Trompe le Monde: A Round the World Tour Diary

Last Rites

2005-07-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

Good lord it's strange to be home. It's going to take me a while to get used to it - just the different keyboard is enough to put me off.

So, the last few days in Mexico. Well, I broke the habit of the rest of my trip and got mugged on my last night abroad. I was walking back from the lucha arena when a kid about 15 or 16 ran past my left shoulder pointed a cap gun at me and pulled the trigger. If this was supposed to shock me it didn-t really work, as I just looked at the fella with a bemused half grin when he said "give me your money". No, I replied and went to walk off quickly when his hitherto unseen accomplice grabbed me from behind. I tried to break free and run off but was tripped and knocked to the ground where the pair proceeded to administer a swift kicking to me. Keeping me down with their feet they grabbed my wallet from my pocket, gave me a few more kicks for good measure and ran off. Gits. Due to the money exchange place having given me my cash in unwieldy $500 denominations last time I'd got some changed I had a fair old amount of mazumah on me when I got jacked, meaning I lost around £30-£35. Which was a pain in the arse. But to be honest I wasn't badly hurt, and like a moron (or so I'd thought) I'd forgotten to bring my camera with me when I went out that night, so it really wasn't too bad. And as I said to the woman who ran my hotel, these things could happen any where. What can you do?

The journey back was going fine until we were about to take off from Mexico City. Yup, things went wrong that quickly. Just as everyone had boarded, the heavens opened and a great big storm kicked off. Marvellous. We were stranded on the runway for 45 minutes before we finally took off. That would have been fine, of course, except that this flight wasn't going straight to London. It was going to Frankfurt, from where I was getting a connecting flight to Heathrow. By the time I arrived in Germany I had a twenty minute dash across the vast space of Frankfurt airport, arriving at my flight just minutes before it left. What didn't make it from one flight to the other was my luggage. When I arrived at Heathrow I had to then wait for a further couple of hours until my bag turned up on a later plane. Still, again, no harm done.

Anyway, I'm back now, so all I've got to do is unpack and sort out all my stuff, and dust off my room. Now, to go back to my life...

Mexico City part the final: Estadio Azteca

2005-07-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

Today is my final full day here in the world's biggest tropical city, and I spent in wisely, by going on a tour around the enormous Estadio Azteca. Opinion is divided as to whether this is the biggest capacity stadium in the world, or whether that title should go to the Maracaña in Brazil (or somewhere else, perhaps - I don't know), but certainly at a capacity of 110,000 all seated or so it's got to be there or thereabouts.

The Estadio Azteca is the home of América, Mexico's best supported and (I think) most successful club side, who currently feature players such as Argentine Claudio Lopez and star of the Mexican national team Cuauhtémoc Blanco, who some of you may recall from the Korea/Japan World Cup in which he did a thing where he held the ball between his ankles and lept over tackles.

América are the champions of the Clausura tournament 2005 over here. What the hell does that mean? you ask. Well, like in Argentina, and many other Central and South American countries, the Mexican league has two season, an opening and a closing. Thus there are two champions per year. Don't ask me why. Actually in Mexico and Central American countries (don't know about South American ones) they don't just have a league either. The league format in both the opening and closing seasons is just a preliminary, at the end of which the top 4 teams play semi-finals and then a final to decide the overall champion. Which seems bloody daft to me, as it means that you can win the league and still get nothing. But there you go...

Anyway, the Estadio Azteca is not just famous as the home of América. It's also where the finals of the World Cups in 1970 (Brazil 4 -1 Italy) and 1986 (Argentina 3 -2 West Germany) were held. It has therefore been graced by both Pelé and Maradona in their pomps. And yes, it's where fat Diego scored both the "Goal of the Century" and the "Hand of God" goals to knock England out. Git.

This will be my last post from Mexico, and indeed on of the last posts full stop. I'll probably do another one or two to recap, sum up, conclude and look back on my journey, but I'll write them when I get back home. Which won't be long now, international flights permitting...

See you soon.

Mexico City part the fourth: More Lucha, The trouble with markets, and mopping up

2005-07-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

Having done all of my planned day trips outside of the city, I shall be spending the rest of my time inside the boundaries of "el D.F.", mopping up museums, smaller ruins and churches and so on. None of which will make for very exciting posts on here, I'm afraid.

So instead I shall revert to a semi-regular theme (no doubt causing groans in some): live sport. On Friday night I went to see more Lucha Libre action, and witnessed a great three hour card at the large indoor Arena Mexico. http://www.cmll.com/07resultados/s_v_cmll.html is what I was there for, if you're interested. Anyway, suffice to say it was great - like watching the WWE live except with more absurd wrestlers and less pyro.

Oh, and finally, having spent an inordinate amount of time wandering around the numerous stalls and markets of Mexico City I have come to the conclusion that they are entirely useless to me. Super cheap bootleg DVDs and PS2 games can't be used at home due to stupid regional formatting, shoes come in US Size 10 at the biggest (which is UK size 9 and waaay too small), and clothes are all either horrible or terrible quality. A shame.

What really sticks in the craw, though, is that despite being in the country from which Kahlua, Mescal and Tequila originate, stupid import laws mean that I'm allowed only a single litre of spirits to take home with me. Such a waste...

Mexico City part the third: Taxco and Teotihuacán

2005-07-15T17:30:00.000-07:00

Technically neither of the following places are in Mexico City, being rather outside of it, but when Arsenal have just sold Vieira for peanuts compared to what he's worth you'll forgive me if my mind is elsewhere and thus my accuracy suffers.

First up, the picturesque colonial former silver mining town on Taxco, located South of "el D.F" in some mountains. It's the usual with regards colonial towns, to be honest: cobbles, lovely (though in this case rather overdone especially the churrigueresque inside) central church, lots of nice smaller churches, small town feel. A bit dull, not a whole lot to do. The main differences with Taxco are that 1) it's built on a ruddy great hill so everything is either up or down a steep slope but there are great panoramic views, and 2) its history of association with silver means that despite there being none of that precious metal left in the hills around the town any more, it all having been mined, it is reknowned as a place to buy jewellery made of the stuff, which unfortunately means every shop, hustler and kid in town is trying their utmost to get you to buy some from them.

I spent a couple of hours there wandering around the streets and enjoying the atmosphere, then came back to the big city.

Speaking of big cities, at a time roughly the same as that at which the Roman Empire was the top dog in southern Europe and some surrounding areas, the king of things round these parts was the citystate of Teotihuacán. That wasn't its actual name, mind you, that's the name the Aztecs gave it hundreds of years later. They revered it, thus giving it a title that means "the place where men became gods". The actual name of the place is, alas, unknown because the Spaniards (them again) destroyed any written material that might have survived to tell us in the name of God.

What does remain of a city that at it's height covered an area of 25 square kilometres and had a population of 175,000 people is, as usual with Mesoamerican sites, the religious and ceremonial heart. In layman's terms, a series of ruddy great pyramids. The biggest two are the Temples of the Sun and of the Moon. That of the Sun is the second biggest pyramid in Mesoamerica (the largest being just a ruin now), its base a very similar size to that of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, though a shallower slope and stepped sides mean that it's shorter than that particular edifice. It's still huge though, the biggest thing I've ever seen in terms of ruins, and very impressive, though perhaps not aesthetically as pleasing as the Temple of the Moon. Despite being smaller, this is on higher ground so that its peak is about the same height as that of the other large pyramid. It's in better condition, and looks nicer to boot.

The site also boasts lots of ruined areas where the priest/rulers of the cities lived, altars on which they sacrificed people and animals and other temples (with impressive carved facades featuring the faces of Tlaloc the God of Rain and (of course) the plumed serpant of Quetzalcoatl), as well as a good museum, and lots and lots of other tourists and cheeky Mexican schoolkids.

Those two places represent probably my last journeys out of Mexico City. From now on I shall be concentrating purely on sights within the city, starting tomorrow with the world-reknowned Museum of Anthropology, wherein I shall see relics and artefacts from the Mayan, Olmec, Toltec, Zapotec, Teotihuacan and Aztec cultures, for perhaps the last time. Sniff...

Mexico City part the second: Trotsky, Toltecs, Lucha Libre and Murals with Metaphors

2005-07-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is going to be quite a long one, as a few days go a long way out here in the big city in terms of things happening.

I've spent large parts of the last few days looking at huge murals painted by Pinko Mexican artist Diego Rivera. In the 30s he was much feted to paint the walls of lots of Mexican public buildings and government offices, meaning that one can wander round these spaces for free and gawp at the quality work on display. Most of the murals are somewhat commie in tone, despite Rivera once oddly being commissioned by Nelson Rockefeller. The painting was then rejected due to its inclusion of Karl Marx.

Rivera's best work in my opinion is the enormous painting of the history of Mexico taking up three walls around the large central staircase of the Palacio Nacional. This depicts the various conquests, insurrections, inquisitions, wars, rebellions and revolutions of Mexican history, with images of lots of the main historical characters. It's great.

There are also various galleries and such dotted around the city where Rivera paintings are shown, though in general they're not as good as his murals. Some of them are in buildings that he actually designed, built or lived in, which is quite cool. One such building is actually the house where Frida Kahlo, Rivera's wife and a famous Mexican artist in her own right, was born. Her work is less impressive for me, being as it is angsty feminist type stuff and thus not really up my tree. However, I'm sure I'll be told I'm wrong by angry e-mails from Sylvia Plath and Courtney Love fans if I denounce it as "dull self-indulgent tosh" so I'll just say that considering what it is, it's done quite well. And that without it I'm sure the artwork for "In Utero" would have been quite different.

That house is also notable because it's where Russian-Revolutionary-it's-ok-to-like Leon Trotsky lived when he first came to Mexico City. Trotsky was of course on the run from the long arm of Joe "how many divisions does the Pope have?" Stalin, and was granted asylum in Mexico largely because fellow lefties Rivera and Kahlo petitioned the then Mexican head honcho. The story goes that when he arrived in Mexico he expressed concerns at the ease of access a possible assassin could have from the neighbouring property. So Rivera bought it and combined the two houses.

Eventually Trotsky moved out of their house and in to his own place, which is where he was nearly assassinated once, before being actually assassinated. The house is now a museum, and had been left largely as was, right down to the bullet holes in the bedroom walls from the first assassination attempt, when yet another reasonably famous Mexican commie painter (this time, crucially, a Stalinist) David Siqueiros and a group of other men put 700 rounds in to the house having been let in to the grounds by a corrupt security guard. Trotsky and his wife and her kid survived by that old chestnut, hiding under the bed. After that attack the Russkie intellectual ordered security beefed up yet further, with towers and walls and 24hr guards all over the shop. Didn't matter though - his eventual assassin bluffed his way in to Trotsky's circle by pretending to be a businessman converting to Communism and then bludgeoned the man to death with the blunt end of an ice pick. Took Trotsky 24hrs to die, after an operation to try and save him. Had a massive brain, apparently.

On a totally different note, last night I went to a traditional Mexican sports event: Lucha Libre. For those familiar with WWE, I shall simply say it was like a load of Rey Mysterios fighting each other and was fantastic. For those not, it's athletic wrestling by masked Mexicans, with the emphasis far more on "pantomime" than "realism". While no doubt my Mum would describe it as "silly", I thought it was extremely enjoyable - there's very few places where you can madly boo or cheer grown men in leather masks, pants and boots, after all...

Finally, today I went to yet another Mesoamerican ruin site. This time it was the Toltecs, who the Aztecs considered to be their ancestors (though modern archaeology disagrees). The ancient Toltec site of Tula is great if, like me, you just can't get enough of stepped pyramids. Even if you're of the "seen one, seen 'em all" mentality, though it'd still be exciting because on top of one of the pyramids are fantastic 5m tall statues of Quetzalcoatl, the lord of creation, depicted in the outfit of a Toltec warrior. Quetzalcoatl is of course the bloke who feld to the East that I mentioned in the last post, then returning in the form of Hernan Cortes, at least in the perhaps misguided opinion of Aztec ruler Moctezuma II. In this particular guise rahter than sailing off on a raft of snakes across the ocean after fleeing, he instead burns himself up to become the Morning Star, or as we know it, Venus.

There are also various galleries

Mexico City part the first: Tenochtitlan and the Conquest

2005-07-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

Seeing as I shall be in this gargantuan urban agglomeration known by Mexicans as "el D.F." (Districto Federal) or simply "Meheeco" (as they say it) I figure I shall be writing more than one post about it. So count this as the first of several.

Today I arrived in the biggest city I've ever been to (and the world's second biggest, according to http://www.citypopulation.de/World.html). I managed to get a cheap room by standards round here, though it's still more pricey than the rest of Mexico. Still, not long to go now...

I spent much of today wandering around some sort of large impromptu street market thing, doubtless occurring because it's Sunday. However, I did also do some things of note, namely looking at the ruins of the Templo Mayor of the old Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (which Civilisation players will be familiar with), on top of which Mexico City is in fact built.

Tenochtitlan was one of the foremost cities in the world when the Spanish Conquistadors arrived, and the Aztec king Moctezuma II could quite easily have sent forces to crush the Europeans flat had he so chosen. And yet, despite the warlike nature of the Aztecs (not to mention the constant requirement their Gods had for human sacrifice), he instead welcomed the foreigners in, leading in the end to his doom. The naughty Spaniards starting taking all kinds of liberties, looting and pillaging, and a disgruntled population, driven mad by Moctezuma's refusal to keep the actions of the conquistadors in check, killed their own king and drove the invaders out. The night that they fled the Spics lost fully two thirds of their number, apparently mostly because the Aztecs took down the bridges (Tenochtitlan was built on swamp) and the greedy Europeans were literally drowned by the weight of the gold booty they were carrying. Mad.

Still, Hernan Cortez, the Spanish leader, wasn't beaten yet. He returned with his allies, most of the other tribes of the region, none of whom had enjoyed the Aztecs rule over them, and laid siege to Tenochtitlan, eventually prevailing, trashing most of the city, and (in true Conquistador style) using many of the stones from the old temples etc to build churches and catholicise the natives.

Why in the bleeding hell did Moctezuma permit Cortez to act like such an arsehole in his city rather than capturing him and burning his heart to the greater glory of pagan gods? The Aztecs had a myth: the God Quetzalcoatl had been drive from Tenochtitlan by an evil god in times past, and had fled to the east. It was prophesied that the light-skinned, bearded god would one day return from there to claim his kingdom. Cortez had a beard. Funny how things work out, isn't it?

London, Oaxaca, Monte Alban and Mitla

2005-07-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all, blimey! I woke up yesterday morning to a world gone mad, yet again. Hope everyone's ok after the bombs...

Oaxaca, where I currently am, is a very pleasant city. In a change to most pleasant Latin American cities in my experience, it's architecture is more "grand" than "quaint", something I welcome. There are of course a load of churches and a market, de rigeur round these parts.

The main draw for Oaxaca, though, general quality of place aside, is the proximity to Zapotec/Mixtec sites Monte Alban and Mitla. First, the former.

Monte Alban is a large collection of pyramidical temples (aren't they all?). What makes it really special is it's location. The Zapotecs levelled out the top of a large hill in a valley to build the religious centre of their city-state, so that the temples stand at the peak of the tallest mound for miles around, looking down on all sides to the valley floor some 300m below. Incredible.

The other reason Monte Alban is special is the collection of "dancer" sculpted panels found there. Rather than actually being dancers, however, the male nude figures displayed are believed to be representations of captured enemy chiefs. The idea being to show that they had been sacrificed to the gods. Hence the genital mutilation on many of the figures...

Mitla is considerably smaller, and further away, but is also cool. Being a later site than Monte Alban, it has more details intact, including some fascinating geometrical wall patterns. Depending on whom you believe, it may well have functioned as a sort of Vatican City for the Mixtecs at the time of the Spanish Conquest, where the head of their religious world lived. By that time the religious leaders were no longer the state leaders, that duty having passed to the military leaders.

I'm off to the (really) big city on the bus tomorrow night - rather than piddle around looking at other small places en route I've decided to just go straight to Mexico City and spent the remainder of my time away from home there. So that'll be what I am reporting about next time. Probably.

San Cristóbal de las Casas

2005-07-05T15:05:00.000-07:00

San Cristóbal de las Casas is the charming Spanish colonial town in Chiapas, Mexico where I have spent the last few days relaxing and doing very little. It's been rather enjoyable, but unfortunately what with not a lot happening there's not much for me to write on here.

Tonight I'm off to Oaxaca on an overnight bus, a town which will hopefully deliver more of interest...

Palenqué

2005-06-30T17:05:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid it is another post about Mayan ruins, which I bet you're tired of by now. I'll keep it brief.

Palenqué is in Chiapas, in southern Mexico, a state which is historically and ethnically Mayan, as opposed to the Aztec, Zapotec, Toltec and Olmec stuff I'll encounter as I get further north. It's best ruin in my opinion was the large Temple of the Inscriptions, which was the first (and still is the most important) burial chamber in Mesoamerica (the Mayan area). It's a big pyramid temple like most of them round these parts, but inside this 'un they found the remains of a Mayan Priest-King and a whole load of other paraphernalia, including a jade death mask which is on display in Mexico City.

Anyway, twas all very nice.

I'm now in San Cristòbal de las Casas, a place invaded by Zapatista guerrillas in 1994. Not to worry, though, despite them being a little bit stirred up of late the foreign office says it's fine for me to be here, and last time said paramilitary group came round these parts tourists were generally photographed by them...

Crocodiles y un otro Juventus

2005-06-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Since travelling alone things have taken a refreshing turn for the bizarre, as will hopefully become clear.

Shortly after I wrote my last post I got on a bus bound for Orange Walk, in northern Belize. The reason I was going to this small(ish) town was because it would afford me the opportunity of spending the next day taking a boat trip down the imaginatively-entitled (can't trust Spaniards to name anything) "New River", through some jungle, to the Mayan ruin of Lamanai.

While other Mayan cities mysteriously declined after about AD900, Lamanai continued to prosper. Even after the conquistadors arrived its location in Belize, a country the Spanish didn't really care about, meant it was left relatively unscathed (except for a bit of church-building). Only when a load of British pirates decided to pack the buccaneering game in and start a sugar mill nearby did it fall apart, the European diseases ravaging the population. The sugar mill was an abject failure, too.

What wasn't a failure was my river trip. Leaving aside the Mayan ruins, about which I have written in the past and will in the future (suffice it to say they were dead good as usual), the real highlight was the wildlife (more mosquitos not included). During the journey I saw several crocodiles (one really big one, estimated by locals as being between 7 and 15 feet long depending on who you talk to), a turtle, some bats, several iguanas, lots of birds and a coatimundi or two. At the ruins themselves howler monkeys were visible (and extremely audible). All in all it was fantastic, except for the previously mentioned (and more previously lamented - see other posts) ravenous mosquitos.

My day didn't finish with the joys of wildlife spotting in the jungle, though. Oh no, it was to get much more weird than that. On the evening of that same day, as I was about to go out and get dinner, the woman who ran my hotel asked me if I wanted to go to the local karaoke bar with her and her bloke to celebrate with the rest of the town because their football team had won the Belizean championship the day before. When you get an offer like that, you can't really refuse, so I didn't.

The football team is called Juventus, and they even seem to play in the kit of the Italian giants. And I don't just mean they also play in black and white stripes, I mean they actually use Juventus kits, presumably bought from a market somewhere. What's even more astonishing, though, is that most of the locals are totally unaware of the existence of another Juventus outside of Belize. They think that their Juve is the only one.

The story around Juventus (or, as they're known in terrible weekly rag The Belize Time, "Benny's Juventus" - not sure why) is that they used to be the best team in Belize, and won the Championship several years on teh trot. Then their players all decided they should be paid more money, and since the club couldn't afford more money, they all up and formed a new team based in Belize City. So Juve went under (from what I gather). But a group of young locals decided they wouldn't have that, and formed another Juventus team. And after a few years, they have now won the Belizean championship. All this I was told while waiting for the team to arrive in their 4x4 with the trophy, poised and ready to take some photos which I could "sell to papers in the States" as the woman running my guesthouse put it (no matter how many times I told her I wasn't from the US bus from England - it was like a reversed version of the way in "For Whom The Bell Tolls" all the Spaniards call the Septic main character "inglés").

The woman was actually really quite annoying. Fair play to her for inviting me out, but she had one reason and one alone for doing so, and that was so that I would buy all of her drinks that evening, and those of her bloke. So it cost me a fair amount each round, and thus I drank pretty slowly. Then she decided I was taking her and him to Corozal (another Belizean town) the next day where they were going to show me a nice time. Of course I would be paying for all that too. This ended up in me skipping town the next day and hopping on a bus bound for Mexico, like a fugitive in a film, except crossing Mexico's southern border not the northern, and running from a forceful old woman, not the cops. As for the drinks, I got a load of them bought for me later by a gaggle of Belizean twenty-somethings with whom I ingratiated myself. Which meant that I finished the evening crying with laughter standing outside a cheap food shack watching a couple of Belizean girls dancing provocatively with a crazy old tramp to loud music pumping out of the 4x4 we were driving around in. Madness...

Anyway, back to the team, I did indeed get lots of photos of the players with the trophy (as if I had any choice - the old woman was extremely bossy), so if any papers happen to read this, and want the snaps when I return to Blighty, just let me know...

My crawling exit from Orange Walk came at half ten on the morning of the 27th (Belizean time). It preceeded a long journey to Palenque in Mexico, where I now find myself, having arrived here at three thirty am on the morning of the 28th. But it wasn't too bad - I wasn't travelling all the time. Most of the time I was waiting around in Mexican border town Chetumal, which meant i got to watch Batman Begins on the cinema. It's pretty good, in my opinion. Nothing really interesting happened during my journey, except that while I was waiting for the sun to come up in Palenque bus station so that I could safely go and find a hotel, the open air building was suddenly swarmed by a load of massive winged insects. It was cool - everyone had to run away until they turned off the lights and thus enticed them outside (sort of). Still, homo sapiens had the last laugh - when I left several locals were picking up downed bugs and putting them in bags, with a view to cooking and eating them later.

Mosquitos and Manatees (and Farewell and Goodbye, mis amigos)

2005-06-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

Caye Caulker, an island off the coast of mainland Belize, is where I've been the last few days. The island itself is beautiful, despite a lack of enjoyable beach. There's clear blue Caribbean water as far as you can see, and blazing sunshine all day. There are also, however, the worst mosquitos in the world.

We stayed there three nights, and yesterday, half way through our second full day I paused to count the number of bites I had on my arms and legs. While bite-counting isn't an exact science, due to swelling and other factors, I obtained a figure of 110 bites accrued. Added to bites on my face and back, I estimate that I must have in the region of 150 mosquito bites. Agony.

Not only were there thousands of mosquitos on Caye Caulker, but they were some sort of super-skeeter. Mosquito repellant had no effect on them whatsover - one fellow tourist told me she had sprayed 100% DEET all over her and still been bitten everywhere. But I could top that: I got bitten through my clothing. The little arseholes managed to penetrate both T-shirt and trousers.

When they bit, they didn't just do it subtley and fly off. Oh no, these bastards bit with a pin prick of pain, and remained there, sat on your skin, sucking away for some time until they'd finished or you swatted them. That was in fact the only decent thing about them: their single-mindedness at least made them easy to swat, after they'd settled on your flesh that is.

All told, the experience of being driven out of bed at 6am in a blind panic because I was being bitten too much is not one I particularly want to repeat...

However, there's more to Caye Caulker than mosquitos and a pleasant Caribbean island experience. There's also the possibility of going on a snorkelling trip, which we did yesterday. Long-time readers of this may remember that I went snorkelling a fair bit the last time I was on a desert island, on Caqalai in Fiji. That time you could just walk in off the shore and swim over a coral reef. Here you needed to go out on a boat trip, so it was more expensive. But, as will become clear, it was also much, much better.

The boat took us to the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, an area of sea in Belizean waters that is a protected wildlife reserve. It's over a channel in the reef (which is, incidentally, the largest in the world after the Great Barrier in Australia). Our first stop was one point of this place. We stopped over the reef, so the water was only around 4-5 feet deep. Looking over the edge of the boat, you could see a big school of large grouper fish, 50-75cm long each, and a Nurse Shark, which must have been 4 feet long. Wow.

We snorkelled around there for a while, then went across the channel to the other side of the reef, on the way spotting a large Manta Ray swimming along the floor of the sea. Cool. Then we came back to the boat.

I thought that was pretty cool, but that was just the start of the day. Next stop was at a place called Shark Ray Alley, also a part of Hol Chan. This was aptly named: there were lots of Nurse Sharks swimming around, some getting up towards 6 feet long. We could snorkel close to them, watch them feed off the bottom of the sea, even see the remora fish attached to their fins. There were also big Stingrays, getting up to a metre across. It was fantastic.

But the best was yet to come. Our last stop was at a place called Coral Gardens. We got in the water and followed the guide around a big patch of coral. Suddenly our guide indicated for us to stop, and pointed ahead. Through the water up ahead was a big grey object. As it swam closer it became clear what it was: a manatee. It glanced up at us, then swam on below, passing directly underneath me, at a distance of around 4m. We swam around the reef, and as we came back towards the boat it we came across it again. As we all floated there, it swam up to us and curiously investigated. So it was that I was able to be less than a meter from an endangered animal in its natural habitat.

It must have been around 3m long, and was covered in thick grey skin. Thickset in the middle, its strange body tapered to the tail, which was a great big featureless paddle. It was amazingly graceful, and yet somewhat ponderous in its nature. Seeing it was one of the best things I've done on this trip. Truly fantastic.

Right now I'm in Belize City, but it's not that great and there's not much to see, so I expect I shall go to the bus station in a bit and catch a bus to Orange Walk in north Belize.There I'm planning on going on a riverboat trip through the jungle to some Mayan ruins. If that comes off, I will of course report all about it here.

A final note, though: Today I parted company with my two travelling companions, Si and Trev. They're going back home a couple of weeks after me, so they are going to the Yucatan to bum around on the beach, while I intend to follow a straighter course for Mexico City. After nearly eight months in Trev's company, and six in Si's (on and off), it's going to be weird being on my own. I'm going to miss them...

Tikal

2005-06-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

You know that bit in Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope (or, as to it I shall hereafter refer, Star Wars) where the Death Star is going to blow up the Rebel base? I've been to that very base. No, I haven't travelled to a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Today I went to Tikal, a famous Mayan ruin site and the location for filming for that very Rebel base (side note: does anyone in the film actually say the name of the planet said base is on? All I remember is that it's not Dantooine).

Smug points next time I watch Star Wars aside, what was the point of me visiting another Mayan ruin? Well, even leaving aside the point that Mayan ruins are great and I'm not yet bored of them, Tikal is miles better than Copan. There are more temples, and less intricately carved Stelae (sort of like tombstones with carvings of gods and rulers on them; very nice if you know what you're looking at, kind of samey if not).

Not only are there more temples, in fact, but they are also better: Taller, more varied, more impressive on every front except for carvings. Also, and this is the trump card, there's no need to go on a jungle walk in Tikal: you're permanently in the jungle. The temples are surrounded by it on all sides. The only time you're out from the green canopy is when, ascending the steep stone steps of a 1400 year old pyramid temple, you break through the top levels of foliage and emerge, blinking in the dazzling sunlight, for a breathtaking view across miles and miles of green, literally extending as far as the eye can see in all directions. Plus you can also see howler monkeys, parrots, peacocks (on the ground, admittedly, not visible from the top of a temple), eagles soaring overhead and other temples poking above the trees like (overused cliché metaphor alert) islands in a see of green. It's fantastic.

Right, don't expect to hear from me for a while: I'm off to Belize, where I shall be relaxing on a tiny island in the Caribbean and not speaking Spanish - Belize, having been formerly owned by Good Ol' Blighty, speaks English. Well, Creole and English. Maybe I'll pick up some patois...

Copan

2005-06-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Mayan civilisation, unlike other indigenous civilisations from the Americas, wasn't wiped out by the Spanish particularly. They killed a load, sure, but by the time they arrived the real big players in the region had been gone for centuries, and all that was left of once-mighty cities and states were a few villages and lots and lots of jungle.

What caused such a rapid decline isn't sure, and as usual in these circumstances scientists opt for a 'mix of causes' answer. Here in Copan, the accepted theory appears to be that they got too big for the resources in the local area, over-strained the environment, couldn't make enough food for themselves and thus became somewhat fragile. Then in came combination of causes (disease, war, etc) and out went the Mayans.

Left behind was the heart of their city. Between around 500 and 800AD Copan was a big player in the region, in charge of lots of other Mayan sites. The valley had thousands of people living in it. In the middle of all this, the elite rulers (and they were few and powerful, as per in these cases) built temples, ceremonial ball courts and monuments to their glory and that of their ancestors and the gods. And lots of altars on which human sacrifices occurred. Today we went to see the moldering remains of these vast stone constructions.

Actually, they're in fairly good nick. The jungle around is sprawling and massive, and contains real life wild scarlet Macaws, as well as Capybara, both of which species were today observed by me. It's been cleared back from the ruins, though, and so the large ziggurat-style step pyramids are clearly visible. They make an impressive sight against a backdrop of green. Not as impressive as, say, Angkor Wat (and in my eyes, it is a competition), but nonetheless quality. Plus it's been ages since I saw anything like this. Actually, the last thing probably was Angkor...

Such a dearth of ruin-sighting won't be repeated now, however. Tomorrow we're off to Tikal in Guatemala to see another Mayan site. Such things will be a repeated presence in the last five weeks of this trip.

Tela

2005-06-14T14:50:00.000-07:00

The Caribbean is the warmest sea in the world - it's official. Or at least it seems to me to be warmer than any other sea I've yet encountered on my travels. You know (girls look away now) when you walk in to the sea and get that shock factor when the cold water hits your crotch for the first time? Doesn't happen here - water's so warm that there's no shock. Fabulous.

So, here I am in Tela on the Caribbean coast of Honduras. Not only is the sea marvellous, but everyone's fairly friendly and laid back and the place we're staying is great. We've got our own mini-apartment, featuring kitchen (complete with rubbish electric oven that gives very powerful shocks if you cook without wearing rubber gloves, but you can't have everything), cable TV (yay! rubbish american programmes! it's just like being at home!), hot shower, fridge and (holy of holies) air conditioning. Believe you me, a mop-haired white boy like myself badly needs aircon in these climes!

So it's the usual, beach bumming by day, un poquito de ron (a little bit of rum) by night. What a life...

El Lago de Nicaragua y la Isla de Ometepe

2005-06-11T10:45:00.000-07:00

Though I am now in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras (like most Central American capitals it's a noisy, smoggy slum crammed between surrounding volcanic peaks) the last few days I spent in the idyllic surroundings of yet another volcanic lake.

This time it was el Lago de Nicaragua, the largest inland lake in Central America. We were staying on the biggest island, slap in the middle, la Isla de Ometepe. The island is constructed out of two volcanoes, and is extremely dramatic when viewed from a boat on the way there.

We stayed in a room right by the black sand (read: dirt) beach. To be honest, the actual possibilities for beach-bumming were slim to none, since though the water was volcanically warmed it was also not very clean and then floor of the lake was covered in rocks that were hard to negotiate, especially not being able to see them due to the aformentioned lack of cleanliness. The higlight of the area, though, was the Green Lagoon nature reserve, a lot of jungle and in the middle, a green lagoon (duh). This meant lots and lots of birds of all shapes and sizes, and also monkeys. Unfortunately it also meant insects galore. So many insects that the strip light and sink outside our room resembled a Papa Roach video at night. This must be where all insects are born, before heading out to the rest of the world.

It wasn't all bad, though - saw some massive great vultures sitting in trees, and various other interesting birds and creepy crawlies, and the boat trip out there and back was pleasant.

Tomorrow we'll probably head to Tela, on the Caribbean coast, for some real beach action.

Lago de Apoyo

2005-06-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today I went to another volcanic crater lake, this one entitled el Lago de Apoyo. At 6km by 8km it's only little (by the standards of these things), but it's also extremely beautiful.

Bright green jungle foliage comes right down to the water's edge, locals wash their clothes and swim in the lake, howler monkeys bark and holler in the tress, kingfishers catch silvery squirming mouthfuls of food, and on one edge stands The Monkey Hut, a large wooden hut serving as accomodation (for those who want to stay here for a while) and base for tourists. Since we were only daytripping, we made the most of our time, meaning I've spent around four hours today floating in a large inner tube in the centre of calm, warm (volcanically heated) water listening and watching birds and animals in the sun. Wonderful.

I also spent some time crying with laughter at the antics of my mate Si, who attempted several times to go from lying in to standing on his inner tube, without success. The balancing issues were too tricky, but what his manoeuvres lacked in grace and succes they more than made up for through the repeated sight of a man overbalanced and falling head first in to the water yet again...

Granada and León

2005-06-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Granada and León are the two oldest cities in Nicaragua. For centuries they've been in competition. Traditionally the main city for the Liberals, León used to be the capital, which resulted in various wars between it and historically-Conservative Granada, including American imperialist General William Walker (ha ha... Willy Walker) once being hired by León to sack Granada, which he did and then proceeded to take over Nicaragua (and attempt to take the rest of Central America too), before being captured by the British Navy.

In more recent times, after the capital was moved to Managua (between the two, you see), Nicaragua has still not quite been 100% peaceful. There was a little matter of a revolution, and an attempted counter-revolution, and... stuff. To be (slightly) more precise, the Sandinistas (like the Clash album of the same name) overthrew US-backed right-wing dictator Somoza, and were in turn nearly overthrown by the US-backed Contras. The US has had it's grubby fingers in a lot of pies down here. Anyway, while León was Sandinista town, Granada had more in common with the Contras.

I'm currently in Granada, having spent the last few days in León, and I can confirm that they're both very pleasant. Like most Central American towns, they have a lovely central plaza, a big cathedral, various smaller churches and a general sense of faded colonial grandeur and history to them. And not much else, really. Pleasant, rather than great.

As for which is better, well that depends what you want. Granada's cathedral is nicer on the outside, León's on the inside. León is unbearably hot (I was sweating profusely while playing cards outside in a shady courtyard at half ten at night), Granada unbearably humid. Granada was burnt to the ground by William Walker, León razed by Somocistas during the civil war. They're much of a muchness, to be honest.

Come to think of it, this whole thing could have made a half-decent parable about the general similarities of politicians from both sides of the spectrum... Oh well, too late now...

Why I hate land borders

2005-05-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm now in León, Nicaragua, having travelled from San Salvador. It took us two days to get here, during which time we had to change buses no less than 6 times and cross two land borders, the El Salvador-Honduras border, and the Honduras-Nicaragua border. I thought it would be a good time to elaborate upon my hatred of such international necessities.

Every time we ever seem to be crossing a land border, for a start, it's mind-blowingly sunny. Land borders being what they are, they are always godforsaken dives: a few shacks, overpriced drinks, very little shade, and lots and lots (and lots) of dust. You have to heave your bag across anywhere between 500m and 3km of no man's land between countries in blazing sunshine, sweating like a pack mule, knowing all the while that you've got more hassle and a bus to look forward to when you cross the imaginary line.

The people at borders come in to three categories. Firstly, fellow travellers, either honkies like us or locals. The locals push in front of you because they reckon (often rightly) that being so foreign you'll block up the line and take ages whereas they can be dealt with quickly. All very well unless there are loads of them. Which is usually the case. Honkies like us are a pain in the arse too, because as mentioned above it often takes ages to process them. Plus for some reason westerners find it very difficult to wait patiently, and have a tendancy to start complaining loudly when made to hold on for a while. That's fine, but when a fellow gringo starts trying to involve me in a conversation about how badly organised the system is, I don't want to comment - they've got my passport, and they've got guns. Plus it's a land border: I have no rights.

Secondly there are the officials. These also fall into two subtypes. There are your border guards, surly, silent types with guns and a look in their eye that says "shoot to kill means what it says". And there are the bureaucrats, typically found behind a pane of glass with a tiny hole in it. They then mumble instructions at you so you can't hear. They are the ones who take your passport, give you a form, stamp your passport on page 29 when all the other stamps are between pages 4 and 15, take back the form and stuff the carbon copy of the form in your passport rather than staple it in thus seriously endangering your chances of keeping that vital bit of paper for another land border later. They then take a certain amount of money in dollars from you, and more than likely a few more as well for "stamping fee" or "ink tax". They'll probably then try to underchange you.

Fianlly, the hustlers. This general category covers pretty much everyone not mentioned above from the moment you step off one bus in the first country until you reach your next bus in the second. They try to carry your bags (for a fee), carry you on a bike/scooter/pedalo (for a fee), get you a bus (for a fee), change your money (for a... you get the idea) , sell you drinks/food, get you accomodation - in short, they hustle you for all yor worth, generally making the whole experience even more rushed and sweaty, and meaning it's impossible for you to just stop and relax even for a second. On the plus side, they do provide you with the answers to any questions you might have, since these borders are rarely equipped with adequate signage.

Still, only three more (Nicaragua-Honduras, Honduras-Guatemala, Guatemala-Mexico) to go now, if all goes to plan.

Volcán Santa Ana

2005-05-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

The day after my previous post appeared, I went up a volcano, as I had indeed predicted. The fire mountain in question was Santa Ana, the highest one in El Salvador at a height of some 2250m, or perhaps more, depending on who you believe.

However high it actually ¡s, it was certainly in the clouds. At the peak, visibility was approximately 4m, thick sulphurous (not sure how you spell that) smoke mingling with standard airborne water vapour. Combined with the total lack of life it was very otherwordly. All around we were surrounded by scree made up of cooled lava, resembling brick, and available in red, yellow and black. Slightly further down the volcano there were strange plants that looked like something from Lost in Space, but up at the top nothing lived except strange orange wasps and red beetles that looked like they had also been formed by liquid magma.

It was impossible to see in to the actual crater due to the smoke, but you could look down it's steep sides and think "better not get too close, as this scree's really slippery and I'm wearing sandals". I had in fact stacked in a few moments earlier and grazed my leg. Fortunately I didn't go clean over the side and disappear in to the smoke.

Got down with no harm done, humbled and amazed by the experience. Totally unreal.

Lago Atitlan, El Salvador

2005-05-24T18:00:00.000-07:00

Lago Atitlan is a huge lake in the highlands of Guatemala. It used to be a volcano cone, or an area where there were a series of volcano cones. However, in this part of the world, geography is frequently a series of cataclysmic events, rather than a series of samples of rocks with scientific names (like at home). In this case, the whole area collapsed in on itself a a result of some subterranean volcanic shenanigans, and the resulting crater (technically it's a caldera, apparently) filled up with water. Thus: Lago Atitlan.

Oh yeah - the water. Arrive in Panajachel (as we did) mid-afternoon in the wet season and it's not hard to realise where all the water comes from: the sky. It was absolutely bucketing down when we got there. The water was running down the roads to the lake in rivulets two inches deep on each side of the road. It does this every day, or every afternoon at least.

Still, that does affor the possibility of getting up earlyish (ugh) and getting a boat across the lake to one of the other villages. In our case, Santiago Atitlan. It's very picturesque and so forth, and there's a market, which is... well... to be honest, at this point I've realised that pretty much all markets in the world, no matter the affluence or political system of their parent country, are fairly alike in certain ways. Busy, mildly interesting, good if you want something specific and can be bothered to find it. But not actually that wonderful in themselves.

This realisation, combined witht he numerous faux-ethnic tat stalls en route to the market, and of course the rain, meant we didn't stay too long in Santiago Atitlan.

A few days later, and I'm now in Santa Ana in El Salvador. Tomorrow I shall ascend a volcano, about which I may write depending on whether I can be bothered or whether anything else happens. Hasta luego...

Oh yeah, one last thing. Watching penalties on the internet is no fun at all.

Más fútbol y un poco Inglés

2005-05-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

It is a shame I'm not staying with a family containing a man who likes football, especially as last night me, Trev and Si went to see the Guatemalan cup semi-final second leg match between Xela (yay) and Communicaciones (boo). Xela were 3-1 down from the first leg.

It started badly as after about five or six minutes their best defender (judging from the last game) number 14 was sent off for a deliberate handball in the box, and a penalty awarded to Communicaciones. Fortunately it was a bad pen and the brilliantly-named keeper (el portero) Fernando Patterson saved it.

Unfortunately not too long later, after about twenty minutes or so, Communicaciones made up for that by scoring from open play. So Xela were 1-0 down, 4-1 down on aggregate, and had had their away goal cancelled out. Not to mention the numerical disadvantage they were at.
However, they didn't give up, amazingly piling the pressure on the team from the capital, and actually scoring! 1-1 on the night, 4-2 to Commu on aggregate.

Then Commu had a defender sent off for what I assume was backtalk to the ref, since it wasn't a foul. As I'm sure you can imagine, football here tends towards the chaotic at times...

So, at half time, it was 1-1, and both teams had ten men.

Five minutes in to the second half a Commu defender handled in the box and promptly also received his marching orders. There were now 19 men on the pitch, 10 for Xela, 9 for Communicaciones, and Xela had a penalty to make it 2-1 on the night.

Before it could be taken, the ref had to spend ages arguing with the players and generally sorting out the chaos. During this time one noticed that the Xela keeper had made his way up to the opposition's box. Long way to go to get involved, I thought. Then I realised: he was taking the penalty! This was of slight concern, as he had already revealed himself to be Lehmanesque with the ball at his feet. The stadium fell into a hushed silence. El portero stepped up, calm as you like, and slotted the ball in to the corner of the net. 2-1 on the night, 3-4 on aggregate.

The 9 men of Commu weren't beaten yet, though. Bravely they attempted to hold on and thus win overall. Particularly effective was the right winger, a black man. He did the usual hold on to it by the sideline and try to draw a foul type affair, and was good at it. I only mention that he was black because of the crowd's disgraceful reaction to him, shouting "mono" (monkey), "tu madre es una puta negra" (your mother is a black whore), and making monkey noises. Disgusting.

The match drifted on, the pace taken out of it by Commu, and it looked like Xela were fading out of the competition, until the last minute, when a corner from the left was nodded in by a sub striker for 3-1 on the night and 4-4 on aggregate. Absolute madness erupted in the stands, as I'm sure you can imagine. It was brilliant.

Indeed, the fantastic exuberance of those scenes was only beaten around thirty five seconds later, when, deep in to injury time, Xela scored again, making it 4-1 on the night and an unbelievable 5-4 on aggregate. What a match! The crowd went absolutely bonkers, everyone hugging each other and shaking each other's hands, jumping up and down, throwing flares and fireworks on to the pitch.

The final whistle went and the players sank to their knees, thanked God, cried etc etc. Smoke from flares and fireworks drifted thickly in the air, partially obscuring the sight of kid after kid braving the barbed wire-topped fences around the pitch in order to run on and get closer to their heroes on such a night. The ref was led off surrounded by the obligatory riot police (always happens at the end of games here) against a backdrop of ranks of hardcore Xela fans, waving flags and sparklers, jumping up and down, singing their hearts out. The captain and best player, Brazilian number 8 centre midfielder Iwerton Paes, ran to the edge of the pitch and climbed the fence part of the way to be closer to his adoring public, trailed by a group twenty children like the wake of a comet. It was marvellous madness.

Here's hoping they do well in the final...

Yesterday as part of my Spanish course, I went to a local school and spent an hour teaching Guatemalan children to speak English. I'd be lying if I claimed it was an entirely positive experience, but it did give me an idea of what conditions are like for people growing up here in one of the poorest countries in Central America. There were 40-45 children in the class, I tried to count at one point but they were packed in tightly so it was difficult to be sure. None of them had dictionaries, which makes teaching language a bit difficult.

Fortunately, I only had to teach them to conjugate English regular verbs, and help them with their pronounciation. Doing the former really made me realise why people say English is such an easy language to learn: the regular conjugation is almost absurdly easy. You take the infintive of a regular verb (we used "to read", "to write", "to talk" and a couple of others) and... er... remove the "to". In third person singular you add an 's'. So it's [I write - you write - he writes - we write - they write]. Compare that to the Spanish equivalent, which is approximately [yo escribo - tú escribes - él escribe - nosotros escribimos - ellos escriben] and you can see that in foreign languages verbs change a lot more!

That sort of simple stuff was what we were doing, getting them to fill in the blanks of sentences such as "The teacher ____ on the blackboard", and then getting them to repeat the sentences after me in order to correct their pronunciation. Unfortunately, in a class that size, with my control of Spanish, you have to get them all to repeat at once after you, which only helps those you can already do it - those who can't just don't say anything. Still, what can you do... I did my bit. And to think I considered it ridiculous when there were 35 people in my German GCSE class in school. At least we had dictionaries...

Hurricane

2005-05-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

Just to let you all know I shan't be directly affected by the hurricane about to sweep through El Salvador because I am in Quetzaltenango, in the north of Guatemala. Though there was a mild earthquake here last night (cool).

So, to recap: hurricane too far away to hurt me. Don't clog up inbox with panicky "oh my god are you ok?" e-mails. Gracias

Fútbol y Español

2005-05-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Anyone not remotely interested in football should concentrate purely on the central portion of this blog, as the start and end are related to the world's greatest sport. Just to let you know.

Last Saturday night myself and mis dos amigos went to the Estadio Mario Camposeco in the fair (well, alright, extremely rainy, as tis the season for precipitation and we're in the mountains) city of Quetzeltenango, called Xela (pronounced Shay-la) by pretty much everyone, a shortened form of it's Mayan name. Our purpose? To watch Xela FC play table-topping Guatemala City side Municipales (booo!).

With only a couple of games to go in the second half of the supremely confusing Guatemalan league, Xela were third. If they beat Municipales and results went their way, they could go up to second and thus be more likely to get in to the semi-finals of the play off system. Or something. Told you it was confusing. Anyway, the bottom line was that Xela needed to win.

When we got to the stadium it was absolutely sheeting down with rain. It remained pretty wet throughout the evening, lightening up as the night drew in, but still spotting from time to time. Good job I brought a raincoat!

The ground itself was a reasonably small affair, not one of those enormous Latin Amrican Hyperdromes you see on TV. For that I shall have to wait until Mexico City, where I may go to see the Estadio Azteca. Ths was a different kettle of fish. In terms of how built up it was it reminded me of a non-league English ground. There were no facilities, just pitch, and stands. Oh, and I mean stands. This was not a stadium that would have passed the Taylor report. The terraces consisted of a series of concrete steps, each large enough to sit on. There were thus four or five rows, reaching down to the front row, in front of which was a wire mesh topped with barbed wire. Between that and the fireworks thrown around the place, it was exactly how you'd imagine it to be - kind of like Football Italia, but without the ultras (thank goodness).

I'd be lying if I claimed that the match itself was agreat spectacle from the point of view of the footballing purist in me. Conditions (never have I seen a pitch so waterlogged) and a general lack of skill prevented that from being the case. But it was a great display when it came to that other important aspect of football, passion. The players ran their hearts out.

Xela went 1-0 up to furious cheers from the home fans (otherwise known as all the fans, there being no Municipales presence that I saw) after about twenty minutes courtesy of a delightful free kick from their best player: a class act, the captain and central defensive midfielder, wearing number 8.

Ten minutes later, though, things went sour - Xela's lazy playmaker number 10 was sent off for stamping on an opponent. That left seventy minutes for los chivos (Xela's nickname: the goats) to hold on against opposition superior in both numbers and skill. There followed a display of guts and giving the ball away reminiscent of a certain national team dear to my heart, as a brave rearguard action came in to play.

An hour and something later, and the local side had done what England failed to in the quarterfinals of the last major international tournament, and held on to a one nil lead. Victory! Great stuff...

And now for something completely different...

As you may or may not already know, I am currently staying with a Guatemalan family in Quezteltenango and participating in an intensive Spanish course. Five hours of one on one tuition a day, and I still can't conjugate verbs quickly enough...

The family stay is less exciting than it sounds. My house is inhabited only by a grouchy old woman who rarely speaks. She told me off yesterday for drinking too much tea, in reply to which I very nearly launched in to an explanation of my nationality and the rights thereof, but decided against it. Besides which my spanish wouldn't have been equal to the task! Anyway, at least the old dear cooks great food, and at least I'm not alone in the house with her ' there are also a couple of other honkies staying there, so it's pretty good. Unlike mi español...

We now return to our regular scheduled talk about football...

I've spent an enormous amount of time looking, and it appears that I am going to be unable to watch this year's FA Cup Final here in Guatemala. This means an event traditionally nerve-racking enough anyway will this time be even worse because I think I'm going to have to keep up to date with it via that most hellish of media, the live internet text update. Aaaaaargh! So spare a thought for me on Saturday...

Guatemala

2005-05-12T15:00:00.000-07:00

Hola!

I am now in Guatemala - you know, that country just south of Mexico. Spent the first couple of nights in the capital, Guatemala City, where the weapon of choice for shopfront security guards is a pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip and a large number of extra shells in the clip. That´s not the only gun you'll see, mind you - you can also glimpse big pistols and if you're lucky enough to walk past an army van like we did, you can even spot big kalashnikov type assault rifles. All good clean fun I'm sure.

We were staying in the posh suburbs, anyway, near the airport, so it wasn't too much of a worry except when we went in to town to look at the Parque Central (big central square thing) and its attendant civic buildings - the Palacio built by a former El Presidente and the Catedral. Nice and plush it all must have been too.

Now I'm in Antigua, a honk-crammed tourist town with cobbled streets and orange and yellow buildings. Needless to say Americans (as in those from the USA) love it. It is genuinely pleasant, mind you, resting as it does in the shadow of three big volcanos. All dormant, so don't worry.

Goodbye USA

2005-05-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I could write this post about a lot of things. I could write more on the staggering Kafkaesque beaurocracy of the US Health System. But I eventually got my antibiotics, albeit at some cost, so I don't want to gripe overly.

I could write about how rubbish Tijuana is, providing neither real nor fake tourist sleaze, and no sense of the real Mexico either. But I shall be returning to Mexico and I don't want to get off on the wrong foot.

I could write about the horrors of staying sober on cinco de mayo, a big celebration night in these parts. But I shan't because it's not good form to mention the drunken indiscretions of one's friends in such a public forum as this.

Instead, I dedicate this post to the girls in (of all places) Starbucks round the corner from my San Diego hostel who at 6 o'clock this morning with insomnia driving me nuts served me a cup of tea with a smile and a friendly chat.

Next time I feel anti-yank I shall try to remember them. They aren't all bad.

Bye USA

San Diego Zoo and You Won't Believe It

2005-05-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

I spent yesterday at San Diego Zoo, one of the biggest and best zoos in the world, or so they claim. And to be honest they're right to claim such things, as it is indeed a marvellously impressive place. They've got animals coming out of the wazoo (well, that is where they come out), from Polar bears and Pandas to Orangutans, Otters and a Komodo Dragon, there's nothing they don't have that you'd want to see in a zoo.

Of course, me being me, the highlights of my trip round the cages were various beasts answering calls of nature in various ways: for example, capybaras and tapirs were in the same cage, but also had their own little enclosures off of the main cage to which they could go for sleep or peace and quiet. While we were watching, a capybara and a tapir had a row, and the tapir, in response to being snarled at by the world's largest rodent, strolled over to the capybara's hutch deal and proceeded to block the remaining big rats in their mini-cage with a moat of urine. Hilarious. But not as funny, needless to say, as the sight of a pair of Orangutans 'wrestling', or a Rhino getting rather 'excited' while eating his (and believe me, it was certainly male) food.

Now on to You Won't Believe It. Yes, that's right, ladies and gentlemen, once again I have tonsillitis. I wouldn't mind if I was actively catching it from other people, but no, I seem to be getting it from nothing and no one. So, after contemplating going home for some time this morning, I decided "bollocks am I going to let this thing beat me" and I rang up my insurance company. They e-mailed me a list of doctors in the local area that would serve me, and I headed off to one of them to get more (and hopefully this time considerably stronger) antibiotics. It was quite a walk to even the closest of the doctors' places, but it wasn't too bad because so far (touch wood) I've not got the disease too badly, just got a nasty sore throat with white spots on it rather than full-on raving delirium. I got there in the end, and went to the reception.

The woman there inquired which doctor was mine. I replied I didn't know, I'd just been told by my insurance company to come. She informed me it wasn't a walk-in clinic, and so I couldn't just see a doctor. I responded that I didn't know about that, I'd just been told by my insurance company to come. She inquired which was my insurance company. I told her that it was a British insurance policy. She asked me for my card. I countered that I didn't have a card, but that my company had said to get her to ring it for the relevent details. She told me that she wouldn't ring, because I needed a card.

At this point she took a phone call from someone (something else I hate, but let's not get sidetracked). When she got off the phone she seemed surprised to see me still there. She laid down the law: she wouldn't ring, because if she did they'd need to know my details, and she didn't know my details. When I told her I could give her my details if they asked she refused. So I've had to come back here to my hostel to try and find another doctors'. I will then have to ring up said place and no doubt have a row (side note: Americans don't use the word 'row' - how strange) with them about my insurance. Who knows, perhaps in the end I will get some sort of service, and perhaps become cured.

This is why we need to keep the NHS, rubbish though it may be: at least you don't have to pay through the nose for such bureaucratic incompetence.

Las Vegas (Fear and Loathing and all that)

2005-04-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas Strip is a gaudy, 24-hour affair of fake plaster sights, fountains and lights, tourists and limos and big video screens, enormous hotels, lots of marriage chapels and both porn and pawn shops galore. It's great for about five minutes before you start getting tired of the vacuous emptiness of it all.

Basically the idea is that you gamble. But I have no money with which to do that, so for me it's got to be 25c slot machines. Since these are unbelievably dull, it's really not worth doing. Where ordinary pub fruit machines have features, holds, nudges, intrigue and strategy, these have... er... pulling a lever. Zzzzzz...

So it leaves me with nowt to do but wander around and look at the sights. Which isn't exactly a hardship - for the most part they're enormously impressive. In the last 48 hours I've seen circus acts, replicas of Michaelangelo's David, the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, several fountain and light shows, and (of course) eaten myself bloated at all-you-can-eat buffets. It's great.

But, like I said, the ultimate emptiness of it all does start to wear fairly quickly, as does the amount of walking I have to do, since The Strip is enormously long and the casinos themselves are huge. At least the alcohol is cheap...

We're off to San Diego tomorrow night, on a night bus as ever.

It's not all fun

2005-04-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

To recap: Last you heard I looked like some sort of ruffian due to the large graze on my face, and the right hand side of my body hurt and was grazed and cut in a lot of places (knee, shoulder, hand, ear). Yesterday I felt rough in general, but I put that down to a hangover. How wrong I was, though.

After a night spent failing to sleep, rolling about in delirious fever, and with a sore throat, I realised that - yay! - I've once again managed to contract tonsilitis. I've just been to an American Doctor, and trust me on this, what they say about medical care being pricey in the US is absolutely true. Ouch. Hopefully I'll be able to get some of the money back from my insurance - after all, that's what it's there for, right (arf)?

All told I'm not a happy bunny at the moment - unable to sleep on my right side, or at all, no money, stuck in a country crammed with Americans. It's not rosey. This morning at 6am (my time) you would have found me on this very computer, having given up the charade of trying to sleep, looking at the cost of flights home. I reckon I'll hang in here for as long as I can, but still - if something else goes wrong...

So who knows? Maybe see you soon!

San Francisco

2005-04-23T14:36:00.000-07:00

San Francisco is a lovely place - small enough to feel like a proper city, large enough for stuff to be happening. Trams (or as they call them here, cable cars) wind their way through the city, the grid street system means it's easy to navigate, and it's all wrapped around the bay (sorry, The Bay) which is marvellous (although the famous Golden Gate Bridge is underwhelming - it's red, for a start). The only things about Frisco that aren't great is that apart from the fabulous art gallery there isn't much to see, the sport is rubbish, and there are a ridiculous amount of hills.

Speaking of which, last night, after a few beers, I was running headlong downhill along the road (as you do) when I tripped and landed on my face. Fortunately my glasses didn't break, and I'm ok, but I do have a rather nasty scrape on my face. I knew my good looks couldn't last forever, but I didn't expect them to go in that manner! Still, as I said, I'm fine (so don't worry Mum).

The Great American Ballgame

2005-04-22T00:08:00.000-07:00

Baseball. The Great American Sport. Tonight, I saw a game live - the San Francisco Giants against the Arizona Diamondbacks. And by God, it's dull.

For those who don't know, 9 innings per team. 3 outs per innings. Pitch after pitch after pitch, with almost every one of them being missed by the batter. Absolutely nothing happens. For hours. Then someone shanks a hit into the front row of the crowd, and that's the game won. Tell me - does anyone know of a worse sport (not including women's football)?

What amazed me most tonight was the crowd, however. They spent more time trying to get on TV with absurd antics and exhorting other fans to stand up and cheer than they did actually cheering themselves. They had two chants, both the same: "Let's go Giants", the only difference being the number of handclaps/footstamps between them. Perhaps because they're too stupid to recall anything more complicated.

Seriously, though, Americans are amazing to me. An entire people, apparently without the least trace of irony or self-consciousness. They couldn't be less like us Brits if they tried - where we thrive on introversion, they are extrovert in nature. I wonder how long I'd have to live here before I enjoyed the enormous portions sold, the absurd conversation and movements. And most of all, before I enjoyed the sports. Any of them.

Oh, how I miss football...

United States of Insanica

2005-04-21T12:53:00.000-07:00

I'm now in San Francisco, but having arrived yesterday on an overnight bus I spent most of the day asleep. So I shall leave my thoughts about Frisco for another post (if I remember) and instead concentrate on LA some more.

In particular, I shall be concentrating on Los Angeles' large population of utter mentalists. I've never been anywhere so crazy as Hollywood before. For example, Kings Cross in London has more than its fair share of lunatics, I think you'll agree. But they tend to be of either the shouting at themselves so you know to avoid them, or probably harmless (right up to the moment you lean too close and they stab you in the eye with a syringe) tramps muttering to themselves. In Hollywood, however, the number and variety of madmen and women is truly astounding.

There was the bloke waiting for a bus who mumbled to himself and then with a yell of defiance leapt and stamped on a paving slab, a routine he continued every 45 seconds. There was the man who looked perfectly normal, until when you walked past him you realised he was singing one extremely high-pitched note to himself. There was the man standing just down a side road off La Brea (a large road) smoking a fag with his left hand and jigging about, while his right hand pulled up the right leg of his shorts so that he could pee in the gutter, a long arc of piss splashing on the road while he pranced around. There was the old woman on the bus who snapped "Don't sit next to me" in a tone reminiscent of The Exorcist at my mate's polite request to occupy the vacant seat adjacent to her. There was the man crossing an intersection in his car, who appeared normal until you noticed he was eating his dinner off a plate with a knife and fork while driving. All these, and lots more. My theory is that, seeing as Hollywood is a silver screen paradise anyway, the government figured that no one would notice a few genuine madmen amongst the quirky and eccentric actors, those crazy from years of drug abuse, and the weirdo super-fans and stalkers. Thusly I think they simply poured several asylums in to the area, and won't let the crazies out. Everyone else can continue to come and go as they please. Rather than being "care in the community", it's "the community".

Anyway, that's all for now. It remains for me only to point out that Mental Health is in fact a very serious issue, and rather than laughing or being scared of men wizzing in the street or eating dinner whilst driving I should be trying to help them. www.mentalhealth.com

Live in Hollywood

2005-04-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, this post comes to you live from an internet cafe on Hollywood Boulevard, home of the walk of fame, with all those stars' names on the floor!!

Though actually, the second thing I've learnt since getting here is that most of the names are of people I've never heard of in my life. I presume they're all old TV stars or something. IT's rather odd, anyway. Though not as odd as the fact that the only current film star I've seen written down there is Cuba Gooding Jr., or as odd as the L.Ron Hubbard army handing out things to try and get you to follow Cruise and Travolta down the Scientology path. It's the land of the weird, folks - last night a man walking up and down the intersection outside our hostel with a sign reading "George Bush won because Jesus is Lord" on one side, and "There is a war in Iraq because that is the will of God" on the other. And here's me thinking that the Good Lord had given us all free win to vote and war as we saw fit. Still, I'm no theologist...

The first thing I learnt about LA is that it's precisely what you'd expect it to be like. Having seen so many films and TV programs set here, it seems strange to me that it's actually real. I have difficulty accepting that the people I see are real, and not characters. Or extras.

On the plus side, the third thing I learnt was that the booze is cheap. Though not as cheap as it would at first appear. You see, when you buy something, it's more expensive than you'd have thought because they add on sales tax (presumably the equivalent of VAT) at the till. So if you think something costs two dollars, it'll actually cost slightly more, due to sales tax. This means you can't ever prepare exact change to pay with, because you don't actually know how much anything will cost. Great system. Still, at least sales tax is piffling compared with VAT.

Right, that's all for now - I've only been here just over twenty-four hours, and most of that time was spent sleeping off jet lag caused by a flight that left Fiji at eleven o'clock at night on the sixteenth of April, took ten hours, and arrived in Los Angeles at half past two in the afternoon of the sixteenth. Damn international dateline. The upshot is that I haven't got a lot to talk about, hence the preceding ramble having no focal point.

I'm off to look at more names on the pavement (or, as it's known here, "sidewalk").

Fiji

2005-04-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

According to Tim Robbins in the Shawshank Redemption, Mexicans say the Pacific has no memory. I'm not in Mexico yet, but I am in the Pacific. But never fear, I haven't forgotten you all - here I am, to prove it, writing my first post in Fiji.

The reason it's been so long is that I've spent most of the intervening time swimming in crystal clear waters over coral reefs, watching tropical fish, colourful coral, starfish and molluscs and the occasional sea snake (three times more poisonous than a King Cobra, don'tchaknow). Along with eating coconuts that have fallen straight from the trees (narrowly missing me on several occasions) I've also been drinking lots of gin and rainwater (the only mixer available), and going swimming at night. So it's a wonder I'm still alive, really, what with this being the arse end of cyclone season as well. Actually, best keep quiet about that last one - I'm not leaving Fiji until the 16th...

Apart from Caqalai (that's the island I was telling you about above), I've been to Levuka, which used to be the capital of Fiji during the brief period betweem 1874 and 1882 after Fiji had become a British colony and before the capital was moved to its current location in Suva (where I am now). Before Fiji became British it used to be a rough shoreleave destination for whalers and sailors, and much of it still looks like a cross between a Wild West Town and something out of a Conrad novel. However, these days the nightlife is more or less non-existent - it's hard enough trying to find a restaurant that's open after seven, let alone get a beer!

Last night we tried to go to the (in)famous Ovalau Club, the only relic from those times apart from the Royal Hotel, the bar of which is guests only. But, just to show how much times had changed, the Club was closed. Ishmael and Ahab wouldn't have been pleased, let alone Nostromo (hmmm... mixed literary metaphors). We eventually found ourselves a comfy berth (of sorts) at the Levuka Club, however.

From the outside, the place looked like a run-down warehouse. The inside did nothing to change my opinion of the run-down aspect of this place, but I realised that in fact it resembled a rugby clubhouse, youth hall or scout hut in severe disrepair. Behind the bar the Indo-Fijian proprietor served up drinks while shouting to be heard over the DVD of some Christian epic at full volume on the TV (with Hindi subtitles). The only other punter in there was an old American fruit, who had a thin grey 'tache, a tropical shirt and some brief shorts, and wasn't a big fat party animal. He was very concerned about the possibility of us not getting visas for the US, bless him... Fortunately we could drink in the back room. Sure enough, to complete the dilapidated scout hut theme of the place, the back doors were wide open and looked to have been broken in that fashion after someone had clambered in through a broken back window. If there had been needles and spoons about I wouldn't have been suprised... All in all it was a bizarre place to have a quiet drink - the three of us more than doubled the number in there.

This morning we got a bus at 5am to the other side of the island of Ovalau, from where we got a ferry across the Koro Sea to the main Fijian island. Then our bus continued to the capital Suva, where we arrived at 9am. A weird journey - who knows why they didn't just leave at 8 and arrive at 12?

Mind you - if I think Fiji is this strange, what am I going to make of LA?

Happy Easter

2005-03-27T22:17:00.000-08:00

Well, it's gone ten pm here, and I've had an hour on the net already, but I just got the best Easter present I could have had, and I thought I'd share it with you while wishing you a Happy Easter. That's right, you. Hope you got Easter eggs galore - and sod the diet for now!

My Easter present was from the good people at the World's Local Bank. They have finally presented me with my own account once again, meaning I can get back on track in financial terms and stop worrying. Obviously my new card (see previous post) wasn't damaged, they'd just cocked up the supposed pin.

In summary: YAY!

Just a quick note: Spent the last couple of days watching the Australia v New Zealand Test Match (that's right, pedants, test match, not first class like last time - you know who you are!), which has been entertaining, if only because it's such a mismatch. And don't expect to hear from me for a while because I'm off to Fiji in the next couple of days where I intend to laze around on a desert island surrounded by coral reefs...

New Zealand

2005-03-24T21:00:00.000-08:00

I've arrived in New Zealand safe and sound, having spent a night in Sydney airport. And then a day in transit/in New Zealand where I basically just drank alcohol. We bought bottles of wine from duty free in Sydney, drank one of them at 8:30am between two of us (Trev couldn't really drink since he gets airsick), then continued drinking on the plane courtesy of free airline perks (mmm... vodka and orange - it's called a 'screwdriver' don'tchaknow). Then touched down in Auckland, and bought 2 litres of gin for 12 quid in duty free. Got to our hostel and drank the other bottle of wine. Then dinner, then gin, and then out to some pubs and a club. It was great - I felt like Hunter S. Thompson.

Since then I've been sober, and thus can judge New Zealand, or rather Auckland, rather better. And frankly, despite being the furthest away from good old Blighty that I will be during this trip, it's the least exotic city to which I've been. It's got a rubbish art gallery, some museums and stuff, a harbour that's quite nice, architecture reminiscent of Reading or Brum (minus the Bullring) or something, an extremely mixed population, race-wise, and apart from that it seems pretty much like any old English city. Which is all very well, but I've travelled half way around the world - I want coral beaches and cannibal tribes.

Watch this space - Fiji next week...

The World's Local Bank continued, plus Sydney 2 and Goodbye to Australia

2005-03-21T17:39:00.000-08:00

Here it is, folks, the long-awaited update to my previous missive about banking difficulties. I say 'update', because it couldn't rightly be called a conclusion, as will become apparent.

My good friend Si returned to the fold the other day, meaning we once again number three (the magic number, don'tchaknow). As you will no doubt be aware from my previous talk on the situation, he was carrying with him my all-new shiny chip and pin ATM card, couriered across the globe with efficiency and aplomb. He guarded it with his life the whole way, since it was unsigned and accompanied by a letter containing the brand new pin number, and thus if someone thieved it they would have access to all my money. The lucky bastards.

Filled with hope and trepidation, I approached an ATM, pushed in my card, and typed in the pin number, transcribing it directly from the aforementioned official pin-containing letter. And was not-entirely surprised when it didn't work. Wrong pin, supposedly. Choking back black rage I got my card back (strangely by pressing not the 'cancel' but, but the one marked 'change'), waited hours nervously, and rang HSBC. At which point, in the middle of a question the wrong answer to which would result in me having my account permanently locked, the phonecard ran out.

I went and got a new phonecard, and (after around half an hour buggering around with that, trying to get it to work after - unbelievably - it initially had a fault) rang back. What I should do, explained the chirpy fool at the other end of the line, was try my old pin. Of course - why didn't I think of that?

What I couldn't do straight away, however, was try my old pin. You see, earlier, in the initial frenzied panic that followed the curel dashing of my hopes of getting hold of my own cash, I'd typed in the "wrong pin" three times. This is the maximum number of incorrect pin attempts allowed, and so my card had locked itself for 24 hours. Serves me right - what was I thinking, believing a letter from HSBC?

Anyway, the next day I retried, going with both old and new pins, to precisely no success. So I again rang the 'helpline' up and waited on hold. The nice operative at the other end asked me a series of security questions, the final one of which was an absolute beauty. "Could you tell me," she inquired, "a transaction performed with your card since you recieved last statement?". Calmly (by this point I am beyond anger at such impersonal mindless repeat screwing) I replied that, as I had been saying, I haven't been getting my statements because I'm in Australia. She took this on board, but could see a way around it. "Well, can you tell me something you've used your card for in the least two weeks?".

Once I'd pointed out that the reason I was ringing was that I'd been unable to use my card for a month, she was able to confirm there was nothing wrong with my account (thanks!). So they're now sending me a new pin. Fingers crossed...

But all this bank-related absurdity shouldn't detract from the fact that here in Sydney the second time it's been pretty damn good. We've been up one of the concrete pylons attached to the famous Harbour Bridge. and thus seen great views and a dull museum about the building of said transport route. We've been out in famously-seedy district Kings Cross of an evening and thus walked past a seemingly-endless stream of neon-lit strip clubs to go to a club in which they sold bottles of champagne at the bar for ten dollars a pop (about four quid), something even we could stretch to! We've seen some good, middling and terrible art by both Australian, European and American artists in the NSW art gallery (in my opinion, and of course I don't know anything about art, but I know what's just a series of household items stuck to a bit of canvas and labelled with pretentious twaddle). And we've seen Russell Crowe's favourite Rugby League team, the bizarrely-named South Sydney Rabbitohs (I have no idea why the 'oh' is on the end), beat the relatively-normally-named Parramatta Eels 49-28 at Aussie Stadium in a fantastic match.

All in all it's been great, and though Sydney won't finish above Melbourne in any list of Australian cities compiled by me, it is a great place.

Right, finally, this will be my last post from the marsupial-filled, red-dusted covered, beach-cultured, sun-fearing, sport-loving, uncouth, good honest bewdy ripper nation continent that is Australia. During my time here I've seen (and mocked) various aspects of Aussie culture and life, from Kylie Minoghue exhibitions to Aussie Rules Football, from Easter Bilbies to Goonbags. And despite turning me in to a pauper (compared to my previous status in Asia), it has provided some great moments. I definitely would come back to Australia, if only to get a car and see me some outback.

But in four weeks I've been unable to find any evidence of there being any Australian male more intellectual than Clive James, of whom there was even a portrait in the NSW Gallery...

So, to Australia:
catch ya later, mates,
your friend,
a lousy pom.

Canberra

2005-03-18T15:31:00.000-08:00

I've not written anything for a while because I've been in Canberra, home of (amongst other things) the Australian Federal Parliament, and ludicrously expensive internet cafes. So not much time, so no writing on here. I'm now in Sydney, home of (amongst other things) the New South Wales Parliament, and reasonably priced "unlimited time" deals in internet cafes.

As you may have guessed from the above paragraph, I wasn't overly enamoured with Canberra. It's a planned capital city, having been constructed in New South Wales at least 100 miles from Sydney as per the agreement when the various Australian colonies formed a Federation back at the turn of the last century. Since it's planned, it's even more spacious and picturesque than the other Australian cities to which I've been, but this comes at a cost. It was obviously designed with cars in mind, so our preferred method of transport, "walking", left us pretty footsore by the end of each day.

Still, at least there's quite a bit of free stuff to see: the aforementioned Aussie Parliament, based on our very own, and with some of the same traditions, most amusingly a man named Black Rod, and the fact that the Queen's not allowed in the lower chamber (she's their Queen too, remember?).

There's also a quality musuem in the Australian War Memorial site. Before you exclaim "War? When the hell have the Aussies had to fight a war?" I shall remind you that Australian soldiers took part in WW1 and 2, as well as in Korea and 'nam, plus of course as UN Peacekeeping troops here and there. And boy, are they ever touchy about it. If you want to really wind an Aussie up (and not just in the "you've got no culture, mate" jokey way) belittle their achievements in the disastrous Gallipolli landings in WW1. Point out that the landings achieved nothing, and that the Aussies, far from playing a key role, lost less then half the number of troops that the UK lost. And we never even mention Gallipolli.

Don't actually do that, incidentally - the whole Gallipolli thing is revered over here, to the extent that every town or city has things named after it, or after ANZAC (the name of the Aussie and New Zealand forces that took part in the military debacle). I assume it's cos it's more or less the only single battle where they've really lost a lot of troops in one go.

Anyway, we're back in Sydney now, and will soon be joined by the returning Si, hopefully with a fully working ATM card for me. Fingers crossed on that score. We leave for New Zealand on the 22nd in the morning, so for those who are counting (or even those who are still reading at this point!) that'll be the 21st in the evening for all of you. Or, as many grammatically-challenged Aussies would have it, "all of youze".

Yet more Sport, plus some R'n'R

2005-03-10T19:21:00.000-08:00

Today I have seen a load of disappointing sport. Firstly I got up at 6am to watch Arsenal limply belly-flop out of the Champions League against a vastly superior efficient Bayern Munich side. Then I spent the entire day watching the dull dull dull first day of the South Australia v Tasmania bottom-of-the-table Aussie state cricket test match. And it was dull. Though Michael Bevan did score 115, so it wasn't all bad.

Anyway, what I need after all that is some R'n'R. Nope, not rest and relaxation: Roo'n'Rice. Since our discovery a few days ago that it's the cheapest meat there is in the supermarket, Trev and I have been eating nought but minced Kangaroo and rice for dinner, with various sauces of course.

Off to Canberra, purpose-built Aussie capital city, tomorrow. Our bus leaves at 11am and gets in at 6am the following morning. Stupid massive country...

A Soap Opera and Adelaide

2005-03-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

So what do you do on your last day in Melbourne when it's intermittently sunny and pissing it down with rain? Travel for some time on a combination of suburban train and bus to an outlying suburb in order to stare in childish joy at some houses of course. To the casual observer they may have looked like any old suburban residences, but to me, they were part of Ramsay Street, inhabited by... actually it's so long since I've watched Neighbours that anyone could live there now, but the point was the same. I was well happy having been there.

After a bus journey leaving at half eight in the evening and arriving at half five in the morning South Australia time (half an hour earlier than Western Australia time), featuring a legend of a bus driver named Don and the film "Walking Tall" starring former WWF and People's Champion The Rock and containing a plot that could at best be described as 'improbable', we arrived in Adelaide.

So far it seems ok, though it's nowhere near as pleasant as Sydney or Melbourne. The town centre bit is a less-bad version of Worthing town centre, complete with scallies en masse. Yesterday, while waiting for the lights to change so we could cross the road, a teenage girl commented upn my 'I love Bognor' T-shirt. "I love boners?" she hypothesised, "Does your T-shirt say I love boners?" "Yes," I replied. "Why has it got a 'G' in it, then?" she commented, shrewdly spotting my error. "Obviously," I thought, "you're not familiar with the concept of irony". "Because I can't spell," I retorted. She thought that was hilarious. Fortunately the lights changed at that point...

Other than that we've been to an Art Gallery (free), the Government House (free), a Don Bradman exhibition (free) and the museum of South Australia (you get the pattern by now). And tonight we intend to buy a box of wine, having not drunk alcohol for a looong time. Today we went to the National Wine Centre (free) in the hope of getting some wine tasting (free) but no dice, unfortunately.

More Aussie Culture (Read: Sport)

2005-03-04T20:23:00.000-08:00

Have been spending the last couple of days watching sport, for which of course Australia is justly world-renowned, seeing as how they're good at it. Not that they ever mention it, of course...

Yesterday we spent a day at the Melbourne Grand Prix. In celebration of the fact that this is the tenth year since Melbourne stole the Australian Grand Prix from Adelaide, this year Thursday was a special "People's Day", which meant it was free to get in. Which meant we bothered to go. Of course, since it was free, there wasn't much to see - qualifying and practice for Porsches and other quick cars mainly, which as my mate Trev pointed out, was basically like sitting next to a motorway for some hours. In direct blazing sun, mind you, so we got burnt. Ouch.

Still, there were other things to do, like... er... wander around the expo section, which was basically just a giant excuse for fit girls to shill corporate produce, and was thus a bit rubbish, and left a bitter taste in the mouth.

All in all though it was a reasonable way to spend a day, and was after all gratis so I can't really complain. And I did get to see the great sight of a Williams F1 car going flat out in a time-lag race with a BMW hatchback. The Williams gave the BMW a 75 second headstart and still won, it's speed on the final straight just astonishing in comparison with a standard car going flat out.

There haven't been many race car champs from Down Under, but today we saw a sport that the cork-hatted fools have had a lot more success at down the years: cricket. We strolled along to the MCG, a famous cricketing venue for anyone who doesn't know, paid about two quid, and watched a whole day of testmatch play between Australian states Victoria (where Melbourne is) and Queensland (the one with Brisbane in it). Amongst other things, we got to see World Record Test Wicket Taker Shane Warne bowling. The fat git. It was wonderfully sedate and relaxing, of course, and it didn't matter too much that at the crowd's height it numbered around 400 people sat around in the cavernous probably about 70,000 capacity MCG...

Tomorrow night we're off to Adelaide. Oh, and today is March 4th, which marks me having been away for five months.

Melbourne, Mooching, Australian Culture and Dirty Protests

2005-03-01T21:33:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Firstly, thanks to those of you who suggested ways I could get out of my current cardless financial predicament. In actual fact it seems we're going with the "Si couriers my card back to me" plan, as I suggested in my previous missive on the subject. Dad amusingly informs me that this week HSBC recorded the highest profit by any bank ever, or something. The system works, etc.

Anyway, I'm now in Melbourne, capital of the great state of Victoria, and Australia's second biggest city, (just) behind Sydney in the population stakes.

So far, though, it seems ahead of Sydney in all other stakes. Admittedly we once again find ourselves in a cack hostel (more of which later), but the city itself is simply marvellous. Wide streets, large amounts of pedestrianisation, and (important for stone broke chancers like ourselves) free exhibitions, parks and art galleries. Yay!

To this end we have been liberally sampling Australian culture over the last couple of days. Firstly, we went to an Aussie Rules Football game at the Telstra Dome, a fantastic new and extremely well-planned big stadium in Melbourne where England may or may not have won the Rugby World Cup the other year (not sure if it was there or at the other Telstra Stadium in Sydney - answers to the usual, please). The game we saw was a quarter-final in the pre-season cup competition the Wizard Cup (the season proper doesn't start until end of March) between Melbourne Demons and Carlton Blues. Carlton is a suburb of Melbourne, just to the north of the city centre, but since we weren't staying there we decided to support the Demons. They lost 107-97 (6pts for a goal, 1 for a 'behind', or narrow miss, and 9 for a 'super goal', scored from more than 50m away), but it was a fantastic game, and I can't see why Aussie Rules isn't more popular generally. It has everything - big hits, free flowing play and moments of tension.

Next up on our Aussie culture journey was a look in the Narional Gallery, which was also for the most part free. We looked at a load of portraits, landscapes and still lifes by various European masters from the 14th to the 17th centuries, including works by Rembrandt, Gainsborough, Canaletto and Caravaggio, plus obviously loads more. All good. The highlight of the gallery for me, though, was the 'Grotesques: the fantastic and diabolical in art' exhibition, which contained lots of insane drawings of gods, monsters, angels and demons from such artists as Durer, Picasso, Goya and others. Marvellously barking. All very good, but none of it is actually Australian, is it?

Next door to the gallery is the Victoria Art Centre. This had perhaps less of interest to the art expert, but maybe more for those like us looking to get in to Aussie culture outside of sport. You see, this contained a Kylie exhibition. That's right, as in Kylie Minoghue, pint-sized rapidly-aging bulletproof-arsed Aussie pop princess. The exhibition contained much of interest to the Australian Kylie obsessive - her costumes from many a famous video and stage performance, pictures of here from many an album cover or magazine photo shoot, and a big video screen playing her stuff. It was garbage, clearly, but it was all put together with astonishing pretension - foolish photographers and designers prattling on about their work having been quoted left, right and centre to make Kylie appear to be less of a trivial face (and arse) for catchy pop songs, and more a cultural icon. I love Elvis, but he wasn't art.

We've also seen the Royal Botanical gardens, which were brilliant, and in the next few days we intend to attend the Melbourne Grand Prix (free no Formula 1 cars day) and a state cricket match. What we've learnt about modern Aussie culture I don't yet know.

We have learnt an important lesson about mooching, however. Hungry yesterday morning/afternoon, we got ourselves down to Pizza Hut to partake in their excellent and justly-famous all-you-can-eat buffet lunch deal. However, we armed ourselves with a bag lined with a binliner, and proved that we have no shame whatsoever by surreptitiously filling said receptacle with slices of pizza. It was a case of 'one in the mouth, one in the bag' for most of the time. When we waddled out of Pizza Hut some time later, it wasn't just our stomachs that where stuffed fit to burst. We also had about 18 slices of pizza stashed away. Of course, we were so full we didn't need dinner that evening, just a snack, and then we used the chaffed pizza as dinner today. Thus one Pizza Hut buffet acted as three meals. Moochtastic.

Earlier I mentioned that our hostel is a bit rubbish. It's mainly inhabited by Irish eejits on year-long work visas, and staffed by English morons ont he same deal. One of its rules is the always-criminal-for-a-hostel 'no drinking on the premises', meaning our much-vaunted "box of wine" idea of drinking cheap has currently been put on hold. However, I wouldn't say the place was so pisspoor as to merit a dirty protest on my behalf.

That's not how they see it, though, obviously, as this morning when we went to try and extend our stay here in Melbourne the member of staff there accused me of having wet the bed. The night before I'd gone in to our dorm to go to bed and noticed that my sheets were gone from my bed. "Some arsehole's nicked 'em," I naturally assumed, and went and got some more from the night warden. But no - this morning it emerged that my sheets had been wet and thus had been removed and 'destroyed'. Now, it was true that I had spilt water on my bed at about three pm the previous day, and rolled back the sheets to dry them out. But it really does take a special kind of staff to mistake water for whizz. Idiots.

Obviously I was not too pleased with the accusation, and the guy behind the desk actually hadn't been there when the sheets were changed, so he was pretty much accusing me of something he knew nothing about. We said we'd come back later and talk about it, especially since when we asked to see the allegedly soiled mattress he "wasn't sure where it had been put". When we returned later there was a different member of staff on duty. She didn't raise the question at all, and booked our two extra night's stay no problems. Seems like maybe they'd realised their mistake... no apology, but then the Aussies are supposed to be brash, right?

Sydney

2005-02-26T17:15:00.000-08:00

All this talk of the terrible state of customer service in multinational banking corporations musn't, however, replace me recording my feelings on Sydney. After all, it's the first place I've ever been to in Australia, or even in the Southern Hemisphere for that matter.

So, my opinions on Australia's Biggest City (population-wise): It's lovely. We're staying in an area called Kings Cross, which is pretty seedy, but then I've just come from South-east Asia - I'm inured to sleaze these days. Kings Cross is handy cos it's right near the Harbour, featuring the Opera House, as well as being near the main business/shopping areas. Not that I can afford anything. Sydney may well be great, like London but with nice weather and a lot less hustle and bustle, but it's also expensive. Especially compared to Asia. Westernisation isn't all good.

Still, it's certainly a pleasure to be able to drink water from the tap rather than having to buy bottled stuff, and to walk around town without standing out as a rich honky tourist ripe for the fleecing.

The Opera House is charming (more buildings should be crazy, in my view), Manly beach is good (though I did get mildly stung by a jellyfish while paddling in the Pacific), and I'm not yet irritated so much by the need to wash up that I've become tired of the novelty of cooking. If it wasn't for the struggle to keep expenses below 15 quid a day (and fail, and then realise you've also got to pay for a bus ticket) and the fact that our hostel seems to be the hottest place in the world (literally dripping with sweat while trying to get to sleep is not pleasant) and all the other guests are criminally stupid (Sample quote: "The Atlanta Olympics - that was a long time ago. Must be nearly five years ago now") we'd probably stay longer, cos the city is really nice.

We're leaving for Melbourne tonight.

HSBC - The World's Local Bank. My Arse.

2005-02-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

Prologue:

When I was still a uni student (seems like so long ago), I had a switch card. Said card expired, and my bank, HSBC, helpfully sent me another one. Unhelpfully, however, rather than sending it to the Warwick University branch of HSBC they instead posted it to the Coventry branch. When I realised this (they also sent the letter telling me about it to my home address in Bognor) I went along to tell the Warwick branch what had happened. They assured me it would be fine, and told me that via their internal mail system the card should be transferred to the correct place in a day.

It took a week to arrive in total, considerably longer than it would have taken for them to post the thing, or in fact for me to walk to Coventry and collect it.

The same thing then happened when my credit card (a different piece of plastic) expired. I never bothered to collect it: to this day, I have no credit card.

Left Thailand with no problems, got the plane fine, arrived in Sydney. But you know all this already. What you don't know is that from the moment I touched down in Australia, my ATM card (the very one from the above prologue) refused to work. Rather than giving me money, machines gave me receipt slips with "You have not been charged for this transaction" and "Call your bank" written on them. Oh dear. I have thus been living off my (very kind) mate Trev's money for the last few days.

"Call your bank", I thought, "I'll do better than that - I'll go and see them in person!". There are loads of HSBC branches throughout Sydney. Except no, I won't go and see my bank. Because my bank is the UK version of HSBC. All the Australian branch could tell me was that the transactions were being cancelled at the UK end, and I'd have to call them. No, the Aus lot couldn't get in touch with the UK lot for me, don't be ridiculous.

So I bought a phonecard, got the blasted thing to work after some trials, and rang the HSBC number. I got through to the switchboard for the UK Branch of HSBC, located, of course, in India. Hey - if this had happened a few months ago I could have visited in person! The guy took all my details, listened to my problem and then transferred me to a Scotsman named Mark. To whom I had to repeat the above information.

Those who know me well may be surprised to hear that throughout this phone exchange I remained calm. Actually, anyone reading this may be surprised when they find out what's coming. But I maintain (from experience of being on the other side of these situations) that if you're polite and friendly the faceless operative is far more likely to try to help you than if you rant and rave, no matter how tempting that may be.

Once Mark had got the gist of my case, he inquired whether I'd been sent a new card in the post in the past few weeks. As a matter of fact, Mum and Dad had contacted me not too long ago worrying about the expiry date on my card, since another lump of plastic had been sent me. I had reassured them at the time, and now I told Mark, that my card didn't run out until October of this year. Mark, though, knew different. You see, that didn't matter - my card had been automatically cancelled thirty days after they sent the other one out, and (and here was the rub) could not be turned back on. Even though there was no possible way I could access my new "chip and pin" card.

I inquired of Mark just what I was supposed to do for money. He in turn inquired of me whether there wasn't in fact anyone at home who could send the card to me. I wasn't exactly enamoured of this solution, seeing as firstly I'm not especially keen on the security aspect of sending my chip and pin card together with its pin across half the world to me, and secondly it's the bank's mistake, so why should my parents should be inconvenienced? (I obviously didn't raise the second point, as the answer "because we're a bank, and that's what we do - we couldn't give a crap about your measly savings" would have presumably been forthcoming).

Instead I suggested that they could save me the security risk by sending a replacement card to an Australian branch of HSBC using their internal mail. But Mark had other plans. That couldn't be done, he explained because of the security risk - I might not be me, and I couldn't prove I was me over the phone. Why couldn't I? Because I didn't have my new card.

Brilliant.

Since HSBC could be of no use to me, I bid Mark good day, and racked my brains for a better solution than relying on international post to send the key to all of my money across half the world to a man with no fixed address.

My mate Si has recently gone home for personal reasons, and so the best solution I can currently come up with is that my parents somehow get the card to him and he gives it to me when next we meet. A solution fraught with difficulty, and one meaning that the bank that has got me in to this situation will not be helping one jot to get me out. All I can say is that it's a bloody good job I'm not out here alone.

If anyone can think of any other way around the problem, let me know. Oh, and if you have any accounts with HSBC, take my advice. Get out while you still can!

The World's Local Bank indeed...

Australia

2005-02-23T21:27:00.000-08:00

I've arrived safe and sound in Aus, after a crazy journey. Spent a night in Bangkok airport as our plane was due to leave at 8am the following day. Let me tell you, it was pretty dull...

Anyway, an 8 or 9-hour plane journey later (featuring no decent films but a fair bit of free drink) and we arrived fine. Spent today wandering around Sydney harbour (delightful), marvelling at being in a country full of honkies who speak English (I need to quickly adjust to not loudly lambasting people, safe in the knowledge their English won't be good enough to understand my quick speech and use of slang), and just cooked a meal for the first time in four and a half months.

Oh yeah, and Australians are great - the train guy let us off buying a ticket (about a fiver each) on the late train from Sydney airport to the area where we're staying cos the change machine didn't have enough spare moolah to break the note we were trying to use. Bonzah (or however it's spelt).

Last Days in Asia

2005-02-20T22:10:00.000-08:00

After a mammoth 14 hour journey I yesterday returned to Bangkok, the city where my Southeast Asian travels began oh so long ago, from Siem Reap. On the 22nd at about 8 in the morning local time we leave for Australia, so it's goodbye to Asia.

Firsty, though, it was goodbye to Siem Reap and Cambodia, a place where my sandals were eaten by a dog, replaced by god awful blue plastic monstrosities that have given me blisters (I bought me some better flipflops from Bangkok's brilliant Chatuchak weekend market today), and where on my last night I was electrocuted attempting to remove a lightbulb. The shock cause me to fling the lightbulb in to my room from the en suite bathroom, where it exploded on the floor, scattering sharp glass fragments across the entire room including into my bed. And me with no footwear, being as my trainers were packed away and my flipflops were on the porch, no doubt being eyed up by that bastard hound.

As you may be able to tell, I wasn't exactly upset to be leaving Siem Reap. Though the Angkor temples are fantastic, the town itself is a hole.

Holes were very much in evidence on the road to the Thai border. The difference between relatively affluent, westernised Thailand and mined-to-buggery, recovering-from-disaster, poor Cambodia is extremely marked, and it shows at the border. On the Cambodian side it's chaos and bureaucracy. On the Thai side there are ATM machines, corner shops and roads that aren't constructed out of dirt.

I'm glad to be back in Bangkok. Of all the cities I've thus far visited, it seems by far the most livable. The people are amazingly friendly and helpful, it's clean(ish - clean for Asia), and the public transport is efficient and easy to use. It may lack the atmosphere of Hanoi, but it is still very much a city I've fallen in love with. You can even get used to the sex tourists after a while.

So it's goodbye to Asia, goodbye to squat toilets, semi-frequent power cuts, taking your shoes off before you go in to a building, Buddhism, Hinduism, rickshaws, potholes and the phrase "same same but different". And it'll be hello to Australia, to sport and... er... the outback... er... and not much else off the top of my head. We're talking about a country with Clive James as its foremost male intellectual...

Napoleon Salas and the Temples of Angkor

2005-02-17T21:08:00.000-08:00

This was going to be a long and dull post about the temples but I saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom on HBO (which we occasionally get in the guesthouse) in bed last night, wearing my own fedora in homage of course, and I decided if anyone wants to know archaeological information they can get it from more eminent sources than me. Suffice it to say that Angkor Wat is the Wrestlemania of the Angkor temples, being as it is the World's Largest Religious Structure, and is bloody amazing, Ta Prohm is where they filmed Tomb Raider scenes, and that if you like the sound of huge temples dedicated to Eastern Gods, built from large blocks of stone, featuring intricate and superbly detailed carvings and set against a backdrop of seething, squawking tropical jungle, this is your place.

What you want to know is what have I been up to since I got over tonsilitis?

Well, mainly I've been seeing the above temples, which has taken up most of my time because 1) there are loads of them, 2) they're a long way away, and 3) I have nothing but a rubbish one-gear rental bike to travel around on.

The closest temple, Angkor Wat, is around 10km from my guesthouse, and the other temples are dotted about from that point on, all at least (and usually more than) 2km from one another, so in the past week I've cycled between 100 and 200km in tropical conditions. And sweated buckets, as I'm sure you can imagine.

The other trouble with cycling, apart from the heat, is the condition of the roads. They're potholed to buggery, and poorly lit, a dangerous combination when you've got up at half four am to see Angkor Wat at dawn and found that the generator on you bike doesn't work. I had to light the way with my torch, precariously held in my left hand while cycling along. Fortunately though a fair few cars were about so most of the time I could sort of see by their headlights.

The other interesting thing that has happened is the death of my sandals. I left them, right as rain, on the guesthouse front porch last night, and came across them this morning, the right one shredded and unusable at the back. What had caused this distressing transformation? The guesthouse dog. It must love my right foot's unique odour because it had had a go at my right trainer as well. Fortunately, converse are made of stronger stuff than "Moby Dick" french supermarket sandals, and so only the lace is slightly damaged. Thus I have some functioning footwear. The guesthouse owner promises me he'll replace my sandals, but, as he explained, sandals are not sold in Cambodia. So presumably I'm soon going to be presented with a pair of Cambodian flipflops. Which, along with my battered green felt fedora, will make me resemble that national stereotype, the English eccentric abroad.

Mind you, national stereotypes are not all bad. Unless you get stuck behind a tour group of Japanese in a picturesque location and you're trying to get past. Trust me on this one...

The Darker Side of Travelling

2005-02-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

We finally left Phnom Penh, dragging ourselves away from the high life of having a mate with a bar, and got our arses on a bus to Siem Reap, a city in northern Cambodia, the name of which means "Thailand defeated" in Khmer (the national language here, and also what you're supposed to say instead of "Cambodian". This is perhaps undiplomatic given it's proximity to Thailand, but then you're talking about an area of the world in which last year there were anti-Thai riots (I think like a low-key version of the infamous Kristallnacht in Berlin) cos some dumb bint of a Thai actress was (mis?)quoted in a magazine as saying Angkor Wat is in Thailand.

Speaking of Angkor Wat, that's why we're here. The Khmer empire used to be the big dog in this particular Asian yard, you see, and at the height of their power their capital was veyr near Siem Reap. They constructed some absolutely enormous temples, and many of them are still in a good state today, including Angkor Wat itself, apparently the world's largest religious building. It's on the flag of Cambodia, and "Angkor" is the name of the national beer, so you can see how it's a big deal for most Cambodians (sorry, Khmer). It's almost as if they are trying to hide the Khmer Rouge's atrocities by focussing on a period of their history when they were great. Which is fair enough.

Of course, all my comments about Angkor Wat must be taken with a pinch of salt, as I have no idea what it's like. I haven't seen it, you see. No, instead, I've been laid up for two days with acute tonsilitis that came upon me all of a sudden our last night in Phnom Penh. And no, I didn't catch it like that.

I've had tonsilitis before, so I knew what to expect: the pus at the back of the throat, the white spots on the tonsils, the extremely high temperatures, the mad delirium in the middle of the night due to fever... But of course when I've had it before I've been at home, and had a) my Mum and Dad to tend to me, and b) the ability to drink cups of tea and hot lemsip. Here I've basically been left to fend for myself, especially as my housemates abandoned me and went to another room so they didn't get infected. This has basically meant lying in bed for two days, feeling awful. In the past, tonsilitis has gone away of it's own accord when I've rested, but this morning, with it having gotten no better in two or three days, I decided to bite the bullet and go to the doctor.

Of course, I went private, so I can't tell you about the Khmer National Health Service, if they have such a thing. I went to a lovely clinic thing where the nurse took my blood pressure and told me it was normal (I should hope so!) and the doctor charged me US$50 for a diagnosis I'd made myself for nowt. But he did give me some antibiotics and stuff, so hopefully now I'll start getting better. And maybe I'll be able to get my insurance to pay me for the treatment.

Right, that's it, I'm off to my room to lie in bed on my own and fail to sleep. Schadenfreude to the usual address...

Small World

2005-02-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Many regular readres of this blog will no doubt have begun to think in the last few weeks "It's OK and all, but of late it lacks the insanity we've come to love". Never fear, ladies and gentlemen, the bizarre makes a welcome return this time.

We were sitting on our guesthouse's lovely jetty lounge restaurant deal. Trev decided he'd go out and buy some water from the stall down the road. Nothing strange about that. He returned twenty mintues or so later looking like he'd seen a ghost.
"Guess who I've just seen?"
"A ghost?"
Needless to say, it wasn't actually a ghost [NB - dramatisation, this conversation may not have actually happened]. Out buying water from a stall in the middle of the street he'd looked up and thought "That bloke looks amusingly like our old maths mate who none of us have spoken to in some time Dan Reilly". This thought was rapidly replaced by "Bloody hell - it IS Dan Reilly". A man who was in the same class as us for a first year maths course, and here Trev was bumping in to him in the Cambodian capital, thousands of miles from Warwick. But it was to get more bizarre.
"Hi Trev," said Dan, "Come in to my house," and proceeded to take Trev on a mni-tour around the bar which he built, owns, runs and in which he sleeps. Bugger me.

So, when Trev returned saying he'd just bumped in to Dan Reilly and he owns a bar here in Phnom Penh, we were pretty stunned. We went round there later and spent a most enjoyable evening playing pool, watching the football and the rugby (in neither of which the team I was supporting won), before heading 0ut after closing to a party. We never actually got to the party, getting waylaid en route for one thing and another, eventually ending up in another bar that Dan's mate owned, then heading back again to Dan's bar. Eventually went home to bed at around 6 in the morning. Grand.

Since then we've spent a fairly bewildering couple of days hanging around the expat scene here in lakeside Phnom Penh, visiting a variety of bars, playing lots of pool and playstation 2, and drinking. We should be leaving for Siem Reap tomorrow...

Phnom Penh again

2005-02-04T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, having spent a middlingly pleasurable couple of days on the beach in Sihanoukville (see previous post for details), we are now back in Phnom Penh. Today we went to see the Royal Palace, which is pretty cool. It's pretty much (excuse the cultural ignorance) like the palace complex in Bangkok but marginally less impressive, perhaps because it doesn't have the ring of novelty for me due to having seen the Bangkok jobber first.

The part of Phnom Penh we're staying in this time is far nicer than the area we were in before. We're now by the lake, staying in a guesthouse that actually has a jetty with a restaurant protruding out on to the lake itself. Lovely - it should be grand come sunset. Very romantic...

One more thing before I end this, though, and I'm afraid it's a good old-fashioned rant. Enemies of vitriol, turn away now.

When we arrived in Cambodia to start with, there were no money change facilities at the border. Absolutely none. Fortunately, we could change traveller's cheques from US Dollars into Cambodian Riels at our guesthouse when we arrived, albeit at an annoyingly cack exchange rate. In performing said change, I accrued a couple of 100,000 Riel notes, as well as other smaller denominations. All very well, I thought. But I was wrong. It emerges that more or less nowhere in Cambodia takes 100,000R notes for any purchase, as they don't have the spare wampum for the change. "How odd," I thought, "never mind - I'm back in the capital now, and I'm running very low on other currency. What I'll do is I'll go to a bank and get them to break the big note".

It took not one, not two, but three banks before they could manage it. THREE BANKS! I mean, what kind of country has notes of a denomination so high that banks can't change it, despite the fact that it amounts to about 13 quid, and things here are far more expensive than anywhere else I've been in Southeast Asia!?!

To make matters worse, I'm rapidly running out of readies, so I'll soon need to break another traveller's cheque. Mind you, as the woman at the bank where I finally changed the demon note explained, here in Cambodia they do take US dollars.

I'd better end the rant at this point - I do hope to be allowed in to the Good Ol' US of at some point during this trip, and the FBI, CIA and NSA do exist...

Sihanoukville: Not Another Gloating Beach Post

2005-02-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

I'm now in Sihanoukville, on the southern coast of Cambodia, and thus today I've been swimming in the Gulf of Thailand. Yay.

Don't worry, though, this genuinely isn't another gloating beach e-mail, because, warm sea aside, Sihanoukville is a bit rubbish. The beach is amazingly short, about 10m of sand from back to surf, and even the bars aren't much cop. Though that didn't stop us going out last night, getting back at about twenty past two in time to turn on the telly and dazedly watch Arsenal lose to Manchester United. A match that would have been an emotional rollercoaster ending with me begin crushed had I been in a normal state of mind, so you can imagine what I was like having drunk rather a large amount...

Anyway, people who don't know or care about football read this, so I shall leave it here, by informing you that soon we will be returning to Phnom Penh to see the stuff we didn't see before, and then to head up to Siem Reap in northern Cambodia in order to look at Angkor Wat. Oh, and that I shall probably go for a night swim tonight.

Phnom Penh and Khmer Rouge Prison S-21

2005-01-31T21:16:00.000-08:00

Still in Phnom Penh, but since I didn't really have a chance to say what it's like yesterday, having only just arrived, I feel that today I should remedy this. After all, I've now been here for just over 24 hours, more than enpugh time for snap judgements!

So far, PP (as I will hereafter be referring to it) seems pretty damn run down, but also strangely expensive. I don't really understand how food and the like can cost quite a bit more here than it does in Vietnam, yet the roads and so on are generally in a state of disrepair, only main roads being anything more than dirt tracks. The plus side, though, is that there is more variety and better tasting food here than anywhere else in the region. Where before we've survived almost exclusively on a diet of noodle soup, here I've been eating fried shrimp with noodles, spicy eel with rice, and all manner of other weird and wonderful dishes. It's been dead good.

Thusly Phnom Penh is ugly and expensive, but has lots of hidden beauty. Like Wayne Rooney. Perhaps.

Right, on to the next. In case anyone is unaware, from 1975 to 1979 Cambodia was ruled by ultra-Maoist organisation the Khmer Rouge. Under the command of "Brother Number 1" Pol Pot, they instigated a shocking and brutal regime, attempting to transform Cambodia into a Communist Agrarian Collective almost overnight. This involved forcefully transporting millions of people out of cities and putting them to work on farms. It also involved, as these things generally do, mass murder of many innocent people. During the four years they were in charge, it's estimated that the Khmer Rouge butchered somewhere between 750,000 and 3,000,000 people. A large number on it's own, but when you consider the population of Cambodia is only about 13 million today, it must have been a large proportion of people. Many of them were executed by being beaten to death with clubs in the fields just outside of Phnom Penh, their bodies rolled into unmarked mass graves. Most of those victims would have been incarcerated first at Tuol Sleng prison, or S-21 (the S stands for secret) Khmer Rouge prison. Today we went there, to see the museum they have now set up in the grounds (which used to be school grounds before 1975) to remember and honour the dead and attempt to bring those responsible to justice.

When you first arrive at Tuol Sleng, it's very hard to get a sense of the horror of the interrogations and torture that occurred there. All you see in Block A is bare rooms with beds in them, and of course, these items in themselves are not horrific. The horror comes from the actions that took place in the rooms, not the rooms themselves.

Block B, however, starts to bring it all home. This contains hundreds of mugshots of prisoners, taken by the Khmer Rouge before the prisoner was incarcerated, tortured and eventually killed. The photos are in black and white, and feature just the head of the victim, facing the camera, generally expressionless. Every one of the people photographed is now dead, having been tortured and possibly (in the case of the women) raped by the security guards. What is most upsetting about the photographs is the eyes. Looking at a board covered with hundreds of pictures, their faces begin to look alike, they all blur into one mass of humanity. But the eyes speak out clearly, looking straight back into the camera and, thirty or so years later, at the person looking at the photograph. All that now remains of the people in the pictures is the hollow glare of the windows of their soul.

Blocks C and D contained the cells used to hold the prisoners, varying in three types. Brick cells, hastily built in the classrooms, around 1m by 3m in size, on the bottom floor. Wooden cells, slightly smaller than the brick ones, on the middle floor. And, on the top floor, the mass detention cells, just classrooms with iron bars in them, to which up to 20 or so people were manacled. The rules were, basically (there were a lot of them but they tended to repeat themselves) lie still, shut up, do what I say immediately, or suffer the consequences. Prisoners weren't allowed to shift position in order to be able to sleep more comfortably on the bare floors without asking permission of the guards, who themselves were generally children with guns.

The paranoia and fear that cause man's inhumanity to man is a powerful force, and it's a somewhat sobering thought that human rights abuses such as those that took place here still go on in the world today (Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib?). It's places like these that remind me how lucky I am to live (usually, I mean) in the relatively stable environs of Western Europe, while also feeling sorry for the mass of people crushed under the feet of tyranny and opression throughout history, leaving nothing but a pair of eyes staring out accusingly at a world that didn't do enough to protect them.

Holiday in Cambodia

2005-01-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Again, it's been a while, but there wasn't a great deal more to write about in Ho Chi Minh City - a few museums, that's all, and none of them were great. So I didn't bother.

After another bizarre journey, on more of which in a bit, we have arrived safe and sound in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. So far it's a bit strange, primarily because despite having it's own currency, the Riel, each unit of which is considerably more valuable than, say the Vietnamese Dong, many of the prices here are printed in US dollars. To think the good ol' US of A invaded this country not too long ago (secretly, of course) to try to stop the Red Menace. Turns out economic forces are stronger than military ones. Yet again.

Anyway, on to our journey. It was actually pretty straightforward by our standards - just got on a bus and got to the border, then got on another bus after the border and got to Phnom Penh. It was (as usual with these things) the border itself that cause us trouble. The actual stamping of passports and issuing of visas and such was more or less as you'd expect - lots of tourists becoming hot and irritable waiting in a cramped office for a man in a uniform to stamp their documents an alarming number of times. Bureaucracy - don't you just love it. The trouble with borders, and in fact airports, is that they require large amounts of patience, respect for authority figures and specific, seemingly-arbitrary rules, and form-filling and queuing. On none of which, as you probably know, I am particularly strong.

But you just have to suck your guts in and get on with it, smiling in the face of incompetance, arsehole behaviour from fellow tourists, and outrageously blatant attempts to get more money from the Westerners with stamp tax, ink rates, paperclip fees and other such crap. All of which I can take better than perhaps you might think (especially you, Mum!).

What irritated me most this time, though, was the behaviour of two idiots who took our bags off of our bus without asking, and transported them in a cart into no-man's land between the borders without asking, and then tried to charge us a dollar a bag to get our own stuff back from them. "But we carried them all that way", they reasoned. Course, we informed them that since we hadn't asked them to do any carrying, would quite happily have humped our own loads, and they were not uniformed officials, we would be paying them bugger all. Course, they held on to our stuff by force, and while we probably could have got our bags back, there being ten or so of us against two smallish Vietnamese/Cambodian (sorry, didn't ask) guys, it might not have been a good idea. And anyway, I was brought up to not to resort to violence. After about ten minutes of waiting at an impasse in the blazing sunshine between two countries, we eventually settled on a deal. One US dollar for all the bags. We gave them some leftover change in dong that amounted to just over a dollar, and took our rightful property. I fell bad about giving them anything, but we really couldn't get into a fight situation, especially seeing as the ten of us was comprised of seven broads plus me and my two mates. And me and one of my mates are confirmed cowards.

Right, so we're in Cambodia. Today we went to a quite good museum containing lots of old Hindu statues - it's like India all over again. Mind you, I can see why the Cambodian government would want to be bigging up their ancient history. "Ignore the Khmer Rouge! Ignore the Khmer Rouge! Pol Who?" they seemed to be shouting. Tomorrow? Yeah, we're going to a museum dedicated to the Killing Fields. And to think, I went to a urinal today (sorry, too graphic?) and someone had crudely daubed "Stop the commercialistation of horror" on the wall. Which I assume wasn't a protest against big-budget bad horror films on behalf of quality low-budget horror films. Food for thought, anyway...

Ho Chi Minh City

2005-01-25T22:45:00.000-08:00

"Saigon, shit, I'm still only in Saigon. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle..." - Willard, Apocalypse Now.

Yup, I'm now in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, playground of the American GI's during the war. It's all greasy neon, sweaty honkies and hookers out there, so I'm in here, on the computer, like any goods maths student should be.

Yesterday we visited the Reunification Palace. This is a large building built on the same site as the former French Governor's palace. The Frogs had their building knocked down when the Vietnamese kicked them out, and after the dust settled, the South Vietnamese built their Presidential palace there. From here, US-backed bad guy dictator Diem ruled with an iron fist and refused elections and reunity with North Vietnam, leading to the American War. During said war, this building served as official headquarters. You can see all the various offices, meeting rooms and waiting rooms that were attached to the Presidents and Vice Presidents of South Vietnam, periodically assassinated as they were. You can also go under the building, to the basement. Here there were lots and lots of war rooms and such, all of which are still there today. It's pretty cool wandering around there, although they are basically just empty green rooms with desks, old phones and filing cabinets, and Vietnam maps on the walls. Still, you can get a sense of the history of the place.

Talking of a sense of history, today we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels. This was a vast tunnel network attached to the end of the Ho Chi Minh trail and to Cambodia during the American War. There were so many guerillas and such in the area that the American forces eventually made Cu Chi a free fire zone, and bombed the crap out of it. It looked like the surface of the moon or something by the end of the war, judging from the pictures. A large number of US and South Vietnamese Troops died in the area, and a far larger number of Viet Cong also passed away, as it was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the whole war. As part of the tour, you get to crawl 100m through tunnels twice the size of those actually used, and lit up by electric lighting. And believe me, with my claustrophobia, this was not a fun experience. If we hadn't had the enormous good fortune to be at the front of the line of our tour group going through the tunnels I don't know what I would have done. As it was, it was cramped, horrible and hot as hell down there. The actual tunnels used by the VC were 60cm by 80cm, unlit, and the ground would have course have been shaking from the bombs. The bombardment was the reason the tunnels were so small: any larger and they collapsed. They must have found that out through trial and error. Capable and willing to go through things like that, it's no wonder the VC beat the Septics in the end. Amazing.

Finally, a note of surreality. Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, is a saint. Yes, that's right, a saint. Cao Daism is a uniquely Vietnamese religion founded in 1924. It combines elements of Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity and Taoism into one bizarre whole. About 2 million Vietnamese are Cao Daist. The Cao Dai religion has three saints, none of whom would have been aware of it, andtwo of whom died before it was founded. They are: A Vietnamese Poet Laureate, whose name escapes me, Victor Hugo, 19th century French novelist, and Sun Yat-sen, Chinese nationalist revolutionary instrumental in the overthrow of China's last dynasty. Why are they all saints? You may as well ask why Cao Daism is absolutely against killing of any kind and yet used to have its own large private army... These Vietnamese are crazy...

Island hopping

2005-01-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

One of the main attractions of Nha Trang, aside from the beach of course, is that being there affords one the opportunity of going on a boat trip around the islands just off the coast. So that's jsut what we did the other day.

The boat trip basically meant we spent most of the day mooching about on said aquatic transportation device. But it did afford us the opportunity to swim about over a coral reef, seeing lots and lots of brightly coloured tropical fish. It was great. It also meant I could jump off the top of a boat into the sea, just like on a video from MTV. Or something.

Anyway, the other great thing we encountered on the boat trip was the phenomenon of the floating bar. Basically, everyone on the trip leapt off the boat into the water, and got a rubber ring type flotation device. The barman sat in a rubber ring with a crate of bottles of fruit wine (like sangria). Everyone had a cup, and you swam back to the bar for a free refill whenever you wanted. Utterly brilliant...

Okay, congratulations to anyone who's got through my last two smug posts without wanting to stab me. I assure you all that the beach-related self-satisfaction will subside rapidly starting from my next post. We're off to Ho Chi Minh City tonight, you see. Also known as Saigon...

Nha Trang

2005-01-20T20:30:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, get ready to once more be jealous, as I hereby announce that we are finally out of the dull grey English-style weather section of Vietnam, and into the sunshine South. Here in Nha Trang it's hot and sunny, and the South China Sea is cool and blue. How are you doing back home? Cold?

As you may have guessed from the obnoxiously smug tone of the previous paragraph, we're now at the great beach resort of Nha Trang, doubtless mentioned in some Vietnam film or other (Apocalypse Now, perhaps?). It's got ok beaches, though it gets quite windy in the afternoons. Still, that just makes the waves more fun. See that? Breaks both ways...

Film references aside I'm afraid I've not got a lot to actually tell you about. We've basically spent the last few days lounging about on the sand and returning to our room to watch Cartoon Network on TV (Recommended viewing as follows - Codename: Kids Next Door, the new He-Man).

Other than that the most interesting thing was when we went out the other night wearing our new flared suits. We looked sharp as a tack, needless to say, and got a fair amount of comment, as you'd expect. Isn't life great?

Sartorial elegance, 'nam-style

2005-01-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

We're currently in Hoi An, though actually we'll be leaving later tonight for Nha Trang, and the beach. Yay! When we leave, though, we'll have to struggle our extremely full bags on to our shoulders. Why are our bags now so full, having not been so full previously? Because we've got new suits, that's why!

You read correctly. It wasn't a misprint. The three of us have all purchased new suits. And not just any suits, either. Tailor-made suits. Two each. One, a conservative, smart work suit. The other a large-lapelled, flared-trouser gangster suit. By this stage you're either thinking I've gone completely crazy, or that I'm taking the piss. Neither are in fact true. Well, at any rate I'm not taking the piss.

Hoi An is a smallish town in Central Vietnam. It is notable for being a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Why this is the case is not very clear when you get here. UNESCO World Heritage sites are supposed to be staggeringly beautiful or important historically, and Hoi An doesn't seem to have a lot of lovely architecture or that many great old buildings. It has a few pleasant and quaint temples, old merchant houses, Chinese-style congregation halls and a Japanese covered bridge, but it doesn't have a lot of things of interest, historically or architecturally, as far as I could see. What it does have, are tailors' shops. Lots of them.

When I say lots, I mean lots. We're talking around two hundred. Evey one of which wants you to come in and look every time you walk past. It can get a bit tiresome. However, it is also great. On our first day, having looked in a few such establishments to get the lie of the land, we each decided on our two suit plan, figuring we hadn't done anything particularly crazy for a while, and that if we were buying six suits from somewhere we'd probably be able to get a discount. And so it turned out. We managed to get two lovely-fitting tailored suits each, made from nice material (some sort of Italian silk/polyester mix). The cost? US$28 per suit. That's around fifteen quid a pop. About what you'd pay for an ill-fitting charity shop suit back home.

All of our serious suits are subtley striped dark grey numbers. Our gangster suits are somewhat more flamboyant. Mine is a grey barcode pinstriped number that look slike something from one of Tony Soprano's favourite black and white films, Si's is a stone-coloured number that makes me think of "Chinatown", and Trev's is a delightful black number with fat golden pinstripes. They all have fat jacket lapels, and flares so big that they almost cover my feet. We're going to look quite the part when we get to Nha Trang and go out to beach bars in those suits... To celebrate this achievement, we each came up with new pimp names to go with our gangster outfits. My new moniker is Juan Antonio Fandango, Trev is Mack Jive, and Si shall be known while wearing his as The Pimptacular Mr Fly.

Our plan is to post back the suits when we get to Bangkok, figuring that even with postage and packaging, we'll still have got a real bargain. And to be honest, UNESCO be damned, it's not like there was much else to do in this town...

Hue

2005-01-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

Right, well, I know I haven't written for a while, but there's not been a lot to say. We stayed in Hanoi for a couple more days, and it started to get very cold. Went to a series of temples in the hills outside town, called the Perfume Pagoda, which was ok but nothing too great. And saw some more museums that were also ok but not great. So I couldn't be bothered to write about them. Ok?

Anyway, we travelled south on an overnight bus to Hue, in Central Vietnam. Hue used to be the capital of the Nguyen dynasty of Vietnamese emperors, who were in charge from 1802-1945, though during the last few years they were really only puppets, their strings pulled by, at various times, the French, the Japanese and whoever else came that way. Now there's not much left of the former Citadel, containing the Imperial Palace, itself containing the Forbidden City, which in turn contained the emperor, his concubines, and their eunuch guards, because the Septics bombed it flat in the American war, when it was held for twenty-five days or so following the Tet offensive. But what is left is reasonably impressive, and there's a great massive concrete block with a flag in front of it - very Communist!

Another thing to see in Hue is a famous pagoda (temple thing) in front of which a monk famously performed a self-immolation in the 50s (I think) to protest against the rule of President Diem, then in charge of South Vietnam. Said pagoda includes a large octagonal tower, a proud and impressive symbol of Vietnam... er, except today it was surrounded by scaffolding. So that was a disappointment.

The final thing we've seen here is Tu Duc's tomb, another large imperial complex that suffered slightly due to the war. It's a big park type deal containing the final resting places of Tu Duc and many of his wives (he was that sort of an emperor - lucky git!) and family members. It was very pleasant.

So, basically, Hue is ok, but a bit dull, and suffered a lot due to Uncle Sam. But it's not all bad - there is a bar here called DMZ (the former demilitarised zone between South and North Vietnam is not too far away from here) which features cheap beer, free pool, and permanent markers with which to further plaster the already covered walls with bizarre graffiti.

"And so it goes, and so it goes... Si and Taz" - An example of said graffiti, on the bar at DMZ, Hue.

Hanoi

2005-01-09T15:14:00.000-08:00

Hanoi is sometimes referred to as the Paris of the East, and it is indeed by far the most romantic place to which I've ever been. We're staying in the Old Quarter, a lovely warren of winding narrow streets, lined with small shops, stalls and street vendors, the roads full of motorbikes and bicycles. The noise is amazing, and from our balcony the people watching is great.

Last night we went to Hoan Kiem Lake, a smallish lake in the middle of said Old Quarter. Legend has it that in the 15th century (I think) Vietnamese Emperor Le Lao(I think) got a magic sword from the gods and used it to drive the Chinese out of the country. When he had accomplished this and once more freed Vietnam from foreign oppression, he went boating on the lake. A giant turtle sent by the same gods came up and took the sword, taking it to the bottom of the lake. And indeed there are giant turtles in the lake, it seems - though they are seen rarely, there are photos of them.

Even without the turtles, the Hoan Kiem lake remains an unbelievably romantic setting at dusk and later. Surrounded on four sides by busy roads, the lake is completely still and calm, the lights of the city reflecting off it, and the slight mist lending it a magical air. Not for no reason is it lined with Vietnamese couples sitting on the stone benches, entwined in each other's arms. It made us all go very Marvin Gaye...

Still, there's only so much romatic setting you can take when you're on a round the world jolly in a three bloke group. In search of something completely different, this morning we got up and went to Ho Cho Minh's mausoleum.

In case anyone doesn't know (and there's no reason why you should) Ho Chi Minh was the leader of the Vietnamese revolution, and the president of North Vietnam during the war with South Vietnam/USA. He claimed to be a Marxist-Leninist by political affiliation, though actually (for all you politics/history/philosophy buffs) I would have said his philosophy was more Maoist, being as Vietnam had very little working class per se pre-revolution, but did have a large peasant population. Anyway, his beliefs about his beliefs may have influenced or been influenced by the fact that Vietnam's ties were always much more with Russia than with it's neighbour China.

Right, politics over with. Uncle Ho (as he's affectionately known to many around these parts) was beloved by the people (as of course all Commie leaders are), and so when he died the Party didn't replace him as President, leaving that position unfilled, and (in direct contradiction to his wish to be cremated) had his body embalmed and put on display in a glass coffin a la Lenin. And this morning we went to see said body. Making it (for those counting) two preserved dead bodies seen so far on this trip.

Uncle Ho's mausoleum is an imposing block of a building, and his coffin room is a very somber, serious affair, as befits a man of his historical stature. Use of embalming agents means that there was rather more to see of Ho's body than there had been of St Francis Xavier's. He looks rather pale, but apart from that it just looks like he's asleep. The whole thing is very eery and pseudo-religious, all the more strange when you consider the Vietnamese Communist Party used to spend a lot of time and effort trying to ban ancestor worship in Vietnam.

The fetishisation of Ho and his revolutionary colleagues and materials was predictably also evident in the Ho Chi Minh museum, which contained exhibits that were more rubbish pseudo-intellectual installation art projects than anything else. There were lots of displays representing the evils of capitalism and fascism and the triumph of the proletariat and so on, and loads of dubious high-falutin words from Uncle Ho and the Party, as well as pictures of the dead man. Not much actual information though.

This afternoon we looked in at the museum built oout of the remaining two thirds of the Hoa Lo Prison, ironically nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by US Prisoners of War who stayed there. Before the Vietnam War (or, as it's known here, the American War) during the French colonial era, the prison was used by the Frogs to capture, hold and torture Vietnamese nationalist revolutionaries, and thus according to the information was very much A Bad Thing. Various torture instruments are displayed and such, including a couple of guillotines. During the American War, it was used to keep US POWs. In strict contrast, according to the information given, they were kept in spartan but fair conditions, and it was A Good Thing. I'd be very interested to hear what one of the prisoners had to say about that, for example Senator John McCain, who stayed in Hoa Lo for around seven and a half years. Bizarrely, the flight suit and gear that he was wearing when he was captured is displayed in the museum.

All told Hanoi is a fantastic place, full of history, romance and beauty, along with Oriental architecture and temples and modern shopping centres. If asked to rank cities I've visited so far, it would currently be number one, beating even Bangkok. So, the Paris of the East: very highly recommended. And much fewer French than that other Paris, too...

The Odd-yssey

2005-01-08T16:19:00.000-08:00

Last time you heard from me I was in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, getting ready to travel to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Here is the account of that epic journey.

It begins on the morning of the 5th December, in Vientiane. We knew our bus to the Vietnamese border left Vientiane bus station that night at 4 in the morning, so we had a day to waste. However, we'd deliberately left some things in Vientiane to do, to fill said day.

So we saw a couple of temples, both of which were nice. One of them is a symbol of Laos independence, a giant golden (painted) Stupa (sort of like a Buddhist spire), and the other was the oldest temple in Vientiane, having been built early in the nineteenth century (Vientiane has been sacked by just about everybody who's ever been in the region so there's very little really old stuff left standing - even that temple has had to be rebuilt since then, as the original was burnt down by the Siamese). I'm afraid, though, that I can't remember the names of either.

We also went back to the Vietnamese Embassy, and collected our visas. While waiting I read a book written by the general of the NVA from teh time of the French and American wars. It was the most biased historical account I've ever read, making such dubious claims as (I'm paraphrasing, but this is the gist): "With the defeat of the Germans and Japanese, Capitalism was clearly falling and the world was entering a new phase". Now, the original had been written in 1974, so from that point of view it could have been seen as fair enough. But I was reading a 2004 revised edition. I think even the nutters from Warwick Uni Students' and Socialist Workers' Party would know to take that out in a revised edition... We also stole another three toilet rolls from the Embassy toilets!

Next up was that most traditional of things to do when wasting time in the capital city of a Communist country: ten pin bowling. Yes, Laos has a bowling alley, so we went along. It was a far cry from the skills displayed as a result of repeated practice in my second year of university, but none of us disgraced ourselves particularly.

All done, we mooched about for the rest of the day, eating dinner very slowly, and then walked to the bus station. It was around 9 o'clock. We had seven hours to kill at a bus station in the middle of the night.

At this point we became aware of the sort-of-hotel nehind us, part of the bus station complex, it would appear. Not that we wanted a room, as we had very little currency left in the Laos kip. But it was of slight concern that this was very much the kind of hotel that rented rooms by the hour, if you get what I mean. And indeed, over the next seven hours, a variety of shady characters and women came and went from the rooms. Classy. I spent most of the time reading books I've bought over the course of my travels so far: "Lord Jim" by Joseph Conrad, which is excellent, and which I got for 50 Rupees from a roadside book vendor in Mumbai, and "The Rock Says", an old autobiography of WWF Wrestler-turned-rubbish-film-actor The Rock, which is also excellent, and which I got for 10 baht from the "everything must go" rack of a second hand bookshop in Chiang Mai. So there you go, literature and wrestling. All to ignore prositution.

Finally, our bus came, and we got on. It left at 4am or so, and I could finally lapse into blessed sleep. And doze I did, notwithstanding the jolting, potholed roads, freezing cold mist streaming in through the open doors, and cramped hard seating. The road we were travelling on? That's right, it was Route 13 Revisited!

Route 13, for those who missed my words about it on my previous post, is a dangerous road on which buses are semi-frequently held up and robbed by armed Hmong tribesmen/bandits. Oh, and they blew up Vientiane bus station in 2003. That's right, the very same bus station at which we'd spent most of the night. Observant readers will also recall that dangerous, dangerous Route 13 was the scene of our bus breaking down for around three quarters of an hour last time I travelled on it, and therefore the scene of many a fatalistic "here come the bandits" type joke.

Back to the present, though, and I was dozing on a bus travelling on the aforementioned deadly transport route.

BANG!

An almighty explosion sound rocked the bus. It skidded slightly, slewed a bit, then the bus driver wrested some measure of control back from the road and bring us to a halt at the side of the road. The smell of burning was thick in the air, and the bus was leaning over to it's back and left, yawing into the centre of the road. Everyone got off, to see one of the pair of back left tyres in shreds. We'd suffered a massive tyre blowout. Once again, we were stranded on dangerous Route 13, waiting for the morons in charge to fix the bus. This time, though, it was a bitterly cold and misty half six in the morning. We stood around hugging ourselves and stamping our feet to keep warm, and, yes, cracking fatalistic jokes about armed rebels. It took them once again around three quarters of an hour to replace the tyre, once they'd found the replacement buried under the sacks of grain being transported at the back of the bus (I have no idea). But fortunately we didn't hear a single AK-47, and we were soon safely on our way again.

We arrived at Lac Sao, a town near the Laos/Vietnam border, at around midday, and were immediately set upon by Vietnamese bus people trying to get us to take their bus to Hanoi. We explained we wanted to go to Vinh (in central Vietnam) to spend the night there, and soon got ourselves transport on what seemed to be a van with seats in it, staffed by three shady looking blokes. Still, for only US$5, the price was right. And it's not like we had any choice - we weren't going to stay in Lac Sao!

Of course, we started regretting the move quite early on in the trip, when our boys began stopping to load goods into the van. And I mean stopping lots. And I walso mean lots of good. Duvets, steam cleaners, rice cookers, the ubiquitous sacks of grain, boxes and boxes of red bull, and (unbelievably) two or three fridges were all loaded into or on top of the bus as we journeyed to the border, through the wettest, mistiest, coldest mountainous jungle terrain I've ever seen. We even stopped at two warehouses high in the mountains. That's right, we seemed to be getting a lift into Vietnam in a smuggler's van!

We got to the border, and had to get off thebus to present our passports to Laos immigration to get them stamped and so on. While doing this we could only take our day bags with us, leaving our other bags on the bus with the smugglers. I'm not going to pretend the whole thing didn't make me nervous. I mean, first of all, tehy could have just driven off with our stuff. And if they didn't do that, they could have put anything in our bags! Needless to say, the officious Lao bureacrat behind the glass took her sweet time performing the requisite multiple stamping on our passports...

When we got out, the bus was still there, so that was a start! We drove on and soon arrived at the Vietnamese immigration point. This was on the top of a steep mountain, an austere concrete Communist block of a building. At this point visibility was down to around 5m due to the mist. What with that and the architecture, I felt like I was in the opening sequence of a Bond film! Again we had to leave our big bags in the van, taking in our day bags. Got our passports stamped, paid the "stamping fee" (yeah, right, there's a stamping fee - blatantly baksheesh, but when it's a Vietnamese border guard and it's only about 50p, you just pay), and had our bags put through customs' X-Ray scanner. Oh, and we got given a free packet of condoms. Yup, that wasn't a typo: condoms. God knows why - some sort of anti-AIDS initiative, perhaps?

Then we went back to the bus again, and were told that they wouldn't carry our bags over the border. We'd have to do that ourselves. Immediately I was edgy. But a quick check and I couldn't see any evidence of anything having been taken out or put in my bag. So I picked it up, put it on my pack, carrying my other bag in my hand, and walked across the border. And that was it. That's right, I didn't have anyone check my big bag. Only my day bag was X-rayed. I simply walked over the border the second time. I could have been carrying guns, crack and porno and gotten completely away with it.

The van got through customs eventually, having seemed to make a lot of presents of goods to various guards along the way (don't know why Vietnam had such a name for corruption), and we were again on our way, in Vietnam.

We got in to Vinh at around six that night, having had to change buses once. We did annoyingly get dropped at the train station rather than the bus station, as they pretended not to understand us while at the same time trying to get us to either stay at their mate's guest house round the corner, or go witht hem to Hanoi there and then (I mean, come on - we'd been on the road for a hell of a long time!). Exhausted, ratty, bewildered, we got a room in another sleazy guesthouse and slept beneath mosquito nets that stank like death shrouds for nearly 12 hours.

Next morning we got up at around 9am, made our way to the bus station, and immediately procured a bus to Hanoi. We arrived in Hanoi at about 5, and our journey was finally over.

First, though, we had to get a room. The first place we went to could do us a triple room for US$10 per night, but we reckoned we could do better. So we went to another guesthouse. They had no room, but while we sat and drank rubbish "flower tea" (what I wouldn't give, at this point, after so many months, for a proper strong cup of tea!) they rang around and found another place that had a triple room for US$9. We figured we'd take this, as we figured we wouldn't find anything cheaper.

When we got to the hotel, we were amazed - I mean, it looked like an actual posh hotel. Fish pool, polished floors, a reception desk, a restaurant. It was small, but boy, did it look out of our league. We were shown up to our room on the third floor, and... well, we had arrived! It had a TV, a sit-down toilet, a shower, a fridge(!) and, best of all, a balcony looking over the busy narrow Old Quarter street we were on. What it didn't have, though, was three beds. It had two single beds. The woman explained that we could just push the two beds together and sleep the three of us like that. Er... That might work with Asians, who tend to be small. But we're northern Europeans, who tend to be larger. And we're none of us small guys. Could you not bring another mattress in, we asked, and put it on the floor. Reluctantly she agreed to this, and then she tried to claim that the room would cost US$12. A quick putting back on of the bags and making as if to leave later, though, and she was back down to US$9.

Twenty or so minutes later, the mattress arrived. Followed by a bed. In front of our very eyes, the guy put together a bed from it's component parts. We were now staying in a super-plush (by our standards) three bed room with satellite, sit-down toilet, hot shower, balcony over the street below and fridge (!) for only US$9. We had arrived.

A little about a lot

2005-01-04T22:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted (as predicted) so I have a lot to write about. Therefore I am having to resort to writing brief unconnected bits about each thing. So bear with me. Or don't - it's not like I get paid for this!

We left Luang Prabang for Vientiane on the second of January, two days ago. On the journey we had to travel along dangerous, dangerous route 13. You might not know about this, as I have been refraining from mentioning it thus far for fear of terrifying you all (well, some of you), but Route 13 is the road that runs from the north of Laos right down to the south, winding through beautiful misty mountainous jungle. It is also the most dangerous road ever.
Well, alright, not quite. But buses travelling on it are sort of semi-regularly held up by armed gunmen and stuff along it's route. This happened several times in 2003 and 2004. And then in 2003 a bomb went off at Vientiane main bus station. It's all the work of... well, no one knows who it's the work of, actually. General consensus is Hmong (it's a tribe) rebels, but the government claims it's just the work of common or garden bandits. Mind you (checks over shoulder nervously for secret police), this is a Communist government that doesn't allow opposition, so they would say that.
Anyway, suffice it to say we survived. Yay. Though I'm not going to claim that when the bus actually broke down right in the middle of the most dangerous but we didn't crack a fair few fatalistic jokes... Thank goodness for spanners, and the mechanical mindedness of the driver!

Vientiane is the capital city of Laos, across the Mekong river from Thailand. It's a sordid, run-down little berg, but having got thoroughly bored of the quiet life after spending just too long in Luang Prabang, the facts that as I speak there is a whore walking the street outside this internet centre ("Hey Baaaaabyyyy" - no joke, no Full Metal Jacket pastiche, that is actually her line), and our guesthouse is a shit heap don't bother me too much. At least there are people here. And things to do (and I don't mean the ho). And without further ado, here are some accounts of the things I've done in since arrival.

Since I gave an account of the bureaucracy involved in getting my Indian visa, I feel I should give an account of what it took for us to go to the Vietnam embassy and get a Vietnamese visa. Actually, that's about it. We went there. It was open, despite it being the first Monday after New Year and thus everything else shut. We filled out a form, gave in our passports and photos, paid our US$55, and were told that the "three working days" it took to process would mean we could collect it on the 5th, when we handed in the application on the 2nd. So that's not like bank-style full working days - yay! Then, on the way out, Si took the risk of causing a diplomatic incident and stole a toilet roll from the Embassy toilets. Have that, Vietnam!

Today we got up (eventually - hey, I'm on holiday), and went to Buddha Park, a collection of scenes from Buddhist and Hindu mytholosy sculpted in cement by a monk. Judging from the sculptures, the man in question was completely insane - his vision of hell was an enormous concrete Giant Peach, into which one could crawl through a bit mouth, wander round the labyrinthine structure looking at bizarre concrete scenes, then eventually end up on the roof. Very highly recommended - it's utterly surreal.

After that we went to the Beer Lao factory. Yeah, I know it's a brewery, not a tourist attraction, but Beer Lao is the nicest beer in the whole wide world (probably), so we turned up at the reception, smiled and asked for a tour. And we got one, as well as free stickers, leaflets and, yes, a free glass of beer each. The bottling plant was fantastic. It was like all those videos in Science on Industrial processes, mixed with the Science Museum, and finally combined with beer. That good.

Finally, tonight I sat in a cheap Chinese in the sort-of-Chinatown here in Vientiane and ate fried pork and rice, then watched an utterly fantastic Chinese film about the perils of gambling. It had everything - the aforementioned gambling, sex, violence, comedy, awesome characters, and more plot twists than anyone could possibly foretell. And what was the name of this great film? I have no idea - the credits were in a Chinese language. Damn.

Right, off to Vietnam in the next couple of days, so again, if you don't hear from me for a while, don't panic and think I've been blown up at Vientiane bus station or somehow stumbled onto one of the many many pieces of unexploded ordinance the yanks left strewn across this still-Communist country when they weren't at all at war here stopping the Red Menace.

Luang Prabang and Happy New Year!

2004-12-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Actually, it'll be in the other order. Firstly, though, apologies if this is in huge type - that's how it appears on my screen and I can't seem to change it. Hopefully it won't appear like that on the finished blog.

Right, with that out the way, on to the next thing to get out of the way: wishing you, dear reader, a Happy New Year. May all your schemes come to fruition. Unless they contradict my schemes, of course...
I shall remain here in Luang Prabang for New Year's Eve. It'll be the third year in a row I've spent New Year's in a foreign country with Trev and Si, and the others have been legendary. So hopefully this one will be too. Anyway, don't expect to hear anything more from me until around the 2nd of January!

With that in mind, I will commence telling you all about Luang Prabang. Situated in North Thailand on the famous Mekong river of mentioned in my last post fame, it contains a Royal Palace. Well, a former Royal Palace. The King was unceremoniously booted out after the 1975 Revolution, you see. It's now a cack museum, but a nice building. It also features lots of great Buddhist temples, or "Wats" as they're known. Prompting surprisingly little "That was a good wat" - "what?" - "yes, wat" etc joking. So we're not completely awful human beings yet.

The main thing about Luang Prabang, though, is the lovely laid back ambience of the place. It's very easy to spend days here doing hardly anything, pottering about amongst the French Colonial architecture buildings, viewing the occasional Wat (don't do it!), sitting by the tropical rivers and eating noodle soup (on which after a few weeks in Southeast Asia I am now an expert - the trick to making it really great is to shove in every condiment they give you: chilli sauce, chilli paste, fish sauce, fish paste, soy sauce, sugar, sometimes more). It's grand. Though it isn't particularly exciting. Kind of like test match cricket - to those who don't get it, nothing really seems to be going on. To those who do, the fact that nothing is going on too quickly is the main beauty of the thing.

PS - Incidentally, if you don't like cricket, you could still like Luang Prabang...

I'm fine!

2004-12-28T19:44:00.000-08:00

Howdy,

Sorry that it's taken me so long to write this and set all your minds at rest, but I can explain. Firstly, I am absolutely fine, the massive earthquake that's decimated parts of South-East Asia left the north end of Thailand where we were relatively unscathed. Us 1, Natural Disasters 0. Though we really want to be keeping a clean sheet on this one...

Anyway, the reason I have taken so long to post this reassuring message is that when the earthquake hit at half eight on boxing day morning Thai time I was asleep (though apparently it could be felt in Chiang Mai). I then spent the rest of the day being very very ill due to what would be referred to diplomatically as Christmas Day 'over-exertions'. In fact I couldn't even keep water down as late in the day as eight o'clock.

Since then I have been trying to find an internet place, but I have also been travelling lots. On the 27th we left Chiang Mai and hauled arse to the Thai/Laos border via six hours of nerve-racking bus trips and a lot of even more nerve-racking waiting for the bus. Nerve-racking because we knew the Laos border would shut at around five and weren't sure how close we were, time-wise. But we got across that day, and spent the night in Huay Xai on the Laos side of the Mekong river, of mentioned in Vietnam war films fame. Then today we again hauled arse, this time up said river on a nerve-racking six hour speedboat journey with frequent not nerve-racking stops. The reason for the nerves being racked this time was due to the speed and apparent lack of stability of the boat. Don't worry, we made it. Though Lonely Planet does mention that a certain number of people are killed every year on journeys like that.

But hey, when you've survived the India Bus and Train networks, and one of the world's biggest earthquakes, you're invincible, right?

PS - My long-awaited post about hill trekking in Thailand will follow this soon, I promise.

Hill Trekking, Christmas and the perils of alcohol

2004-12-25T20:07:00.000-08:00

Warning - this post contains frequent references to drugs and alcohol and should not be read by anyone under fifteen years of age.

That's got Mum and Dad worried...

So, hill treks. Basically, a bunch of honkies (white people, if you didn't know) go to the mountain jungle (think misty forested slopes, like a Kenco advert but not in South America) and wander around looking at stuff and going "wow". And, in our case, also ride an elephant (nearly falling off more than once) and a bamboo raft (ditto).

Also in our case, however, was our tour guide Pon, a twenty-four year old Karen hilltribesman who went to university as part of the Thai government's scholarship for tribesmen scheme, speaks about five languages, and now makes a living sharking western women who come on the trek. A hilarious man who refers to women (in fact refers to almost everything) as 'chicken'.

He is also a bad influence. On the second day of our trek, at around ten in the morning he stopped in a small village for a break. He then went in to a hut and got some locally brewed firewater that he referred to as "corn whisky", though it tasted more like weak vodka than anything else. Then we drank three bottles of it between four of us (me, Trev, Si, Pon) in about three quarters of an hour to the disbelief and astonishment of the other (middle aged) members of our party. The thing is, it was free drink. I couldn't very well turn it down - it might have been offensive to the tribesmen. Needless to say, the six hours of walking we had to do up and down hills the rest of that day was... eventful.

Having said the tribesmen may have considered it offensive to turn down free booze, it seems unlikely that they would even have noticed, since they were all permanently caned. On the second day, I got up before anyone else, since I couldn't sleep anyway. On blearily stepping out of the hut at about six on a freezing cold morning (we were at quite a high altitude) I saw one of the tribesmen starting the fire. And in his mouth was an enormously fat spliff. They'd been caning the previous night, but at six in the morning!? Pon says they all used to be opium fiends but the government cracked down on it three years ago. Lots of people got shot and stuff and many of them had to go to Chiang Mai for a special cold turkey scheme, but it's worked cos now there's next to no poppy produce in North Thailand. When we asked why the government hadn't also outlawed what they referred to as "green leaf" they just laughed. All the locals basically chain smoked draw all day. Goodness knows what they'd do if it was banned...

Anyway, the trekking was grand, considering that I hate walking (thanks Mum for all that early "let's go for a walk" talk) - the scenery was brilliant, very reminiscent of "Predator".

The second night we drank more corn whisky and sang alongakaraoke round the camp fire to various Oasis/Beatles etc songs. And some great singing was indeed done. Particularly me and Trev's Johnny Rotten version of "Eternal Flame".

The next day (Christmas Eve) we came back, and decided to go out in Chiang Mai that night with Pon. As I believe I have mentioned elsewhere. My this is getting confusing.

So, you already know about that day. Now for Christmas Day. Bear in mind that by this point what with all the above alcohol abuse, walking, lack of water and lack of sleep, I am not at my most alcohol-tolerant, but figuring it was Christmas Day, I was miles from home, homesickness is nasty, and it was Si's birthday we cracked open the rum at about half noon.

Yeah, basically, not a good idea. So that's how I came to be so hungover that I didn't even know about the earthquake until I was travelling and thus unable to comment upon it.

Merry Christmas

2004-12-25T11:26:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone!

I got back from my hill trek last night, about which I shall write another time. Suffice it to say at the moment that it involved more corn whisky than was perhaps healthy at ten in the morning.

We went out last night with our 'responsible' tour guide who took us to a bar owned by his mate, where we saw in Christmas (which is also my mate Si's birthday) drinking cheap rum and coke and playing pool with the locals. Quality.

Plans for today? Well, it's about half eleven in the morning here, so I'll probably eat some more watermelon (traditional Christmas fare that it is), then drink some more rum. 'Tis the season, folks!

Sukhothai

2004-12-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

Today we went to the other ancient Siamese capital, Sukhothai. Sukhothai is older than Ayuthaya, and was annexed by the latter in the middle of the sixteenth century, so after that their fortunes tend to run together (specifically they get sacked by the Burmese). All that remains of Sukhothai are a load of old ruins, which add up to another UNESCO World Heritage Site.

To get to Sukhothai equied a long bus journey, all the more annoying as the previous day we'd had a boring seven and a half hour train journey fom Ayuthaya to Phitsanulok, where we're staying. The train wasn't an 'express', but an 'ordinary' this time, and the carriage resembled a hospital waiting room on the inside, with seating in the form of benches lined up against the wall, and not in the usual facing towards or away from the direction of travel. And tomorrow we've got a possibly even worse journey from Phitsanulok to Chiang Mai - our train leaves at 7.30am and gets in at 4.30pm.

Anyway, back to today. We hired bikes, and spent a lovely relaxing day peddling around the ruined temples and monasteries of an abandoned civilisation and suffering from our colds (it's December, so I've got a cold - the fact that it's hot here apparently matters not).

That's it for central Thailand - Chiang Mai is in the north. Boy am I not looking forwad to tomorrow...

Muay Thai, Ayuthaya

2004-12-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

When you last heard from me I was in Bangkok. Now I'm in Ayuthaya, which used to be the capital of what was then called Siam in the olden days, back when it was a city that at the time was bigger and more populous than London (which was possibly dying from gin and/or consumption and/or the plague and/or fires at that point), before the Burmese sacked it and the Thais set up again at the present day site of Bangkok.

On the last night in Bangkok we went and saw Muay Thai kickboxing at Lumphini boxing stadium, a building reminiscent of prtty much every Jean Claude van Damme martial arts competition film I've ever seen. It was a concrete, wood and wire mesh structure with a lit-up ring in the centre and a packed stand full of Thai men frantically betting with one another.
The action itself was not as quickfire and bloody as I'd expected and, let's be honest, hoped, but therew aren't many times or places in life when you can watch kids in their late teens hug and knee each other in the ribs for about six quid, so it was pretty cool. At the end of five three-minute rounds of such hugging and rib-kneeing, the person who had been hit the most was declared the winner, or so it seemed to us. Obviously we didn't quite have the rules down pat...

And so to Ayuthaya on the swish-as-anything Thai trains. We were in second class as well, so god knows what first class is like! Have spent the last two days seeing lots of cool old ruined (and some still in use) temples travelling between them by bike and boat. All very photogenic and evocative. We'll probably leave tomorrow and go to Phitsanulok, from there visiting the other ancient Siamese capital, Sukhothai.

Wat Po, Grand Palace, Wat Arun

2004-12-14T22:04:00.000-08:00

Continuing the (childish and perhaps casually racist - you be the judge) amusement I often derive from Thai words (actually, come to think of it, words in any language that sound a bit like English words), the Thai word for temple is 'Wat', pronounced like 'What'. This isn't particularly funny in itself, but combine it with other Thai words and you get places like 'Wat U Mong' and 'Wat Wang', both of which make me laugh rather a large amount.

Anyway, back to the point at hand: There are of course many Wats in Bangkok. Yesterday I went to see some of the most famous and beautiful. We started at Wat Po, a large collection of buildings making up a temple (or a series of temples - not really sure). The highlight of Wat Po is a huge (46m long 15m high) golden statue of a reclining Buddha (Buddha lying down dying and thus ascending to heaven/nirvana, I believe), which is extremely impressive. Though the back side of it reveals a disappointing lack of definition about the buttock region. Not that I go and see Buddhist masterpieces to look at their arses, obviously...

Wat Po is also very impressive just in itself, a large collection of amazing architectural works. They're all done in what I would consider to be very much an oriental style, red and green layered tiled roofs and such. Quality.

This style of building was repeated, but with variation, at the next building complex we went to see, the Grand Palace. The Grand Palace is where the Thai King (they have a constitutional monarchy not unlike the British model except the King is very much loved in Thailand (according to Lonely Planet)) lives, so you can't go in, but you can look at the building from outside, and it is pretty good. Very palatial.

The most impressive part of the large number of buildings in the complex, however, is another religious building. Wat Phra Kaeow (I think that's how you spell it's name but I may be wrong) is the King's own private monastery. By which I mean it's a monastery, but no monks live there - it's reserved as the King's private prayer hall. It's visible from a way off due to three enormous tower type things in front of the hall proper, one golden. Inside the prayer hall is the Emerald Buddha, a jade (yes, jade, not emerald - both green though so that's how the mistake was first made, and the name just stuck, I suppose) model of Buddha that is of immense religious significance to Thai Buddhists. As per the rules with all Thai Buddhist relgious places, be careful not to point the soles of your feet at the Buddha - in Thailand the feet are the lowest and dirtiest part of the body (didn't know they even knew me!) so mustn't be pointed at anyone or put on seats or whatever.

The last temple we saw was Wat Arun, a large Khmer (Cambodian, if you didn't know - the Khmer were an ancient Cambodian people, hence Pol Pot adopting the name for his country-flaying Marxist group the Khmer Rouge) type design across the river from the rest of Bangkok. It's also impressive, though it suffered as a result of me having seen other, larger examples of Thai Buddhist art and architecture on the same day.

All dead good, anyway. Bangkok is going up in my estimations, and it started high. The other day I bought fried crickets from a foodstall by the side of the road - delicious!

Bangkok

2004-12-12T18:41:00.000-08:00

With India safely left behind, we arrived in Bangkok at around five in the morning, and got the bus to our hotel. We're staying in the Department Store area of Bangkok, as opposed to the Backpacker's area (based around Khao San Road, probably Lonely Planet's favourite road ever, more on which later) or the sex tourist area. Which is not to say that our hotel doesn't have it's fair share of sex tourists. In fact, it's purely sex tourists and us. So firstly, a word on them.

Quite simply, I find them repellant. As most of you who know me will no doubt be aware, generally speaking I'm usually not that repulsed by immoral acts, but there's something so plain wrong about fat sweaty ugly white men flying out here to take their pick of the many Thai hookers, or to marry a catalogue bride. I suppose in a way everybody's happy - the Thais get money, the men are less lonely. But it forever colours the relationship between Thailand and the west. It's got to the extent that every time I see an old white guy around here I assume he's a sex tourist, which is probably unfair a lot of the time. And I can only imagine how much I'd hate westerners if I was a Thai bloke my age.

Right, rant over with, let's get on to my first impressions of the 'City of Angels' (this is part of the real name for Bangkok - apparently Bangkok is just the western name for it, it's official moniker being hilariously long - about twenty words). Well, because, as I previously mentioned, we're in the department store district, my first impressions were of a department store. It was here I discovered a startling and bizarre phenomenon: reverse culture shock.

I've spent so long in India, that when we got in to the department store I was confused and panicky. Everything was so clean and bright and hard. There was so much blank well-lit space. All the products were so clean and folded. And no one spoke to me at all. It was terrifying.

Spent that first day gradually acclimatising ourselves to living in a place so much more like home than what we've been used to. It took a while, but a lifetime of Western ways comes back stronger than two months in India reasonably quickly.

The rest of the day was spent watching the King's Cup International Takraw Championships in the Bangkok National Stadium. Takraw is a game like volleyball, played with two or three person teams, using a light hollow wicker ball about the size of a mini-football, on a court resembling a badminton court. Each player can touch the ball once (as opposed to doing loads of kick-ups) and can use any part of their body except their hands. It's sort of like football volleyball. And it's amazingly athletic - the smash equivalent is generally some sort of ridiculous overhead scissor kick, performed by an oriental man about five foot seven, over a net as high as he is. The man in question then generally lands on his feet, or feet plus a steadying hand. A fantastic sport.

The next day, our second in Bangkok, we decided to go to Jatujak market, since it was a Saturday. This is a giant covered market, the biggest I've ever seen. It's easy and enjoyable to get lost wandering around through the various sections, with stalls selling clothes, hats, belts, shoes, furniture, bags, pets, etc. That's right: pets. Oddly enough Jatujak market is the place to go if you want a dog and you live in Bangkok. We mainly looked at the clothes, though - some cool band T-Shirts, but nothing that I really wanted to buy, though at 180 Baht (about two pounds twenty-five) the price was certainly right. Had it been the last stop on our trip I would have probably spazzed all my remaining wampum on clothing, but as it is, there was no point in me buying two pairs of jeans and having to lug them around for eight months!

After we got bored of the market, went and watched more Takraw, then back to the hotel, where we met our other travelling companion, Si Whitby. He'd flown from Heathrow that day. So from now on there'll be three of us. Yay.

To celebrate the reunion, we went out for dinner and some beers, and watched the Newcastle v Portsmouth football match on TV (Si is a Newcastle fan) in a bar full of Thai hookers who we politely ignored. Going out in our region of Bangkok is actually not too seedy, but again as a consequence of the above-mentioned prevalance of sex tourists, there are lots of hookers. And, again a horrible consequence of these ways of the world, you get to the stage where you assume every Thai woman you see out is a working girl. Which is horrible, because for all I know they might not be. Mind you, it's quite a change from India, where every woman you'd see would fall into one of the old three Maiden, Mother or Crone types, and you wouldn't see many women in general anyway. Here you see more women than men, but as mentioned above, there's a tendency to assume they all fall into another old type.

Today we went to the National Museum Bangkok, and learnt about Thai history. This appears to be a history of the kingdom of Siam warring with Burma lots and lots, being in charge of Cambodia and Laos, and warring with Vietnam a little. Then the European powers turned up, and the history was then the kingdom of Siam trying not to be outright conquered by France or Britain through the means of continually ceding areas of it's land to the foreign interests. Mind you, I'm not too sure about much of it, because the English information at the museum was written in a style that left many sentences completely nonsensical. Such rarely-employed grammatical techniques as ending a sentence with the word "and" were brought out. This, combined with the often amusing names of historical characters such as King U-Thong (childish, I know, but very very funny) meant that much of the time I was near-crying with laughter.

Also today we went to the aforementioned Khao San Road. And it's rubbish. Despite how much Lonely Planet claims it's great, it's in fact a slightly lame stall-lined street full of student clothing, rubbish slogan T-shirts and some bars and bookshops. A big disappointment: If you want clothing and you're in Bangkok, Jatujak market or the MBK Shopping centre are far better bets, it seems to me.

So, can Bangkok topple Mumbai as 'best city so far'? It's too early to say, as we'll still be here for a few more days, and we haven't seen any landmarks yet, but early signs are promising. It is certainly a great place in itself. It's got great shopping facilities, it's clean, the public transport is very good (especially to a man coming from India - here they understand the concept of letting everyone who wants to get off the bus or train before trying to pile on) and the beer is pretty cheap - about 50p for a big bottle from a supermarket, or around one pound twenty from a bar. The only problem is the number of fat old westerners, always making me feel a little bit ashamed.

Who would have thought it - me on the moral high ground!

Bollywood, Elephanta, Goodbye India

2004-12-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

From now on, I'm afraid, I shall have to get an agent of sorts to write this up for me, or a ghost writer, or something, for I am now a Bollywood star. What the hell am I on about? Read on, dear friend...

It all began late the other evening, when there was a knock on the door of our hotel room. It was the hotel proprietor, not normally a man we'd want to see (in case there's some rule of the hotel we've broken or he wants more money for something or other). But the place we've been staying doesn't seem to have rules posted up, besides which we'd been very good. So what did he want? He wanted to know if we could swim. Er... yes. Why? Because he'd just had a casting agency on the phone looking for honkies who could swim to act as extras in an Indian series tomorrow. We'd be paid 500 Rupees for a day's work, and we'd get all our food and water for free. Oh, but they only wanted one of us. Though the other could come and watch. Were we interested?

Is the Pope still Catholic (I assume he is - I've been away for some time, but I presume the Vatican status quo is still more or less in place)?

The next morning, we left bright and early at 8 o'clock, picked up by our studio contact Ali, and proceeded on foot to another hotel, where we picked up the co-star honky extra, a German hippy girl who'd spent a year in Australia and looked like Lleyton Hewitt. Only with dreadlocks. She was friendly enough, but dull and earnest in the way only hippies can be - absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever, even for a German girl. Oh, and her name was Wibke. And she claimed not to be able to understand us because of our accents. Which coming from a teutonic hippy who spoke English with a German/Aussie twang was somewhat hard to stomach.

Wibke in tow, we headed to the shoot. In line with the style and glamour befitting such stars as ourselves, we travelled by train, and then by rickshaw. Jetset here I come...

The series was called 'Hotel Kingston', and was being shot at a five star beach resort complete with swimming pool and various other sports amenities. We didn't get much of a chance to look around, unfortunately, but we did get a chance to steal four toilet rolls. Well, they're very very rarely provided in Asia, and every penny counts. Besides, five star resort toilet paper doesn't grow on trees, you know.

So we spent the day hanging around on set, watching the (pisspoor) recording taking place, and being called on to act in the background as hotel guests. The continuity of the shots of the same scene from different angles was at best rubbish. In one scene, I was lounging by the pool. A conversation took place between some of the main characters. When shot from one angle, the tete-a-tete took place to my left, when re-shot from another angle, it took place to my right. After the final editing process, I'm going to be teleporting around in the background! Mind you, Trev, Wibke and a couple of Indian extras were playing around with a volleyball in the pool during the shooting of that scene. Goodness knows how they're going to have any continuity whatsoever. Maybe Indian series don't worry about that sort of thing.

Anyway, it was a great experience, and was generally good fun, when we weren't getting contradictory instructions from actors (this happened rather a lot). And the 500 rupees paid for a posh dinner we had that night - I had a very nice Bombay Duck, which is actually fish, and tastes like salty battered cod. Unfortunately, we did have to hang around with Wibke until the end of the day.

Old Jokes' Home
Q: What do you get if you cross an elephant with a rhino?
A: Elephino (Hell if I know, you see. Actually, this doesn't really work in print).

Working jokes or no, the lead tourist attraction of Mumbai is the similarly-named (ish) Elephanta Island. This is a forested lump of rock in Mumbai harbour, some hour and a bit of dull boat trip away from the famous Gateway of India, right near our hotel. On said island are some cave temples. Yay. I haven't seen enough cave temples. These were supposed to be the primo sight of Mumbai, however, so we went to have a look, stumping up the exorbitant fee of Rs110 for the boat, an incredibly cheeky Rs5 "tourist tax" on reaching Elephanta island, and Rs250 to enter the caves.

Was it worth it? Does the Pope crap in the woods? (Again, here, I'm assuming his condition hasn't degenerated to the extent of the head of the Roman Catholic Church running wild). Even if I'd not been over-caved of late, I still would have felt ripped off by this particular set-up. The only thing worth seeing in the caves that you couldn't see much cheaper in other caves elsewhere in India (speaking as a layman here - perhaps the caves are of special historical value and thus important to the cave carving expert) is a giant triple-headed bust of Shiva. That aside, it's pretty much same old. The main difference was that here, when we were sitting down quietly at the edge of one of the caves, a security guard came over and told us we were only allowed to sit down outside. The fact that I've been sitting on and in UNESCO World Heritage Monuments for months now, not to mention having to put up with frustratingly arbitrary and nonsensical Indian bureaucracy, was bad enough. But what really stuck in the craw was that the very same security guard then went and sat down himself! Not even a cheeky "excuse me aren't you only allowed to sit down outside" prompted a response from him - I don't think he understood our point.

All in all, Elephanta Island being it's main attraction is really going to hurt Mumbai's chances of winning "Best City" award at the end of this trip...

Anyway, that's it from India. The next time you hear from me I shall be in Thailand. So long, subcontinent. It's been frequently confusing, frustrating, tiring, bizarre, educational, and occasionally fun...

Apologies:
Sorry to The Muppet Show, Popbitch, the Roman Catholic Church and any and all aligned forces and/or deities.

Mumbai

2004-12-06T15:48:00.000-08:00

The city formerly known as Bombay was first seen by me through the window of a sleeper bus at about quarter to seven in the morning, as I blearily awoke from the half-doze in which I had reposed for most of the night.

Yes, we've finally left the beaches of Goa, and suitably brown, we hit the town. Mumbai (re-named in the late nineties after Mumba, disappointingly a Goddess of the early fishermen tribes who lived here a long long long time ago (when there was no city), and not Samantha Mumba (what's happened to Samantha Mumba?)) is (shock! horror!) actually discernible as being a city, having architecture, infrastructure and roads, and thus shunning Delhi's building/bomb site aesthetic for one approaching that of a late nineteenth-century British metropolis. Which is pretty much what Mumbai was, absured regionalist politics be damned. For better or worse the British legacy in Mumbai is extremely visible and obvious, from the lovely whimsicality of Bombay University (designed by the bloke wot done St Pancras in London), to the Maidans (expanses of grass on which several games of cricket are played all at the same time by various teams - like a Hackney Marshes only for Cricket), from Victoria Station (now renamed after Shivaji, the main historical Maratha chieftain and thus major historical 'good guy' of the area, who, er, never had a city here) to the Gateway to India (a big Arc de Triomphe type affair by the sea through which the last British battalion symbolically departed before Independence), it's all inherently stamped with good old Blighty. Consequently, for the first time, I actually feel I could perhaps live in Mumbai and not go stark staring bonkers within about a month.

Which is not to say that it isn't also very Indian. There are hawkers and street sellers galore, and a great Market - like Leicester market (if anyone's ever been there) but with less Indians (well, alright, probably slightly more) and with a bizarre mix of goods - electrical equipment sold on stalls next to fruit, chickens next to shampoo. I'm sure it all makes sense to the locals...

Thusly, Mumbai is pretty much odds on favourite to scoop my coveted 'favourite city in India' prize, unless it does something to righteously piss me off in the next few days.

Oh, and it has a McDonalds, so I'm eating meat again. God bless globalisation!

Poley and Herc ride again

2004-11-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

You've read the title, and it is indeed true. Not a week elapsed since we fled Palolem, hoping to forever put behind us the insane alternative identities of Napoleon and Hercules Salas. But life is often not so simple...

It all started when last night, being a Saturday night, we decided we should go out. Near to Baga, where we are currently staying, are two 'Saturday night Bazaar' places. Think Camden Market, with more old English tourists, Indians, beer and a terrible terrible "entertainment" stage featuring a cack jazz band, an odd guy doing tai chi, and an old cockney hippie woman as the worst compere in the world. On the plus side, there are less rubbish "legal high" stalls. But no decent clothes or records shops, either - it was all hippie beads and trance. Basically, if you want an Om or Che Guevara T-Shirt, or any item of ethnic tat, this is your place. The food was the same as Camden Market food too - overpriced slightly tasteless MSG-rammed noodles in card trays with plastic forks. Yummy. In case you hadn't yet guessed I wasn't overly enamoured with the Ingo's experience.

However, Ingo's did have the advantage of being within walking distance of the area's top club, "nightclub in the sky" Club Cubana. And for all the pedants out there, no, it was on top of a big hill. At Club Cubana there is a swimming pool, a jacuzzi, a dancefloor that looks like a laser quest, and the policy that you pay 500 Rupees to get it (that's pretty much what I'd normally spend in a day - about six quid fifty to you) but after that drinks are free all night. That's right, I said free. And all night. As you can imagine, it's brilliant. And as you can probably also imagine, due to the gratis nature of the refreshments, we got pretty, er, refreshed during the evening.

Our main shock, however, came relatively early on, when I was tapped on the shoulder at the bar, turned around and came face to face with an english guy we'd met in Palolem. "Poley and Herc, isn't it!". No, we didn't tell him the truth - we just nodded and smiled and spent the rest of the evening avoiding him and the gaggle of Scandinavian girls out with him. I think they were Swedish as well. Curses - foiled by our own stupidity. Will I never be rid of this Albatross-like alter-ego?

The Great Charade and Bones of a Saint

2004-11-26T02:33:00.000-08:00

You left me in Palolem some days ago, feeling slightly burnt but otherwise on top of the world. What a difference a few days make.

The very evening of my last post was the beginning of the fun, and eventually the trouble. On said night, myself and Trev headed out for dinner and beer, though we figured we wouldn't bother to go for spirits after the over-exertions of the first night in Palolem. So we headed to a few bars, eventually winding up in the badly-titled Cafe del Mar at midnight, at which point it was pretty darn busy. Soon enough we were spoken to by a loud Aussie (are there any other types?), and so began an evening of roundly mocking him and his country, and speaking to a wide variety of amusing characters. There were some Englishmen, a Scotsman (tried to get involved in the England v Australia debate on the Antipodean's side and was shouted down with repeated cries of "Andy Goram"), a crazy spiritual German, an absolutely wasted Indian, some Swedish girls and some more Englishmen (Mancs, to be precise), to name the main characters. Here is where our genius/insanity kicked in, though. You see, in a moment of inspiration/stupidity we up and introduced ourselves to all of the above people as the brothers Napoleon (that's me) and Hercules (that's Trev) Salas. And of course, they all loved our names, and said how memorable we were etc. And a hilarious night was had, as we were there until about half four, with them all unaware just how hilarious it was for us.

This formula was continued, with restaurant and bars followed by del Mar until very late (or early depending on how you look at it) for the next two nights, with us regularly bumping into those we'd met out in the evening during the day as well. The trouble, though, when you lie about something like that, is that it begins to take over your whole life. No longer could we sit having dinner in a restaurant and casually talk about our respective families - we're brothers, remember? No longer when in the sea could one of us shout to the other by their actual name. You have to remember all the time. And that's where the drinking really causes problems. Waking up in the morning and thinking "With what other details were the Salas family life embellished last night?". You start to feel generally vaguely edgy...

On the third night, we left del Mar early (at four am instead of five) and went to have a night swim. The swim itself was great, but after we got back to our hut, we couldn't sleep, so we lay awake talking. At the end of the evening we'd been introduced to yet another Scando broad by an English friend of ours who'd said "Their names are difficult to believe", or words to that effect. We thought it was a suspicious comment at the time, though with hindsight it seems fairly innocuous. Anyway, during our bedtime chat, this was one of the things we discussed.

Next morning I awoke at about 10 feeling pretty rough. Went to go to the public toilet in our beach hut village. On the way back, I was accosted by the English bloke who lived next door to our hut, with his Irish girlfriend.
"Can you keep the noise down at night, please?", he requested.
"Yeah, sorry", I blearily replied, thinking that we were pretty noisy walking back to our hut from the beach.
"Yeah, well, you woke us up last night talking to each other in your hut. We heard everything you said about us," he countered, extremely aggressively. Which was news to me, as I couldn't recall talking about the pair - they weren't acquaintances from del Mar, just our neighbours. But wait... everything we said? Suddenly I felt super edgy. I made more weak and bleary apologies, answered with a "you don't seem sorry", due presumably to my chemical imbalance detracting from my sincerity, and went back in to the hut.

We spent the rest of the day in an extremely nervous frame of mind. How much had we said about the couple? How rude had we been? Had we been rude? More worryingly, what had we said about our names? And who did the couple know that we knew? In the face of all these questions, we did what any pair of true men would: we ran and hid at the top (more deserted) end of the beach, edgily scanning the sands for anyone we knew.

Sure enough, that day everyone we knew was at the top end of the beach (thankfully except the couple from next door). Which meant a day of talking to people, every moment expecting an angry conversation along the lines of "Why did you lie about your names, you dicks?". Eventually, night fell. Having nervously checked my e-mails (no way I was writing all this while in Palolem!) and having dinner in an out-the-way restaurant, we skulked back home under cover of darkness, and scuttled to and from the communal showers and toilets getting ready for bed, all the time nervously casting glances at the balcony of the hut next door and praying not to see anyone sitting there.

After a troubled night's sleep, during which time every noise outside was sinister to my immensely tired (due to three very late nights in a row and an exhaustingly nervous day) and paranoid brain, we awoke at 7 in the morning and got the bloody hell out of Palolem.

The moral of the story is that what they say about truth being the best policy is actually truer than I'd thought. Needless to say, where we are now (Baga, in north Goa), we are back to being Sam and Trev again. I'd be surprised if Napoleon or Hercules were seen again for a very long time...

Baga is ok, we are in a lovely hotel room this time instead of a beach hut, and last night (our first) we had an early night so as to recharge the batteries. The area is a lot less backpacker-filled and a lot more like the Costa del Sol, which should be amusing, at least for a few days.

Today we went to Old Goa, formerly Goa's capital (now it's Panaji) for a long time during Portugal's rule of Goa (which only stopped in 1967, years after the rest of India had been liberated from the British), and said to once rival Lisbon for it's splendour. Now it's a collection of actually fairly underwhelming (though Lonely Planet disagrees with me there) old Catholic churches, cathedrals and convents. The kind of culture we needed to see after six days of beach (and lying-related madness). But this year, for ten days only, starting from the 21st November, there was an extra special reason to go: the chance to see the corpse of Goa's patron Saint, Francis Xavier.

St. Francis Xavier was a Spanish missionary sent by the Pope to Goa, in order to keep the faith of those natives that the Portuguese had converted, and of course convert more. His conversion rate (as I assume it's called) was apparently legendary, as was his ability to curb the supposedly-decadent and disgusting excesses of the Portuguese soldiers. He travelled all around Asia, but frequently returned to Goa, where he held several important high-ranking church positions. He eventually died on an island off the coast of China. He wished not to have his body return to Goa, or something (this part of the story is a tad vague) so his assistant poured quicklime on the body, attempting (as all Fight Club fans will know) to chemically burn it up. But the body remained untouched by decay, and so it was sealed up in a coffin and sent Goawards.

It took a couple of years to arrive, during which time it was buried briefly, and one of the toes was stolen, but when the corpse finally turned up at Old Goa it was still amazingly unravaged by the effects of time. Foul play was suspected, and so the Church got a doctor to inspect it. He reported that the corpse had been in no way embalmed or chemically altered. The lack of decay was declared to be a miracle.

Over the following years, various parts of the body were stolen by relic hunters, but throughout history doctors were brought in to examine in and all reported that it was incredibly well preserved. Only relatively recently, in the last hundred years or so (the body is 400-500 years old) has it decayed. These days, to protect it from more organ-pilfering, it is kept locked in an ornate tomb in the Se Cathedral in Old Goa, except for a ten day exposition, held once every ten years. And today, as part of said exposition, I saw it. A wizened, dessicated corpse not unlike those of the ancient Egyptian mummies in the British museum, but unliek them, according to every historical doctor's testimony, entirely untreated to prevent it's being more decayed. The toenails and things are still visible, as (to an extent) are the nose, mouth and ears. I don't know what a 500 year old body is supposed to look like, of course.

So, was this a genuine miracle? That, boys and girls, is the question I leave you with today. Oh, and this: "Does lying about your identity until you go crazy mean your own body is unlikely to be singled out for similar special treatment by any God(s) when the time comes?" Answers to the usual address, please...

Life: A beach?

2004-11-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

Q: How can you tell an Englishman on a beach abroad?
A: He'll be bright pink and probably drunk.

Yes, hello from beach paradise Palolem in Goa, where it's all kinds of hot and sunny, the seafood is awesome, and the sea is warm and clear. Jealous? You should be. And, as the above introduction suggests, we've been flying the flag appropriately, getting sunburnt and drinking too much on our first day here. Quality.

We arrived in Palolem at 5 in the morning, having gotten the night bus from Badami. Our first experience of the beach was sitting on it waiting for the sun to come up. Once it had, though, we wandered around for a while and soon got ourselves accomodation: a bamboo shack on stilts some 40m from the sea. Before long we hit the beach, and got in a good morning's skinfrying.

In the evening we had dinner, and drank a bottle of local firewater Feni, which is not too bad. Felt utterly terrible the next day, though (yesterday), but then we did go to a fair few bars and drink a noxious mix of spirits - rum, vodka, etc etc. Still, all in all it was a great great day - for the first time in ages I saw the sea, drank too much and, thanks to the Kingfish I had for dinner, I had a meal containing something that had died for my food.

We'll probably mooch about here in south Goa until Thursday or so, and then we'll head up to north Goa, which is the real party scene.

Anyone who wants to tell me how jealous they are, or what the weather is like in England, e-mail me at the usual address!

A week is a long time

2004-11-16T20:42:00.000-08:00

...in politics, so they say, and also in India, it seems - the events described in my last post seem like they happened a long time ago. Since then I've been to Bijapur, Badami and now Hampi. So I'd best be brief, and offer a quick roundup. But first, the Ajanta caves.

These caves are older than the Ellora caves described below, and are solely a Buddhist affair. They are famous for their cave paintings rather than for their sculpture or architecture. Said paintings are very nice, and our understanding and appreciation of them was much increased by the guided tour which (in an extremely rare move, for us) we embarked upon. The art depicts a varied set of scenes from Buddhism, mainly taken from the Buddhas previous lives before he was Buddha. They are done in colours, the source of which was desrcibed again and again by our guide. In fact, his general style of guidance was to repeat certain facts over and over again. Though to be fair to him, many of the rest of our tour group seemed remedial at best, so it was perhaps a wise choice of way of imparting information. Overall I would say that while the average cave at Ajanta is probably marginally more impressive than that at Ellora, the Kailash temple at Ellora means those are Sam's Caves Of Choice.

Bijapur is a smallish (300,000 population) town in south India. We got there on Thursday, and were so amazingly impressed by the laid back atmosphere and lack of hassle that we elected to stay an extra night. Bijapur has two main sites, both mausoleums for dead Muslim kings who used the town as their capital back in the day. Both buildings (the Ibrahim Rouza and the Golgumbaz) are good - the Ibrahim Rouza is architecturally beautiful, while the Golgumbaz is just massive, featuring the world's second largest dome at 38m in diameter, behind St Peter's in the Vatican (which I've also seen, so there).

Friday night in Bijapur was Deepawali, the big wombassa of the Hindu holy month of Diwali. So we went out expecting there to be drinking in the streets and much assorted revelry. We were somewhat disappointed, then, when there were more people than normal milling about and lots of kids setting off fireworks. Boy am I glad we're not in India for New Year! (Note: We'll be in Southeast Asia somewhere, where the chances are they won't actually celebrate the same New Year as us, but rather will celebrate the Chinese one instead).

And so to Badami. This is a much smaller village (population: 25,000 or so) featuring more (slightly lame in comparison) caves and near to some other villages (Pattadakal and the hilariously named Aihole, unfortunately pronounced Ioli) which have some ok but a bit dull old ruined Hindu temples. All of which would probably be better had I not been cave-and-templed out of existence at Ellora and Ajanta. However, there was an amusing episode in Badami (Animal rights protesters look away now).

As we were walking to the entrance for the caves in Badami, I was holding a plastic bag containing our lunch in my left hand. Suddenly a monkey (of which there are many in India) came bounding towards me, lept, and tried to snatch the bag from me. Fight or flight responses in my brain caused me to jerk the bag away from the diminuitive simian, but it's claws were hooked into the bag, and I simply lifted it off the ground, clinging on to my lunch, shrieking at me in an attempt to get me to panic and drop my food, as presumably other tourists have done before. But this furry fiend picked the wrong honkey to attack. I swung a right boot at it's hairless pink arse, connecting with a meaty slap, and swearing profusely at the little git. With a final shout, it dropped off and retreated. My lunch wasn't going to to line the stomach of anything at a lower evolutionary level...

Today we arrived in Hampi. First impressions of Hampi are that it is basically Pushkar 2, except with more mosquitos. Now we're in the tropics, the ravenous little blighters are a serious concern. Good job I've got malaria tablets, really. If only they also had some kind of effect on the number of god damn filthy stinking crusty hippies...

Cakes and caves

2004-11-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

Our overnight bus journey to Aurangabad was far more comfortable than the previous one had been. This time we were in lovely reclining comfortable seats, and I was thus able to snatch brief minutes of sleep between the moments when the bus hit huge ruts in the road and launched me airborne. Being jolted awake with your arse 6 inches above the seat is not a particularly relaxing experience.

Still, we arrived in Aurangabad safe and sound. Spent that first day relaxing, and (during a moment of genius or insanity due to exhaustion, depending on opinion) came up with new names with which to introduce ourselves. From now on, I shall be known as Napoleon Tolstoy Salas, and Trev as Hercules Caesar Salas, my younger brother. Our father is a philosophy lecturer and our mother a not-doing-very-well writer, in case you're interested. The thought of introducing myself to fellow travellers under this assumed name amuses me greatly, as I'm sure you can guess.

The names were properly christened that very evening, when, again through genius or insanity, we purchased a kilogram of chocolate birthday cake from the restaurant in which we were having dinner (much to their astonishment) and requested that 'Happy Birthday Napoleon' be written on it. We then proceeded to eat said cake in one sitting. I was wished a happy birthday by most of the staff.

Don't worry, those of you who aren't fans of insanity, I have since slept well, and am aware that these actions could be construed as 'strange'.

On an unrelated note, the next day (duly rested) we went to the local Ellora caves. These are a series of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monasteries and temples intricately hand carved into the face of a cliff between AD600 and AD900. There are 35 caves, ranging from the bare to the ostentatious. The best Buddhist one has a ceiling carved to resemble wooden beams, as well as the obligatory massive statue of Buddha.

The best cave of the lot, though, is not really a cave. It's the Hindu temple of Kailasa. This is a huge temple carved out of the stone cliff. It is an awesome sight and I am amazed that I had never heard of it before. It is the second best thing I've seen in India, after the pretty much unbeatable Taj Mahal.

Kailasa is supposed to represent the mountain in the Himalayas on which Hindu god Shiva (or at least one of his aspects) is supposed to live, mythologically speaking. It is covered with carvings of Hindu mythological scenes, taken from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, as well as from Vedic texts and other sources. The place is fantastic.

Tomorrow we go to the even-older Ajanta caves, a series of Buddhist caves with wall paintings from a few hundred years before the Ellora ones. It remains to be seen which set of caves will be the better of the two.

Travelling without moving

2004-11-06T02:19:00.000-08:00

Well, that's what much of the Indian bus 'service' is. I haven't posted in a while, what with one thing and another, so I'll try to quickly update where I've been.

From Udaipur we headed off on an overnight bus to Indore. We were travelling 'sleeper' class, which is an amusing, and I assume ironic, title. What it basically means is that the two of us got an overhead luggage rack about the size of a small single mattress to live and sleep in for the duration of a ten hour journey. Given that Trev gets travel sick and we were on what seem to be rutted farm track most of the way, and the fact that the windows in our box were not correctly fitting meaning a freezing draft most of the time, not a lot of sleeping was done.

We saw Indore at 6 the following morning, immediately getting on a bus and heading for Mandu. This is a tiny village (pop: 8,500 or so) which is notable for having been a large capital city of a mid-Indian muslim kingdom during the 14th-17th centuries. It was eventually splatted by the Mughals from Delhi, but there are still ruins, which are great. What wasn't great was the lack of fireworks for sale, with which to celebrate bonfire night, and the lack of basic hygiene in our room. Squat toilets and rats... nice. But there was an 'English wine shop', so gin and whisky could be bought and drunk.

Having finished with the sticks, we headed back to Indore, again via rattletrap deathbus. Safe as houses. Indore at first glance at a bleary eyed 6 in the morning had seemed like a hole. It's not too bad, but there's absolutely nowt to see or do here. We're leaving tonight, having spent last night watching an atrocious Tim Allen/Rene Russo film called 'Big Trouble' or something on telly. One to avoid. Next stop: Aurangabad. But we're getting there on an overnight bus... darn.

Udaipur, Octopussy, Illness

2004-10-31T15:44:00.000-08:00

And so our journey took us onward to Udaipur, one of Rajasthan's most romantic cities according to Lonely Planet, due to the large Lake Pichola, ringed by hills and set with beautiful (and expensive) island hotels. In theory, anyway.

In practice, this year's extremely dry monsoon has left the lake almost completely dried up. The very-exclusive hotel, at which one can normally only get dinner at if one pays for it before one even gets on the boat, can now be reached on foot. Though I doubt we'd be allowed in...

Udaipur's romantic locations have seen better days, therefore, most notably (crashingly ignorant statement coming up) when used as locations in the Bond movie 'Octopussy'. No less than three of Udaipur's impressive palace/hotels were used in this piece of cinematic history. And, brilliantly, this leads most of the budget restaurants in Udaipur to show Octopussy on video cd every night at seven o'clock.

So, two days ago, we set off at about half six, looking for such a restaurant. Since pretty much all cheap Indian restaurants seem to be much of a muchness (or at least you can't tell what they'll be like from the outside, and Lonely Planet isn't much help on this front), we just went in to the first place we'd found. But oh dear, just our luck, it was run by India's answer to the Chuckle brothers.

Firstly they tried to 'plug' the TV in to the socket in the wall. Except that the plug in question didn't actually have a plug - it was just the stripped end of the wire. So with some tension I watched a man trying to feed wires in to a live socket with his bare hands. Somehow he didn't kill himself, and they got the TV to work, only to have to send 'a boy' off to get a video cd player and the film. It turned out that it was the first night they'd put the sign up, and we were (yippee!) their first customers (whether for Octopussy, or ever, was not clear).

Still, the food was very nice, surprisingly, seeing as it was being cooked by utter buffoons. As the evening rolled on, the video cd player arrived, along with the films, but unfortunately in checking to see if it worked, they broke it. We were assured that they would fix it and that we could go back the next day "at any time" and watch the film, however.

We left, too bemused and amused to be really angry. Since it was only 8 o'clock, we went to a Travel Guide endorsed German Bakery attached to a nearby hotel for some chocolate cake. And lo and behold, said hotel also had a policy of showing Octopussy! Since they hadn't started showing it yet, and the restaurant was almost entirely deserted, could we watch it? "No - it's too late, sir". Too late? Are you having a laugh? It's 8 o'clock! You're a restaurant! You don't close until 11 o'clock! Just how long is this film? But the chocolate cake was great, so again we left, more disappointed than angry.

However, the Chuckle brothers hadn't finished yet. The next morning I awoke feeling like the proverbial fat sack of cack. A particularly virulent dose of food poisoning confined me to bed for the whole day, feeling awful the entire time. Towards evening, though, I started feeling a little better (well, I stopped dry heaving my guts up), and decided to go out for dinner.

This time we took no chances. We went to the place that was directly opposite our hotel. And praise be, we watched Octopussy. And indeed it was glorious.

I don't think I'll ever again be so excited or persistent about watching a Bond film.

PS - Today (the day after) I feel much better, in case you were worried.

Jodhpur and Pushkar

2004-10-26T19:03:00.000-07:00

Leaving Jaisalmer we headed to Jodhpur, the blue city (because the buildings of the Brahmins (a priestly caste) there used to traditionally be painted blue, and now most of the houses are blue). Having become fed up of the last two places we'd been to simply by dint of spending too much time there, we left Jodphur after only one full day, but it did seem very pleasant. A fairly affable town, with lots of cothes stalls and such. The highlight, though, was Meherangarh, the big fort on the hill, which has never been taken by armed force in it's whole 500 year history. Though I doubt it would pose too much of a problem these days if Uncle Sam wanted to come a-knockin' (that's Uncle Sam as in America, folks, not as in some sort of rubbish self-styled nickname). The reason that the fort could be the highlight despite it not being in itself any better than any other fort I've seen of late is the natty audio guide you get free with your 250 Rupee entry fee. The sound effects on this audio guide are unintentionally hilarious, being such things as contrived battle sounds every time any sort of fighting was mentioned.

As I write, we are in Pushkar. Pushkar is a holy city for Hindus. It has a lake that sprang up when Brahma dropped a lotus flower, according to legend. You're supposed to throw flowers into the lake to get a prayer or something, and while I've not done that yet I probably will, figuring it's best to get as many gods as possible on side over the course of my journey, as you never know when you might need divine help of some sort. On that note we're off on a day trip to the Muslim holy city of Ajmer tomo - I figure Allah is a god on who's wrong side you really don't want to get!

Pushkar, being a holy city, is chock full of holy men, and also chock full of travellers, many of whom look like twats, wearing traditional Indian costume (you're white!), daft facial hair, and all manner of ethnic tat paraphenalia. Actually, the travellers we have encountered so far have generally been either old or fools or both. Still, I suppose there's a long way to go...

[Sorry this post hasn't been as amusing or story-formatted as the previous couple...]

The Great Thar Desert

2004-10-22T02:24:00.000-07:00

Having escaped from Jaipur without any further gem-related mishaps and without getting any bulletholes in a double bass or meeting Marilyn Monroe on the train (credit for joke: my Dad. It's not often I get to say that!), we arrived at Jaisalmer after a mammoth 13-hour commute.

Jaisalmer is in the midst of the Great Thar Desert, not that far from the Pakistani border. Not sure how far because on every map you see "the external boundaries of India have not been verified and may not be correct". In other words, whatever you do don't mention the war. Apart from being a major Indian army base, Jaisalmer is also home to the majestic Golden fort, which is basically an enormous sandcastle that people still live in to this day. It looks spectacular, and inside it is very evocative, with narrow streets (that are impossible to find your way around in) , ornate Havelis (olde merchant's houses, to you) and some Jain temples (no shoes, no photos, no menstruating women).

The main attraction of Jaisalmer, though, is that it affords one the interesting opportunity of going on a camel safari. This is where you pay a man to get you some guides, some food, some water and some camels (duh), and head off into the desert itself for anywhere up to four days of nomadic journeying. We opted for three days and two nights, on a tour arranged by the none-more-ruggedly-beautiful winner of Jaisalmer's "Mr Desert" award and model for Jaisalmer brand cigarettes, Sahara Travels' Mr Bissa, of whom I am now the proud owner of a signed photograph, given to me at the end of the safari. "Don't make a booking until you see the Face", it suggests, and I would say this was good advice.

Having paid the man, the next morning we arrived at his office at 9 o'clock and waited with some trepidation to see if there would be any other tourists on our safari. Thankfully there weren't (we were fully expecting a pair of middle-aged american feminist lesbians), so it was just myself, Trev, our two guides, and three camels.

The camels obviously had to be named. Trev called his Joe, after Cartoon Spokesperson Joe Camel, while I opted for Abraham for mine, after a vague memory I have of a cartoon camel with a red fez called Abraham (if anyone knows where I've got this from please tell me), Abe for short. The guides' camel was named Isaac to fit in with the biblical theme, Ike for short.

Camels are stubborn cantankerous bastards (bastard is really the only appropriate word to describe a camel's personality). Deciding where to go is a complex compromise process, but rest assured the ultimate decision lies with the camel. And if that means (in Abe's case) walking through bushes, or (in Joe's case) going right no matter how hard the left rein is pulled, then so be it. Fortunately, our friendly and helpful guides were on hand to curb the worst excesses of the truculent beasts, as well as to cook our food (of which there was more than enough) and, er, to guide us. Having everything done for you by a complete stranger in this manner is somewhat strange - the only decision we had to make was whether to have two helpings or three at lunch and dinner time. Needless to say it seemed pretty colonial at times (am I allowed to say that?).

The desert itself is mainly low scrub and tightly packed sand, reminiscent of a Western. There are occasional sand dunes though, and they are majestic. Since we had good guides we actually spent the second night on the top of a dune completely unspoilt by footprints (before we got there). The other thing about the desert is the heat. We're talking all day burn weather, 40 degrees in the shade during the hottest times of the day, during which we were thankfully in said shade, sheltering and trying to recover from mild sunstroke thanks to the morning's riding.

The most amazing part of the safari? Unquestionably the desert night, when (as on the second night) there are no clouds. The stars and moon are so clear, and sleeping out underneath such a sky is quite an experience.

So what have I gained from my three day trek into nowhere on a dumb dromedary's (is that the one with one hump or the one with two? To my discredit I can't remember. The camels in question had one hump) back? A pulled left hamstring, a right groin strain (steady!), a minor case of sunstroke, a sore arsebone, a bunch of great memories and a film container full of sand. A grand old time was had by all...

Jaipur

2004-10-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

Jaipur, the town I am currently residing in, is located in Eastern Rajasthan. It is known as the Pink City because the old city, which is contained within some very nice old city walls, is all a sort of burnt orange colour, supposedly having been painted "pink" in the 19th century to honour the visit of the then Prince of Wales.

We got to Jaipur on Tuesday after a cramped five hour bus journey from Bharatpur, which is at the north eastern corner of Rajasthan. Knackered, we checked into the hopefully titled Evergreen hotel and had a bit of a rest, noticing en route that the Evergreen hotel is chock full of crusty old hippies. As you probably know, I hate hippies.

Suitably rested, we decided to go for a stroll in the old town. It's a lively shopping area in the by-now-familiar Bazaar format - like a sort of permanent market. Actually, a bit like Camden market, but with traditional Indian clothing and jewellery in place of bongs and retro clothing. Though of course ethnic tat is pride of place in both contexts...

Having strolled for a while, and gotten good at ignoring the salesmen's "Hello sir" introductions, we were stopped by a chap of about our age. "Why," he wanted to know, "do white people never stop to talk to Indian people?". We explained that it was because we were fed up of being hassled to buy things all of the time, but he wouldn't have that. He claimed that Indian people just want to find out about foreign parts most of the time, and are simply curious. He wanted to know about England and wondered if we would come and have a beer and a chat with him. One part of my mind was going "Mmmmm... beer... it's been so long" while the other was remembering scare stories concerning travellers drugged and robbed. We cautiously agreed to go with him, but declined his offer to go to a good place in his car. We wanted to stay where we knew how to get home. When we got to the place, we broke the habit of a lifetime and had water instead of beer, because bottled water would be sealed. We were chatted at by the man (whose name was Ajay) for a bit before we declined the offer of going on somewhere else because "we were tired". We then agreed to meet him for breakfast the next day at 9am.

We took our leave and headed home, only to be stopped by a bumbling fool. His name was Balaji. "Why," he wanted to know, "do white people never stop to talk to Indian people?". Trev began to say the truth, as we had tried before, but I interrupted with "because back home in England no one ever says hi to anyone so it's a bit strange for us". Balaji also wanted to go for a chat with us. We followed him (because there is no way such a melon as him could have designs on robbing us) onto the roof of a small shop, where we sat and chatted for a bit, and were introduced to Kuldeep. In contrast to Balaji's nervous idiocy, Kuldeep was a smooth operator. They were such nice blokes that we agreed to have a beer, and were invited down into Kuldeep's art shop (on which we were sat) to drink it. Inside the art shop we met a third man, older, named Mahesh. Mahesh was fairly quiet, but had worked in Germany for ten years, so could speak German with me as well as English. Which was surreal.

So here we were, sitting in an art shop in old town Jaipur, drinking "Godfather" beer with a 19-year old fool, a 22-year old smooth operator, and a 30-something german speaking quiet man. We joked and laughed with them for three hours (the jokes were a little risque for this, being a public forum and something my mum might read). And then they wanted us to go for breakfast with them the next day. We tried to fob them off with dinner, but they were having none of it. We figured that after three hours we owed them a day more than we owed suspicious character Ajay, so we agreed to meet them at ten. Then they cast aspersions on hippie-filled Evergreen terrace, using the witty, in fact Wildean, "Evergreen is never clean". But we needn't fear - Kuldeep knew of a better hotel. He knew the owner very well, and we could stay there for Rs200 a night, 50 less than it cost us at Evergreen. But first we could see the place. Well, by now we more or less trusted the boys, figuring they'd have robbed us by now if they were going to. So we zipped off to the very nice (comparitively - no hippies, you see) Akriti Hotel on their motorbikes, and were then given a lift home. We decided to check out of Evergreen in the morning and check in to Akriti.

This is the bit where in a rubbish american sitcom we would try to meet up with both Ajay and the others without either party realising. However, we are English, not septics, so we did the right thing and met Ajay, simply telling him we had met other people. "Kuldeep and the others, I know - I know them" he said, slightly upset at being shunned. How he knew them, or how he knew we had met them was not clear, but we didn't really want to have a conversation...

At ten o'clock we were checking in to Akriti, when we met Balaji, Kuldeep and Mahesh. After a quick cup of chai (that's NOT how you make tea!) we were off to the shop for an Indian-style breakfast of some kind of sauce deal, chapati type bread things, bananas and curd. It was very nice, although I only ate the bananas (though I dislike them) for fear of being rude. Then it was a quick Balaji-guided tour of the local gem workshops, where Jaipur's gem trade is run. Precious and semi-precious stones are imported from all over the world and fashioned into jewellery.

In the afternoon, Balaji was jettisoned and we rode out of Jaipur in style, on the backs of motorbikes ridden by crazy Indian drivers. I was on the bike of the relatively sane Mahesh, but Trev had the boy racer Kuldeep to contend with. More than once on the journey, as the other bike was out of sight somewhere around the next couple of corners, I thought that if two Indians wanted to rob and murder a couple of tourists and leave their bodies somewhere, the starkly beautiful Rajasthani countryside we were zipping through would be a good place to do it...

But eventually we reached our destination, the impressive Samode Palace, around 25km outside of Jaipur, safe and sound. Samode Palace was the Maharajah's palace at one time, but is now a really expensive (starting at 3000 pounds a night) hotel. But you get a tour around it for Rs100, and you even get that money off a drink at the end. And it's extremely posh...

Tour over with we headed back to Jaipur, stopping en route for more beer and a snack, and then a second time to pay for a lamb to be murdered and cut up for us at some kind of amazing roadside slaughtershack five. Off we went with the meat to Mahesh's house.

Here we all deskinned about 60 cloves of garlic between us, chopped up a daft amount of onions, prepared some ginger, bunged in a whole load of spices and oil and cooked a beautiful curry over a period of three hours. During this time we drank whisky with Kuldeep and Mahesh, plus Balaji who arrived with a new man, named Krishnan, in tow. Krishnan looks like Barry White would if he was a colombian cocaine dealer of Indian extraction, only not fat. The man is a gem dealer, and is utterly minted. He is also (bizarrely) a fan of the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays... When the curry came it was perhaps the nicest thing I have ever tasted, eaten sitting on the floor using chapati's as plates and spoons and our fingers as... er... forks? We were then given a lift home, tired, a bit pissed from the whisky, but having had one hell of a great day, thanks to Indian hospitality.

The next day Kuldeep picked us up at our hotel at half nine. We went to Mahesh's house and watched the cricket, Australia v India, second test. The game was pretty boring, though, so... no, we just sat and watched it. And kept watching telly throughout tea, when we watched rubbish Indian music channels. And then, just as the second session was starting, our boredom was relieved by the appearance of Balaji and Krishnan. We were off. But where were we going? Er, to the shop, to sit and watch the cricket. Balaji and Krishnan disappeared. Then Mahesh disappeared. We were left with Kuldeep. "Do you want to look at my paintings?", he said, "no pressure to buy or anything". With a sinking feeling we agreed, and sure enough after we'd looked through a series of very nice little pictures that would never survive until we got home, we had to tell him we didn't want to buy anything. He seemed to take it well to start with, but then lapsed into silence, and in fact then went to sleep, leaving us sat alone in his shop watching the cricket, in which we we had annoyingly missed two wickets.

So it was that we were pretty relieved (again) when Krishnan returned. "You can come to my place, we will talk for a bit, and then we will go up to the fort in the evening, drink some beer and watch the sunset". Sounded good to us, so away we went... just round the corner and into a tiny little office full of glass display cases with jewellery in. "Sit", offered Krishnan, and we duly were sat, facing his desk with our backs to the door through which Balaji entered, himself sitting just behind us. Krishnan sat behind the desk and showed us photos of him with Princess Di wearing one of his necklaces, and a picture of him with John Major (ooooh, luminaries!). Then came the crunch. We could do them a favour. Since we had tourist visas, we could buy some of their jewellery and transport it to Australia, which they knew was on our route. Then they would buy it back from us in Aus and pay us 5 grand english for the service. The whole time we thought we were experiencing Indian hospitality, and in fact we were simply having whisky with diamond smugglers. We said no to the proposition - even if it WAS legit and they DID actually turn up to buy the stuff back off us, it wouldn't be tempting because of the hassle. And of course they kept coming back and asking us, and making it awkward for us to leave. Then in came Mr Big, Krishnan's brother. Krishnan and Balaji left, and we were exhorted to either help them out as above, or buy some jewellery by an Indian man who strongly reminded me of Brando's Vito Corleone, right down to the voice and 'tache.

Eventually we managed to get out of there, and were repeatedly assured that we were all still friends and that we could still go to the fort that evening with them. We made some excuses and took our leave, promising to go back later. Then we headed straight to the train station to book our tickets the hell out of Jaipur. But the next train wasn't until midnight the day after next... until then we would be stuck in a hotel that they had got for us. But first, we had to tell them we weren't going anywhere with them that evening. We returned to the shop, to find no trace of Kuldeep, Mahesh, Balaji or Krishnan. Only Mr Big was there, sitting at the back. We waited nervously for the others for a while, but then we gave a message "we were tired so just wanted to chill in our hotel room this eve" to Big to pass on. Then we went to McDonalds (ah, crooks one can trust) and home.

But it wasn't over yet. When we got back we turned on the TV only to be confronted with a message, right there on the screen: "Call me on this number" and then a number. This was getting suspiciously film noir on our arses. What would Philip Marlowe do? Like hell we were calling that number. Then the phone rang. Hesitantly, I picked it up... "Hello" "Hello... do you want dinner? It is my duty to ask" - it was just the front desk downstairs. Phew. Then the phone rang again. This time Trev answered it, and it was Kuldeep. He wanted to know what had happened, since he was asleep when we left his shop. Trev told him we had been offered a gem transporting deal but had turned it down. Kuldeep assured us that Krishnan and his brothers were nothing to do with him (yeah, right - they own your shop!) and wondered if we wanted to do something tomorrow. We said we'd look around Jaipur's monuments ourselves. He agreed, but said we could call him if we had any problems. How we were to do this with no number wasn't something for us to dwell on - perhaps his was the number on the telly? Who knows.

Anyway, it's now 24 hours later, and there are about another 28 hours left for us in Jaipur. We have had no word from the gemsters since yesterday, and hopefully we won't hear from them again. But, as a big fan of Chandler and film noir, I am fully expecting Ajay to turn up as an undercover cop any minute, or at least some kind of a twist before our midnight train leaves Jaipur tomorrow night, bound for Jaisalmer and the Great Thar Desert...

India in a day

2004-10-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hmmm... When was the last time I posted? Not for a while methinks. {Shuffles through memory} Ah yes, twas the last day in Delhi. How young I was then...

Anyway, that fateful night myself and El Nino, my travelling companion, sauntered along the Main Bazaar of Paharganj, the area of Delhi in which we were staying, strolled into one of the several restaurants that line said busy "road" and bought us some Chicken Mughal to eat for dinner. Nothing of note in the meal itself, it was quite nice but not fantastic, although the waiter singing to himself at all times was disconcerting. Not, however, as disconcerting as the effect the Chicken Mughal had on my digestive system just over 24 hours later. Without wishing to go into too much detail (though I know you want it, every last sloppy pint of it), we're talking burning firewater. For a day. I nearly broke down and cried. And of course, it was the day I saw the Taj Mahal, neatly encompassing the stereotypical Indian Tourist Experience into a short space of time. Except I didn't meet some sort of guru and turn into a hippie...

The Taj Mahal itself is absolutely awesome, however. Pictures of it are one thing, but you don't get an impression of it's sheer size. The thing is massive, and the fact that it is so large and that it's constructed entirely out of white marble makes it seem otherwordly and ethereal, like it's been superimposed onto your eyes. It was built by Shah "I seem to have been involved in every building in India" Jahan as a mausoleum for his favourite wife (these Mughal emperors had it sorted on the women front). Apparently when she died he was so gutted his hair turned grey overnight. The big jessy.

Finally (not much today, I know, but I'm in a "small" (pop 200,000) town outside some bird sanctuary in Rajasthan so this internet connection is pretty slooooow - it feels like I'd be better off with two plastic cups and a piece of string) more on the "white man smells of the devil" front. While calmly sat on the shady side of the Taj Mahal, myself and Trev were quickly surrounded by about 40 Indian schoolchildren on a trip. They first stared, presumably in rapt awe at my sheer beauty {cough}, then all gathered round us and before we knew what was going on their teacher was taking photos of the whole merry group. There followed much "hello" and handshaking. This must be what it feels like to be famous...

Delhi: A correction (plus additional notes and thoughts)

2004-10-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

Correction:

In the last post I may have appeared to denounce Delhi as being smelly, overcrowded, delapidated, aggressive and generally not a nice place to be. Having stayed here for more time and become acclimatised to it, I would like to denounce this impression. It is delapidated, hot, humid and smelly, but it is also a fantastically alive, friendly and exuberant place. The people are generally extremely helpful and courteous to strangers, if occasionally over-helfpul. Once you get used to the touts they are pretty much no problem, and many of the "hello sir" and "excuse me" calls you hear are in fact people trying to be helpful. It's just that being from England I assume anyone in any way talking to me in a public place must be up to no good.

Since I last posted I have been to see most of Delhi's main attractions: The Red Fort (quite impressive), the big mosque in Old Delhi (shoes off before going in and strict and suspicious glares at non-muslims such as myself, but absolutely enormous), Humayun's tomb (Brilliant - same architecture as the Taj Mahal), Purana Qaril (disappointing). These were all forts, mosques and tombs built by the Mughal dynasty, who ruled most of India for a fair long time and who were directly descended from both Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. Technically speaking, there was a Mughal in charge of India right up until the Brits took over, but actually much of that time would have been a figurehead only. Anyway, the Mughals were the ones who built the Taj Mahal, which is at Agra, for which I leave tomorrow, by train. I'm concerned though, as the Indian train network was designed by the same people who designed the British train network, namely the British. I am therefore expecting it to be shoddy and unreliable.

Also today we saw the newer Indian government buildings and President's house, and the India Gate, an enormous monument to the India's fallen in various early twentieth century wars, including WW1. They are all nice enough, but all government buildings always seem a bit stale and severe to me. Mind you, I'd just seen the impressive Humayun's Tomb, so perhaps they just suffer in comparison.

This area of Delhi (Paharganj, since you asked) is prone to power cuts - two in the last two days. Which is not a problem since the hotels and shops have their own private generators on the whole, but it does create quite an eery atmosphere when you're out and about and there's no street lighting, just lighting spilling out from stalls and emporiums (emporia?).

Today in Delhi the sun was out. Actually, the sun has been out every day, but today the smog lessened and so the sun was blazing rather than hazy. Which meant I nearly got sunstroke walking around a crumbled down fort with no shade whatsoever. Anyway, a good amount of sitting in the shade drinking water later, I decided to get me a sunhat. Wandering round Delhi's frankly rubbish "main shopping area" Connaught Place in confusion and getting lost for a while due to the confusing diversionary signs for building work on the upcoming Delhi Metro (woah - now that's gonna be hot!), I eventually stumbled on a hat shop, and bought myself an amusing green trilby (or panama or something - I don't do old hat names). It'll keep the sun off of my head, and it makes me laugh whenever I see myself in anything reflective while I'm wearing it, and for 300 rupees (about 3 pound 75) it's a bargain. Though I think over ten months it could get fairly battered and sunbleached...

Finally, a strange occurence: While sitting on a wall in some shade in the Red Fort, taking a break from seeing old ruinous buildings and about to go to a museum (see - cultural! And I haven't been drinking!), myself and Trev were approached by an Indian family. hey were obviously tourists, though I'm not sure where they were from. But it was either another part of India, or from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka because their first language wasn't English. Anyway, they came up to us and said, in broken English "can we take your photo?". Thinking they meant us to take their camera and photograph them so that they could have the whole family in one pic, we assented, only for it to turn out that they wanted a photo of the two late twenties/early thirties men to sit next to us on the wall, one shaking my hand, the other shaking Trev's hand, and the little boy to sit between us, for a photo op with us. I suppose they wanted to check the old Chinese saying "the white man smells of the devil". Bizarre, though...

Delhi

2004-10-05T17:30:00.000-07:00

I can't be bothered right now to go into details about the journey to Delhi, but suffice it to say it was long and jetlagging and I and Trev and both our bags arrived without a hitch.
Stepping out of Delhi airport, the heat, the humidity and the smell hit you. We got a taxi and went to our hostel. Traffic in Delhi, though, is not so simple. In fact it's completely crazy. In terms of concern for road safety, and respect for any kind of system of staying in lane, Delhi is literally about 5 times worse than Rome. Everyone cuts each other up all the time, beeps constantly, tailgates, undertakes - in short it's pretty much like the city's cars, buses, rickshaws, autorickshaws and cyclists are playing a giant multiplayer game of Grand Theft Auto.
Having arrived in the area in which our hotel, the lovely Smyle Inn. Our room is reasonably cool (thank God!) and at around a quid fifty a night you can't complain. To get to the hotel though we had to wander through Paharganj with packs on our backs, occasionally needing to pause to look at a guidebook or stare in wonder at the cows roaming wild in the street.
To say we attracted a few helpful locals eager to ease our journey by steering us into one hotel or another would be an understatement. Saying no to them is hard at first, because if someone comes up to you seemingly trying to be helpful you feel a bit rude. After a few hours in Delhi, though, it's second nature to completely blank pretty much all of the "Hello sir!" cries. The problem is that if such touting was restricted to one area of the city it would be ok, but it's everywhere you go. Combined with the heat, humidity, choking dust, live animals, noise, traffic and sheer pavement-with-great-big-holes-in-it squalor, the effect is somewhat tiring, especially to a man already jetlagged.
Mind you, the fact that touting does occur all the time means you soon get used to it. In order to get away for a bit we went to see the Janter Manter, an old Indian astrological site where it was nice and cool (ish) and where we were only hassled briefly by a man claiming to be the official guide.
The other thing to get away from it is to sit in our room with both fans on full blast, a 10 Rupee straight-from-the-fridge litre bottle of water in hand. Mind you it's doing that that led me to fall asleep for some hours this afternoon until about quarter to five. Though it's not really surprising - I had been awake for over 24 hours. I just hope I can sleep tonight.
This evening I expect we shall go and sample some local cuisine, being doubtless hassled en route, and then tomorrow it's probably time to start the sightseeing.

Xzibit uses you-know-what for a visa

2004-09-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

Mind you, that's a different type of visa (If you have no idea what I'm on about look up the lyrics for the song "X" by Xzibit). I doubt his method would work at customs in India. With this in mind, I researched what diplomatic permission I'd need for where.

Research indicated a need for myself and Trev to get visas for India. Tis apparently fine to just turn up in Thailand and get your visa, and for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia we'll either sort it out in Bangkok or on entry to the country in question. The good folks in the good ol' US of A simply require a friendly fingerprint and mugshot, and for you to have a machine readable passport. Presumably they'll put all this information in the CIA's files so that a faulty piece of software, a malfunctioning chip or some idiot Agent Johnson's cockup can clearly and distinctly imply that you are the head of a major islamic terrorist organisation, but we'll cross that particular free of charge (in both senses) incarceration and sackbeating at Guantanamo Bay when we come to it; for now, all that matters is that I shan't need an extra bit of paper to enter the Land of the Free. Central America is also fine, as is New Zealand and Fiji, which just leaves Australia, the world's foremost sports nation, for which an Electronic Travel Authority can be obtained online. For now ignore this piece of information, and the fact that the acronym for such a thing is identical to the name of a Basque seperatist group (which could lead to some confusion, in my view), and we'll return to Aus later, having dealt firstly with getting a visa for world's second most populous nation, India.

India House in London is the appropriately-named location for getting the bit of paper for India, which I thought was a happy coincidence... But not for us (myself and Trev) the front door. Oh no, a sign showed us round to the side entrance. Seedy. Having collected a small section of yellow card from a man behind a window with a sign saying "collect a ticket and go up the stairs", we went up the stairs. The inside of the visa office is decorated like a train station from an Agatha Christie novel, all oak panelling and cream walls. I kept expecting to see Poirot and Hastings at any moment, the Englishman hustling and bustling in an attempt to get the cool Belgian with the little grey cells some diplomatic immunity.

But even without Hastings, there was hustle, and indeed bustle, aplenty. The office is two adjoined rooms. The first room is just a waiting area, with benches and vending machines. The second room has the kind of glass windowed portals and operatives normally seen in a bank, though as mentioned above, here they are done in oak. Very tasteful, and (much as I hate to say it, for obvious reasons) very empire-looking. In the top corner of the row of portals is a readout with space for two numbers and a letter, ranging from A01 to F99. Our initial complete confusion was soon cleared up at this sight, when upon closer inspection of our "tickets" we saw that the illegible scrawl at the bottom right could, in a certain light, look like C9 and C10. The number at that time was B34, and so we sat down to wait with all the others.

I should mention at this point that said waiting was not being done in the waiting area, but rather that there were in fact loads of plastic school hall type stacking chairs set out in rows in the main room as well. After about 37 seconds of watching others get called up to the portals one by one we realised the system: Wait until number is shown. Go up to portal. Give passport, pre-filled in form (obtained from the internet the previous night and hurriedly filled in on the train on the way up) and £30 to person behind counter. Wait for about half an hour. Go round to other window and collect visa and passport back.

Easy. But of course, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip. And, also of course, the world is full of idiots. Our apparent ease of understanding of the system led to us watching and mocking those fools who didn't get it. Like the loud couple behind who (naively) believed the bit on the form about needing two Indian addresses to get a visa. Yeah right - since when was ol' Joe Stalin in charge of India? Mind you, the fella from said couple was also unable to work out which portal was free when his number was called, and believe me, in these situations you have about 0.7 seconds to get to your designated friendly Indian helper before the next number comes up.

On the down side, our apparent ease of understanding led to fools querying us as to procedure. Fortunately, Trev was on hand to point out to a confused woman that the numbers probably went up to 99 because there was only space for two digits. The only thing stood in our way was the smug long haired bloke who kept walking around annoying us, and the possibility we had screwed up the form. But no! Smug chap notwithstanding, everything went to plan, and I am now the owner of a lovely Indian visa in my passport. In your face, Poirot...

But wait... I still needed the help of ETA (European or Spanish police and/or secret services note: this stands for Electronic Travel Authority). Diligently filling out the relevant internet form, I clicked send, and blam! My application cannot be processed on line! Wha...? Why? Am I a terrorist? International fraudster? Mob kingpin? Race relations agitator? It didn't say... But I WAS charged $20 Aus for the service. So, what now? Well, there's a number to ring, but the website helpfully points out that it will be answered by an answering service, and I hate talking to robots, so that's out. But it's ok, because I can e-mail. Taking a deep breath, I typed all my passport details out and e-mailed them to person or persons unknown, praying that I wasn't just helping passport fraud...

And I waited.

It took them a couple of days, but they got back to me. And fortunately, it all ended up ok. I think. Well, I've got an e-mail saying that I've got an ETA. Hopefully that's what I was supposed to get. And hopefully my passport isn't being printed out en masse somewhere as I write this. We'll see when I get to Australia...

To be continued

Packing (for) heat & soundtracking a journey

2004-09-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

I have always hated packing. From packing when I was a kid, going on family holidays, though packing and unpacking my stuff six times a year to go to and from university, it is something that has always irritated and upset me. It is a seemingly endless series of small and fiddly things to remember, each nagging incessantly at the fringes of your consciousness, and then suddenly it's all done. But far from being satisfied at the task's completion, far from getting the sense of fulfilment at the knowledge of a job well done, you are then gripped by a ticklish doubt: what have you left out? Which of the 1827 small tasks that you had to accomplish have you forgotten?

The solution to this is, of course, easy. Simply write down all the stuff that you need to do and tick every item off as you do it. According to my parents. Of course, this is no use when you are in the shower when you think of something that you need to do. And by the time you get out of the shower, you've up and forgotten what it was that you had thought of. Sigh.

Still, after all of these concerns and worries, I think I am all packed. I've got my Visa's for India and Australia (more of which later perhaps), I've got my water purification tablets, I've got my vaccinations, I've got "War and Peace" and a guidebook to India, I've got two packs of cards and some clothes. I think I'll be OK. It's getting exciting now...

In other news, trying to squeeze enough music for 10 months onto just a few minidiscs is bloody hard work. I've got me a few compilation albums burnt off the internet. That's one minidisc. I've got a soul minidisc, featuring Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and a host of old soul classics. I've got a minidisc featuring The Streets, Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and (slightly bizarrely) the King Geedorah album I got off my brother for my birthday. I've got a minidisc featuring a whole load of Dylan, a bit of Marley, and some Grandaddy. I've got one with The Libertines, The Clash, Sex Pistols and Primal Scream's "Exterminator". And now I'm in the middle of doing another couple of minidiscs featuring some other albums I haven't yet got down.

The trouble is trying to include enough music so that I've got both what I want to be listening to now, and what I'm going to want to listen to 8 months from now. Which is hard, seeing as I'm not even sure where I'll be 8 months from now. Come to think of it, by then my minidisc player will probably have been chiefed off of me by some artful foreign pickpocket. Or actually, probably by some lovable scamp artful dodger of a british pickpocket at Heathrow airport...

Prevention: Better Than Cure

2004-09-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

The thing about Foreign Climes, of course, is that the diseases are different over there. Thus, when you embark on a journey such as the one I'm soon to leave for, you need to get a heck of a load of jabs and pills to stymie a whole variety of bacteriological and viral agents that could otherwise make my stay in strange lands an unpleasant and perhaps fatal one.

To illustrate my point, here is a list of some of the diseases that I have had to take into consideration before leaving:
Diptheria, Tetanus, Polio, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, Yellow Fever, Rabies, Japanese B Encephalitis, Malaria, Tuberculosis, HIV.

Each one of which is probably less than pleasant once contracted. But never fear, friends and relatives, as with quaking heart and the above list I ventured into Bognor Regis Health Centre (located conveniently near to my house) in order to achieve immunity to all illness at the minimum of cost and effort, thanks to the NHS. Or at least that was the plan...

Bognor Health Centre is a strange place, and I shall not attempt to describe it's Kafkaesque (that's right: Kafkaesque. As in Franz Kafka. I do read, you know) insane bureaucracy. Suffice it to say that an attempt to see a "doctor" is pretty much doomed to failure, and thus ordinary mortals such as me must content ourselves with seeing a "nurse". Which suited me fine. On my first meeting with said nurse, then, I explained where I was travelling (see previous post "The Route" for details). Then I explained again, because it's a lot of information in one go. The nurse looked at a series of charts and asked me a few questions about what vaccinations I'd had in school (all of them - my mum doesn't believe in not getting jabs). She then told me that I'd need to get vaccinated against Typhoid and Hepatitis B, which was one jab and could be done there and then for free, and that I'd also probably want to be vaccinated against Rabies and Japanese Encephelitis, which would have to be ordered in specially and would cost a combined total of £22o. I assumed this was some kind of a test to see how my constitution would react to situations of extreme shock, and so I nodded and smiled. When she repeated this figure several times, I began to realise that it was the truth. I took the free jab and retreated home, to think about the proposition.

Now, as you probably know, I am a gambling man. In my view, £220 is wasted on prevention. I would have quite happily just said "sod it, chances are I'll be fine" and headed off without having to endure the time, money and hassle of getting a program of armpokery that costs about the same as a hundred pints of lager (that's sixty pints of lager to those of you who live in London, and a hundred and fifty to those of you from up north). But, as mentioned above, my mum is not someone who wants her sons going without every kind of injection-related disease prevention available, and so she (extremely kindly, may I add) said she'd pay for the vaccinations. So I made appointments to get my arms, and her wallet, painfully punctured.

Rabies and Jap Encephelitis require three jabs each, to be given on days 0, 7 and 21 or 28 of the vaccination program. This meant that I could go to the health centre three times and receive two jabs each time. Simple. Or so I thought.

However, as those who have been to Bognor Health Centre (and those who have been reading closely) may have worked out, there was a snag. Quite brilliantly, on the day of my first jab, I turned up only to be informed that they had lost the japanese encephelitis vaccine. Great. So, on day 0 I had only the Rabies vaccine. Then I made an appointment for a week later. Day 7 for Rabies. Second Rabies dosage. But by then they'd found the Jap Encephelitis vaccine, so I get my first dose of that. So it's day 0 for Jap E (I hope you're keeping up with this at the back). So I have to make another appointment for a week later to get my second Jap E dosage, on day 7 for that, and day 14 for Rabies.

Anyway, it all will (hopefully) work itself out, as I can just get my final dose of both on the 28th September, which will be day 35 for Rabies and day 28 for Jap E. Which is apparently fine. I hope. Like I said, I'm a gambling man...

Meanwhile, I've also got to take Malaria tablets. One a week. For pretty much the whole time I'm away. So I've got forty tablets. At a total cost of £120 or so. Ouch. And they taste nasty as well, and can cause depression in some people to boot. How they know that it's the pills causing depression and not the cost, hassle and taste I don't know...

Still, if you've got your health, that's the main thing, eh? And at least now I can boldly stride into disease-ridden places with the firm knowledge that I am equipped with antibodies in my bloodstream to deal with all the nasty illnesses swarming about me. Except STDs. And stomach upsets. And the common cold. And Avian Flu. And SARS. Hmmm... To be honest, I think I just be glad that with only one Health Centre visit left, I seem to have emerged without catching some kind of superbug...

The Route

2004-09-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

OK, people, so that everyone knows the score and can check back if and when required, I figured it would be best if I outlined the planned route of the Grand World Tour here and now. Of course circumstances may vary, but if all goes according to plan the route should take in 4 continents, 13 or so countries, and a smidge under 28000 miles. So here goes:
Firstly, on the 4th October I shall fly to Delhi. I arrive at Delhi airport at half past midnight and then have to wait for 5 hours or so for my travelling companion Trevor "El Nino" McClure to arrive. We'll hang around Delhi for a bit, then overland through Rajasthan and places to Mumbai. Then down to Goa, and then once again back up to Mumbai. We are planning on spending about 2 months in India all told.
The next stage on our travels is a flight from Mumbai to Bangkok. Our other travelling companion, Si Whitby, will be arriving in Bangkok on the 11th of December. After this we'll head in a big circle around South East Asia, taking in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, where no doubt Full Metal Jacket quotes will abound. Then it's back to Bangkok, ready for our next flight.
Said flight is from Bangkok to Sydney. Not sure whereabouts we're gonna be heading within Australia, but we plan to spend around 6 weeks or so there. Then we fly from Sydney to Auckland, for some time in World's Sheepiest Country, New Zealand. Again not too sure of the planned route within NZ, we'll just make it up as we get there I expect. Completing the South Pacific section of our journey is the next flight, from Auckland to Nadi, in Fiji.
Having bummed around in Fiji, we head on to the grand ol' US of A, flying direct to Los Angeles for a stay of a fortnight. We actually have no real wish to go to LA, but you need to go via there to get to Central America from Fiji, and if we're gonna stop there anyway we might as well see the place. But after a relatively short and expensive time there, we shall move on, flying to Guatemala City in, er, Guatemala.
Again, we don't really have a set itinerary for Central America. Of course by this stage it will all depend on how much money I have left, but after probably a couple of months I shall be returning to dear old blighty from Mexico City, no doubt lighter by several pounds and indeed by several thousand pounds, if you see what I mean...

Hola!

2004-09-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

With just under three weeks to go until I leave for Foreign Climes, I felt it was time for me to begin this travel diary weblog. Basically I'll try to post about where I am and what I'm up as often as I can. I'd write more here now, but I'm nursing a slight hangover as a result of going out for my birthday/my last day at work yesterday. So I'm off for a quick dose of triple S, and will probably post details of where I'm going and who I'm going with tomo, for all those who don't already know.