DubCentral - Round The World

2006-02-21T13:02:00.000+01:00

Bangkok Shot My Brother

Jumped into a taxi and headed out to the airport to meet my brother Andrew who was on his first visit to Thailand, as usual the driver dropped me off at the wrong place at domestic arrivals and not international. After a quick check I found out that I had to catch a small shuttle bus to get to the other terminal, no problems so far as I got to the airport in plenty of time. While waiting for the bus I noticed an ATM machine, so I dived over and stuck in my card. Nothing happened, nothing, no message, no enter pin number, nothing no I’ve just swallowed your card ha-ha message, just nothing. So I stood around staring blankly at the screen for a few seconds and thought maybe there’s an information place nearby. Didn’t find any info place but I went to a bureau de change run by TMB the same company who owned the ATM, the girl behind the desk laughed nervously when I explained my story. I asked if she could open the machine or maybe phone their service department, she said that she couldn’t do either because even though she had on a TMB uniform and that she was working in a glass box emblazoned with TMB Logos she wasn’t a TMB employee. Same Same but different was the response when I pointed to the logo on her blouse, getting quite exasperated I decided to head to the other terminal before I missed Andrew.

The flight had landed but I think I got there before he came through the arrivals door. As I'd flown into Bangkok before I knew that it was a bit of a scrum trying to fight your way through the Limousine & Taxi touts trying to pick off the dazed and confused tourists as they pour through immigration. So, I wore the brightest top I could find and one that Andrew would recognise and a small sign with his name. Well it was the brightest top I had and I’m sure Andrew could spot a Celtic top in any crowd, and if he didn’t see the top he would definitely see the Mr Lyylee sign I held above the heads of the rest of the waiting throng. Andrew ambled through like he had just walked out of a bar in Glasgow’s Merchant City, and soon spotted his older sibling probably insulting half the folk around him with sign of the phonetically challenged way they usually say our surname. It was great seeing Andrew and he didn’t seem too knackered after his 13 hour flight from Glasgow.

We then headed through to the other terminal to see if I could get anybody else to help fish my bank card from the ATM machine. Managed to find a slightly more helpful TMB employee who gave me a few phone numbers to try but as I had no change we headed back to the hotel and phoned some of the numbers to cancel my card. Small Tip: if you’re flying to Bangkok ignore all the hoopla at the entrance and head straight out past all the taxis and limousines and walk out to the main street running parallel to the airport, less than a two minute walk. Usually you will find a taxi waiting here or if not soon as you’re out flag one down and you have just saved yourself 50 Baht as the taxi driver doesn’t have to pay any airport stamp. In the taxi it seemed quite strange as I was talking away to Andrew as if I hadn’t seen him in a week and not the almost twelve months since I last seen him.

After Andrew booked in and grabbed a quick shower we headed out for his first experience of Bangkok. We caught the BTS skytrain to Siam to pick up our tickets for the Bangkok 100 Rock Festival and headed further down on the skytrain to Saphan Taskin where you catch the small ferries that commute people up and down the river which runs through the heart of Bangkok. The last time we visited Bangkok we stayed quite near the river and the small ferries are a great quick way to avoid the polluted rush hour traffic to get up to China Town and Banglamphu. Once on the boat we pointed out some of the landmarks as we whizzed by them with a cool headwind cooling down the mid afternoon heat, it took us about ten minutes to get to Thewit that would have taken well over an hour on the road from Saphan Taskin.

We headed for dinner in a small street restaurant that we had been in a few weeks back, nothing fancy but the food was better than the Lonely Planet trumpeted Hemlock that we were in the previous night. Andrew isn’t much of a spicy eater but he enjoyed his Pad Thai as we tucked into Green and Red Curries. After that we headed to Khao San road for a few beers and a wander around the stalls and trinket merchants, the place was busy for Wednesday night and we were soon back at the most unsafe pub in the world, since the Lord Darnley in Glasgow was closed down for being riddled with TB.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this in our last blog about Bangkok, but after 6pm the local Shell Garage closes down and hundreds of small bright yellow tables appear and a small bar is set up between the petrol pumps. We managed to get one of the last tables available, this not being Glasgow you’re free to smoke and play with the candles that sit precariously on each table. I’m just waiting to see it in the papers some day soon when someone has maybe dropped a match, candle, fag or just shimmied a bit too much with their segged shoes. We escaped without going up in smoke and piled into the back of a Tuk-Tuk and managed to find a driver that took us straight back to our hotel and didn’t even try and rip us off.

It was great seeing Andrew and I think the three of us had a great night catching up. Before we got into the back of the Tuk-Tuk there was also some hi-jinx with a kid selling balloons but to be honest too many beers got in the way of any of us making sense of it… Check the Photos and see if you can figure it out.

Next morning we all made it up for breakfast, not in the best of health but least we all still made it for breakfast. We had to head to the tourist police station so I could report my card being swallowed by the ATM and get a crime reference number. After sitting in a traffic Jam for about twenty minutes we decided to head out on foot and try to find the office. After been pointed in the wrong direction several times we eventually found the office hidden behind a bushel, once inside it didn’t take too long to sort out even though they were translating everything into Thai. The only worrying thing was they had never heard of the bank, but I checked my account later and nothing was amiss before I managed to close down the card.

While we'd been wandering around looking for the police we noticed a massive sign at the University saying Art Gallery and we said we should head there later in the week. We went for a wander back to the hotel and passed the Parliament building and crowds of families celebrating Graduations (we think) in a local park. That night we headed to the Thai boxing known locally as Muay Thai at the Ratchademnoen Stadium, we had been tipped off that Thursday night was the best to see some good fights. The pricing is 1st, 2nd and 3rd class, we opted for the 2nd class which was still a whopping £20 quid each for us poor unemployed & homeless westerners, Andrew’s got a job but he looks poor.

Once inside the stewards tried to hustle us into a section with restricted views but we stood our ground and managed to get a decent view of the ring. We got in just before the first bout (there was to be another 9 afterwards), after the boxers entered the ring they entered a strange ritual that was half warm up half superstitious hokum as they wandered around nodding and bowing at every corner. This seemed to take forever and it got really boring after a few fights and to be honest once the fights started it never got that much better.

After the first fight the three of us turned to each other with a look of befuddlement as we never really understood what was happening and the guy we thought was the best didn’t win. This went on for the next few fights and although it got quite exciting when the crowd started hollering and hooting we still didn’t really get why they suddenly got excited when the opponents grappled and tried to knee each other in the thigh. We spent probably as much time watching the locals betting, tic-tac style with strange hand gestures prompting stranger responses from the bookies runners.

There was also a band who accompanied every fight with a strange rhythmic warbling that after a few hours slowly got caused your brain to turn to porridge and start dripping out your ears. After the seventh fight we decided to cut our losses and sneak out. Strangely it felt a bit like leaving the Barrowlands after a gig as hawkers tried to sell you t-shirts, both Andrew and myself were quite surprised to see a Celtic t-shirt amongst the Thai Boxing and Elephant t-shirts.

Next morning we headed off to Ko Ratanakosin, to wander around the Grand Palace and Wat Phra Kaew. Joanne and I had been here twice before, well once really as the first time we never made it into the grounds as we turned up five minutes after closing time before we were ushered into a Tuk-Tuk heading to a local gem store. This time we managed to slip in before anybody tried to scam us and skipped by all the Japanese who were having countless group photos at every single insignificant fixture in the grounds. Once inside I think Andrew was slightly overwhelmed by the sheer opulence of the many temples and stuppas, the old Kings of Siam certainly liked their bling as your eyes are dazzled by the sun reflecting off the hundred or so jewel and gold covered structures. We had a look at the revered diminutive Emerald Buddha which is a bit of let down considering that the building housing it is one of the most opulent temples we’ve seen on whole trip. The Grand Palace doesn’t see too much action from the present King, but there are still a few decorated guardsmen out front posing for photos for all the tourists.

After a short stroll to Wat Pho which has the largest collection of Buddha images in Thailand, as well as the largest reclining Buddha we decided to head for some lunch. This turned out to be a bit harder than we expected and I was on the end of a few harsh words from Joanne and Andrew as I led them down numerous winding lanes and dead ends in China town in the hope of finding that illusive cheap noodle shop. Eventually after grabbing something to quell Joanne and Andrews rumbling innards we hustled and bustled with what felt like the rest of Bangkok in the narrow streets that held the thieves market in China town. After a few hours in the increasing heat we decided to give up and head back to the hotel and chill out for an hour or so before heading out for the night.

Friday night we headed down to Patpong for dinner and a few drinks, after been told that there was no chicken we went for the neck of pork....bad choice. I think we would have rather had some H5N1 flavoured noodles than the fatty tasteless pork that arrived on our plates, alongside some of the most outrageously spicy dipping sauce. We then had a quick wander around the night market and passed by some of the notorious ping pong bars and clubs. We decided to head for our first beer of the night when Andrew pointed out some actress from Neighbours (supposedly an Australian Soap) standing just in front of us, walking quickly on we turned into a street full of bars when I noticed someone vaguely familiar. When your travel about South East Asia on the backpacking route you crisscross paths with many fellow backpackers, so I didn’t really pay much heed to the very recognisable face getting closer and closer. It was just as this chap passed by that I realised that it King Monkey himself, Ian Brown, ex-lead singer of the Stone Roses and one time monosyllabic spokesman of a generation. I didn’t say anything to him even though he and the rest of his band took up quite a bit of my wall space in the late eighties when Manchester was centre of my musical universe. We had a few more beers in Patpong before deciding to head to some more bars nearer to our hotel as it was going to be long day tomorrow.

We got up early and headed out to the weekend market so Andrew could scout out some presents, and to get his first shipment of Bathing Ape t-shirts. The market wasn’t too busy at this time and we managed to tick quite a few things of our respective lists. We grabbed a few excellent smoothies, had one last wander around the market then headed back to the hotel just before the place got too busy. Andrew had luckily came to Bangkok the same week as it was having its first major rock festival and some of our favourite bands had signed up to play. We headed out early as we didn’t really know what to expect nor did we know how far out of town it was. Once inside we soon realised that it was going to be slightly different from T in the Park there was only one beer tap for the festival, but we still managed to get a few free whisky’s as the event was being sponsored by 100 Pipers Whisky (one of the biggest brand names in the country). 100 Pipers also had a small area set up with fairground type booths to test your skills with the chance to win some logo emblazoned merchandise, we came away with a t-shirt, CD case and a key ring between us.

After a few local bands and a boring Belgian band we had our first real highlight of the day as Ian Brown, entered the stage wearing a horrendous pink shell suit not seen since Jimmy Saville was hanging weirding out Louis Theroux. Ian Brown was never the best of singers but he always known how to master the stage and he soon had the crowd going with his combination of Thai pleasantries, goofy shoulder shuffling and all round showmanship…. Top Man. Joanne has never been a fan but was well won over with his infectious friendliness, the quality of his backing band and the highlights from his back catalogue which now has some serious gems to sit alongside the seminal Stone Roses songs.

Next up was Franz Ferdinand all the way from Glasgow, having taken the world by storm over the last few years it was great to see them on the big stage in Bangkok. Alex the lead singer used to run the Kazoo club in the 13th Note back in the day when I was in a band called Limehouse, there was also talk of us doing a split single with Alex’s band at the time the Blisters, but you will have to ask Davie Whyte more about that if you know him. Franz didn’t disappoint and the place was rocking to some of the best songs released in the last few years with a band who are obviously still loving being the most talked about British band in the world. This made the Oasis set even more disappointing as in the early nineties Oasis had the same verve and passion as Franz Ferdinand before they disappeared up their backsides in a storm of white powder. Liam was his usual self and Noel even came across like a spoiled brat anytime he ventured near the microphone.

Why not check out Andrew’s reviews of the festival here…. Ian Brown, Franz Ferdinand, Oasis, 100 Rock Festival

We luckily managed to get a taxi outside the venue and were soon speeding back to our hotel, since it was after midnight we decided to grab a few beers and snacks from a local 7 eleven and finish off the night in one of our rooms. Joanne headed up to the room as Andrew and I headed for the refreshments. On the way round we noticed a small urchin throwing stones at a teenager while laughing menacingly at him. As we passed the same kid on the way back he approached us and pulled out a gun, suddenly he flipped open the barrel and spun it a few times before putting in a bullet he had just waved in our face. At this point we didn’t know what to think, things started getting a more unsettling as he raised the gun to Andrew’s face and pulled the trigger a few times before the kid burst into laughter as we scarpered across the road. I just turned to Andrew and said that it was a great story for the blogger before the shock really set in and both of us could see the colour drain from our faces. We enjoyed the beers as we talked over what had just happened still not sure if it was really funny or just very dangerous.

Next morning we had a bit of a later start after all the exertions the previous day, but it wasn’t long before we were hitting the shops and markets as Andrew tried to finish off his shopping orders from back home. That night we headed to the Bar 22 in Sukhumit to watch the Celtic v Dunfermline game, the bar was run by ex-Glasgow bus driver who entertained us with his stories of On the Buses Glasgow style. The game turned out to be the a bit of a cracker as Celtic ran out 8-1 winners and a certain Mr Lennon managed to get his first goal in about four years. After the game we also had another game of killer pool with the bar staff and the air stewards from Quantas who were dragged in by one of their Scottish colleagues. We eventually left the bar a little worse for wear and Andrew thought he really had too much to drink when he saw a few elephants walking up the street in front of him. With a little closer inspection there were two elephants been led along the road with their owner trying to sell bananas to unsuspecting tourists to feed the animals, not what you expect to see when you stagger out the pub at two in the morning.

Next we consulted the guidebook and decided to head to the University’s Modern Art Gallery which was highly recommended in the Lonely Planet. We had seen the gallery a few days earlier when we looking for the tourist police. When we arrived at the University we couldn’t find the gallery and soon realised that we were not at the right University and that the book was talking about another one at the other end of the city, so we decided as it had started to pour that we would leave it until the next day. As the rain was bouncing off the street we headed down to Siam with all its indoor shopping centres and markets.

On Andrew’s last full night in Bangkok we headed to Khao San Road for our final blow out or at least that was the plan. After eating too much pizza we headed round to one of the bars on the main strip, and soon realised that the place was deserted and that none of the stalls or performers were out that night. We found out later that there's no street markets on Monday nights in this area, and the pubs can’t put tables and seats out on the street. So after a few drinks we headed round to a small CD shop which also had a bar and picked up loads of CD’s while sipping Leo & Chang beers. We headed home slightly disappointed as we were looking forward to sending Andrew home with a bang, but a mixture of bad timing and the exertions of the last few days had finally caught up with us.

Andrew’s Last day saw us heading to Modern Art Gallery, this time we did find the correct university but the Gallery was closed and looked if it had been for some time. So we headed to the Robot Building to take some snaps, the robot building is as you would imagine a large building that surprise, suprise looks like a robot. Once again we luckily avoided a massive downpour just as we jumped on the skytrain. After dinner Andrew went back to the hotel to pick up his bags and jumped a taxi back to the airport. I hope he had a great time, and I know Joanne myself really enjoyed having him over and giving him a quick run round some of Bangkok’s many highlights.

2006-02-15T14:20:00.000+01:00

Fake Tales of Bangkok City

For once both of us managed to get a little bit of a sleep on the bus. We were supposed to arrive in Bangkok at 6.30 am but despite the numerous lengthy stops the bus driver hammered us to Bangkok and we were dropped off at Khao San road at 4.30 in the morning. We had printed the address for the hotel but the print was pretty poor and wandered down the street trying to find an internet. This place reminds me of Glasgow city centre at 2am picking up a rather merry Mr Reilly, sticky smelly streets and loads of people either falling over or holding each other up!! We managed to get onto the internet and arrived early at our hotel The Bangkok City Suite at 5.30am.

After some discussions the staff let us have our room from 6.15am which was rather nice of them and we both tried to get a little sleep. We then managed to get reception to give us a room later in the day which had a wireless connection and thankfully I hadn’t unpacked that much. So it was back to reception and after what seemed a lifetime they eventually agreed to provide us with another room after 1pm. We had a quick shower and headed out as we wanted to scout out the weekend market.

We arrived at the market at lunchtime and it was rather busy, hot and sweaty walking or dodging people, stalls and trolleys laden with goods. Chris bought a tee-shirt (surprise, surprise) and I managed to get some other pressies and after a couple of hours we had had enough and decided to head back. We are about a 15 minute walk from the Sky Train and as we left the rain started to come down, well within 2 minutes we were drenched. The traffic came to a complete standstill so the only option was to walk in the heavy thunder storm, it was like having a shower with your clothes on. The water was hot, we were soaked to the skin and had such a laugh walking down the street. You would have thought that we were crazy with the looks that some people gave us although many folks just smiled and laughed at us as we danced our way back to the hotel. The staff at reception looked at us in disbelief as we soaked the reception area to collect our key for our new room.

It was the Rangers v Celtic game that night and yes that is one of the main reasons why we left the beach early to allow a certain person to watch the game on the TV. We managed to find a bar in the Sukhumvit area that was supposed to be showing the game so we jumped in a taxi as it was still raining and managed to find Hilarys Bar. Unlike a lot of the bars this place had slightly older girls playing pool with Western men and too be honest it wasn’t too sleazy. So we settled down with some great burgers and chips although unlike Glasgow the girl kept trying to take my plate away as I was still eating she was nearly forked a couple of times as I tried to stab a chip. We had a couple of jugs of beer and then another couple as we watched Rangers lose 1-0. Our bar maid was rather tipsy as one of her customers had been buying her a few drinks and she kept on topping Chris’s drink up and telling me to look after him – I think she was after him with all the looks she kept on giving him.

The following day we made it up for breakfast which was slightly better than anticipated but cold fried eggs is not something that we relish eating with a hangover, but we managed to eat some anyway. We went to the MBK shopping mall and spent some time wandering around there and then into the Siam Discovery, Siam Centre and the Paragon Shopping Mall. We had pizza for lunch/dinner as we needed some sustenance to keep us going. We managed to find a Tesco shopping centre and spent about an hour wandering around buying some things for the fridge and then some other stuff as well. It’s probably one of the best supermarkets we have been in since leaving Oz.

As it was valentine’s night we decided to treat ourselves and went to ‘Hemlock’ a restaurant we had been in several times on previous visits. The place was busy and we waited to be seated. It was a really romantic table with less than a foot between us and the next one and it took a while to order food and drink. Our food was placed on the table next to us and the guy asked us was this what we ordered so we ended up spending the rest of the meal chatting to them. We wandered up Khao San road and then headed home.

On Tuesday it was the arrival of Mr Reilly junior (Andrew, Chris’s brother, to those who know him) and after having breakfast Chris left to meet him at the airport. Chris was a bit worried when he realised that Andrew's flight refernce was HN51 and the avian bird flu was on the march again

2006-02-11T05:58:00.000+01:00

Busy Doing Nothing

We managed to get to the ferry and on it without any great hardship and found ourselves a good seat on the deck so that Joanne could see the horizon, in Joanne’s mind this helps her avoid being seasick. For someone who’s just spent the last year travelling round the world she ain’t much of a traveller; she doesn’t like flying, she can’t read on buses, she’s sick on 90% of boats and she usually fights with taxi drivers. Five minutes after we sat down the heavens opened and we had to retreat under the canopy for a few minutes as the shower passed, so much for our plans to sit in the sun all week.

On arrival at Thongsala we had to run the gauntlet of taxi and hotel touts thrusting flyers into your hands and squealing into our ears about cheap accommodation and fast cars. As usual we tried to pick out the least annoying and quietest person of the crowd and were soon in the back of a pickup with another few couples as we sped along the coast road. John & Vanessa had recommended Chills a small resort that they had been to a few weeks earlier, I’m not sure having a pool table and a small rock pool justifies calling it a resort but we headed there anyway. The place sat right on the beach and all the rooms and chalets faced onto the water, so after having quick look at our room we decided to book in for the week and try and do as little as possible over the following seven days.

The owners were away on a visa run and Steve a friendly English guy gave us the lowdown on the place and the rest of the island. We were told to help ourselves to the fridge full of beer and juice and just to mark what we drink on the tab. The place also had three resident Thai’s (Daa, Ball & Mo) who made the food, cleaned the rooms and joined in with the fun. All the amenities were right on our balcony and we didn’t really have to leave the place so we didn’t for the next two days. That afternoon we took some books from the large library and sat and read while sitting on the beach.

The place was really peaceful and there were only five other guests staying on the day we arrived, one of them was the owner’s friend John who had been here for quite a few weeks. The other four were some teenagers from Ireland, yes even more Irish. I’m not sure why but we have only met a handful of Scots over the last year, but we have met at least thirty or forty Irish people. I find it quite sad that two countries that have a similar population have a real different attitude to travelling, most young Scottish people you meet are quite happy for week in Ibiza but everywhere we've been this year there’s been crowds of Irish out there doing it and living it to the full. Sorry for the crass generalisation but that’s just the way I’ve seen it, and I doff my cap to all the Irish we’ve met on the trip who’ve been full of fun and adventure.

The resort had a small lounge area with a few low tables and cushioned mats to spread out on, I’m sure this was just a rouse to get you so comfortable that you wouldn’t leave and just drink more beer from the too handy fridge. That night we all watched Walk the Line the new movie based on the relationship between Johnny Cash & June Carter. Although the storyline takes a few liberties with the truth the music is the real star of the show. Joaquin Phoenix looks uncannily like Johnny Cash at times and the director of photography does a great job in replicating some of the famous still photos from the Folsom & San Quentin Prison gigs.

The days started to merge into one another as we lazed, ate and drank all within 30 meters of our bed. Joanne was up to reading two trashy novels per day and I got a head start on a few websites that I planned to work on while back in Scotland. Now time for an advertisement for Dubcentral: One hardworking, enthusiastic web designer, application programmer, photographer, blogger, graphic designer, musician, collagist looking for an interesting job in Glasgow and the surrounding areas.

After a few days we had enough of sitting in the one place and we decided to head down to Thongsala to maybe use the internet or find out the best way to get back to Bangkok the following weekend. We asked a few people the best way to walk into town and they all looked incredulous that we would even think of walking. We worked out that it was just over 6 Km’s and that it wouldn’t take us much over the hour in the heat. We soon realise that one of the reasons that no one walks is because of the really bad driving on the island and the packs of skanky dogs that congregate at almost every corner. I’m not really much of a dog lover, as well as being allergic to them I think they smell the fear and always seem to snarl and snap anytime I’m near.

Thongsala was a bit of a disappointing place with loads of shops selling fake Ministry of Sound CD’s, juggling balls and head torches to the crowds who pour in for the Full Moon Parties. As usual we were going to just miss the big party but I don’t think either of us was too bothered and chilling out for a week was more than enough consolation. We got all our business done and popped into a busy café for lunch, we had loved the Thai food so far but we decided to get a burger for a change. The burger was fine but the highlight for me was the bottle of HP Sauce that materialised on our table, I can’t remember the last time I saw a bottle never mind covered my chips in it.

On the way back to Chills we noticed a sign for accommodation that would be ideal for Joanne when she trying to blow off some steam.

On the Wednesday night the owner Karl and his girlfriend Becks returned from their visa run to Penang in Malaysia and suddenly the place became a whole lot louder as the Ben Elton lookalike told us how much he hated Penang and how he was so glad to be home. Pretty soon a game of Killer pool was organised and everyone was in the pool room knocking back beers and cranking up the music, I didn’t play too badly that night but the following nights I could hardly hit a ball. The last time I had played Killer pool was on my stag weekend when Gary (The Shark) said he had a great game for a crowd and by the time he had explained the rules he had just lightened everybody else’s wallets and made his a whole lot heavier. Here's some of the rules I remember from Killer pool.

• Everybody starts with five lives
• You must pot a ball or you lose a life
• You can pot any ball
• Everybody has one shot

We were still playing at three in the morning when I realised that Celtic were playing, I didn’t think the game would be on TV as it was midweek. So as I sat in the deserted lounge flicking through the satellite channels I got a great surprise to see rainy Glasgow appear on the screen and Celtic v Falkirk already kicked off. So for the first thirty minutes of the game I ran back and forward from the pool room to the lounge trying in vain to get myself knocked out the pool tournament so that I could watch the rest of the game. Usually I never have a problem getting knocked at pool but tonight it just wasn’t happening quick enough, luckily I was in the lounge when Roy Keane got his first goal for Celtic since signing from Manchester United in November.

The next day Joanne headed off with Daa & Ball to go crab hunting, what they never told Joanne before she headed off was that they would be going on a motorbike. Joanne hates motorbikes as much as I dislike dogs, so you can imagine her face as they whizzed along the bumpy roads. They came back with a large bucketful of crabs, Joanne said she caught about a dozen but she was no match to the locals who caught bundles. That night we all had some crab for dinner, but to be honest I found it all a bit too much like hard work biting through the shell and sucking out the meat. Daa & Ball had also made a small raft from some old plastic barrels and polystyrene that had washed up on the beach, they had tied it all together with tyre tubing’s and had planned to sail out over the reef and get to some of the bigger fish.

The rest of the week we spent doing more of the same and when it was time to leave on Saturday the idea of travelling overnight to Bangkok was not nearly that appealing as lying about watching the sun set from our balcony or from the lounge sipping Changs and wondering whose turn it was to head up for the next beer. AAAAaaaaaa the Life of Reilly!!!!!

2006-02-03T08:10:00.000+01:00

Check Your Bucket

We were dropped off in a bus station somewhere in the North of Bangkok and quickly realised that the taxi and tuk-tuk drivers hadn’t changed and were up to their usual tricks of trying to get you to pay more. We eventually managed to get a tuk-tuk to take us to the nearest sky train station and made our way across the city to our hostel without any problems. We arrived about 7am and for the first time we were unable to get our room and had to go and find something to do!!

Well the shopping malls opened at 10am so we had 3 hours to kill and spent them wandering around the city, through Lumphini park watching all the oldies doing their Tai Chi and having some coffee. We then hit the MBK mall although we don’t remember this having as many floors and then the posh stores where we managed to spot the “Garnier girls” in strange outfits promoting their “white skin” range. Around one we were both shattered and went back to the hostel.

We were shown to our “twin” room which had squeaky bunk beds, a window that didn’t lock and scaffolding across half of the window as the building next door was being worked upon. We both fell asleep to the drilling and banging of the workmen through our wall and later I got locked in the bathroom as the door handle/lock wouldn’t open some place!

At night we took the sky train to the river and then the boat up towards Khao San road which is the main backpacking area. We stopped off in a little lane with lots of restaurants and had Pad Thai and a Red curry which turned out more spicy than anticipated. We strolled along past the many stalls which had set up for the evening trade of drunken farangs (westerners) and had decided to go and get a beer when we heard 2 rather distinctive voices. “Isn’t that John and Vanessa” said Chris and we looked around but couldn’t see them. Two minutes later we realised that it was definitely them (we spent Christmas in Saigon with them) the only difference being that John now had dreadlocks and Vanessa had dyed her hair blonde!! So we stood chatting with them and another couple and arranged to meet up the following night. Chris & I then sat in one of the bars on Khao San and watched the hordes of tourists stream up and down.

The following day we found a rather nice coffee place and spent some time catching up on the internet. We had decided to head out early and try and find the Southern bus terminal to book our next destination. So we took the boat and started to walk thinking that it looked about 30 minutes or so on the map. An hour and a half later we were still walking and eventually found the bus station at 8.40. This was such a waste of time since only immediate departure tickets were available and we couldn’t even get the price for our destination so we jumped into a taxi tired, hot and sticky. We met up with the other guys in Gulliver’s Traveller’s Tavern at the top of Khao San road. We quickly downed a few beers before heading to one of the strangest bars ever.

We went into a place which is a petrol station by day and is decked out with table and chairs at night. Being ever so safety conscious the tables are lit by candle light by melting the wax and sticking the candle in it. In addition to this smoking is allowed and later on you watch many people wave their ciggies in the air, all of this being carried out right next to the petrol pumps! Despite this the bar was fairly busy and the six of us all managed to get a table. The other couple Stu and Vanessa were from Oz and were a really good laugh.

Well we had several drinks and Chris and I even managed to get some rather uninspiring food and we were constantly interrupted by the hill tribe ladies in their usual garb, croaking frogs at us for the best part of the evening. Then a boy about 14 (selling sweets) came up to us and asked John and Vanessa where they from Ireland and said “Pogue Mahone” amongst various other Irish phrases, both of them were fairly impressed!! They also insisted that everyone bought some sweets of off him and being the kind souls that we are we did. Chris also managed to invite an 18 year old Swedish boy to our table after chatting to him about a certain Mr Larsson, the young guy actually said “Hello, I’m from Sweeeeeeden!” with the strangest accent I kid you not!!

As it was Stu and Tash’s last night John and Vanessa insisted that we all go and get some buckets to wash down our evening so we headed down one of the lanes and sat on some mats whilst they ordered some rum and coke. By this point I had had enough of the beer and really couldn’t manage anything else but Mr Reilly had a few sips and then another bucket was had. So we eventually staggered to a taxi at around 4’ish. The driver didn’t have a clue which BTS station we wanted to go to so he took us to a deserted one and tried to insist that we get out on this dark road with no other shops opened. He eventually took us to where we wanted to go after asking someone else where our BTS station was.

We both had a bit of a hangover the next day but Chris’s was much worse than mine and I had to do all the packing as we had to be out of the hostel (thank goodness) for 11am. After chatting to John and Vanessa the previous night we decided to do our visa run to Myanmar (Burma) and then head to Ko Pha-Ngan an island off the east coast of Thailand. So we went back to Khao San road to book the tickets, then back to the hostel and back again around 5.30pm. We spent most of our day in and out of taxi’s with nowhere to rest our weary heads.

After a quick bite of dinner we met outside the travel shop at 6.30 to be taken to 2 places, the second of which was the bus station and the bus wasn’t leaving until 9pm. So we had to wait another hour before moving. Again the bus trip was not that great sitting underneath the air conditioning unit with the driver just belting down the road and several times I went at least 2 feet in the air as he decided not to slow down going over the ramps.

We arrived at 6.30am in the border town of Ranong and even at this time the whole town stank of rotten fish. We started to walk on the instructions of Victor a Danish bar owner who remembered 10 mins later that we had to go back and check out of Thailand first. Chris and I were the only two carrying our backpacks and had to walk back but at least it wasn’t 12 o’clock and absolutely scorching. We got stamped out and were promised a taxi to and from a boat by one of the boat owners. No taxi and after 15 minutes of hearing “It’s just here” after about 10 times we decided to see if there was any other boats, nothing to be had so we had to walk for around another 5 minutes before heading onto one of those wooden boats which looks as though any more than 2 Farangs and it would sink. Fortunately it didn’t, we went to another Thai border check and then waited for 30 minutes for the tide to come in.

This had caused a traffic jam of boats as they all jostled for the best position in the middle of the river and rather than lining up all the boats were pointing towards the middle we saw one boat being moved by two English guys helping to sway it from side to side so John and Victor gave it a bash and we managed to get out of the jam. We then landed in Burma with our entrance being stamped and then it was off to the next place to have them stamped as exiting with many young men trying to get you to go with them to buy something cheap from them. We all declined and headed back to the Thai border this time managing to get the boatman to get us a taxi.

After we got our visa’s we were dumped back at the bus station only to find that our bus didn’t leave until 2pm, whereas Vanessa and John managed to get theirs right away. So Victor, Chris and I went to have breakfast/lunch in a little café and tried to wish the time away. It was a long 3 hours wait for us; having been hung-over the day before and having very little sleep on the bus.

Our “air conditioned” bus arrived and we groaned as we watched them load up the bus with huge baskets of fish!! The bus did have air in it although it stank a little of the fish but it was ancient and again the seats were more suited for 8 year old children than 2 big westerners, but I even managed to get some well deserved sleep. We then arrived in Surat Thani at 7pm and we had an offer to go with Victor to Ko Samui and stay with him before heading off the following day but this involved waiting until 11pm for the overnight ferry which took at least 5 hours so we decided to call it quits for the night and booked into the nearest hotel. We both had a good nights sleep before getting up the next morning for the bus/ferry combination to Ko Pha-Ngan.

2006-01-31T05:50:00.000+01:00

It's not all walking

We were picked up about 9:30 for our eco-trek into the Thai highlands north of Chiang Mai, as seems to be the norm in Thailand we were then driven about 2 Km’s and then shifted into another van. We had a short journey to a market to get supplies before we got going; well to be honest we never really got going. After driving for another hour we stopped off at a small hill village where we wandered about for five minutes, but there was nothing to see except some people trying to fix a pipe and snotty kids chasing chickens. It was then back into the van for another short drive to our lunch stop for fried rice and veg. By this point we were all wondering if we were going to do any walking at all today and the rest of the people we were with were starting to get a bit anxious.

Joanne and I had signed up for the three day trek, but everybody else apart from a Swedish father and daughter who were only here for two days. The group consisted of two Irish sisters, three women called Maria from Valencia, a sailor from Switzerland and Christophe and Charlotte from Sweden (but who now live in Provence, in the south of France). We eventually started walking just before two o’clock and we had a nice walk through some rice fields and small woods, but the walk was far from strenuous and our guide was as informative as the internet in a power cut. Don’t think for a second that we were trudging knee deep through rice paddies as its slap bang in the middle of the dry season and the ground was parched and barren. The most exciting it got on the first days trek was crossing logs over some small streams, one of the Maria’s suffered from Vertigo and had to hold on to my shoulder as we crossed a few of brooks. I decided about half way across to do a wee hop, skip and jump which didn’t go down to well as she hit me once she got off the log.

We arrived at another small village and were directed to the group’s hut, large mosquito nets hung from the roof covering our mattresses. You could almost hear the mosquitoes salivating as we piled in to pick our spot for the long night ahead, as the local flying vampire’s booked in for their European buffet. A small crowd of women and kids had congregated around the hut door selling bracelets and necklaces, if it looked like they weren’t going to get a sale they put some wares in one of the youngest kid’s hands and tried to embarrass you into buying something. We came away with two bracelets and a few smiles from the women and kids. During the time we had arrived a frail old woman was struggling to climb onto a long axle foot press to separate rice from its husk, she looked as if she was about to keel over at any moment but she had probably be doing the same thing every day since she could remember.

After dinner we sat around a camp fire for awhile and drank some beers, but most people decided to hit the bed early as we expected a heavy day of trekking the next morning. Nobody got a good night sleep as the cockerels doodle doodled doo all night and one of the Marias snored like an asthmatic water buffalo, much to the annoyance of Christophe and Charlotte who were sleeping next to her. We were woken at 7:30 for our breakfast before we started at 9:00 for our first short walk of the day, yeah the walks never really did get that difficult on the second day.

We arrived at a clearing in the forest and caught sight of the elephants that were going to be our transport for the next hour. Joanne bought some bananas to feed the elephants, and suddenly the five elephants made a beeline towards her with their trunks aimed for her hand. This gave Joanne a bit of a fright and she was off her mark pretty sharpish, luckily a few others bought some bananas so Joanne narrowly avoided being mauled by the hungry beasts. After the elephants had their fill of bananas we climbed on and set off for our slow procession through the forest. After horse riding in Bolivia and Camel riding in Australia this was by the far most leisurely of the three and apart from a few hairy moments going down an embankment also the safest.

Soon after the Elephant rides the group split with the two day trekkers heading one way and Joanne, Christophe, Charlotte and myself heading the other. We arrived a good hour early for lunch and our guide didn’t seem too happy that we were walking too fast, whilst we were all getting a bit frustrated at the lack of real walking. We then set off and had a nice leisurely walk across some more rice fields and pass many herds of water buffalos and cows. We arrived at our camp for the second night just before four and we decided to have a dip in the pool at the bottom of the fall. Big mistake as the water was absolutely freezing but after a few minutes it was almost bearable, there were no showers for miles so it was the only way that we were getting a wash that night.

Before dinner we whiled away an hour knocking cans off a fence with catapults, when I was a kid I always wanted a toy called Tin Can Alley but I was obviously a toe rag as Santa never did come up with the goods. I really enjoyed using the catapult and don’t remember ever trying one before, but I’ve said things like this only to be shot down a few seconds later by some knowing party. After a few shots I thought I was doing really well and was hitting the cans quite regularly but I was then challenged by the rather worse for wear cook who hammered me every time and I had to sing a song as a forfeit. After dinner we asked the guide if we could start earlier the next morning than the planned 10am start to do quite a bit more walking, but he threw a bit of a strop and got a bit snappy with Christophe while playing cards.

Next morning we set off 30 minutes earlier than the guide had wanted and he said he would try and find a longer, harder route but kept saying that he hadn’t been this way in eight months and that we might get lost. We didn’t get lost, and it was a bit more taxing than the previous two days but we still felt that we had been short changed. We arrived at a nice spot with a waterfall so we decided to have a dip in the water and chill for a bit as we realised we weren’t too far from our lunch spot. After lunch it was into the back of a truck and a short drive to the river for some bamboo rafting.

I hadn’t really thought too much about the rafting before arriving at the river, and I suddenly realised that we were going to be floating down a fast flowing river on five bamboo poles tied together. My fears weren’t allayed when I was nominated to stand at the back of the raft to punt us down the river as the other three sat in the middle. We managed to set off ok and it wasn’t too bad at first, a raft with four Germans in front was having quite a few problems and it looked like they were going to sink at any moment as they were sitting well below the water line. At one point I had to dive on my front as I was about to smash my head on a low trunk of a tree, but luckily I managed to stay on the raft even though now I was totally soaked. After about 50 minutes we arrived safe and sound at the finishing point where the bamboo poles back are sent to the start via a van. We were then packed off into a small van and taken back to our hostel, even though we weren’t too chuffed with the guide and the lack of walking we had a good time and would maybe do a bit more research in to what company we would use in the future.

Saturday morning we wandered into Chiang Mai and had lunch at the Cinnamon House which sold fantastic baguettes and iced coffees to die for. We had wished we had found this place on our first day and not near the end of our time here, but we did make three trips to it over the next day or two. It was such a nice day we headed to the park and found a nice spot to sit and read. The place was full of local families sitting under the shade of the trees, eating ice cream and enjoying the lovely setting with ornamental ponds and gardens.

Sunday morning after a slight detour to the Cinnamon House for breakfast we headed to the railway and bus station to try and find the best and cheapest way to Bangkok the following day. We decided to get the bus again as it was almost half the price and the times suited us better. Well we misjudged the scale of the map slightly and we were walking for over a good five hours there and back. We stumbled across a cool street market selling loads of interesting knick knacks for a lot less than the tourist orientated markets. We also found a sports shop selling football strips at ridiculously low prices, I’m not sure if they were sourcing them straight from the back door of the factory as they were 90% cheaper than the exactly same strip available in the adidas shop in the centre of Chiang Mai.

The bus turned into another saga, but you must all be fed up hearing about our nightmare bus trips. This time the air conditioning was on full blast and we almost froze to death sitting on the most uncomfortable seats with our legs straight out right at the front of the Double Decker supposedly VIP bus. But nevertheless we arrived safe and sound in Bangkok at 5:30am slightly cold and without any sleep.

2006-01-24T11:08:00.000+01:00

Ready Steady Puke

We were picked up at the airport and threw our things in the back of a truck which stopped more times than it started, but it was a free lift so we couldn’t complain. We were staying at the Chiang Mai International Youth Hostel and on arrival were given the full run down of all the tours that they can provide (there were quite a few).

So we dumped our bags and walked into town which was a 45 minute walk from the hostel. We managed to find one of the luxury shops called “Boots” you might remember them, pharmacy come smelly goods shop and I had to have a browse (well I did buy some things). I only wish that they would have accepted my Advantage Card to get me some extra points. At night we wandered through the night market full of copy CD’s, t-shirts and plenty of other touristy knick-knacks to keep our attention in between the ear piercing shrieks of “MASAAAAAGE you want foot MASAAAAAAGE”. We ate in the Phon Non Café that night and Chris ate the classic Pad Thai (noodles) and I had an excellent bowl of Red Thai Curry.

We then went in search of some bars but found it difficult to find one that wasn’t either empty, full of Thai girls waiting for old western guys or full of old western guys with a really young Thai girls. So we opted for the Rock ’n’ Pizza to have a drink and watch the end of a Premiership game, it was nice to be able to afford another drink apart from beer after the prices in Malaysia.

On Sunday we went back to the shopping mall where we had been in the day before and Chris bought some computer software. We went to a couple of the temples firstly Wat Phra Singh which has Lanna architecture and murals and then Wat Chedi Luang which suffered a huge earthquake 1545 and was partially restored to stop it crumpling any further.

In the evening went to a bar which was showing an old Rangers game. Chris was hoping for the Celtic game to be shown, but as the bar only had one Swedish guy (who was married but wasn’t here for the ladies) and the rest were Thai girls patiently waiting. So we went back to the pizza place and Chris managed to get them to put the same channel on and guess what the Celtic v Motherwell game was on. He was one happy chappie but I’m not sure if was due to the drinks or the Celtic score.

We decided that we would watch the first half of the Man U v Liverpool game further down towards the hostel and went into a small bar. We sat for a bit and then a group of guys sat near us and one of them started to talk to us. He worked for a furniture company and was on a works night out at the ten pin bowling. His boss was telling him to tell us about his store and gave us his phone number so that we might go and buy some furniture. We tried to explain several times that we didn’t have house to put anything in but it was going in one ear and out the other. He continued to ply us with beer and ice, which is how the Thai’s drink their beer and we felt that we ought to buy them a beer or two back. We watched the game to full time 1-0 to Man U before heading drunkenly back to the hostel.

I was up early the next day as I had booked a Thai cookery class, but I only wished that I had stopped drinking about 10pm. I had some breakfast and was picked up and met every one in the group who were really nice. We stopped off at the market where we were shown the different types of veg/herbs that we would be using that day and for other Thai recipes.

We were then driven out to the school for our lessons. Our teacher was ‘Perm’ and was hilarious which made the class fly by. We made the Thai soup which was sweet/sour and absolutely delicious (even if I say so myself). We then made a stir fry dish with the option of having an “adventure” throwing water into the oil with the flames coming out of the top, the guy taking my picture didn’t manage to get the camera to work at that point but I did managed to take a cracking picture for an Aussie with the flames hiding the two people standing next to her.

We then made a Pad Thai (noodles), Penang curry and green curry. We were shown how to make sticky rice with it going into a salad and also a mango pudding which I could have eaten all day. Then we got to sit down and eat. By this point I was full but then I started to have pains in my stomach….I’d eaten something with prawns in it and spent the next half hour throwing up!! We packed what we hadn’t eaten into bags – well all of mine went in and I spent the next 45 minutes trying unsuccessfully not to throw up in the back of the truck.

Back at the ranch Chris couldn’t understand why I ran in and immediately went to the loo. He had spent the day using the laptop and on the internet. Later on we managed to get the hostel to heat up the food and Chris ate all that I had cooked – he said it tasted quite nice but I’m not sure if he was worried that I might have poisoned him also. We had a quiet night in.

On the Tuesday we visited the oldest Wat within the city walls aptly named Wat Chiang Man which contain the Crystal Buddha believed to have the power to bring seasonal rains and Buddha Sila. We wandered again through the night bazaar before buying some last minute supplies from Boots for our 3 day trek the following day.

2006-01-22T10:00:00.000+01:00

The Day I Read A Book

Another one of the bounus's of our trip is the chance to catch up with some books especially when your stuck on a bus or a train for over 24 hours. Thanks to everybody who have given us or swapped books along the way, it has been well apreciated.

Here's some of the book, click the titles for a small synopsis.

The Idea of India - Sunil Khilnani
Absoulute Altitude - Martin Buckley
D.I.Y. The Rise of Lo fi Culture - Amy Spencer
ChickenHawk - Robert Mason
What Should I Do with My Life? - Po Bronson

The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce
The Brethern - John Grisham
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
1984 - George Orwell

One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest - Ken Kessey
Deception Point - Dan Brown
Shame - Salmon Rushdie
Clough The Autobiography - Brian Clough
Porno - Irvine Welsh

The Sorrow of War - Bao Ninh
The Third Man & The Fallen Idol - Graham Greene
Down Under - Bill Bryson
Mary Barton - Elizabeth Gaskell
Homage to Catalonia - George Orwell

Digital Fortress - Dan Brown
Red Zone - Mark Frankland
Hitler's Peace - Philip Kerr
Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
What do I want to do with my life? -
Ruthless.com - Tom Clancy & Martin Greenberg

We've probably read about another dozen or so that we can't remember at the moment. If anybody has read any good books lately, stick it in the comments box.

2006-01-21T05:19:00.000+01:00

Malaysian Return

When we arrived back in Georgetown we headed straight to 75 Travellers Lodge only to be told that there was no room at the inn, so we spent the next twenty minutes plodding round Chinatown with our full rucksacks trying to find a room for the night. Luckily we got one which wasn’t too bad, it was massive with the only problem being that it overlooked a busy junction and there wasn’t much sound proofing. It was quite late but we managed to get some food in a busy restaurant which was showing the Manchester derby. As you would expect most of the locals were supporting Man United but there was a sizable crowd of backpackers in and they seemed to be supporting Man City. The game finished 3-1 to City and to make matters worse for the United fans, the last minute goal was scored by Robbie Fowler.

Next morning we moved back into Travellers 75 lodge and set out to explore the rest of the town as it was a glorious day. As usually happens when we’re out wandering aimlessly we managed to stumble on to something strange or bizarre. As we turned one corner we came upon a crowd milling about a non-descript building, but as we got closer we noticed that quite a few of the crowd were dressed in elaborate Chinese costumes and masks. When they saw us coming down the street they ushered us over and posed for our photographs and they couldn’t have been any more friendly. We didn’t really find out why they were dressed up but we think it might have been a dress rehearsal for some Chinese New Year celebration.

We then went to the large shopping centre to pick up some supplies and to have a look about, being a Sunday the place was mobbed so after a short while we escaped back out to the sunshine. We then headed back up through Chinatown to the esplanade hoping to take some photos of the old buildings that dot the town. As we cut across Padang Park, we could hear a band and what looked like from a distance a game where instead of a ball they used a large pole. On closer inspection it turned out to be some sort of display team who would flick a 20 ft pole up with their feet which had a massive trailing flag and the next guy tried to catch the base of the pole on his forehead and then try to balance it there. Once it was balanced he then tossed the pole up by his head for the next guy to catch on his head which was an extremely difficult feat and during the time we were there we only saw this happen once. This was all done to the accompaniment of a small band who tapped out a steady rhythm with drums and bells.

The promenade was mobbed with families taking in the late afternoon sun and the cool breeze from the sea, and where there’s a crowd you find the hawkers and food stalls. The best sellers seemed to be the bubble blowing guns for kids and the dried squids which seemed to be selling faster than the proverbial hit cakes. We made our way through the streets taking loads of photos of the Mosques, Churches and all the great buildings that are dotted about this part of town.

Monday morning we were up early to try and find some sun cream so that we could head back to the beach at Batu Ferringhi. When we left the shopping centre we noticed that half the street in the area had been closed off, and being the nosey types we wandered over to where a small crowd of photographers and onlookers had gathered. We could see a chalk outline of a body on the opposite kerb, and a forensic team gathering evidence. I asked one of the photographers what happened and he said that there was an electrical accident the previous night in the café bar across the road. A few days later the newspapers were reporting that it was a small bomb loaded with nails that had killed the customer and was not an accident.

The last time we went to the beach it was mobbed as it was a national holiday, so we were quite surprised when we got there to find only a handful of people on the miles of sand. It must have been quite a bit rougher out at sea as the beach was covered in debris and wasn’t that nice to swim in. It was a shame because the previous week the beach was spotless and the water although not crystal clear was not as murky as it was now. Nevertheless we had a nice afternoon reading our books and listening to some music on the quiet beach.

That evening Laura & Louise who we met the previous week in the hostel were also back for a night on their route back south after a few days on Langkawi. We chatted to the girls for awhile and arranged to meet up with Laura in Kuala Lumpur. We had booked the same bus company we used on the way up from the capital so we had no problems as the luxurious bus glided the five hours back to Kuala Lumpur.

We had booked a room at the Green Hut hostel this time in Kuala Lumpur and after a bit of a mix up with the rooms we eventually got our bags unpacked. The room had a small balcony but once again the walls were nothing more than Gyproc and we could hear everybody shuffling along the wooden floors in the corridor. We had a late lunch in a small Indian restaurant we visited the previous week for some mutton curry and rice and again we ate too much and didn’t bother having dinner that night.

We headed to the Petronas towers so that we could get some night photographs of the twin towers. We mistimed the sunset slightly so we had a wander around the manicured lawns and ponds of the small park at the foot of the towers and headed in for another look around the shopping centre. There was an interesting photographic exhibition about a Petronas sponsored Trans Himalayas mission in 23 four wheeled jeeps. The route of their journey passed through quite a few towns and cites we had visited in the last few months and it was interesting to see the photographs from Laos and the Chinese city of Kunming. Once it got dark outside we went out and watched the choreographed fountains dance in the ponds, and took some photos of the towers lit at night.

Next morning we had the unfortunate experience of being drawn into a conversation with an aggressive lowlife from Scarborough, who reminded me of the character Begbie from Irvine Welsh’s “Trainspotting” and “Porno” novels. I had just finished reading “Porno” on the bus down from Penang so that might be the other reason why I readily associated this character with the antagonistic thug portrayed with great menace by Robert Carlyle in the film “Trainspotting”. The guy from Scarborough didn’t say anything that was offensive or even antagonistic, but you could sense that just below the surface he was about to explode and I didn’t really want to be around when it happened.

We once again followed our familiar path to the Petronas Towers but this time we hoped to get tickets to the 44th floor and walk across the sky bridge that links the towers. The tickets were free but only so many are allocated per day, but luckily we managed to get two and after a short film we were hurtling up to the 44th floor. The lift took 43 seconds to reach the 44th floor and we then had about 10 minutes to wander about taking photos. Members of the public don’t have access to the higher parts of the impressive building, which at the moment are the second & third tallest buildings in the world 452 meters.

On the way back to the hostel we decided again to go for an early dinner and ended up in the Banana Leaf restaurant which always looked busy when we passed. No plates in this restaurant as the food is served onto a large banana leaf, we had this before in Hong Kong a few years back. Joanne went for a veg rice combo along with tandoori chicken which she managed to cancel when she realised how big her veg order was. I stuck to my new favourite, Lamb Biryani and once again I wasn’t disappointed and we both left the place suitably sated.

We had arranged to meet Laura at the hostel at seven and whilst waiting I observed a small incident with the character from Scarborough. A few young guys were watching a DVD of Benny Hill which was put on by guess who, after a few sketches I heard some of the young Scandinavian guys laugh at how dated and unfunny it was. After a few more comments, Scarborough man jumped up and snarled into one of the young guy’s faces, “Do you know what’s no funny?? Eh Do you know what’s no funny?? You saying this is no Funny….. now shut it or beat it”. Luckily Laura turned up shortly after this and we didn’t see much more of our new friend over the next few days, he is by far the most aggressive person we have met on this whole trip away.

Laura had brought along her friend Jenny (from the borders) and since we were all hungry we headed round to the next street which had hundreds of Chinese restaurants with tables on the street. After a quite a bland meal we headed down to Chinatown for a quick look about and ended up in another crap reggae bar which once again was playing awfully stuff like Maxi Priest and my bête-noir UB40, they had also ran out of Vodka which limited the girls choices of drinks. After wandering about trying to find a better bar we decided to cut our losses and head back to the Green Hut and have a few beers on the front terrace.

Friday morning and after a lengthy search for the bus stop, we found ourselves heading 15 Km out of the city to the Batu Caves. A Hindu shrine was built in a vast open space known as Temple Cave which can only be reached by climbing 272 steps. Once inside we wandered about looking at the small temples, trying to imagine how the place would look with the million or so pilgrims who flock here during the Hindu festival Thaipusam. During this festival some devotees take part in spectacularly masochistic acts like piercing themselves with swords and knives. At the temple I got talking to a Greek guy called Manos from Kos who wanted to have his photograph taken with me as he has so many Scottish friends, strange guy. After a while we jumped back on the bus and returned slightly disappointedly back into the city.

For our last night we headed back to the Banana Leaf restaurant with Laura and Jenny and the pressure was on as we'd been raving about it the previous night. Luckily they didn’t let us down and we all left very full, for what was an extraordinary cheap meal. After a short de-tour so that the girls could pick up bus tickets for their trip to Singapore the next day, we headed to the Ceylon bar back in the Golden Triangle near our hostels. Beers and cocktails all round for the next few hours before we called it a night as we were all on the move early the next morning.

We had a taxi booked to take us to the airport at 5:45am and when it arrived he told us there would be a 35 Ringgit (about £5) surcharge as it was before 6am, if only we'd checked the small print we could have saved a bit of cash. We'd booked the taxi extra early as I wasn’t sure how bad the traffic would be in the morning, but we sailed up the motorway and arrived well before we had to. We were also ready for Air Asia’s 15 kg baggage allowance as we had transferred most of the heavy stuff to our hand luggage and jettisoned all non-essentials. Both our bags were under the 15 Kg and we'd a hassle free trip to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

2006-01-14T04:59:00.000+01:00

Life's a Beach

After reaching Krabi we still had several hours before we would eventually reach our beach destination of Hat Ton Sai and we headed to the pier to get a boat. We were told that we would have to wait until we had at least 8 people or pay the full boat price and after an hour only one other person turned up so we decided to cut our losses and head for the “local bus”. It was in fact a converted truck with benches in the back and a luggage rack on the top so after dumping our bags we were off on a harem scarem ride for 45 minutes to Ao Nang. Once there we jumped straight on a long tail boat and were taken to our final destination. It was now about 5 o’clock and we still had to find accommodation.

We started to look from the beach upwards, but everything was full as we slowly worked our way up the steep hill. One place had a room but the price was extortionate, supply and demand market dictating the price obviously. A kind woman offered for us to dump our bags whilst we looked so I stayed with the bags as Chris went on a quick tour of the resort trying to find us accommodation. We eventually found somewhere which was a bit more expensive than we anticipated, but it was a nice bungalow with en-suite and we put up our mosquito net since we were in the middle of the rainforest.

We then headed down to the beach to catch the last few rays of sun and watch the sunset. We were also both rather hungry as we’d eaten very little during our travelling that day. We managed to find a table right at the beach in the restaurant, saw the sun slowly go behind the hill and a nice hazy glow settled around us. Our Thai food was great although the waiters didn’t have a clue and gave our food to other tables and brought us food that we hadn’t ordered so we weren’t really surprised that when we came to pay that the bill it was more than double what it should have been. We had expected the resort to be fairly busy but at 8pm it seemed fairly quiet so we headed back to chill in our bungalow.

The following morning after our breakfast we headed to the far side of the beach which took us all of about 5 minutes to stroll across and we settled ourselves down on the sand in between 2 rock climbing schools. Most of the people doing this were fit and fairly supple and we enviously sat and watched them scaling the face of the rocks and dangling by one hand or foot. We did feel a bit guilty of all the strenuous effort going on around us as we lay back and dozed on the beach.

As the sun lit up the beach I decided it was time for a dip in the sea, but unlike the beach in Penang this beach had lots of rocks and plenty of other fishy creatures there. There were sea cucumbers (huge long black things which do look like a cucumber), plenty of holes from which we saw a lobster like creature pushing the sand out of (Chris almost sat on one) and several fish floating around looking for some toes to nibble. Needless to say I didn’t spend that long in the water. We played with the straw ball that we bought some time ago in Laos and after 2 minutes trying to play keepy up we decided a volleyball type game might be more in store for me.

It was rather hot work in the sun and around 2 o’clock we decided to head to the shade and have some lunch. On our way back up to the hotel through the rainforest we saw several huge spiders with enormous webs between two trees sitting patiently waiting for their next victim. We also saw a huge family of wild monkeys which were being fed by the ladies from an “authentic” massage parlour. The monkeys roam around this part of Krabi and come here every couple of weeks, the parents were obviously taking the children out for a weekend jaunt. After watching their antics for a bit we headed back.

That night we ate in a rather bizarre place which took forever to bring food and met up with two guys from Sunderland (well Chris was certainly put straight by them after he called them “Newccastle United Supporters” – they were deeply offended). It was another quiet night on the beach and we headed to a reggae bar afterwards for our final beer of the night – unfortunately the music was the same 80’s/90’s crap reggae by the likes of Aswad and UB40 that we have come to associate with most of these bars in SE Asia.

Our plan the following day was to head over to Hat Rai Leh beach (pronounce Hat Reilly) which seemed to be a short walk over the hill from where we were and apparently there was a beautiful sandy beach there. So we headed up through the rainforest forgetting about the pesky mosquitoes, when we stopped to decide which track to take I suddenly had about 4 huge things sitting on my leg with a couple of them managing to draw blood. So we quickly brushed of the nasty things before running up the hill to get as far away from them as possible. These mosquitoes were huge and are probably the biggest I’ve seen on our trip. It was also quite an effort to get up over the hill and definitely not as easy as the boatmen had said the day before, when he was going to drop us off at the neighbouring beach.

When we arrived at the beach it was just as everyone had promised with the blonde sand and perfect clear water. We were scorched after about an hour and decided to head round to another beach which was also recommended called Perang. When we got there, we saw (we think) the same troupe of monkeys who entertained all the beach goers with their antics. They were being given plenty of food and seemed to live in the rocks above the beach.

This was another gorgeous beach and we headed for some shade in amongst many others by the huge rock caves. I bought some Pad Thai noodles off of a beach vendor which were delicious and later we walked across the beach before heading back to Rai Leh. We decided to see whether the tide was out rather than walk back through the forest and fortunately it was. This meant we could walk across the sand and rocks from Rai Leh to our beach avoiding the pools of sea cucumbers and crabs as we went.

Since we had caught a bit of sun we decided that we’d head back to Penang the next day to break up our trip to Kuala Lumpur. That night we ate in the same restaurant as the first night and I got a rather spicy Green curry with prawns, beef and chicken whilst Chris had the same only with a Red Curry. Afterwards we chilled on deckchairs in a bar with a beer and a cocktail staring at the stars and watching the guys doing their fire dancing. We’d seen a girl practising this with tennis balls on strings (the balls being the flames) but she kept on hitting herself and managed to whack her face with them. Fortunately, for her, she wasn’t practising with the real thing!

That night I was up most of the night due to the food being dodgy and Chris suffered briefly the next morning so we decided to make a dash for Malaysia. We started off at 9am in the morning for another boat/bus ride. It took us about almost 13 hours with two long uncomfortable minibuses and one rather rude driver to eventually arrive back in Penang.

2006-01-11T12:06:00.000+01:00

Crash Penang Wallop

After checking the weather reports we escaped the grey skies of Kuala Lumpur and headed north east to the island of Penang in the Andaman Sea. As Joanne mentioned in the last update we had a great bus and it wasn’t too long before we were crossing the colossal 13.5 Km Penang Bridge (currently the third longest bridge in the world) that joins the island to the mainland a few miles south of the town of Butterworth.

After crossing the bridge I spotted a large Tesco supermarket and I was suddenly transported back to my troubled youth when dodgy nights in even dodgier bars & social clubs of Pollok seemed to be an all too regular occurrence. Worse still was the soundtrack to all these rubbish nights out seemed to be supplied by the awful Rick Astley, Sinitta and the rest of the Stock, Aitken & Watertorture clones. While still at school I packed shelves at Presto’s while my friend Gerry worked on the cheese counter at the local rivals Tesco. For some reason I was always invited along to their nights out, he probably thought if he had to endure them he might as well share the pain with someone else. Luckily I was saved from a life of dubious perms, leather ties and caterpillar moustaches by Stuart Murdoch (lead singer with Belle & Sebastian) when he handed me a flyer at the Barrowlands whilst watching The Fall. The flyer proclaimed that the Wasp Factory Club would be playing all of my favourites at the time; The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine, House of Love, The Wedding Present and countless other exotic names. Naively up to this point I had never associated socialising in night clubs and bars with good music so this revelation changed my life and most weekends for years after I haunted the Indie clubs of Glasgow. Luckily soon after Gerry got a free transfer to City Bakeries the upmarket eating establishment in the heart of Glasgow and I escaped Prestos when it was closed down after shoplifters outnumbered consumers.

Anyway back to Penang and we pulled into a large bus station only to find that we were still forty minutes away from Georgetown the main settlement on the island. So with our full rucksacks we struggled onto a local bus where I nearly concussed a small lady as I tried to swing my pack into an empty seat. We arrived in Georgetown and we made our way to Chinatown and the 75 Traveller’s lodge which had been given a good write up in the Lonely Planet. They didn’t have a en-suite room so we were ushered into a small room that seemed very familiar, I’m not sure if it was from Cool Hand Luke, The Great Escape or maybe The Shawshank Redemption but it did seem dreadfully recognizable. I’m not saying that the walls were thin but we could hear the person in the next room breathing and I could almost make out the colour of his shirt through the gyproc.

We headed out for something to eat with the notion of maybe looking for somewhere else to stay the following day. We ended up in the Blue Diamond Café which sold tasteless Mexican fayre and I’m sure the chef would have great difficulty in telling the difference between Aston Villa and Pancho Villa. After scouting out a few more hotels and guesthouses we soon realised that for the money 75 Travellers lodge was probably as good as Georgetown got.

We had a good walk around the town and found many interesting but slightly rundown buildings from the town’s colonial past. Penang is the oldest British settlement in Malaysia predating Singapore and Melaka and was acquired by Captain Francis Light on behalf of the East India Company in 1786. One of the most notable differences in Malaysia from other places we have visited in South East Asia is the social mix; there are large Indian, Chinese & Muslim communities living seemingly quite peacefully alongside the Malays. Sitting alongside Georgetown’s colonial buildings and churches are numerous Mosques, Hindu Temples, Buddhist Temples and Chinese slop houses.

After our initial misgivings about the 75 Travellers Lodge we soon found out why it sits so favourably in the Lonely Planet guidebook, the owner Mr Low is one of the friendliest owners we have came across on our travels. Not only is he very funny, he also is a mine of information and is very helpful and honest about Penang’s attractions and the easiest way to travel around and off of the island.

The hostel also has a few tables at the front entrance for sipping teas and beers and is a great place to meet other backpackers to exchange stories and advice. On the first night we met two young Aussie guys who are on a whirlwind trip of SE Asia before they move to London. We also met a few girls from various parts of England who all support Manchester United and had travelled down from Thailand. The weather still wasn’t the best so we were thinking of maybe moving on in a few days, and after talking to Laura (one of the girls) we decided to maybe head to Krabi after she recommended some good beaches. One slightly disturbing thing about sitting out the front was the numerous rats that seemed to congregate nearby. We also saw quite a few in Kuala Lumpur and have now seen more rats in Malaysia than we’ve seen in the rest of the trip put together.

Next morning we went for Breakfast in the café next door and met Louise one of the girls from the previous night along with a German guy called Alex. After breakfast we caught the local bus to the beach at Batu Ferringhi about 45 minutes from Georgetown. As we got off the bus we also met Andrew and Guy the two Aussies from the previous night who were also looking for the beach. Luckily the sun had come out and we spent a nice afternoon on the beach chilling out and soaking in the balmy sea. That night a group of us headed to an Indian for dinner, which although was very nice was a bit expensive in comparison to most places in Penang.

We headed back to the hostel for a few more drinks; where we got talking to an American guy called Barrett who works in Bangkok. Barrett was down in Penang on a visa run as without having a proper working visa you have to leave the country every 30 to 90 days. Barrett also lives quite close to and is also going to the Bangkok Music Festival. After being tipped off by my brother about the festival and with him being able to book online we are now the lucky owners of tickets to see Franz Ferdinand, Oasis & Ian Brown on the 18th February in Bangkok.

On Wednesday we had another early start and were supposed to be picked up at 5am at the hostel, also waiting outside were Guy and Andrew who were on their way to Phuket and would be sharing a minivan with ourselves and another half a dozen people travelling north to Thailand. The van eventually turned up at 5:30 and we arrived in Hat Yai on the Thai side of the border at ten o’clock. We then transferred to another van and had another five hour trip to Krabi.

2006-01-09T14:57:00.000+01:00

Oompa Lumpa slipped in Kuala Lumpur

We arrived in plenty of time for our flight with a cheap airline called Air Asia (similar to Easy Jet). We had bought bargain tickets as we didn't really fancy the lengthy journey from Siem Reap to Bangkok and we didn't bother to read the terms or conditions. On arrival our bags weighed in at a hefty 42kgs but we were only allowed 15kgs each so we were told we had to either pay $4 per kilo that was over or we could remove some things and put them into hand luggage. So off we went to the middle of the concourse to rummage around our dirty laundry, ditch any toiletries that we could and to remove as many heavy items as possible. We had to do this twice to get our bags down to 32kgs and they allowed us to carry the rest on as hand luggage even although there were only 30 people actually on the flight.

The rest of the journey was fairly smooth and we arrived in Kuala Lumpur on time. We had to get some money and as the ATM's on the ground floor weren't working an "employee" decided to show us up to another level where the machines were all in working order. It turned out this guy was actually a tout who wanted us to pay 20 pounds one way in a limo into the centre. We sidestepped his bargaining powers and managed to get a return journey for the same price from the airport taxi company. Then we were off and unlike the rest of the South East Asia the roads were straight and smooth - the first that we've been on since Australia in September. We were whizzed into the city to the Golden Triangle district in about an hour and were deposited at the Pujangga Homestay.

We went for a wander after putting some laundry in and went to one of the many huge shopping centres that KL has to offer. This place was filled with every electronic gadget so you can imagine Chris's delight. When we left the heavens had opened and there was a major downpour (you would think that by now we would remember to take our jackets) so we headed into a friendly Chinese restaurant for dinner. We waited for some time before the rain eventually died down enough for us to make a dash for home going undercover as much as possible. The only problem was that my trainers aren't very good in the wet and this along with tiled pavements was a recipe for disaster. Well the inevitable happened and I slipped down some stairs walloping my back and hitting my head in the process. I don't know who got the bigger fright Chris, the guy trying to help me up or me!! Round 1 to the Berghaus trainers.

On Saturday we decided to head up towards the Petronas Towers which is the second biggest building in the world standing at a mere 452 metres in height. The day had started off very grey and we went into the shopping mall beneath the towers in the hope that when we resurfaced the sky would have brightened. This place was huge with loads of designer stores and even a Marks & Spencers (although the stock was poor in comparison to back home). The weather was much the same when we came out so we headed to an Indian Buffet where I had a great Mutton Curry.

At night we walked to China town which had a market and we opted for a canteen style place for dinner where Chris had some noodles and I had some beef and rice from different stalls. A small can of beer in the shops cost about a pound (four times the cost in neighbouring Thailand) we're not sure if this has anything to do with Malaysia being a mainly Muslim country. So we realised that drinking in a bar was going to be expensive, we went to an Irish bar and got a pint of Guinness and a Corona which came to around 8 pounds, well we savored every last drop of those drinks before heading back.

The following day we went more window shopping only this time we managed to buy Chris a pair of sandals. We then went to one of the biggest shopping malls I have been in since Houston called Time Square. This place had an Imax Cinema, indoor fairground with a rollercoaster, thousands of shops and several department stores including Debenhams which covered over 4 floors. We spent several hours here before booking our bus tickets onto our next destination.

For dinner we headed to another excellent Indian buffet with mutton curry all round. My problem is that I don't know when to stop ladling the delicious food onto my plate and I ended up rolling out of here stuffed. Chris says I've not to mention the Clyde v Celtic game and please note that if anyone mentions it, it doesn't count as we are overseas.

Monday saw us doing a 15 minute trek with our bags to the bus station and we even managed to get on an earlier bus. The bus was the best that we have been on in all our travels, our seats were like huge armchairs with large armrests in between. They were so big that there was only enough room for 3 seats with 2 on one side of the bus and one on the other. So we settled back and enjoyed our 5 hour journey to Penang.

2006-01-05T10:05:00.000+01:00

Angkor Temples

The last time we came to the Angkor Temples was in March 2004 and we only had one and a half hurried days to explore, so it was always on our agendas to return but we both didn’t think we would be back this soon. We had arranged to use the same Tuk-Tuk driver that Marc & Donna had been using the last few days. So he picked us up at our hotel and took us to the ticket checkpoint so that we could get our three day passes for the temples. If you get your pass after 4:30pm you can get sunset at the temples and your three day pass starts from the following morning.

Our first destination was Phom Bakheng not because it’s a particular great temple but it has the best views over Angkor Wat and surrounding countryside as the sun slowly slips into the night. When we got to the foot of the mountain and jumped out the Tuk-Tuk we were engulfed with swarms of kids trying to sell us soft drinks and postcards. The place was more like a fairground than an ancient temple as the smell of the food stalls blended with the stench of Elephants, which if you’re feeling lazy or just very rich you can hitch a ride with to the top of the hill. The climb up the hill was a lot steeper than I remembered from the last time and a bit rockier, or maybe it’s just me that’s aged a year in the last few days.

From the top of the hill we took some photos of Angkor Wat before climbing the temple to get the best view of the setting sun, but we weren’t the only ones with the same idea as we waited in turn with the multitudes to climb the steep narrow steps to the top. A few thousand people had got there before us so there weren’t that many great vantage points, but it was quite chilled watching the sunset. As soon as the sun had gone the crowd evaporated back down the side of the hill into the arms of the waiting hawkers, we managed to give them the slip and find our driver and head back into town.

We had arranged to meet Donna & Marc for dinner as it was their last night before travelling south to Phnom Penh. None of us were feeling that up for a big night, so we had dinner in the Red Piano bar again and headed to another bar to watch some football. After a couple of drinks we said our farewells again and headed back to our respective hotels.

Next morning we headed to the Ta Prohm temple which is quite famous now after it was featured in the movie Tomb Raider starring Angeline Jolie. Unlike most of the other temples in Angkor the 12th Century Mahayana Buddhist temple has been left just as it looked when the first French explorers set eyes on it over a hundred years ago, as the jungle has been left to overrun the place. We didn’t get too many great photos as it had clouded over but it was nice and cool walking under the canopy of the trees. We spent over an hour here before it got too busy with coach loads of tourists whizzing through snapping furiously as their guides machine gunned out the history of the jungle sanctuary.

We had a short journey to the centre of Angkor Thom and the Bayon temple which from a distance looks like a large pile of rocks. This changes as you get closer you suddenly realise that hundreds of faces are observing your approach. The temple has 216 massive benignly smiling faces carved into dozens of towers so no matter where you stand you cannot escape their stony gaze. The faces are said to represent the then King Jayavarman VII who was hoping his omnipresent moniker would keep his subjects in check predating George Orwell’s Big Brother character from his classic novel 1984 by over 800 years.

We had a good wander round and we stumbled across a sad looking old monkey sitting forlornly in a shaded corner. Marc had heard from a local guide that it had fallen out of a tree the previous week and that the rest of its family had abandoned it, so it now stayed in the temple and was being fed by the tourists. At one point we seen it sneak into one of the Buddhist shrines within the temple and try and pinch some of the offerings of fruit, but a elderly female monk chased it out with a broom and started shouting at it. There was also a fashion shoot going on with an Asian lady in a shiny suit with a gargantuan scarf draped over her shoulders giving all her best moves to a cameraman who had more lenses than Black & Lizars. After a stroll along the terrace of elephants and the terrace of the Leper King admiring all the impressive carvings, we decided to call it a day as we had still to move into our next hotel and we also planned to make it for sunrise the following morning.

We got picked up at out hostel at 5am and we made our way through the dark deserted streets of Siem Reap, as we approached the temples we could see quite a few other Tuk-Tuks heading in the same direction. Torch at the ready we made our way into Angkor Wat passing through the perimeter walls and climbing the first two levels. Luckily I remembered from our last visit that it was easier to climb to the highest level on the right hand side of the temple because of a hand rail, at this point we had about half a dozen people following us as we seemed to know where we going. We made it to the top quite quickly, it was probably made a bit easier because the torchlight only lit a few meters ahead and you couldn’t see how high and steep we were climbing.

We managed to make it to the top level in one piece and get a decent spot to sit and wait for the sunrise. After about an hour the sun was over the trees and the largest religious building in the world was now bathed in the orange glow from the morning sun. After a while we headed down the steps to get some breakfast and some photos of the lilies which were slowly opening up in the ponds in the moat surrounding the temple. We then headed back into the now almost deserted Wat and quickly found a spot to sit and sketch and chill out for a few hours. At one point a small kid who was collecting used cans and bottles became interested in our drawings and was curious to hear what I was listening to on my MP3 player, now there’s a ten year old Celtic supporting Cambodian boy running about saying he’s a massive Smog fan.

We then had an hour’s drive out to Bantay Srei, which was quite bumpy in the back of the Tuk-Tuk. When we got there Joanne headed to the toilet and I had a wander about, when I found a large algae covered pond. Just at the same time a herd of water buffalo decided to have a dip in the luminous green swamp, I tried to shout Joanne but she couldn’t hear me. It was amazing watching the lumbering giants straining to keep their heads above the waterline, but after a few minutes they had enough and climbed out the other side of the pond. Just as last one disappeared into the woods Joanne appeared missing the show.

Bantay Srei isn’t the biggest temple but what it lacks in size it makes up in detail, with almost every square inch of the pink sand stone walls covered in intricately carved scenes from Khmer history. After about half an hour it was back on the Tuk-Tuk and the bumpy trip back nearer to Angkor. We then visited three more temples; Ta Keo, Ta Som and the extensive Preah Khan. One of the nice things about the temples is that each one usually has a small band near the entrance playing amazing rhythmical music that really gives the place a nice atmosphere merging with chorus of million grasshoppers and other insects humming along. By the time we left Preah Khan it almost 4 o’clock and our driver was about to take us to another temple when we decided to change plans and head back to the hotel as it felt like we had been tramping temples for days.

One of the reasons we packed so much in to the second day of our Angkor pass was so that we could have one day just relaxing and enjoying the temples without feeling we had to rush round and see as much as possible. So today we didn’t bother with sunrise and headed to The Baphuon temple just after breakfast. The temple was painstakingly taken apart piece by piece by archaeologists before the civil war but the meticulous records were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge. So when the archaeology teams returned they found thousands of stones but no idea where they should go. The temple seems like a giant jigsaw puzzle but an ambitious project is underway to stabilise the partial ruin and complete it.

Next to The Baphuon was a large clear pool where some local kids were swimming with some of the more acrobatic one’s where somersaults and back flips into the cool water. When the kids noticed us watching their antics they came round to our side of the pool and put on a show of even more complex dives and moves, some of them even posed like pumped up musclemen before performing their daring stunts. We knew where this was heading and pretty soon one of the kids was up asking for a dollar for each of them, we declined his invitation and to be honest they didn’t take it too bad as they waved us goodbye.

We then wandered along a dusty path behind The Baphuon and stumbled on to two other temples we hadn’t seen before, both were in a state of disrepair but what they lacked in finesse they made up in character. The second temple which we think is called Preah Palilay has massive trees growing alongside the main tower and the place is covered in spider’s webs with quite a few of the eight legged freaks darting about. We then stumbled on a small Buddhist temple where an old monk was throwing water over a family and their motorbikes. We found out from a kid selling coke that the family had come for a blessing to give them luck, they also brought their bikes to get blessed as it was cheaper than insurance.

In the afternoon we went back to The Bayon temple to sit and draw the giant faces. Before we left Scotland I don’t think either of us had drawn, sketched or painted since school which was quite a few years ago now. But after picking up some pencils and notebooks in China we have really enjoyed taking some time out to sketching in some scenic spot or chilled out bar. To be honest our drawings aren’t that good but that’s not really the point, as it’s one of the most relaxing ways to spend an hour or two in the sun. We managed to find a spot just above the throng of bustling tourists and once I plugged in my MP3 player, I didn’t even hear the Japanese guides shouting at their groups. I’m quite glad they haven’t adopted the megaphones that Chinese guides use with great gusto from the Great Wall to the Three Gorges.

As the sun slowly started to set we headed into Angkor Wat to take some photos with the late afternoon glow, once again climbing the dangerously steep steps. As we got to the top we realised there was a massive queue to get back down the steps with the hand rail so we decided to not hang about too long and head down other steps without the handrail before it got too dark. We got down safe enough but it did take quite a bit longer as we gingerly placed our feet carefully on each tiny ledge. We then headed out to the lily pond for our last photos of Angkor Wat as the day turned into night. Our Tuk-Tuk driver had said he would take us to the airport the next morning so we headed back to the hotel and for our final night in Siem Reap.

2006-01-02T10:22:00.000+01:00

Out with the Old

We left Saigon on a bus that had seen better days but at least we managed to get to the border control without any major hiccups. We had to queue for over an hour at the Vietnamese immigration and we then crossed “No Man’s Land” into Cambodia where we went through in under 10 minutes.

On our next leg we were told that we were to go on one bus and our bags on another, we had heard so many stories about this and lo and behold at the other end you are parted from some of the nice things that you may have. So we politely declined and 4 of us with our baggage in tow and 3 other guys went on a smaller bus with no air conditioning. The windows were thrown open, we all had plenty of space to stretch out and we were off. The first part of our journey to Phnom Penh was fine, some great roads and scenery and then we stopped to wait for the ferry. We were harassed by the many hawkers pulling the windows open further, dragging your arms to give you what they were selling, beggars pushing in and a few even managed to get the door open. So onto the ferry for a short trip where the kids were banging on the windows and we gave them all the food we had left in our bags. The next stretch of road wasn’t that far but it took longer than normal due to major road works being carried out. It also didn’t help that our bus broke down but our driver had our vehicle fixed in no time and we were speeding along the road.

When we arrived we were driven directly underneath a building into the Kings Guesthouse reception where our bags were whipped off in anticipation of us staying there for the night which we did as the rooms were fine. For dinner we walked by many places selling hot pot but we really couldn’t be bothered with this so we went to the Wah Kee Chinese Restaurant where we ordered a beef dish which would have done both of us, but as usual not realising the size of the portions we also had a veggie dish and some spring rolls. Afterwards we waddled slowly back to the hotel.

The following morning we were up early for a bumpy and dusty bus ride to visit the Killing Fields just outside Phnom Penh which we had missed on our last trip to Cambodia. As we entered the grounds all you could hear was a chorus of “One, Two, Three, Smile – Take my Photo!” from the local kids trying to get $1. We walked up to the memorial stupa which contained a selection of the skeletons from the thousands of people who were buried here, the skeletons were sorted into age groups of male/female from babies to the elderly. It is a solemn sight to see with this being only a small fraction of the people who were killed during the Pol Pot regime. All of the skeletons were removed from the mass graves (or so they thought) but when the rainy season came this washed more remains up and only then was the full death toll actually realised. There were 86 mass graves with almost 9,000 bodies, the adult victims were killed by a blow to the head (as the Khmer Rouge didn’t want to waste bullets) and children and babies had their heads crushed against a tree trunk. We wandered around the grounds which had fields and rivers around it with locals farming and fishing, giving us time to reflect on what we’d seen before heading back onto the bus.

We didn’t realise that this trip also took us to the Sleng 21 prison, the last time we were there our guide told us about how the Khmer Rouge regime impacted on his family including the deaths of his brother and sister. Since there were a few new exhibitions we went back and wandered through the buildings remembering the harrowing story that we were told previously. This is the place where the Khmer Rouge tortured people before taking them to the Killing Fields to die. Photographs were taken of nearly all the inmates along with the guards each year and the negatives from those which were not destroyed by fire have been developed and put on display. When the Vietnamese came to liberate the Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge, the last remaining prisoners were tortured and left to die with only 6 actually surviving and with 2 being alive today.

On another floor of the prison are a couple of different exhibitions, one taking photos of reflections of visitors to the museum in the pictures of the inmates. Another one had photographs of the Khmer Rouge then and now with details of what they are doing and how they felt about what they did at the time. Many of them showed remorse for their actions and explained how they really had no option in doing what they did, but I still felt that a few of them really didn’t care about what they had done or the people they had killed. This was another thought provoking day for us and going to this prison is a must to understand some of the atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge on their own people. All the Cambodians want now is to see some justice, but none of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge have ever been brought to trial.

That afternoon we headed in the basking sunshine to the Russian Market which is a place filled with your copy gear just like “ra barras” and I managed to replace my well worn daypack with a fake North Face bag at much cheapness. There wasn’t that much else there that delighted us so we headed back to enjoy the last hour or so of sunshine on our balcony.

At night we decided to head to the backpackers area called Boeng Kak via a tuk-tuk. We thought that there would be more happening here but as we wandered up and down the main street we realised that this wasn’t the case and opted to go into the busiest bar “The Lazy Gecko”. We were asked did we want to join the quiz so we did at $1 each with the winner taking all. Chris’s eyes were glinting at the thought of the $6 prize money but unlike our last quiz he was second and a bit behind the winner, although he does think that this was a stitch up (he is such a bad loser at times).

Friday 30th was our bus journey to Siem Reap which passed very smoothly but on arrival our names had been passed onto another hotel with guys holding placards and shouting out “Chris Reilly” but we managed to give them the slip, avoided all eye contact and made our way via a cheap tuk-tuk to the City River Hotel since we had booked a supposedly “plush” hotel for Chris’s birthday.

We had been emailed by Donna and Marc (who we’d met in Laos) that they were in town and we wandered around in the hope that our paths might cross which they did. We also met Marita (a Dutch girl) and all of us had dinner in the Dead Fish restaurant which had at least 5 floors with traditional dancing and live singing. In addition to this there was a crocodile pit near the toilets with at least 50 of them all lying on top of each other with a few swimming in the water. Back home there would be so many regulations about keeping these animals but here it doesn’t matter there wasn’t even a fence on either side of the walk way that takes you over the other side. With signs up outside advising that they don’t do “Cheap Food” nor do they serve “cat, rat, dog or worm” we certainly weren’t disappointed with our Thai meal the soup in particular was fantastic but we left to find some bars with ‘Happy Hours’ for cheap beer when the dodgy two piece band came on.

On Hogmanay as we went to meet up with the guys in the Red Piano the heavens opened and just like Glasgow we were soaked to the skin in minutes. The only difference being that it wasn’t the usual freezing winds biting through your bones more like a Turkish bath with the humidity. Donna, Marc, Marita and Klaus (a Swedish guy) had just managed to miss the rain, so we soon dried off and all of us had a great meal. The main bar street had been closed off to traffic so after our sustenance we moved down to the middle of the road to “The Funky Buddha” and managed to get enough seats for us all.

Ben and Yvonne also came and joined us (we met this couple on the Killing Field trip in Phnom Penh) and we were all set to party. Each of the neighbouring bars were competing with their music so we had at least 4 or 5 songs going in our heads at once and then the dancing started.

Lots of tourists were bouncing the street kids up and down on their shoulders with some of them wearing masks and hats. Older kids had firecrackers which they shot out of bamboo canes so we knew we were in for a good night. We brought the bells in with a bottle of wine (cheap in flavour not in price) and then Donna decided that we had to sing “Auld Lang Syne” with only a few of us knowing the words. There were fireworks and floating candle lanterns lighting up the sky. Then it started to get messy as someone thought it was a good idea to have shooters (Tequila or B52’s) so we all had one and then a few more in between our rounds of beer. Along came a couple of Irish guys who we’ve bumped into on and off since Luang Prabang with whisky buckets which Chris had to have a souk out of since it was his birthday which was mainly whisky and not a lot else.

We were all up dancing in the street which wasn’t good enough for one of us who also had to get on a speaker for a couple of songs. Again we said our farewells as Klaus, Ben and Yvonne were all up early the next day to travel onto somewhere else (lucky for them eh?) and well we eventually made it back to the hotel for 5am and Marc, Donna and Marita went to the Angkor Temples to watch the sunrise.

We received a couple of early morning alarm calls at 7am wishing us a Happy New Year and Chris a Happy Birthday (thanks & sorry guys) as you can only imagine our sober state. We didn’t make it up for breakfast the following morning surprise, surprise and we just literally chilled out. That was until we tried to access the in-room internet access and found out there was none in our room so we then had to go through the palaver of changing rooms again. The access was behind a huge bed and despite all our efforts we were unable to get it working. What a big let down! We are thinking of renaming this hotel to something that rhymes with city!

At night we had a lovely dinner to celebrate Chris turning 35!! Oh I did get him some nice gifts, he particularly liked his croaking frog!! We then went back to the hotel to see if the Hearts v Celtic game was on TV and guess what Chris’s luck was in!! He managed to see the game live although after the first half I am sure he’d had rather not. With Celtic having a remarkable comeback from 2-0 down to winning 3-2 he ran around the room whooping his delight with YEEEEESSS!! And since it was his birthday I even celebrated a little with him. The things you do for love!!

2005-12-31T07:35:00.000+01:00

2005 - Top 10's

Albums of the Year

01. - A River Ain't Too Much To Love - Smog
02. - You Could Have It So Much Better - Franz Ferdinand
03. - Tender Buttons - Broadcast
04. - Love Kraft - Super Furry Animals
05. - The Great Destroyer - Low
06. - Mother's Daughter & Other Songs - Tunng
07. - The Secret Migration - Mercury Rev
08. - Humming By The Flowered Vine - Laura Cantrell
09. - Ambulance Ltd. - Ambulance Ltd.
10. - Demon Days - Gorillaz

Chris's Songs of the Year

01. A Certain Romance - Arctic Monkeys
02. The Well - Smog
03. Do You Want To - Franz Ferdiand
04. Michael A Grammar- Broadcast
05. I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys
06. Anecdote- Ambulance Ltd.
07. Galvanize - Chemical Borthers
08. Carlifornia - Low
09. Cocaine Man - Baxter Dury
10. La Gasolina - Daddy Yankee

Best Movies (we’ve seen in 2005)

01. - Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
02. - Crash
03. - The Assassination of Richard Nixon
04. - Sin City
05. - Old Boy
06. - Machua
07. - The Motorcycle Diaries
08. - Bad Education
09. - Spirited Away
10. - Garden State

2005-12-28T17:04:00.000+01:00

Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh City

We didn’t quite believe it but when we arrived in Saigon it wasn’t raining, not just that but it was clear blue skies above us with a large yellow blob I remember they used to call the Sun. Saigon has been officially called Ho Chi Minh City since North & South Vietnam were unified in 1975 after the Vietcong swept south, but the centre of the city is still known as Saigon. We had booked into the Yellow House a cheaper hotel for three nights in the backpacker district (Pham Ngu Lao) before we moved into a nice hotel for a few days over Christmas. The Yellow house had all the facilities you need with a decent breakfast thrown in, right in the heart of the busy bars and restaurant district.

That afternoon we wandered down to the Dong Khoi area where we had stayed the last few times we were in Saigon, not too many changes apart from a few new 4 star hotels, some expensive fancy boutiques and a lot more beggars. We had hoped to return to the Majestic Hotel, still our favourite but the prices had jumped well over our budget and if you stayed over Christmas you had to pay for their Christmas Banquet. We had a quick look in but we felt like kids peering through the sweet shop window without any chance of getting our hands on the goodies inside.

We didn’t get much sleep on the bus the night before so after dinner we had a short walk around the night market before heading back to watch the final few episodes in the third series of 24, in case you were wondering Keifer Sutherland saves America from doom. Next morning we walked to Ben Tanh the central market, we didn’t last too long as we got fed up with being pulled at by a string of stall holders as well as being shouted at. The favourite hollers ranged from ‘What you looking for Laydeeeee!!!’ to the downright cheeky ‘Need T-Shirt Sir, We Do Big sizes!!!’ we escaped without opening our wallet or purse not because we didn’t see anything good but more because we couldn’t be bothered bartering in the scrum.

We had lunch in a place called Pho 2000 which sells super sized bowls of real tasty beef soup; once again the place isn’t much more than a glorified canteen but the food brought us back on more than occasion over the next week. Hanging pride of place above us was a framed pic of Bill Clinton and a gaggle of grinning staff. Either Bill has similar tastes to us or he’s got a gang of doppelgangers circling the planet looking for free food as we’ve encountered more than a dozen similar photos on our travels.

We were quite surprised to see all the large stores with massive Christmas displays and gangs of Santa Claus clad staff trying to tempt you in. We saw hundreds of Vietnamese families pulling up alongside the stores in their motorbikes with their young kids dressed in Santa outfits jumping off getting a few photos snapped in front of the shop displays before getting back on their bikes and on to the next store. Some of the displays were quite inventive; my personal favourite was the Santa Band with an Elvis Costello lookalike. The Parachuting Santa was also quite good.

We received an email from Penny & Pete who we’d met at the Chinese/Laos border saying that they were going to be in town for one night before they headed on to Bangkok. We arranged to meet them at the GO 2 bar along the street from both our hotels. Whilst sitting in the bar, the three Irish girls we met on the bus between Hoi An and Nha Trang passed by and we agreed to meet them later on that weekend.
Pete & Penny are trying to see as many bands as possible on their year trip and have been noting everyone they see and rating their performances, so we headed off to Sheridan’s Irish bar which had bands on most nights of the week. When we arrived the only seats available were right next to the singer, so we climbed up on to the high stools and ordered up a round of beers. The singer was an American called Mike and he played a good selection of songs from the sixties and seventies. Pete had requested a few songs and when the singer asked him to sing along to “Behind Blue Eyes” by The Who, Pete was straight up there singing with great gusto obviously loving the moment. We all enjoyed the rest of the set even though it did finish quite early at 11pm.

We made our way back to GO 2 for a night cap and said our goodbyes to Penny & Pete and thanked them for another good night. They had also made up a mix CD up with loads nautical related songs by artists like Neil Young, The Beach Boys, The Byrds and many other acts from the sixties and seventies. We headed back to our hotel, but on our way along we noticed a crowd of guys from Cork we had met in the Sailing Club in Nha Trang, so we stayed out for one more drink. The guys from Cork were obviously having a good night as they started singing, after a few Irish folk songs they dedicated a version of ‘Flower of Scotland’ to us. Next thing they started singing ‘500 miles’ by The Proclaimers so we made our excuses and got to our hotel before they sang any other songs that would embarrass any sane Scottish person.

Next day we walked over to the Cambodian Embassy to apply for our Visas, this we thought might take about an hour in total. After getting to the Embassy we handed over our passports, photos and completed all the relevant forms in duplicate. We were then informed that we should have brought a photocopy of our passport. The official said we would have to go and get it done somewhere on the main road even though we could see a photocopier a metre behind him. After getting the copies we approached the desk with all the forms and the cash for Visas, when he saw that we had Vietnamese Dong he said we would have to pay an extra £5 each. So we decided to go and get some money exchanged into dollars as we were sure the extra was going straight into his back pocket, this added another 30 minutes to the transaction. Finally we handed over all the forms and money to find out that due to public holidays the next day service would not be available and we would have to pick up our passports up late on Monday afternoon. By the time we had got back to our hotel we had lost half a day and decided to have a quiet night as we were changing hotels the next morning.

We got lots of strange looks from all the streets sellers as we marched through central Saigon with our full backpacks on in the sweltering heat, but it wasn’t too long before we were in our massive room that we had treated ourselves for Christmas. The room in the Bach Dang hotel had a balcony and a free internet connection, so it was quite useful for sending out all our Christmas emails and to watch the Celtic game on Boxing Day. After unpacking we hunted round a few bars to see if we could book Christmas dinner somewhere for Sarah, Jo-Jo, Lorraine and ourselves. We had noticed Sheridan’s were advertising a Christmas dinner with all trimmings, so after a quick look at the menu and a phone call to the girls we managed to get a table booked for 7:30.

Joanne and I then went our separate ways for a few hours to try and get each other some small Christmas presents that we could open the following morning. After dinner we met up for Christmas Eve drinks with the Irish girls who brought along another couple John & Vanessa also from Ireland. We started off in the ?? bar which was quite expensive so we returned to the Eden bar which we had been in the last few nights. There weren’t enough seats for the seven of us but Chin the bar man rustled up a few extra seats and an extra table, and we had a prime spot on the pavement to watch all the nights shenanigans unfold.

The girls worked out that it was cheaper to just order a bottle of Vietnamese vodka and share cans of coke & 7-up, I decided to stick to the beers for the time being. As it approached midnight Chin started bringing out shots and trays of food, which soon disappeared but where soon replaced by even more of the same. Sparklers and cigars were brought out as we lit up the new Christmas morning, Lorraine attempted to start up a chorus of The Pogues’ "Fairytale of New York" on numerous occasions, each time getting slightly further as we were joined by another crowd of Irish girls we had met the following night. It now felt more like Temple Bar than downtown Saigon as John belted out a breathless rendition of the Irish Rover and Lorraine tried to show the street kids her best Riverdance moves. I’m not sure exactly what time the night finished but after escorting Lorraine back to her hotel we jumped in a taxi back to ours.

We still managed to wake quite early the next morning and exchanged the gifts we picked up the previous day. Joanne had managed to pick up all the practical stuff I was needing, things that I always put off buying as well as some brilliant cinnamon tic-tac’s which went down a treat. I wasn’t sure how Joanne was going to react to the bottle of Scorpion wine that I picked up for her, especially as it looked identical to the one that bit her in Mexico. I think she preferred the painting set but it was a fun morning if slightly different from our usual Christmas morning’s back home.
For breakfast we headed to a nearby pub called Underground for their large English breakfast, just what we needed to soak up all the alcohol from the previous night. It was quite strange sitting in the blazing heat and sunshine knowing that it was Christmas day, it crossed my mind many times that day that it was the first time I had ever missed Christmas day at my parents. We both talked about how we’d miss my dad’s bad jokes and his great cooking and all our usual Christmas stuff.

It was strange the build up to Christmas for us, usually back home the shops and adverts are full of it by early November and by early December Christmas nights out are starting to happen but over here apart from the odd occurrence it seemed to creep up on us just a few days before. Everything was opened so we headed for a walk after breakfast but it was so hot and sticky we decided to head back to the hotel to chill out in our air-conditioned room and try to recover for our upcoming meal that night.

Just before we were about to leave for Sheridan’s the skies opened and we had to don our cagoules and keep our eyes peeled for all the rapidly appearing puddles in our path. Once inside we talked briefly to John & Vanessa who had booked their meal for a few hours before ours, but were planning on hanging around until our meal was over. It was a set menu of Pea Soup, Turkey & all the trimmings plus mince pies and ice cream. You also had some Mulled wine on arrival plus as much wine as you wished during your meal and an Irish coffee to finish.

The soup was great as was the massive servings of turkey, I think Joanne was a little disappointed with the mince pies but we were grateful for having anything as we didn’t know how Christmas dinner was going to pan out this year. As the remains of food were cleared away John & Vanessa joined us and we talked about the previous night festivities and filled in some of the blanks before we set about creating a few new ones from tonight. At one point John & Sarah got up dancing but the manager was being quite unhelpful and some of his other customers/friends were becoming quite obnoxious so we decided to head to another bar.

We had one more drink in the Geko Bar but as it was getting late and the girls were heading to Cambodia in the morning we decided to wrap it up early. So we now had the sad but now familiar routine of saying goodbye to new friends hoping that our paths might again cross on our trip now or sometime in the future. Back at our hotel we had a surprise as my brother had taken loads of pics of Christmas day back home and posted them on the web, so it was great to see my niece & nephew with their presents and everybody having a great time.

Next morning after a long lie we went to the War Remnants Museum. We had visited this museum on our first visit but it was only our second day in Vietnam and we wanted to have a second look after knowing a lot more about the country, the places and the people. The Museum shows the Vietnamese side of the war for independence against the imperialist French and American. The first section has lots of stats about the American’s involvement in the war. I’m not sure of the accuracy but I will repeat a few here anyway:

• 7,850,000 tons of bombs dropped over Vietnam
• 75,000,000 litres of defoliants (inc. dioxin) sprayed over Vietnam
• 325 Billion Dollars spent by the US Government on the War
• 58,000 American Soldiers died during the War
• Over 3 million Vietnamese were killed
• Over 4 million Vietnamese injured during the War

The museum quotes a lot from Robert S. McNamara’s (US Secretary of Defence under Presidents Kennedy & Johnson) book “In Retrospect – The Tragedy & Lessons of Vietnam”. One quote from the book was repeated quite a few times throughout the place “Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong, we owe it to future generations to explain why”, maybe someone should invite Mr Bush along.

The second section had hundreds of photos from the conflict mainly reproductions from glossy American magazines from the sixties, along with exhibits from other photo journalists who shot the conflict. There are also accounts of journalists, photographers and television news crews caught up in the action. Outside there are US tanks, helicopters and Jet planes all either caught by the Vietnamese or left behind when the Americans went home in 1975.

The last exhibit room examines the legacy of the US Air Force spraying large areas of Vietnam with defoliants. Alongside jars with horrifically deformed foetuses are dozens of photos of children who were born with physical and mental defects due to the effects of defoliants in the food chain. The museum also recreates the cells that the Americans kept their Vietcong captives in; this was a bit Madame Toussuds and didn’t really add anything to the overall experience. The museum is very one sided but it says it’s purpose is not for inciting hatred, but just for learning lessons from history. The museum’s pamphlet optimistically but probably slightly naively says “Human beings will not tolerate such a disaster happening again, neither in Vietnam nor anywhere on our planet.” The museum is well worth visit and probably shows the other side of the war we’ve seen in the Hollywood movies.

Later in the afternoon we arrived at the Cambodian Embassy after taking a few wrong turns, probably just as well as we still had to wait for our passports and Visas. We then headed back to Pham Ngu Lao to book the bus to Cambodia, once again it started to pour so after hiding in a Restaurant for an hour we jumped in a taxi back to the hotel. We had a lazy night in drinking a cheap bottle of sparkling Wine we had bought for Christmas and snacking on cheese and biscuits, while I watched the Celtic game and Joanne caught up with her diary.

Next Stop Cambodia

2005-12-28T08:21:00.000+01:00

Ringing in the Rain

As we drove to Hoi An we soon realised that it was very much still rainy season, a full month and a half after it usually ends. It was quite funny driving past all the scooters and motorbikes being ridden totally covered in cheap plastic Macs not seen since the temporary stand was still being used at Celtic park. It was just before lunch when we got to the Green Field hotel but since it was so wet we decided to catch up with the sleep we missed on the train.

As Joanne mentioned in the last blogger entry this is our third tour of Nam and we last came to Hoi An almost three years ago. One of the main reasons for coming here apart from it being a beautiful World Heritage town is for its thousands of small family run tailors & dressmakers who will knock you up made to measure clothes in one day for a fraction of the price back home. One of the hazards of so many competing small companies is that it’s difficult to walk down the street without being harassed by some over zealous teenager trying to get you to her mother or aunt’s shop. Joanne decided to wait until the following day before going to get her clothes made up so we decided to brave the rain and head into the old town and have a wander.

When we got to the market the front street was under about 3 or 4ft of water as the river had burst it’s banks and started edging it’s way into town. After about 20 minutes we abandoned the walk and headed to a bar for some spring rolls and a beer. We went back to the hotel and began watching the third series of 24 which we picked up in China, this was the first of the series which switched to Sky in Britain. So the next two days when not running from puddle to puddle we were holed up in our room either watching Keifier Sutherland run from one disaster to the next or catching news updates on Roy Keane’s move to Celtic.

Next day Joanne returned to the same dressmaker she went to three years ago and blew a big part of her Christmas money on three skirts, two blouses, a pair of trousers and a Chinese style dress. The girls in the Nhi Trung dressmakers remembered Joanne and where very glad to see her again but I’m sure they were just glad to see her money. It still hadn’t stopped raining so it was another day of avoiding puddles and far fetched storylines. We spent a bit of time in a bar which had free internet for my laptop and really nice spring rolls, they also had a Christmas tree made from Heineken bottles.

We decided to go by bus for the next leg of our trip and managed to get two tickets for the 512km journey to Nha Trang for $13 which didn’t seem too bad at the time. The rain hadn’t stopped once since we arrived in Hoi An and we don’t have too many photos from this visit, but if you click here you can look at some of the photos from our previous visit. The bus journey to Nha Trang should take 12 hours but I had a feeling with the weather that it might take a bit longer and it all seemed to be going quite well until about 2:30 in the morning. After driving without any problems for 6 hours we suddenly stopped and were part of a huge convoy of very stationary vehicles.

Well we sat in the same place for a good four hours and not once did anyone think to tell us what was happening up ahead and when any of the westerners asked we just got a nervous laugh back and a soft shrug from the driver. We moved meters rather than kilometres in the next few hours. After another few hours some of the passengers got off and headed to a small café up the road which was having an extremely profitable day with hundreds of buses and trucks stopped on it’s doorstop. The local kids also noticed an opportunity and were round all the buses with small baskets filled with drinks and snacks hoping to make a tidy sum out of the gridlocked travellers.

I decided to go for a walk and headed down the hill towards the front of queue, after about 10 minutes down the hill I noticed in the distance that the convoy had started moving again and had to run back up the hill and get on the bus. I managed to get back on the bus but quite a few passengers were still in the café, the bus didn’t want to lose it’s place in the queue so it headed off without half a dozen of them. An argument then broke out between quite a few of the passengers when a stroppy woman told the driver to keep driving as it was their own fault for leaving the bus, we stopped after driving about five minutes and all the stragglers managed to get back on the bus. The journey could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t for a good crowd of passengers sitting around us, this made the long stops slightly more bearable.

We eventually arrived in Nha Trang at 3.30am on the Sunday morning, 32 hours after leaving Hoi An. The bus pulled up at the Khan Duy hotel and we managed to get a decent room for the next few days. Next morning when we awoke it was still raining, so once again it was on with the cagoules and we spent the next few hours dashing from one café to the next café checking weather report son the net. Later in the afternoon the rain stopped for a few hours so we walked along the beach watching the massive crashing waves smash upon the shore. The water was a murky brown colour and flotsam was strewn across the promenade and what we could see of the beach.

We spent 5 nights in Nha Trang in April 2003 and had a great time, but one of the main reasons we wanted to come back was due to the work being done by Crazy Kim’s Bar. We only found out on the last night of our previous trip that most of the proceeds from the bar goes to helping the local street kids and to the promotion of measures to rid Nha Trang of paedophiles. The bar also asks for English speaking volunteers in the morning to help the street kids with their lessons. If the kids go to the class they also get a lunch which might be the only meal they get some days.

That night before we headed to Crazy Kim’s we went to back to our favourite restaurant in Vietnam, the Cyclo Café On D Trang Quang Khai. The place hadn’t changed much and the food was still brilliant, we ate here most nights on our first visit and every night this time. Their specialities are pork in a clay hot pot and barbeque beef grilled at your table, but to be honest everything we have tried in this place has been brilliant. In Crazy Kim’s we sat at the bar and we got talking to Neeyun and Duyen as we managed to get a few cocktails before happy hour came to an end. Neeyun spent most of the night talking to us and didn’t seem to do much work, she kept asking us questions about Scotland and why men wear kilts and what happens at Hogmanay.

There was a big Christmas party being organised for the kids on the 22nd and unfortunately we were going to miss this as were heading straight to Saigon as the weather didn’t look as if it was going to improve much. The bar was selling presents for the kids, so we bought one for a for a girl and boy which were wrapped and put alongside the already huge pile. We also bought some raffle tickets, but as we weren’t going to be in town we put the girls behind the bar name’s on the tickets. The bar also had a desk with information on all the work done at the morning classes and on trying to educate the locals about the dangers of paedophiles targeting the street kids in Vietnam. As well as a large wanted poster with Gary Glitter’s face there was a folder containing press cuttings of his time in South East Asia. We also signed up to help in the two classes the following morning, so we decided to head back to the hotel early so that we would be fresh for the next day.

After dropping off some laundry we headed to Crazy Kim’s, when we arrived there were only kids and one other volunteer. So at 9:30 the kids dragged us into the classroom at the back of the bar and they started handing out their jotters. The first class was for the younger kids and had about 14 kids ranging in age between 8 and 16, after 5 minutes the teacher came in and we sat beside one or two of the kids as they started working on some exercises from the books and blackboard. The young kid Phuock about 11 or 12 sitting next to me was very good at writing English and copying from the board but wasn’t great at stringing too many words together, but I guess that’s why we there to help them out.

After an hour the kids packed up and another group came in, this group had kids up to twenty years old but luckily quite a few more volunteers came for the second class. There were actually more volunteers than kids in this class and the next hour went in quickly with the kids each taking turns of writing on the black board and answering questions from the teacher. Quite a few of the kids had noticed my Celtic top and were asking me questions about Roy Keane and Gordon Strachan, almost everywhere you go in Vietnam you will see someone watching Premiership games and the kids all have fake strips… I’ve even seen a few Celtic one’s for sale in Nha Trang. The young boys were definitely more interested in talking about football than finer points of English grammar which was fine by me as you can tell if you read much of my blogger.

After the class the kids go back to their full time jobs of harassing tourist to buy their postcards, some of the volunteers never made it out the class as they were swarmed by manic kids when they showed more than the slightest interest in the postcards. Even though it was only a few hours it did feel great helping the kids and we would urge anybody who travel in this area to pop in and maybe help for a few hours. Check out the website for more information on all the good work done at Crazy Kim’s.

That night after dinner at the Cyclo we headed back to Crazy Kim’s and got chatting to the girls again, as well as all the good work done by the bar they also play some good music and have quite a nice place. Later on we headed to the Sailing Club on the beach which we went to for a few drunken nights out on our last visit. The Sailing Club is probably Nha Trang’s busiest bar and usually has people up dancing from 10 onwards, the place had a lick of paint since our last visit and was looking quite swish in the evening rain. We bumped into a few girls who had also volunteered at the school in the morning and also Lance from California who we had met in the internet café the day before.

We got talking to loads of people at the sailing club and had a really good night and when the lights came up for the end of the night we decided to try and find another bar with Lance and a couple from Greenland and Iceland. We had been tipped off that the Why Not? Bar opened later so we wandered about for a bit before finding it. When we got into the bar an Australian guy Lance had been trying to shake off found us and was being a bit of a pain, and was been quite racist to the guy from Greenland. Joanne stepped in kept the guy talking whilst I went with the couple to the other side of the bar and had a good laugh talking about Glasgow where they lived for awhile and about Henrik Larsson who they had named their son after. The only problem now is that after a few weeks I can’t remember their names, I will really need to start writing things down when I get back from bars.

When the bar closed we headed off with Lance and ended up talking to him under the awning of a shop trying to shelter from the now torrential rain. On first impressions Lance looks like your typical Californian surfer with more brawn than brain, but he’s actually a teacher and knew his stuff about America politics and was interested in other cultures and was a privilege to meet. We said our good byes as the morning light started to appear and we had a quick look at the market setting up for the morning rush. We eventually made it back to the hotel for 6:30 am and we had still to pack out bags as we were due to book out at 12.

We woke at 11:30 and quickly showered and packed our bags and just about managed to get out the room in time, I’m not sure how we managed it but we did. After catching some lunch with the rain still hammering down we headed further into Nha Trang to return to another place we went to on our previous visit. Long Thanh is an internationally known photographer who won many prestigious photographic awards and has been photographing the people of Nha Trang and the surrounding areas for the last thirty years. His Black & White photos really capture the spirit & kindness of the local people and we could easily have spent thousands of pounds on his work, we restricted ourselves to one print to go alongside the one we bought on our previous visit. This took us quite a while to choose as there was so many great photos in his studio, but we went for one that had stuck in my mind from the last visit. The last time Long Thanh also gave us some great tips for where to go and take some great photos and when to catch the best light, which gave us some of our favourite photos from Vietnam.

That afternoon we had also agreed to meet Duyen one of the girls from Crazy Kim’s bar for a coffee to help her with her English before she started work that night. We learnt that she went to University every day for four hours and then worked in the bar at night to pay for her English lessons which was very expensive for the locals. We found it quite difficult at first to help as she was quite shy although she seemed glad that we had agreed to meet her and soon sat chatting to us. After our final meal in the Cyclo we headed back to the hotel so we could catch the overnight bus to Saigon and unlike the last time we had no problems and arrived at the pre-arranged time without any hitches.

2005-12-25T06:27:00.000+01:00

Merry Christmas Everybody

from Chris & Joanne

in Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh City

Check out our Christmas Photos

2005-12-12T11:09:00.000+01:00

Tails of the Unexpected

After a short flight we landed in Hanoi, quickly went through immigration and were picked up in our free taxi from the hotel. We then drove into Hanoi via the hair raising highway and the ’Jesus’ handles were constantly used as not one single car, truck, motorcycle or bike drove in one lane but toddled along in between the lanes with our taxi driving about 2 foot at high speed from the vehicle in front frantically tooting his horn and flashing his lights. We were surprised when we arrived safe and sound in our hotel Thuy Lam and we managed to get a huge room with satellite TV and two huge beds.

We headed out towards the lake to see whether Hanoi had changed much since our last visit (almost 3 years ago) and what struck us was how much louder Hanoi was since then. The main culprits being the many motorbikes tooting their horns whereas previously the main mode of transport was the bike. We had a quick walk and bite to eat before turning in for the night.

We woke up after 9 in the morning and thought we’d missed our free breakfast, but when we went down to reception they took us through into the dining area and gave us two huge baguettes with cheese and a tea and coffee. The other plus point about this hotel was we were also allowed free internet access and all for a little over 5 quid a night!! We couldn’t believe our luck.

We then went into the ‘Women’s Museum’ which owed it‘s many displays to the Vietnam’s Women‘s Union. The exhibits gave information on the heroines throughout the numerous years that Vietnam was at war with the French and USA, how women worked in the fields, different traditional dresses of the hill tribes and also various exhibits on the Women’s Union. One display had a list of reasons why a man could divorce his wife two of them being if she didn’t produce a son as the first born and she didn’t keep a clean home, thankfully things have now changed a bit. One of the best things I saw was a picture of a tiny Vietnamese woman pushing a gun against a huge American GI Prisoner of War twice her size.

We strolled around and stumbled on a small market and everything was going fine until we spotted the local delicacy - spit roasted DOG!! Honestly there were whole and chopped cooked dogs sitting on the counter. What we also noticed was how clone like the dogs all looked, breeding dogs for eating, whatever next!! Once our stomachs had stopped churning we went towards St Joseph’s Cathedral which was an ugly concrete building and here we found ‘La Place’ café for lunch. We had some spring rolls washed down with lashings of beef Pho (a noodle based soup eaten any time, any place, anywhere by the Vietnamese). This place also had paper table cloths with crayons provided for us big kiddies to sit and draw for a bit….Picasso eat your heart out!! At night we went to bar street where we chilled out over a few Hanoi and Tiger beers.

The following day we decided that since we had been so lazy of late that we would walk the 10km from the centre of Hanoi to the Museum of Ethnology. We had another grey, cool day and weren’t in any hurry so we wandered in and out of shops on the way. There were a couple of great exhibitions describing the Tet festival (Vietnamese New Year - Usually Late January, Early February) and showing video clips of families preparing for this. The other exhibition we liked was 100 years of Vietnamese Weddings, in Vietnam the groom is chosen by the bride’s family and provided both families agree to the wedding then they will be married. The stories told of how apprehensive many of the girls were about leaving their own home and living with not only the groom but his family as well. Numerous pictures showed how nervous both the bride and groom were. There was also a huge exhibition on every single hill tribe in Vietnam down to one which has less than 1000 people and explained how they lived, farmed, what dress they wore, which religion they practised and how they were married and buried. Within the grounds were also exhibits of traditional tribal buildings and contents and we even saw a couple having their wedding pictures taken there.

We took our time getting back and by this point both of us were ravenous. It was well after the ‘lunch hour’ so we ended up spying a few spring rolls and thought that these would see us through to our dinner. The lady owner told us to sit down at the table and this was the first laugh. The stools were small enough for a three year old and I managed to get down fairly quickly but Chris being that bit taller struggled to get down. He also had to stretch his legs across the small room avoiding the numerous motor bikes parked inside the house to get comfy. We were then given a bowl of soup, some noodles and veg which was to go along with it. Now all we wanted were our spring rolls but it seemed rude not to try some of the soup so we started to add the noodles and veg into the bowl. Two seconds later and the woman was back frantically waving some cooked meat nuggets at us from her chopsticks. “Dog” she smiles wickedly at us and then plonks it down into my bowl just as I scream “No!!!” at her and then puts another into Chris’s bowl. Well my stomach must have churned but the woman stood over us menacingly and I felt that I had to at least give it a try. To be honest I took one bite and couldn’t tell you what it tasted like. I then asked Chris what he thought “Mmmm” says he and the lady gave him a knowing smile putting the remainder of the pieces on the table for him to munch away at. She then put down the spring rolls and I had a couple but since there was unidentified meat in it I was starting to feel a little ruff and left Chris to lick the bowls clean.

We went back to the Spotted Cow a bar we’d been in the last time and met a guy called ‘Mac’ who showed us how to play “Mickey Mouse Darts”. We had had such a laugh that night and reminded of us both going home rather worse for wear in two cyclos with each of the drivers frantically taking over each other so that we could get some pictures. This time there wasn’t much of an atmosphere with several old expats supping their pints and one English guy whooping at the top of his voice when the TV was turned over to Miss World in their bikini’s with his wife right by his side. So we ate our burgers had a couple of drinks before heading to La Place for a night toddy.

On Sunday our weather was much the same so we went into a really good shop which sold lots of Propaganda posters and mugs before heading to La Place for our customary bowl of Pho (minus the dog this time!!). At night we went back to the Hoan Kiem Lake for some night time pictures.

We were leaving on Monday evening and decided to post some things home and like all the other countries in Asia we had about 40 forms to fill in with a customs check before we were able to send it. We wandered in and out of the shops and stalls to kill some time before having our final meal in bar street. We then headed to the train station for what we thought was to be a hard sleeper. Turns out the hotel had cheekily charged us for a soft sleeper which was much better and even included food. We shared our cabin with two young Oz guys who fell asleep at 8pm. So around 9ish we turned out the lights and tried to get some sleep.

We were woken at 6.30am with plastic containers of noodles being thrown at us and about 10 minutes later the two boys left as we were now in Hue. The weather was becoming more miserable the further south we went rather than better with the wind and rain bouncing off our window. Neither of us had slept very well and were dozing when the door opened and we were given two containers with rice and odd assortments of salty meat and veg. We ate a little of these and then about 10 minutes later we were told we were arriving at our destination Danang, 2 hours earlier than we expected. This was a first for Asia and quickly jumped off and into a taxi for our 20 minute journey to Hoi An.

2005-12-08T08:23:00.000+01:00

Chris Up in a Brewery

After our nightmare trip from Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang we chickened out and decided to get the VIP bus south to the capital Vientiane, for only a few pounds extra each. I would hardly say the bus was luxurious but we didn’t have to climb over any sacks or share our seats (yes I even got a seat this time) with any livestock. The bus even left five minutes early which was a major improvement on our last two bus journeys. The bus showed some movies which were either Laos or really bad American movies so I just turned up my MP3 and delved into my book. Once again the scenery was outstanding as we wound up and around some amazing looking mountains that came straight from a 70’s dinosaur movie set usually starring Doug McLure who you might remember from such movies as The Land that Time Forgot and the epic mini series Roots.

A lunch was thrown in as part of the price of the trip, so we stopped off for some noodles and had a chance to stretch our legs before getting back on the bus. For the rest of the journey they showed Karaoke videos which I gladly ignored but Joanne said they were all terribly over dramatic and ended with the main character been killed or killing themselves. We then also saw another set of hills in the distance that looked like a famous English football panellist from the 70’s and after referring to the map in our guide book I found that this range of mountains were called the Jhim-ee Hills and that they’re known locally for spewing rubbish on regular basis.

We arrived early into Vientiane which was just as well as we had to trek round quite a few guesthouses and hotels before finding somewhere with an available room. After unpacking our bags we headed out and had a look round the main bar and restaurant area which sadly was nowhere near as nice as Luang Prabang. After dinner we had another scout about before we headed into an internet café to watch the Aberdeen vs. Celtic game but we could only get the BBC tickertape and updates from the Celtic forums. Luckily after the Dons went ahead Celtic came alive and won 3-1 which meant that Joanne could get to her bed without me moaning too much.

Next morning after our now routine baguette for breakfast we went out to see some of the sites in town. The first we passed was That Dam a large black stupa which was well on it’s way to falling into disrepair. This decay seemed to add a bit of gravitas to the stupa (a Buddhist shrine that usually houses a relic or marks the location of an auspicious event) but we couldn’t find out much more information about this particular one. After a trip to the post office we came across the Patuxai which was Vientiane’s ugly interpretation of Paris’ Arc-De Triumph, the concrete for the monument was donated by the American’s for a new airport runway but the Laos government in 1969 thought it would be more beneficial to have a large imposing monstrosity in the middle of the busiest street in town.

Next stop on our tour of Vientiane’s hotspots was Pha That Luang the most important national monument in Laos which is a symbol of both the Buddhist religion and Lao sovereignty. The construction of the beautiful golden stupa was started in 1566 and stands within a high walled cloister which has hundreds of images of Buddha as well as a selection of art by local artists. But the shimmering golden stupa steals the limelight and your eyes are constantly drawn to it’s many towers dazzling in the azure above. We chilled in the cloisters for a while, sketching and updating our journals.

Our hotel was right next to the national stadium so we sneaked in and had a wander round. The place was quite run down but there were crowds of people who seemed quite happy running round the track and playing football behind the goals. The Laos relay team really need some coaching as the baton was dropped nearly every time they had a change over and then a few of the runners would start arguing with each other over who let it go.

It was quite cloudy on the Tuesday so we headed to the large morning market to scout out a few things we had been looking for over the last few weeks. Joanne eventually managed to get one of the local skirts that she’d been admiring since arriving in Laos. After a good bit of bartering she got 2 meters of material and a seamstress to turn it into a fitted skirt for the price of Big Softee in Gregg’s Bakery back home, but I’m not sure what she would rather have at the moment. I wasn’t to be out done in the bargain front so I picked up one of the straw footballs I had been playing with a few days earlier in the village near the waterfall.

The weather was a lot better on the Wednesday so we decided to hire bikes, head out of town and maybe work off some of the beers from our previous nights. After consulting our guidebook we decided to cycle to the Beer Lao factory 12Km out of town, so maybe pointing our bikes in direction of the biggest beer factory in the country wasn’t the best idea. We steered ourselves through the busiest part of town no problem and everything was going well until we came to a fork in the road but we never had a clue which road to take as it wasn’t on our map. A few of the locals must have seen our puzzled looks as they came over, asked us where we going and when we told them they laughed and pointed down to left. After another fork in the road and with more locals helping us on our way we arrived at the factory just after 12.

When we approached the reception we were told everyone was on their lunch and we would have to come back after 1 o’clock, so we sat about in the sun and ate the remainder of our baguettes. After lunch we were ushered into a plush reception room with fancy leather sofas and display cabinets fully of trophies and awards from all around the world. After a short wait a young lady appeared with a Beer Lao gift pack for each of us and asked if we would like a tour of the facilities. As Joanne stood up she soon realised that she must have sat on some chewing gum outside, but the problem now wasn’t that it was on Joanne but all over the expensive looking seats. Joanne quickly asked for some ice and the both of us were rubbing furiously over the gum trying to get it off the leather upholstery. Luckily we managed to get it all off the seats and the guide was most impressed with our knowledge of stain removals, Joanne said she become so good at this due to her living with me.

The tour lasted for a grand total of 12 minutes as we were whizzed round the bottling plant churning out 60,000 bottles and 12,000 cans of Beer Lao every hour. 99% is sold in Laos and only a tiny fraction makes it out of Asia. Maybe since I won’t have a job when I return home I should buy an export licence and try and conquer the Scottish lager market. After the tour we were taken into a plush lecture theatre and offered a complimentary beer or water, as we were cycling we decided to stick to the water. OK only joking we had the beer, as if we were going to knock back a free beer.

On our cycle back into Vientiane we stopped off at a few Wats, at the first one Haw Pha Kaew we had a young monk escort us round but his English wasn’t great and never gave us any real insight into the temple or the many exhibits in it’s small museum. The next was Wat Si Saket and this was well worth a visit, built in 1818 the temple has some unique features. The interior walls of the cloister are riddled with small niches that contain more than 2000 silver and ceramic Buddha images, there are also 300 stone Buddha’s resting on long shelves in front of all the niches.

It was our last night in Vientiane so we decided to head to Nazim’s Curry House, after really enjoying it’s sister restaurant in Luang Prabang. We didn’t think the nans were off the same high standard but we both loved our curries. We then headed into a bar called Sticky Fingers for their half price cocktails which slipped down very nicely. After bumping into Michal & Camilla again we ended up in the busy Kop Chai Deu Food Garden watching Chelsea v Liverpool play out a boring Champions League 0-0 draw. This Champions League is not all it’s cracked up to be, it was so much better when it only had Champions in the tournament.

Our two weeks in Laos didn’t last long and we both enjoyed our time especially in Luang Prabang, we now wished we had applied for 30 day Visa but maybe next time. All that was left to do on Thursday was to pack our bags, pick up some Dong for our next destination and make our way to the airport in a tuk-tuk.

2005-12-04T03:37:00.000+01:00

Boom Bang a Luang PraBang

Arrived in darkness, took a short tuk-tuk ride into the centre and after wandering around quite a few guesthouses we managed to find a large room with a window for under a fiver. We were both ravenous and after dumping our bags headed towards a busy restaurant for some well deserved food. We hadn’t even finished eating when the family started to cart the tables and chairs inside and it was only 10pm!!

I didn’t have a great sleep as the wooden floor between us and reception had light coming through the cracks and the fan whirred away for most of the night underneath us. So we spent most of Sunday morning finding and transferring our things to the Mano guesthouse which had a great room (ensuite) for less than the night before. We decided to go for a wander and made it as far as Wat Wisunalat which had a Lotus Stupa built in 1514. I sat sketching for a bit in the shade whilst Chris sat in the sunshine writing up the blogger. I looked up at one point and there were about 20 young kids all crowding around him with one wee boy trying desperately to fit into a space to see what was going on - I only wish I had the camera!!

Later we wandered along the night market with the goods on blankets on the ground and uncovered light bulbs at every stall. We ate dinner that night in the market with a lovely jovial lady who laughed at everything. Dinner consisted of a bowl that could be filled with as much as you liked with noodles, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes and other vegetable assortments for only 27p!! It was delicious and washed down with a Beer Lao what more could one ask for. We spent more time wandering around the market which sold some gorgeous bed linen (hand stitched), cushion covers, paper and woven lanterns, t-shirts and the usual trinkets galore. They also sold machetes and knifes in sheaths (would like to see them get away with that in Glasgow!!).

We knew that Pete and Penny were arriving sometime today and had heard earlier in the day that George Best had died. So we figured that Pete would be upset and as we were walking along we spied them both in the internet. Pete was just as we’d thought, although he was extremely pleased that the press were writing about him as a footballer and not as in his later life as a celebrity alcoholic. Chris and Pete reminisced about the times that they had seen him play live (well Chris was only 7 so I don’t know how much he really remembered). We had a drink with them and they told us about their two day boat trip which seemed a much better choice than our bus journey. Afterwards Chris & I went into a place called the Hive for a beer, which had some good music and also some red bottles hanging from a tree.

We decided to climb up Phu Si which had several wats and plenty of steps for us to climb. Most of the Buddha statues were quite new but they also had a Buddha foot imprint which had curved toes although it looked as though it had come from this world. We then went further up and saw some monkeys tied with a piece of material around their waists which was attached to a hoop. The hoops were through bamboo stalks and the monkeys ran up and down these trying to work out away to escape. One of them kept falling off and dangling by it’s waist, it would do this time and time again and then jump up using the material to bounce back onto the bamboo. At the top we saw great views over Luang Prabang and the Mekong and Nam Khan Rivers and sat for a while enjoying the sunshine before heading down for a well deserved Beer Lao. In the evening we had a grilled fish, which was really tasty as it was stuffed with lemon grass, and a bowl of food in the night market.

On Tuesday we decided to get our Vietnam visa from a travel agent in town, so as we were taking our things we bumped into Donna (from the plastic stool journey) and her boyfriend Marc (from the posh part of Manchester). So we had a blether over a coffee and then did our admin things. We had arranged to meet them later that night along with a German guy called Flo. They all fancied the idea of a Laos hotpot, after our experience in China we really didn’t want another crap meal but Donna (having been to China herself) assured us that this was nothing like the Chinese one. So we all walked along by the river and went into the Lao Lao Restaurant.

The waiters came and removed a tile from the middle of the table and then dumped a large iron bucket with hot charcoals in its place. Then came the hotpot dish which had a place for the meat at the top with a lip around the side which is where you put in water and initially veg with some stock to make a tasty soup. You also added two raw eggs and noodles to this. So the waiter put some stuff on for us and then it was a free for all with us all sticking bits and pieces on. This was delicious!! We then sat next to an open fire and had a few more beers at 11.00 it was last orders and then we had to leave at 12 as the licensing laws in Laos are a little strange.

We had arranged to meet up with the guys the next day and head out to a waterfall so off we went to the Tad Sae waterfall in a tuk-tuk for about 20 mins and then a short boat ride to take us to the waterfall. The only disconcerting thing about the boat was that they kept on removing water from it with a plastic tub. The waterfalls were beautiful with different levels of water cascading down. There were tables and chairs in the water for you to sit on, so we went in for a dip - it was absolutely freezing but once you get your shoulders in (that is according to Mr Reilly anyway) everything will be fine . There weren’t that many people around so it was easy just to sip a beer, have a swim and chill for several hours in this really scenic spot.

Later we all decided to head for a cheap meal in the market, Marc and the woman had a thing going whereby she tried to squeeze past him and would giggle like a school kid. We weren’t disappointed with the food again. We went back to the place we were in last night for drinks and also decided that we were going to try a Lao Beer Bomb. So firstly we had a cocktail, then a Lao Beer Bomb which consisted of Lao Beer, Lao Vadtka (vodka), M-150 (a red bull type drink) and a dash of 7up. Well I really didn’t like mine so Chris got almost two. Several drinks later and Donna stands up with the guitar everyone thinks - yeah someone’s going to play, but we knew that Donna couldn’t as she had told us earlier - “It’s out of tune” she said whilst we all fell about laughing.

We all suffered for it the next day and decided to go to a posh hotel and laze by the pool. The pool was even colder than the waterfall but it was worth it for a dip in the sunshine. Chris went to watch footie with Flo & Marc, it was a “Worthless Cup” game between Liverpool vs. Sunderland. Later on we all went to the Hive bar for a few ‘quiet’ drinks since the others were leaving the next day. So it was Beer Lao and several Shots all around. The conversation got round to the fact that Chris wore a ‘skirt’ for his wedding and I explained to Marc how the kilt actually worked. Flo then pipes up that he has a full lederhosen outfit back home which he brings out for special occasions. Flo is over 6 foot and I wouldn’t say that he is that well built (but not as skinny as Vinny) so he has promised to send us some pictures! After finding this rather amusing Marc then tells us about two of his “English” mates back home who regularly visit the pub in the full lederhosen garb and sip their pints. Before we knew it our time was up and we said farewell to our new friends.

On Friday we went more Wat hunting and spent some time in Wat Sop. Chris was taking some pictures and got chatting to a young monk who wanted to practise his English. At the same time another monk asked me to help him with a speech he had to do and he was struggling with some of the words. So I spent some time with him and Chris came round and we all sat chatting. Turns out he is building many Buddha statues and Stupas for his temple. He is also learning English so that he can teach it and become a tour guide in later years. We must have been there for over an hour at least and it was a nice way to while away some time. After this we wandered around several more Wat’s and in particular Wat Xieng Thong which was built in 1560 and remained within the royal patronage until 1975 when the royals were exiled to the north where after they were never seen again.

We’d both been feeling a little ropey for a couple of days and at night we decided to have an Indian in Nazim’s restaurant. After we ordered we heard fireworks going off to mark the end of the National Laos day and the only other celebrations we heard were several cars going by about 4.30am that morning with folks banging drums and singing. The locals and tourists all stood in the street to watch them. The food in this place was almost as good as the New Annand’s (our local Indian restaurant back home) and reminded us of the many delicious takeaways we got from there.

On Saturday we were both feeling a little chirpier and decided to head to another waterfall called the Kuang Si falls in the afternoon. So we paid to go on a minibus and sat back and watched as the fields went into small villages, the road wasn’t too bad apart from the many precarious wooden bridges that we had to drive over. We then arrived at the falls. To “entertain” their guests they also have a tiger and some bears.

We saw the tiger lazing in the afternoon sunshine enclosed with a metal fence with a sign saying Don’t put you fingers in Tigers BITE. We then made our way to the waterfall which had a huge drop but there weren’t as many tiers cascading into each other. We both went in for a dip and yes again it was fine once you got your shoulders under - so I did this rather quickly to get it over and done with. You had to manouvre across several tree trunks to get in.

It was our last night and what better way to finish it off than to wander through the market. I was so tempted to buy one of the bed linen sets but in the words of Mr Reilly “You don’t have a home to put it in!”, so instead I opted for some more light shades. We met up with Karen (who we’d met at the waterfall) and she also brought along a couple of odd French guys. One of them could hardly speak as he was a little worse for wear, and they told us their names but we couldn’t make them out with their thick French accents. We all headed down towards the Mekong River to a traditional Laos barbeque restaurant and ate away to our hearts content. The other French guy regaled us with hilarious tales of living in a squat in Amsterdam, his numerous tattoos (including wanting to have his whole body done) and piercings.

To end our last night Chris and I had a couple of Beer Lao in the Maylek pub whilst watching some football and eating peanuts, crisp dried bananas and rice that tasted like popcorn. We watched “Revolver” on DVD and set our alarm for an early rise the next day.

Got up at 5.15am and finished our packing (so before any of you guys say it some times it is a hard life travelling!!). We then went out to watch the morning ritual for the monks who wandered around the streets near their temples receiving offerings of food from the locals. It was dark when we went out, but within half an hour the light started to come through. It was a humbling sight watching about 60 or so monks filing by in their orange robes receiving mainly rice from the locals. We were told by the monk we met a few days ago that this is their daily meals (they eat twice a day).

We then said goodbye to Luang Prabang and took a tuk-tuk to the bus station.

2005-11-26T10:24:00.000+01:00

Laos & Winding Roads

As we crossed no man’s land between China & Laos the building we thought was going to be the Laos checkpoint turned out to be some Chinese administration block, so with our full backpacks we toddled on for another ten minutes along a dusty path in the blazing sun before jumping into a Tuk-Tuk with Pete and Penny the couple we had met just before the Chinese border on the last bus. The Laos checkpoint was only just another few minutes down the path and as we approached we could see people pushing and shoving trying to get their passports through a small hole in the window.

After a slightly protracted process of form-filling and exchanging of documents we managed to get through to the Laos side, where we hoped we could get a bus or some form of transport to Luang Nam Tha. The only bus there when we arrived was already full, so we asked a Tuk-Tuk driver how much to Luang Nam Tha, when he came back with a price that was almost four times the price of the bus we just laughed and decided to have a seat in a small shed next to the crossing that was selling food and our first sighting of the world famous in SE Asia, Beer Laos.

We spent a relaxing half hour sipping Beer Laos and exchanging stories and tales with Pete and Penny. It’s always quite interesting to meet someone who can talk as much as Joanne, and Pete could certainly do that but it was great fun listening to someone almost as passionate about music and football as myself. Pete & Penny have a had few articles printed in Beach Boys fanzines over the last few years as well as having God Only Knows played at their wedding, the song we also had as our first dance at our wedding reception.

We also spoke at length about George Best who we had just found out had been put back on a life support system, Pete talked fondly about seeing him in the late 60’s even though he was a Chelsea supporter. Pete was always quick to point out that he’s old Chelsea and doesn’t feel the same passion for his team now that Abramovich has poured his millions in, some people are never happy as I knew hundreds of other fans who would loved to have millions poured into their clubs but I understand where he‘s coming from.

We were soon joined by another customer who promptly knocked the condiments flying from the surrounding tables as he drunkenly bumped across the room offering us some suspect lethal concoction that you could smell from a good ten yards. We all declined his tipple but we all greatly admired his natty peaked balaclava before he was ushered away by the staff who seemed deeply offended by his antics, but the guy was just trying to be friendly.

Another Tuk-Tuk driver approached us and before we could even arrange a price Pete was convinced he wanted to go with this guy as he thought he had a real friendly Spanish looking face. Well Pete got his way as the driver gave us a price cheaper than the bus and was willing to leave in the next five minutes. After getting our rucksacks on the roof we piled into the back of the Tuk-Tuk, at the same time our drunken friend appeared and started loading the back with numerous sacks and boxes. He was about to get in the back when the driver shepherded him into the front passenger seat away from the rest of his passengers.

The journey flew in as we had a good laugh in the back, bumping along dusty tracks and through some beautiful tiny villages. By the time we got to Luang Nam Tha our hair was matted and clothes had turned a sandy/brown colour but we were thankful to get there in one piece and to have finally stopped moving. As we left the bus station we noticed two large guesthouses, then an American shouted from one of the balconies saying that this one better as it had hot showers. So we headed to Cha Rueh Sin Guest house and found out that you could get an en-suite double room with hot water and a balcony for 3 US$, we could have went for the 2 US$ with shared bathroom but 57p for your own bathroom doesn’t seem that high a price.

Laos never really existed as a country until the French, British, Chinese and Siamese drew a line round it, even then the French managed to spell the name wrong and add the letter s to the end. Over the last few years I’ve heard it pronounced so many ways but I think it’s low as in allow or rhyming with the bow of a boat. The country was under French control until 1953 when full sovereignty was handed back but this was followed by 20 years of chaos as multiple parties split into two factions. The Pathet Lao where supported by the Soviets, Chinese and Vietnamese and the right wing elite by the US who feared another country toppling to Communism in their Asian domino theory. From 1965 to 1973 the US devastated eastern and north-eastern Laos with non-stop carpet bombing trying to flush out the North Vietnamese troops.

In 1973 the US pulled out and the country divided into Pathet Lao and non-Pathet Lao but within two years the Communists had taken over and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic came into existence under the leadership of Kaysone Phomvihan. Today Laos has softened is socialist principles and allows private enterprise and foreign investment and the US has taken Laos off it’s blacklist that contains Cuba and North Korea. Curfews still exist with most bars and hotels closed by 11:30pm and everywhere you go you will see the Laos national flag along side Red flags with the hammer and sickle. At night music and news are piped onto the streets via large speakers attached to the street lights, not knowing much of the language meant that we didn’t get indoctrinated. The music sounded as if it was being played through an old analogue delay unit as it’s echo bounced off the surrounding buildings to give a really weird effect not heard since Static ran out of ideas and started messing about with gadgets.

Luang Nam Tha has about 10 streets so after a quick shower we headed out in search of food, we never had any breakfast or lunch so by the time we picked a restaurant I was feeling mighty peckish. Penny and Pete joined us and after a slight delay in ordering since a 10 year old boy was left in charge of the restaurant we tucked into some ok rice dishes. After a few more drinks we were joined by Camilla and Michael the Czech couple who also arrived in town today before we all headed to the Panda Restaurant which seemed to be the in-place as we never seen the place less than full. We said our good-byes to everybody as Pete & Penny were moving on early the next morning and Mikael & Camilla where heading off on a two day trek. On this trip you say good-bye to many people but so many times you bump into familiar faces further down the line.

Along with some stunning architecture one of the great things about the French being in South East Asia is that you’re never too far away from some outstanding fresh baguettes. So for breakfast it was a great cheese and ham baguettes washed down with some truly disgusting Lao coffee and condensed milk, Joanne got off lightly with a papaya fruit yoghurt shake. It was literally a breath of fresh air being in Laos after the smoggy Chinese cities and great to have a bit of sun on our faces for a few hours.

We had decided to stay an extra day in Luang Nam Tha and have a wander about the town, which we managed in about 40 minutes and that was the long way round. After lunch we ventured out again and found a nice spot to sit and chill out, Joanne got out the sketch pad & pencils we had bought in China while I caught up with some of the blogger on the laptop. After another stroll we bumped into Camilla who told us that they had to cancel their trek as both her and Michael had caught a bad cold and didn’t feel that a two day trek into the mountains would be the best for them. That night we had dinner in the Panda restaurant before the two Czechs joined us for a drink and we talked about their time in China and being brought up in the Czech Republic before the Velvet Revolution and the changes afterwards.

Next morning we crossed the road to the bus station at about 7:40am to book our seats for our next journey south to Luang Prabang, which we managed without too much of a problem or so it seemed. Once our rucksacks where hoisted onto the roof of what looked like the bus from The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour, we climbed over a dozen or so sacks of rice that filled the aisle for the first two or three rows and made our way to the back of the bus. We soon realised that we had been sold seats 44 & 45 of a 44 seater bus. After a few minutes trying to explain this to the driver he came back up to the back of the bus with a small plastic stool and told me to sit in the aisle. When the conductress came on to check tickets I asked for a discount because I had paid for a seat and after trying to pretend to not understand me she eventually grudgingly handed over a 5,000 kip note (27p), to which I replied thank you very much that won’t even get me a bottle of beer.

The bus was over an hour late in leaving and before we left I was joined with another 10 plastic seat aisle hoppers on the seriously over crowded bus. When we eventually pulled out of the bus station at about 9am we hadn’t even left the town when we stopped for the driver’s assistant to get cigarettes from a stall two streets from the station. This was to be the norm and we stopped seven to eight times in the first hour for various reasons. Joanne had ended up sitting beside Donna who was from Wales and both of them had a good moan to each other about the bus and the constant stops while I decided to try and put myself into a trance and block out the uncomfortable bus journey by playing my MP3 player as loud as possible. The road was never straighter than two bus lengths and I had to straddle my plastic seat like a rhinestone cowboy at every bend or else I would end up in the lap of two old Lao’s ladies or two grumpy German guys.

It was a great shame that the bus was so slow and uncomfortable because we passed some glorious scenery and hundreds of little hill villages which would have been great to spend a few hours in and wander about taking photos. At one point we passed what looked like an over turned bus and we saw quite a few westerners walking about dazed with numerous cuts, there was also a local lady lying next to the road with blood pouring from her leg, our bus stopped for a few minutes but we didn’t find out what happened or take anyone on board. We stopped soon afterwards for lunch break at Udommxai and we saw some ambulances heading back in the direction we came from. After lunch I had a look at the map and though we had been on the bus for over four hours we had travelled virtually no distance at all.

The journey went on in the same fashion with numerous stops, at one point we had to get off the bus and show our passports to some teenager in a big green uniform. Twenty minutes further down the road another kid in ill-fitting garb came on to bus to look at our passports before he waved us on. Our next stop might be our most bizarre yet as the driver pulls over after seeing some urchins standing by the side of the road. After a few minutes the driver and his side kick return to the bus after buying a chicken, the kids then approached us offering to sell us rats and mice through the windows of the bus.

Another small village we passed was having a massive party with a few hundred people, I’m not sure if it was a wedding or some festival. In the corner of the garden was a massive Jamaican style sound system with speakers teetering high above the crowd, one on top of each other and only being held together by the smallest of ropes. The Laos girls looked right good on the dance floor, dancing to electro pop like robots from 1984.

Our supposed arrival time of 4pm came and went as day became night and any chances of having a leisurely Saturday night in Luang Prabang were fading fast. At one stop Donna had asked the driver what time did he expect us to arrive, when he said 8pm we didn’t know if he was joking or not but when we finally arrived we pulled into the Luang Prabang it was 8pm precisely as if every stop was a planned to perfection throughout the day. I don’t think I will ever be able to look at plastic seat again without thinking about my journey from Luang Nam Tha to Luang Prabang.

2005-11-24T09:13:00.000+01:00

Chinese Hit Parade

1. Spitting on the Duck in the Bay - Otis Redding
2. Everybody's Smokin' - Nillson
3. Wouldn't it be Rice - The Beach Boys
4. Another Brick in the Great Wall - Pink Floyd
5. The Time is Mao - Moloko
6. This Town ain’t Big Enough for the 2 Million of Us - Sparks
7. Don’t Stand So Close to Me - The Police
8. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? - Cultural Revolution Club
9. Red Army Dreamers - Kate Bush
10. Take me to the Yangzi River - Al Green

Best Things to Do & See

The Great Wall of China
Forbidden City
Pandas (Chengdu)
Three Gorges (Yangzi River)
The Terracotta Warriors
Urban Planning Exhibition (Shanghai)
Jinmao Tower (for Cocktails)

Things We Will Miss about China

Hustle & Bustle
Street Food (esp. Xian)
Cheap Beer
Overnight Sleeper Trains
Peking Duck
Haggling
Spicy Food (Chris)
Friendly People
Cheap DVD’s
Dave & Ruth

Things we won't miss about China

Spitting in the Street
Clearing Nostrils in the Street
Smelly Toilets
Being Stared at
Rip Off Taxi Drivers
Hot Pot
Pushing & Shoving
Bad Roads
Spicy Food (Joanne)
Internet Restrictions
No Pedestrians Right of Way

2005-11-24T06:01:00.000+01:00

Minging Mengla's Bus Blues

We arrived at the bus station with an hour to spare before our bus was due to depart, after half an hour the bus driver came over and told us to go to the bus. So after dumping our bags we went on and were surprised to see that instead of seats there were actually beds on the bus (we were later told that many people call these coffin buses). About 2 seconds onto the bus we were hit by the smell of disgustingly sweaty feet we’re not sure if it was due to cheap plastic shoes or the fact that the guy hadn’t washed his socks in weeks but odour eaters were definitely required.

We were then confused when the ticket inspector took us to the back and told us to go on the top where there were beds for 5 people as we had booked lower beds. We went up anyway and thought that he might be being nice to us “westerners” and that we might be the only ones there. Then another western couple came on and he told them to get up beside us, they refused and went and sat down on their allocated seat numbers. So we decided to do the same but unfortunately someone was on one of our beds so Chris waited until he left the bus and moved his things off. Then the ticket inspector came back on and after much gesticulating he realised that he had been found out and just shrugged his shoulders in amusement at us.

Well 4 o’clock came and went and we were told that the bus wouldn’t be leaving until 5pm (two buses were being put into one). So a little after 5 we left the bus station and headed into the Kunming’s rush hour with the traffic clearing a little as we headed onto the motorway. For about 45 minutes we seemed to be moving along nicely and then we pulled over at a service station for petrol. Well bearing in mind the bureaucracy to get a sachet of coffee it took us over an hour to get petrol and this was after skipping the queue of over 30 articulated lorry’s in front of us. Then we were on our way again only to stop 15 minutes later for 30 minutes for a food break and this was just the start of our journey. The new Star Wars DVD came on and at first we could hear it in English then came the Chinese dubbing over the English speaking so you couldn't really hear either. So on and on it went with the constant stop starting during the night (we reckon we must have stopped for over 6 hours!!) with us having very little sleep due to works being carried out on the road after the military checkpoint.

One of the amazing things about China is that they must currently be working on adding millions of miles of roads to their network. Everywhere we were driving through had huge parts of the landscape being worked upon with bridge supports being put and excavations of where the road should be. The only thing was that they didn’t start in one area and finish that first (that would make too much sense), every area was working on their bit and none of it appeared to be finished or much likely hood of it being done in the next year!!

We arrived at the bus station in Jinghong with all the Chinese people leaving the bus and were told by the bus driver we would leave “soon”. By this point we should have been at our final destination over 3 hours before and then the driver shouted at us to get off. He then pointed to a minibus which was full of the Chinese laughing at us with their bags on their seats and not enough space for all of us. They took over half an hour to reorganise the baggage and then magically produced half seats for us to sit on - surprise, surprise Chris and I were the only two westerners who had to sit on these and with Chris’s seat being broken my knees were being battered at every bump in the road (of which there were plenty).

We were told that the trip would take 2 hours but 4 hours later we arrived in Mengla, tired and dusty from our trip. We had two options either to try and make it to the border (which would have been extremely tight) or stay a night in Mengla. We decided to stay the night and went with the Czech couple (Michael & Camilla) we met on the bus to a guesthouse just down the road and had our bags carried for 2 minutes by a tuk-tuk driver. This was our cheapest accommodation yet at under 3 quid for an en-suite room with TV (although we didn’t manage to get a western toilet!). We hadn’t bought that much food for the journey and were both starving as we expected to arrive in Mengla at 5.30am so we had a quick meal in a little place next door to the hotel.

9am the following morning we decided to get a minibus to Mohan (the Chinese border) and gave our bags to the same tuk-tuk driver to take to the bus station. At every opportunity over the last 24 hours this guy asked us whether or not we wanted to change money which we politely declined. So onto a minibus we went and we were feeling ok as we left the bus station since the bus wasn’t as full as yesterday until we pulled outside of the station the bus stopped and 6 people got in (backhanders to the driver!). There was still plenty of room and we went on our merry way stopping to let people on and off during the hour and a half journey.

The bus juddered to a halt at a road block by one military guy as road works were being carried out just ahead of us. So we waited and waited and after about half an hour the driver told us to get off this bus and go onto another slightly larger bus (better than the one we were on) and we waited again. A couple from London came on Pete and Penny and started to chat with us which whiled away some time and then all of a sudden we were off and back on our way.

We arrived at the Chinese border control filled out our exit form, waited to be stamped out and were told several times by the guard to line up (I actually think he wanted us to stop talking!). So we eventually got our passports stamped and decided to walk towards what we thought was the Laos border control just across the road.

2005-11-22T06:04:00.000+01:00

Kunming No.9 Your Times Up

Once we dragged ourselves from the train we we’re so relieved to see a beautiful blue sky, since it seemed so nice we decided to just walk the 2 or 3kms to our hostel. Almost immediately after leaving the station we realised that Kunming was a lot more laid back than Shanghai and most other Chinese cities, we didn’t have to run the gauntlet of taxi drivers, hotel reps and various other touts while shielding our ears from incessant battle between car horns & bicycle bells and were left quietly to meander our way through the streets to the hostel.

We had a booked the hostel a few days earlier over the net mainly just because of the name, it did also had quite a few good reviews. When we arrived at The Hump hostel, the reception/bar was being used for a press conference, but we still managed to get booked in fairly quickly. I’m not sure exactly what the press conference was for but it was something to do with the local indigenous tribes as amongst the journalists and cameramen were many young women and men wearing traditional costumes.

After unpacking and having a shower to wash the two days of train from ourselves we headed to the Laos consulate to see if we could get a Visa for the following week. It took nothing more than filling in a few forms, leaving a sizable amount of cash & our passports to secure our Laos visas and if we returned in three days they might even give us back our passports. We then wandered to the University district to try and find an English bookshop, we had been trying to get the Lonely Planet’s South East Asia on Shoestring book for a few weeks now without too much success. On the way we passed lots of new skyscrapers and fancy shopping malls, Kunming was definitely not being left out of China’s boom time.

Around the university there were plenty of interesting shops selling more than just your usual tack that you find in most of China’s shops; fancy stationers, 60’s Beat Writers Book Shop, Laid back coffee houses and numerous boutiques selling smart original clothing. We also found the bookshop and to Joanne’s great delight we managed to pick up the book we had been trying to find since Beijing which she greeted with a loud “Wooohhhooooo” in the middle of the shop.

On our way back to the hostel we passed by Pizza Hut and all the staff inside were wearing Father Christmas outfits and I’m sure we could hear Noddie Holder & the rest of Slade shouting their way through “I wish it could be Christmas everyday”. This really caught us by surprise as it was the first time Christmas had wandered under our radar, even though it was mid-November. I remember wandering down Sauchiehall Street one lunchtime last October and I nearly screamed out in frustration as I saw Marks & Spencer’s setting up their Christmas window displays, but I’m sure it will be a lot worse in Scotland than it will be for us in China.

Back at the Hostel we sat and had a beer in the roof garden and watched the locals flying kites and going about their business as the sun set over the city. The view from the Hostel was really good with two strikingly lit large ornamental gates set in a pedestrian area where quite a few stalls were being set up for a small night market. We also got chatting to a retired Austrian called Gunter who had also being travelling around China for the last six weeks but mainly in the west of China. That night we had dinner in the Brother Jiang restaurant down stairs from the hostel, nearly every street had a Brother Jiang and they always seemed quite busy. The Kunming district is famous for it’s across the bridge noodles but we didn’t really notice the difference from the other noodles we had in other parts of the country.

Next morning we caught up with all our internet duties, before heading down to the local markets. This is where we found our latest great street food, large slices of flat bread that tasted like a weird hybrid of potato scone & nan bread with sesame seeds & chives sprinkled over the top - a definite hit on the old taste buds. The market seemed to a have millions of stalls selling cheap shoes, I’m sure there might have been enough to cover every foot in the country. We also seen a whole street selling Christmas & New Year decorations, but every stall sold exactly the same gear I’m not sure if this is some Communist ideal about equality for the masses.

Every town or city in China had it’s own unique things that we will remember it for and Kunming is no different. On arriving we noticed that many of the female cyclists in town like to wear the type of sun visor that were all the rage for two weeks in the summer of 77 by wannabe tennis stars and bad poker players. Another stand out for Kunming was that many of the shops had MC’s outside extolling the value and street worthiness of the goods inside, many of these had more echo & delay effects than the pioneering 70’s Jamaican Dub DJ’s like U-Roy and Big Youth. We stood outside Ming Lee’s Emporium of Underwear with our Mandarin Book to try and translate some of the rhymes that the MC was belting out to the passers by, here’s some very rough translations.

Wake the town and tell the people
Ming Lee’s Shop is so unbeatable

Watch how the Dance floor Rocks
When you are wearing our Socks

Don’t you fret there will be no more frights
While you are wearing Ming Lee’s tights

No more shockings or mockings
You’ll look great in our stockings

No need to Travel Wide and Far
In search for the Kings of Bra

No need for a Blessed Rosary
With our splendid Hosiery

When wearing trousers, You’ll be fine
‘Cos you’ll never see a knicker line

SSSShhhhaaaabbbbbaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!

Another thing we haven’t really mentioned about China is the hundreds of massive one-stop shop Wedding Megaplexes which must have about 50 staff for every customer and also has more frilly dresses than you would find at a Can Can convention on the Moulin Rouge.

Saturday lunch time we checked out of The Hump so that we could move to the Hotel Gandu to watch the Celtic game that night. The hotel wasn’t on the map so we asked one of the staff from the Hump to write the name of the street in Mandarin so we could show a taxi driver. After a while he eventually gave us a bit of paper back with something written on it but we weren’t convinced it was the right thing as he kept going on about a number 26 bus.

We ventured out to the taxi rank just outside the hostel and showed the bit of paper to the taxi driver, she seemed to know where to go. After about 15 minutes she stopped at a busy cross-section and told us this was where the note said to let us off, we then tried to ask her where the hotel was but this wasn’t getting much response. Next thing she’s on the mobile and then she says she now knows, and takes off for another 5 minutes drive. Half way back along the road we stop outside the Police station and she thinks this is where we want. After another 5 minutes discussion and another phone call we’re heading back to the first place she tried to drop us off but this time she carries on another few minutes and we see the hotel. I’m not sure how she didn’t know it as it’s the biggest place in the area and had about 40 taxis outside it.

Once in the room we chilled out for a bit and watched BBC World for a bit, the first time we had seen any English speaking news channels since leaving Sydney over 9 weeks before hand. In the afternoon we wandered the streets surrounding the hotel to pick up some lunch, it was obvious that tourists don’t usually come to this part of the city as we had more than our usual stares. Mothers were picking up their kids and pointing at us and getting their kids to wave at the two weird westerners wandering about.

We wandered into a supermarket to pick up some things, which was bit more difficult than you would expect. At one counter we picked up some coffee sachets and we then had to wait for the counter girl to write out a receipt in triplicate so that we could pay for the coffee at the checkout, this happened at three other counters on our way round the shop. A job that should have taken 5 minutes turned into a half hour marathon of bureaucracy, but I suppose it kept another 5 or 6 people in jobs.

We found a small restaurant and with the aid of the mandarin book and some pointing we both had some great food and few beers for under 3 UK pounds. That night we sipped some beers while watching the game and chilled out in the comfortable room, we never did get round to using the swimming pool, billiards room or sip cocktails in any of it‘s numerous bars. The following day we didn’t do too much but use the internet and watch some movies.

After getting some dinner at the same place the night before we decided to get our haircut and we had noticed quite a popular place on the way to the restaurant. Joanne hadn’t had her hair cut since Mexico when they burnt her hair with too much chemicals and quite naturally was a bit apprehensive. Things got off to a good start when we both got a 15 minute head massage, Joanne even got her back prodded and slapped for an extra 10 minutes. We both survived without any disasters and were quite pleased for the whole experience only cost 20 Yuan which was about 1 pound fifty.

On Monday we booked back into the Hump for a night, picked up our passports and visas from the Laos consulate and we also managed to book two bus tickets to Mengla (the nearest town to the Laos Border) for the following afternoon. We also picked up quite a few cheap DVDs to watch on the laptop as this was probably going to be our last chance of cheap counterfeit goods in China. Lots of new signs and banners had been put up around promoting the City, one we noticed was “Everyday is Spring in Kunming” which was a lie as it was absolutely freezing. By this point we really did want to head to South East Asia and get some heat back into our bones and some sunshine on our faces. Out of the six weeks in China we were probably lucky to have 5 or 6 days of blue sky in total. We didn’t bother leaving the hostel that night and once again had a few beers and dinner in this lively place.

Next day we loaded up on the potato scone / nan bread hybrid and made our way to the bus station for our overnight trip south to Mengla and then hopefully a short hop skip and jump over the border to Laos

2005-11-15T06:24:00.000+01:00

Shanghai Sniffles

We arrived in Shanghai and managed to make our way across two subway lines to the Captain’s Hostel half a block from the bund without any problem well apart from me nearly being hit by a motor bike!! The Bund is where all the large European companies had their headquarters in the early part of the 20th century. We had tried to find some cheap accommodation in Shanghai but to be honest non was to be had so we decided to stay in a dorm and after sharing with Ruth and Dave it couldn’t be that bad. So we all ended up in the same room which was huge with lockers large enough to store our bags. After our last few days we were all starving and in need for a gentle reminder of what western food could taste like so we all went to Ruzzi’s Pizza for a set lunch before doing some admin on the net.

We all met up later on and headed to the rooftop bar which gave an excellent view of the skyline across Pudong but the beers were a bit steep but well worth for the view. We had decided (or rather Ruth’s continuous talk about food led us to decide) that that night we would do a full blow out and head to the French Concession (or now known as the French Connection after Ruth‘s little slip up) to the Indian Kitchen. So another couple of metros across the city led us to a lovely Indian restaurant for some good Indian fayre but still not as great as the New Annan (that delightful place across from our old flat). Anyways after dinner we decided to hit one of the main bar areas - maybe not the best idea after an Indian but we all reckoned that we had room for a couple of beers.

So we wandered up to Maoming Nanlu which had a few bars for “gentlemen” and then a few others which we deemed were safe enough for us ladies. Our choice was the Blue Frog and we sat on the bar stools people watching and enjoying the enormous glasses of beer - I almost needed two hands to lift mine. Several of these later we realised that despite our best intentions it was now 12 midnight and we still had to look at getting a taxi home. We all got back in one piece despite a couple of wrong turnings by the taxi driver.

Well the next day was Wednesday 9th September and for those of you who didn’t know there was an Old Firm game (Celtic vs. Rangers) for one of the quarter finals of the League Cup. So being the ever devoted wife we had booked a hotel the day before which had internet access in the room for one night to allow my delightful husband the pleasure of watching the match live on Celtic Channel 67.We first of all had to walk for over an hour to find the place and then check that the internet actually worked - bonus it did. We then headed back and found a little market with lots of Cultural Revolution things and wandered around the main shopping street for a bit. We had dinner at a small café which had an English menu (yippee) and at 2 quid for a meal for 2 and 2 big beers we really couldn’t complain.

Then it was off back to the hotel. Now the game was on at 8pm UK time but in Shanghai it was 4am in the morning and Chris in his wisdom decided that he would stay up and take full advantage of the internet. Half asleep I thought we had a bird loose in the room as I heard flapping sounds, bleary eyed I spotted Chris flapping his arms as if he wanted to take off and raising one hand in the air (I figured Celtic had scored). In case you didn’t know the result well Rangers were knocked out of the cup after Celtic winning 2-0 going on 6-0 or so Chris said anyway.

The following morning we both were just a little tired and after getting back to the hostel we were put in a different room from Dave & Ruth which had 10 beds and 7 rather smelly young guys. It was raining and Chris fell asleep with a huge grin on his face to catch up on some 'well earned rest'.

We met up with Ruth & Dave in the downstairs foyer at 7pm well the beers were only 70p down there and after a couple of these we headed for dinner in the same place we ate the night before and had another cheap meal and drinks. Due to the rain we decided to head back to the hostel foyer and have a few more beers. Around 1ish (we think) we headed to bed - only to find that in our room we had a snorer who sounded more like a lion roaring and lucky me I had the bed next to him.

On Friday 11 November we managed to get a room swap - whether this was a good idea or not who knows but at least it didn’t smell as bad as the now alcohol filled room that we were in. We managed a short trip to the post office and got a box sent without too much hassle and then decided to head to the Urban Planning Exhibition.
Most of the ground floor was covered up for a Mercedes Benz exhibition which was due to open any day and due to the crowds of tour buses we skipped the next floor and headed straight to the 2nd floor which had a scale model of Shanghai. This was fantastic and showed how far the city stretched with hundreds upon hundreds of skyscrapers in every direction.

We then walked around reading about how Shanghai will look in the future (well they hope to have it all be completed by the Shanghai Expo in 2010). Pictures show how the area looks now and how it will look when completed and explain the benefits of this for the Chinese people, apparently Chinese people do not own the land and are just lease holders which can be withdrawn at any time. Hence the reason for thousands of homes being bulldozed with the occupants left looking for accommodation elsewhere, although if you believe all the descriptions in the exhibition the vast majority are re-housed in much better housing (but some of the picture of the new houses showed the electrics hanging out of the wal as the family’s moved in!!). Several areas will become eco friendly and the only industries allowed will be non-polluting industries (the polluting ones will be in another area) with bungalow type houses and plenty of gardens/greenery.

When you see the bigger picture it is absolutely amazing that a country can do this amount of demolition and building as quickly as it does and with the foresight to put the airport next to the docks and construction of several additional metro lines is under way to improve the overall transport of the city.

The main highlight for me though was the 360 degrees cinematic room which took you on a flying journey of how the ‘new’ Shanghai will look - this was really good despite us both feeling a little travel sick in the place. We also got to see how the old Shanghai looked with another film but this was pretty rank so we left without seeing all of it.

This was Dave & Ruth’s last night so we what better way to start the evening than have a cocktail on the 87th floor in the Hyatt Hotel in the Jinmao Tower. The 88th floor is the tower for viewing across the whole of Shanghai. So we wandered down in our glad rags and rain coats and headed into 3 different lifts to get to Cloud 9 bar. This building is the tallest in China and the 4th tallest in the world and stands at 420.5m.

We managed to get a seat at the window and fortunately for us we were early enough to miss the minimum tab of 9 quid per person. We all ordered cocktails although Dave’s being a ginger tea came in a tin mug whilst the rest of us sipped ours out off proper cocktail glasses and we all ate delicious hot coated peanuts. At first we could see very little due to the mist and the rain but someone was looking out for us, as the mist lifted and we could see quite a distance down the Bund and the Pearl Sky Tower.

We headed out to meet up with Chris (a friend of Dave and Ruth‘s) and once we got there we were taken in a taxi to a little restaurant and a couple of Chris’s friends came too. All of these guys have been learning Mandarin for a while now and were ordering us some food when in pops a lady who could speak English and asked if she could help. She then proceeded to tell them the specialities (despite the guys having already ordered several dishes) one of which was the squashed chicken. When asked was it run over by a car she laughed and replied “No it was hit by a hammer!”. So we had to have some of that as well. The food in this place was fantastic:- mashed potato with aubergines and minced meat (almost like a shepherds pie), spicy beef, pork and the best of all was the chicken which was put into a square dish and was believe it or not completely flat.

So after stuffing our faces we headed to the Time Passage bar. This was supposedly one of the oldest bars in Shanghai and we soon realised that how quickly things change round here as it was only eleven years old. The bar was full of expats and wasn’t too expensive for Shanghai standards and we sat and listened to a band covering Oasis, The Eagles and any other requests or sing a longs on the mike by the audience. We had a few more beers before heading back to the hostel and the beer monster (Ruth) had to have another beer (this wasn’t that bad an idea for me as I wanted to phone home and wish my sister Christine a Happy Birthday) but none of really had the energy to finish them.

On the Saturday we all met and had our last breakfast together before Chris and I walked along the Bund with some sunshine in the sky - we couldn’t believe our luck.
We strolled in amongst the locals taking some pictures of the Pearl Sky Tower and the Bund which has buildings that would not be out of place in any big European City. After saying our farewells to Dave and Ruth we had a quick meal before heading back to the hostel as we were both suffering miserably from a cold.

We were up earlyish on the Sunday and headed towards the old town and the antique market. We thought it was some distance away but in reality it wasn’t that far although the old town was actually fairly new and the antique shops all sold similar trinkets. So we wandered back to a market we stumbled on a few days earlier and Chris haggled for a Cultural Revolution figurine, with a young woman with her hand in the air, the price actually started off much cheaper than we expected.

We were both feeling a little tired and rough after being woken up the previous night several times by an inconsiderate door slamming American couple and we were also suffering from a cold so we headed back to the hostel to chill out before heading along the Pudong and the Bund for some night time pictures. This place was still really busy and a couple of women were there with their kids, when their husbands showed up they stopped first of all to admire the camera (they had their faces in the lens looking at it) and then asked could they take a picture of me with their wives and kids so I happily obliged.

Monday was a bit of a wasted day as we tried to arrange a flight to Bangkok from Hong Kong from British Airways, to cut a long story short after 3 hours of waiting we asked for our tickets back. We then decided to head overland towards Kunming (quite near the Laos border) which was our original plan. It was to be a 44 hour train journey and we managed to book our tickets for Tuesday the following day. Both of us were still loaded with the cold and thought that maybe two days travelling on a train would allow us to do nothing and get rid of it. Our other options were to stop somewhere after 12 hours or 30 hours so the whole hog was decided on.

It was both my parents birthday’s over the next couple of days and since we were travelling I decided to phone them, so we sat in the foyer until we could phone home, we met up with another Glaswegian called Jim and sat and had a few beers with him telling us his tales and travel plans before eventually going to bed. Our last morning in Shanghai was spent sorting out last minute things, food for the journey, post office and melodica buying (yes Chris eventually found the instrument he’s been looking for a while although I did want him to take it on the train and play!) before we made our way via the metro to the train station.

To be honest due to our colds we didn’t really do Shanghai justice but we still had a fun time and it’s maybe one of those places we will head back to one day, but I’m sure it will look completely different then as things are really changing quick here.

The 44 hour train journey didn't turn out too bad, we were the only westerners in our carriage and as far as we could see the only one's on the train. The train was slightly more modern and the 6 bunks were slightly closed off from the main corridors which helped keep the noise down a bit. We could get some dumplings and snacks when the train pulled into stations so we didn't go hungry, and by the end of two days doing nothing we felt we were over the worse of our colds.

2005-11-07T02:24:00.000+01:00

Slow Boat in China

We were picked up at our hostel at 6:30am and taken to somewhere on the outskirts of Chengdu where we met Dave & Ruth and the four of us were put on a bus full of Chinese businessmen. The roads were quiet for the first half hour as we whizzed along the new highway but this soon petered out and pretty soon it was a road that would rival some of the Bolivian roads that we bumped along as being the worst in the world. At one point the road was blocked by a solitary police car as he waved all the oncoming traffic onto a slip road and into a large holding area. We didn't have a clue what was going on but after about half an hours wait we were allowed back onto the highway to continue our crawl to Chongquing.

The guidebooks describe Chongquing as a poor man's Hong Kong and yes it shares the former British colony's partiality for ugly tower blocks but lacks the colossal glass palaces that give Hong Kong one of the most famous skylines in the world. The grey skies, smog and dirty streets made us glad that we only had a few hours to spend here before we boarded our cruise ship for our three day tour on the Yangzi river. The guy from the tour company had warned us that the on board restaurant was rubbish and told us to buy as much food before boarding. After getting some lunch we picked up some extra provisions before heading to the dock and onto the vehicular cable car that took us down to our floating home.

The boat held over 400 hundred passengers and had three classes of accommodation, we had plumped for the 2nd Class 4 berth dorm which had about enough room to swing a very small cat. One of the main reasons for the four of us deciding to do the trip together was that we had heard quite a few horror stories of western travellers sharing rooms with chain-smoking Chinese men who invited all their friends into the dorm to play cards for the complete trip. So it was lucky for us that we found Dave and Ruth, two chain smoking Londoners (to be honest they never smoked in the room) to share our small cabin with. It wasn't long before the engines were running and we were waving goodbye to the tacky Blackpoolesque skyline of Chongquing's riverfront.

Dave and Ruth are on a years honeymoon which takes them on similar route as ours but in the opposite direction as they head to Japan and then Australia after China. We first met them on the Terracotta warriors trip and bumped into them quite a few times over the following week or two. We also had the bonding experience of exorcising our misfortune at staying at the worst hostel in China, the Yamen in Pingyao.

We had picked up a small slab of beer before boarding and were horrified to discover that once opened it tasted as appealing as the Yangzi which is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. As we were settling into our cabin we had a procession of people pass our door to have a peek at the strange westerners, some even stood for a few minutes and stared, we soon got used to this and just waved and shouted “Nee- Hao” to any of our curious new friends. The rest of the night we drank our horrible beer, slurped our ever so slightly better pot noodles and listened to some music as we had an early rise the next morning.

We were woken at 5:30am for the first stop on our tour at Fengdu, after fighting our way through the crowds and two other boats we eventually made it to land. It was still pitch black when we were handed to a local guide who didn't speak any English, so we decided to head off on and make our own way to the Abode of Ghosts. As daylight broke it was like the pictures of Berlin just after the allied invasion or maybe a bit like Priesthill or Darnley in Glasgow in the early 90's just before the old schemes were demolished to make way for the new toy town ghettos. All the houses on the lower part of Fengdu where being demolished due to the Three Gorges Dam which is due for completion in 2009, people were being relocated further up the hill into new apartment blocks.

Some Facts about the Three Gorges Dam:

1. It has become the World’s Largest Dam (185m High & 2Km wide)
2. When it backs up it will flood an area the size of Singapore
3. Over 2 million people will have their homes washed away & 8000 important
archeologically sites will also disappear
4. Costs over $75 Billion
5. Will produce the equivalent electricity as 18 Nuclear Power Plants

On reaching the abode of the Ghosts (also know as the place of devils) you have to cross a suspension bridge which is strung across a river a few hundred feet below, up until this point the four of us had been slowly wandering up trying to let all the frantic Chinese tourists get ahead of us. Suddenly I noticed Joanne and Dave scuttling across the centre of the bridge as if some invisible spectre was pulling them over. Ruth soon explained, that like Joanne, Dave suffers from vertigo and probably just wanted to be over the other side as soon as possible.

On the other side there were a few temples with some shoddy looking statues and lots of stalls selling cheap rubbish, but we continued on up. We then entered the Hall of Demons which was a cheap Madame Tussauds Dungeon with paper-mâché monsters torturing other paper-mâché creations while silly hooting noises and screams were being played over the sound system. It was like something out of a episode of Scooby-Doo, the one set in a disused fairground where they catch the villain and pull off his mask at the end. There was also a massive concrete/stone head at the side and on the top of the hill but we didn't really find out who and why it was there. Most of the place looked as though was created in the last five years but they had tried and failed miserably to make it look a lot older.

We soon realised that there wasn't much else to see so we headed back down to the boat through all the destruction work. At one point we watched a worker standing precariously on a wall swinging a large jack hammer as he knocked out the bricks from under his feet. This drew a ripple of murmurs and laughs from a crowd of women selling food who thought it was very amusing to see the strange westerner taking photos of the workmen. We all wished we had stayed on the boat and caught a few extra hours sleep but back on the boat we decided to go for a nap until our next stop.

The next stop was much better but that isn't really saying much, we pulled up at the Stone Treasure Stockade a 56m high wooden temple built on a huge rock. Before you get to the 12 storey pagoda you have to run the gauntlet of women selling snacks & drinks. We slowly climbed the 12 floors as everyone on the boat seemed to do it at the same time, I'm not sure how safe it was having 400+ people climbing an ancient wooden structure hanging precariously on the side of a rock but we made it to the top without incident. Once at the top there was no view to speak of as the sky was so low and overcast that we could hardly see the boat below us. On the way back to the boat we haggled quite unsuccessfully to get some beers for 2 Yuan a bottle, but had to make to do at 3 Yuan but there were a millions times better than the dishwater we had the night before. We also picked up some small potatoes on a stick to tide us over for a while.

We then had a lazy afternoon watching a movie called “Raise the Red Lantern” which was filmed in Pingyao and was set in the early part of the 20th Century. The film was about 4 concubines/wives (we're not really sure if there was a difference in this movie) each vying for the time of their husband. It was quite funny watching a movie in a place we had all been in the last two weeks and they had used Pingyao's old houses to great effect.

We stopped at nine o'clock where you could visit a temple but it was quite expensive and we decided to try and get some dinner at one of the local shops. We had a look round some of the market stalls before heading back to a place that Dave and I noticed that was showing live Premiership football. All the food was laid out on a table on the outside of the restaurant and you just picked what you wanted and they would throw it into the wok. The food was ok but we weren't sure about the sausage, we thought it looked a bit like chorizo but as for the type of meat that was in it, it could have been Beef, Pork, Rabbit, Donkey, Dog or something worse.

The game was Villa vs. Liverpool and wasn't much to write home about, Dave is a big Charlton fan and the first day we met he was quite proud as his team was sitting 2nd in the league at the time. Joanne soon put him in his place and asked what league they were in, since that first day they have slowly slipped down the table and even worse now their manager has been linked the poisioned chalice that is the managers job at Rangers. When we asked for the bill we were quite surprised to see it and thought they had made a mistake but I think they must have charged us for their full years subscription to the Premiership, so we paid up and wowed in the future to ask how much before tucking into the food. We were all still feeling a bit peckish as we headed back to the boat and decided to get some small spicy potatoes, this time the food was brilliant and the women selling them wasn't wearing a mask.

Next morning was another early rise as we transferred onto a smaller boat for a trip up the Lesser Three Gorges. These gorges are much more narrower and loom high above us as the smaller boat edged up through the mist, we spent most of the trip standing on the deck waving at people on the other boats. We even managed to see some monkeys jumping about the rocks and trees on the side of the gorge, I'm not sure exactly what type of monkeys they are but I'm certain some of my anthropoid loving friends will soon let me know. As to how the rising water will affect the monkeys we don't really know but other endangered species along the Yangzi like the Chinese Sturgeon and Yangzi river dolphin are feared to be lost forever once the river turns into a 480Km long septic tank with the untreated waste from the 40 towns and 400 factories along it's banks backs up against the dam wall.

We stopped for lunch on a steep set of stairs where crowds of local woman sold loads of interesting looking food. The first thing that stood out was the deep fried birds on a stick, complete with head, beaks and feet. None of us were brave enough to try them but we seen many Chinese getting stuck into them like we would eat an ice cream, we stuck to the safer potato on a stick option.

At the next stop we transferred on to an even smaller boat, more like a glorified rowing boat with a motor attached. We then passed some people who were standing on platforms at the side of the gorge singing into a loud haler, but nobody could tell us if they were protesting or just singing for the good of their health. After about 40 minutes sailing up some amazing scenery it was back on the middle size boat returning to main Yangzi river.

Out of the 400 people on the boat there were only around 20 westerners and an elderly Australian woman had organised a meal for all 20 of us in the ships restaurant. We were a bit unsure about the food after the reps warnings back at Chongquing but to our surprise we had a really nice meal and got speaking to some people from Canada and Switzerland. After dinner there was the chance to leave the boat for 5 hours and visit the Three Gorges Dam or stay onboard while the boat descends through the 5 locks of the Gezhou Dam.

After our experiences in Igazu in Brazil we were in no rush to go to another dam and at night time I wasn't certain as to how much of the concrete wall you would see. There have been lots of fears about the dam project and not just about it's environmental & social aspects but about the quality of the build. In 1999 over 100 cracks were discovered running the full height of the up-stream face of the dam, but the raising of the water level has continued. Chinese engineers have said that such problems are common in large dams and that the cracks have been repaired, but the former Premier Zhu Rhongji has been quoted as saying the concrete has the strength of `mashed tofu'. The Chinese also have some unfortunate history of disasters with dams, in 1975 two dams in the Henan province collapsed killing 230,000 people. This information was kept secret up until very recently and is just one of many stories we have heard about China's poor human rights record. Click this link to read an article that appeared in the Herald on the 9th Novemeber.

So we remained on board and watched from the deck as we went into the first lock and slowly descended, after about half hour the four of us head back to our room and watched the new Charlie & The Chocolate Factory movie starring Johnny Depp. Up at 5:30am for our 6 o'clock bus to Wuhan which was supposed to be 3 and half hours but it actually took us more than 6 to get to our the train station in another massive city that didn't have much to hold us there. Dave & Joanne managed to get us tickets on the next train to Shanghai which was due to leave in two hours. So after a quick bit of lunch it was onto the train for a 21 hour overnight journey, which didn't turn out too bad because of the late nights and early starts we were all tired and managed to get a few hours sleep.

2005-11-03T12:00:00.000+01:00

Chengdu be du be du

We arrived in Chengdu on Tuesday 1st November without too many incidents on the overnight train from Xian and were picked up at the station by a rep from the Dragon Town Hostel which we had booked over the net. When we arrived at the Hostel we didn't know whether to laugh or cry as the street where the hostel sat was no longer there. In it's place was a deep channel the complete width of the street with the occasional wooden plank for you to cross from one side to the other. I felt like a contestant from It's a Knockout sheepishly navigating along these planks in the pitch black with my rucksack replacing the usual silly foam costume. All I was waiting for was a cackling commentary from Stuart Hall as the locals throw buckets of water from the windows.

The hostel was a charming four storey Qing Dynasty building with a central courtyard for people to sit about and had quite basic rooms but it was clean and handy for most things in Chengdu. The city has a population of 4 million and the place abounds with China's new wealth with opulent department stores and modern looking apartment blocks rising at almost every corner. We have mentioned a few times already about the scale of the rebuilding and expansion in China but it never fails to amaze with the endless vista of cranes looming over every place we've been. A city the size of Manchester is built every month to keep up with the economic growth.

Here are some other facts about the modern powerhouse that is China:

China is the world's third largest trading power behind the US and Germany.
In 2004, China accounted for 6% of the world's exports and 10% of global economic growth.

There are 377 million mobile phones in China making it the world's largest market.

In 2004, five million cars were sold in China, making it the third largest market in the world after the US and Japan.

China's road network is now the third longest in the world and 44% of it was built in the past 15 years.

There are 100 million internet users.

Sources: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development. World Trade Organisation. China's National Bureau of Statistics. World Bank.

Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan province famous for it's dishes laden with hot spicy pepper which is not for the faint hearted as it leaves your lips tingling and tongue numb. We had tried some hot pepper dishes in Xian and Joanne ruled out ever ordering it again as it took hours for her mouth to cool down. The city is also a good base for many of the sights in the surrounding areas and one of the few places in China where flights to the Lhasa the capital of Tibet are available. We looked into doing a 2 or 3 day trip to Lhasa but it was working out to be quite expensive equivalent to the cost of 30 days elsewhere in China. There is also a large fee for a Tibet Tourism Bureau permit that you never actually see and seems to be a bit rip off by the Beijing government. There are also lots of restrictions on tourists movement throughout Tibet as the place is run like a Police state with permits required to gain entry to most parts and most land crossing are banned to Westerners.

After deciding to skip the trip to Lhasa for the moment we booked a trip to the Giant Panda Breeding Research Base for the following morning. After dinner we headed back to our hostel where we bumped into Dave & Ruth and we decided to have a few drinks in the Che Guevara bar next to our hostel. We soon found out that Dave & Ruth had also booked to Panda trip the following morning, it was quite funny how similar our route and choice of hostels and tours had been in China so far. We also discussed the possibility of doing a three day trip up the Yangtze to the three gorges together to keep the cost down.

It was a 6:30 rise for the trip to the pandas but we had indulged ourselves by booking an English Breakfast (our first since Sydney) before getting on the bus. The Panda Breeding Research Base is 10km north of Chengdu and has currently about 40 giant pandas. We arrived just as the Pandas were having their breakfast of bamboo shoots followed by more bamboo shoots and some even had a desert of even more bamboo shoots. Seems like quite a good life being a Panda in the reserve, lying back while someone throws you food every now and again. There was plenty of space for the pandas to roam about and the place seemed so much better than any zoo I had been in previously. An occasional panda would take a break from eating or lounging to stretch a leg, or even roll over a bit. We even saw two adventurous souls have a game of dummy fighting before deciding it was all to much effort and slumped back into their natural position of waiting for their next bamboo fix.

We then wandered up to the nursery where we saw hundreds of Chinese crowding round a window looking into one of the enclosures, once we fought our way to the front we saw a large panda holding it's tiny six week old cub. We then went to the enclosure that had the red pandas which were quite disappointing and more reminiscent of racoons than their giant namesakes. It wasn't long before we were back in the minibus and on the road back to the hostel. It's not the longest tour you will ever go on but both Joanne and myself really enjoyed it and was well worth the money and the reserve seems to have the right balance between research and tourist attraction without being detrimental to it's star turns.

That afternoon we trouped round some hostels and tour operators trying to find the best deal for our trip on the Yangtze. After that we headed back to the hostel to catch up on internet and an hours nap before going to dinner with Dave & Ruth. The four us tried to get a taxi but the first driver's eyesight was so bad he couldn't read our map so we decided it maybe wasn't the best idea to have him drive us about the busy streets, the next taxi we stopped wouldn't take us but eventually the third one took us but he made sure he took the longest route he could find to get us to the Mix Hostel to book our tickets for the Yangtze trip.

We then had dinner in a Hot Pot Restaurant but this wasn't the Betty variety favoured by the residents of Coronation Street but the same type we had on our first night in Beijing. The quality of the food was a lot better than the poor fare on offer in Beijing restaurant but afterwards the four of us were slightly disappointed and still a little bit hungry. We decided to avoid the taxi's and head back to our area of Chengdu and maybe hopefully find a bar to stop off in on the way back. The bar never really materialised until we were almost all the way home and to be honest we wished we had given it a miss as it cost a 100 Yuan (just over 7 pound) for four small Carlsberg beers when the night before we paid 20 Yuan for four large local beers which were better than any crappy imported Danish beer.

Next day we had planned to travel out to Leshan to see the world's tallest sitting Buddha carved into a cliff overlooking the confluence of the Dadu & Min rivers but by the time I woke I was feeling quite groggy and the 2 hour bus trip and various connections didn't really appeal. We later saw some great photos taken by Dave of the 71m high Buddha but he also mentioned quite a few hassles about getting there which made me feel slightly better about missing out. After a longer than planned sleep we wandered into central Chengdu and picked up some provisions for the trip the following day and had a wander round the shops. One interesting place we came across was the Manchester United Restaurant which I could only guess at some of the items on the menu as my Mandarin isn't as good as I would like at present. Here's some of the things I worked out by the use of the some pics on the menu.

Eric Cantonese style Noodles,
Roy's Salad with a Keane as Mustard dressing,
Cheese and Beckham Sandwiches,
Brian “Chocolate” MecLaire's

We were quite hungry but we didn't fancy any of the NeVille cuisine on offer and headed to a local bakery for some lovely bread with chives and garlic. After wandering past the massive statue of Mao that dominates the centre of Chengdu we went into the People's Garden to have a nosey at the locals relaxing. The park had a few lovely lakes and gardens where loads of locals were having their wedding photographs taken.

At one point Joanne and myself were stopped by two local girls holding a camera and a small round container with two gerbils inside, at first we thought they wanted us to take their photo. But that wasn't the case they wanted to have their photographs taken with us, so we tried to keep a straight face as they both got their photos taken in turn with us. The park was also full of people playing cards and MaJhongg in the numerous tea houses dotted around.

That night we were running a bit late and decided to go to a small place along the street for dinner, this turned out to be a great little noodle place where we each had a great big bowl of noodles with beef for the grand sum of 8 Yuan (60p back home), this was by far the cheapest meal we had eaten yet in China and as far as we can remember ever. We once again met Dave & Ruth for some drinks and talked over our plans for trip the next day to Chongquing where we would board for our three day trip up the Yangtze.

2005-10-31T18:32:00.000+01:00

Xian Gate Dub

Our second overnight train was just as crazy as the first. A family were in the beds opposite us and I missed the lovely delight of the baby girl wetting the floor in between the beds. This might be the time to explain the clothing of kids from about 6 months to 2 years old which consists of trousers with a split in them from front to back and normally no underwear or nappy to be seen. Now this might seem a great idea for potty training but I have seen children sitting in dirty streets and also sliding down chutes dressed in this attire - I shall say no more! We also had a couple of people with no beds one of which sat on Chris’s bunk for a while and shouted at each other for a couple of hours. So we were fairly tired when we arrived in Xian at 6.30am and after getting into our hotel the Canaan International right away we tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately we had a couple of drunken smokers next door who had their room door open and were shouting and laughing at each other so we managed to get our room changed.

We realised that we could get internet access and also this would allow Chris to view some games via the Celtic’s Channel 67 + network. So Chris set up his details and imagine our surprise later when we were phoned by someone from Celtic to confirm his details!! Normally this kind of thing would take weeks to be sorted out but for once Celtic definitely on the ball.

Xian has a large Muslim population which is renowned for it’s street food and as we were both in need of some sustenance we headed out to sample some of this. We managed to have our first chicken on a stick which was deep fried with a batter around it (not exactly the healthiest for breakfast) which was spicy although you could have added dried chillies, a chilly sauce or a pepper powder to it! We were not disappointed. We were both fairly exhausted after the amount of walking that we’d done in Beijing and Pingyao and decided to take things easier for our first few days in Xian. In addition to this we also booked into a much more plusher hotel than usual which was still under 15 pound a night.

Other than our first week in Beijing the weather here has been mainly grey also due to the amount of pollution in the air and Xian was much the same (we even had rain the first night). So it was back to the hotel in time for a quick snooze before waking Chris up for the Celtic game which they won 5-0 against Dundee United (I am not sure if I like this Channel 67 it’s making me wake up at the oddest of hours).

The following day we tried another street delicacy pita bread with extremely spicy chicken and pepper on it, again maybe not a great idea for breakfast but boy was it good! Our mission for the morning was to get to the train station and find our way to the tourist information office, well we must have wandered in and around the train station for over an hour looking for this place. We eventually found out that they had moved to the other side of town. We were trying to book a trip to the Terracotta Warriors and eventually went to a youth hostel to book it. This turned out to be another drama, as we turned down the street we couldn’t see the hostel but there was a huge pile of rubble with a digger on top of it. Someone asked us were we looking for the hostel and told us to follow him up over the rubble and down the other side (I think I would have cried had I come here and saw this as my accommodation!). Well we managed to book our tour and had to retrace our steps carefully over the rubble since there was only one entrance (doesn’t even bear to think about if there was a fire!).

It was Friday the day of our tour which included a decent breakfast in the ticket price. Got chatting to Ruth and Dave who we had bumped into the night before - they told us when they arrived in the morning there was a huge gate to the hostel and when they got up later on it had been demolished. Both of them were from London and so was another guy Nigel who sounded like Ian Dury. Our guide Abbey took us firstly to a large shop/manufacturer of Terracotta soldiers and a guide in there explained how they were made. We then went to a museum which had loads of ancient artefacts and a list of punishments that included death by poking, being boiled in water, hung drawn and quartered and the death of the individual, their family and even sometimes several of their neighbours - good idea if you don’t get on with the Jones’s. We then went for lunch in a huge restaurant but the most bizarre thing was being taken all the way up to the back of the restaurant and put into a room at the back (obviously used for Westerners). We all got chatting and had a bit of a laugh even although the food wasn’t that great.

We then headed to the Terracotta Warriors around 2 o’clock, this was the part we’d all been waiting for. The soldiers were discovered in 1974 by a farmer digging a well (he has now written his own book about it and when we were there he was doing signing sessions). The Army of Terracotta Warriors are over 2000 years old, and there are thousands of these soldiers and horses in battle formation. Over 10,000 pieces of weaponry were also found with no corrosion or rust due to their surfaces being treated and due to this when found were still sharp. An emperor decided that on his death he wanted to be surrounded by an army and hence the reason why these soldiers were made. It is a fairly amazing sight to see and there is still a lot of excavation work being carried out. One of the good things is that this is being done properly and the soldiers are being pieced together carefully. Our guide wasn’t up to much and we were whizzed around the site with a brief talk which was also included on boards around the place. This was in between being pushed, shoved and prodded by the thousands of Chinese tourists. We were also inundated by the street sellers trying to sell us all manner of trinkets including the fake copies of the Terracotta Warriors.

We didn’t feel too hungry that night after our big lunch so we decided to have a few more things off of the street vendors to keep us going. So we had that good old faithful chicken on a stick and also some delicious garlic and herb flat bread. We then were looking for somewhere for a drink and headed into the Moonkey bar which we had spotted the previous evening. The music sounded ok from outside so we went in to be surrounded by a sea of staff wanting to serve us (we were the only customers).
After one drink we decided to leave and to find somewhere with a bit more atmosphere, but despite being a Friday night we failed our mission and ended up back at the hotel before 10pm.

On Saturday we strolled around the Muslim quarter which was full of stalls and the ubiquitous Chinese crowds pushing and shoving as if their life depended on it. There have been calls in the local press that there should be a new event at the next Olympics in Beijing namely “Jostling” with China winning Gold, Silver and Bronze. There were also lots of different smells coming from the food vendors and we bought a deep fried cake with a fruit jam filling which Chris put into his mouth immediately even although it had just come out of bubbling oil “It’s hoooottt!!” he exclaimed, but they tasted much nicer than they sound.

We sharpened our bartering skills and bought packets of Mao and Cultural Revolution playing cards for a fraction of the actual price requested by the vendor. After this we headed back to the hotel through the main streets of Xian passing by hundreds of mobile phone shops. There are currently 377 million mobile phones in China making it the world's largest market.

During the day we stumbled on a lane full of bars and decided that this must be the “happening” place so after dinner we headed there only to be met by more disappointment with several couples sipping coffee or empty bars. We decided to head to the bar in the hostel to see if that faired any better, it wasn’t really much busier but we bumped into Ruth and Dave and had several beers with them.

We had a lazy Sunday just walking around the city buying some last minute things for our 16 hours train trip the following day to Chengdu. That night after dinner we settled down to watch another Celtic game well Chris did whilst I packed our bags. There wasn’t loads to do in Xian, but it was well worth it being here for the excellent street food, the Terracotta Warriors and only being charged for 1 days internet instead of 5.

2005-10-25T10:23:00.000+01:00

Last Train to Pingyao

We were both sad to leave Beijing as there was plenty of things there that we still wanted to do but onwards and upwards to our next adventure on an overnight train to Pingyao. We arrived in plenty of time to get on our train and managed to get onto our carriage but you would have thought that the train was about to leave with the amount of pushing and shoving going on. There were 18 carriages and out one had rows upon rows of 6 bedded cubicles with no dividers - just like a big dorm on wheels and then there were two small chairs with an even smaller table facing each cubicle. We sat on the seats for a while waiting for the train to go.

So the train took off on time about 7.30 pm and shortly after we both got settled into our middle bunks (we were even provided with a pillow and a thin duvet) and managed to read for a while until the lights were suddenly switched off around 10pm. So I was wide awake and left lying listening to all the noises around me whilst Chris was listening to the MP3. Well we had all sorts in our compartment there was a snorer, a sniffer, a stripper and a snoozer: The snorer believe it or not was neither Chris nor I but the guy on the top bunk, I was the sniffer (I had a bit of a cold), the stripper was a guy who came on later in the night and took of his trousers on our bunks - I had to turn away (Chris told me later that he had legging things on) and lastly that leaves Chris as the snoozer since both he and I only had naps throughout the night.

We got off in complete darkness at 5.30am and managed to eventually get a motorcycle cab to take us to our Hostel. So we drove in complete darkness into the ancient walled city (we could have been taken anywhere), Chris even spotted a street cleaner sweeping the streets with no light!! So we were deposited off at our hostel and woke two girls sleeping in bed which turned out later to be a table in reception and we were taken in through an unlit courtyard to our room which involved a few tricky steps. The bed was huge and both of us just fell into it without really taking much notice of our surroundings.

When we woke up we could smell the drains from the bathroom….not very pleasant. The room was ok but seemed to be a bit cold/damp and the bed well it turned out we were lying on top of bricks - apparently this was all the rage hundreds of years ago for beds in China. We then headed out past reception where we found 4 girls sleeping at a table. We didn’t want to disturb them so we quietly slipped past them onto the street. We wandered along several streets/lanes full of tourist shops selling your typical Chairman Mao things along with Chinese paintings and paper cut outs. Pingyao’s claim to fame is that this is where the first cheque was ever written and it used to be the financial headquarters for China during the Qing dynasty. Most of the buildings within the city’s walls are original from the early 1800’s and the wall surrounding the town is still intact. The place was thriving merchant city but when the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911 the city fell into poverty and there’s was no money available for modernising the buildings and streets. The city was named a world heritage site as it is a excellent preserved example of a traditional Han Chinese City. Several films have been shot here using the town as it’s backdrop. We went through an archway out onto a busy main street and walked for a bit with the locals staring at us again. We had lunch by grabbing a few small spring onion and garlic dumplings off of a stall which were so tasty we went back several times over the next few days.

We walked back through the town which wasn’t that big replying “Hello” to the kids several of them also even said how it was nice to meet us in very formal accents (obviously stage 2 of the English book). Plenty of restaurants seemed to have ‘English menus’ and ‘Western Food’ but we hadn’t had enough of the Chinese food yet, so we went into a small place which was busy downstairs and managed to get a seat on a small balcony for dinner. We ordered pork fried dumplings, a pork dish and a potato dish (both of which were local recipes). The dumplings came and were excellent - we were off to a good start. Then the main courses came with the pork being delicious but the potatoes turned out to be similar in taste to the small frozen potato fritters you can buy back home. The city had closed fairly quickly and by 9pm there was very little left open so we wandered slowly back to the hostel. The room was freezing but fortunately we did have air conditioning which doubled up as a heater.

The following morning we went onto the internet first and then decided to walk the 6Km Ming Dynasty wall around Pingyao. You paid for a ticket which seemed to get you into lots of places although there was no full list in English to be found which told you where you could go. As we walked around locals (adults and kids) would smile and wave up to us from the houses and streets below the wall. The buildings were all dark grey/black in colour and probably looked like Glasgow might have in the 1900’s due to the soot from coal fires and pollution from the surrounding factories. The houses are not allowed to be altered and have to remain the same but we aren’t sure if the locals are that happy with that. We saw cows, sheep, pigs and goats being kept in back gardens, corn on the cob and chillies drying on the top of roofs and a prison with several inmates waving at us (or maybe it was some backpackers in a really cheap hostel).

After this we headed for a well earned beer and whilst doing this found out why the locals were staring at us so much. Since I had a skirt on and Chris had shorts on we both had bare legs which the locals couldn’t understand as to them it was cold. A wee old lady pointed to my legs and gave a brrr sound whilst another woman walked by commenting on them (later on Chris had the same type of reaction from an old man). So after a beer and a chicken burgers (our first western food since our MacDonald’s in Japan) we headed back towards the hostel. The sun was starting to set and we climbed the Fengshui tower just outside our hostel and we quickly whizzed round the financial museum which also explained punishments before they closed the door on us at 6pm sharp.

A few words about the hostel apart from having a smelly room, being the only guests, no lights in the courtyard at night and the hardest bed in Asia we were also very disappointed by the staff. Anytime we asked for assistance or advice, even buying a bottle of water felt as if we were disturbing them from their sleep or food. We were never made welcome at any point in time and since found out it wasn’t just us they didn’t like as we’ve met another couple who were treated exactly the same. They also advertised their services for booking train tickets and tours but any enquiry was met with a curt ’No’ and no guidance on how to get them. So you won’t be surprised to see no link to the Yamen International Youth Hostel and if you are ever in this area don’t come here but read the next paragraph.

We had dinner that night in the Tianyuankui Hostel and had noodle soup and dumplings which were both delicious and we also managed to book our train from here with extremely helpful staff. This place was also a guesthouse and we really wished we were staying here as there were plenty of people around the place unlike ours.

On the Monday we decided to walk to the Shaunglin Temple which was 6km from the city. We weren’t bothered too much by the cyclo drivers trying to give us a lift and it took us just over an hour to get there. There was lots of restoration work being carried out around the buildings and pathways but internally a lot of the statues and buddhas needed some major work on them and some loving care to bring them back to their original splendour. We were a little disappointed in the temple as many of the statues were behind huge iron cages and you couldn’t see them fully but we would like to go back and see this place once it has been fully restored.

We had time to kill on the Tuesday but tried to tick off as many of the other museums and temples from the invisible list on our ticket. We went to the Rishenchang Financial House Museum which gave a little explanation of the rooms and the titles and job description of the people employed there. After a lunch we went into a Taoist temple and then the Confucius Temple which also held an International Photography Exhibition which had some great photos from around the world.

We also went into a Martial Arts place but the demonstration was 3 hours away and all we saw were numerous ancient looking implements for fighting (I tried out some of my Shaolin Buddha finger moves out on Chris who was soon writhing in agony on the floor). I saw what I thought was a religious festival but it turned out to be a Buddhist’s funeral procession. There were cars at the front, huge circular flower displays, a band, several men in chef’s hat holding food on plates and mourners following behind in the strange little golf carts you see all around town. We had a quick dinner and collected our tickets before having the second of our motorcycle cart rides through the city to the train station and our second overnight train journey.

2005-10-21T03:42:00.000+01:00

Beijings, crivvens, help ma boab

It was dark and misty when we arrived in Beijing but it didn’t take too long to get through immigration and into our taxi organised by the hostel. The hostel was about a half hour drive from the airport and as we zoomed along the motorway we got held up slightly with a crash that everybody slowed down to look at. I think this was our first indication that the roads were going to be a bit mad. We couldn’t find an ATM machine at the airport but the hostel kindly let us pay the next day after getting to an ATM. It was after 10 when we arrived so we decided just to have an early night so we could make the most of out first full day in China.

We were staying at the Red Lantern Garden Hostel a newly opened annexe of the Red Lantern Hostel about three streets from our building. During the day there was quite a bit of work going on in the hostel and at night the family took over the main sitting area so it felt like you were intruding slightly when asking for something from the bar, but the family were always very friendly and helpful. The main Red Lantern seemed more like your typical hostel with a nice central area for chatting with other backpackers and exchanging advice and tips on places in the city and further a field.

After sorting out our debts we decided to head to Tiananmen Square so we could get our bearings and get a feel of the city. The area the hostel was in was a maze of tiny crowded streets but once we made it out to the main road it was very straight forward to get to the centre of Beijing. The sky was slightly overcast as we wandered the manic dusty road, with loads of shops selling musical instruments, copy DVD’s & wedding dresses. We also noticed that there weren’t too many westerners about and that most people were staring at us but not in a menacing way but more of curiosity, if we smiled they would always smile back and usually say hello. We decided to try something from a street stall for breakfast, we used the universal language of pointing and raising a few fingers to indicate how many. I’m not sure if the guy realised that it was out first morning but he charged us 20 Yuan for 2 savoury pastries, we soon realised that the going rate for this kind of delicacy was between 1 and 2 Yuan. They tasted great but maybe just a bit spicy for first thing in the morning.

We passed some large department stores quite like the one’s that are everywhere in Japan but didn’t seem just as busy here. As we got closer to Tiananmen Square we noticed an increase in the presence of the police and army by ten fold, we also soon realised that all the 'not so secret police' were wearing the same beige Harrington style jackets. We passed a really nice entrance to something military and the guys in the beige Harrington jackets would only let you take photos from a certain point and if you crossed an invisible line they would approach you and ask you to step back. We watched them do this hundreds of times to the tourists every time we passed this area.

We were soon at the Gate of Heavenly Peace with the large painting of Chairman Mao at the north end of Tiananmen Square, this gate is also one of the entrances to the Forbidden City but we decided that we would investigate this later. So we crossed under the subway and emerged in the square just as the sun started to make it’s way through the grey skies. Tiananmen Square has many similarities to Glasgow’s George Square, both are covered in lovely concrete, both have a history of tanks being used to quell rebellious crowds and there’s also many a local trying their best to get some cash out of the unsuspecting tourists. The Chinese tourist industry is one of the first to benefit from China’s rapid acceleration into a fully blown capitalist superpower as most of the tourists who visit Beijing are Chinese. If you're after a genuine fake Chairman Mao watch with moving arms or a copy of an official first print of the wee red book (and I don’t mean the Evening Times one) then Tiananmen Square is the place for you as every few minutes you will have some dodgy looking geezer opening up the inside of his jacket to show you his wares.

We passed by Mao’s mausoleum but decided the queue was too big and to go there another day, so we went for some lunch and on the internet for a bit. We managed to get a cheap lunch of rice and beef for under 1.50 pound for the both of us, which wasn’t too bad after our breakfast scenario. We then wandered back through Tiananmen Square and into the Forbidden City, we didn’t enter the main complex but skirted round the side as it would take a whole day to explore. We headed back onto the main street we came down this morning and I jumped into the first hairdressers I could find, I had been putting off getting a haircut for quite a few weeks now because of the cost so I was quite glad that for 1.50 I got a reasonable cut and still had both my ears.

We went to a restaurant quite near the hostel which had been busy when we passed the night before and was again busy when we went in. There was no English menu but one of the staff came over and hooked a large pot to gas canister under our table, they then stuck in some stock with water and the pot began to boil up. Another member of staff took us over to the other side of the restaurant to what looked like the vegetable section in Asda as if it hadn’t been cleaned for a month and someone had left a lot of fish in it. So Joanne and I looked at each other and decided what the hell let’s go for it and started putting some vegetables, fish & pork on our tray. Back at the table we slipped the contents of our tray into the now bubbling pot and started to worry if we had enough toilet paper back at the hostel. Turned out the food was ok but not brilliant by any means but we both survived without any lasting effects.

Friday morning it was back down to the Forbidden City this time we paid our entrance fee and headed in, the place gets it’s name because it was off limits to Joe Public for over 500 years and was home to the Emperors of the Ming & Qing dynasties. I’m not sure of the exact size of the place but it is massive and after five hours we felt that we only scratched the surface it. We entered at the north entrance into some beautiful small gardens with lots of lion and dragon sculptures with many small pagodas that the emperors would disappear to get away from their daily duties. Lots of the small pagodas had different exhibitions on the various times of the Forbidden City’s history. After a few hours we eventually reached the central courtyards, this is where you start to realise that China has over a billion people and it seems at times that a good percentage of them want to get up close and mingle with you as you try and see some of the sites.

We’ve been to a large Chinese Emperor‘s compound in Vietnam a few years ago in Hue, but the Forbidden City has been preserved/re-created to a much higher standard and we were thoroughly impressed by the work that was on-going throughout the site. We could speak for hours about all the different rooms and pagodas but I think it would be best if you all just get on a plane and come over here as it’s definitely the best value you will get for 4 quid anywhere in the world. After a great day we headed back to the hostel to recharge the batteries, on the way back we took a slight detour in and out of all the small streets towards the hostel. At one point in a tiny street a local chap in his late 40’s or 50’s spotted and shouted out to us in voice straight from a Harry Enfield old time BBC sketch “Helloooooo How are you doing???????” but never stopped to hear our response, we just waved and said hello back but he definitely caught us off guard.

That night we headed out to the main street about ten minutes from out hostel for something to eat and we ended up in a large restaurant with the ubiquitous red lanterns outside but once inside we managed to navigate the picture menu and ordered a brilliant meal with crispy beef coated in a honey syrup, to be honest this was one of the best things I have ever tasted and made all our tribulations from the previous night’s dinner disappear. After dinner we wandered back to the hostel through all the street hawkers selling sport socks three for one Yuan and Copy DVD’s for less than what it would be for a tenth of a DVD rental back home.

Saturday morning soon turned into Saturday afternoon after a late rise but we got on the underground after our new lunchtime discovery. The local supermarket had a bakery which sold a real tasty pastry with a nut paste for about 7p and a potato and onion combo for about 14p, so after a nut pastry each and half a potato/onion combo thingy we where ready to take on the hordes of Beijing on the subway and local buses on our quest to the Panjiayuan market. We managed the subway without too many mishaps, for 12p you can get to any other station so it’s a cheap and great way to get about this sprawling city. The bus was slightly different as we pushed on to a already bustling bus, after a few stops with more people pushing on I’m sure I could feel the person’s kidney next to me pressing against my abdomen and a few other internal organs seemed to be in very close terms by the end of the trip. Once we squeezed ourselves off the bus a friendly local showed us the direction to the market.

The market had countless rows upon rows selling mostly the same trinkets and fake antique furniture and to be honest we were quite disappointed with most of the stuff. It just wasn’t like the markets back home: no counterfeit DVDs, no Duty Free Tobacco, no fake Burberry, no dodgy watches. The only thing we bought was an old Cultural Revolution poster advocating that the workers united will make China stronger, quite ironic since I haven’t done a stroke of work in almost a year and I’m sure some of you will say a lot longer. We thought we done quite well in the old bargaining getting the poster down to 40 Yuan from 150 Yuan but the following week we picked up a similar poster for just 10 Yuan without evening bartering (10 Yuan - roughly 70p). We decided to catch the rush hour and head back on the bus to see if we could get in the Guinness Book of Records for the most people on Public Bus.

Saturday night we headed to Chaoyang the supposed best area for bars and nightlife which took us quite a time to get to, a few changes on the subway and a good half hour walk. We managed to get another great meal on route and once again it was well under 5 pound for some fabulous food and decent beers. Once we found the bar street we soon realised it was more like a Mediterranean resort with all the reps trying to get you into their bars, offering happy hours and free drinks and with crowds of German tourists' seats all facing out to the street. We had been quite surprised by the lack of western tourists in Beijing but most of the ones we did see seemed to be large group of Germans in there 50’s and 60’s. After walking up and down we didn’t really see any great bars so we decided to head to the Poachers Bar that was recommended in the Lonely Planet book but after a drink we decided the book was over generous in it’s appraisal and we decided to cut our losses and hit the road back to the hostel. It was quite a nice night so we took the decision to walk it back, so after an hour walking along a large carriageway we made it back safe and sound, it’s amazing for all the people you see during the day how quiet the streets get at night.

We decided to have a lazy day on the Sunday and headed to Beihai Park and sit by the lake and catch up with our diaries and recharge our batteries after all the walking from the previous few days. It was a really hot day but it was a bit hazy overhead, we found a nice quiet spot that looked like a cross between a band stand and a ornamental pagoda. When I said it was quiet well it lasted for all of 5 minutes as a busload of Chinese pensioners turned up and squeezed in besides us, and then in the next pagoda thingy a band turned up playing traditional Chinese instruments accompanied by a woman who’s range was causing the local dogs some earache and bending spoons of picnickers near by.

The park was a lovely setting with a large white pagoda on an island across the lake from us, the park was also the location for Kublai Khan’s Palace whilst he was holed up in Beijing for awhile. On our way out of the park we passed through a small ornamental garden with willow trees, gold fish filled ponds, small timber bridges and thousands of people taking photographs in the late afternoon sun. We also passed the nine dragon screen which was quite impressive, a large wall covered on both sides with green glazed tiles and a gaggle of dragons (does anyone know what to call a group of dragons??? )

Back at the hostel we got talking to one of the local girls who worked there and we asked if she could recommend anywhere for trying the city’s speciality dish. We’re not sure if it’s called Beijing Duck or Peking Duck but nevertheless she told us about a small place not too far from the hostel, up a few dark winding lanes but we managed to find it after walking past it twice. We had a note from the girl in Mandarin describing what we wanted so we never had any problems ordering the food. The place was very basic and we could see into the kitchen and watched them pick the duck from the rack, but once the food was on the table we soon realised that we were in for a real treat. The duck was so succulent and not as fatty as it usually is back home, we soon devoured the whole duck between us and then had the biggest shock when we got the bill for the meal and our drinks. The total came to a grand 2.60 and that included two 600ml bottles of Beer, we weren’t sure if there had been a mistake but the bill seemed fine.

Next morning it was an early rise as we were off to the Great Wall, there are many different tours available and numerous locations with everybody telling you why some parts are better than others. We decided to head to the most famous part at Badaling, being so famous also meant that we had to contend with the crowds but we were starting to get used to all the bustling and shoving that seems to be the biggest participatory sport in China. We also decide to skip the organised tours and went to get a local bus, for the hardship of finding the bus and then asking in limited Mandarin for a ticket we managed to save 10 pound which would be the equivalent of a night’s accommodation. We managed to get on the correct bus and got to Badaling about 9:30 in the morning without any problems.

Once at the site you are immediately targeted by the hawkers trying to sell the usual tat and cheap t-shirts but being me I easily side stepped these guys but the next thing we came across before we got to the entrance was large enclosures with lots of brown bears. At this point more hawkers arrive now with fruit to feed the bears and so it goes on until you get to the entrance. Most of the people seemed to be elderly Chinese and they were all heading for the cable car or toboggan type carriages that take you to the higher parts of the wall, us being the fit young things that we are headed for the climb. Luckily due to the steepness the first part wasn’t too busy but you still got some old pensioner climbing a step an hour just in front of you. It was a beautiful day and the location was just stunning with the wall snaking away into the distance in all directions and the trees starting to turn red and orange as Autumn was slowly arriving.

Some parts of the wall were really steep and slippy but the hand rails were quite useful, I’m not sure how useful they would have been for the horses that used to trek these walls in the early days. You really have to watch where you walk to avoid all the spit and snot, no matter where you are you will hear the disgusting chorus of phlegm sliding up someone’s oesophagus and the splatt as it hurtles out of someone’s mouth and onto the ground. This is one of the most annoying things about China at the moment but the authorities as starting to raise awareness of the health implications of this. Once at the top it started getting a whole lot busier but we managed to push our way through the crowds and make it down the other side. We even managed to find our bus back to Beijing so all in all it was a successful day and the wall certainly lived up to our expectations, another must see even though you can’t see it from outer space as it was thought for many years.

On Tuesday we once again jumped on the Subway and headed to the Silk Market this turned out to be a massive department store with hundreds of stalls spread out over 6 or 7 floors. We survived the constant pleading from the sales staff to look at their merchandise with their whining “Very Cheap, Very Good, You will Like these”, but some of them were a bit over the top and started pulling at your sleeve and trying to usher you into their stall. After about half an hour we had enough and decided to make a break for the doors. So we headed down to the train station to try and book our tickets for the next part of our trip, everyone we’ve met who’s been to China in the past has always mentioned how difficult it is to get around the country so we didn’t know what to expect. At the station we found the Foreign desk where the woman behind the counter spoke some English so it turned out not too bad and we got two overnight hard sleeper tickets to Pingyao.

We once again wandered through Tiananmen Square in our way back to the hostel and a large floral display promoting the 2008 Olympics had disappeared and loads of young army recruits where sweeping up the remainder of the site. The motto for the Beijing Olympics is “One World, One Dream, One Big Building Site”, not all of that is strictly true but everywhere you go at the moment buildings are being torn down and new skyscrapers, fancy hotels and large shopping malls are appearing everywhere. My Uncle was here in late 70’s for a few months with Rolls Royce and I’m sure he would see quite a lot of changes since he was here almost 30 years ago but I’m sure if Joanne and I come back after the Olympics we would be lucky to recognise anywhere with the amount of changes that seem to be happening at present or planned to in the next year or two. One down side to all the building work is that the city seems to be covered in grey dust and mixed in with all the pollution and smog it sure plays havoc with your lungs and nostrils.

The night before when we had duck we noticed that there was loads of other small restaurants near by so we headed back in that direction to try one of the other places out. Once inside there was no picture menus, no English translations and no staff with any English so out came the Mandarin Book and with lots of patience and help from young waiter we managed to order 2 main course, 2 bowls of rice and 2 beers and not end up with something that we couldn’t describe so once again it all worked out well in the end. The meal on the first night in Beijing had worried us because we had heard that the food was good so we were glad that place was not the norm and every meal since has been great and the people in all the restaurants and street stalls have been really friendly.

Wednesday morning we once again headed back to Tiananmen Square this time to get in line with all the locals and queue up for a quick whiz round Chairman Mao’s Mausoleum, we had previously been Ho Chi Minh’s in Hanoi a few years back so we thought we would tick another dead communist leader of our checklist. We decided to head in separately as you can’t take any bags and cameras in with you, and both time we were the only non-Chinese person waiting in the line. As you marched inside the compound a small booth selling flowers comes into view and hundreds of the line just start running over and fighting to get to floral tributes. I managed to contain my self and stay in line and soon got up the steps which lead into a large open room with a huge marble statue of Mao sitting looking forward with a massive landscape painting covering the entire length of the room. At this point the queue splits in two as your filtered left and right into the next room as you slowly file past a large glass box with what looks like a plastic head lying in a bed, audible sobs and gasps could be heard by some of the other people passing through and a few seconds later your out the back of the building and into the throes of dozens of vendors each trying to outdo the next with the tackiest item with the Chairman’s moniker on it.

I find it really difficult to understand the Chinese people's relationship with Chairman Mao, everywhere we go you see his picture and I’m not just talking about official Government buildings or public places it’s in cafes, people's houses and in the line for the mausoleum people weren’t there like myself just to be nosey but to actually pay sincere homage. This is a man who’s policies and dictates caused the death of millions of his own countrymen and left his country in a third world state most of the time just to stroke his own ego and to remain central to everything in his peoples life. One of the stories I always remember about his so called “Great Leap Forward” economic policy of the late 50’s was that he thought the reason for bad crops one year was due to the birds eating all the seeds, so Mao ordered the country to stop all other work for a week to catch and kill every bird they could find. Not only was this a total waste of resources from all the important industries the experiment was a total disaster as the following year almost all the crops failed as they were eaten by the bugs and other beasties that the birds would normally have eaten. This and hundreds of ill thought plans sent China into famine of staggering proportions that an estimated 30 million people died from but some people put the figure nearer 60 million.

On our last day in Beijing we headed to the Drum Tower and climbed the steep steps to large room where for centuries the monks would bang certain drums to indicate the time of day for the people in the surrounding areas. From the Tower you get a good idea how the city is changing with large cranes in every direction but you can still see the glinting tiled roof of the Forbidden City and the shimmering water in Beihai Park. We strolled back through Lotus Lane where there are loads of bars and cafes along a small lake and then through the Hutong the name for all the small streets and lanes around our hostel. We stumbled on street markets and took loads of photos of the people as they got on with their everyday stuff just as we had to think about leaving them and get on the train our next destination. We both really loved Beijing and could have stayed a lot longer but we thought we’d better try and see some of the rest of this huge country.

2005-10-12T08:26:00.000+01:00

Land of the Missing Sun

On the Monday morning we were due to catch our train and manoeuvred our way through the metro carrying our bags in plenty of time to wait at the platform. This was no ordinary train though as we were booked on the Shinkansen (the bullet train) one of the fastest trains in the world. The trains had a distinctive aerodynamic nose and can reach speeds up to 300 miles per hour. Once we got settled the train left on time (unlike back home), we were sitting on the right hand side which would give us excellent views of Mount Fuji but unfortunately due to the cloud and mist we didn't see any of it. One of the other strange things was that every time a guard left the carriage they would stop at the door and complete a low bow to all the passengers. We had to change trains which was no problem at all before arriving in Kyoto exactly on time at 2 pm.

We hadn't booked accommodation as our Japanese was pretty poor so we headed into the tourist information who booked us into a ryokan (a traditional Japanese style inn) for several nights. Arrived at Ryokan Ihora (near the Gion district) into our room and what seemed like a different world. It felt like we were transported into a 60's James Bond movie and half expected a band of female assassins to spring through the sliding screens. We took off our shoes and donned the lovely slippers left out for us. The coffee table was knee height (mine not Chris's) with chairs on the straw matted floor and we were left a couple of kimonos to wear. There was no bed insight though as expected there were mats in the cupboard for us to lay out later……so we did - every last one of them (although I am sure we were only supposed to sleep on one of them.)

We then spent several hours wandering around the Gion district which was full of huge department stores and several lanes of undercover shops/market stalls before catching something to eat and finding an internet cafe. Woke up the following day to overcast skies so we walked bacl into the centre to the Tourist Information place to do a couple of admin things. It was raining cats and dogs when we came out so we took the metro back to hotel rather than walking over an hour in the rain and ate our lunch there where Chris ate his first Japanese pot noodle (he says it was much better than those back home). At night we wandered along the shops and we stumbled upon a temple in the middle of this district. It was lit up by loads of lanterns and there seemed to be some service going on as we could hear the chanting coming from inside. We ate our dinner in that good old Yoshinoya after being on the internet.

On Wednesday the weather was not fairing any better so we headed to the Hein Shrine which had a huge red gate entrance. We soon realised that Kyoto was the school trip capital of Japan as we passed about 3 classes of young school kids which was the theme for the rest of our days in Kyoto. Several of the kids (usually the boys) would shout 'Hello’and when we said it back they would giggle behind their hands. We then went to Shoren In temple which had huge camphor trees before heading to the Chion-In Temple. This had a huge main hall and there was some sort of service/ceremony being carried out as lots of older ladies sat singing and hitting bells and the hall was closed off to us mere mortals. We also sat in one of the temples for a while listening to the chanting of several Buddhist monks and the noise seemed to reverberate through the whole of the room. When we came out the heavens opened again so we headed back and chilled out. We bought our second souvenir which was two fabric wall hangings which is not too bad considering we've been away for 7 months.

Thursday turned out to be much better and we woke up to a glorious blue sky so we quickly changed our plans and rather than heading for Osaka we went back to the temples we'd been in the day before. The sky was a much better backdrop for the metallic red in the Hein Shrine. We then went into the Muruyama Park which was huge and wandered past the numerous school groups, the pond, a graveyard, several other temples and a massive white stone Buddha. This is where we saw loads of women wearing the traditional Japanese Kimonos before stumbling on an area where they have created loads of tiny streets with traditional Japanese houses which now just sell tat to tourists.

We walked back to the centre of Kyoto and into the magnificent Kyoto station building which is a huge structure of steel and glass with great views over the city and a scary sky walk for vertigo sufferers like myself. There is also a bamboo garden on the roof of the department stores for workers/shoppers to chill out with great views of Kyoto Tower and surrounding areas. That night we saw a guy with a belt on holding at least 20 mobile phones (wonder what would have happened if they all went off at once). The internet café here was similar to the one in Tokyo with free drinks but the best of all was that they had a free slush puppy machine.

On Friday we took our second trip on the bullet train and headed further west to Hiroshima. Once again Japan rails efficiency was never in doubt, as well as being very fast the Shinkansen are also very safe and in 30 years of operation they have never had any fatalities. We had already booked our accommodation so it was a short walk to the Flex hotel in which we had a small but lovely room with an added bonus of free internet connection. We dumped our things and went for a wander well Chris had spotted two CD shops in all of the five minutes that took us to walk from the station to the hotel so this was our first stop. We then managed to visit 4 out of the 5 shops that this chain had in Hiroshima and Chris bought a few things to keep him occupied.

At night we tried to find a certain area for dinner but we wandered around a place that was completely dead so we managed to find somewhere in a small place in a more happening area. The chef/owner came out from behind the counter and stood outside whilst we pointed to the plastic version of what we wanted in the shop window. Not sure if we have mentioned this but there's an area in Tokyo where you can go and buy plastic plate versions of all types of dishes which are supposed to look like the real thing, some are close but others are nowhere near the mark. So we sat at the counter and watched the dinner being made up and then we quickly devoured the delicious chicken tempura and pork and rice.

We then headed to a place called Mac's Bar which had thousands of CD's, I even have to say I think it may have put Chris' CD collection to shame!! We sat and had a few beers and got chatting to Alan from Ireland who was travelling alone throughout Asia before heading to Australia. The music was really good ranging from Bob Dylan to Belle & Sebastian with some choice Velvet Underground tracks and a smattering of Radiohead and Beck. Everywhere we’ve been on this trip we’ve heard Franz Ferdinand and we've even been known to have a dance to ‘Take Me Out’ - as we did on this occasion quite late into the night. Several beers later and Alan thought he'd better head home….well we left not long after and it was about 4ish when we landed back at the hotel.

Woke up the following morning to more grey/whitish sky, at least it wasn't raining. We walked along to the Peace Park and saw the A-Bomb Dome which is the symbol of the destruction of Hiroshima. The bomb exploded almost directly above it and it's structure has remained intact (although it's now propped up) and remains as a permanent reminder of what happened.

We walked through the Peace Park which holds many different memorials: the centotaph (containing names of all known victims which is updated on an annual basis), the Flame of Peace (will only be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon has been destroyed), the Children's Peace Memorial (inspired by Sadakoa, a 10 year old girl with leukaemia who decided to fold 1000 paper cranes a symbol of longevity and happiness who died before she could reach her target) this memorial now contains paper cranes from all over the world and lastly the Korean A Bomb Memorial, a large number of Koreans worked as slave labour in the factories and prisoner of war camps. It has taken several decades for the Japanese to recognise the fact that more than 1 in 10 people who lost their lives at Hiroshima were Korean.

We then went into the Peace Memorial Museum which tells the grim story of what happened on 06 August 1945. The museum had many displays, which thankfully were also in English, that explained the science behind the creation of the bomb, the decision why to bomb Japan and not Germany and the destruction and aftermath of the world's first atomic bomb used in warfare. It describes the allied decision not to carry out air raids on Hiroshima beforehand so that they could understand the full power of their new weapon. For days leading up to the bombing and afterwards the USA took many aerial photographs of the city to enable them to assess the devastation. Many thousands of people lost their lives almost immediately and thousands of others suffered for years afterwards due to the effects of radiation including rescue workers. There were many tragic stories in particular those of the school children whose parents only had clothing or school bags left as reminders. This museum definitely is a thought provoking place and drives home the realities of atomic warfare. The museum doesn't hold back in it's condemnation of the USA using the atomic bomb, but it also recognises that the Japanese forces also carried out many atrocities throughout Asia and the South Pacific.

We had a fairly relaxing night (following our late one the night before) and watched the Lithuiania vs. Japan football game on tv with Celtic's Shunuske Nakamura scoring and the rest of the night chatting to folk on the internet. The following day we headed back to Tokyo on the ever punctual Bullet Train. These trains hold far more people probably in one carriage than we hold in three back home and are extremely clean. We ate some sushi on the train which was really nice and promptly arrived in Tokyo. Our hotel room was even smaller than the last one although we did manage to get free internet access this time. We ate dinner in the hotel restaurant and had dim sum which was really good along with a main course.

Our last few days in Tokyo were slightly hampered by the weather and a bank holiday which we knew nothing about. On the Monday we went to Shibuya and wandered the shops for a while. To get out of the rain for a while we headed into one of the many amusement arcades and had a shot on a drum game, where you had to beat a drum and cymbals as they appeared on screen, Chris won by two points but he did have a warm up game before hand (well that’s my excuse anyway). We had lunch in a wee counter place with two huge bowls of noodles - they were lovely. Headed back towards the station and noticed the massive Shunuske Nakamura billboard above the main department store advertising adidas.

The following day we headed to a photography exhibition in Ebisu which was closed on Mondays (unless it was a bank holiday) and guess what the Monday was a bank holiday so we missed the exhibition. We had also planned to go to the Sapporo beer museum and do their tour but this was also closed for the same reason. So we headed off on the subway to Tokyo Bay across the Rainbow bridge. We wandered through the Sony shop which had Eye Toy games…..well again Chris proved he was the champion - I could hardly get the game started whilst he was chopping cucumber like I have never seen before and squishing tomatoes all over the place. We had look in a Coca Cola shop selling hundreds of different merchandise with the world famous logo. Afterwards we ate a great lunch in a Sake Brewery called Hanashibe. We had decided that we couldn't leave Japan without experimenting with their local drink so we bought a bottle of Sake from their shop for later.

We then passed the big wheel and no matter how much Chris tried to persuade me I wasn't going on it and certainly not in their see through cabs. We stumbled upon the Toyota Exhibition which isn’t all just the latest models of cars, we went inside a huge stimulator which took you around the Fuji Formula One course where you could feel every bump and gear change. We also had a roam through their small car museum before another lengthy walk through a bizarre designer shopping centre called Venus Fort which had a fake moving sky which changed colours. We toasted our last night in Tokyo back at the hotel with the Sake, pot noodles and sushi. The sake didn't last too long as we only had two small glasses each but since it was fairly potent at about 50% proof it was probably just as well.

We had an early rise on our last day for our travel to the airport and took the long train as opposed to the express train. We also met this really strange American who took the liberty of depositing himself opposite us on the train in a fairly empty carriage and decided to shout at us all the way to our stop. His stories ranged all mainly around him and his famous brother in law (whom he didn't name but apparently is a Thespian). We finally arrived at the airport in time for our flight to Hong Kong and then onwards to Beijing.

2005-10-02T09:48:00.000+01:00

It's So Japaneasy

We didn’t arrive in Tokyo until after nine at night and by the time we got through immigration and picked our bags up it was closer to ten before we headed to the train station. We had to cross almost the entire city to get to our hotel and once we worked out the psychedelic spaghetti like Tokyo subway map we where soon on our way. The journey took about an hour and a half with two line changes, but luckily it was quiet and we could get a seat with our backpacks without any problems. Our Hotel the Tokyo Inn was in an area called Magome but there didn’t seem to be much happening here apart from people passing through. The room was very small and the bathroom even smaller, Joanne had to have her knees fully bent in the bath so there was no chance for me to stretch out and soak. We decided to have an early night so we could have a early start the next morning.

The subway station was right beside the hotel so we decided to get a Tokyo day pass that would get us onto any Tokyo Subway line and the Circular JR line. We decided our first stop would be the central Tokyo station which had a tourist information centre so we could pick up some maps and information in English. We had two changes to get to our destination but we never waited more than two minutes for a train. The trains where busy but not packed as we had waited until just after rush hour, once we got our maps and stuff we decided to have a quick look round. We seemed to be in a business district with huge offices towering above us, but on the ground floor of all these offices where shop after shop of all the most famous designer brands like Gucci, Louis Vutton, Armani, Tiffany’s and so on. We had a look at some of the shops but I didn’t see much I liked so we decided to look for somewhere for lunch.

One of the flight attendants on our flight recommended checking out the basement floor of most department stores for reasonable priced food so we did as he said and after picking one from a dozen of small restaurants we jumped in for our first taste of Japanese food. The restaurant was called Fumotoya and it was mobbed with business people having lunch. The décor was really cool but the staff spoke as much English as we spoke Japanese, but we managed to order a great lunch with the help of a picture menu and lots of pointing and nodding. We both had a small bowl of miso soup then Joanne had a chicken rice dish and I had beef and noodles, the food was excellent and it was all washed down with green tea.

It was still quite overcast so we decided to hit the shops and jumped back on the subway to Shinjuku, there was a large shopping centre just as we got out subway so we decided to head to the top and work our way down. Top floor Tower records, supposedly the best stocked record shop in Tokyo. The place was massive and covered three floors, it also had a huge book and magazine section. It was the day of the new Franz Ferdinand CD Japanese release so we got to hear most of it while we browsed about, they had quite a few large displays promoting the album and showing the new video. The CD prices were ok probably equivalent to HMV back home but Tower was almost the most expensive record shop in Glasgow when it was open, so I refrained from increasing my collection any further. The remaining floors of the shopping centre were filled with loads of sports and fashion shops selling well known western brands. We spent the next few hours blissfully wandering the busy shops people watching as much as window shopping, the Japanese sure like to shop.

After a while we decided to give our feet a rest and started our hunt for an internet café. The lonely planet guide mentions that there’s not that many internet places in Tokyo, but we managed to find one quite quickly. Once inside we soon realised it was more than just your usual internet café with some clapped out PC’s and plastic bucket seats that we’ve been used to the rest of the way round on our trip. First you are allocated a room number and given a free ice cream and told to help yourself to as much free coffee or soft drinks as you wish. Once in your private room you have a large TV, DVD Player, Playstation 2, PC, comfy leather chair with foot rest and access to an extensive library of magazine, books, DVD's and games. We only really wanted to check our emails so all the extras were wasted on us apart from the ice cream.

When we emerged from our private rooms into the neon lit streets it suddenly felt like we had really arrived in Tokyo, the place was manic with business men making their way home, high pitched juveniles shrieking to their friends and a few dazed tourist bumping into each other as their eyes jump from one flashing light to the next. My first ever full time job was with a sign making company and for a short time I trained in the art of making neon tubes, this is a process that is a lot more difficult than it looks and one that I never really mastered and was quickly moved onto other tasks. So I had a lot of respect for the work that created the millions of iridescent tubes glowing above my head advertising things I couldn’t read nor understand.

Some of the guys we met on our trip in Peru had recently been in Japan a few moths before reaching South America and has tipped us off about a few things in Tokyo, so it’s with thanks to Sharpy, Tubbsy and Matt that we found a place for our next meal. The Yoshinoya restaurants are Japan’s answer to McDonalds serving quick cost effective Japanese food, which can be found not to far from any subway station. Over our two weeks in Japan we returned to Yohinoya to fill up on the miso soup, noodles and rice on many occasions. It had been a long day so after some walking about the neon lit streets we jumped back on the subway and back to Magome to rest our weary feet.

Next day we went for the cheaper day pass that got you onto all the subway stations apart from the circular JR lines, this saved us a few pound each and we could get to everywhere we wanted but maybe via a few extra stations. We headed to the Ginza district to see the Imperial palace, well you can’t actually get in to the palace as it is only open to the public two days of the years. So we took some photos and headed back to Ginza and to the Sony Building to play with all the new gadgets and some that were still in development. The place was spread out over 5 or 6 floors and we played with robot dogs, listened to Franz Ferdinand on headphones that cost more than my stereo and TV back home, played the latest football game on the Sony PSP which has Shunske Nakamura and Zico (legendary Brazilian footballer who now manages Japan) in all their marketing campaigns and whiled away an hour so without spending any of our hard earned Yens. Well I say hard earned but being unemployed and homeless for seven months certainly has it drawbacks when in a city with so many great shops with prices tags to match. We noticed on the map there was a Godzilla statue in the area so we walked a few street to where it was on the map and once we got there we both nearly fell about laughing. We were expecting a gargantuan replica of Japan’s biggest movie star but what we found was a two foot model on a 4 foot plinth stuck in a corner near a subway exit.

Since the sky was still quite overcast we decided against sightseeing round the cultural highlights and headed instead to Akihabara home to Tokyo’s world renowned electrical and gadget district. We wandered from Ginza past Tokyo station which had a large exhibit featuring a F1 racing car and some genetically elongated Japanese girls in short mini dresses and big boots sponsored by some company called The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Akihabara must have over a 1000 shops selling endless amounts of MP3 players, Cameras, Computers, DVD players and the ubiquitous mobile phones and with the helium voiced sales staff squeaking out the reason to go to their shop and not the one next door selling exactly the same goods. The prices are definitely cheaper than back home but maybe not as cheap as Bangkok or Hong Kong so we didn‘t pick up too much but I‘m sure if there was an electrical appliance you’re after then you would find it here no problem. The area also had loads of shops selling Japanese Comics & Animated Movies (Manga) but some of this stuff was a bit weird and a bit different from the Beano and Dandy. Every newsagent has thousands of comics on sale and it’s not unusual to see loads of businessmen engrossed in them on the subway.

Friday morning we caught the subway to Ueno and wandered about the Ameya-yokocho market which was the famous black market district after World War II but now just sells the same counterfeit goods you can find in most markets around the world. This is where we saw the fake Celtic strips with Nakamura and the number 25 on the back, the quality wasn’t too bad and they even had a copy of the new Green away kit which was only released in the UK a few weeks before hand. We were in a shop the night before that had a large display showing a Celtic Strip and loads of cuttings from Nakamura's first few games for Celtic but I’m not sure if either all the strips where sold out or they don’t have the distribution network set up yet to cash in on the interest. We picked up a hot takeaway box for lunch which had some rice, salmon and some chicken tempura which was once again very tasty.

In the afternoon just as the sun came out we went on a free guided tour of Ueno Imperial Park with an English speaking volunteer. The volunteer was in her late 50’s and spoke very good English and had a good sense of humour. We were told some of the history of Tokyo’s first public park and how it was once the highest point in Tokyo. The park is also home to most of Tokyo’s homeless who sleep under tarpaulin in the northern end of the park, while we were there a Christian charity was having a service and afterwards they would give out food and clothing to the homeless.

We also went to a Buddhist temple where the guide showed us the correct etiquette for using the water purifiers at the front of the temples. The temples were very beautiful and we had a chance to look around as we were the only ones there. We then saw giant stone lanterns, monuments to fallen Samurai, 5 storied Pagodas, fountains and countless other shrines. The ninety minutes flew passed and was a great way to learn a bit more about the area and people so if you ever make it to Tokyo ask at the tourist information office about free tours by the SGG (Systematized Goodwill Guide) club. Once we said our goodbyes to the guide we headed to the Shinobazu pond which was split in to three main ponds. Two of the ponds are completely covered in water lily pads and the other is a boating pond with large pedalos in the shape of swans for hire.

After wandering about the park we headed back to the subway to catch some of the shops in Ginza. We walked and walked as it turned from day to night and streets slowly started to glow with the massive billboards and neon signs but once again it was all designer palaces thronged by the hip young things throwing their money at French bags, Italian footwear and Swiss watches. I’m not sure what the average wage is in Tokyo but on the subway nearly everybody has an Ipod, tiny mobile phones and wearing really smart expensive clothes. Since we’re not hip young things with money to burn we had some dinner in the cheap and cheerful Yoshinoya. We were quite intrigued by a massive sign for a shop called Don.K which turned out to be Japan’s answer to Poundstretchers but with a few twists. It had all the usual stuff like cheap aftershave, Rolla-Cola, cheap plastic toys, Pink Balaclava’s and sports socks. Yes Pink Balaclavas and nurse’s uniforms popped amongst all the usual banal stuff you usual find in bargain basement shops. After getting some provisions it was back on the subway back to Magome for another well earned rest.

When we woke in Saturday morning it was another glorious day so we put on our sunscreen and headed out for another day pounding about Tokyo. We arrived at Omotesando Subway and walked along past another collection of designer stores this time interspersed by loads of small café’s and coffee shops mobbed by people showing off their best clothes and trying very hard to look very cool. At the end of the street we came across a totally different crowd of poseurs, the cos-play-zoku (Costume Play Gang) are young teenage girls dressed in some of the most outrageously over the top get ups you could ever imagine. Some of them are in Little Bo Peep, others are dressed as children’s cartoons characters like Pokemon and some in weird goth like creations all topped off with massive boots and a million beads or ribbons.

After people watching for a bit we had a quick wander round Shibuya-ka park with it’s massive Shinto shrine one of the biggest gate like shrines in Japan but the one we see today is only a replica as the original was destroyed in bombing raids by the Americans during World War II. We then headed to the nearby Takeshita Dori area which is a bit like Ashton Lane or the Merchant City in Glasgow but a hundred times bigger. This is where the cos-play-zoku shop and the there are hundreds of cool little boutiques, record shops and cafes. We came across a shop selling Disney character clothing for dogs and another selling English football hooligan memorabilia. We also spent half an hour in the Beatles shop where I could quite easily have spent hundreds of Yens but Joanne kept reminding me that I’m unemployed and homeless. There was also quite a few label shops like X-Large, Triple Soul 5 and Stussy where I would normally pick up a t-shirt or two but this being Japan there’s not much of a market for X-Large stock so I had to once again stick to my Window Shopping role.

We headed back to the hotel to get changed and have some dinner as we planned to go out for the night at hit some of the bars as we had been very well behaved all week. The hotel’s restaurant was very good and we especially enjoyed the dim-sum. We got the subway to Roppongi which supposedly had Tokyo's best night life, so we decided to have a look about first before diving into the first pub we see. This took a bit longer than we thought and with so many bars to choose from and so many touts trying to get you into their bar or club. The first bar we went into was a reggae bar on the fourth floor which the tout told us was beginning to get busy, but once we got into the bar we found out we were the only one’s inside and a small beer would be 800 Yen which is about £4, so we made our excuses and headed back down to the street.

The first bar we had a drink in was called Gas Panic one of may of the same name throughout Tokyo, as we walked in there were people dancing on the bar and the place was mobbed but we managed to get a drink in the upstairs bar which was a bit more sedate but this wasn’t really our kind of place. So further up the street a young Canadian guy who was touting for a bar that had just opened that night gave us half price passes for the Dollar Bar. Once again it was on the fourth floor but this time it wasn’t empty but there were two other people sitting in this beautiful bar with all the best of fittings, plasma TV’s but has as much atmosphere as the sea of tranquillity. So once again after one drink it was back on the street looking for the so-called happening bars of Roppongi. The next place was the Kingston Town bar which once again wasn’t too busy but the music was great so we stayed in here for a few drinks. The DJ was a 7ft Jamaican guy wearing a White suit and a large fedora hat and between playing some of the best music I have heard in a bar in moths was also playing darts for drinks against some other Jamaican guys. On the TV screens dotted about the bar was the 2005 Miss Dancehall competition and if you know anything about Dancehall Reggae you will realise that the screens were full of young Jamaican girls shaking their plentiful rears and anything else that jiggled at the judges, audience or anything that happened to be in the Caribbean that night. Some of these girls are known to inject there backsides with chicken fat to increase their chances of impressing the judges in this very serious Jamaican competition. After Joanne took a few notes on some of her favourite moves it was time to move to another bar.

Next stop was the Motown bar which was full of drunk middle age Japanese business men singing and dancing along to some of the most awful Euro Pop and 70’s Disco records ever to be heard. There was one guy we noticed up dancing who was cradling a bottle of beer as if he had known it all his life and was deeply in love and another guy who had obviously been to the Kingstown Town bar and was shaking his behind in all directions in hope of a few extra points. The beers in all the bars ranged from 500 to 800 Yen so to be honest it wasn’t a lot more expensive than drinking in Glasgow City Centre but the night was still young and had a few more twists before the end.

We decided to go to one more bar before we hit the road back to Magome so our last pub for the evening was the Geronimo which was facing the subway station, once inside we were quite surprised to find the small bar completely mobbed and what seemed like a mad party. We managed to get a place in a corner to stand and sip our Coronas, a few minutes later a girl in front of us reaches over the bar and hits a large gong with a drumstick. Within the next few minutes we were handed a shot of some cocktail because this girl had banged the gong, this happened nearly every ten minutes and over the night far to many to count. We never did really find out what it was all about but supposedly if you bang the gong you have to buy everyone in the bar a shot, there must have been about 40 to 50 people in the bar.

We got talking to Angel & Jane two girls from the Philippines who where standing next to us in the bar, Joanne had been asking them if it was one of their birthdays as they had banged the gong. The conversations got a bit hazy after this but we had a good laugh when we brought the camera out and started taking loads of silly group photographs, as the night wore on the faces and poses where getting more and more contorted. At about 3:30am we called it a day, said our goodbyes and headed down to get the subway. Once outside we soon realised that the subway was closed so it was into a notoriously expensive Tokyo taxi, which was only £16 and it did get us back to our hotel a lot quicker than the subway would.

Well we never saw much of Sunday morning but by lunchtime we were in booking our train tickets for our journey to Kyoto the next day. We had hoped to wander round some of the second hand camera shops in Shinjuku but we could only find one and it didn’t really have what we were after, but every cloud had a silver lining. On some of the small lanes and side streets behind the large department stores we found hundreds of small specialized record and CD shops, so I had a great afternoon browsing reggae, northern soul, Indie and sixties shops. There was also so many live bootleg concerts and DVDs available I’m sure if I looked long enough I would have found a Static, Limehouse or Twister CD for sale, even though the furthest east we ever played was Cowdenbeath. These where a few of the bands I was in when I still thought I was going to have a career in music before realising I was destined for a life stuck behind a desk numbing my brain.

After Joanne was totally bored by the fifth Dub parlour we had been in we decided to try and find an internet café to catch up on some emails. You would think that with Tokyo being the modern metropolis that it is it would be easy to find somewhere with an internet but no it was a nightmare, the one we had been in a few days earlier was closed so we wandered for hours before we eventually found somewhere. After that we had to find an ATM as most cash machines in Tokyo don’t accept cards from outside Japan, so once again it was another wild goose chase for an elusive Citibank ATM which took a good 50 minutes. By this time it was 9:30 and we where really hungry so we decide to got to a Curry place we had seen a few hours earlier. Before you enter you select your choice of meal and accompaniments from a vending machine out on the street, once we selected our Chicken Kormas and Nan’s we clambered into the tiny restaurant and handed over our tickets from the vending machine and waited a few minutes before we where served two massive meals with two gigantic nans, it’s always a worry when you start eating something bigger than your head. Another great low cost meal in Tokyo so it is possible to Tokyo without spending a mint, but I’m sure you would probably enjoy it a bit more if you had a bit more to splash.

We loved our first six days in Tokyo and we know we only skimmed the surface but the place is filled with fun and the people are very friendly but just a little shy. We also never had to many language problems which is good going since we only knew about 5 phrases in Japanese.

Arigato - Thanks
Konnichiwa - Good Afternoon
Kombanwa - Good Evening
Sayonara - Goodbye
Wa doko desu ka skanku dreadu shoppe - Where is the Dub Reggae Shop?

Next morning it was off to Kyoto on the Bullet train.

2005-10-01T05:05:00.000+01:00

Dear DubCentral

Here`s some comments we`ve had about the blogger from old & new friends over the last few months.

Chris & Joanne

Your trip sounds shite. We're glad we stayed at home. All that foreign food like pizzas....yeuch!!! And the weather? Don't get me wrong, I like it warm, but not that warm. Give me a balmy 17 degrees and the easy availability of Greggs, Irn Bru, junkies and sectarianism any day. I especially thought that the whole of South America sounded like a complete waste of time and money. Once you've seen one Aztec or Mayan temple you've seen them all. The pictures of Macho Pishoo just looked like a pile of rocks with a few hills and sweaty middle class drop-outs swarming all over it. And San Fransisco sounded as if you needed to wear a full metal jacket rather than flowers in your hair. F*** that for a holiday! I'll stick to Benidorm. You can get your English breakfast, everyone speaks the King's Own, a Red Lion and a pint of bitter on every corner...and you've got the weather. What more would you want?

Anyway, I hope for your sake the second half of your trip picks up a bit so at least the year off hasn't been a complete disaster.

Cheers!

Vinny
Head of English
Larkhall High
Darkest Lanarkshire

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Dear Mr DubCentral

We haven`t taken to kindly to some of your observations and comments about our beautiful country in you so called travel journal. We have your name on a list and you will never darken our door again whilst I`m in power.

Thanks but no Thanks>

Helen Clark
Prime Minister of New Zealand<

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Hi Chris & Joanne

Enjoying reading about all your exploits, remember if you meet any good looking female capitalists who need protecting remember to pass on my name, rank and phone number. Keep safe and don’t believe half the lies they tell you.

Name: David J. Whyte
Rank: Outsider
Likes: Public Order, 60’s Beat Combos and the early works of Dostoevsky.

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Dear Chris & Joanne

Thanks again for mentioning my show in the blogger, since then it’s shot up three places in the ratings and we‘ve been nominated for a few Emmy’s. Also looks like the Mighty Thistle might get to play Rangers next season if we can win promotion. Anyway Sharon says hi and says if you can remember the third verse of “You cannae shove yer Granny” please get in touch.

Thanks again.

Craig Ferguson (a.k.a Bing Hitler)

2005-09-27T13:23:00.000+01:00

The Great Barrier Spew

Flew over the Great Barrier Reef before we landed in Cairns airport and were picked up by the Tropic Days Hostel. We arrived just in time for their pizza night and all you can eat for $8 with a free drink….well what more can you ask for. The hostel also sold beer and wine so all we did was kick back and relax (the unpacking could wait ‘til later). We sat chatting to Tracey and Maria from England during the pizza. Then the owner’s daughters were brought out to sing, tell jokes and do some Irish dancing (in the full costume) for us. They passed round a hat as some of the money went to them and some of it was put to charity. We then had a quiz for which we had to read a brochure about On the Wallaby Tours describing several of their tours into the rainforest. The quiz was a mix of questions from the brochure and several trivial pursuits questions with a prize of 2 for 1 on a day tour into the rainforest. So out of about 30 to 40 people Chris and I were equal with another couple so the four of us were all put individually against each other and yet again that lucky Mr Reilly came on top with 6 out of 9 questions right...the rest of us only got two. So as he went up to collect his prize with another big grin on his face he managed to win us a day trip.

The following day we went into the centre of Cairns which was a 15 min walk from the hostel. There is a huge shopping centre where we managed to grab some breakfast before catching up with all our admin stuff for the next part of our trip. That night we caught the free bus into the centre and took our free dinner ticket which the hostel supplies for the Woolshed pub. In the Woolshed you can pick up Spaghetti Bolognaise and chilli for free or pay $5 to upgrade to another main course which we both did. The portions were huge and the food was good. Since we were up early the next day we headed back after dinner and chilled out with a few drinks before heading to the squeakiest bed we’ve ever slept in!!

It was Saturday and our Great Barrier Reef Day and both of us were down to have a dive although we weren‘t sure whether we would go through with it. We were sailing with a company called the Ocean Free, the boat was a sailing boat and we had to sit inside for a bit while they crew told us safety rules and a bit about the diving….by this point I was starting to feel a little rough so I went back outside. I was trying my best not to chuck up and then I was drenched from head to foot by a huge wave splashing over the deck of the boat. Chris sat beside me and at one point I thought he had gone over the side, unfortunately (oops! I mean fortunately) he hadn’t but the wave had knocked him off the seat and onto his knees. Shortly after this I really had no option and after checking the direction of the wind and timing the dips of the boat I managed to discretely part with my breakfast in full view of everyone on the boat. The crew were great and within 10 seconds Bones (a Canadian who was the spitting image of Drew, a guy Chris used to work with) gave me some water but shortly afterwards it was salt water as we were drenched again by another wave coming over the bough of the ship.

When we anchored near Green Island I couldn’t get off the boat quick enough but had to go on a small boat which was even more rougher. I had to sit in the shade on the island in the most expensive sun loungers ever for about 2 hours before I could eventually pull myself together. Strike 2 to the travel sickness. Our lunch was brought over and I managed to eat some of it without the seagulls stealing any. Then Chris was told he had to leave if he wanted to dive...so there I was left on my own on the beach feeling miserable whilst Bones took Chris down for a 1 to 1 scuba dive. When he came back off of the boat ‘Grinning Like a Cheshire Cat’ doesn’t even begin to describe the grin on his face. He had a great time and saw loads of different coral and supposedly found Nemo which made me feel much better.

When I eventually got back on the boat and I was in time to do a little bit of snorkelling….I managed to see a clam close over and ‘Nemo’ well it was a cousin of Nemo or something and several other fish. Definitely the highlight of my day!
The journey back home for me was much of the same since somebody nicked the last of the travel sickness pills so I sat outside only I was freezing this time as wave after wave hit us until eventually we drew up the sails and went without the motor. Meanwhile ‘living the life of Reilly’ Chris had wine, cheese, fruit and cake and boy did he eat it whilst I struggled hard and managed just to keep my lunch down. Despite feeling a bit rough we both really have to recommend this trip as the crew were excellent, from the start they remembered everyone’s name and were extremely attentive to everyone.

We arrived back at the hostel in time to remove at least 2 layers of salt from our bodies before heading down to the Woolshed with an Irish girl called Maria who we met on the boat trip for a well deserved steak and mash which was great. Chris had persuaded me to go and watch the footie since it was on in P J O’Brien’s (another classy Irish Pub not). This place was massive with one half of the pub showing English Premiership games and the other showing that’s night’s SPL games. Meanwhile in the centre the bar staff were doing Coyote Ugly dance routines on the bar!! A bit like trying to watch the football in the Ba Da Bing club in the Sopranos, there was also a live band from Rotoruro in New Zealand playing bad middle of the road rock music a bit like Bryan Adams. So after watching Hearts beat Rangers we sat and watched Celtic struggle to beat Inverness Caley I then managed to escape and head back to the hostel.

Sunday started off as a day of rest as we didn’t get back until 2.30 so it was up late for a quick brekkie before heading down to put in Chris’s underwater camera in and a few hours on the internet meant that our chance to chill in the sun was gone. We had heard about a really good restaurant from Elizabeth in Trinity Beach and it didn’t look too far from Cairns, so we got our glad rags on and headed out on the bus. After 45 minutes on the bus we were starting to get worried that by the time we got there the place would have shut but luckily the place was still open. The place was called L’Unico an Italian restaurant ran by Aldo (Elizabeth’s friend Maria’s brother), who managed to get us a great seat and slipped us a few free drinks and a great desert not bad for a Chelsea supporter. We both had such a delightful meal and managed to waddle to catch the bus back without any problem and got ourselves organised for another early start.

The following day was our freebie tour with On the Wallaby Tours. We were picked up by Bart who was to be our guide for the day. After everyone on the bus doing a bit of an introduction of themselves and what they were doing we soon arrived at our first stop overlooking a valley with a bluey grey haze over the landscape which was due to the Eucalyptus trees. We then went into the forest in the Atherton Tablelands to see the Cathedral Fig Tree which was thousands of years old....these trees actually grow from the top down on existing trees and sap all of the energy wrapping itself round it until eventually it dies and the fig tree has taken over. We had a walk through the rainforest where we saw a Water Dragon (a type of lizard) and the rear end of a kangaroo known as Muscurat so called as the explorers thought it was a rat.

We then had lunch at a lake and saw some turtles swimming in the water. Following this was the treat of the day we went to three waterfalls. The first one was Millaa Millaa falls where we went into the water for a swim underneath the falls....it certainly took your breath away as the water was absolutely freezing. We then went to the Zillie falls where we had some tropical fruits for a snack and then onto the Ellinjaa falls before heading home. The rainforest was so cool in comparison to the heat in Cairns.

We were dropped off just in time for the Aussie BBQ back at the hostel, which was to be a fitting end to our time Australia with our first Barbie. After a quick change we got ourselves sorted out for the BBQ sitting next to Maria and Tracey. The menu included crocodile and kangaroo along with your usual sausages and stuff, all of which was excellent. After this there was a didgeridoo competition with the owner showing us the white man‘s didgeridoo - a plastic pipe and funnel along with the more traditional ones. Several people were picked to have a go along with other members of the audience who had to jump and hop like a kangaroo.…..fortunately neither Chris nor I were picked for this. And so to bed to pack as we were travelling to Japan the next day.

To sum up we had a great time in Cairns and only wished we had extended our time there for a few days to see some more of the area and actually be able to have chilled by the beach. Our 4 weeks in Australia have been fantastic from the moment we got off the flight in Sydney until we got on our flight out from Cairns.

2005-09-22T10:42:00.000+01:00

Don`t Look Outback in Anger

As we started our descent into Alice Springs all I could see through the window was a floor of red with the occasional patch of green bush, this took me back to growing up in Glasgow in the 70’s & 80’s where instead of learning the beautiful game on turf it was skint knees & Dettol scrubs after a kick about on red blaze. This never deterred me too much as most of my childhood I would be out playing football somewhere or other, usually somewhere you weren’t supposed to be like the local library grounds, school playground or out on the street. You think all this practice would have made me a good player but it never worked out that way. One season I won the Most Improved Player while playing for St Robert’s Guild, and I can always remember one of the other players saying at the time “You must have been really rubbish at the start of the season”. The following season I won the “Loyalty” trophy which was also another award invented to make the crap players better about themselves.

We were picked up at the airport by the hostel and where in our rooms unpacking within 20 minutes of landing. We had booked to stay at Annie’s Place Hostel for one night each side of a three day tour into the outback and round Uluru (Ayers Rock), but due to a festival being held in Alice Springs the tour had been put back a day. This meant we had two days each side of the tour in Alice Springs, so we decided to wander into town and have a look around to see what the town had to offer. We soon realised we weren’t the only outsiders in town that day as about a 30 to 40 Harley Davidson Bikes passed us on our short trip into town. We quickly found out that it was the Harley owners national jamboree, I’m not sure if they call it a jamboree but they do seem a bit like the Boy Scouts with their matching greasy uniforms.

Well it took us about 25 minutes to walk the full length of Alice Springs and that included swotting about 3 million flies, they never mentioned them in the TV adverts or colour brochures. I could have done with one of the brochures to help fend of the disgusting little blighters as they flew up my nose and in and out my ears and we looked enviously at the people walking about the with the fly nets over their heads. We found somewhere for lunch before returning back to the hostel to chill out by the pool for a bit. Just before sunset we reached the top of Anzac Hill on the edge of the town to watch the sun setting over the hills that surround Alice Springs and it was a quick turnaround back to the hostel. I’m not sure if it’s something to do with them both being in the centre of their respective countries but the more time we spent in Alice Springs it seemed more and more like Falkirk all be it with a little more sun. Back at the Hostel, Falkirk’s finest Arab Strap seemed to be cropping up a bit more than usual on the random setting on the MP3. I can just imagine Aiden Moffat out here in his best bush gear hailing imaginary taxis as he’s bundled out the pub at closing time whinging about some Shelia who’s dumped him.

Annie’s Place likes to cover all the bases for backpackers with decent rooms, swimming pool, internet café, tours, laundry, kitchen facilities, a bar and restaurant. All residents can get any meal on the menu for $5 AUS (about £2.20), the food turned out to be really good and on the first night Joanne had breaded chicken and chips and I went for the kangaroo curry. The staff were all really friendly and they always seemed to remember you name, not bad considering the hostel had space for up to 75 guests and were changing almost daily.

Next day we headed to “Henley on Todd Regatta” an event that has been staged in Alice Springs for the last 44 years and had been declared an iconic event by the Northern Territory Government which seems to attract nutters from all around the world. Well this wasn’t your usual regatta with upper class twits larking about on rivers in between their Pims and cucumber sandwiches, first of all the river was bone dry and the only drink to be had was VB or XXXX lager. The first event seemed quite tame as teams of four ran up and down the dry river bank carrying boat like frames trying to be the first team over the line. We soon realised that there were in fact about 1800 Harley Owners in town and most of them seemed to taking part in some of the many events: Oxford tubs, Tug of War, Sand Shovelling and numerous races with different objects either being carried, pushed or pulled along the river bed.

After heading for some shade in the after afternoon we headed back to watch the finale of the show, the Gun Boat Battle. This was three large floats done up to look like boats which drove round the arena firing water and flour bombs at each other as well as the usual stray missile into the crowd, this went on for about 15 minutes and the place looked like a scene from Apocalypse Now by the end of it, I was expecting Robert Duval at any minute to emerge from the smoke and start shouting “Smell That, Smell That…. I love the smell of Flour in the morning“ or something similar. One of the best things about the whole event were the two commentators who waxed rubbish for hours about each event and who seemed more interested in telling people the Aussie Rules latest scores and saying hello to friends in the crowd. One of the guy’s was like the commentator from the movie “Best in Show” with his stupid questions and weird analogies. Headed back to Annie’s Place for some more $5 meals and off to bed early as it was an early rise for our tour into the outback.

We had to be out our room and in the car park for 6:30am to be picked up by the bus, most of the people who were going on the tour were also staying at Annie’s Place so we didn’t have to drive round picking up from other places. Once we were all on and introduced to the tour guide (also called Chris) it was a short half hour drive out to Noel’s Camel Farm where you got a chance to ride the camels, feed the kangaroos and eat some pigs…..well they did serve bacon rolls. The camel rides only lasted for about 5 minutes but that’s about as much of the smell you could probably handle at that time in the morning. Joanne and myself went on the same camel and all my nightmares from the horse riding in Bolivia came flooding back, but it started off not to bad and even the fast bits I found quite enjoyable. I’m not sure if Joanne quite liked getting off the camel as it lunges forwards and nearly throws you over the top. Once everybody was back on the bus it was a three hour drive to Kings Canyon for our first walk. Along the route we saw many wild camels and horses and a few times we had to slow right down to make sure we didn’t hit any. The camels were brought over in the 1800’s from Lanzarote to help with expeditions into the bush but with the introduction of the railways into Australia’s far flung corners they were just abandoned to the wild where they have flourished and now are being rounded up and sold back to rich Arabians for camel racing.

The walk started with a steep climb in the baking heat but once we reached the top we had a break and the guide Chris told us loads of stuff about the geology and history of the surrounding landscape. The rest of the walk was fairly easy and the canyon was quite stunning in places, we stopped at a waterhole called The Garden of Eden and some of the group went in for a dip. Joanne and myself decided against having a swim as the water was freezing and it was also a bit hazardous getting in and out of the water. On the way round the walk we got speaking to Dyane from near Elgin and Tiffany an Aussie girl, it was quite a diverse group with not that many having English as their first language. We then headed to a cattle ranch called Curtis Springs where we going to be sleeping that night under the stars. You start to understand the sheer size of Australia when the Curtis Springs cattle Ranch is bigger than Belgium.

After searching for firewood in the surrounding bush we set up our swags in a circle around the fire and had a few beers and chatted to some of the group while waiting for dinner to be made. After dinner Joanne and myself were amazed as about half of the group jumped into their swags and went to sleep, the rest of us had a few more drinks around the fire. The swags where a lot more comfortable than I thought they were going to be, the only problem we had sleeping was the full moon shining brightly above us. Next morning it was up at 6:30 but we were surprised how long it got some of the group to get up and ready. Here’s a rundown on the group: 6 Germans, 3 Koreans, 3 English, 2 Belgians, 1 Japanese, 1 Australian, 1 Swiss and of course 3 Scots. The young Swiss and Swedish guys really needed a rocket up their backsides to do anything over the three days of the trip, I couldn’t believe how long it took them to do anything. Also when the Swiss guy was asked to grate some cheese by the tour guide his response was “I don’t know how to do that my Mum does that for me”….needless to say he was shown how to do it and grated the cheese for the whole group.

Once everybody was up and we had cleared the site it was a drive out to the Olgas (Kata Tjuta) where we had a hike through the Valley of the Winds. The walk was fairly easy but the scenery was amazing and once again we had a beautiful day with hardly a cloud in the sky. I had never heard of the Olgas before arriving in Alice Springs and I’m sure if they weren’t as close to Ayers Rock (Uluru) then they would be as famous as their neighbour. We then had a visit to the culture centre at Uluru which had loads of informative displays on Aboriginal culture and why Uluru is so sacred to them. We then had our first chance to get up close to Uluru and for those who wished to defy the aboriginals pleas to not climb Uluru could if they so wish. Joanne and myself decided not to climb as it would be akin to abseiling the Wailing Wall, bunging from the Sistine Chapel roof or Cycling round Mecca the wrong way. We were quite surprised when quite a few of the group decided to climb and especially when Erika one of the Korean girls jumped off the bus, the previous day she had struggled at the first part of Kings Canyon.

While the others climbed we had a chance to walk round the base and have a close look at the many sacred sites that we had read about in the information centre. It didn’t take us to long to walk back round to the van and wait for the rest of the group to descend from the top of Uluru, some of the group where already down. We had arranged to meet a 5pm but by 5:30 Erika was nowhere to be seen and the rest of the climbing group had left her half way up because she was struggling. Chris the guide then had to climb it (well run it almost) to try and find her, this added another 20 minutes to the wait but she was found on the way down oblivious to all the concern down below. When she got back on the bus all she could do was laugh, I’m not sure whether anyone else could see the joke, we then drove a short distance to a viewing point where we could see the sunset on the rock.

Because we were late in leaving we didn’t manage to get a spot with a table so we had to walk a bit further round to get a spot for ourselves. We carried our large cool box of beers round and sat and watched Uluru slowly change colour as the sun set behind us, many people tried to push into our spot but Joanne and few of the girls defended the ground brilliantly. I got speaking to a few of the guys about football and the Belgian guy who I can’t remember his name was amazed I had even heard of Mechelen never mind knew what there strip was like, he knew lots about Scottish football but mainly from seeing Belgian players like Joos Valgaren and Thomas Buffel playing for Celtic and Rangers. Uluru looked really impressive from here and everyone in the world could probably recognise it from this vantage point, while we watched the sunset Bushtucker Chris made dinner and once it was dark we ate and watched the stars appear one by one in the night sky.

Once we reached our camping grounds for the night we had to go in search for firewood again, slightly more difficult doing it in the dark than yesterdays daylight search. Once the fire was going we all sat round the and played a few games, we tried to play Chinese whispers but with 8 different countries in the mix it was always going to be a bit of a disaster. Tak the Japanese guy was sitting next to Joanne and he would never understand her and just make something else up so by the time it was back to the start we had some real strange new phrases. The group seemed a lot more livelier than the night before and most people sat up talking for a few hours even though it was going to be a 4:30 rise so that we could get back down to another viewing point to see the sun rise this time on Uluru.

We were one of the first groups to arrive at the viewing point but this didn’t seem to matter to the people who turned up late as they would just push and shove to get in front and there were nearly a few fights. At one point we tried to get a photo of a Kangaroo sign with Uluru in the background but we had to wait for 15 minutes as a group of 5 Japanese girls mimicking Kangaroos all wanted to check that their photos had worked in each of their own cameras. Another thing could someone please drop us a line and explain to us why that every Japanese person under the age of 30 must do the two fingered peace sign in every single photo that they are in. We have seen this happen everywhere and we‘ve decided to do it all the time in Tokyo so we don’t look too different.

After breakfast it was another hike round Uluru where Chris told us a lot more about the local Aboriginal people and their customs. We also spoke about why there seems to be lots of Aboriginal people drinking in the streets of towns like Alice Springs. After been thrown off your own land and forced to suffer many atrocities over the years is it any wonder that so many don’t want to integrate into a western type society and turn to drink and petrol sniffing as a way out. Back in the bus it was a four hour trip back to Alice Springs and Joanne, Tiffany, Chris the guide and myself had a played the game when you name someone famous for example Steve McQueen then the next person has to name a famous person who’s first name starts with an M and if both first name & surname starts with the same character then the direction changes the other way. This lasted until about 10 minutes outside Alice Springs and it got down to myself and the guide for the last while.

The whole group met up for a meal and a few drinks at Annie’s place, it was quite weird to see everybody dressed up and out of their hiking stuff. I got speaking to Tak from Japan who was asking me about Nakumura who plays for Celtic and I was asking about his Daniel Johnson t-shirt. After a few drinks at Annie’s a crowd of us headed to another bar in Alice Springs, the place was a bit of a barn but it was quite busy for a Tuesday night. After quite a few more drinks, few dances and some weird conversations with Koreans, Swedes and Germans it was back to the hostel for a well earned sleep. Next day we didn’t do too much but chill out by the pool and catch up with our diaries and blogger and we started to read up on Japan. Thursday lunchtime it was time for our flight to Cairns in the north east of Australia.