my taxi driver a) knew how to find the address, b) spoke decent English, and c) was more or less legit.
I got to the hostel just after most of the guests had gone out for the night, which was a pity, but then I wasn't feeling too energetic after my long flight. So I just settled for going into the 7/11 next door and having the inevitable ten minutes of marvelling at how cheap everything was. When the partygoers came back, I learned that they'd been viewing a spectacle which in the interests of taste & discretion I will refer to, synonymically, as 'feline table tennis'. Ahem.
Yesterday morning I got up and went off on my usual big long city-exploring walk. The weather was totally overcast, stiflingly hot and extremely humid. (I have taken scissors to my jeans and casual trousers, they're cut-offs now, although my tracky bottoms remain intact). Everywhere I went, I was besieged by young guys trying to sell me rides in tuk-tuks (motorised rickshaws), or pirate DVDs, or women, or whatever else. Notwithstanding the lack of preparation mentioned above, I am streetwise enough to know that the best response is just a smile and 'no thank you'. Also whenever they ask 'first time Thailand?' I reply 'no, here many times' and they visibly lose interest right away.
It was quite interesting just to wander round the streets and marvel at how crowded and ramshackle everything is. I thought crossing the street in New York was hazardous but this is just a whole new level altogether. I've been reading a lot of Dickens recently and it's hard not to draw parallels between 19th-century London and places like Bangkok today - the dirt, the seediness, the poverty, but also the humanity and vibrancy that comes with it. So on the one hand you have malnourished beggars, pimps and prostitutes, but then you also have my taxi driver from the airport who told me about how he works extra long days because his wife is too ill to work and he is paying his daughter's university fees, for which he gets no government help. Give the Thais 150 years, perhaps less, and no doubt they'll end up with a coddled & sterile welfare state like ours.
Came back to the hostel, had a shower and spent the afternoon relaxing under the aircon. Later on we all watched the Olympic ceremony and then went out on the lash. (Most of the people in the hostel are Canadians or Americans; the rest are mainly Brits and Aussies, with a few miscellaneous Europeans making up the balance). We went to a couple of strip bars, which as you might expect were full of leering old Western men and tiny little miserable-looking Thai girls. Not really my idea of fun. Fortunately we soon pitched up at a regular nightclub and there we stayed until it was hometime.
I don't think I'll stay in Bangkok too long. I'm going to check out the bus schedules and see what's available.
On my flight from Melbourne to Bangkok, about 9 and a half hours, the guy next to me had excessively loud music on his headphones throughout the whole of the flight, and not only that but he also felt compelled to hum along, loudly and in falsetto, to every single song. Grrr. I hate people. In my own inimitable fashion, I had completely failed to make any kind of real preparation for Thailand, other than having the address of my hostel scrawled on the back of a business card. Fortunately my taxi driver a) knew how to find the address, b) spoke decent English, and c) was more or less legit.
I got to the hostel just after most of the guests had gone out for the night, which was a pity, but then I wasn't feeling too energetic after my long flight. So I just settled for going into the 7/11 next door and having the inevitable ten minutes of marvelling at how cheap everything was. When the partygoers came back, I learned that they'd been viewing a spectacle which in the interests of taste & discretion I will refer to, synonymically, as 'feline table tennis'. Ahem.
Yesterday morning I got up and went off on my usual big long city-exploring walk. The weather was totally overcast, stiflingly hot and extremely humid. (I have taken scissors to my jeans and casual trousers, they're cut-offs now, although my tracky bottoms remain intact). Everywhere I went, I was besieged by young guys trying to sell me rides in tuk-tuks (motorised rickshaws), or pirate DVDs, or women, or whatever else. Notwithstanding the lack of preparation mentioned above, I am streetwise enough to know that the best response is just a smile and 'no thank you'. Also whenever they ask 'first time Thailand?' I reply 'no, here many times' and they visibly lose interest right away.
It was quite interesting just to wander round the streets and marvel at how crowded and ramshackle everything is. I thought crossing the street in New York was hazardous but this is just a whole new level altogether. I've been reading a lot of Dickens recently and it's hard not to draw parallels between 19th-century London and places like Bangkok today - the dirt, the seediness, the poverty, but also the humanity and vibrancy that comes with it. So on the one hand you have malnourished beggars, pimps and prostitutes, but then you also have my taxi driver from the airport who told me about how he works extra long days because his wife is too ill to work and he is paying his daughter's university fees, for which he gets no government help. Give the Thais 150 years, perhaps less, and no doubt they'll end up with a coddled & sterile welfare state like ours.
Came back to the hostel, had a shower and spent the afternoon relaxing under the aircon. Later on we all watched the Olympic ceremony and then went out on the lash. (Most of the people in the hostel are Canadians or Americans; the rest are mainly Brits and Aussies, with a few miscellaneous Europeans making up the balance). We went to a couple of strip bars, which as you might expect were full of leering old Western men and tiny little miserable-looking Thai girls. Not really my idea of fun. Fortunately we soon pitched up at a regular nightclub and there we stayed until it was hometime.
I don't think I'll stay in Bangkok too long. I'm going to check out the bus schedules and see what's available.
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Melbourne, Australia (continued)
Written at 1.47am Melbourne time. Sarah & Sean have gone to bed - they were at work today and they'll be at work again tomorrow. I personally haven't done any kind of work in over three months, and I'm not tired; so I have decided to occupy my insomnia by writing another blog entry, quietly, on the laptop.
Monday was my birthday, and Sarah & I toured the delights of Melbourne to commemorate it. We went up to the Skydeck in the Eureka tower, 88 floors high, and then visited the MCG. If you've never heard of the MCG then never mind, but any cricket buffs amongst my readers will no doubt nod approvingly. The sports museum in the stadium ground was very impressive. On Monday night me and my three Melbourne buddies went out for a curry to celebrate my being even more old & decrepit than previously. 32 to be precise. It was my first curry since I've been travelling, and frankly it's been far too long. But this particular curry was worth the wait. The restaurant was called Gaylord for some reason. Good recommendation from John there. And the same goes for the bars we visited afterwards. I can easily see how Melbourne is an attractive destination for those who are contemplating life away from the shores of Blighty...but I'm not.
Tuesday and Wednesday I did more general relaxing and wandering, eating and drinking, etc etc. On Tuesday night I had another bout of tennis with Sean: after being heroically but tragically defeated 6-1 6-2 last time, I revised my tactics and redoubled my efforts, and was duly rewarded by only getting beat 6-1 6-3 this time. That put Sean in his place good & proper.
Otherwise, I can't say I've done anything too constructive or energetic or adventurous. Hey, I'm on holiday. But the hour is soon to come when such complacency will be behind me...as will the English-speaking world as a whole.
Monday was my birthday, and Sarah & I toured the delights of Melbourne to commemorate it. We went up to the Skydeck in the Eureka tower, 88 floors high, and then visited the MCG. If you've never heard of the MCG then never mind, but any cricket buffs amongst my readers will no doubt nod approvingly. The sports museum in the stadium ground was very impressive. On Monday night me and my three Melbourne buddies went out for a curry to celebrate my being even more old & decrepit than previously. 32 to be precise. It was my first curry since I've been travelling, and frankly it's been far too long. But this particular curry was worth the wait. The restaurant was called Gaylord for some reason. Good recommendation from John there. And the same goes for the bars we visited afterwards. I can easily see how Melbourne is an attractive destination for those who are contemplating life away from the shores of Blighty...but I'm not.
Tuesday and Wednesday I did more general relaxing and wandering, eating and drinking, etc etc. On Tuesday night I had another bout of tennis with Sean: after being heroically but tragically defeated 6-1 6-2 last time, I revised my tactics and redoubled my efforts, and was duly rewarded by only getting beat 6-1 6-3 this time. That put Sean in his place good & proper.
Otherwise, I can't say I've done anything too constructive or energetic or adventurous. Hey, I'm on holiday. But the hour is soon to come when such complacency will be behind me...as will the English-speaking world as a whole.
Sunday, 3 August 2008
Melbourne, Australia
The slightly misanthropic tone of my last blog entry is now replaced by a warm & fuzzy feeling of goodwill towards all of humanity. I am now in Melbourne and have been touring the delights of this most beautiful city with my good old friends (and emigrants to Australia) Sarah, Sean & John. I'm sleeping on Sarah & Sean's very nice L-shaped sofa, which is a very positive change from hostel dorms, and indeed on Friday I had my first bath in literally about four months. (Don't get me wrong, I've been having showers in the meantime).
Got a plane from Sydney to Melbourne on Thursday, and then a shuttle bus into central Melbourne. Sarah met me at Southern Cross station and I dropped my bags off at their place and then we went back into town and she went back to work and I had a wander around town. On Friday night we went out for a few jars in Prahran. It turned into quite a late night so Saturday took a while to start, but when it finally did me & Sean toddled off out into the city and met John for a few beers. (Sarah was comatose in bed and didn't get up until 5pm). The first bar we went to, we'd barely sat down before we were joined by one then two and then three local weirdos, all regaling us with their life stories and generally annoying us. I guess that's why John never drinks there! Live and learn. We moved on and wound up in a beer garden on Fitzroy Street, where the three of us spent all afternoon sharing jugs of beer and big piles of crisps and generally relaxing.
When Sarah eventually levered her lazy ass out of bed (hi Sarah!) we went back into town and tried to find a decent curry house but it was in vain, so we settled for an Italian instead and then came back here to watch 'Death Proof', Quentin Tarantino's most recent movie, and frankly it was complete and utter toss. However that in no way detracted from the quality of the day as a whole.
Today (Sunday) was another late start. Me and Sean went out to play tennis, and he caned me 6-1 6-2, and then we went out to watch some Aussie Rules Football, St Kilda vs Port Adelaide at the Telstra dome. The attendance was 22,878 and the score was 101-93. Before the game, I was already mentally preparing a blog entry which fulminated and polemicised about how Aussie Rules was the naffest sport I'd ever seen, worse even than baseball (see previous entry from Chicago), but in the end I must admit that it was watchable enough. I wouldn't go as far as John and get a season ticket, but I did enjoy myself.
As I write, Sarah is doing a fine job of cooking chilli & rice, and then we're going to watch a DVD, and generally enjoy lots of home comforts, of which I have been cruelly deprived over the past couple of months. I must take this opportunity to broadcast to the world, or at least the 0.000000001% of it which reads my blog, how appreciative I am to Sarah and Sean for their kind hospitality. Muchos obligados compadres, etc.
I'm 32 tomorrow you know!
Got a plane from Sydney to Melbourne on Thursday, and then a shuttle bus into central Melbourne. Sarah met me at Southern Cross station and I dropped my bags off at their place and then we went back into town and she went back to work and I had a wander around town. On Friday night we went out for a few jars in Prahran. It turned into quite a late night so Saturday took a while to start, but when it finally did me & Sean toddled off out into the city and met John for a few beers. (Sarah was comatose in bed and didn't get up until 5pm). The first bar we went to, we'd barely sat down before we were joined by one then two and then three local weirdos, all regaling us with their life stories and generally annoying us. I guess that's why John never drinks there! Live and learn. We moved on and wound up in a beer garden on Fitzroy Street, where the three of us spent all afternoon sharing jugs of beer and big piles of crisps and generally relaxing.
When Sarah eventually levered her lazy ass out of bed (hi Sarah!) we went back into town and tried to find a decent curry house but it was in vain, so we settled for an Italian instead and then came back here to watch 'Death Proof', Quentin Tarantino's most recent movie, and frankly it was complete and utter toss. However that in no way detracted from the quality of the day as a whole.
Today (Sunday) was another late start. Me and Sean went out to play tennis, and he caned me 6-1 6-2, and then we went out to watch some Aussie Rules Football, St Kilda vs Port Adelaide at the Telstra dome. The attendance was 22,878 and the score was 101-93. Before the game, I was already mentally preparing a blog entry which fulminated and polemicised about how Aussie Rules was the naffest sport I'd ever seen, worse even than baseball (see previous entry from Chicago), but in the end I must admit that it was watchable enough. I wouldn't go as far as John and get a season ticket, but I did enjoy myself.
As I write, Sarah is doing a fine job of cooking chilli & rice, and then we're going to watch a DVD, and generally enjoy lots of home comforts, of which I have been cruelly deprived over the past couple of months. I must take this opportunity to broadcast to the world, or at least the 0.000000001% of it which reads my blog, how appreciative I am to Sarah and Sean for their kind hospitality. Muchos obligados compadres, etc.
I'm 32 tomorrow you know!
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Sydney, Australia (continued)
Weather here continues to be very changeable. I caught a ferry to Manly on Monday morning and the weather was nice - fortunately I got back to the hostel just before it turned to torrential downpours. As well as the ferry there is a fast boat called the 'Manly Jetcat', which for some reason strikes me as a really good potential name for a band.
I have been keeping a fairly low profile in this hostel. Throughout America, and to a lesser extent New Zealand, there was a good mix of people & ages & nationalities everywhere I went. But in Sydney, or at least in this particular part of it (King's Cross), it seems like there are only dumb & shallow gap year students intent on having all-night conversations made up solely of the words 'ohmygod', 'like' and 'Facebook'. Yawn. And admittedly just about all of these annoying young things are English.
On a more positive note...last night (Tuesday) I went to the opera - Verdi's 'Otello'. No prizes for guessing the venue. I didn't know they had standing room at opera houses, but evidently they do, and that's how I got in for a piffling AU$40 (20 quid). Three hours is perhaps a bit long to stand, but then it's not much longer than a footy match with extra time and penalties, and I'd never object to standing all the way through that. And in the event I managed to blag my way into an empty seat at the interval. Not the greatest opera ever written, but it was entertaining enough. Surprisingly, this particular Othello was very much a white Othello (I think the boot-polish option is frowned upon these days). It's a good job Militant Black Guy wasn't there.
Right now I'm keeping a close eye on the news as my travel plans for South East Asia could be adversely affected if Thailand and Cambodia do end up going to war with each other. Come on fellas, sort it out. Scissors paper stone or something.
I have been keeping a fairly low profile in this hostel. Throughout America, and to a lesser extent New Zealand, there was a good mix of people & ages & nationalities everywhere I went. But in Sydney, or at least in this particular part of it (King's Cross), it seems like there are only dumb & shallow gap year students intent on having all-night conversations made up solely of the words 'ohmygod', 'like' and 'Facebook'. Yawn. And admittedly just about all of these annoying young things are English.
On a more positive note...last night (Tuesday) I went to the opera - Verdi's 'Otello'. No prizes for guessing the venue. I didn't know they had standing room at opera houses, but evidently they do, and that's how I got in for a piffling AU$40 (20 quid). Three hours is perhaps a bit long to stand, but then it's not much longer than a footy match with extra time and penalties, and I'd never object to standing all the way through that. And in the event I managed to blag my way into an empty seat at the interval. Not the greatest opera ever written, but it was entertaining enough. Surprisingly, this particular Othello was very much a white Othello (I think the boot-polish option is frowned upon these days). It's a good job Militant Black Guy wasn't there.
Right now I'm keeping a close eye on the news as my travel plans for South East Asia could be adversely affected if Thailand and Cambodia do end up going to war with each other. Come on fellas, sort it out. Scissors paper stone or something.
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| Bondi Beach (apparently this is 'winter') |
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| Bizarrely well-maintained camper van |
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Sydney, Australia
Strewth! Yes, the hire car has gone back (with more than 3000km on the clock, and that's just on the South Island), the sheep have been bidden emotional farewells, and I have left New Zealand far behind. I had blithely assumed that the flight from Christchurch to Sydney was just a short hop: it was only 3 hours or so, but at 1319 miles it's still longer than (say) London to St Petersburg.
Contrary to my prior assumptions, I got no real hassle from the Aussie immigration people. The only reason that they said anything to me at all was that I'd ticked the 'have visited rural areas in NZ' box on my customs form and so they asked to see the soles of my shoes as a result. Also the sniffer dog lingered around my bag, but I explained that there had been a ham & egg sandwich in there earlier, and they left it at that.
Sometimes I'm amazed that people are still reading this shite.
Anyway! Sydney...It absolutely pissed down with rain for the whole of my first night and day here, but I kept myself occupied with my usual literary & academic pursuits. Today however the sun shone brightly, so I went out for my traditional Immensely Long Walk and saw all the sights, and perused the delights of the city centre. As can no doubt be attested to by those among my faithful readers who've been to Sydney, and I know there are a few, it's an absolutely fabulous place with plenty to do and look at.
In the Chicago subway the buskers were rapping; in Haight-Ashbury they were playing sitars; today in central Sydney there was a comely young opera singer belting out soprano arias 'a capella' (ie without any instrumental backing). She hit a few quite impressive high notes. I reckon I could have gotten a few higher ones out of her given the chance, ha ha ha. Ahem. See photos.
Next update will be Wednesday I think.
Contrary to my prior assumptions, I got no real hassle from the Aussie immigration people. The only reason that they said anything to me at all was that I'd ticked the 'have visited rural areas in NZ' box on my customs form and so they asked to see the soles of my shoes as a result. Also the sniffer dog lingered around my bag, but I explained that there had been a ham & egg sandwich in there earlier, and they left it at that.
Sometimes I'm amazed that people are still reading this shite.
Anyway! Sydney...It absolutely pissed down with rain for the whole of my first night and day here, but I kept myself occupied with my usual literary & academic pursuits. Today however the sun shone brightly, so I went out for my traditional Immensely Long Walk and saw all the sights, and perused the delights of the city centre. As can no doubt be attested to by those among my faithful readers who've been to Sydney, and I know there are a few, it's an absolutely fabulous place with plenty to do and look at.
In the Chicago subway the buskers were rapping; in Haight-Ashbury they were playing sitars; today in central Sydney there was a comely young opera singer belting out soprano arias 'a capella' (ie without any instrumental backing). She hit a few quite impressive high notes. I reckon I could have gotten a few higher ones out of her given the chance, ha ha ha. Ahem. See photos.
Next update will be Wednesday I think.
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| Sydney Tower, from the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park |
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| Hot Opera Girl |
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| Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge |
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Christchurch, New Zealand
It's now more than two months since I hopped on that flight to New York. I've never been away from home for anything like this long. But like everything else in life, you get used to it after a while.
In all my travels around New Zealand I have been assured by locals and travellers alike that Christchurch is the one place in the country which most resembles a 'European city'. If I'd known that the 'European city' in question was Middlesbrough then I might perhaps have been in less of a hurry to get here. This place is a shit tip. Even without the grey skies and drizzle, it really does resemble one of the less nice cities of northern England, except with an unwelcome added seedy side - brothels are legal, and ubiquitous, over here.
On Monday I left Dunedin and drove north to the Rock and Pillar range of hills, and had a brief hike which I had to cut short as the snow got a bit too deep further up the hill. The weather was OK enough but I just couldn't see the track beneath the snow. The photo was taken from halfway up, while I was still nervously trudging past herds of cattle which all stopped chewing as I approached, and stared at me in motionless and rather intimidating silence as I passed. (By the way, yes, my camera is working again.) I drove on for a while and spent the night in Twizel, not far from Mt Cook (tallest mountain in NZ at 12,349 feet). Yesterday the weather was a bit naff so I thought I might as well just hit the road and drive all the way to Christchurch, which, as mentioned above, I'm beginning to regret slightly. At least my hostel is decent enough. But the next blog update will bring news of a fairly substantial change of scenery.
In all my travels around New Zealand I have been assured by locals and travellers alike that Christchurch is the one place in the country which most resembles a 'European city'. If I'd known that the 'European city' in question was Middlesbrough then I might perhaps have been in less of a hurry to get here. This place is a shit tip. Even without the grey skies and drizzle, it really does resemble one of the less nice cities of northern England, except with an unwelcome added seedy side - brothels are legal, and ubiquitous, over here.
On Monday I left Dunedin and drove north to the Rock and Pillar range of hills, and had a brief hike which I had to cut short as the snow got a bit too deep further up the hill. The weather was OK enough but I just couldn't see the track beneath the snow. The photo was taken from halfway up, while I was still nervously trudging past herds of cattle which all stopped chewing as I approached, and stared at me in motionless and rather intimidating silence as I passed. (By the way, yes, my camera is working again.) I drove on for a while and spent the night in Twizel, not far from Mt Cook (tallest mountain in NZ at 12,349 feet). Yesterday the weather was a bit naff so I thought I might as well just hit the road and drive all the way to Christchurch, which, as mentioned above, I'm beginning to regret slightly. At least my hostel is decent enough. But the next blog update will bring news of a fairly substantial change of scenery.
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| View over Highway 87 from the Rock and Pillar Range |
Sunday, 20 July 2008
Dunedin, New Zealand
Apologies for the distinct slowing-down of my blog entries in recent days. In remote parts of New Zealand there aren't many internet cafes and nor is there much mobile phone reception to speak of.
When I wrote my last entry, on the 16th, I had just pitched up at the lakefront in Te Anau. The next day (Thursday 17th) I went on a walk up Mount Luxmore, which overlooks the lake from the west. The summit of Mt Luxmore is a proper mountain, ie steep and pointy and covered with snow, so I obviously wasn't going to go all the way up. But there's a hut at the 1000 metre mark where one can sit and eat one's hastily prepared cheese sandwiches and enjoy some pretty special views. By the lakefront it had been dull and overcast; climbing up through the forest it was cool and misty; at the peak I was above the clouds and the sky was blue. See photos.
On Friday I boarded a bus and headed off to Milford Sound, which was obviously always going to be one of the focal points of my trip to NZ. The bus from Te Anau to the Sound stopped several times to let us all get out and take pictures, as there's nearly as much to be seen on the way as there is when you get there. The weather at the Sound itself was OK, we could see everything, but the light wasn't great (it probably would have stopped play at Lord's) so most of my photos didn't come out so well. The ones that were passable or better have been uploaded. One of them is a bit blurry but I've included it because there's a boat near the bottom of the picture which indicates the scale of the place. It goes without saying that Milford Sound is beautiful and awe-inspiring and lots of other cliched terms like that.
Yesterday I headed out to the south coast, and then east to the Catlins, where there are sea lions and lighthouses and also a signpost marking the South Island's southernmost tip. (Sadly by this point my camera had died completely for some reason and it doesn't look likely to recover, so I don't have any more photos. Fortunately, said camera didn't cost me anything! I 'liberated' it from a former employer who will remain nameless. I will buy a new one in duty free next time I'm in an airport, which has obviously happened to me rather often of late.) Stayed the night in Owaka, a rather bleak and desolate place but a very plush hostel, and today drove up to Dunedin. Here I experienced the joys ofthe world's steepest street - Baldwin Street. If you don't believe me then look it up. Also went up the Otago Peninsula in the hope of finding penguins and sea lions and stuff, but sadly without success.Indeed New Zealand as a whole is not all that great for wildlife. The forests I've walked through have been almost eerily quiet, apart from the odd wood pigeon. My insect repellent has gone unused. Evidently there was an abundant and diverse bird population in New Zealand for many millions of years, until humans came along and brought with them cats and dogs and (especially) stoats, animals which developed a penchant for climbing trees and eating bird's eggs and thus just about wiping the poor little tweeters out. As mentioned in the previous entry, me and my hired Nissan have been making sturdy progress in finishing them off completely. Humans eh?
Hope everyone is well! Next update from me in another day or two (or three, or four...)
When I wrote my last entry, on the 16th, I had just pitched up at the lakefront in Te Anau. The next day (Thursday 17th) I went on a walk up Mount Luxmore, which overlooks the lake from the west. The summit of Mt Luxmore is a proper mountain, ie steep and pointy and covered with snow, so I obviously wasn't going to go all the way up. But there's a hut at the 1000 metre mark where one can sit and eat one's hastily prepared cheese sandwiches and enjoy some pretty special views. By the lakefront it had been dull and overcast; climbing up through the forest it was cool and misty; at the peak I was above the clouds and the sky was blue. See photos.
On Friday I boarded a bus and headed off to Milford Sound, which was obviously always going to be one of the focal points of my trip to NZ. The bus from Te Anau to the Sound stopped several times to let us all get out and take pictures, as there's nearly as much to be seen on the way as there is when you get there. The weather at the Sound itself was OK, we could see everything, but the light wasn't great (it probably would have stopped play at Lord's) so most of my photos didn't come out so well. The ones that were passable or better have been uploaded. One of them is a bit blurry but I've included it because there's a boat near the bottom of the picture which indicates the scale of the place. It goes without saying that Milford Sound is beautiful and awe-inspiring and lots of other cliched terms like that.
Yesterday I headed out to the south coast, and then east to the Catlins, where there are sea lions and lighthouses and also a signpost marking the South Island's southernmost tip. (Sadly by this point my camera had died completely for some reason and it doesn't look likely to recover, so I don't have any more photos. Fortunately, said camera didn't cost me anything! I 'liberated' it from a former employer who will remain nameless. I will buy a new one in duty free next time I'm in an airport, which has obviously happened to me rather often of late.) Stayed the night in Owaka, a rather bleak and desolate place but a very plush hostel, and today drove up to Dunedin. Here I experienced the joys ofthe world's steepest street - Baldwin Street. If you don't believe me then look it up. Also went up the Otago Peninsula in the hope of finding penguins and sea lions and stuff, but sadly without success.Indeed New Zealand as a whole is not all that great for wildlife. The forests I've walked through have been almost eerily quiet, apart from the odd wood pigeon. My insect repellent has gone unused. Evidently there was an abundant and diverse bird population in New Zealand for many millions of years, until humans came along and brought with them cats and dogs and (especially) stoats, animals which developed a penchant for climbing trees and eating bird's eggs and thus just about wiping the poor little tweeters out. As mentioned in the previous entry, me and my hired Nissan have been making sturdy progress in finishing them off completely. Humans eh?
Hope everyone is well! Next update from me in another day or two (or three, or four...)
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| Milford Sound |
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| Milford Sound |
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| Milford Sound |
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| Milford Sound |
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| Mirror Lakes, on the road to Milford Sound |
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| Clouds over Lake Te Anau |
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| More clouds over Lake Te Anau |
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Te Anau, New Zealand
The birds here are pretty slow-witted. They hardly see you coming, and then before they know it, they're under you. Sadly it's birds of the feathered variety I'm talking about. I think I've accidentally but brutally killed at least three so far on the deserted rural roads of New Zealand. I try not to, but obviously I'm not about to make a self-endangering swerve when I'm negotiating tricky mountain passes and the nearest hospital/towtruck is hundreds of miles away. Sorry Tweety.
Another gripe I have about New Zealand is the complete absence of any kind of actual literature in the bookshops. I went through about six different bookshops in three different towns and couldn't find anything worth reading at all. You can get the latest Harry Potter; you can get 'How To Get Your Spirit In Touch With Princess Di'; you can get the memoirs of Shayne Sploonaroonga who kept wicket for West Auckland B in the early 70s; but God forbid you might want to read something serious. I hate to judge (cough splutter) because everyone I've met so far in NZ has been friendly enough.
Anyway, gripes over. After writing the previous entry in Kaikoura on Friday morning, I drove up to Picton, and it was very nice there but the heavens opened and I had to stay there for two nights just waiting for the weather to clear. I don't mind a bit of wind and rain, but when the visibility is down to ten metres or whatever then there isn't really much point in leaving the hostel, apart from going to the pub. I'm in no hurry anyway. After Picton I drove west along the North Coast to Nelson, and then south-west inland across to Greymouth, where I stayed two nights. The hostel there was extremely well-appointed and indeed rather eerie...all carved African statues and incense and soft music everywhere.
On Monday I climbed Mt Te Kinga, a modest scramble of 4,000 feet or so, and yesterday I spent the whole day driving down from Greymouth to Cromwell. Cromwell wasn't my destination of choice, but Wanaka and Queenstown were both absolutely jam-packed as it's ski season in that part of the world.
I did have a wander through Queenstown this morning, and finally found a bookshop which could sell me something worth reading ('Bleak House'). I also found a record shop which sold cheap old cassettes for me to play in my hire car! When I first got the car, the guy at the car hire place said I was allowed to pick three cassettes from the pile they had. I took three and then obviously I nicked another three when he wasn't looking. So far I've been making do with Barry White, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, the Beatles and a naff 80s compilation. After today's shopping trip I have now added A-ha, the Pointer Sisters, Hall & Oates, Bobby Brown and Peter Gabriel. Mint.
I'm now pitched up at the lakefront in Te Anau, which is not a bad place to be, all things considered.
So far New Zealand has mainly been just one big drive. But the scenery is such that just driving in itself is a pleasure. I would love to do justice to everything I've seen, but it's beyond my talents to do so in prose, and even more so in photographs. Nonetheless I have been busily snapping away on my cheap camera to the best of my abilities, and my meagre efforts are now available for your viewing pleasure. One of the photos is of Kawarau Gorge, in which there is a waterfall called Roaring Meg. Blackadder fans should feel free to make their own jokes about 'roaring and gorging' in their own time.
Til next time!
Another gripe I have about New Zealand is the complete absence of any kind of actual literature in the bookshops. I went through about six different bookshops in three different towns and couldn't find anything worth reading at all. You can get the latest Harry Potter; you can get 'How To Get Your Spirit In Touch With Princess Di'; you can get the memoirs of Shayne Sploonaroonga who kept wicket for West Auckland B in the early 70s; but God forbid you might want to read something serious. I hate to judge (cough splutter) because everyone I've met so far in NZ has been friendly enough.
Anyway, gripes over. After writing the previous entry in Kaikoura on Friday morning, I drove up to Picton, and it was very nice there but the heavens opened and I had to stay there for two nights just waiting for the weather to clear. I don't mind a bit of wind and rain, but when the visibility is down to ten metres or whatever then there isn't really much point in leaving the hostel, apart from going to the pub. I'm in no hurry anyway. After Picton I drove west along the North Coast to Nelson, and then south-west inland across to Greymouth, where I stayed two nights. The hostel there was extremely well-appointed and indeed rather eerie...all carved African statues and incense and soft music everywhere.
On Monday I climbed Mt Te Kinga, a modest scramble of 4,000 feet or so, and yesterday I spent the whole day driving down from Greymouth to Cromwell. Cromwell wasn't my destination of choice, but Wanaka and Queenstown were both absolutely jam-packed as it's ski season in that part of the world.
I did have a wander through Queenstown this morning, and finally found a bookshop which could sell me something worth reading ('Bleak House'). I also found a record shop which sold cheap old cassettes for me to play in my hire car! When I first got the car, the guy at the car hire place said I was allowed to pick three cassettes from the pile they had. I took three and then obviously I nicked another three when he wasn't looking. So far I've been making do with Barry White, Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, the Beatles and a naff 80s compilation. After today's shopping trip I have now added A-ha, the Pointer Sisters, Hall & Oates, Bobby Brown and Peter Gabriel. Mint.
I'm now pitched up at the lakefront in Te Anau, which is not a bad place to be, all things considered.
So far New Zealand has mainly been just one big drive. But the scenery is such that just driving in itself is a pleasure. I would love to do justice to everything I've seen, but it's beyond my talents to do so in prose, and even more so in photographs. Nonetheless I have been busily snapping away on my cheap camera to the best of my abilities, and my meagre efforts are now available for your viewing pleasure. One of the photos is of Kawarau Gorge, in which there is a waterfall called Roaring Meg. Blackadder fans should feel free to make their own jokes about 'roaring and gorging' in their own time.
Til next time!
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| Franz Josef Glacier |
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| Lake Wakatipu (I think) |
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| Kawarau Gorge |
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| Lake Hawea |
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| Somewhere on the west coast of the South Island |
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| View from the top of Mount Te Kinga |
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| Somewhere on the road |
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| Picton harbour (South Island port for ferries to and from the North Island) |
Tuesday, 15 July 2008
Cromwell, New Zealand
Just a quick one to confirm that I'm alive and well. Have been busy for the past few days and haven't found time to update the blog or upload photos. A full update and a big pile of new pictures will follow within the next couple of days. Honest.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Kaikoura, New Zealand
I'm now on the South Island, and my trusty little white Toyota has been replaced by a trusty medium-sized white Nissan. No definite plans right now, other than proceeding round the coastal areas of the whole island in an anti-clockwise direction and taking advantage of the fact that it's winter and a lot of the hostels are quiet (I had an 8-bed dorm to myself on Tuesday night) so I don't need to book in advance. The opposite was true in America: all the hostels were packed out, and so being spontaneous was a prohibitively expensive habit as it meant you ended up having to pay rack rate in a hotel.
Went out on Monday night - my room-mate Dan (who is from Leeds and who took a rather unfair amount of stick from me as a result) was heading off to Australia, having worked at the hostel for a few weeks doing the BBQ, so it was kind of a leaving do for him. Out came the Jagermeisters and, er, oh dear. Went out again on Tuesday night and played pool in a pub down the road from the hostel. Me and some weirdo stoner Kiwi guy played doubles with two girls, one Aussie and one Kiwi. Our first match was boys onto girls and obviously that was a bit one-sided (sorry ladies!).So for the next game it was me and Anna the Kiwi versus Neil the stoner and Carly the Aussie; the prize for the winners was choosing a song for the losers to sing on the karaoke. Anna & I triumphed, and thus did Neil & Carly find themselves singing 'I Can See Clearly Now', very badly indeed (and in Neil's case, stoned as he was, not entirely truthfully).
It's not all been drunken tomfoolery though. Having the hire car has given me the freedom to just drive around and stop wherever takes my fancy. It's worth doing just for the drive itself. On TuesdayI stopped at a place called Baylys Beach and that made a headlong impact straight into my Favourite Places On Earth - I didn't have my camera with me but you can look it up. Miles and miles of completely spotless beach, blue skies, blue sea, cliffs & dunes, &c. Technically you're allowed to drive on the sand but I had nightmarish visions of my hire car sinking in quicksand or being swept out to sea so I didn't take any chances on that score.
I spent Wednesday driving back to Auckland, and on Thursday morning I got my flight over to Christchurch and then drove up here to Kaikoura. See pictures. More in a few days.
Went out on Monday night - my room-mate Dan (who is from Leeds and who took a rather unfair amount of stick from me as a result) was heading off to Australia, having worked at the hostel for a few weeks doing the BBQ, so it was kind of a leaving do for him. Out came the Jagermeisters and, er, oh dear. Went out again on Tuesday night and played pool in a pub down the road from the hostel. Me and some weirdo stoner Kiwi guy played doubles with two girls, one Aussie and one Kiwi. Our first match was boys onto girls and obviously that was a bit one-sided (sorry ladies!).So for the next game it was me and Anna the Kiwi versus Neil the stoner and Carly the Aussie; the prize for the winners was choosing a song for the losers to sing on the karaoke. Anna & I triumphed, and thus did Neil & Carly find themselves singing 'I Can See Clearly Now', very badly indeed (and in Neil's case, stoned as he was, not entirely truthfully).
It's not all been drunken tomfoolery though. Having the hire car has given me the freedom to just drive around and stop wherever takes my fancy. It's worth doing just for the drive itself. On TuesdayI stopped at a place called Baylys Beach and that made a headlong impact straight into my Favourite Places On Earth - I didn't have my camera with me but you can look it up. Miles and miles of completely spotless beach, blue skies, blue sea, cliffs & dunes, &c. Technically you're allowed to drive on the sand but I had nightmarish visions of my hire car sinking in quicksand or being swept out to sea so I didn't take any chances on that score.
I spent Wednesday driving back to Auckland, and on Thursday morning I got my flight over to Christchurch and then drove up here to Kaikoura. See pictures. More in a few days.
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| Kaikoura |
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| Cape Reinga |
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| Cape Reinga |
Sunday, 6 July 2008
Paihia, New Zealand
After arriving in Auckland and writing the last update, I hired a bicycle and set off round the 50km cycle path which circles the main part of the city. The sun was shining and the harbour was lovely, so everything was going swimmingly at first. However when I got to the halfway point the heavens opened and all of a sudden things were going swimmingly in a rather too literal fashion. I got drenched from head to toe. Admittedly I wasn't wearing a waterproof...admittedly I haven't brought one on my trip...ahem.
So I took the bike back, got dried off, and spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday exploring Auckland on foot.It's a nice enough city but to be quite honest it's nothing to write home about. So I hired myself a little white Toyota and spent Saturday driving up north to Paihia, in the Bay of Islands, which is where I am now. Today I drove all the way up to Cape Reinga, the very northernmost tip of NZ, with a look at the Ninety Mile Beach along the way. It's winter here at present, hence the sporadic heavy rainfall and winds, but on the whole the weather is still perfectly tolerable. And being able to drive on the left is a huge plus. But I've had to settle for automatic transmission, and my left foot is beginning to atrophy and waste away as a result.
Although I never really noticed any difference between American accents and Canadian accents, apart from the latter saying 'eh' after every sentence, I have very quickly learned how to distinguish Aussie from Kiwi. To produce an Aussie accent, you just have to impersonate someone from 'Neighbours'; for a Kiwi accent, you have to impersonate a South African impersonating someone from 'Neighbours'. Every vowel sound reverts to 'eeee'. Simple.
Once again I am grossly offended to find M*gpies intruding upon my personal domain. There's a lass in my dorm (she sleeps in the next dorm cos that's where her boyfriend is) and it turns out she's from Gosforth. 'Eeeeh, a Mack-am in me rooooom' she exclaimed disapprovingly. To add insult to injury, when everyone was debating what video we should all watch in the TV room, she was instrumental in building a consensus for 'Notting Hill'. Slut. I ignored the film and ate my tea, but even just the sound of Hugh Grant stuttering and smarming his way round Julia Roberts made my fear for my ability to keep from projectile vomiting over all four walls. So I hastily departed for the pub to watch the rugby instead.
Photo updates will follow as soon as I get to a suitable computer.
So I took the bike back, got dried off, and spent the rest of Thursday and all of Friday exploring Auckland on foot.It's a nice enough city but to be quite honest it's nothing to write home about. So I hired myself a little white Toyota and spent Saturday driving up north to Paihia, in the Bay of Islands, which is where I am now. Today I drove all the way up to Cape Reinga, the very northernmost tip of NZ, with a look at the Ninety Mile Beach along the way. It's winter here at present, hence the sporadic heavy rainfall and winds, but on the whole the weather is still perfectly tolerable. And being able to drive on the left is a huge plus. But I've had to settle for automatic transmission, and my left foot is beginning to atrophy and waste away as a result.
Although I never really noticed any difference between American accents and Canadian accents, apart from the latter saying 'eh' after every sentence, I have very quickly learned how to distinguish Aussie from Kiwi. To produce an Aussie accent, you just have to impersonate someone from 'Neighbours'; for a Kiwi accent, you have to impersonate a South African impersonating someone from 'Neighbours'. Every vowel sound reverts to 'eeee'. Simple.
Once again I am grossly offended to find M*gpies intruding upon my personal domain. There's a lass in my dorm (she sleeps in the next dorm cos that's where her boyfriend is) and it turns out she's from Gosforth. 'Eeeeh, a Mack-am in me rooooom' she exclaimed disapprovingly. To add insult to injury, when everyone was debating what video we should all watch in the TV room, she was instrumental in building a consensus for 'Notting Hill'. Slut. I ignored the film and ate my tea, but even just the sound of Hugh Grant stuttering and smarming his way round Julia Roberts made my fear for my ability to keep from projectile vomiting over all four walls. So I hastily departed for the pub to watch the rugby instead.
Photo updates will follow as soon as I get to a suitable computer.
Thursday, 3 July 2008
Auckland, New Zealand
Oh my God I can't believe it, I've never been this far away from home...
San Fran was a blast, but all good things must come to an end. I got a very short and very scenic flight to Los Angeles, followed by a much longer and not in the least bit scenic non-stop flight over the Pacific. I don't know if I was alone in presuming the time difference to be much more than what it is - it's only 5 hours. Well, technically it's 19 hours, but obviously it makes more sense to regard it as 5 hours and skip a day. In my particular case, Wednesday July 2nd 2008 is the day that never was and never will be. Strange things, international date lines.
Getting into the USA was a doddle, all smiles; getting into Canada was a bit more troublesome; and this morning I got the full grilling and bag search before I could get into New Zealand. This trend does not bode well for Australia - it could well be rubber glove time. I don't mind just so long as I get some foreplay, ha ha ha. (Before anyone asks, yes I have already got my visa sorted out, don't worry.)
So anyway, it's now 7.20am in Auckland and I'm checked into my hostel OK and I did manage to get some sleep on the plane so I'm feeling OK and I don't expect jetlag to be a problem, just as it wasn't when I got to New York.
I must admit to knowing absolutely sod-all about this country in advance of my arrival. The only things I can think of that I'd associate with New Zealand are sheep, mountains, and Lord of the Rings. Oh aye, and the All Blacks. And Crowded House. And the Anzacs. So that's quite a few things really. But my plan has always been to just put down my bags and have a look at the noticeboards and talk to people and see what's going on.
On the bus from the airport into town, I was very pleased to realise (suddenly and belatedly) that they drive on the left in this country. Hurrah! Might be time to finally exercise the car hire option. Next update will follow when something actually happens.
San Fran was a blast, but all good things must come to an end. I got a very short and very scenic flight to Los Angeles, followed by a much longer and not in the least bit scenic non-stop flight over the Pacific. I don't know if I was alone in presuming the time difference to be much more than what it is - it's only 5 hours. Well, technically it's 19 hours, but obviously it makes more sense to regard it as 5 hours and skip a day. In my particular case, Wednesday July 2nd 2008 is the day that never was and never will be. Strange things, international date lines.
Getting into the USA was a doddle, all smiles; getting into Canada was a bit more troublesome; and this morning I got the full grilling and bag search before I could get into New Zealand. This trend does not bode well for Australia - it could well be rubber glove time. I don't mind just so long as I get some foreplay, ha ha ha. (Before anyone asks, yes I have already got my visa sorted out, don't worry.)
So anyway, it's now 7.20am in Auckland and I'm checked into my hostel OK and I did manage to get some sleep on the plane so I'm feeling OK and I don't expect jetlag to be a problem, just as it wasn't when I got to New York.
I must admit to knowing absolutely sod-all about this country in advance of my arrival. The only things I can think of that I'd associate with New Zealand are sheep, mountains, and Lord of the Rings. Oh aye, and the All Blacks. And Crowded House. And the Anzacs. So that's quite a few things really. But my plan has always been to just put down my bags and have a look at the noticeboards and talk to people and see what's going on.
On the bus from the airport into town, I was very pleased to realise (suddenly and belatedly) that they drive on the left in this country. Hurrah! Might be time to finally exercise the car hire option. Next update will follow when something actually happens.
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