Ryan & Jo

On Top of the World

ryanandjo — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:23:00 GMT

Travelling to the “roof top of the world” wasn’t one of the easiest decisions we’ve made. It’s a place of constant religious and political tension, so the Tibet ‘story’ is a fascinating one. China has always considered Tibet to be part of its Empire, but the Tibetans with their own language, distinct way of life and religion have always, on some level, fought Chinese occupation. In the early 20th century the Tibetans enjoyed a period of de facto independence, until the 1950’s when the Chinese decided to liberate the Tibetans from their supposed poverty and feudal lifestyle. Many Tibetans view this as a destruction of their culture and heritage and tensions continue to run high many years later.

For a budget traveller Tibet is an expensive place to visit because you need a special permit to visit the region on top of a Chinese visa. The only way to obtain this permit is to sign up to a tour with a private guide, driver and car to get you around. You’re not allowed to travel independently, which we have become used to, so choices are restricted. So, why go to all this trouble when you can just fly across Tibet to get to the sub-continent? Hopefully this blog will answer those questions for you :)

Having met a pair of Perthites looking to do the same journey at the same time while in Laos, we teamed up with Catie and Lindsay to cross the Tibetan wilderness together. (Yes, Lindsay is a man’s name too you know!)

The Qinghai - Tibet Railway

was completed in 2006 and is a massive feat of engineering. It’s the highest railway in the world and includes sections of land that have to be frozen all year round to support the track. The journey was 25 hours and extra oxygen is piped in to cope with the altitude climb that peaks at 5100m high.

However, it’s not a great idea to crack open a beer at this altitude as the gas can’t wait to rush out, as the boys soon discovered! Vast plains and snow capped mountains lined the route along with ice flowing rivers.

The track also passes by the highest freshwater lake in the world

and some of the remotest train stations in the world, including a poor guard who had to stand on duty for 30 mins while the train was restocked and he didn’t move an inch!

We arrived in Lhasa late at night and were met by our guide for the week, Chong La, an adorable 20 year old keen to use her English to teach us about her culture. I did feel guilty for travelling to Tibet by the train as it felt intrusive arriving at a huge concrete station that is obviously out of place for Tibet, but it’s the most sensible way to travel there for altitude reasons.

Lhasa

Our itinerary for Lhasa covered the main temples and monasteries of Tibetan Buddhism. The timeless Jokhang temple in the Barkhor district of town was a blast to the senses. The kora is packed with pilgrims walking clockwise around the temple with prayer wheels and beads in hands, chanting mantras to themselves, all wearing amazing traditional outfits. The front of the temple was full of pilgrims prostrating themselves on the ground over and over again, in what is considered the spiritual centre of Tibet.

There were many more pilgrims queuing outside because a local Lama had passed away four days before, so people were praying for the peaceful passing of his soul. Inside, the temple was full of small, individual chapels. We were not allowed to take any pictures inside but even a picture couldn’t capture the smell of the yak butter candles, the burning incense, the sound of chanting, drums beating, horns blowing, people pushing past with handfuls of small currency to give as offerings, trying to touch columns with their foreheads, reaching out to encased Buddhas to pray for family and loved ones. The atmosphere was intense but so peaceful and we felt honoured to witness this. No photo could ever show what it actually feels like to be inside a temple of this importance to the Tibetans.

We headed to the roof top area to get some perspective of the temple and that’s where we caught our first glimpse of the famous Potala Palace.

The military presence was a stark contrast. Chinese troops marched around the narrow cobblestone streets in groups of 6 and pairs of soldiers observed from roof tops. The night before we could only drive near to our hotel and had to walk some way because the soldiers block off roads in the Tibetan district to quash disturbances and protests, which last occurred in 2008.

At the Sera monastery we witnessed the Monks’ debating court, where they smack their hands together and point to someone to answer a question, it’s very vocal and exciting and they have to answer the question correctly or they quickly get shouted at!

Norbulingka was the Summer Palace retreat of the Dalai Lama. The grounds contain temples each containing thrones with the outfits of the Dalai Lama’s that used to sit there. One temple contains sedans and carriages offered to the Dalai Lama as gifts, including one from Queen Elizabeth 2. There is also a small tricycle just visible under one carriage, which we discovered ,from the monk who looks after the collection, was a birthday gift to the 14th Dalai Lama from his English teacher when he was 7 years old, our guide didn’t realise this and you could see how special it was for her to be so close to one of his possessions.

The 14th (current) Dalai Lama built a new palace within the grounds in the early 1950’s, and it still contains the furniture he used and the clock on the stairway is stopped at 9 o clock, the time he had to leave the palace to flee Tibet in 1959 as the Chinese were going to kidnap him. It’s a beautiful building but so quiet and as our guide said, ‘it’s a place full of beautiful things, but so empty’.

This palace is also the only place in Tibet where you can see a picture of the 14th Dalai Lama, on a mural behind his throne when he was in his twenties. He has no glasses on but it’s still recognisable as the man we see today. When we mentioned this to Chong La she didn’t know what we meant as she had never seen a current image of her leader.

After a taster of the Potala Palace the day before we were looking forward to climbing up the 13 stories to see inside this impressive structure from the 17th century.

It’s separated into the White Palace for government use, where you can view the room the Dalai Lama used to meet with high officials, along with his personal waiting room.

The Red Palace is the religious section and contains over 1000 rooms, including the funeral stupas of the 5th to 11th Dalai Lamas. These are where the holiest men of Tibet are laid to rest, so it’s a sacred site for all Tibetans. Again, we could take no photos inside but it was a never ending maze of temple after temple, ancient wooden doors hiding stupas, thrones, guardians and Buddhas and an endless stream of pilgrims making melted yak butter offerings. It was fascinating and felt like stepping back into mediaeval times. The Tibetan style of architecture has been kept the same throughout the centuries, they are proud of their culture and see no need to modernise like many other cultures.

To help us reflect on the visit to this powerful building, we tried a Tibetan speciality, yak butter tea, hmmmm sounds bad...yep it is bad...better to stick to regular tea from now on.

Drepung monastery was much quieter on the outskirts of town, but again had something new to offer, especially when one pilgrim nearly set fire to the temple when his one yuan offering caught alight in a candle, he looked very worried but gave a quick prayer and it went out, he looked very relieved!

One aspect of the monasteries we couldn’t quite fathom out was the wall painting technique, which involves getting a bowl full of paint and just throwing it at a wall or stupa, no paint brushes involved. Another version is to pour paint down a hose from above and aim the end over the top of a stupa hoping it will run down the correct side. If this wasn’t bad enough they don’t stop to let pilgrims walk past, so most people get splashed with whitewash as well.

The Tibetan Plateau

After four days in Lhasa (we could have stayed a week) it was time to jump in the Land Cruiser and meet our driver Tenzing (what a cool name) and what a cool guy he was too, leather jacket on, dark sun glasses and slick back hair and he turned out to be a good driver, especially when we got stuck in a traffic jam and he just drove all the way down the outside of it to beat the crowds. Go Tenzing Go

The drive across Tibet to the Nepal border was to take 4 days and it was full of beautiful scenery, barren land and high passes over 5000 meters high. Yamdrok-tso Lake looked like someone had coloured it in blue, it almost seemed fake but was beautiful.

Further along we found more lakes and some literally breathtaking scenery, as trying to climb a hill at 5000+m high is hard work, the oxygen is thinner and when you realise you’ve lost your breath it can take a while to get it back again.

We overnighted in Gyantse, a town with another impressive monastery with Nepali influences and this time we got to visit the library, something maybe only a Librarian can get excited about.

The downside of being at the top of the world is that it’s much colder, the air is drier and I woke up in the night with breathing difficulties. So I had to take it easy the next day when we travelled to Shigatse and had Tenzing chauffeur me across town while the others had to walk, he he.

Shigatse is the home town of the Panchen Lama, second to the Dalai Lama in the most followed (Gelupa or yellow hat sect) form of Tibetan Buddhism. The monastery contained the tomb of the 10th Panchen Lama, as well as the tallest bronze Buddha in the world, but as usual no photos were allowed, you will just have to imagine it. The current Panchen Lama was chosen when he was 6 years old but he was not the choice of the Chinese government so he was ‘taken’ to ‘live’ in Beijing at the age of 6 and has, along with his family, never been seen or heard from since.

So you may wonder how well we are getting on with the Aussies on the trip? Well, dorming together, eating copious amounts of of momo’s (yak meat filled parcels), experiencing Lhasa beer, playing game after game of Yanif, 21 and Uno seems to be working out well. I’m not keeping score but I think the Brits are winning :)

After a bad nights sleep for all, as the air was so cold and dry and everyone kept waking up thirsty, we started the long drive to visit the most sacred monastery of the Sakyapa or the red hat sect. We thought we had seen it all but each monastery always has something new to offer and here was no different. It was nice to see the contrasts between the different sects of Tibetan Buddhism.

Everest

After another day of fantastic scenery we entered the Qomolangma area (Tibetan)at 5250m...read as Mount Everest!!!!!!! Guess what? My breathing cleared up completely, I must be a high altitude dudette and just suffer mid-altitude sickness, bring on the Everest peak climb I say!

Our first view of Everest was a wow wow wow moment, and we were all awestruck. It was amazing to see the highest point in the world and a memorable experience that probably ‘tops’ everything else we have seen this year.

We drove further into the Everest area and picked up our permits in Shergar, a town we were happy to leave because of the packs of Tibetan Mastif dogs roaming the streets and guarding the toilets, growling at us to get back in our car! It was a 3 hour off road journey to the base camp. The scenery was from another planet, Mars perhaps, so dry, rocky and desolate, no life out there at all, until you bump into a yak or goat herder miles from anywhere just wandering around!

We made it to Everest base camp at 9pm and stayed the night in a 4 bed dorm with no heating at -10 degrees, thank goodness they gave us two heavy duvets each and a blanket, plus we all slept in our clothes to keep warm, there was no way we were getting undressed.

The only problem was the toilet...the outside toilet with no light. It was so gross that people chose to pee in the car park in the dark rather than venture to the unstable hut with a few holes in the ground, mainly because no one wanted to fall through into the cesspit below.

It was quite an experience peeing in the dark covered by thousands of stars and a moonlit north face of Mount Everest staring down at you, one number one we will never forget.

Next morning we somehow managed to crawl out from under the warm duvets to see sunrise on Everest, although due to China having only one time zone across the whole country, the sun didn’t rise until after 8am so it wasn’t so early.

We stayed at base camp for 30 minutes before we all had to give up the awesome view in the hope of rescuing our frozen toes...the question, ‘how soon does it take for frostbite to set in?’ had us all running for the car and at -15 degrees the view was beautiful but dangerous. I have no idea how people can climb further to the peak and deal with the elements, so no peak climb for me, crazy people!

On our way to the border we drove through small villages where all the kids stop and wave incessantly, happy to see some strangers whiz through. The best part of the drive was when we approached and then crested the Tong La pass at 5000m with the most amazing view I have seen, the Himalayas spread out over the horizon.

It was so cool to see them as a group rather than an individual like Everest. You can really appreciate how this range of mountains divides up the world.

We then started the 3000m descent to Zhangmu on the Nepal border, a strange town built along a switch back road that is full of Chinese and colourful Nepali Tata trucks taking up half the road so that chaos followed as soon as someone tried to overtake, which is pretty normal for Chinese roads.

But we made it to the bottom and finished our trip off in a ‘lovely’ 4 bed dorm (or maybe a taster of room design to come in the sub-continent) and a dinner with the compulsory Lhasa beer to celebrate.

We made it, we loved it, we have had experiences in one week that equal the experiences we have had so far this year and that’s saying something. Everest is Awesome!!! Good work team!

Tibet observations:

Dedication - I have never seen, up close, religious dedication to this extent, people walking the kora always an odd number of times, prostrating themselves on the ground all over Lhasa. It’s a place for pilgrims, amazing to watch and you can’t help but respect these people. Some of them travel on foot from Qinghai, over 1800kms away!

Tibetan Buddhism - just when you think you are beginning to understand it, another aspect is revealed that you need to get your head around. Really need a Buddhism for Dummies guide!

14th Dalai Lama - it is a shame that he may never be able to return to Tibet, for him and the Tibetans, we hope we see this change to at least some extent in the future. The Potala Palace is empty without him.

Food - Tibetans eat good, hearty, ‘keep you warm’ food, from thick noodle soups, big chunks of yak meat and momos, 3 of the group became obsessed with these! However, if you order potato stew, be prepared to eat a whole plate of boiled potatoes, something was lost in translation on one menu!

Music - travelling in a Land Cruiser across the Tibetan plateau, having the driver put on a Movie Soundtrack ballads cd (read as Titanic, Bodyguard and Lion King) with the four of us crooning along in the back, making the guide giggle, was hilarious! Then they put the Tibetan songs back on...much better than Thai and Laos pop though.

And lastly...Tibetans - these are some of the coolest people we have ever met. There are big, burly, butch men, with huge yak fur coats with swords hanging from their hips, definitely not to be messed with! The women all dress in traditional costume and even though they look much older than they are because of the weather, they always smile and look beautiful. They live in a land with some of the harshest elements around, freezing cold winters, barren wind swept plains with no one in sight for miles, yet they just deal with it like they have for centuries. They are hardcore and inspirational.

What a blast...

Jo & Ryan

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157622730909694/

And if you want to see more about Tibet, here’s the link to Catie & Linds pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/catieandlinds/ and their blog: http://beyondbagot.wordpress.com/

Go West

ryanandjo — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 04:41:00 GMT

From Beijing we decided to head to Xiahe and as the train didn’t leave until the early afternoon we decided that I would try to complete a communist leader tri-fector. Having seen an embalmed Lenin on a school trip and visited Uncle Ho while in Hanoi, it only seemed right to visit Chairman Mao before leaving Beijing. The 60th anniversary celebrations meant the Mausoleum had been closed for most of our stay. We had tried to visit the previous day, but were thwarted by government officials delaying the re-opening to see their revered leader. As the mausoleum is only open for 4 hours and the queue was at least that long we decided we would try the next day. The following day we arrived early, only it seems that we were not as eager to see the Chairman as his still adoring public, Tiananmen Square was already packed and they had stopped letting people join the queue half an hour before opening.

Not seeing Mao didn’t stop us completing a tri-fector though as on the train we had managed to book ourselves into bottom bunk hard sleepers. Bottom bunks are considered the most luxurious as there is enough space between the bunks to be able to sit up and no climbing is involved. However, it seems that when you have the bottom bunk everybody else sits on your bed too! Maybe it was due to us filling the higher bunks previously that we had not seen this before, but our beds became the seats for everyone in our cabin. We felt a tinge of guilt for those on the bunks above us though, as one lady on the middle bunks fell onto Jo’s bed when trying to get down from her bunk and then in the morning I was awoken by the gentlemen from the top bunk accidently standing on my foot. Having completed the hard sleeper tri-fector we both agree that we would choose the top bunk for the privacy and the ability to escape the goings on below.

The 17 hour train journey to Lanzhou was only part of the journey to Xiahe as we still had a 4 hour bus journey to get to our final destination.

Xiahe

Arriving at the bus station in Lanzhou they wouldn’t sell us tickets for the bus until we provided photocopies of our passports and visas. Not having any we set about finding a photocopying shop, luckily there was one close by. The bus journey went smoothly and we arrived in a decidedly chilly Xiahe, so cold that we went straight for the fleeces and thermals and even bought some hats.

Our first impression was that it was a huge contrast to the capital, while obviously smaller, the cult of Mao was no where to be seen.

One of the most noticeable things about China is that each new province is like a new country and the people from province to province, dress distinctly, look different and have differing customs, and Gansu province is no different. Xiahe or Labrang as it is known to the majority Tibetan population, also comprises of Han (Main Chinese) and Hui (Muslim) ethnicities, as well as Mongolians and Nomads who wander around the streets with huge swords attached to their hips.

The mix of ethnicites doesn’t always mix well, in fact Xiahe has only recently re-opened to tourists. Riots and demonstrations in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa in March 2008 led to conflict in Xiahe, where 19 people died. Which we assume is why had to provide photocopies to come to the area. Tibet is a controversial subject in China probably more so than Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), with the Tibetans considering themselves a separate country from China, with China considering Tibet to be part of it’s realm, disallowing the Dalai Lama to visit his adopted homeland forcing him to live in exile in India.

Despite all this internal conflict the people we met in Xiahe are the friendliest that we have met in China and that is quite something. One of my concerns with visiting China was the language barrier and whether we would be accepted by the locals, but I needn’t have worried as the Chinese have been some of the friendliest people we have met. Even though most don’t know any English they are always willing to help out and whenever you show the most basic language skills, they will get excited and talk as if you are a fluent native speaker, to which you have to shrug your shoulders and laugh, to which they laugh back. Of course it has been the children that have been the most fun, as all are intrigued by us, while some are scared most are cheeky and offer a ‘Nihao’ or 'Hallo'.

However, the friendly people were not the reason we came to Xiahe, we came to see Labrang the biggest Tibetan monastery outside of Tibet.

During the cultural revolution between 1966-76, much of the monastery was destroyed and has been rebuilt, the number of monks that live in Labrang was also reduced from 4000 to 1200 today.

We started our day walking the 3km kora or pilgrimage path around the outside of the monastery walls, adorned with 1174 prayer wheels.

Along the way we saw many pilgrims, spinning the prayer wheels and praying.

We then took a tour led by a Tibetan novice monk, who spoke perfect English, to see inside of the monastery buildings, where we got to see the fascinating philosophy school and prayer hall, along with some interesting sculptures made from yak butter. They had a funny smell to them!

Ganjia Grasslands

Xiahe lies in an area of expansive grasslands so we decided that we would organise a visit to the Ganjia Grasslands, pronounced with a silent ‘i’. Not many places in the world can you walk around freely asking” Ganja, how much?” But that’s exactly what we did in asking the local taxi drivers how much a trip to the grasslands would cost.

We managed to agree a reasonable price with a driver named Gayou, who didn’t speak any English but was fluent in the language of laughter and smiles that Chinese have perfected and that we love so much.

We drove to the grasslands and were met with stunning vistas of the surrounds.

Before visiting Bajiao, a 2000 year old Han dynasty village, protected by a 12 sided mud wall, which we were able to climb to get a better view of the village.

From here we headed to Baishiya to visit the Trakkar Gompa, against a back drop of vertical rock formation.

There were many nomads roaming around on their horses, looking like they could have stepped out of a history book.

After a long day we decided to have an early night and went to bed, only to be awoken at 10 pm by a knocking at the door. Opening the door, we were met by a member of the guesthouse staff and two very stern looking policemen, who wanted to see our passports and visas. After presenting them and them checking our details they didn't arrest us and moved on to the next room. The staff member was very apologetic and said that it was a common occurrence and there was nothing for us to worry about.

Tongren

The next day we caught a bus to Qinghai province and the village of Tongren, which took us through more impressive scenery and a red rock valley.

At the first toilet stop of the day, a wall in an small alley, which actually is preferable to the standard public toilet in China. They usually consist of a trough with a slight gradient, which is full of ‘people waste’ and smells to high heaven and is separated into half cubicles with no doors that you have to squat in, very public indeed! I decided to get off the bus to stretch my legs while nomads got on to the bus to sell yak yogurt. After a while a white yak appeared in the middle of the road with it’s herdswoman not far behind. The yak looked at me and started to walk towards me, the herdswoman shouted some command at the beast and it looked back at her and then decided to charge at me, forcing me to run and jump back on the bus. I’m not sure what objection the yak took to me, whether it was that fact that I hadn’t purchased any yogurt or if I had eaten a relative the evening before.

It seems that most people had used the stop to stack up on cigarettes and everyone around us started to chain smoke, filling the bus with a cloud of thick smoke. In the cities people no longer smoke on public transport but in the rural areas locals still puff away. I now have what only can be described as a smokers cough and I shudder to think about the poor children on the bus that were subjected to the same smoke cloud. This girl was the daughter of the bus driver so she probably takes the journey all the time.

Despite this we arrived in the village Tibetans call Repkong and booked ourselves into the worst accommodation we have had on the trip. It was one of those rooms that looked a little rough around the edges but ok and then after we had paid seemed to get worse and worse. Nothing worked, everything was falling or fell of the wall during our stay and it was dirty. The long dark corridor and atmosphere reminded us of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, we both agreed we would only stay one night not two!

Happy to leave the squaller for a few hours we bartered for taxi to take us to Wutun Si, to visit some monasteries. First we visited the Mango (Lower) Monastery, which had some impressive temples outside the monastery.

However most of the chapels inside the monastery were closed and we were only able to see the outside.

Heading to the Yango (Upper) Monestary we were able able to see the impressive chorten from the outside and were able to go into the monestary after the monks saw us and said 'money, money, money' to indicate we had to buy tickets.

In one of the chapels, we were honoured to be able to watch monks during their school of philosophy and prayer, which is very rare, seeing them all sat on floor cushions chanting away.

Xining

Having survived our night at the Overlook Hotel, we caught an early bus to Xining and booked ourselves into a nice hostel with a huge room with a view for our last days in China.

On our first evening at dinner we met a nice Tibetan monk whose English name was Victor and as he left the restaurant he wished us........sweet dreams! How nice. Dinner was like every other meal we’ve had in China, excellent. Before coming I was worried about the food as I’ve never been a fan of Chinese food. Again I needn’t have worried as the food is some of the best we have had on the trip and is so much better than the ‘Chinese’ food served outside China and not a mushroom in sight!

The reason for choosing Xining as a place to spend our last days in China is that it is the staring point of the Qinghai - Tibet railway. Tibet is officially part of China but we’re considering it a separate country despite needing a China visa to visit Tibet, it’s probably best not to get into the politics :)

So now we're off to Lhasa.

Ryan & Jo

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157622494295083/

China Summary

Highlights

Favourite Place - Tiger Leaping Gorge (Jo), Jiuzhaigou (Ryan)
Favourite Attraction - The Awesome Wall of China (Jo), The Great Wall of China (Ryan)
Food - Beijing Duck (Jo), Anything from Sichuan (Ryan), Mapo Dofu (Both)
Beer - Harbin (Jo), TsingTao Stout (Ryan)

Lowlights:

Yangshou (Both)

For those of you thinking of possibly travelling to the region: Costs in USD

Accommodation - Rural $6-15, Cities $12-30
Restaurant meal - $3-5
Food stall meal - $0.50-1
620ml Bottled Beer - $0.75 -1.50
285ml Soft Drink - $1
1.5l Bottle of water - 30c
Bus - $2-3 per hour
Train -$3 per hour

On The Right Track

ryanandjo — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:24:00 GMT

At last we do a long overnight train journey in China...Hong Kong to Shanghai in 19 hours. We decided on the hard sleeper option rather than soft sleeper, the difference being there are 6 beds per cabin rather than 4, a little less comfort and privacy but the hard sleepers were half the price. The only beds left were the top bunks, which presented a few challenges to us as there was virtually no head room so you can never sit up properly...

and they are high up so climbing required some gymnastic ability and grace that neither of us really had. The bonus was we had lots of storage room and it’s easy to sleep up there without being disturbed as you can’t see anyone else in the carriage being in the roof of the train. Why didn’t we do this earlier? A great journey that left us looking forward to another train ride.

Shanghai

After working out the metro system and finding our hostel, we headed down to the famous Bund area only to discover that major road works and construction are underway for the Expo in 2010, which seems to be taking over the city. There no longer is a riverside walk along the Bund to see the city’s skyline, but luckily we found one place to stop and take pictures before I started to panic, phew.

We wandered down Nanjing Road, famous for it’s shopping where there were lots of people milling around enjoying Golden Week, you could feel the holiday atmosphere in the air.

The next day we took in some of the cultural highlights Shanghai has to offer, including the site of the first Chinese Communist Party meeting in 1921 and then over to the Shanghai Museum of History to take in many ancient sculptures, jades and calligraphy, quite riveting stuff but not enough seats for my liking, museums make my feet ache!

Then we headed over to the Pudong area to get a close up view of the Oriental Pearl TV tower,

and to ascend the Jin Mao tower for the observation deck. Shanghai’s skyline is filled with skyscrapers and has a very futuristic look.

It also has a view down into the lobby of the worlds highest hotel, the Grand Hyatt. It uses the 53rd to 87th floor of the building and the view down looked like something out of Star Wars.

And that was it for Shanghai, just a whistle stop tour to get a view of the city.

Nanjing

Next morning we headed back to the train station to travel to Nanjing and I accidently forgot to ask for hard seat tickets so we ended up in the soft seat carriage (read as first class!!!) on a very swish and luxurious train, I could certainly get used to that kind of travel.

Nanjing used to be the capital of China, so it’s a city with lots of history, but we were there for only one day so decided to visit the Memorial Hall for the Nanjing Massacre.

The memorial is comprised of fantastic architecture and statues, plus a museum recounting the atrocities that took place. In the lead up to WW2 Japan invaded China and by December 1937 they made their way to Nanjing and massacred and murdered over 300,000 people during a 6 week period as well as raping over 20,000 women.

Although very informative, the museum forgets to mention that the Chinese government of the time fled Nanjing before the Japanese arrived to set up a new capital in the West of China, locking the gates of the city wall, apart from one, making it impossible for the all the citizens to escape, resulting in the massacre...minor detail though maybe?

A viewing hall is built over a mass grave of the victims, which still contains the bones of people killed on that spot and you can see how each body was killed, some with crushed skulls, some with long nails still sticking in their bones, and even one with it’s skull resting on it’s chest. Certainly one of the most disturbing places we have both visited.

Nanjing was another city enjoying the Golden Week and 60th anniversary celebrations, with the streets filled with lanterns and lights, people having fun enjoying the last day of the holiday. We’re really glad we returned to China for the last few days rather than sitting it all out. Seeing most of the population celebrating shows a different side to a country that you don’t usually see.

When we were sitting in Nanjing train station the next day, I made a trip to the toilets but was unfortunate to witness an old lady, half naked, relieving herself all over the bathroom floor, while three of her relatives struggled to hold her up by the arms and legs. There was obviously something seriously wrong with her as they were all shouting at her to get her attention but she didn’t seem to be conscious. About 10 minutes later back in the waiting room, we noticed, just a few seats down from us, someone had collapsed on the floor and staff were trying to resuscitate them. It was the same old woman I had seen and after 30 mins the paramedics turned up and pronounced her dead, she had passed away right there on the train station floor.

After that sombre experience, we caught the 18 hour train to Beijing, another sleeper but this time we had the middle bunks, which came with a little bit more room and were not so difficult to climb into.

Half our carriage was taken by the train staff, so we got to witness a lot of men walking around in their white vests and chequered underwear, getting ready for bed after their shift had finished, plus the women staff in uniform tops and pyjama bottoms, great looks! This also meant that when the shifts changed at midnight they made loads of noise getting ready and talking to the guys who had just finished their shift, please shut up!!!! At one point our four cabin mates were all snoring, each at different times and speeds creating a snore chorus to lull us to sleep. Another great nights sleep and a nice lie in too, no point in getting out of bed until we arrived at 10am! We love travelling by train and don’t want to get back on a bus!

Beijing

The first place we headed to was Tiananmen Square, which was so crowded. The area was still decorated for the huge 60th party and military parade they held on the 1st October, with giant screens replaying the events of the day. Patriotic music piped through out the square and there were floats on display from the parade. Everyone was buying ‘We Love China’ stickers, waving flags and looking very happy.

Nearly as abundant as tourists were men in uniforms, both military and police. I think it is safe to say we were being watched. We waited around to see the lowering of the flag ceremony where all the traffic was stopped to let the guards ‘goose’ march across the road and back again all in perfect marching unison.

Just outside Beijing is the Summer Palace, which was once the country retreat of the Ming dynasty. It’s a grand collection of temples, pavilions, living quarters, theatres and the centre point is a temple high on a hill overlooking Kunming lake, plus a 1km long outdoor wooden walkway, known as the ‘long corridor’, decorated with intricate paintings. Everything in Beijing looks grand at the moment as all the tourist attractions were redecorated for the Olympics, so even though the sights are impressive, it’s hard to get a sense of how ancient they really are.

We couldn’t resist a visit to see the stage of the Olympics, as we both loved watching the games. The Birds Nest stadium is a peculiar structure but striking too, although it’s grey colour blended in well with the grey sky of the day.

The Water Cube looks cool from the outside and we took a tour inside to get up close to the structure. It’s only a shame the swimming pools are not in use for the public but just there to view, which seems a bit of a waste.

The Forbidden City takes up a large area in the centre of Beijing. It’s fronted by the Gate of Heavenly Peace, recognisable for the picture of Mao that hangs over the middle arch.

It’s also the location of many famous speeches and declarations in China’s history. You can tour around the gate and get a good view of Tiananmen Square from the top, making it easier to appreciate the size of what is the world’s largest public square!

The Forbidden City is made up of a series of gates and temples all in a row, with courtyards around the outside containing living quarters. It does feel quite forbidden, named so as no one was allowed to enter for 500 years unless invited, the punishment being instant death if caught doing so.

The neighbourhood we stayed in felt like a true reflection of Beijing, with a mixture of new housing and old hutongs. A Hutong is a grey walled area with narrow lanes filled with housing, although not many remain in the city. They are a good place to enjoy the peace and quiet away from motorised transport and they are filled with bikes, there are lots of bicycles in Beijing apparently!

Beijing is a fan of big grey walls and one day we tried to visit a temple in the south of the city. We managed to find the right area but we spent an hour walking along side a never ending, high, imposing grey wall looking for the entrance to get inside. It was so depressing trudging along, never finding a gap. Eventually we found it but it started to pour down so we just gave up defeated.

Beijing was one of our favourite places in China. Even though it’s the capital and a huge sprawling city, it’s not full of skyscrapers overpowering the landscape or shopping malls lining every street corner, it doesn’t feel ‘westernised’ yet. The heart of the city lies in it’s history, no matter if it’s good, bad, factual or pure propaganda. It feels like a city that is really lived in. Everywhere you go you are surrounded by portraits of Mao, large or small. For the people of Beijing, I can imagine it’s hard to escape the ways of the government or the propaganda that still exists, if recognisable. Each underground train has televisions in the carriages showing the images from the Golden Week celebrations, they never stop showing it! Is it propaganda or is it just patriotism, it’s hard to judge but whichever it is, it’s difficult to ignore or maybe easy to absorb. The people have a different attitude to those in the other big cities, a slightly ‘rugged’ feel to them as if they have seen and lived through many changes right there on their doorstep, but again they are as friendly as ever.

Of course no visit to Beijing is complete without mentioning the most famous food from the area. BeiJing or Peking Duck. There are duck restaurants all over town, but we chose one near our hostel that was full of locals all eating the duck, a good sign of quality we think, and it tasted good, so good we went back the next night for more. (Sorry duck lovers!)

We saved the best until last...

The Great Wall of China

To start with it should be renamed the Awesome Wall of China, Great doesn’t even begin to describe what you see. I think this little old wall over some rolling hills in the backyard of China has to be one of the most impressive places I have ever been to. A ‘pinch me, am I really here?’ experience.

We decided to visit it on our own rather than with a tour group, and went to a quiet section of the wall, 90km outside of Beijing, where you walk 10km from Jinshanling to Simatai. We got up at the unearthly hour of 5am to catch the first bus out of Beijing and arrived in Minyun at around 7.30am. At the bus stop we met a driver who said he could drive us to the start of the walk and pick us up at the end and return us to the bus stop. His prices were steep so we asked how much it would be just to take us one way to Jinshanling. His reply has to be one of the best lines we have been given so far and one that we repeat often - ’Me, I’m a two-way man’. After that classic line and still giggling, we bartered him down to a reasonable price and headed off to the wall. Our driver turned out to be a great guy, speaking some English and offering us lots of advice and stopping at fruit stalls and supermarkets on the way so we could buy some breakfast and lunch.

The wall itself was magic.

I always thought you would have to share the wall with crowds of people, but we had it all to ourselves. There were hardly any tourists, only a handful we passed on the way plus a few local hustlers selling drinks and postcards, but apart from that it was just us and the wall. Some sections of the wall have been repaired so are easy to walk on but other parts are in ruins and covered in rubble. It’s very steep in places so it’s a very slow walk as you have to watch each step you take and use your hands to help get up some sections, in all a Great hike.

To be on the wall and see it curving over the hills around you and vanishing off in the distance is just remarkable. To think it was built around the 14th century and the number of people it took to build it and who died in the process, part of the wall is said to be supported by bones of the dead!

Trying to imagine the people running up and down it each day, sending messages and looking out for the Mongolian enemy really makes you feel like you are somewhere very special, a part of history.

When we got to the end 4 hours later, we didn’t want to leave, we wished we could have hiked it for days rather than hours, but we had to meet up with our ’2-way man’!

And that was it for Beijing...so until next time take care of yourselves and each other ;-)

Jo & Ryan

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157622214754286/

Living in a Box

ryanandjo — Mon, 5 Oct 2009 05:53:00 GMT

Unable to obtain more than a single month visa for China in Vietnam, we decided to go to Hong Kong to get new China visas. Hong Kong was reunited with China in 1997, despite this it still holds a great deal of autonomy from the mainland and requires it’s own visa, and as citizens of the UK we were issued with a 6 month visa on arrival (note to China the same for the mainland would be nice :)). I always thought that Hong Kong was a single island, so was surprised to find that it actually comprises of around 260 islands of which Hong Kong Island is just one.

One of the main reasons we decided to go to ’Honkers’ was because mainland China was about to start its ’Golden Week’ holiday, an 8 day national holiday where 1.3 billion people go on vacation, with the majority travelling internally, causing gridlock and inflated prices throughout China. Hong Kong only observes the first day of the holiday, so we would be able to process our visas quicker.

However, we weren’t going to escape the rise in costs, as Hong Kong isn’t cheap, well at least compared to the costs of travelling in South East Asia. We had heard unfavourable stories about the cheapest accommodation in Hong Kong, but up for the challenge we decided that we would give it a go. Heading to Kowloon, we opted to avoid the infamous Chungking mansions and chose the less well known but comparable Mirador mansions.

Our room was not much bigger than a shoe box...

The beds were so small and my feet hung over the end. The bathroom comprising of a toilet and shower was only just big enough to sit and stand in, you couldn’t as they say ‘swing a cat’.

All that said, it was exactly what we had been told it would be, it was also very clean and well kept, very secure and the beds were raised so that we could stow our luggage underneath them. It’s true that the mansions look a little rough around the edges in the hallways and outside.

The lifts are intolerably slow and the hawkers outside selling suits, fake watches, handbags and the like can be annoying, but the room was nice and as a place to lay your head of an evening and it was better than a great deal of places we have stayed on the trip. The mix of ethnicities in the mansions also made it a great place to get cheap food from around the world, with the take away Indian curry becoming our favourite, of course along with a beer or two.

On our first evening we walked down the Avenue of Stars, which pays homage to the HK film industry and some of it’s most famous stars.

But the real reason for heading there, along with taking hundreds of skyline shots

is that it’s a great vantage point for the Symphony of Light, which was first performed during the reunification hand-over in ‘97 and has been continued every evening at 8pm since.

We were one of many armed with cameras to catch this treasured event. I’m sorry...I don’t get it, I don’t even know what to say about it, it was naff and not in a good, kitsch, kooky, kind of weird naff way. The lights were meant to be in time to some dodgy Chinese elevator/euro pop music, after it finished my only thought was, can I have those 15 minutes of my life back please? At least it was free, but I still think the energy could be better spent or even saved.

The next day we decided to tryout another of Hong Kong’s free activities and also one of Jo’s favourite past times, shopping, this may not be so free after all! ‘Honkers’ is famous for its shopping and it’s easy to see why, it has an abundance of shopping centres with shops catering to all comers, ranging from the dollar shops to the flashy designer stores. Now if we could only get our head around the money we maybe able to buy something too! Three banks, Standard Chartered, Hang Seng and Hong Kong’s pride and joy HSBC all issue their own notes for each monetary denomination and in some cases like the HK$10 they’re not even the same colour and they even throw in a coin for good measure, good luck checking if you’ve got a fake note or not!

Hong Kong was the scene of the first typhoon warning of the trip. A level 1 typhoon warning was issued for Typhoon Ketsana, we later found out that Level 1 meant that it was 800 km away from Hong Kong and a day later after it had safely passed Hong Kong it slammed into Vietnam killing over 160 people. Due to the bad weather which came with the typhoon, shopping became a daily activity for our first few days, thankfully all of the shopping centres and office buildings are connected like rabbit warrens and you can get everywhere in tunnels underground, so you can keep dry when it’s raining and when it’s hot you can roam in an air conditioned wonderland.

When the weather cleared we were able to venture outside. Not being used to the fresh air having been inside for so long, we found it difficult to walk, but luckily there were the Mid Level escalators to help us out, which are the longest series of escalators in the world.

We were also able to get out onto the harbour on the ever popular Star Ferry

As well as getting the Peak Tram to Victoria Peak

to take a HK skyline picture from another vantage point

The weather also held out for the 60th Anniversary of the creation of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) celebrations, culminating in a fireworks display in the evening.

Where it seemed like all of Hong Kong came out and packed the street to get a view of the fireworks and to celebrate.

Hong Kong was also the setting for one of the most stupid things we’ve done on the trip. During the biggest Chinese holiday period we decided that we wouldn’t tell the guesthouse that we intended to stay longer until the morning we were due to leave. Of course they had no rooms available and we were then in danger of downgrading from our box room to a cardboard box on the streets. Luckily it didn’t come to that, but the quality of our new box didn’t quite match our previous one.

Partly due to this we decided to head back to the mainland during the Golden week celebrations to get a first hand idea of how crazy it gets, but not before checking out one of the best museums either of has been too. The Hong Kong Museum of History detailed the history from HK's geological creation to the reunification hand over in ’97 and had just the right mix of displays, videos and interesting memorabilia.

So now we’re off to Shanghai, and we’re even getting a train!

Until next time

Ryan & Jo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157622347308423/

Once There Were Warriors

ryanandjo — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 11:27:00 GMT

Xi'an

is a huge city in Shaanxi province at the end of the Silk Road and much bigger than we expected, although after 3 weeks in a country of 1.3 billion we should be getting used to the size of places by now or maybe we would just stop having expectations and just see things for what they are. We found a hostel smack bang in the middle of the city with a fantastic view of the Bell Tower and the city lit up at night, right outside our window.

We took a walk though the narrow lanes of the Muslim quarter, where there are numerous temples and mosques, covered with great designs and art work.

The streets are lined with cheap shops and souvenirs along with all sorts of Mao memorabilia, including badges, Mao’s little red book, playing cards and even alarm clocks. All very kitsch.

There’s all kinds of food available on the streets, including a Chinese hamburger called the Roujiamo, a pita bread filled with meat or tofu for just 30 cents.

Plus our new favourite food, Moon Cakes...

These come in various sizes and flavours and are traditionally given during celebrations, especially the Mid-Autumn festival which is on October 3rd this year, so the shops are full of moon cakes ranging from cheap ones from 2 yuan each to elaborate box sets ranging up to 500 yuan each. The Chinese characters on the top of each cake have one symbol for longevity or harmony, another for the name of the bakery, and the last to tell you the flavour inside, usually sweet and fruity, so as you can guess we have no idea what’s inside until we eat it!

You can also catch the locals enjoying their food, this guy in particular had a great technique for eating noodles...no hands!

Xi’an is surrounded by a 12m high fortified wall built during the Ming dynasty in the 14th century, it’s very thick, with grand gateways along each side. We hired bikes on top to cycle the 14km boundary, which was a great way to discover the ancient history of the city. However, you only get 100 minutes to hire the bikes and if you are late back you have to pay a penalty, so after taking it leisurely we realised we had better bomb the last section back but made it with one minute to spare.

Terracotta Warriors

Of course Xi’an’s biggest attraction is the Terracotta Warriors, and we have been looking forward to this ever since seeing them being excavated on Newsround and Blue Peter when we were 11 years old! Discovered in 1974 and opened to the public in 1988, the warriors were built by the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who was a complete tyrant for his time and wanted to defend himself against his enemies in the afterlife, so had a whole army built to protect him. After the gigantic project was finished, the warriors were buried to hide them and kept secret for thousands of years. The site consists of 3 pits; pit 3 is known as the command centre.

Pit 2 is still in early excavation stages but you can get up close to 5 of the original warriors.

Pit 1 is the largest containing over 6000 warriors in an aircraft hangar size building. As you walk in the size takes your breath away, it really has the WOW factor.

Each life-sized warrior has a different face, no two are the same. It almost felt like they were once a real army buried alive and preserved ready for battle, absolutely fascinating.

Where there are warriors, there are souvenir sellers, and you can buy your own army of varying sizes if you so wish.

There are even packets of nuts and sweets you can buy shaped as warriors, the list is endless.

Before you get warrior'd out I'll move on to...

Guilin

After Xian we headed all the way south to Guilin, a 26 hour train journey,or it would have been if it wasn’t for a bargain flight offer we found that was cheaper than the train. Transport is expensive in China, so any savings we can make we take, even if it means we are taking to the skies far more often than we wish to. We’re still looking forward to a long train journey, maybe next time though.

Guilin, a city in the heart of karst country, surrounded by towering karst mountains in all directions along the Li river. We took a day to explore the city and climbed the Elephant Hill karst, conveniently called because it has a trunk, to get a good view of the area.

We also stumbled upon a talent show where one teenager was showing off his prowess by standing on meat cleaver blades in bare feet!

The city also has it's own twin towers, although in a more traditional Chinese style.

Yangshuo

Unfortunately there wasn’t a flight to our next destination, so we had the chore of catching a bus for an hour to get to Yangshuo, a small town in the heart of karst county. It’s a very ‘touristic’ place, with a pedestrian zone lined with western style bars and cafes and shops selling Beer Tsingtao t-shirts, just like all over SE Asia. It did feel like Thailand, but with the sun shining and no pollution in sight, it was good to see a part of China that felt so different to the rest we had seen so far.

We’ve seen karst formations all over Asia, from Krabi in Thailand, Vieng Xai in Laos and recently Halong Bay in Vietnam. Even though the karsts were so familiar to us, these ones stood out a little bit above the rest, there are many more in one area then we have seen before, or so we tried to convince ourselves to make it seem interesting. If these were the first karsts we had seen we would be astounded by their beauty.

But they’re not, so we weren’t, same same... We still managed to muster some karst enthusiasm to hire bikes for a day, but the 6-7 hour bike ride only took us 2 hours, maybe because we didn’t stop at every corner to gasp in wonder at the scenery and because we got so fed up with touts springing out the bushes trying to get us to take a bamboo raft ride down the river that we cycled at warp speed to avoid them.

We did climb the Moon hill...

inspiringly called because it has a moon shape cut out of it, for another view of the region.

However, along with the searing heat and humidity, came the little old ladies and their fans and cold water, following us up the hill fanning away at us to get us to buy cold water. It actually worked, I enjoyed the fanning for once, even though Ryan was stern and stopped them from fanning him, I pretended to dislike it but really it was just what I needed and the water was refreshingly cold even if three times the price in a shop. Sometimes their persistence does pay off and the touts come in handy just when you least expect it.

We did little else in Yangshuo, apart from burning some calories at the outdoor gym...

We were amused by the blatant brand theft of sports shops in town. Even funnier when the real Adidas shop is just a few doors down.

We caught a night sleeper bus to Guangzhou, which was uneventful apart from waiting four desperate hours for the first toilet stop, after which we both managed to get enough sleep to make it worth the while.

Guangzhou

We arrived in Guangzhou at 7am and decided that rather then spend the last night of our China visa here, we would just head straight to Hong Kong. We found out the location of a bus stop and bus number that would take us to the station where the buses direct to Hong Kong left from. Unfortunately, we didn’t check which direction to catch the bus in. After an hour of being on a rush hour packed bus standing up with our backpacks blocking the way, and then having little old ladies insist we take our bags off and sit down, which meant they ended up holding our bags for us (how guilty did it make me feel sitting comfortably while a 70 year old held on to my bag for dear life), we made it to the bus station...but not the right one, doh! It was the bus station at the opposite end of the line in some quiet leafy suburb with no buses to Hong Kong for miles. Oh sugar. Luckily, we found out we were quite close to the train station, so we cut our losses and caught a taxi and then an expensive (but very comfy and swish) train to Honkers, which is where we are today, so location wise, we are up to date.

Until next time

Jo & Ryan

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157622307084719/

The Flavours of Sichuan

ryanandjo — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:57:00 GMT

If flying is cheating then call me Rosie Ruiz, the journey by bus and train from Lijiang to Chengdu would have taken the best part of two days and had multiple points of failure, so choosing the hour long flight was an easy option.

Chengdu

Liquid Capital, my old employers, have an office in Chengdu, so we arranged to meet friends for dinner. Sichuan is famous for its spicy cuisine and we would be treated to it’s most famous dish, the Hot Pot. Hot Pot consists of a large vat set over a burning flame set in the middle of the table. The vat is divided in two, with one side bubbling with fiery hot with chillis and the other a more tame side. Various raw meats and vegetables are then brought out and cooked in the bubbling vat. Loving spicy food, I had been looking forward to this meal for a while and it didn’t disappoint.

When discussing Chengdu we made the faux pas of saying the city was more polluted than we had expected, it turns out that the Mandarin word for pollution is “cloudy”, Chengdu apparently was more ‘cloudy’ than usual.

However, it was not too cloudy the next day to stop us getting out and about to visit the Wenshu Monastery and a huge statue of Chairman Mao at Tianfu Square.

In the evening we met up with / crashed a Liquid team dinner. This time we were treated to a buffet at the Sheraton where we were like kids is a sweet shop, returning time after time to fill up on the great food. It was here that we realised that the hostels with nice touches that we look for aren’t quite the same a nice hotels!

We’ve come across some interesting scams on this trip and i’m not sure if the following is the most elaborate or the most dangerous. At the hostel one of the staff asked if we would like to earn some money for a days work. Cristiano Ronaldo was filming a Nike commercial just outside Chengdu and they were looking for westerners to appear in the audience. However, they already had enough males so they were only looking for females. I was suspicious because the football season had started and Portugal had a World Cup qualifier against Hungary the following day. I need not have worried as Jo’s response was “We’re going to the Panda’s tomorrow aren’t we? And why would I want to meet Cristiano Ronaldo anyway?” Pandas 1 Ronaldo 0!

The following evening we met up with Liquid again and were treated to a traditional Chinese meal, followed by some Chinese drinking games. As we had to get up early the next morning Jo deferred her drinking responsibilities to me and promptly made me drink 12 glasses of beer with HER rolling of the dice.

Pandas

Jo had been looking forward to visiting the pandas in Chengdu ever since we decided to visit China. They were very cute and playful and we even got to see some new born cubs in incubators, which apparently were “adorable”. Panda’s aren’t very active, they have adapted to survive on bamboo but it provides them with very little energy, much like Koala’s with eucalyptus. They’re only active around breakfast time and then sleep for much of the day, so it was funny to see them get out of breath easily, flop over and even fall off their apparatus.

We managed to find a solitary giant panda called Ling Ling, who sat in his enclosure and did nothing. There were many Chinese tourists shouting at him trying to get him to eat so that they could take a picture of him, but he wouldn’t budge. As soon as the Chinese tourists left, Ling Ling wandered right up to us and then went on a bamboo binge. It was amusing watching him peal the bamboo leaves off the bamboo and them roll them into a cigar shape before munching it in the side of his mouth, with his eyes closed!

I wasn’t sure I would enjoy the trip as although its a conservation and breeding centre none of the Pandas have been released into the wild, but even the scrooge in me has to admit that it was fun.

Emei Shan

Our next destination was Emei Shan, two hours outside of Chengdu. Emei Shan is one of China’s four sacred Buddhist mountains. Buddhists make a pilgrimage by climbing the 40 km of steps up the mountain to see the pagoda on the top, but 99% of pilgrims now get a bus 35 kms up the mountain, then walk for 1.5 kms before getting a cable car up to the top rather than attempt the last steep two hour hike up 6600 steps. Some don’t even walk the 1.5 kms and get a Jampan to take them instead.

Pushed for time and not wanting to collapse like Pandas, we decided that we would get the bus the first 35 kms and then do the rest ourselves. After the first 1.5 km I had a call of nature and went to the toilet and pondered the advice given...

Jo arranged a head start and I was to catch her up. However, it was very misty and Jo decided the weather was so bad that she didn’t want to walk to the top if there would be nothing to see, so she started to descend. Unfortunately there was a monastery at the start of the trail and two ways around it to reach the path up. It turns out as I was going one way to start my climb, Jo was coming back down the other way. Having not caught her up, and after waiting for over 2 hours at the summit and wondering where Jo could be, I decided to enlist the help of the local police. The policeman spoke as much English as I did Mandarin and correspondence was done with a novice English speaker over the telephone. After an hour of wishing I could speak more Mandarin and that I knew metric rather than imperial we had a description of Jo out and the policeman said to me the one English sentence he knew, “Welcome to China”, it made me laugh and in the situation it was just what was needed.

Another policeman arrived and we set about looking for Jo, we would get the cable car to where we had separated and start from there. While waiting for the cable car, one of the policeman got a phone call and he passed me the phone and on the other end was Jo, who had been spotted down below by another officer. Relieved we started our journey to meet Jo, where when we were reunited, the policeman repeated his ‘Welcome to China’ phrase to Jo and we laughed together, before we posed for a few photographs with him on his mobile phone. Jo maintains that she had done what any good child would do and stay where you are if you get separated, so she had been sat in the same spot for 4 hours in the cold, waiting for me to find her and according to her she wasn’t lost as she knew exactly where she was the whole time!

Jo’s punishment for ‘bottling’ the climb the day before was to get up at 6 am to complete the climb because she had the camera the previous day so I couldn’t take any photos.

She made it and was rewarded with a great view emerging through the clouds 3100m above sea level.

We left the summit and started to descend to the bottom. On the way down we saw about two dozen people walking up, with a 50% mix between Chinese and Western pilgrims, all who looked shattered. Add to the fact that you can’t see anything as everything is covered in clouds and mist, and we began to realise why most pilgrims take the bus.

The path was wet and slippery, so we only managed to walk down 25 km rather than the 40 km we had planned, before catching another bus off the mountain. As I had caught a cable car the day before Jo decided that as her legs were shot she would take the one on offer to the bus station while I walked the last 3 km, thankfully we were able to meet up at the bottom without any issues this time!

It was hard going and very tiring but was also great fun, the climb up is meant to take 2 days but I think it would have taken us 3 or 4. But then again, does Emei Shan exist? As from the town at the base you can’t see the mountain standing over 3000m tall and when you are on it, you can’t see off it as it’s surrounded by cloud and mist, maybe that is why it’s one of the mystical sacred four.

Leshan

On our way back from Emei Shan we took a slight detour to see the worlds largest sitting Buddha at Leshan.

Dafo, as he is known locally, is 71 meters tall and was carved as an offering to the gods to calm the rivers and protect boatmen from lethal currents on the river, which he overlooks. The rocks discarded from the carving process were dumped into the river, filling the river hollows and quelling the dangerous currents and thus a legend was born.

Dafo is looking very weathered these days, but was still an impressive sight considering his age of 1300 years and didn’t have any hair growing out of his 7 meter long ears! We went on a weekend and it was very busy with people paying their respects.

We caught a bus back to Chengdu for an evening, before catching an early morning bus to our next destination.

Jiuzhaigou

The bus journey to Jiuzhaigou was the longest of our trip, a 16 hour doozy. To be fair though we were expecting it, travelling to Jiuzhaigou in Northern Sichuan has always been problematic even more so since the richter magnitude eight earthquake hit the region in May 2008, killing 88,000 people.

Travelling through the mountainous region you can see the devastation in the roads and the surrounding areas and the ongoing rebuilding effort. The road we took to Jiuzhaigou has only recently reopened from the earthquake and is subject to landslides at this time of year, one of which was still being cleared from a few days before and caused a huge traffic jam along the way.

The road took us through the epicentre of the quake and through towns that were devastated, but today they are nearly all rebuilt, with new housing and schools.

Just as we had finally traversed the earthquake area and onto some tarmac the gearbox and brakes decided they had had enough, and bellowed their disapproval into the bus, which became very smoky. Luckily we were near enough to Jiuzhaigou that there were buses going there that could take us. So we spent the last 3 hours of the journey sitting on the floor next to the driver of an already full bus, before finding accommodation and crashing out exhausted.

This is the reason for making the trip to Jiuzhaigou National Park.

It’s not possible to walk the whole park in one day so at some points we used the very expensive park buses, but Jo was happy as the buses had pictures of pandas on them, some people are easily pleased! They’re known as green buses, because of their colour not because they are environmentally friendly, which is a shame considering the beauty of the area.

Dinner was amusing, none of the restaurants had English menus so we had to order in Mandarin, we were able to order the Sichuan speciality of spicy tofu and a chili pork dish, but didn’t know the word for basic steamed rice (mifan), doh! We got there in the end and then had a candlelit dinner when there was a blackout, a romantic end to a great day.

Huanglong

We to’d and fro’d with whether to go to Huanglong or not, we were probably not going until we found out that there was a five day wait to travel east by bus from Jiuzhaigou due to a landslide. We could head back south and then catch a train north to our next destination of Xi'an, but it would cost as much as a direct flight and take a great deal longer. Oh dear our carbon footprint isn’t looking too healthy right now!

As our flight was in the evening and the airport was close to Huanglong, it made sense to go and we’re really glad we did.

Huanglong was different too but reminded us of our time at Yellowstone, with it’s terraces of limestone ponds, which were spectacular despite the poor weather. The park is at high altitude, nearly 3600m, and there is oxygen for sale in special oxygen sheds along the route. We didn’t need any, although we easily got short of breath if we walked too quickly.

Now we're off to Shaanxi province, more on that next time!

Are we still loving China? ........ You Bet!

Until next time

Ryan and Jo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157622195538545/

China - There’s No Where Finer

ryanandjo — Sun, 6 Sep 2009 08:05:00 GMT

The border crossing from Lao Cai to Hekou went smoothly, as we were the first to arrive in the morning and there were lots of friendly officials helping us through passport control, to fill out the forms, and letting us cut in line to take our H1N1 temperature readings, which were ok this time! We had heard stories of Lonely Planet China books being confiscated at this border because they have a map showing Taiwan as a separate country, which is controversial in China. We bought a second copy of the book in case we got one confiscated and hid them deep in our backpacks. We shouldn’t have worried though as they didn’t check any of our bags and just waved us straight through.

We stepped into China to a mass of Chinese signs and no English at all and realised without our ‘buried’ books we had no idea where to head. We asked an official looking person if they knew where the bus station was, he spoke a little English and give us directions and you could tell he was happy to have an opportunity to practice his English as he wished us a safe journey and said good luck to us, how kind! We’re not in Vietnam anymore!!!

We found the bus station easily and as we walked in wondering how our first experience of asking for bus tickets in China would go, we were very happy to find that the only other passenger at the station was our friend Echo, a Chinese girl who had shared our horrendous Laos/Cambodia border crossing and was one of the 5 squeezed into the taxi. What a surprise and what luck for us to bump into the only Chinese person we have met on the trip only 2 minutes after entering China! Echo was heading to a different town to us and her bus was leaving in 30mins. We had just missed a bus to Kunming and would have to wait 3 hours for the next one, so after some easy persuasion we changed our plans to follow Echo to Yuanyang area and it’s famous Hani rice terraces.

We found out Echo had her LP China confiscated at the border, she didn’t know there were any issues and had it in her day pack, which was searched. The guards said they didn’t want to take it but it was their job to and they had to follow orders. She was upset to find her government resorted to this kind of censorship just to keep one map out of the country.

Yuanyang

The journey was fun, very winding and bumpy and apparently along the worst road in China. The locals were really intrigued by us and one man sitting next to Ryan was happy to point out how hairy Ryan’s arms and legs were compared to his. He was also interested in our watches wanting to know if they were made in China. An older gentleman got on and smiled as soon as he saw us and started chatting away to us, in Chinese of course, and offering us some berries to eat, the kind that you are warned to avoid. Luckily Echo could translate for us and we could have a proper conversation for once rather than just guessing what the locals are saying to us. When he left he said he was very happy to meet us and wished he could have more time to talk. How kind. We are definitely liking China already.

Arriving in Zinjie, the old town area of Yuanyang, the bus lady said her family owned a hotel and wanted us to take a look. Wow, the rooms were great and with a fantastic view of the mountains we had just driven up and all for 40 Yuan, we were expecting to pay at least double that for a room in China, what a bargain.

While wandering the town we were asked if we wanted to hire a car to take us to see sunset at the rice terraces. Echo set about getting us the best price, if it wasn’t for her we a) wouldn’t have been able to talk to anyone, no one spoke English, and b) would have paid twice as much as she bargained it for, what a stroke of luck. The drive to the terraces was amazing, passing through remote hillside villages where there are around 25 different tribes in the area, all wearing traditional costumes. We stopped to give a lift to one lady who was wearing an outfit that took 6 months for her to make, they take a lot of time and care to get the costume right and it’s all done by hand.

We climbed down a hillside for a vantage point of the famous terraces and we did’t have to pay to watch it from a viewing platform as we found a local who showed us where to get the best view for a fraction of the cost.

The next day we had to cancel our sunrise trip to another terrace as it was pouring with rain but we weren’t too upset to head back to bed at 4.30am. We spent the rest of the day wandering the town, surfing the internet in a very smoky cafe full of people playing games.

The Great firewall blocks facebook, youtube and a few other sites but we can access most of the ones we use. For lunch we had a regional dish that uses blackened chicken instead of regular chicken, it doesn’t look very appealing as the skin and meat is all grey and black, but guess what, it tastes just like chicken.

Kunming

The next day we said farewell to Echo, armed with a notepad full of Chinese characters to help us in sticky situations, and caught a bus 7 hours to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. The bus station timetable and bus route map were a little confusing but we easily managed to get tickets, i.e say Kunming while holding up 2 fingers in a polite fashion.

Kunming is a large city of over 1 million people and such a contrast from the countryside, with many shopping centres and restaurants, highlighting the extremes of China. Everyone drives electric motorbikes, which is such a change from Vietnam as they don’t make any sound, although it does mean you don’t hear them coming either. Kunming was just how we imagined Chinese cities to be like, and not disappointing at all.

We got up early the next morning to walk around the city and saw hundreds of old people doing Tai Chi in the parks and squares. It was fantastic, again, one of those iconic sights you expect to see in China.

There were also a few strange sights on the streets, including multi coloured chicks. I’m sure they’re not meant to be that colour.

Night bus

We thought it was about time we took a sleeper bus to save on a nights accommodation. Now these are buses with actual beds in them, three rows of bunk beds along the bus. We were told we had to pay a gas fee for our extra luggage as it was over 10kg each, although ‘Mike’ said he knew how much they weighed without using scales, hmm not sure we believe him, so we gave him a sob story on how we didn’t have much money and had to go to a bank and in the end we gave him some Vietnam Dong and a few Yuan and that kept him happy but i’m sure it was all a big con. We were both too big for the beds on the bus but after our ‘bribe’ Mike moved us to better beds, although they didn’t make any difference to us. Other than that it was lights out all the way. Ryan slept for most of the journey but I was too excited about travelling on a bus in a bed and laying down watching the scenery go by, not that I could see much, but it felt like proper travel again and I was also staying awake to see if I could spot any pickpockets lurking around that we were warned about, I was in Detective Jo mode.

Lijiang

Arriving at 6am, a little sleepy, we quickly got fed up when none of the taxis would take us to a guesthouse, but we later discovered it was because they were all in the old town and no cars are allowed along the cobbled streets. So we set off walking and it took us 90 mins to find the place we were looking for after getting lost in the lane ways, although we wandered all the old streets as the sun rose with hardly anyone around and everything shut up, which was a good introduction to the town. Lots of locals were trying to help us find our hostel but none spoke English although that didn’t stop them chatting away to us in Chinese even though we couldn’t speak back to them.

Lijiang is a very pretty little town and a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s very toursity but so different to South East Asia as 90% of the tourists are Chinese, so it is scarce to see a foreigner. All the souvenirs in the shops are really good quality and you can walk pass shops and browse them without any hassle at all, not that I was buying anything. It’s easy to find quiet areas as the Chinese tend to stick to the popular tourist route of the town and the more expensive areas so once you step down a side street it really is quiet and you are the only ones around and you can find bargain food stalls and cafes that are really friendly.

The local Naxi food was delicious, especially the snack food that was all over the town.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

After two days of exploring Lijiang, we took a 2 hour minibus ride to Qiaotou the town at the start of the 22km Tiger Leaping Gorge hiking track. After paying our entrance fees and picking up the trail map and info, we headed off to find the track and start the uphill journey

The first 2 hours were steep but manageable and after a lunch stop at a Naxi family house we started the infamous 28 bends, where you make a 900m ascent on a steep switch back trail that is more or less vertical.

Now I decided to be sensible and take this as slowly as possible to avoid over exertion and because the level of oxygen starts to thin here so many people, no matter how fit, get out of breath. Slow is an understatement, as well as making Ryan nearly cry at the lack of speed I was taking, I also managed to really upset the Naxi horse guy who had followed me the whole way from the bottom hoping I would wilt and need a lift on his horse, although the more persistent he got the more determined I was to make it up. We both made it, me completely exhausted, Ryan with no problems at all, but it was worth it. It took us 2 hours to walk less than 1km, it was probably the hardest walk I have ever done and raises me from novice to amateur trekker status! The view on the way up was not very rewarding until we got to the top and rounded the corner and we could take in the view of the Jade Snow Dragon Mountain in it’s full glory.

The rest of the walk was downhill and flat until we reached the Tea Horse Trade Guesthouse, where we stopped for the night in a gorgeous pine cabin with great food, a fantastic view and a really comfy bed that was so appreciated.

The next morning after a hearty breakfast of Naxi potato cake with yaks cheese, we headed off to finish the trek.

The going was mostly flat but along very thin paths that skimmed round the edge of the mountains. We encountered a lot of locals from the nearby hamlets as well as a cattle and goat jam on the path that held us up for a while as we waited for the slow animals to head up into the hills as the path was too thin to overtake them.

The most treacherous bit, for me anyway, was when three waterfalls crossed over the path so we had to walk across fast running water and slippery stones on a narrow path with a very deadly fall if we made one wrong move. I like to talk things up a bit, but it was frightening.

The final part of the trek is descending all the way down into one of the deepest and narrowest gorges in the world, or so they say, to see the rock that the Tiger leapt across the gorge from to escape a hunter, now you see where the name comes from! The descent was very steep, rocky and DANGEROUS with ladders at some sections where there was a sheer drop.

Of course what goes down, must come up again, so after a quick look around I decided to give myself a head start on Ryan and climb up on my own to see how far I could get before he caught me up and I actually beat him! When he did catch up to me he was very out of breath as he decided to go at his Pace rather than mine for a change, and it definitely took it’s toll on him, he he!

After another good nights sleep at Tina’s Guesthouse, we headed back the next day to Lijiang to rest aching limbs and to make our way over to Chengdu in Sichaun province. Are we catching a bus, a train, or a plane? A plane would be cheating, wouldn’t it?

In China things observed we have: (China Observations)

Weather - the temperature in China is a mild 20 odd degrees and quite cool at night, which means all the guesthouses have lovely soft duvets to snuggle up under, oh how I missed thee warm doona!

Sleeping late - The Chinese don't like to wake up early. When we arrived in Lijiang, no one was up and we had to bang on hotel doors at 8am to be let in with the owners all still in their dressing gowns. In Xinjie town, we had to wake up the owner to let us out of the hotel, which was all shuttered up, when we were trying to leave at 7.30am to catch a bus. It's such a change from SE Asia as no matter how early you got up, even 5am, there were still people up before you working or exercising to beat the heat of the day.

Lost in Translation - there are many signs around China that show the meaning in English as well as in Chinese characters, unfortunately the wording doesn’t always make sense! This is known as Chinglish language, we'll try to capture as many of these as possible!

Oh, I forgot to say...We are LOVING China!!!

Jo & Ryan

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections72157622214754286/

Hanoi(ed)

ryanandjo — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:20:00 GMT

The train system is recommended for travel between destinations in Vietnam, with the reunification express connecting HCMC to Hanoi. Having done so many bus journeys recently we decided that we would mix it up and pay the little extra for the train to Hanoi.

I almost didn’t make the journey, as after waiting for the crowds to disembark and with both our backpacks I started to climb the steps into the carriage. Upon reaching the top I was met by a straggler who was slower than everyone else to get off . The train wasn’t due to leave for 5 minutes, but rather than a) wait, b) let me past, c) walk the 2 metres to the adjacent carriage and disembark there, he chose d) place his hands on the backpack I was carrying in my hands and try to push me backwards out of the train!! But we made it on and managed to find our seats ok.

Before our first stop an official looking man came around selling tickets to passengers. As we had prepaid for our tickets and he didn’t ask us we thought nothing more of it, until midday when people started handing their tickets to the food staff in return for lunch. It was then that we realised he was selling lunch tickets and had decided unilaterally that we wouldn’t want lunch or that it was too much hassle to speak to us. Luckily, there were other food vendors on the train, so we did get a meal, although it was less appetising than what the majority were eating.

The rest of the 13 hour journey passed uneventfully, until there was a large bang close to Ninh Binh. We had read about children throwing stones at trains, but as our train had no metal shutters we assumed that the problems were in the past, but the huge crack in the window was testament to the fact that it still happens today.

After our long journey we weren’t looking forward to arriving in Hanoi, as it’s probably the scam capital of South East Asia. Hotels appropriate the names of popular hotels and working in cohorts with taxi drivers, direct customers to the ‘dodgy’ hotel where tourists are ripped off. In an attempt to avoid this we walked past all the touts and headed outside the station and went straight to a taxi company we had used before and to someone who wasn’t asking for our business. We arrived at our guesthouse with no issues, using the most direct route and the meter not being ‘over clocked’, which is another con prevalent in Hanoi.

The next day we set out to do some exploring and quickly noticed that the pavements in Hanoi are not for pedestrians. Shops spill out onto the pavement and what little space is left is quickly commandeered by moped parking, meaning that you have to walk on the roads, which are even busier with mopeds than HCMC. Whether you’re on the path or the road it seems moped drivers in Hanoi deliberately try to run you down, but i’m probably being paranoid.

All of the roads in the Old Quarter area where we are staying are named after their principle trade of yester year and in some cases still today, i.e all the cotton shops were or are on cotton street and silk on silk street etc. We’re not sure of the translation of our street is, but it is probably deep fat fried alley or fish and chips lane!

The kids around deep fat fried alley were SO nice. A couple of kids playing football stopped playing so they could throw the ball right at Jo and another said hello to me and when I turned to say hello back he stuck two fingers up at me, charming.

We have long since realised that we aren’t going to enjoy Vietnam. However, after much deliberation we decided that we would go to Halong Bay rather than skipping it.

As we were aiming for escapism, we decided to make our own way to Cat Ba island, the largest inhabited island in Halong Bay, rather than paying for an horrendous sounding tour from Hanoi.

Rock the Cat Ba

Our first impressions of Cat Ba island was that it was nice and a place that we could finally relax and try and escape from the ‘real’ Vietnam.

We booked ourselves onto a tour and we were told that we would be part of a small group, I was skeptical to say the least, but when our tour started I was surprised that there were only 6 of us on an traditional junk boat. Perhaps the thing I dislike most about Vietnam is that I have started to assume everyone is untrustworthy and is trying to rip us off, it’s not a nice trait and its one I hope to lose as quickly as I have picked up.

Halong Bay was as advertised and we had a relaxing day sailing and swimming through the limestone karsts.

On our way back to Cat Ba we stopped at a floating village and picked up a villager who had filled her boat to capacity with recycling.

After about 10 minutes there was a screech from the back of the boat and upon going to investigate it was clear there was a problem.

Her boat had capsized and shed its load into the sea. We were all thankful for another opportunity to go for a swim and cool down and along with the boat helpers we set about collecting as many cans and plastic bottles as we could. After 30 minutes we had managed to collect the majority of the recycling and it was nice that the owner of the recycling, who didn’t speak a word of English thanked us all personally and indicated that she would now be able to eat with the money from selling the cans and bottles.

Arriving back at the Hanoi bus station there was only one taxi company that we hadn’t used before so we wondered about their legitimacy. Things started well when we set off on the most direct route back to where we had stayed previously. However, neither of us could read the meter due to the sun light, but I could notice the figures changing quickly without being able to read them. Positioning myself to be able to read the meter I was astounded to find that we had travelled 10km and the fare was already nearly US$10 after just 2 minutes. At this point I told him to drop us off and we weren’t going to pay the fare. He waved his hand and said later and as we were on a ‘motorway’ we had little choice but to stay in the taxi.

We arrived at a street close to our destination, after, according to the meter, 5 minutes, 28.4 kms and a fare of $25!! He asked for the fare on the meter and I again refused. At this point he tried to lock us in the car, Jo having her wits about her already had the door open and the automatic lock failed and a stand off ensued. Jo got our belongings out of the car and I told him that we wouldn’t pay anymore than the already inflated $5 we had paid to get to the bus station, having gone the long way and if he wanted to call the police then he should do so.

When it became apparent we weren’t going to resolve the stand off, he called my bluff and said he would call the police. As the police are probably just as corrupt, or that he would know someone who was, I didn’t really want the police involved. He could have been calling some ‘friends’ to help him out or not actually speaking to anyone at all, but did we really want to find out? I sent Jo off to get the owner of the guesthouse to help us out and upon seeing her leave the tables turned and he was suddenly happy to accept $5 and quickly drove off.

The next day we finished off sightseeing in the city, going to Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex,

where the main attraction is going to see an embalmed Uncle Ho. The mausoleum is very strict and I managed to get told off for breaking nearly every rule, wearing sunglasses outside the mausoleum, smiling, talking, even having a hand in my pocket. You are not allowed to take pictures inside the mausoleum and we were told we had to hand our camera in at the main gate meaning we weren’t able to take any pictures of the rest of the complex.

After finishing seeing Hanoi we booked a bus up to Lao Cai. It was another typical ‘Vietnamese’ journey, which started off well with nice comfortable reclining seats but followed the usual pattern of a broken air conditioner on a bus with no windows and lots of vomiting from locals. We only stayed one night in Lao Cai but we both liked the town and the people were very friendly. Although, we’re not sure whether we liked it so much because we knew we were so close to ending our ‘nightmare’ in Vietnam. Lao Cai is a border town and it was from here the next day we said farewell to both Vietnam and South East Asia to head into China.

Until a hopefully more lighthearted next time, take care

Ryan & Jo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157621819402495/

Vietnam Summary:

Highlights

Favourite Place - Qui Nhon (Jo), Ho Chi Minh City (Ryan)
Favourite Attraction - HCM Mausoleum (Jo) , Cao Dai Temple (Ryan)
Food - Hue Spring Rolls (Jo) , Vietnamese Curry (Ryan)
Beer - Saigon Green (Jo), Beer 333 (Ryan)

LowLights

Too many to name (Jo) , People (Ryan)

For those of you thinking of possibly travelling to the region: Costs in USD

Accommodation - $8-15
Restaurant meal - $3-5
Food stall meal - $1-2
Mug of Draught Beer - $0.20
450ml Bottled Beer - $0.75-1.25
285ml Soft Drink - $0.75
1.5l Bottle of water - 50c
Bus - $1.50 an Hour

Are we having fun yet?

ryanandjo — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:54:00 GMT

Up to Kon Tum, named the friendliest city in Vietnam and it was here we really appreciated the size of the population in the country. The description of Kon Tum sounded like a small rural village, remote and off the beaten track. We were disappointed to see it was a large town and realising that with a population of 85 million, we are not going to find any quiet retreats in Vietnam. But we decided to give Kon Tum a chance and it lived up to it’s name with every one giving us a friendly wave and hello. The town is surrounded by traditional villages that contain an unusual communal house called a Rong, something we haven’t seen before in Asia.

We were also able to view rice noodle making techniques, and see them dry out in the sun.

To get back to the coast we were looking forward to taking a journey through the Central Highlands most impressive scenery and along the road that was part of the Ho Chi Min trail during the war. The journey was definitely memorable...as the journey from hell!

We were up early to get the 6am bus only to have the ticket guys laugh at us when they saw how much we had overpaid for our bus tickets. Not a great start. The bus was a cranky old minibus and even though we had allocated seats the organiser put us in the middle of the back row. This was fine until the bus fills up and there were still passengers waiting to get on. The organiser decides another man can sit on our row....where though, there is NO ROOM!!! How many times could we tell him there is absolutely NO ROOM!!! That peed us off even further and we refused to move into the non-existent space he wanted us to take, so he rearranged the bus so a very small teenager could be squeezed on to our row, I have no idea how but sardines in a tin can were having a better day than us. We could hardly see the scenery out the window, there was no air conditioning working, only two windows open but none near us. The crazy driving skills and winding road resulted in motion sickness for the girl next to me, so I was surrounded by full sick bags all the way. Her Mum also got sick and actually threw up into her hat, which was quite funny and made the whole bus laugh, until the smell hit us. On top of that it was a 6 hour journey with only two quick stops for toilet breaks in the bushes. So with no food or drink stops we arrived in Danang, hungry, thirsty, with shoulders, hips and knees all out of joint. Bad day?...you bet.

Danang is where the American invasion began in 1963 and the local beaches, including China Beach, were used by the troops for R&R. From here we headed straight to Hoi An. Now we know the lads selling bus tickets raise the price for tourists, it's expected, but when we were told the price was 50,000 dong each, 5 times more than we should pay, we just laughed, but he got angry and wasn’t going to take any less from us and since the bus had already set off and we didn’t know where we were, we had no choice but to be ripped off.

This is a recurring theme in Vietnam, it seems the tourist industry has all the scams and tricks in the book to extort extra money out of us. We feel like we are back at week one of our trip learning to travel again, or maybe we have let our guard down as we haven’t encountered any touts for a while. For example...(skip this section if you don’t want to hear about it...You may need a beer to get through this!)

At a road side stop for lunch, there is a menu with no prices on it so you check the price of a meal before you order, that’s obvious. When it’s time to pay the cost has doubled and they refuse to take any less. What can you do?

Hotels quote prices in US$ so we ask what the exchange rate is if we want to pay in Dong. When it comes to paying, the exchange rate always increases making us pay more, literally within two minutes of asking in one instance.

Taxis always get lost trying to find the hotel you’ve asked to be taken too, even though you’ve pointed to a map, said the hotel name 3 times and they confirm they know where it is, still you get taken to the wrong place or they take the very long way to get there. I could go on.

We had no real expectations for Vietnam and so far we are still trying to work out what we like about the country, it’s charms are not obvious but unfortunately it’s flaws are. We’ve had a few bad days and journeys so we have decided not to write the country off yet, we are optimistic for the North, but that guard is up and staying up from now on.

Vietnam does have an upside...the food is great, really great, whether it’s from a street corner or a restaurant.

and the Bia is so cheap, 20 cents for a draught beer! Cheaper than water. Trust us, some days we really need it!

Hoi An

A World heritage listed town, left untouched by the war and overflowing with charm and quaintness, showing the colourful Vietnam of yesteryear and a delight to stroll around.

The number of tourists that visit make it a touts dream. It’s overflowing with tailors and souvenir shops with every other building containing someone who can make you the latest fashions in a day. But it wasn’t a problem for us, the touts kept quiet as we wandered by, we must have looked so dapper already there was nothing they could do to improve us!

Hue

Taking the 4 hour drive north, Vietnam started to grow on us. The scenery was beautiful with mountains and beaches, small low key villages, the reunification train crossing bridges over rivers and the roadside dotted with war cemeteries. This was what we had been expecting, or maybe what we had seen in the movies.

Hue was once the political capital of Vietnam and we discovered there is much more to this country’s history than the war. The countryside is home to tombs of Emperors from days gone by, set in lakeside grounds and grand hilltop scenery.

We also learnt that Mandarins are not just a fruit or a Chinese language, but important government workers for the Royal dynasties.

The heart of Hue city is the Citadel and Imperial Enclosure where the Nguyen dynasty Emperors lived until they handed over power to Ho Chi Minh’s provisional government in 1945. It’s also where most of the local population live today, although many of the historical buildings were bombed during the war, so there isn’t as much to see as there could be.

But lets not forget the War (American or Vietnam depending on which side you were on). The Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) is 70km north of Hue on Highway 1 and was the scene of the most intense and significant battles of the period. We booked onto a 12 hour tour to visit the DMZ, which ran 5 kilometres either side of the 17th parallel, with the Ben Hai river creating a natural border between North and South. The area is still pockmarked with bomb craters and tunnels used by the North.

The tour also took in the main sights on Highway 9, including Khe Sanh combat base, where the bloodiest battle took place killing 500 Americans and 10,000 North Vietnamese. A memorial museum of US Army remnants is all that remains from the tented city which housed 14,000 US troops and part of the original runway is still visible.

The Ho Chi Minh trail still exists today but it has all been upgraded to highway now and a new bridge has been built over the Dakrong river, with funding from the Cubans.

The worst aspect of the tour, which typically sums up how Vietnam has gone for us, is that eighty percent of the tour was spent travelling on the bus and we were made to rush around the sites we did stop at. Maybe if we hadn’t done a 2 hour round trip to go for lunch at the tour company’s hotel, we may have had more time to sight see. The tour company didn’t actually allow us to stop anywhere in the 10km wide DMZ and the only photos we were able to take of the area were from the bus!

Apart from what we saw on the tour there really isn’t much evidence of the war left in the area, but it’s not hard to imagine the land as a battle zone, with hills for key vantage points and land still scarred from Agent Orange. The countryside here is beautiful and picturesque, with a low population made up mainly of tribal villagers. But the beauty does not come naturally, of course most of the areas residents were killed or displaced, and the use of Agent Orange ruined the land for cultivation, so the peaceful area has only evolved as such through chaos and bloodshed.

Jo & Ryan

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157621819402495/

Temperatures Rising in Vietnam

ryanandjo — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:02:00 GMT

From Phnom Penh we caught a direct bus all the way into Vietnam. After our Laos/Cambodia border experience we thought that this would make for a smoother ride. The journey was nothing special, but Jo was pleased that we arrived 11.45am in time for her to say “Good morning Vietnam”.

Part of the bus companies ’direct’ service was to pre-fill our H1N1 health report declaration for us, we thought it a little strange, but as we didn’t have any of the symptoms we thought nothing more of it. As well as the health declaration the bus company pre-filled our immigration arrival and departure cards, with incorrect names (as is always the case it seems with reading our passports) along with some dodgy signatures.

All this pre-filling became a problem at the Vietnam H1N1 screening when having passed through immigration myself, Jo was refused entry into Vietnam! The reason...she had a temperature of 39.7 with 38 degrees being the limit. I managed to talk my way out of Vietnam back to Cambodia to be with her and we found out that she would be allowed a second attempt after 5 minutes. Using the time to organise a plan B if needed, Jo was then called forward to try again and after a very long pause she was allowed to pass through, where they showed us the machine reading of 37.9! Having just scraped through with much relief, we were able to continue our journey to Ho Chi Minh City.

Saigon was renamed HCMC in 1975, but almost everyone still calls it Saigon. Just when I was beginning to think that I couldn’t be surprised by anything in the region, Saigon goes and slaps me in the face! It’s a sprawling metropolis unlike any other we have seen in South East Asia. Most of the hotels are stick thin and have 3 to 4 floors above a shop of some description, which made searching for accommodation a challenge first time out, but we managed to find ourselves a nice little retreat down a quiet lane.

Away from the truly astounding mass of mopeds on the road .

Due to the mopeds our first attempt at crossing the road took a long time. But we gradually learnt the skills needed: walk slowly, no sudden movements and no stopping, or resort to using a local as a human shield! Everything then seems to part around you like a school of fish, although it can still be a little daunting at times. Having some of the necessary skills required we set off on foot to explore Saigon.

Our first stop was at the reunification palace, which is very kitsch and retro as it’s still preserved from the time the North’s tanks stormed through the front gates in 1975 signifying the end of the Vietnam war.

We followed this with the War remnants museum, which documents the war and shows how peoples lives were and are still affected. Most of the literature accompanying the photographs and remnants was obviously written not long after the fall of Saigon, as in todays Politically Correct world it seemed a little out of place. However, the Vietnamese have every right to document the war as they see fit after the atrocities that were committed against them.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a cinema to check out their timetable as Jo has been dying to see Harry Potter. H1N1 seems to be taken more seriously here than anywhere else we’ve encountered and they were performing temperature checks before you were allowed in to watch a film. Learning my lesson I let Jo go first, only to see the man gasping at Jo’s temperature reading, apparently Jo is one hot lady!

In the evening we went for dinner at one of the numerous cheap food options that Saigon has to offer and washed it down with an ice cold beer

Having spent a couple of days exploring the city on foot, including the Chinatown area with some lively temples, we decided to see some of the attractions further afield. We were picked up early by our guide, Thong or Slim Jim as he liked to be called. Slim was a knowledgeable guide who had also over the years learnt Cockney rhyming slang and every Australian Slang known to man, he would intertwine these into his presentations, which we found amusing although most of the other European tourists were having trouble keeping up.

Of all the things in Vietnam I was looking forward to, travelling through Trang Bang junction was one of the most important to me. Having studied the Vietnam War, I was keen to see the location of one of the most famous images from the 20th Century, the Pulitzer prize winning photo ‘The Girl in the Picture’, which captures Kim Phuc running naked and burnt down the road during a napalm attack in the area.

Sitting next to Slim Jim, he practised some of his ‘blue’ slang on us, until we arrived at the Cao Dai temple.

Caodaism is a religion incorporating aspects of Catholicism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism, which even has the poet Victor Hugo as a Saint. No matter what your beliefs the mixture certainly made for some very colourful architecture and we were able to witness their midday ceremony.

Our next stop were the Cu Chi Tunnels, a network of underground tunnels originally built during the Vietnamese fight for Independence from the French. However, during the war the network was expanded to approximately 200km worth of tunnels.

The allegiances of the people of Cu Chi were with Uncle Ho (Ho Chi Minh) and the North and they used the tunnels to fight against the Americans and the South. Similar tunnels were used throughout the country and it was this type of guerrilla warfare that the American troops were untrained for. Seeing the size of the tunnels you can begin to understand why. To protect against collapse tunnels were only big enough to crawl through lying flat using their elbows to pull themselves along and entrances were no wider.

Cu Chi soldiers would disappear into the tunnels when under attack and surface behind an unsuspecting enemy. Today they have widened one of the tunnels so that westerners can experience 100 meters inside, they have also added 6 new exits for quick escape from the tunnel. Being claustrophobic Jo decided to give this one a miss. It was a wise decision as even expanded the tunnels don’t have the luxuries you normally associate with a tourist activity, it was hot, very cramped and everyone was on all fours. The Cu Chi guide at the front with the only torch raced through the tunnel as if the war was going on, leaving everyone but one tourist to complete the full 100 meters.......

Nha Trang

From Saigon we headed 11 hours over to Nha Trang for the beach and our first glimpse of the South China Sea. The temperature is rising as this is the right season to be on the coast of Vietnam, with the mercury hitting 35 degrees again! So its out with the wet rain look and back in with the wet sweat look, somethings just never go out of fashion!

Nha Trang was a lot bigger and more developed than we had expected, it felt like a little Saigon by the sea, but after the initial surprise it started to grow on us.

The beach at Nha Trang is 6km long and mostly quiet during the day. Around 4 o’clock each day the beach would swell with local families who would arrive and head straight into the water in whatever they had on, bringing with them the vendors selling peanuts, rice noodles, beverages and sunglasses. It was nice to be on a busy beach with so many locals rather than foreigners around you. Despite the huge beach it seems that the Vietnamese can’t or don’t like to swim, nobody goes further than 3 meters out and everyone stays playing or floating in the surf. So for the rest of the sea it is like you have the whole ocean to yourself. There were even games organised for the kids to enjoy, including sack races that were hilarious to watch.

Quy Nhon

Our next stop was further up the coast in Quy Nhon. The journey along the coast was enjoyable, passing picturesque bays filled with fishing boats. Sharing the journey with crickets wasn’t so enjoyable. Throughout SE Asia we have seen many different forms of livestock including chickens, birds, fish, frogs even a pig on our buses. My first knowledge of crickets on this bus was when one crawled along my foot and up my leg, knocking it off a local picked it up and set it free. Later another ran across my foot and then yet another. Someone was transporting boxes of crickets and they were escaping into the mini bus. To be honest we should have realised sooner than we did as the music was quieter and a lot better than the normal fare! Thankfully they were only crickets.

Departing the bus in Quy Nhon we were hounded and prodded by the the taxi and moped mafia, asking “Hey, You, Where you go?”, all except for one moped driver who having opened the back door of the mini bus to remove our bags had seen all the crickets and found himself an empty bottle. Rather than pestering us, he set about capturing a snack for himself, catching the loose crickets and removing those crawling all over our backpacks.

Quy Nhon beach was another long one, deserted in some places and very picturesque.

One area of the beach was covered with small round fishing boats lying around for fishermen to get to the larger boats offshore. After sundown, the town and promenade again filled with locals exercising, enjoying the sea and having a Bia at the beer stalls set up all along the pavements. In all, a relaxing town with a good insight into the Vietnamese way of life.

Until next time...

Uncle Ryan and Jo

Congratulations to Alex and Kristine on the birth of Charlie John Pace.

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157621819402495/

Amazing Angkor

ryanandjo — Sun, 2 Aug 2009 10:12:00 GMT

After a bout of travellers sickness for me, which added two extra rest days for us in the capital, we took the 4 hour bus ride west to Battambang, the second largest city in Cambodia. Although, from the size of it you would never believe it, it’s feels like a small market town by normal standards. The journey was fine, apart from the thousands of mosquitoes that were travelling with us. With concerns for the outbreak of Dengue fever that has hit Cambodia in the last few months we covered ourselves head to toe in 50% Deet repellent, but thankfully we arrived with no bites.

Most of the attractions of Battambang are outside the town in the countryside, so we arranged for a tuk tuk to take us to the Phnom Sampeau hill area, where there are temples and the Killing Cave to visit. The cave was used as a slaughter chamber by the Khmer Rouge, killing 10,000 people from the surrounding area and some of the remains are still in the cave today.

There were temples, stupas and Buddhas around the hill to provide a memorial for the dead.

The view from the top was stunning, clearly showing the landscape that covers most of the country. Vast plains of flat countryside covered in palm trees as far as the eye can see.

Unfortunately there were a few ‘extra’ costs involved in the trip that we were unprepared for. This included a $4 fee to help build a new road, which was fine as the road was in terrible condition. The only way to get up the hill is to take a ‘guide’ that turned out to be a local child. Again, we were happy to do this, but thinking it would cost about 50 cents we were flabbergasted when the 12 year old said that his fee was $5!!! There’s a phrase often used in Asia that goes ‘No Money, No Honey’. Well our young guide said ‘No Money, No Study’! How could we refuse to help a kid continue to learn English.

As we were fast running out of money at this point, we were alarmed to see there were donation boxes situated all over the hill area for visitors to donate to the building and up keep of all the temples. They are hard to avoid when you are walked straight up to a table where a man shakes a bowl for the money whilst handing you a pen to write down your donation details. It’s not that we begrudge anyone asking for donations, but you can only give so much at a time and we didn’t have enough money on us to donate at all eight boxes we passed on the way.

After that little excursion we decided we had seen enough of the Battambang area, so we decided to head on to the Big Show of Asia...

Siem Reap

Reaching the gateway to Angkor Wat was a big milestone for our trip. Siem Reap is very touristy but the town has something for everyone and for all budgets, so was quite a relaxing place to stay. I was happy when we discovered the night market selling cheap Krama, the traditional chequered scarf worn by Cambodians. Not to feel like an outsider, I had to purchase one, or maybe five, to help protect us from the elements a day of temple exploring would involve.

The next day with our trusty tuk tuk driver Sukteah at the wheel, we set off for the city of Angkor.

We purchased our 3 day passes and hit the temples for day one. Angkor is an ancient Khmer empire built between the 9th and 13th centuries, with hundreds of temples still standing. The first on our list was the fortified city of Angkor Thom, famous for the Bayon with it’s towers of stone faces.

During the day we toured around the smaller circuit of Angkor taking in another 8 temples in total, including Ta Prohm, made famous by the Tomb Raider film.

It didn’t give me any clues on how to play the computer game though, I could never get out of the practice level to play the actual game.

The finale of the day was to see Angkor Wat, the biggest religious building in the world and centre piece of Angkor city, and we were excited...but then it started to rain

and the ‘templed out’ syndrome hit us hard so we decided to cut our losses and call it a day.

The next day refreshed from a night on Pub Street in town...

We decided to tackle the big circuit of Angkor, and this time we would do it on bikes. The day didn’t start off well...

Ryan’s chain broke off before we made it to the entrance, so we had to turn back and get a local bike repairer to fix it. Take two.

When we arrived at Angkor Wat in the morning the sun was still shining and we were able appreciate the magnificence of the temple in full.

We managed to complete the full 27km outer circuit, with just one more breakdown for Ryan when he got a puncture after riding into a pothole.

The temples are full of people trying to sell you souvenirs, cold drinks, photocopied books and much more. If you have a dollar there is someone with something to sell. I tried to stump the kids by telling them I was from Fiji, not England, so they couldn’t reel off all the details they’ve learnt about that country, but when one girl said ‘Will you give me a $1 if I can name the capital of Fiji?’ I quickly backtracked admitting I was from England after all. I’m sure she would have won that dollar too!

It is a shame that there are so many children being used to sell to tourists, but we like to have some fun with them rather than get annoyed by them, after all it’s not their fault they are taught to sell by adults. All the locals we met in the area were so friendly, especially when the bike broke and they went out of their way to help us, tell us where the nearest bike repairer was and look after me while I waited for Ryan’s return.

The temples of Angkor are crowded with tourists, so we were slightly anxious about visiting somewhere so popular. But, after arriving you realise there’s a reason such large numbers visit the area, it really is worth seeing. It’s adventurous, exciting, intriguing, exotic and romantic all wrapped up in one package, so we were happy we went.

When we got back to town we decided we were officially templed out by Angkor and as we had seen all the major sites we decided that using the third day of our ticket would just detract from the fun we had from the two days exploring, so we booked tickets to head back to the capital.

Phnom Penh again

Back to the dust bowl of Phnom Penh, this time to organise our visas for Vietnam and to finish off the sightseeing on offer, including the Independence Monument, Royal Palace, National Museum and the Central Market.

We have spent just over two weeks in Cambodia and even though there are other parts of the country to visit, we have to push on with our plans for the rest of Asia. Cambodia has beaten all our expectations, which, to be fair, weren’t very high because we had met a lot of travellers who hadn’t enjoyed all their time here. It has a distinct personality that stands out from the other SE Asian countries we’ve visited. It’s a country picking itself up from a haunting past but moving on with smiles on their faces. There are more tuk tuk drivers here than there will ever be a need for probably in the whole of Asia let alone just Cambodia, but they are the most polite we’ve met and it means there’s always someone to help out.

But just as we think it’s a shame to be leaving, tomorrow we get to say Good Morning Vietnam (sorry, that was lame) and that’s something new to get excited about, that’s the beauty of travel.

Highlights

Favourite Place - Phnom Penh (Both)
Favourite Attraction - Tuol Sleng (Both)
Food - Chicken Amok (Jo) , Fish Amok (Ryan)
Beer - Klang (Jo) , Angkor (Ryan)

LowLights

Border Crossing transport company (Both)

For those of you thinking of possibly travelling to the region: Costs in USD

Accommodation - $5-10
Restaurant meal - $3-5
Food stall meal - $1.50-2
Mug of Draught Beer - $0.50
620ml Bottled Beer - $2.50
285ml Soft Drink - $1
1.5l Bottle of water - 50c
Bus - $5 all destinations

Until next time

Jo & Ryan

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157621880891834/

Crossing to Cambodia

ryanandjo — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:54:00 GMT

We started the day by catching a long tail boat for an hour across the Mekong in monsoonal rain. Upon arriving at the boat landing we had to make our way across five boats to get to shore, testing our balancing skills. When we had safely reached dry land we had to find the minivan bus we had booked to take us across the border and eventually stumbled upon it and managed to get a seat without showing our tickets. We usually prefer to take local transport as it's cheaper than transport provided specifically for tourists and we had also heard stories of the tourist transport not being reliable, but it seemed the best option for getting across the border was to take the package tour. Something we would come to regret.

The land border between Laos and Cambodia is one of the remotest in the region and we were soon to find out why as we drove down a long straight road and came to a stop in the middle of nowhere with two barriers across the road, one to leave Laos and the other to enter Cambodia. Tourists are treated like walking ATMs by the immigration staff who demand ‘administration fees’ before they give you your passport back. On the Laos side the fee was steadily rising as they processed more people going up from $1 to $3 each by the time we got to the window. After paying our ‘fees’ we then walked ourselves the 50 metres between the border checkpoints to only go through the process again on the Cambodian side.

After sitting around waiting for everyone to pass through immigration the transport company realised that there weren’t enough seats for everyone and five of us would have to squeeze into a Toyota Camry, the alternative, to be left at the border until the next morning. With that not being a real option we squeezed in for thankfully only an hour journey. Very relieved we arrived in Stung Treng, despite a pit stop to tighten a couple of wheel nuts.

From Stung Treng everyone but the five of us in the taxi were heading further afield, with us just wanting to catch local transport from here on. What we didn't expect was being taken to the transport company owners house and being refused transport to the bus station or directions to it! Stung Treng didn’t look like a nice enough place to spend an evening so we decided to head on with the tourist transport with the promise that there were enough seats for everyone to Kompong Cham. After paying, it quickly became apparent that there weren’t, but more seats would be available after 2 hours at a lunch stop.

Reluctantly we all squeezed on to the mini bus, with 4 people squeezed into seats made for 3 people in every row and to make matters worse none of the buses had roof-racks so 18 backpacks were also squeezed into the aisles and in the foot wells. If the situation wasn’t bad enough the mini bus leaked on me for the entire journey as it continued to rain.

After lunch we did actually change buses, but this only made the new bus as squashed as the last one. Realising that things weren’t going to get any better and that somethings just aren’t worth it, we decided to remove ourselves from the situation, forget about moving anywhere else that day and stay where we were in...

Kratie

Although a little wet and muddy Kratie looked like a nice town in which to experience a little Cambodian culture.

In some of our reading on Cambodia we had read about the Khmer people wearing pyjamas. I assumed that what they wore wouldn’t be what we call pyjamas, but it quickly became apparent that pyjamas is a pretty universal term and a majority of the women spend the day dressed for bed. Pyjama spotting photo below...

Kratie turned out to be a nice place to spend our first evening in Cambodia, and experience a couple of the local brews, which we needed after that journey!

However, the next day we set off for ........

Phnom Penh

Our itinerary for Cambodia changed in Laos when our SLR camera lens packed up. So we decided to head straight to the capital to give ourselves the best chance of sorting it out and having good pictures for the rest for the country.

We’ve heard many stories about Phnom Penh and most of them not very endearing. It’s dusty, although, we assumed that it would be the same as elsewhere in South East Asia, it managed to raise the bar a notch. Like Yangon it’s edgy, lacks real footpaths and the traffic is crazy, more so than anywhere else. The side of the road to drive on seems to be more of a guideline than a rule and tuk-tuks looking for business are a menace. On one occasion two drivers were almost fighting for our business and we were even asked if we would like a ride straight after leaving another tuk tuk! Despite this we loved Phnom Penh, but understand that if this was the start of our trip our opinion could be different, as like Indonesia it’s a little in your face. We also enjoyed Phnom Penh as sorting out the camera was painless. With no tax it worked out as one of the cheapest places to fix the camera.

One thing that wasn’t going to be an unexpected misrepresentation was the history of Cambodia. The country has a dark past and the worst of it very recent. From 1975-79 the ’Khmer Rouge’ under the leadership of Pol Pot inflicted one of the bloodiest revolutions in history, with over 3 million or a fifth of the population dying as a result of the their atrocities. It’s abhorrent to think that born at the same time but in a different place we too would have experienced the terror of the ’Khmer Rouge’ and that everyone one we meet of our age or older lived through the horror.

On my birthday we decided to visit Tuol Sleng. Tuol Sleng started life as a school, however, during the time of “Democratic Kampuchea” it was turned into Security Office 21 or simply S21, an interrogation and torture centre and today it’s a Genocide Museum.

For all the wrong reasons this will go down as one of my most memorable birthdays. The museum is haunting, both in showing the darkest side of human nature and that you can see both it’s use as a school and a place of incomprehensible horrors.

The museum opened eight months after it’s true use was discovered and for that reason it’s well preserved, which is both a good and a bad thing. It’s not hard to imagine the horrors that transpired because you don’t have to imagine much. It’s almost as if only the bodies and the blood have been removed from the scene of the genocide.

The black and white photographs of the men, women and children who were sent to Tuol Sleng (only 4 people sent there survived) are heartbreaking, depicting women with their children and the fear in the eyes of some clear to see.

It almost felt wrong after our moving day but in the evening we went to celebrate the rest of my birthday and the fact that Cambodia is moving on from the horrors of its past, determined to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself. So we headed for cocktails, and a beer of course, at the FCC bar on Sisowith Quay.

The next day we headed to Choeung Ek which due to it’s proximity to Phnom Penh is the most famous, but by no means the biggest ‘killing field’ from the Khmer Rouge era. It is made up of 129 mass graves and is the resting place approximately 17,000 men, women and children, including all those in the black and white photographs at S21.

9000 of the bodies have been excavated and the skulls are now displayed in a memorial stupa within the grounds

Unlike S21 most of the remnants of the suffering have been removed from the killing fields, but it doesn’t detract from its horror. Walking around the fields, clothes and shards of bone can be seen buried in the ground.

Like Tuol Sleng, the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek are a poignant and memorable tribute to those that lost their lives during the Khmer Rouge period of Cambodian history and a vivid reminder of the ugly side of human nature.

Ryan & Jo

Photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157621880891834/

The Last BeerLao Days

ryanandjo — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:17:00 GMT

We arrived in the capital, Vientiane, and started to wonder if we were still in Laos or if we’d been transported to France. The streets were lined with biblioteque, boulangeries, patisseries etc,

There was even an Arc de Triumph to confuse us further.

So we settled down to a pain au chocolat to ease our confused minds, but thankfully the tuk tuk drivers offering us ‘some weed?’ at every turn reminded us that we could only be in Asia.

I became a happy little vegemite when we found an expats supermarket stocking foreign imports, making both of us run around salivating over cheeses, biscuits, cereals, cold meats, wines and even the frozen food section, shouting ‘look what I’ve found!’, but we resisted the urge to purchase the items we hadn’t seen for 6 months, except for one jar of vegemite!

The food on offer in Le Capital made us skip local food for meals we hadn’t tasted for a while, indulging in lunch everyday at the JoMa cafe that did great salads and quiche.

The National Monument of Laos, the Pha That Luang, is the focus of many national holidays and matches the understated charm that runs throughout the country, although to us it looked like it could do with a good clean but the modern monks seemed happy enough to have their picture taken next to it.

A more interesting attraction was found 25km outside of the city. Buddha Park is a field of weird and eccentric Buddhist and Hindu related statues, which was bizarre but a great change from the usual statues and monuments we are now used to seeing in SE Asia. We were definitely entertained, the guide book did say it was a great place to take kids!

With the wet season really starting to take hold we bypassed a few temples the capital had to offer, but the weather didn't spoil the fun and of course the obligatory Beer Lao t-shirt reminded us where to head to escape the rain.

Savannakhet

After a 10 hour bus ride, we thought Savannakhet was not a town to write home about, especially after we traipsed around looking for decent accommodation, seeing many dodgy rooms that made us both burst out laughing to think anyone would even consider sleeping in them, but we eventually found somewhere passable for the night. However, strolling around, the town developed a charm of it’s own with plenty of examples of old French architecture and a riverside promenade full of family life and a great place for having a BeerLao while watching the sunset over Thailand.

But with little else to offer we set off the next day to...

Pakse

When we told the receptionist at our guesthouse that it took us 6 hours by bus to get to Pakse, he couldn’t believe it and said it should have taken 3 hours at the most. However, our bus driver that day wanted to set the world record for the number of passengers he could pick up, the bus was crammed and we didn’t seem to travel more than 5 minutes before we stopped to pick someone else up.

Because the bus was so full it took ages to find and arrange seating for the new passengers, which was usually a plastic stall perched on top of a bag of rice. To be fair he wasn’t helped by the locals who would at times stand 20 metres apart on the side of the road. The bus would set down, spend 10 minutes loading a passenger and rather than moving to the bus the other waiting passenger would stay where they were to wait to be picked up......only in Laos. It was a day for shaking our heads in disbelief, especially when trying to save time, the ticket attendant climbed out of the window up onto the roof 'Dukes of Hazzard' style to pull the cover over the luggage when it started raining , while the bus was going 60km/hr!

Pakse was another town without much personality, or you could say a town heavily influenced by it’s close proximity to Thailand, so much so that it didn’t feel like Laos anymore. Maybe we spent too much time in Thailand but the towns by the Mekong in Southern Laos all have a very Thai feel to them. We weren’t expecting much from Pakse though as we only planned to use it as a stepping stone to...

TadLo

a small village sitting in the Bolaven Plateau, an area 1000m above sea level that is rich in agriculture, coffee and waterfalls, just 2 hours by bus from Pakse. Tadlo is the name of a waterfall next to the village, one of three along the river that runs through the area. The waterfalls were impressive, the kind you can hear loud and clear before you can see them, so worth visiting.

On the river sits an exclusive Lodge, too expensive for our budget, but they have two elephants they rescued from logging, which people can arrange to take rides on. One of the two elephants was ill and ‘out of action’ for the day, but the second elephant, that I will imaginatively call ‘Nellie’, was taking it easy by the river, so we got the chance to meet her, feed her bananas, and spend as much time as we liked with her. She was slightly intimidating as she was very big and strong up close and felt a bit ‘prickly’ and liked to hit me on the head by flapping her ears about, but she was lovely. We had finally got to do the obligatory Asian elephant ‘thing’ all for free instead of the extortionate fees they charge at special elephant parks.

We saw a sign in the village asking people to visit the local temple to assist monks in teaching English. In Luang Prabang we had visited Big Brother Mouse www.bigbrothermouse.com, a charity that creates books for local children. The idea behind Big Brother Mouse is to write books in both Lao and English that tourists can buy and hand out to those less fortunate and in remote villages to help Lao children with their education. We thought that handing them out here would help more people than handing them out individually. Unfortunately, none of the children were there to learn as it’s the time of year they work in the fields to help their parents harvest their crops, but the monks were really pleased with them and said they couldn’t wait to share them when the children come back, whilst also enjoying reading the books themselves.

We had some bad luck in TadLo when the lens on our SLR camera decided it had had enough of travelling and didn’t want to take any more pictures. So despite being under warranty which is of no use to us on the road we are back to the regular digital until we can get a replacement sorted out.

After a hearty, or a near heart attack inducing, breakfast of the worlds biggest banana pancake complete with UXO (shaped) bananas

We headed back to Pakse to get transport to Si Phan Don.

Don Khong

Si Phan Don means 4000 islands and is so named as during the dry season there are some 4000 islands nestled in the Mekong at it’s widest part right at the southern tip of Laos, although many are under water now during the wet season. The first island we visited was the biggest, Don Khong. There are a handful of guesthouses and restaurants for tourists but the rest of the island has only a few villages and plenty of quiet local life, which we explored by bike. Not just any bike though, the Turbo Fairy bikes

got us around the whole island in 3 hours, covering about 30km and setting the Don Khong cycling speed record, so we rewarded ourselves with a huge Lao sandwich

Don Khon & Don Det

After a couple of days on Don Khong, we caught a longtail boat down the Mekong to the two most popular islands, Don Det & Don Khon (without a G), which are linked to each other by a bridge. After many rewarding but bum numbing journeys around Northern Laos this was to be our relaxing reward. Don Det has a ‘party’ reputation so we once again got out our pipes and slippers and headed to the ‘retirement’ village on Don Khon.

With 4 days left on our visas and a pile of books to read we set about relaxing and exploring the islands. Exploring involved a Turbo Fairy bike tour, doing our best not to run into water buffalo and not get stuck in mud quagmire, before settling down to enjoy our last days in Laos (and BeerLao of course!).

Highlights

Favourite Place - Muang Ngoi (Jo), Luang Prabang (Ryan)

Favourite Attraction - Cycling Don Khong (Jo) , Muang Ngoi Trek (Ryan)

Food - Ping Gai (Jo) , Laap (Ryan)

Beer - BeerLao (Both)

LowLights

Getting stuck in Vieng Xai (Both)

Realising there is only one more BeerLao day left (Both)

For those of you thinking of possibly travelling to the region: Costs in USD

Accommodation - $4-10

Main meal - $1-3

620ml Beer - $0.80-1.00

285ml Soft Drink - 30c

Bottle of water - 30c

Transport - Bus $1-$2 per hour

Next we are off to Cambodia so stay tuned...

Jo & Ryan

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157620848132640/

Fabu-Laos

ryanandjo — Wed, 8 Jul 2009 04:04:00 GMT

Leaving the cat behind we got an overcrowded boat back to Nong Khiaw and took in the spectacular scenery we missed during our rainy trip north, unfortunately our bags were at the bottom of the pile on the boat and were soaking wet by the time we arrived. We got our tickets for a 14 hour bus ride to Sam Neua and Jo went off to find some lunch for the journey, when we experienced reverse Laos time when the bus turned up 45 minutes early! With Jo nowhere to be seen I loaded the bags onto the bus, asked them to wait and went looking for her, luckily Nong Khiaw is relatively small so finding her didn’t prove too difficult and we were on our way.

The ride took in the most fantastic scenery yet, the roads were windy and steep and the bus driver would probably have been a rally driver in another country. He was actually a good driver but not the sort of driver you want on public transport. The driver and the roads took their toll on the bus, every hour we stopped and water was thrown onto the brake discs to cool them down and after 6 hours they finally packed up. We had finally broken down for the first time and to top it off we were in a National Park known for its tigers, where local villagers don’t venture out after dark through fear of being eaten. Luckily, it wasn’t yet dark and the driver and his pit crew had all the tools and were able to get the bus going again.

Despite breaking down we still arrived in Sam Neua 4 hours early where we spoke with a French couple who had been cycling around Asia for nine months as a honeymoon. We shared a sawngthaew to look for a guesthouse and both decided on a guesthouse where the owner, the Danny Devito of Laos, a shirtless, short rotund guy spoke a thousand words a minute but not a word of English which amused us all, him included.

Sam Neua had a very Russian feel too it..............

Vieng Xai

The reason for heading to Sam Neua is not to see the Russian looking monuments

It’s to visit Vieng Xai, an idyllic little town of limestone cliffs and karsts. The town is renowned in Laos history as it is here that the Pathet Lao (land of the Lao) hid during the second Indochina War (Vietnam War). Fearing a communism ‘domino effect’ in South East Asia, the US secretly dropped more bombs on Laos between 1964 -73 than were dropped during WW2.

Using the natural surroundings near the Vietnam border, the Pathet Lao hid from US aerial bombardment in over 400 caves of which 6 of the most important are now open to the public. The caves are no longer furnished but give an idea of the conditions the people lived in.

We finished the tour around 11.30 and headed back to the bus station past some lakes made from bomb craters,

to make our way back to Sam Neua. With no staff around and no timetable, we decided to have lunch at a food stall next to the bus station. We asked the restaurant owner when the next sawngthaew was and she said 1o’clock. The sawngthaew turned up at 1.30 and the driver mimed eating and indicated he would be back at 2pm. Laos time being what it is, we didn’t expect him to return at 2 and he didn’t disappoint arriving at the not unreasonable 2.30. He then indicated that he would now be leaving at 3pm. 3 o’clock came and went and at 3.30 he headed off again, but not before suggesting 4 as the new departure time.

At 4 a worker from the bus station came over to us and placed his hands together and put them by the side of his head, miming sleep and then pointed to the ground. We thought that he was suggesting that we should have a sleep while we waited. When everyone else left the bus station we realised that he was telling us we should find somewhere to sleep in Vieng Xai as there would be no transport for the rest of the day!

Public transport in Laos is not public in the true sense of the word, the majority is privately run with the drivers owning the vehicles, if there aren’t enough bodies then the transport doesn’t run. So not wanting to pay for 2 rooms, leave our unsecured belongings unattended back in Sam Neua or rearranging our onward travel plans we were left with no other option than to try and make our own way back. Being that it was a 30 very hilly kilometre trek, walking was quickly discounted. Trying to convince locals with cars to help us get back fell on deaf ears, so we decided to try the guest houses in the hope that someone would be able to speak English and be able to help us find some transport. It took a few guest houses and a few strange looks but we finally found someone who was prepared to help. Laos may be different to many other countries, but money still talks, it’s just that here less is needed.

So after agreeing a price of $US20 we had ourselves an off duty sawngthaew which when deducting the price of paying for an extra room and the actual cost of travel back the next day it amounted to a little under $10, so we were very happy and relieved to pay for the convenience. At times during the day I considered it the worst day of the trip so far, but having worked through the challenge it ended up being one of the better days for what we managed to achieve.

Phonsavan

The next morning we easily made our scheduled bus to get to our next destination of Phonsavan. The bus station had a great view

There wasn’t a very diverse range off food for breakfast on offer at the bus station, so we ended up with a bag of sticky rice each!

The journey was a little different to the previous trips but alluring none the less, this time our unscheduled stop was for a tree that had fallen across the only road out of town, while locals with chain saws cleared the way.

In Phonsovan we went to the Mines Advisory Group (MAG) office to find out more about Unexploded Ordinance (UXOs - clusters bombs, land mines, grenades). During the second Indochina war over 30% or around 131 tonnes of all ordinance used on Laos didn’t detonate and people are still affected today as most remains undiscovered. Farmers are afraid to expand their land boundaries due to fear of UXOs. The poor collect UXO scrap metal to subsidise their income but the the recipients don’t what the explosives so the collectors try to remove it themselves often with disastrous results. Inquisitive children are also affected despite efforts to educate them. According to MAG, at the current rate it will take over 100 years to clear Laos of UXOs.

After educating ourselves we booked onto a tour to see the Plain of Jars. The Jars are a little like Stonehenge, i.e. stone constructions of which no one really knows their purpose. Plain is an apt way of describing them, the first few were interesting to look at and trying to guess their purpose also caused some amusement, but in all honesty they didn’t excite me, without any history and information about them, it was just looking at concrete in a field.

At one site I had a call of nature and thought about going in the bushes, but hastily retreated when I realised it would have meant stepping into the red zone and not staying in the safe white zone area already cleared of UXOs.

Getting back to nature in this area is not a good idea! Something else that struck us as not a good idea was golf. However, on the way back to our guesthouse we saw a sign for ‘adventure golf’, adventurous indeed!

Luang Prabang

Our next port of call was the much hyped Luang Prabang and thankfully it didn’t disappoint, if anything it exceeded our expectations.

Not being able to write a blog without mentioning the journey, this is one that will be etched in my mind for ever. The scenery was 'Laos normal' but the music, well I don't really know where to begin. Like in all countries in South East Asia the music on buses is played at the loudest setting and in Laos they play mostly Thai pop, which i thought was the worst music in the world, until...... and I'm not sure if they played this for our benefit, they decided to play the Vengaboys greatest hits along with Aqua and other less noted Euro dance-pop acts (if that's possible), my ears are still bleeding!

The town was made up of beautiful French colonial buildings, understated temples and monasteries, which were smaller and had more rustic charm than those in Thailand.

The food was also to die for, with cake, crepe and baguette stalls

and the night market particular highlights

One of the major ‘falang’ attractions in Luang Prabang is getting up at least once at 5 am to see the monks collecting alms. Jo broke her morning curfew to venture out on her own early to witness this, only to return an hour later to say she couldn’t find the masses she was expecting and had to chase a small group of monks down a road to catch up with them for the obligatory alms giving shot to prove she did it, but still not worth getting up so early for!

Maybe the monks were put off by the rain, it did rain a lot while we were in Luang Prabang, but that didn’t dampen our spirits, or the glasses of wine we indulged in for the first time on the road!

Vang Vieng

From Luang Prabang we headed to another much hyped town, Vang Vieng. This also matched the hype but that wasn’t a good thing. 10 years ago we probably would have loved Vang Vieng a sort of Phuket meets Khao San Road of Laos. The main activity is sitting in tractor tyre tubing and floating 4km down river, stopping at make shift bars to get drunk along the way. The town itself is full of bars with bright neon lights, restaurants showing continuous episodes of Friends and every other plot of land has a building site on it, waiting for a new hotel to be built to fill with more Falang. I shudder to think what the locals must think of Westerners based on this snapshot of life. This is not the place to discover Laos.

We packed up our pipes and slippers and headed off the next morning. At the bus station we were greeted with a suspicious “the bus is full, but you can get a more expensive minibus in 10 mins”. As the next bus was a 4 hour wait we decided it was worth it, and made our way to Le Capital..........

Hope you’re all well

Ryan & Jo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157620848132640/

It's Laos Time

ryanandjo — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:07:00 GMT

We said our final farewell to Thailand and crossed the Mekong river in a 30 second long boat trip to arrive in Laos (pronounced cow with an L!). After getting our visas at immigration in Huay Xay we decided to catch a bus north rather than take the popular boat trip south down the Mekong, we didn't fancy sitting on a boat for 2 days in the rainy season. We were able to catch a mini bus to Luang Nam Tha and to also experience our first encounter with Laos time! We were told the bus would go in 10 mins, then another 10 mins and so on for an hour then suddenly we were told to get on the bus, go go go! We got on the bus, set off, but the driver stopped two minutes down the road to have a coffee with his friends! Off again and 5 mins later he stops and disappears for 10 mins only to return with his lunch in a bag, he had just popped home to see the wife! We eventually hit the road and had our first view of Laos scenery, lots of lush green hills, paddy fields and thick jungle foliage, along with twisty roads. We shared the trip with some Laos men, one of whom liked to fall asleep on Ryans shoulder and no matter how much he nudged him to get off he kept going back for a kip.

Luang Nam Tha

In Luang Nam Tha there are lots of trekking possibilities but due to the amount of rain we had over the last few days, we decided to give it a miss, especially when we heard the leech stories from other travellers. Instead, we hired bikes and did a day cycling around the villages and met lots of friendly people shouting 'Sabaidee' (Laos for hello, how are you and good bye all in one word).

We visited a waterfall that had a difficult cliff hugging steep path to get to it, only to discover the unsigned path the locals take is much easier and just a short 2 min flat walk around the corner, why they don't signpost that way I just don't know. Cycling back home we ran into some boys who decided to chase us down the street inventing a game I can only imagine was called 'Slap the Falang on the leg to try and knock her off her bike'! I was cycling so slowly it wasn't difficult for them to win points whilst giggling their heads off, but the road was so bumpy I had to concentrate on not falling off, but once I picked up speed I soon out cycled their running abilities, ha ha. Falang means foreigner in Laos and they like to use it a lot, often followed by laughter...nice to know we make people laugh.

Udomxai

The next day we set off for Udomxai and caught a 4 hour bus ride. Now four hours may sound quite far but we only covered about 120km, the road was so bumpy and windy we never travelled more than 30km/hour and had to use all our strength just to stay in the seat. I hit my head on the window twice and jumped out of my seat too many times to count, it felt like we needed rollercoaster harnesses to keep us in our seats. On arriving at Udomxai we decided to spend the night instead of taking another rollercoaster ride the same day. It was a nice little town to explore, no tourism but a small temple on a hill with fantastic 360 degree views of the area.

Plus a group of friendly monks playing with their dogs and cutting the grass very slowly with machetes.

For lunch we ate at a cheap food stall near the bus station that sold barbecued chicken and sticky rice. We ate all the chicken, apart from the........

The next day we got an early bus to Nong Khiaw, although by early of course it left 90 mins late on Laos time. We have no idea why but we think the driver was enjoying watching the boxing on TV as we didn’t leave until the match had finished and all the other delayed buses left at the same time!

Although we had fun watching the different buses getting loaded up for their journeys including one with a motorbike and another with about 100 tree saplings

Getting on the smallest bus at the station, we headed off into the wilderness. Yet again we stopped 5 mins down the road, then another 5 mins etc until about 30 mins later we eventually got going. The ride was on another bumpy road with more great scenery, I don’t think we will get bored of the Laos countryside, its so beautiful.

Nong Khiaw

The road passes through many villages with pigs, chickens and cows running around the place with the bus honking it's horn for them to move, with us only just missing quite a few of them. The villages are full of children looking after their half naked younger siblings and waiting for their parents to return from work in the fields.

We stopped a few times along the way to pick up hill tribe people with their sacks of belongings precariously balanced on top of the bus, but eventually made it to Nong Khiaw, a one dusty street town.

We were greeted with huge cliffs looming over the Nam Ou river and as we crossed the bridge to the other side of town we could do nothing more than stop and stare at the view, it was spectacular.

We found a nice little bungalow hut over looking the river.

And finished off the day by enjoying a BeerLao as the sunset

We spent a relaxing day reading, taking in village life and enjoying the food while planning the rest of our stay in Laos, and more beer, dark this time. The beer is so cheap here, this may be all we have to report for the rest of our time in Laos!

Muang Ngoi

We decided to head north up the river for an hour to Muang Ngoi. We were about to load onto the boat when torrential rain storm came, so we 'cleverly' rushed onto the boat to be undercover, while the driver and a few locals headed for dry land. Stupidly, we didn't notice the boat had no side protection so when the rain came in sideways we got absolutely drenched and we couldn't get off as the boat had drifted away from the shore. Finally we set off although still in the rain and heading into the eye of the storm, so the journey was very wet, we would have been just as wet swimming. Due to the rain there was lots of free flowing water and run off water from the shores. We headed towards some rapids and at one section a guy in the front shouted some orders back which we couldn’t understand. When we saw the size and speed of the rapids we were approaching I looked back at all the Lao men in the boat only to see them all praying! They must have known something we didn't but good job they did as we're not sure how we made it through them without capsizing. We arrived in Muang Ngoi (still not sure of the correct pronunciation) and the rain finally stopped and we found a bungalow overlooking the river, our cheapest yet at 2.40 pound a night, with a pet cat to make it more homely.

When we stopped to look at the view it was Amazing, totally stunning! We thought Nong Khiaw was beautiful but this was 100 times better, jaw droppingly majestic with sets of mountains looming over the river, not to over do the description!

After a stroll around town, a one street alley running alongside the river,

we decided that this would be the location of our first trek in Laos. We met a Dutch girl, Marieke, who joined the two of us to get the price of the trek cheaper and settled in for an early night to prepare. Well, I say early night, but only after about 2 hours of being on bug and slug patrol.

The next morning we met our guide, Peng, a local from the village. Our first stop was a cave that was inhabited during the 'secret war', a war that ran alongside the Vietnam war, but no information about the attacks by the US was ever released at the time, so the media never covered it. During the war, the area was bombarded by bombs so our guide lived in the cave from the age of 13 to 21 with his family and 80 other people.

It was a remarkable story. All they could eat was vegetables because the bombs destroyed the rice fields and they could only venture out to get food under the cover of darkness. He knows many people who were killed in the area and many more injured. We met one of his friends during our trek, who only had one arm. He had been in the military and shot at an American plane, only for it to turn around to find him and shoot off his arm.

The trek continued for an hour until we reached the rice fields, where we started the circus like balancing act of weaving in between the fields, careful not to step too close to the edge of the path as they easily fall away into the rice and mud. We also finally learnt and understood how rice grows after all this time in Asia! Even though the terrain was mostly flat we had to cross many rivers and learn more balancing skills when using bamboo poles to get across deep streams, I don't know how we managed to stay so dry, we should have fallen in!

Ryan thought he would perfect his flip flop trekking skills but was easily out done by a barefoot local!

The locals were happy to pick fruit for us to try including logans and jack fruit.

The trek passed through three villages

and at the last village we stopped for a refreshing drink and the man of the town offered us Lao Lao to drink, the local rice whisky. We were really dehydrated and it was hot, so Marieke and I declined but insisted Ryan would take one for the team. However, in Laos the locals always have two shots of everything because you have two legs, so it's not acceptable to drink just one you have to have two, one for each leg. I think it means if you have only one you will be lopsided so you have two to balance you out, or something like that...good on ya Ryan!

It was a fantastic trek and our guide was amazing, he knew enough English to tell us stories of his life and the area. On the way back our guide made us continue on our own as he needed a pit stop, so off we went adventuring only to run into a herd of water buffalo heading towards us and completely blocking the path, so after 2 mins on our own we were already shouting for Peng to help us. Luckily the herder came along and made the buffalo move over for us but they were so scared they just stood still. When they got the courage to come closer they dashed past at such a speed and all in different directions, the herder had to go chasing after them all.

We made it back in one piece after 10 hours of trekking through stunning scenery.

Muang Ngoi is a marvellous place to visit because the only access is by boat, so there are no cars or lorries passing by just the sound of cockerels crowing at all hours.

After another good nights bug busting we headed back to Nong Khiaw to catch a bus to Sam Neua.

Laos Observations:

Sharing food - Lao like to share food with you. Our first bus driver shared his sweets with us. On the second bus journey the lads we were sitting with shared corn on the cob and mangoes with us. A tuk tuk driver saw us eating bananas for our breakfast and gave us some rambutans he had in his cab. On the third journey the bus driver bought some peaches for us from the village fruit sellers along the road side where some young entrepreneurs were trying to get in on the act.

Laos time - no watch can be set to Laos time, it’s impossible to predict. We asked our landlady in Nong Khiaw if she knew what time the bus left for Sam Neua and she said 7 maybe 8, actually it could leave at 11! The people in Laos are in no rush to get anywhere so you just have to sit back, relax and go with the flow, luckily we are in no hurry either so it's a good way of life.

Bath time - walk to the river with your basket filled with shampoo, soap and toothbrush, wash and clean, then walk back home, all in your undies or sarong. If the river is too far to walk to, just stop in the ditch on roadside or us a public tap in the village. Washing is a huge communal event and completely public. It's a time for kids to play and women to natter. We drove past one guy who was stood underneath a village tap, covered head to toe in lather, waving at our bus as we drove past, crazy!

Dogs - puppies and young healthy looking dogs are in abundance here, and you often get puppies following you along the streets. However, we have never see any old dogs anywhere. Then we discovered why when passing a meat stall at a market, there was an entire dog chopped up waiting to be sold, including four paws chopped off and on offer...hmmm maybe time to turn vegetarian.

Rainy Season - you wouldn't think it would be much fun travelling in the rainy season...well you would be wrong, it's about 10 degrees cooler than before, yippee, not so much sweating involved, but still some. We can actually sleep without needing a fan or air con, it's wonderful, and all the scenery is lush and green instead of brown and dry.

Fireflies - I had never seen these before until Muang Ngoi and it took me an hour to realise they were flies and not alien like flashes of light in the dark sky.

We have reached the 6 month milestone of being on the road and we are really looking forward to another 6 months. To sum up our first impressions of Laos all I can say is WOW! A guy on a bus asked me if I was happy happy in Laos and I said I was having a very happy happy time!

Until next time

Jo & Ryan

Photos:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157620848132640/

So long (in) Thailand

ryanandjo — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:56:00 GMT

Bangkok

We returned to our ‘second home’ Bangkok and our favourite guesthouse to pick up some of the clothes and other belongings that we had left behind. We decided to use our time to inundate you all with blogs from our time in Burma!!! as well as catching up on some of the latest films and sorting out our plans for our onward journey

Sukhothai

We decided to catch the train and head north to Sukhothai. We had already done the Lopburi to Phitsanoluk part of the journey so we knew what was in store for us. We arrived early, in time to see everyone stand for the kings anthem at 8am sharp.

Quickly we had a decision to make, would we pay $9 each for the Express A/C train that was 4 hours quicker or would we pay $1.50 each for 3rd class? We chose the latter and although the journey was a little long for the comfort at least there were no drunken soldiers this time!

Sukhothai preceded Ayuthaya as the first capital of Thailand. Like Ayuthaya it is filled with ruins from yester year. The ruins in Sukhothai are better preserved and in many ways that made them less impressive than those in Ayuthaya. We hired bikes to cycle around and got an impression for the ruins without seeing them all.

Mae Sot

Next we headed to Mae Sot, which is a hot bed of illegal activities, including drug, gem and Burmese people smuggling. We didn’t get to see any of these activities first hand as we both fell ill for three days. However, while eating out we did meet restaurant staff who were recognisable as being Burmese, so we were able to thank them for the service in their native tongue which seemed to shock and surprise them.

It was in Mae Sot that Jo decided to go home for a break and to catch up with her family. I decided to stay in Thailand and travel around on my own for a while.

Chiang Mai

We had already decided that our next stop was going to be Chiang Mai and as the major tourist destination in Northern Thailand it would be a good place for Jo to catch a plane to Bangkok to get back to the UK. So after a couple of days having Mexican food for the first time in 5 months and visiting some of the biggest second hand book stores in South East Asia, it is here that our journeys diverge and the next part of the blog is about my time alone.

Pai

As a lone traveller I decided to head to Pai which is known for its trekking and had been recommended by fellow travellers. It’s not the correct season to be trekking but apparently there is still plenty to do. The guide book says the ’hippy trail’ is alive a well in Pai. As I wasn’t sure what this meant I thought I should investigate. It wasn’t quite what I expected, by hippy they obviously mean feral tourists and drunken yobs. The town in itself is quite nice, small enough to traverse on foot but I found all the shops too tourist driven which was not surprising considering the tourists out numbered the locals significantly, most restaurants served western food with a small section of Thai dishes with only a couple of usual food stalls.

My food experiences in Pai were not great, I should have stuck to the food stalls. One evening I decided to have a burger, on the menu under the relevant heading was a ‘vegetables burger’ .As with many translations some things can go astray so I assumed I would be getting a vegetable burger. However, when it arrived it was clear that there was nothing wrong with the translation at that it was a burger bun full of vegetables and not a patty of any sort!

On another evening I had to leave a restaurant after a drunk man decided to come and chat to me and try and be my friend. I left the restaurant and walked around the block hoping that he would disappear only to return to find him asleep on the table and the restaurant staff rounding up help to try to get him to leave. The next morning around 9 am I saw him sitting outside the local store already starting his next days drinking session.

The accommodation was the best thing about Pai. My accommodation was very basic, but for $3 I got my own hut with an ensuite toilet and shower.

I shared my room with a gaggle of geckos who did a wonderful job of keeping the insect numbers down. My ensuite bathroom was outside which lead to some interesting scenarios. I now had an excuse to leave the toilet seat up, as otherwise the sun would bake it during the day and in the evening I would get a shower every time I went outside regardless of whether the shower was on or not. Pai has power cuts, almost as frequently as in Burma, the difference being that they are not as well prepared for them and didn’t have generators. So the shower wouldn’t work to cool you down during the day when it was hot and when the electricity came back on in the evening there was no need for a shower anyway as it was raining in the bathroom anyway.

All that said, I loved my little hut, the view was stunning

and the rickety bridge across the river was an adventure every time I ventured to or from the hut, there was even a section that you could see had collapsed previously making the journey all the more exciting.

Chiang Rai

From Pai I headed to Chiang Rai the gateway to the ’Golden Triangle’. However, it sounds like a nice little tourist trap and where lots of people go to buy opium pipes and other drug paraphernalia, so I decided to stay in Chiang Rai. There isn’t much to see or do in Chiang Rai in the way of tourist activities, and that was fine by me. I found myself a good little second hand book store and a guesthouse with free wifi. What Chiang Rai does have is a fantastic night bazaar where I ate a variety of Thai foods every evening.

The only other thing to mention about Chiang Rai is the small matter of causing an accident. One evening when crossing the road I smiled back at some Thai school girls on their moped as they passed and the driver must have taken her eyes off the road as the next thing there was a bang and the sound of smashing plastic. The traffic in front had stopped at an intersection and the bike had careered into the back of another moped. Luckily nobody was hurt and a few brake lights and number plates were all that were damaged.

Soon it was time to be heading back to Chiang Mai to meet up with Jo. The bus journey was uneventful but followed a similar pattern to the bus journeys elsewhere in Northern Thailand, where the bus also doubles up as a mail van. People arrive not wanting to travel themselves but wanting to send a parcel to the destination town or for extra money somewhere along the way. The bus will then drop the parcel at the bus station and then someone will come at pick it up at the other end, which seems like a good alternative to using the post system. Alternative is not the correct word as the main customer of this service in Northern Thailand is...you’ve guessed it, the Post Office! Each bus stops at the post office and collects lots of parcels and then drops them off at the other end.

Chiang Mai

I arrived back in Chiang Mai and after doing some research online before I left I had decided to stay somewhere new. I hired a tuk tuk at the bus station but after arriving in the town centre he claimed not to know where the road was or to have heard of the guesthouse. After much searching we ended up back at the guesthouse we had stayed at previously. I’m still not sure if it was a scam to get commission from the the guesthouse and was none too pleased. After a refreshing shower I decided to go and look for the guesthouse that I had wanted to stay in, I found it on the road opposite and about 100 yards away from the guesthouse I had just checked into, so arranged to check in the next day.

I picked up my book and headed out to find a beer. Mainly because it’s the cheapest and tastes ok I chose Chang. I think I’ve mentioned before that Chang is labelled as 6.4% but that’s the least it will be and it can be anything up to 15%. I like to think of drinking it as a bit like Russian Roulette, sometimes you’ll have two 620ml bottles and be fine other times you’ll have some motor skill problems. I had 4 but my skills remained sufficient to get me back to my guesthouse.

The next day I went to meet Jo at the airport and we are back upto the full quota of two travellers.

Chiang Khong

From Chiang Mai we headed to the border town of Chiang Khong which is a well oiled border crossing between Thailand and Laos. We spent our last day in Thailand relaxing on our balcony watching the Mekong going by looking at our next destination

After 3 months in Thailand we are now looking forward to the experiences that Laos has to offer.

Thailand Summary and costs:

Highlights:

Favourite Island - Ko Lipe (Both)
Favourite Place - Bangkok (Jo), Kanchanaburi(Ryan)
Favourite Attraction - The Beach, Maya Bay (Jo), Hell Fire Pass (Ryan)
Favourite Activity - Snorkelling (Jo), Diving (Ryan)
Food - Phad Thai Gai (Jo), Panaeng Curry (Ryan)
Beer - Archa (Jo), Leo (Ryan)

Low Lights:

Diving (Jo)
Ubon Ratchanthani (Ryan)
Bed bugs Bangkok (Both)

For those of you thinking of possibly traveling to the region: Averages in USD

Accommodation - $5-10 (Mainland) $15-22 (Islands)
Main meal - $1-3 (Mainland) $3-6 (Islands)
620ml Beer - $2-3(Mainland) $3-5 (Islands)
330ml Soft Drink - $50c - $1 (Mainland) $1 - $1.50 (Islands)
1l Bottle of water - $15c (Mainland) $30c (Islands)
Transport - Bus $1 p/hour , Boat $15-20

Until next time, take care

Ryan & Jo

Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618900596162/

Inle Lake

ryanandjo — Wed, 20 May 2009 11:36:00 GMT

Day 21 - Inle Lake

We started early so we could fit in a whole day trip on the lake, sharing a boat with some Swedish friends from our guest house. The longboat took us down the 3 mile canal to get to the entrance to the lake and then the lake opened up before us, surrounded by mountains on both sides. We saw traditional Inle fishing with fishermen using their foot to paddle the oar, although I'm not sure how they get anywhere as it looks like they just go round in circles.

The fishermen were also using traditional spear fishing methods, using a basket cage to trap the fish.

We cruised through floating gardens

and villages with all houses on stilts.

I don't think we could live there as you can't pop out for a walk to the shops or to visit your neighbour without getting in your boat or getting wet. They seem to enjoy their way of life though, with the water around the house acting as the bath tub, with lots of naked kids jumping in from their door step and having fun.

We visited many places on the trip including pagodas, a silk weaving factory, a brass knife making place, and a famous monestary. The monks here were bored one day, probably because they couldn’t go for a walk, so they taught their cats to jump through hoops! A little odd and I'm sure I could teach a cat to do that if I had enough time, add that to my list of things to do in life.

We stayed at the Aquarius Inn, a great place to stay. It provided the best breakfast we have had in the country with spanish tortilla one day, pancakes the next with a full fruit salad and sugary sweet biscuit as well, then it was back to eggs on day 3, boo. We’re not complaining (much) but everywhere you stay in Burma provides 2 fried eggs, toast and a banana for breakfast. After a week of it you start to get sick of greasy eggs every morning and we even resorted to buying tomato ketchup to help get them down, but that didn’t help for long. We would really recommend this as a place to stay, lots of room to lounge around and the hotel owner would bring out tea and fruit for free and even gave us a present when we left, and lent us books from a great library with 'banned' books about Burma.

Day 22, 23 & 24 - Inle Lake

The lake was really beautiful, but after a whole day in the boat we decided one day was enough to get a feel for the water, so we spent the next three days exploring the shoreline and countryside.

We went for a trek in the nearby hills and visited a village where a festival was under way, with lots of people eating in tents and having fun and it seemed all the hill tribes in the area had come down to join in. We went to a cave where a monk gave us torches and showed us inside, it was very dark so I stayed at the top while Ryan went off exploring the tunnels on his own.

Another day we hired bikes and went to a village about 10km along the shore for the market day. The road there was an interesting mix of rocks and rubble and huge pot holes so the cycling was very slow and bumpy, not difficult if riding a mountain bike but on an old town bike with no suspension, it's a little uncomfortable.

Luckily, we hit some tarmac halfway along and passed lots of people on their way to and from the market carrying basket loads of goods over their shoulders and heads.

We also met lots more kids to give sweets to.

We also had a couple of encounters with snakes. The first one Ryan discovered when taking a closer look at a temple on a hillside. He opened a door and a snake fell down from the gap and slithered slowly away. Picture shows the scene of the crime.

10 minutes later Ryan said the snake hissed at him then moved away quickly. 10 minutes after that the story was the snake had tried to bite him before slithering away spitting venom at him! I just heard a girlie yelp but wasn't around to witness it, so you will have to take his word for it. The second snake encounter was on the way home when a couple of teenage boys had just killed a snake that was about 6ft long and they were using it as a skipping rope! They started swinging it around the place so we quickly cycled passed, we didn't trust them not to throw it at us. That has to be the oddest thing we have seen so far on this trip.

It was in Inle that we learnt the news about Aung San Suu Kyi going on trial. As we didn’t know how the country would react and if there would be any protests or not, we decided to leave Inle a day early and head back to Yangon before the trial started.

Day 25 - Back to Yangon

Before catching the bus back, we had to get a pick up truck to the highway junction, we were squashed in so much both of us suffered dead legs. The bus journey was meant to be about 20 hours but due to new roads around Napyiydaw it was a lot quicker. Luckily for us it didn’t go on any longer as we were surrounded by children. What's wrong with that? Well, we were sat on two of the seats on the back row. The other three seats where taken up my a Pa'O tribe woman and 4 of her 6 kids, there were another two sharing a seat in front of them, plus a couple of other kids sitting in front of us from another family. After a few hellos to them we noticed one of the kids was looking really sick, on closer inspection we saw all of the kids were sweating and looking very pale and soon started to throw up. Thinking whatever they had must be really contagious, we prepared ourselves for sickness at any time. After a 30 minute stop we noticed all the kids seemed to perk up and look healthy again, it wasn't until we were back on the bus for 20 minutes that the throwing up began again and we realised they all had motion sickness, and everyone around us was throwing up at 5 minute intervals. I don't blame them as the road was really twisty with pot holes to add to the bumpiness. We think this must be the first time this hill tribe family have ever travelled by bus and chose the longest bus journey in the country for an introduction. We made it there in one piece with nothing landing on us, but had a few of the kids slumped over us as they slept.

Day 26, 27 & 28 - Yangon again

We arrived at 3am obviously 4 hours earlier than we expected. A taxi dropped us at the hotel we previously stayed in to find it all shut up. We decided to go looking for a tea shop that might be open to wait in for a few hours but everywhere was closed and all we found were a pack of barking dogs that got too close to us and followed us around and showed big gnarly teeth that scared the bejeezus out of us (me). We rushed back to the hotel and luckily a local passing by banged on the door for us to wake someone up. We had been told not to go out in Yangon after midnight as it could be dangerous but I didn't realise it was the dogs we had to worry about! After a long lay in to catch up on sleep, we headed out for lunch the next day only to find all the dogs from the night before fast asleep in the middle of pavements making us step over them, I was too kind to kick them!

As we had done most of the sightseeing in Yangon we had a few days to chill out, talk to other travellers in our hotel and reflect on the journey we had completed. We also went to see the street children we had met before and to catch up with our guide from our first day.

The trial of Aung Sang Suu Kyi began but we didn't see or hear anything about it on the streets, it was as if nothing was going on. The only way to get news about it was via the internet and a foreign news channel on tv. The local paper, the New Light of Myanmar, had a full page announcement on the trial, just stating the facts and crime, but not reporting any of the details, but I’m sure people were whispering about it whenever they got a chance.

Day 29 - Leaving Burma

Our flight left early in the morning just as the streets of Yangon were waking up. Our taxi driver took us past University Avenue one last time and he slowed down to show us the barricade that is still up. He says that he will get arrested if he drives us down there, even though Aung San Suu Kyi is no longer in the house. He gave us our last political talk in the country, with his final words being ‘I hope she is set free’. So do we.

As we said before coming to Burma, it was a hard decision and not one that we took lightly. Having been we can now say that we are both glad we came and it was the right decision for us and we leave with no regrets. All the travellers we have met along the way have felt the same.

Isolation has never worked, it has only helped the Generals and it has been the people who have suffered. Meeting the people of Burma and listening to their stories is the only way to ensure that they are being heard and their stories are leaving the country and being spread around the world. They have entrusted us and need us to help spread the word about their plight and their living conditions. They enjoyed being able to talk freely with people as they don't know who to trust in their own country and being able to talk gives them hope and reduces the feeling of isolation that is left by the sanctions.

Aung San Suu Kyi comments about boycotting Burma were made during the "Visit Myanmar'96" campaign, it is unclear what her thoughts would be about visiting now. Everyone we spoke to were glad we came and asked what they could do to make more people visit the country. It was hard to explain that comments made over 10 years ago and the political situation meant people didn't visit fearing that they would be seen as legitimising the generals regime. Despite the situation the people are very proud of their country and rightly so, tourism is one of the only ways to help them.

If you were considering it, we would recommend going to Burma. However, as long as you went as a responsible traveller and not as part of package tours arranged by government owned tour operators. We spent around US$1000 between us for the 4 weeks, with a maximum of US$200 (including taxes taken from the money that went to the people) going to the government. The remainder went to those who need the money the most. The amount the government makes from independent travellers is pocket money compared to what they make from the natural resources and trade with China and India.

Burma has so much to offer and the community wants to meet new people and offer you a friendly smile. They are by far the nicest, most friendly people we have met. Lots of travellers want to get off the beaten track and find somewhere new. Burma may not be new but it's definitely away from the main tourist trail of South East Asia and although we wouldn't recommend going for this sole reason alone. It is certainly somewhere were you can experience something different, our experiences both the highs and lows are going to be difficult to surpass on the rest of this trip, if you’re thinking of going but aren’t quite sure whether to go, VISIT BURMA!!!

Jo & Ryan

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618607455580/

Summary and costs:

Highlights:

Meeting Burmese people
Favourite Place - Kalaw (Jo) , Old Bagan (Ryan)
Favourite Attraction - Shwedagon Paya (Jo) , Dhammayazika Zedi (Ryan)
Food - None - Orwell summed this up best, the Burmese can do absolutely anything with food, except make it taste good.
Beer - Myanmar Beer

Low Lights:

Dehydration (Jo)
Road to Kalaw (Ryan)
Bagan Heat (Both)

For those of you thinking of possibly traveling to the region: Averages in USD

Accommodation - $10-15 (A/C)
Main meal - $1-3
620ml Beer - $1.20-1.80
285ml Soft Drink - 30c
Bottle of water - 30c
Transport - Bus $1 per hour

Kalaw

ryanandjo — Mon, 11 May 2009 06:31:00 GMT

Day 17 - Kalaw

Having seen all that we wanted to see but by no means all the sites in Bagan, we decided that with our new found passion for early mornings we would catch the 3.30am bus to Kalaw. Ok, it was the only bus and we had no other options but we thought we could manage it none the less. Much of the town was already buzzing with people working and tea shops open and serving snacks. The reason we were up was because as we had learnt it’s cooler earlier in the morning and the bus we were going to be travelling on was old, very old, built in a time way before A/C and before soft padded seats too apparently. We had hoped to catch some sleep on the bus but soon realised that there was no chance of this, although a couple of bags of rice in the aisle way did look inviting. Unfortunately the bus wasn’t the worst of it, the road conditions were the worst we have experienced, so much so i started to have fond memories of the 4x4 track we had taken to Bagan. This road did have a tarmac strip and many years ago it was probably a decent road, but now it is in such a state of disrepair we were travelling through large potholes and cracks in the road for 10 hours. The road was only wide enough for 1 bus so spent a lot of time in the dust by the side of the road and because we had to have the windows open to move the hot air around by the time we arrived in Kalaw everyone was covered in a think layer of dust.

I’m still not sure how we made it, there is no way that bus should have been able to make that journey, but yet it does it all the time. One of the enjoyable aspects of the ride was that we got managed to see some interesting locals at work along the route.

News of swine flu hadn't reached Burma yet!

In the evening we watched a precession for Buddhas birthday, with the 28 floats to represent all the Buddha images.

Day 18 - Kalaw

The main reason for coming to Kalaw is to go trekking, some come to Kalaw to do day treks while others come to take the 3 day, 60km trek to Inle Lake. We decided that we would try a day trek before committing ourselves to anything else, and 16km would give us a good idea of our limits. Our guide was very knowledgeable of all the local flora and had us trying fruits and wild vegetables along the way, as well as showing and having us smell herbs and telling us there medicinal purposes. He even climbed a tree to pick us some wild figs to eat.

As for the fauna there really isn’t much left for him to show us, 75% of Burma animals are now extinct, there are no large animals left, no elephants, no tigers, no bears nothing that you would expect to see in a country of this size. The reason is because the government let the people do as they like with the land, as long as they stood by all other orders imposed on them. As well as being an expert in Flora he was also an expert in peoples and the region in which we were trekking, speaking 6 languages, having lived there his whole life. He took us to visit an indigenous hill tribe, the Taryaw, where we got to try some of there main source of income, tea, which dries on the village paths waiting to be taken to the Kalaw market held every 5 days. If we'd have visited 20 years earlier we'd have been trying Opium!

In the Taryaw village we also saw the school which along with all places of education in the country will close at the end of the year for the elections, not so votes can be cast there, but to prevent people gathering and protesting. The guide was one of the few people that we have met that had a positive outlook for the future and believes that the 2010 elections will affect change in his country. He suggested that the global credit crisis has forced the generals hand due to less trade with China and India and they will have to abide by the election results. He also explained why electricity is so intermittent around the country, apparently the generals switch it off, so that they can have 100% power for themselves, their military bases and their factories to meet export deadlines.

Day 19 - Kalaw

At breakfast we had an interesting conversation with a Slovakian who didn't believe there wouldn’t be any ATMs in Burma, so had arrived for her 5 week stay with very little money and no access to it. You have to bring enough money with you into the country to cover your stay, so we hope she didn't run out. After breakfast we headed to the market held every 5 days, in which the hill tribes come down to sell their produce. We had seen a lot of it being picked in preparation on our trek the previous day. Like most of the markets we have seen in Burma they were filled with both vibrant colours and smells. It was a shame that we had no way of cooking the food otherwise we would have bought some.

One seller displaying sandlewood used for the thanaka make up

People come to market to buy their staples, rice!

It was interesting to see how people transport their goods both to and from the market. We saw lots of women balancing baskets and other objects on there heads both coming to the market and leaving for home at the end of a long day, and also carrying a basket on their backs with the strap positioned around their forehead

For lunch we overloaded on Indian cakes and sweets at a traditional Burmese teashop, before heading off on a self guided trek to the 'bamboo Buddha', only to find that the house in which the Buddha was enclosed was made of bamboo not the Buddha itself! The trek was enjoyable and along the way Jo was presented with many flowers by the local children, which was funded on her part with the distribution of ‘candy’! One child would offer a flower and get candy and others would see the reward and swarm her with different flowers. We returned back to the guesthouse before dark to book our onward journey, having decided that a 3 day trek was probably a bit too much in the heat.

Day 20 - Kalaw to Inle Lake

Our next destination was the two hour journey to Shwenyaung. On the bus no space was left unaccounted for, with fold down seats for the aisles people hanging out of the doors. We were like sardines in a can, with us on the backseat which had a person more than normal, so we were thankful it was only a short journey. Another thing to be thankful was that the bus that had left half an hour before ours had broken down on route so we were glad we decided on a lay in! Upon arriving at Shwenyaung, we disembarked to collect another form of transport to our actual destination of Nyaungshwe, which is on the mouth of Inle lake. After refusing an expensive taxi, we opted for a ride in a pick up truck. Like with the bus journey no space left untouched with people on the roof and hanging from the back for the 13km journey. We spent the rest of the day chilling out before going to see the lake the next day.

Ryan and Jo

Photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618607492086/

Bagan

ryanandjo — Fri, 8 May 2009 06:28:00 GMT

Day 12 - Mandalay to Bagan

We decided on Bagan (formally Pagan) as our next destination, which is high on the list of architectural wonders of South East Asia. In the morning we awoke to find 5 other travellers making the same trip, and we would all be going together in a taxi ordered for us by the guesthouse. Our taxi was actually a Lei Bein or a tiny four wheeled Mazda truck that Jo and i had taken previously and had felt cramped in with just the 2 of us in. All of the luggage was tied precariously to the roof, and 4 of us squashed in the back while another sat up-front with the driver.

The bus to Bagan was not as good as the one we had had from Yangon and in the heat of the day the air conditioning did even less to cool us, but travel is about experiences and i’m sure we’ll look back on this one in the future and laugh. The journey was through the ‘dust bowl’ centre of Burma on the main highway to Bagan. For ‘highway’ read dirt track that would be fun in a 4x4 but not so much on a bus for 7 hours! Bouncing our way along we noticed that all the rivers that we crossed were dry, until we finally came to one that had some water in it. Upon arriving at the river the bus stopped in the middle of the road, we thought we had broken down for the first time, as they started to unload all the baggage from stowage. When they started to pile everything into the bus with us we realised that there was no bridge across the river and we were going to drive through it!

The rest of the journey carried on along the same lines without any further river crossings. The only other thing of note was the entertainment. I think this is going to be a recurring theme of bus travel in Burma, as once again the entertainment was played at full blast, on the home DVD player strapped down to the dashboard, this time showing people performing acts of mutilation that miraculously did them no harm, but was difficult to watch none the less.

We arrived in Nyaung U our chosen destination for exploring the Bagan Archeological Zone, but unfortunately we were unable to avoid the government entrance fee, before taking a horse and cart to our chosen guesthouse.

Day 13 - Bagan

The following morning we hired another horse and cart for the day to help us cover some of the 42sq km and take in a few of the remaining 4,400 Paya's (meaning 'holy one's') which at one point totalled over 13,000 (Zedi's, Stupa's, Pahto's, Temples and Shrines), many of which were built over 800 years ago. Individually, none of the sites are as spectacular as Borobodur in Indonesia, but it’s the weight of numbers that makes Bagan so impressive. It’s not simply a case of quantity over quality though, as viewing stupa upon stupa, reaching as far as the eye can see in all directions is magnificent.

The horse and cart was a great way to travel and gave us a chance to orientate ourselves with the huge area. Jo got to laze in the padded back like a princess while I got to sit up front with my feet hanging precariously close to the horses doofus bag! Our driver often took a nap in the back when we were exploring the ruins.

Our day was spent on a ‘highlights’ tour taking in some of the more famous and religiously significant sites. We visited many temples, which reminded us of a phrase that we have heard many times on our trip “same, same but different!”

Each was different enough to keep us interested without getting “templed out”. However, one aspect was constant and that was the vendors lining the entrance ways trying to sell everything from postcards, books, marionettes, paintings amongst many other things.

Bagan is the most touristy place we have visited, but in some ways it was actually nice to see that everything is as it is elsewhere in South East Asia, even in Burma. It was hard to get annoyed with the persistent children so we had fun with them, giving them sweets whenever we didn’t want to buy anything from them.

One vendor decided to take another tact with us, after unsuccessfully trying to sell us some longyi she asked us to come with her to her stall, where she wanted to show us thanakha. Thanakha has two uses, the first is as a make up, and is worn by all females and children, the other is as sunscreen. It is made by rubbing sandalwood and water on a circular board to produce a paste that is then applied to the face and body.

You must understand that I was wearing this as a kind gesture to the vendor and as a sunscreen and not as make-up, although it felt both cool on the skin and smelt fragrant, maybe I could get used to this make-up lark!

Being in the horse and cart a lot of the time we didn’t really notice how hot it was outside, however every site we visited we would have to take our footwear off and it was then that we really noticed the heat! Walking around a temple or up a pagoda barefoot that had spent the day being baked by the sun, lead to some jumping around, running between shady areas and abandoning climbs all together. At one temple I thought the hot ground would be good chance to get rid of a persistent vendor, with me having a longer stride and all, but he was not to be stopped and followed me regardless, probably more use to burning feet than me anyway!

At one temple we met someone we affectionately named 'Chatty', who shone a torch for us to climb some dark stairs so we could get to the top for a good view across the plains. He didn’t ask all the same questions as the others so we gave him sweets and that seemed to keep him happy.

From the name you can gather that Chatty wasn’t very talkative, but then he was only 10 and we later found out that he didn’t go to school, and worked from sunrise to sunset, 7 days a week and had only just started to learn English. His parents couldn’t afford to pay to put him through school and this was now to be his life, he like the majority in this country deserve a better future.

After saying goodbye to our new friend, we went to Bu-Lu-Thi to see one of Bagans most spectacular sites, sunset

At the end of our first day we had seen 15 Paya in detail and approximate that we probably saw another 1000 in total.

Day 14 - Bagan

On our second day of exploring Bagan we decided to stay a bit closer to home. There are 3 towns in the Bagan Archeological Zone; Old Bagan where we had spend most of our first day exploring, New Bagan which was created when the generals decided to move everyone who lived in Old Bagan out on a days notice under the premise of preserving the area. That didn’t stop them building a monstrosity of a hotel there, so out of character with everything else in the ‘zone’ along with the viewing skyscraper they also decided to build despite UNESCO protection. Thankfully, we heard from a local that nobody is going up the skyscraper, and almost all consider it an eyesore. The other town is Nyaung U where we had based ourselves for our stay.

Nyaung U is the site of perhaps the most revered of all Bagan sites, the Shwezigon Pagoda.

Which was the prototype for the ShweDagon Paya in Yangon. We decided this would be our first stop, and to get there we would hire bikes and then make our way to some of the 3000 temples and pagodas we had yet to see. We set off around 10 o’clock and upon arriving at the Shwezigon we saw that there was a fee for leaving bikes, and it was in the sun so some vendors offered us a spot to keep our bikes in the shade, on the promise that we would 'look' at their stalls when we had finished. We returned as promised and had a look, Jo even bought a bracelet, but my vendor was not taking no for an answer, after explaining that I really had no need for lacquerware she grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let it go. As sweets had worked with children I thought I would try with the lady and what followed was chaos. I made the mistake of offering her the bag to take some for herself rather than handing them out and she tried to take the lot! She also made enough noise to let some of the other 20 vendors or so working know that there was something on offer and then they all surrounded like a pack of vultures each wanting sweets and wanting to help themselves. After passing a few out myself we managed to escape back to the road to go to our next site.

We had spent a long time in the Shwezigon Pagoda not only due to the vultures but because even walking around we had had to stop and take shade from the heat. When you sit down it is taken as a sign that you want to be spoken to, and many children and the occasional adult will come to practice their English with you. Most of it is quite repetitive but you occasionally get a heartfelt question that makes all the conversations worth while. It is also a good way to find out about the local conditions and we were informed that it was already 44 degrees!

At the next site we met a vendor with something a little bit different, on top of the pagoda he tried to sell me a ruby, I have no idea if it was genuine or not, but just the fact that he was trying to sell it to me was a little surreal. The situation was all the stranger as he spoke in a way as if he was trying to sell it incognito despite only Jo and I being around. I told him that I had no need for a ruby, but if he had some lacquerware....! Upon completing the site we decided that it was too hot for cycling and 2 sites would be enough, only some 2998 to go! Despite there being no electricity at the guesthouse we could at least have cold showers to cool down.

Later in the evening we did venture out again, cycling around Nyaung U where we managed to stumble upon the local National League for Democracy Party (NLD) office. The NLD, if the 1990 election results were upheld would be in government, but the office was just a pile of bricks and wood as most of the party are in prison indefinitely. We thought better of taking photograph as along with bridges and military officials we are banned from doing so. The cycle was enjoyable as it was about the time that people finished work and the area was a bustle of activity, with people starting to fill the tea shops and beer stations.

Day 15 - Bagan

After the relative failure of the previous day we decided that we would try a 5am start to try and beat the heat. Again hiring bikes we would check out the area between Nyaung U and New Bagan.

This turned out to be a very successful trip, not only did we escape the blistering heat we also managed to see lots of temples and pagodas.

including our favourite Dhammayazika Zedi which offered some of the best views over Bagan we had seen.

The early start also meant that we beat a great deal but not all of the temple vendors and 'guides' who like to show you around and practise their English. We had practically every site to ourselves and could spend more time taking them in and exploring. The only thing we had to worry about was avoiding the goats and cattle as they roamed around the ruins.

After about 5 hours and 12 different Paya we returned to our guesthouse to make sure we weren’t caught out in the midday sun, which proved to be a blessing as the mercury hit 46 degrees!!

Day 16 - Bagan

Having been so successful the day before, we decided on an another early start to see the remaining Paya we had yet to see in and around the Old Bagan area. On our way to the last site of the day I noticed, mainly through the juddering in my arms that my front tyre was flat and I had a puncture. We were about 4 kms away from the guesthouse and it was approaching 10, so rather than walk I decided to ride and risk having to pay for the wheel rather than getting caught in the sun. Thankfully I managed to nurse it back with no damage to the wheel, which on the roads of Bagan or anywhere in Burma is quite an achievement.

My reward was another 46 degree day, with no electricity and no generator power, a sweat fest. I think on this day alone the number of cold showers I took surpassed the sites we visited during our stay. Immediately after you dried yourself you were once again perspiring and covered in sweat. For these couple of days, Jo and I believed the greatest sound in the world was when the A/C unit clicked into gear when power returned. We had decided to come to the hottest part of the country in the hottest part of the year, and again I think this is one of the experiences we will remember from our time here, we survived!

Ryan and Jo

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618575415066/

Pyin U Lwin and the Moustache Brothers

ryanandjo — Sun, 3 May 2009 11:21:00 GMT

Day 7 - Mandalay to Pyin U Lwin

After another sleepless night, with no electricity to work the air con and the hotel generator giving up the ghost so not even the fan worked to move the hot air around, we decided to leave the heat of Mandalay a day early. We organised a share taxi to Pyin U Lwin, 1500m above sea level in the Shan hills, and about 10 degrees cooler, which was really appreciated. The taxi was a 30 year old toyota corolla that the driver pushed to its limits as we climbed the hairpin turns. The car needed a break half way to cool the engine down with a hose. We shared the journey with two Burmese ladies but we became slightly alarmed when the taxi started to drive onto a military base, dropping them off to visit their relatives. We didn't think we would get a tour of a Burmese military camp on our trip, and we sunk down low into our seats to avoid the stares from uniformed officers, but we made it out alive.

Our hotel was on the outskirts of town, in a quiet area with nothing to do. Perfect. We really needed somewhere to unwind from the first week in Burma. All the sights, conversations and experiences, along with the heat and dehydration had overwhelmed us. We were also a bit paranoid about doing or saying something wrong. You hear you shouldn't take photos of government buildings or people in uniform, and I think knowing we could do something wrong or look at a person you shouldn't started to take its toll. We knew it wouldn't be easy here but it was so different from anywhere else we had visited in Asia, such a culture shock. We knew about the conditions and lack of human rights before we came, but after making friends with people who are actually living through this you can see the reality of it all, and appreciate how difficult and depressing it can be to live here. It takes a lot of strength to continue to have hope, as well as just living day to day, not knowing who you can trust. We considered leaving early not knowing if we could cope with four weeks here, and we met a few travellers who all agreed they had the exact same thoughts. Everyone arrives in Yangon and thinks, where on earth have I come to, which is fair as it is a grim place! But it's not fair for us to give up so easily, we came here for a reason and decided to stick with it for the whole four weeks, at least we get the chance to leave the country in the end. Many others wish they had that option but can never leave.

Day 8 & 9 , 10 - Pyin U Lwin

There is hardly anything to do in Pyin U Lwin apart from walk around and observe life. It's an old colonial hill station, where the British set up camp to escape the heat, just like us. The country lanes are full of big colonial houses, people walking and cycling around and dodgy old tractors chugging along.

The town has a fresh produce market everyday.

The best way to get around town when too lazy to walk is by horse and carriage, which we took one evening and made us feel like we were in the wild wild west, so a few yeehaa noises from the back made the driver laugh!

The town is a popular holiday location for Burmese, but only those that have enough money to afford holidays. We were the only foreigners in our hotel, actually it seemed we were the only ones in the whole town, but no one we were staying with was interested in talking with us, we just gained a few stares from them all. I guess it adds another side to the story, and we could see how the richer population in Burma live. Whether they didn't like us being there are just weren't interested in meeting us I don't know but everyone else in the town was happy to see us and we have become professional 'wavers'. We walked through a small village one evening and seemed to be applauded and cheered on our way through, with all the kids running along side us and all the adults looking out the windows with big smiles to see us.

The best thing about the town was a bakery we found with real CHOCOLATE CAKE!!! I couldn't remember the last time I had tasted chocolate and it was much needed after a lot of rice, eggs and noodles. Also, thankfully there was a large Indian and Nepali population in the town so our taste buds tingled when we treated them to Indian food. I know we haven't mentioned Burmese food yet, we have to pluck up the courage to discuss that another time!

After three whole days of relaxing, we had recharged the batteries and were ready to face whatever came next.

Jo & Ryan

Day 11 - Back to Mandalay

Leaving the cool climate of Pyin U Lwin we headed back to Mandalay to get a connection elsewhere. Like the trip there we got a 'share' taxi with a few locals that involved us paying practically the whole fare. This wouldn't have been so bad, but I had to sit in the middle of the backseat and prop the passenger seat up with my knee to provide us with some leg room, while a young child of about 8 sat behind the driver with all the room in the world.

After checking into a different hotel to our first visit, we headed out for some lunch, and were quickly reminded of the oppressive heat. We found a vegetarian Nepalese restaurant, and were treated to some fine cuisine (i think we'll enjoy the food in Nepal!). Like in a lot of eateries in Burma you know that the food is freshly prepared as when you order food, a member of staff will leave the restaurant and jump on a bicycle or moped and race off to the shops, returning before long trying to hide from your eyes the ingredients they've just bought to make your meal.

As we had already seen the attractions in Mandalay we used the rest of the day to sort out our itinerary and change money. For dinner we had our cheapest meal of our travels. At a chapati stand, we both ate and drank until we couldn't eat or drink anymore for US 45c!!

After dinner we caught a couple of trishaws to see the dissident comedians; the Moustache Brothers Troupe. Banned by the government from performing outdoors, they have opened their home to continue their livelihoods and raise awareness of the issues within their country. They are only allowed to perform to foreigners though, no locals can view the performance otherwise they will be shut down. Two of the brothers were sentenced to and completed 7 years hard labour for telling political jokes, with one of the brothers Par Par Lay being arrested for a second and third time for standing up to the generals.

This has not stopped the group from continuing their performances of traditional a-nyeint pwe (folk opera, dance, music, in your face slapstick comedy, political satire and Myanmar history), getting their whole family involved. Jo was given the 'lucky' seat to sit on, the one Aung San Suu Kyi used when she visited them in 2003. The traditional dance and music was especially interesting, i'm still at a loss as to how they perform some of the moves and how they are still able to execute them every night after all this time.

One of the brothers, Lu Zaw, spoke perfect English and had all the idioms, slang, jingoism's and one liners to boot.

When he spoke it wasn't all funny though, when the subject turned to his countries plight. We arrived at the show early and got to have a long discussion about how the generals canceling currency of certain denominations had left many people destitute, due to their distrust of the banks run by the regime. Which in turn had forced many women to secretly cross the border to work as prostitutes in Thailand and returning to Burma with AIDS, which the government deny the existence of the problem in the country. He also showed us DVDs of some of the atrocities and of Hollywood actors calling for help, which he gave us a copy of to distribute around.

He also explained they blame China for the situation within their homeland. How their refusal to sanction proper embargoes and economic restrictions due the amount of trade they do with the generals had allowed them to continue the humanitarian atrocities and flood the Burmese market with their cheap goods. He was very smart and well informed of current events such as the happenings in Bangkok, Somalia and the economic crisis and we were more than happy to support them in their personal stand against the generals.

Ryan and Jo

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618574056832/

Mandalay

ryanandjo — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:18:00 GMT

The road to Mandalay is lined with bamboo huts, children bathing and playing in ponds, ox carts and loose cattle meandering down the road, men playing Chinlon (a version of keepy uppy with a cane rattan ball), all very idyllic. Then we hit a junction. Straight on the road is blocked by military, off limits to travel, like most of the country. Turn right and you hit a brand new highway, built so the generals can travel comfortably to Naypyidaw, the new capital they decided to build because the generals are too afraid to continue to live in Yangon. The road is lined with toll booths, one every hour, so the locals can pay for the road. There are no facilities at all as we found out when the bus stopped for the first toilet stop, men to the front of the bus, women to the back! What! I was so shocked that by the time I realised I just had to go, the bus was ready to leave and I had to hold on for 2 more hours. The next stop was more to my liking with proper toilets, and food. The roadside cafe was run by children all running around in uniform serving customers. I don't think we saw a single adult working there.

Back on the road we soon had to stop for a check point. We weren't sure what was happening but someone on the bus spoke English and explained we had to show our passports, while the locals had to show their identity cards. The check point was little more than a wooden desk at the side of the road and a board covered in wanted posters of people they are trying to catch. Some soldiers wrote our details down so the government would know where we were for the night although it took them ages and held the bus up, mainly because they couldn't work out the passport details properly, they only wrote our first names down and missed our surnames, doh! We told them we were heading to Mandalay, and when we walked away you could hear them sniggering about us and the way we spoke, nasty little men! Not far up the road we passed by the new capital, Naypyidaw. No one is allowed to travel there and no foreigners have officially seen the city, but from a distance with all the eyes on the bus focusing towards the view, you could see it was all lit up like a christmas tree with a sparkling pagoda, brand new town houses, hotels and deserted wide avenues. Not only were there way too many lights along the streets, but also fairy lights in the concrete walls lining the roads and instead of one light on the roundabouts, there were about 10 in a circle, even though there were no cars around at all. Obviously, there are no electricity problems here, maybe this is where all the power in the country goes to!

Day 5 - Mandalay

We arrived in Mandalay at sunrise, in time to see the novice monks collecting alms along the street. We hadn't slept much on the bus, mainly due to the loud screeching speakers that played music to keep the driver awake and a lady next to us who sang most of the way there. We headed straight to a hotel and slept in until midday. First impressions of Mandalay...it's way hotter than Yangon, that can't be possible. April is officially the hottest and driest month to visit Burma and lasts until May when the rains might come. The temperature in Yangon was around 38 degrees, in Mandalay it's 42 degrees. Everywhere is dry and dusty and you dehydrate as soon as you breathe the air, very similar to being in the Outback. There is no time to eat as you just have to drink water continuously otherwise you wilt and fade, like we did in Yangon. The key to survival, rehydration sachets!

Outside our hotel was a rickshaw driver called 'SoSo' and his friend 'Joker'. SoSo said they could take us around the sights of Mandalay, tell us how to avoid paying any government entrance fees and (whispering) talking politics to us but only when no one was around. So we took them up on their offer and headed off to see the outside of Mandalay palace. You may wonder why we only wanted to see the outside and not the inside of the palace, which the city is so famous for. There really isn't any palace to see. Most of the royal city within the walls of Mandalay were bombed during WW2. The government decided to rebuild the palace for tourists but used forced labour to do so and the result is meant to be really ugly. SoSo said we could visit if we wanted to but he really would prefer if we didn't pay to go in. Unfortunately for him, he was one of the men forced to work on the rebuilding of the moat around the palace walls. He had to work one day for every week the build took and he had belongings confiscated from him and never returned.

We went to a teak monastery, that is the only original part of Mandalay palace still left, it was moved to another location before WW2 so survived the bombing. All the attractions in and around Mandalay are part of a $10 combo ticket, (with all the money going to the government) so you need one to enter all the main sights. SoSo thought we could get in for free or just buy one ticket between us so we could take it in turns to see the sights. He went to check at the ticket booth for us but was shouted at for asking. This really upset him and he couldn't understand why someone could talk down to him so easily as he was only asking. He said he was only a rickshaw driver though so no one thought highly of him in the city. We told him it wasn't right, he shouldn't be spoken to like that at all and his job is just as important as anyone elses. We didn't bother paying a fee and took a picture from the outside instead!

Our next stop was a temple, famous for being the worlds biggest book, as each page of a book (can't remember which one, but a famous Buddhist book) is inscribed onto marble slabs, each housed within a small temple of its own. SoSo took us to an entrance the locals used and said just don't wander to the south entrance where the ticket office is! We didn't see much though as we met an English teacher who was with some of her pupils. She really wanted the kids to practice their English so we happily answered their questions, although one of them stumped Ryan when he asked 'what is your ambition?', Ryan said 'oh I don't have one, er er to be a footballer'? This question led to an early mid life crisis at a beer station later that evening!

Next we did the bare foot climb up Mandalay Hill, the whole hill is a temple so no foot wear is allowed. The views were not so great though as the haze from the heat surrounded the city, as you can see.

We headed back to our hotel with the rickshaw drivers sweating from cycling us around, and us sweating just from sitting there!

The electricity supply in Mandalay was appalling compared to Yangon, averaging only 6 hours a day. It makes the evenings interesting though, walking about the dark streets trying to see if there is a rickshaw or bike coming as none of them have lights on. It also means it's too hot to sleep.

Day 6 - Mandalay

SoSo said he could organise another trip for us to the villages around Mandalay, because his cousin was a taxi driver. We got to talk more about politics as we sat in the back of the taxi, a mini pick up truck. He told us about the Monk protests of 2007. He and his cousin rode behind them for a few days to support them until the army announced they had had enough of seeing people on the streets and would send tear gas in and they started shooting. SoSo knew a tea shop nearby and banged on the barricaded door to be let in, the owner knew him so opened up and they hid some monks in there too, but many people died in the area.

Whenever we drove on a major road, crossed over a bridge or entered a village the driver had to pay a toll. However, the roads are in really poor condition. SoSo told us that the government never repair the roads, so the locals take it upon themselves to make them safer, but to do so they need to buy a permit. So, the government take money twice; from the tolls and the permits but never spend any of it on the roads! Makes sense.

Our tour included a visit to a gold leaf beating workshop, where they beat, flatten and make the small gold leaf squares that people buy at temples to apply to Buddha statues.

We saw a marble statue workshop where they mainly make Buddhas, but it was funny to see them without faces, as this part is left until last for an artist to complete.

We went to lunch in a small village by the Ayerwaddy (new name for Irrawaddy) river, where there were lots of kids trying to sell necklaces. They all asked the same routine questions in English that they have been told to ask, and also reminded me how beautiful I am! Once they realised I wasn't buying from them we had a fun photo session with them all laughing at their pictures on the camera screen, then they all decided to get some candy out of me as I wasn't giving them money, but I was happy to buy a big bag of sweets for them all to share.

Next we had a steep climb up Sagaing Hill, for a view over the village where there are over 500 stuppas and temples nestled around the hills. This is a place where monks come to relax if they get stressed out!

The village is part of the $10 combo ticket but our driver knew a back road to take, where there were no officials to check for foreigners in cars, so we saw it for free! This happened for the rest of the day too, so our guide and driver saved us in total $26, which went into their pockets instead of the governments, ha ha. I am trying to be unbiased in this blog but you can tell it's not working!

U Bein bridge is a teak bridge over 200 years old over a lake between two villages and is a great place to watch the local life commuting back and forth. There were more necklace sellers here, but SoSo said they can speak many languages so if you say you're from France they will speak french to you. So, I thought I would put my french into practice and told one girl that's where I was from. It only took her four questions to stump me, I couldn't understand what she said so had to admit I was English and felt very ashamed of myself!

A small part of the bridge broke away a while ago, but rather than mend it with teak, which is abundant in Burma, the government decided to mend it with concrete. How ridiculous! Unfortunately, this seems to be the case across all historic sights in the country. If anything needs to be restored, rebuilt or modernised for tourist access, it's done in the most ugly and cheapest way possible. Huge concrete stairways with corrugated roofing lead up to hillside pagodas, obscuring the view as you ascend. Landscapes are ruined by 10 story government buildings or hotels, because they think bigger is better. A lot of people we met have said they've been disappointed by the sightseeing in Burma, us included. It's not because the sights aren't worth seeing, they just haven't been looked after and are falling to pieces, dirty or covered in rubbish. Its the same with the towns, especially Yangon. The buildings are falling apart, grimy and the pavements have more holes and cracks then they do paving slabs. It's not the fault of the people, they can see the country is in ruins and they think all developments over the last 20 years are ugly and out of place. I dread to think what state the country will be in if there is no change in the next 20 years, I don't think it can last much longer the way it is now.

We had a great day and discussed many issues with SoSo, however he seemed to have no hope left for the future. He really didn't see a chance for any change in the country and was willing to lead a quiet life and keep his head down just to get by. It may be due to him being older so he has lived through more hardship then other people we've met, but it was sad to think many others have given up hope too. During the last election his family and him just spoiled their ballot papers, too scared to vote for the opposition but not wanting to vote for the military. His nephew decided to join the military so he can earn a better wage for his family, but SoSo has disowned him because he wont associate with anyone in the military even if they're family. We really hope it's not long before there is change, the people here really need it so they can see hope for the future instead of living under the oppression they deal with everyday. It may not be long before the whole population gives up hope and that would be a tragedy.

On a lighter note, we found a Mandalay beer company with an interesting slogan to sell it's beer. We didn't think we could drink enough of it whilst here to see if it works or not.

Jo and Ryan

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618574037854/

Yangon

ryanandjo — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:20:00 GMT

To begin our blog of our trip to Burma, our decision to go there was based on some conditions we set ourselves. We decided to go there only as responsible travellers not package tourists. We intended to stay in small family run guest houses only and use transport that is run by private companies or individuals. We would not stay in government run hotels or use the train network or airlines, also run by the government. We would try our best to spread our money over as many local businesses as we could rather than to keep returning to the same shop over again. We decided to go to Burma to meet the people, talk about their lives and answer any questions they have for us, but only talk about political issues if they brought the subject up and it felt safe to do so, as we did not want to get anyone into trouble. Any sightseeing we would do is secondary to this and is done to support the people or as a way to meet them.

It's not possible to summarise the history and politics of Burma, it's complicated and better to read the background of the country for yourself if you are interested, especially the last 20 years. But here's a brief overview to give an idea what kind of country we are heading to. It is run by an oppressive military regime. They only take from the people and give nothing in return. Burma is a rich country, it has natural gas supplies, teak and gems galore, but the people of the country are poor. The government keeps all the money and resources for itself. They do not recognise election results, instead they put the leader of the winning party, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for nearly 20 years and imprison key members of the party. Anyone showing dissent towards the government are sent to prison, tortured or just disappear. The people have no freedom of speech, no right to protest, no human rights. They live in a 1984 society where they are watched or afraid spies will be listening to their conversations. This is not going to be easy...

What's with the name - Burma or Myanmar? The government changed the name to Myanmar 20 years ago, although there was no referendum with the people to decide this and the name change is not recognised internationally. Myanmar is an old name for the country, originating from the Myanma people who arrived from Mongolia in the 15th century, you can tell I have read a history book on this can't you! Burma is the name given by the British when they arrived in 19th century. We weren't sure which name we should be using so we asked a few people. Everyone said Burma. The only reason the Burmese call the country Myanmar is because they will end up in prison if they say Burma.

Day 1 - Yangon

So we arrived safely in Burma after some hesitation about getting on the plane in Bangkok because of last minute doubts as to whether we were doing the right thing by going. We've read that arriving at Yangon airport can be tense because immigration can question you in depth about your intended stay and customs search your bags for any electronic equipment and they have been known to confiscate computers until you leave the country. We were surprised to experience none of this. The immigration officers were polite and although using an outdated passport system where they had to type all our details in by hand, no questions were asked. Customs? We were all prepared to walk through the red zone to declare our laptop but there was no one there and at the green zone they just waved us through, not a hint of concern as to what we were bringing into the country.

We had booked a hotel room ahead of arriving and they kindly picked us up for free. The airport is about 30 minutes from downtown Yangon (new name for Rangoon), so we saw a few of the sights on the way in including a police barricade at the entrance to University Avenue, where Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest. We also had our first anti-government talk with the hotel owner, as he hoped we were going to be avoiding government transport and hotels during our stay. When we arrived at the hotel we had to check in using both our passports, instead of just the usual one, so the authorities can keep a track of where we are in the country at all times and the hotel has to report to the police station each day to say exactly who is staying at their hotel.

As we arrived quite late we didn't venture far from the hotel, but had dinner at a beer station down the road, fried rice, typical Asian cuisine, but with a Burmese flavour to it!

Day 2 - Yangon

We decided to spend our first day in Yangon checking out the downtown area and getting a feel for the city. Our hotel was a 20 minute walk into the main part of town and we passed lots of Tea Shops, where locals drink tea and eat pastries and chapatis. We also passed a number of run down buildings with barbed wire fencing, buildings that may have been quite grand at one time but have not been looked after at all. The typical housing in Yangon is 7 or 8 story apartment buildings that don't look too inviting. All the cars are at least 30 years old here, it makes you feel like you've travelled back in time.

It didn't take long before we met our first guide of our trip, a local from Yangon who runs a tour business in town. We wont mention his name just to be safe. He was very happy to see us because tourism has been really low in the last two years since the protests of 2007 and since Cyclone Nargis hit in 2008. His first questions for us were regarding the situation in Bangkok. He was very concerned to hear about the riots because any fall in tourism to Thailand directly effects the tourist numbers in Burma, because most people travel via Bangkok to get here. We were on our way to see the Sule Paya, a 2000 year old gold temple that has been surrounded by shops and turned into a roundabout, so he offered to show us the way.

Our guide then said he would show us some sights of the city and we ended up spending all day with him until 7pm, on the condition he could practice his English on us, which was perfect anyway. He kindly showed us where the British Embassy was, just incase we needed it! Next door was The Strand hotel, a colonial hotel from when the British ruled the country, similar to Raffles. He took us into the most expensive shop in town, one filled with top clothing, cosmetic and electronic brands, including a $25,000 necklace. The only people who can afford to shop there are government officials. We next went to the Aung San Market, filled with gems and jewellry as well as souvenirs. There was no security at all there, considering that all the gems would be locked away in shops elsewhere. All the walking around was thirsty work so we stopped for a local cola drink!

Our guide wanted to show us the 5 star hotels in town to show us how the other half live, so took us on a tour of the Traders Hotel. He also took us to the top of the Sakura tower, where there is a 5 star restaurant with great views of the city and the delta on the opposite side of the Yangon river. He was good at spinning a few tales to get us in, telling doormen we were visitors thinking of staying in the hotel and eating at the restaurant, with us telling them we'll be back for dinner, but of course we had no intention. Next he showed us his office where he works, today was his day off, and then we went to an internet cafe for our first experience with censorship. The government have blocked many websites, but luckily they haven't blocked gmail or the BBC, so we can get email and news here, although it's a very slow connection. We then went to lunch for a taste of Burmese food, consisting of meat curries, soup and tea.

While walking around town we met an old lady called 'Ethel', who was also very pleased to see us and told us she's known as 'Ethel blah blah' as she can talk a lot, which we found out after standing on the street corner for nearly an hour listening to her. She was not afraid to speak her mind and was happy to shout Aung San Suu Kyi out loud, which was shocking as we thought no one mentioned her name allowed or only referred to her as 'The Lady' through fear they would be arrested. She said she knows the corrupt people and they leave her alone as she knows 'tales' about them. She was definitely a character and we promised to visit her another day.

We spent the afternoon at Kandawgyi Lake, just north of downtown, taking a rather dilapidated taxi to get there.

It was here in the open, that our guide started to talk more about politics and his country, so we sat down for a drink and had a long chat with him. He told us stories about when the cyclone hit and how he sent his wife and child to the countryside and stayed to protect their home, which sadly blew away. He now rents a place in a tall building in town as he's too afraid to live in a basic home again. He said there are still many homeless and hungry people in the delta area where the cyclone hit the hardest but the road is blocked for tourists, no one can go and see how bad the situation still is. We also discussed the sanctions on the country and how he believes that China is the key to the country changing, if only they would also sanction the government instead of plying them with trade and money. He still has hope for the future and hopes his son will grow up to have more freedom and be able to get a university education. Our guide studied at university for three years but he was not allowed to finish his course as the government closed the universities down. He would like to move abroad and once tried to get a visa for France with a recommendation letter from a French friend, but he was declined and he lost a lot of money on the application. He thinks even if he was given a visa, he knows he would be stopped at the airport and not allowed to leave the country. I asked him why we had seen no motorbikes or mopeds in town, the lack of them was really noticeable considering this is usually the main form of transport across Asia. The reason is that about 5 years ago a man was drunk on his motorbike and he saw a generals car and decided to drive up alongside it using his fingers to imitate a gun, as if he was going to shoot the general. This frightened the general so much that he demanded all motorbikes be removed from Yangon, so whoever owned a bike had it taken away with no compensation for their loss, how absurd!

The day ended with a fantastic view of the ShweDagon Paya as the sunset over the lake. We had a fantastic day with our guide and a great way to start our trip. He was really intelligent and gave us a great insight into the country and his views. It was so kind of him to spend all day with us and he didn't want any money for his time, we just paid for food and drinks all day.

Day 3 - Yangon

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and got talking to John, a Scottish man who is married to a Burmese lady. He is in his 70's and visits Burma every year for a month or two and was also a soldier stationed here over 40 years ago, so he knows a lot about the country! He also had some support for the government here, telling us that having a 'strong' government means there is more unity amongst the population because they are able to control the different ethnic groups within the country, who would probably cause civil war if there was a 'weaker' government. He also was not happy with the US and UK sanctions on the country because they cause the people to suffer rather than the generals. The rich can obtain anything they need from China, but the poor people have to live without water and electricity because all their generators are old American or British makes, so they can no longer order parts for them. This means he chooses to stay in a hotel while his wife stays with her family, because they have no sanitation or power when the electricity cuts out, which is very often. He was interesting to talk to as he can see a different side having family living in the country.

Down the road from our hotel was the BoTaTuang Pagoda, where we encountered our first gruff military man who made us pay $2 each to get in. I tried to pay in the local currency Kyat (Chat) but he wasn't happy with that suggestion and wasn't pleased when I said I wasn't going to pay the $5 camera fee, as I could just take a picture from the outside. He ordered us into his office to take off our shoes and no matter how polite I was to him I couldn't get a smile out of him!

The pagoda is next to the Yangon river, which is wide and brown like many in Asia. There are a few rickety long boat ferries you can take to get to the villages on the other side.

Wandering back into town we met some children who try to sell postcards and souvenirs on the street. They are taught to speak English and ask lots of questions about where you come from and they love to flatter you by saying how beautiful and handsome you are, but we weren't buying. We talked to them for a while to find out about them and when they realised we weren't going to give them money they just chatted normally to us. They were good children so we promised to go see them again the next day.

The main focus point in Yangon for tourism and also for pilgrimage is the Shwedagon Paya, a gleaming gold pagoda that is visible from all over the city. It's the biggest in the country and is 2500 years old. It's the main temple in Burma that every person is expected to visit at least once in their lifetime. We headed over there for 5pm so we could be there for sunset and lights on. It was a fascinating place, like a Buddha city with not just the main pagoda but many temples and shrines all over the area.

There are many people walking around, praying, talking quietly, and it's very relaxed and peaceful, it doesn't feel busy at all even though it was.

We got a guide to show us around and he started to drop hints that he was against the government, so I asked him a subtle question to make sure. Aung San Suu Kyi made some famous speeches at the Shwedagon twenty years ago, so I asked him where these took place, without mentioning her name. When he realised who I was talking about he became so excited and passionate it was such a change of character from the shy guide who had just been showing us around. He said how much of a hero she is to the people and how they all love and admire her. He told us many stories as we walked whispering to each other trying to pretend he was still guiding us around because if security suspects anyone of 'talking' they can zoom in and listen on conversations. He told us of his brave friend who was sent to prison for writing a letter to his Mother that contained a joke about how peaceful Yangon was after the generals moved to the new capital Naypyidaw. That is all! His friend has since become famous because he can tell all the jokes he likes in Insein (insane!) prison and they make their way onto the streets so people can laugh at the generals expense.

In Buddhism, the day of the week you were born is more important than the actual date and at each pagoda there is a shrine representing each day of the week. People use water to bless the shrine for their day, pouring one cup of water for each year of their life plus one extra for longevity. Aung San Suu Kyi was born on a Tuesday and our guide told us how each Tuesday her followers come to the Shwedagon to pour water on her behalf.

There are often journalists and photographers there trying to spot them and he knows who a few of them are, but he says they are very brave as some have been arrested at the pagoda.He also said how they wear a red coloured jacket that represents her, and one day our guide wore this colour to work without realising and he was told he could not wear it, for fear he would lose his job!

The most important statement he made was that he really wants people to visit Burma, as he believes people need to see with their own eyes what is happening to the country and the conditions the people have to live in, otherwise there will never be change. He was such a wonderful person to meet and I wish I could spend more time talking to him, but our tour had to end otherwise people would get suspicious of us, but the Shwedagon really was beautiful all lit up.

Day 4 - Yangon

The next day we went back to see the children we met and we bought them a watch each as they told us the day before they would like one. They seemed really pleased to be given a present and they told us more about their daily lives and how the hotel doormen are nasty to them, chase them away and take their postcards off them. I'm sure there are two sides to the story but they seemed glad to have some adults who were on their side for once. As it was our last day in Yangon we promised we would go back to see them when we returned to the city to catch our flight.

We then sat at a tea shop with 'Ethel', the lady we met two days before, and got a lot of travel advice from her, with her recommending hotels, guides, taxi drivers and rickshaw drivers we should use at every place we planned to visit. She also told us how she can extend visas for most nationalities as she can pay a bribe to the officials on behalf of the tourist, but she can not do the same for US or British citizens because the government are scared of them and don't want them staying in the country any longer than the 4 weeks given on the visa.

We needed to change some money so we went to a camera shop we had been told about, where we could buy some Kyats on the black market. It was all very hush hush with us slipping our dollars under the counter and the lady handing us the wads of 100,000 kyats back again, until we decided to count it in open. She soon grabbed it back off us and used a money counter hidden down low to show it was the correct money. Luckily, they didn't rip us off and we had the correct amount. One guy we met changed $300 on the street and was ripped off $85 even though he checked the money twice, there are a few clever distraction techniques in use. If you go to a bank to change money the official rate is $1 to 9 kyats. The rate at the airport is $1 to 450 kyats. The rate on the street is $1 to 1050 kyats. The only way to beat the corrupt system is to become corrupt yourself and buy on the black market!

In the afternoon we headed over to the highway bus station to catch our 14 hour bus to Mandalay. We passed Inya Lake where you could get a view of the houses on the southern side, one of which houses Aung San Suu Kyi. It's very surreal to know her story of house arrest and to then see where she is kept prisoner, it really brings home how messed up this country is. The bus was in better condition than we expected, an old chinese coach with air con that worked, just!

Jo & Ryan

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157618486160407/

Isan Province

ryanandjo — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:22:00 GMT

We decided to try Thailands rail system to reach our next destination of Phitsanulok. However, unlike in Indonesia we travelled in circumstances more befitting to our status, 3rd class. We soon realised that this is a perfectly comfortable way to travel in Thailand. The over the seat luggage racks weren't exactly made for our backpacks, but that was more of a problem for one of the locals, after i nearly dropped 18 kilograms on her head!

Our entertainment was provided by a group of young soldiers also in the carriage with us. Seeing 18 year olds drinking alcohol before 10am brings back university memories, and similarly they had no idea about pacing. They started off on large bottles of lager, before moving onto bottles of whiskey. As the 6 hour journey progressed they steadily got more and more lary, loud and boystorous, spilling drink and causing general disruption, smoking both normal cigarettes and those of a more illicit nature.

When we arrived at our intended destination we started to get the impression that we were slightly off the beaten track. It wasn't until later in the evening while at a great night market

that we actually bumped into some fellow travellers, who said they were thankful they weren't the only travellers in town. We had some fantastic stick food

along with a take away drink Thai style.

We decided to head east into the Isan province, which is the least 'travelled' area in Thailand. The next morning (Jo's Birthday) we caught the local bus to the border town of Nong Khai, Happy Birthday Jo, your present...a 10 hour bus journey! We arrived at the local bus station and soon had to stand to attention for the Kings anthem, which was shorter than at the cinema and seemed to end abruptly.

One of the advantages of local travel rather than getting a tourist VIP bus is that you get to see a lot more of the small towns that travellers tend not to visit and get more of a feel for rural life. You also get to meet the locals and to see Thai food vendors at work. Along the route they get on the bus selling all kinds of snacks, including 4 hard boiled eggs on a stick, chicken on a stick, and by chicken I don't mean a piece of chicken I mean a whole flattened roasted chicken, along with the now normal takeaway beverage in a bag.

One disadvantage of local travel is that communication can be a little difficult. At one stop, having checked it was okay with the bus controller, Jo got off the bus for a pit stop. After she was out of view the bus driver starting to reverse out of the bay. Trying to get the attention of the controller and driver on a packed bus to tell them to stop was not easy, but thankfully Jo is still with me!

Nong Khai

After a long days travel, but one of the best road journeys we had done so far, with rolling hill scenery along the Laos border and great local life out of the windows, including more elephants to Jo's surprise, we arrived at our intended destination to celebrate what was was left of Jo's birthday. Nong Khai is mainly visited for the border crossing between Thailand and Laos, with the two countries seperated by the mighty Mekong river and Friendship bridge. We arrived in time to see a fantastic sunset looking over to Laos

and then headed to a floating resturant on the river to celebrate, with Jo enjoying a long awaited Singapore Sling, which had been too expensive for the budget in Singapore!

Along the river there is a promenade and many of the locals excercised here, whether it be thai chi or power walking, I even thought about going for a run (for all of about 2 seconds!!!)

Lots of people coming to Thailand from Laos had said how fantastic Laos was, but we decided not to cross the border here, as a change in our plans were afoot......For much of the trip we have wrestled with the decision of whether to go to Burma or not, in fact the decision of whether to go or not has been harder than the original decision to go travelling. After much soul searching and research in Nong Khai we finally made the decision to go. Without getting into politics and history, we understand that it is not the conclusion that everybody would come too, as there are many reasons not to go. It's an individual choice and going to a country with an oppressive military regime is not one we haven't taken lightly. If you want to discuss it with us futher offline then we would be happy to do so. Thus, this decision lead to us heading back to Bangkok to apply for visas. Rather than heading straight back we would traverse some of the Isan region and take in some of the road less travelled.

Isan Province

We followed the Mekong River around the east coast taking in the spectacular sights of the hills of Laos,

stopping at the towns of Nakhon Phanom and Ubon Ratchanthani, before taking the cheap local bus to Bangkok. This turned into a 16 hour journey rather than the 8 hours the VIP bus would have taken. After driving 5 hours north in the opposite direction the bus thankfully then headed south, but it meant we had seen practically every town in the region. This was our 9th bus journey in 10 days. So I feel we know a bit about local bus travel. Something about bus travel that may only be interesting to me:

1) It's cheap

2) Bus stations and stops are provided, but the bus will stop for anyone anywhere on route that asks to be picked up

2a) To suggest that you want to be picked up stand on the side of the road and the bus driver will beep his/her horn twice, if you signal back the bus will stop if you don't they will continue on their way

3) You can also get off dropped off anywhere on route

4) Local buses take a lot longer than tourist buses

5) There is no such thing as a full local bus, when you think it's full, another 10 people manage to squeeze on!

On our 9 local bus journies we encountered no fellow 'travellers'.

Bangkok

We arrived back in Bangkok late at night, but not late enough to get 2 sleeps for the price of 1! However, this time we headed to Soi Rambuttri which is less busy than Khao San Road. We had to change hotel late one evening as we had our first encounter with bed bugs crawling all across the mattress!

We arrived at the Myanmar (Burma) Embassy to find out that there was a 12 day turn around due to weekends and a 3 day national holiday, celebrated through out most of South East Asia. Rather than heading elsewhere we decided Bangkok would be as a good place as any to join the festivities and have a break from the road. In Thailand the new year festival is known as Songkran, and as well as being a religious festival it is known for its water fights. During Songkran anyone is fair game. You can't move without being drenched. Street Vendors sell water guns to the tourists while the more savvy Thai's fill small buckets with ice cold water. Thankfully the weather was scorching and a little drenching was a nice relief, the first few times!

On one of a ventures further a field we saw the protesting 'red shirts' that we had seen on our previous visit to Bangkok, but this time there were a couple of tanks on the street around the rally. There was no incident, but it was obviously the start of the build up to the riots and protests of the next few days that thankfully we were no where near.

Having spent over 2 weeks in Bangkok and becoming experts in the river ferry system

we finally got our Visas with no issues and have booked our flights to Burma, so that's where we are heading tomorrow. We are not sure how easy it will be to email and blog but hopefully you will hear from us soon.

Hope you're all well

Ryan & Jo

Bangkok & Beyond

ryanandjo — Wed, 1 Apr 2009 09:50:00 GMT

We decided to attempt our second night journey on the trip, heading to Bangkok from Ko Tao via a 2 hour boat ride and an 11 hour bus trip. When we got off the boat in Chumporn there was a table where you checked in for the bus, so as I was waiting for Ryan to get our bags off the boat, I decided to get our bus seats sorted. I went to get the tickets out of my purse, only to discover I didn't have it on me, maybe Ryan had it? Ryan didn't have it so panic quickly set in as we realised we had lost the tickets and money and bank cards. I had to wait ages for the boat to clear so I could get back on to check I hadn't left it there and after searching around our seats with no luck, I put my hand under a few seats near where we sat in a last ditch attempt to find it and THANKFULLY there was my purse lying in the dark. I was so relieved to find it and still have no idea how it got there, but at least we were saved a lot of hassle. We found out the bus wasn't leaving for an hour and it would only stop once at midnight for a toilet break so we would have to eat there and then. Of course there was only one place to buy food so we had to pay the prices but they weren't too unreasonable, they could have really taken advantage of the herd of hungry travellers. The bus journey was fine and pretty comfortable, we got to watch The Dark Knight before lights off for sleep time.

The bus was due to arrive at 5am so we had planned to get some breakfast and then search for somewhere to stay as the sun came up. The bus arrived at 3am, two hours early!!! We didn't know where we were in Bangkok, but after searching around we were only 10 minutes walk from Khao San Road, the favourite haunt for backpackers. At this time of night there was hardly anywhere open and plenty of drunk people amazed we were walking around with backpacks on. We found a hotel that seemed a bit seedy, especially after a prostitute tried to get Ryan to take her/him up to the room, but turned out to be good enough and we stayed there 4 nights. One benefit of arriving early morning is you can check in, sleep, get up, sleep again but only pay for one night rather than two, bargain.

The Khao San Road is packed with shops, bars, fast food joints, food stalls, neon signs and lots and lots of fake goods. It's busy, noisy but not too hard to deal with, although the best part is walking down the alleyways behind the road and escaping to the neighbouring streets that offer the same same but less in your face

A lot of people would have heard about and possibly used the legendary Beer Scooter to escort you home safely after a night on the tiles. Well, we found it on the Khao San road of all places!

So Wat did we get up to in Bangkok? We visited the Wats of course (Wat meaning temple), actually we only did one, Wat Pho, famous for it's giant reclining Buddha. We got up early to beat the heat and the crowd and be first in to see it, we were third in, but it was impressive.

At another shrine inside Wat Pho we were allowed to sit at the back while the monks were praying. We even remembered to sit on our feet and not point them at Buddha so not to offend anyone. The young trainee monks couldn’t help but give us inquisitive looks and smiles.

Next we went to the Grand Palace just after it’s opening time, hoping to beat the crowds again. It was packed though as about 10 tour coaches were lined up out side and many tourists inside. It is very grand, but by this time the sweltering heat of the day was beginning to rise so we saw the sights as quickly as possible.

On our way back we passed the Sanam Luang open air ground where there was a large congregation of people, I would estimate about 100,000, but I really have no idea what that number of people looks like. They were attending a political rally and march for the UDD party (United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship), otherwise known as the Red shirts. They were demonstrating against the current government, wanting them to resign as they were not democratically elected after a soft coup three years ago. They also wanted the protesters who held a sit in at Bangkok airport last year to be prosecuted, the Yellow shirts. It was very lively and noisy, lots of singing and honking horns but peaceful too.

Another day we treated ourselves to a trip to the cinema, but as it was only two pounds for a ticket, not such an expensive treat. Before the film started (Watchmen - thumbs down from me) we all had to stand to attention for a short film about the current King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX). I had read about this before but it was very surreal when it happened. The Thais love the King and his picture can be found in every home, bus, restaurant, plastered on billboards lining major roads, he's just every where. People wear t-shirts and bracelets with Long Live the King written on them. He is the longest reigning current monarch worldwide now in his 63rd year of reign. It's even illegal to stand on money here as his head adorns every note and coin.

Most of the time we got around Bangkok using tuk tuks. I love going for rides in these, it feels a bit like riding on a ghost train car as it jolts and throws you around when turning corners. We had heard all the scams that tuk tuk drivers try on unsuspecting tourists, usually offering to take you to a temple stopping at gem stores, tailors etc along the way with people giving you the hard sell, or telling you the temple you want to visit is closed so they can drive you around for longer to get more money. We were having none of this and always asked to go direct with no stops even though they did insist we stop at least once, we just walked away or said we wouldn't pay if they stopped. We were willing to pay a good price for no stops and one driver offered to take us around for free if we just stopped once! What's wrong with earning some honest money rather than trying to scam us. One driver sitting on the roadside asked where we were going, when I said the name of the shopping centre about 20m further down the road, he tried to tell me it was closed!!! It was a weekday lunchtime and we could see people walking in and out of it, that really made us laugh, how stupid do they think we are!

As far as spicy thai food goes, normally when eating in a restaurant you will be asked if you like it spicy, but we have never had a really spicy meal, it tends to be dumbed down for Farangs (foreigners). However, when eating from a food stall where the locals eat and asked if you like spicy food, you can me sure it will be spicy spicy much much. I had a green curry and some Laab from one stall in Bangkok and it was the hottest meal I have ever eaten, delicious, but seriously spicy.

Kanchanaburi

was our next stop and we caught a local bus from Bangkok that took 3 hours. We found a charming riverside stay here, the cheapest yet at 150 baht, about 3 pounds per night! Thinking what a bargain, we then we found out termites are more common than we thought when we heard the familiar munching sound they make, it’s so gross. We also had to put up with very thin walls and a neighbour that played Kenny Rogers at 1.30am, hmmm, so cheap though!

The river we were staying alongside was the famous River Kwai and yes there is a bridge over it too, which carries part of the Burma-Thailand Railway. There is an excellent museum in town dedicated to the construction of the railway, which was initiated by the Japanese and built by POWs. Many people died during the 18 months it took to lay the track, mainly because of the poor conditions they lived in, malnutirition and diseases they contracted, along with the strenuous work they were forced to undertake.

Part of the railway runs through Hellfire Pass, a section of the track that was blasted through the cliff side and so called as the eerie glow of fire as they dug at night made the POWs feel they were in hell. We descended to the track but there was no one around so it made the visit more poignant and the track and pass through the rock felt very ghostly. Over 20,000 POWs died making the entire railway with the biggest portion dying at hellfire pass.

The railway is also known as the Death Railway as another 80,000 contracted workers also died. Part of the track runs precariously alongside cliffs with a steep fall into the river below.

We caught a train along the track and then over the River Kwai via the famous bridge. It doesn't look like the one used in the film of the same name, and it was never damaged as badly and did not cause the disruption intended. Some of the bridge posts still show damage from the bomb blast.

Ayuthaya

Next day we had an early start to catch a bus to Ayuthaya, and we discovered the best form of transport we have used so far on the trip. We were looking for a tuk tuk to take us to the bus station when a motorbike with a metal side car stopped and offered us a lift. This was great fun, if not a little worrying that I would fall straight off the front if he braked hard, but it had us laughing all the way there.

The driver then took our photo, making Ryan pose on the bike!

It took a couple of local buses to get us to Ayuthaya, the former Thai capital before Bangkok. The attraction here is the UNESCO world heritage site of historical temples that were left to ruin after the Burmese destroyed them in the 18th century. But, a huge thunderstorm hit just as we arrived RUINing our plan to hire bikes to see all the sights, so we had to grab a tuk tuk early the next morning to drive as around the major ruins, but what we saw was pretty spectacular and made me feel like Indiana Jones!

Lopburi

Our next quick pit stop, on what is turning into a whistle stop tour of central Thailand, was a two hour local bus ride away. A town that doesn't have many reasons to visit unless you like monkeys like I do! There is a merry band of monkeys that live around a ruined temple in the town centre and run riot around the surrounding buildings, particularly on one hotel that has metal window bars the monkeys use as a climbing frame. So that's where we stayed. I think Ryan was over the monkeys after 5 minutes, but they kept me entertained all day. I sat in the room watching the monkeys run past, it was like an inside out zoo, me inside the cage watching the animals on the outside. I then decided it would be a good idea to try to feed them. There was a big sign on the window in red lettering, which could have said Do Not Feed the Monkeys, but it was only in Thai not English, so I opened the window and threw out some fried banana. What happened was chaotic, about 30 monkeys all bombarded our window trying to get the food and some of the smaller ones could climb threw the metal bars and were clambering at the window trying to get in!!! Oh heck, that quickly got Ryan's attention who slammed the windows shut! Luckily, the monkeys weren't clever enough to open the window, but it was a very close call.

Well that almost brings us up-to-date. We are a few towns further down the road/track but we'll leave that until next time.

Jo & Ryan

Photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157615033865715/

Island Hopping

ryanandjo — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:00:00 GMT

Many people have commented on how much they enjoyed the last blog and photos, so in attempt to give the people what they want here goes.....Island Hopping, Part 2!....(like all sequels it can never be as good as the original!)

From Ko Phi Phi we took the relatively short boat journey to perhaps the most well known island in the region, Phuket (poo -get). Rather than heading straight to the beaches, we decided to start in Phuket Town to experience something a little bit different. In looking for accommodation, I visited the On On Guesthouse which was used as the Bangkok guesthouse in 'The Beach', but was under strict instructions not to take a room unless it was room 38, where they filmed Leo!

The visit to On On wasn't a complete loss, as just down the road was perhaps the best book shop in the world!!! Ok my favourite book shop in the world, a second hand book store called 'Second Wind', where books cost $1 and we were able to pick up some 'classics'. I was like a kid in a candy store and after the sugar high wore off, my backpack weighed an extra 5 kilograms! An intended short stay ended up being a little longer than we planned after Jo fell ill for a few days, luckily nothing serious and it didn't help that the accommodation we were staying in from the corridors looked more like a prison than a hospital. After this short intermission we were soon able to move back to the beach.

I’m not sure what we expected, but Phuket wasn’t at all what i imagined. After being spoilt with the islands that we have visited so far, i wasn’t prepared for the westernisation that we experienced. Fast food chains (you know the ones i mean), restaurants, bars, shops all aimed specifically at the western tourist. You could have supplanted the island anywhere in the world and not known where you were, in short it didn’t feel like the Thailand we have grown to know and love. That said I can see why people come to Phuket, with its long beaches, fancy resorts, cheap food and alcohol, it's ideal for a 2 week holiday with a little bit of home feel, but seriously speedos/budgie smugglers are henceforth banned!!!! (It would be hypocritical of me not to mention that I did actually turn package tourist for a night, going to a bar, drinking beer and watching Liverpool give Man Utd a good hiding!)

Phuket was also the seen of our first 'Wai', a Thai gesture of placing palms together in a prayer like manner and nodding of the head, used as a greeting rather than shaking hands, which Jo carried out with skill.

Moving away from the Andaman coast we set off for the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. We decided to side step Ko Samui, as it sounded too much like a mini Phuket and headed straight to Ko Phangan (Fang Yan or something like that). Most of the journeys we had taken so far in Thailand have been, short, by boat or both. But to reach Ko Phangan would require 11 hours, by mini bus, bus and ferry. The mini bus journey was 6 hours and only entailed a few ‘close you eyes moments’ of overtaking on blind corners which seems to be the norm in South East Asia. Next was a 2 hour wait around at a 'tourist' office for no particular reason than to add some excitement to the day by making sure that the 90 minute bus journey arrived just as the ferry was departing, requiring us all to run so as to not be left stranded. The ferry journey could have been more pleasant if the lightening, thunder and torrential rain didn't follow us all the way across the sea.

Ko Phangan is famous for it's half and full moon parties, and many travellers head there for this reason alone. Having not packed our luminous whistles and glow sticks, we headed for the furthest beach away from the 'raves' . The ferry arrived late in the evening and by the time we arrived at our chosen destination it was too dark to see any of the surrounding area, so we checked in for 1 night and and waited until the next morning to see what Haad Mae Haad (Haad meaning Bay) had in store for us. Stepping out of our beach hut, we noticed that we were a stones throw away from the 'typical' squeaky clean sand and jade coloured waters, but also a sand bar to the small island of Ko Ma.

The beach also had some of the best snorkelling from the beach we have experienced thus far on the trip. Initially in trying to return to shore we almost got stranded on some of the many sea cucumbers at low tide, but luckily we found that half way down the beach there was a sand opening all the way out to the far edge of the coral making getting too and from the snorkel points more enjoyable.

One of the problems with remote locations is that they are often without ATMs or money changing facilities and taxi services are also expensive. So short of funds we decided to take the plunge and hire our first moped of the trip. After struggling with the brakes on my practice spin, i finally mastered the 'art' well enough to take on a reluctant passenger. We made our way to the next town at speeds never seen before on the islands of Ko Phangan, i think at one point a walking lady overtook us, but that didn't stop Jo from jittering for the whole 10 minute journey. Having managed to arrive safely at our intended destination and acquired some much needed funds, and stopped at the gas 'station' to fill the moped up with gasoline.

After a quick look around Chaloklam we headed to a couple of other nearby destinations, before heading to the safety of the beach. Now that we could afford the onward journey, we booked our tickets to leave the next day. Jo deciding that she had had enough of bikes for the day, decided to stay and watch the sunset as i set off on a ride to try to use some of the tank we had filled up earlier in the day.

I managed to cover much of the island and ate far more bugs than i anticipated, at one point almost losing a eye to a dragon fly. I also managed to find a stretch of road with no pot holes and was able to over take some of the locals as i tested how fast a moped can go (3 figures apparently ;-))

We were sad to be leaving Ko Phangan as we had enjoyed our stay, when we checked in the owners had not told as that our hut came with a guard dog, that would sit on our porch and sleep outside the door of an evening to protect us from, well nothing really but it was nice to have a visitor.

We were not so sad to be leaving our other visitors behind, as nice as our hut was we had noticed a 'munching' sound during the day and in the evening. After finding the culprits and looking online, we found that our hut had termites, luckily of no danger to us as long as the hut didn't collapse around us, it was nice to be leaving them behind.

Our next destination was Ko Tao, or Turtle Island, and no destination so far on our journey has produced such contrasting opinions. One of us happy to spend us much time as possible on the island while the other couldn’t wait to leave. The main reason most people head to Ko Tao is due to it’s diving, it’s the second most popular place for PADI certification and perhaps the cheapest in the world. However, after our first day of diving Jo discovered that she didn’t like being underwater and went back to snorkelling during the second day after giving diving one more try. Having locked ourselves into the whole dive package, including free accommodation, we weren't in the best location for Jo to be able to explore the rest of the island. I on the other hand would have happily carried on gaining diving certifications until the money ran out! During my 4 dives I came across the dangerous, titan trigger fish, moray eels and a banded sea snake more posinious than any on land! And the not so dangerous, Nemo, blue spotted stingrays, juvenille harlequinn sweet lips, puffer and porcupine fish, but unfortunately no turtles!

However, the whole experience in Ko Tao was not a complete turkey for both of us, from our PADI we met 2 really nice fellow travellers from Switzerland and Australia, whom we spent most of our time with on the island and were sad to leave, hopefully we will see them again on our travels.

Much like in Ko Phangan we also had insects to contend with, ranging from some of the biggest gecko’s we have seen to the standard cockroach, to a huge beetle that was so big and made so much noise that it awoke us both up in the night. Unfortunately, we have no documentation of this ‘freak ‘of nature as after managing to trap it under a glass, it managed to move around the room despite it’s new home and we were keen to get it out of the room as soon as possible. Wanting to find somewhere we both enjoyed we decided to move on to our next destination of Krungthep Mahanakhon Amonratanakosin Mahintara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Popnopparat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amonpiman Avatansathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukamprasit, thankfully known as Bangkok to you and I!!

Ryan and Jo

Pictures at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/sets/72157615978250322/

Welcome to Thailand

ryanandjo — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:26:00 GMT

Ko Lipe (Leepee) is a 1 hour speed boat ride from Langkawi and one of the most southern Thailand islands on the Andaman sea. Ko Lipe (Ko meaning Island) must have one of the best immigration halls we have ever seen. It consists of the passengers sitting on the beach while the Captain delivers the passports he has carried across the border in a water tight bag to the immigration officers, who sit in a bamboo hut on the beach stamping away, very laid back compared to most immigrations we have passed through!

Next we had to search for a place to stay and we usually take it in turns so one person sits and waits with the backpacks while the other investigates all the accommodation and makes a decision. This is much easier than both of us looking with our backpacks on as we usually just settle for the first place we get to just to get the bags off our backs. Searching for a place in the midday heat, traipsing past people lying on the beach isn’t much fun, and after seeing bamboo hut after bamboo hut I was about to stop looking and choose one but thought I would check out the last place on the beach, a set of stilted huts on the cliff side, a bit of a climb up to them nestled in the trees but soon realised it had a fantastic location over looking the whole of Pattaya beach and out to sea. Perfect, well a few big gaps in the floorboard that might let a few nasty creatures in, but I think we will have to get used to that living on islands.

I think this place wins the prize for best bedding we have slept on so far!

On our first day we set off to find Sunset beach on the other side of the island, which was meant to be a 30min trek through the jungle. It was not as dense as it sounded but we couldn’t find the correct path and kept hitting dead ends, until we spied two people who looked like they knew where they were going, so we followed them. We soon lost them too but found a barely trodden track and followed it down to a small beach in a cove, in desperate need for a swim. This would have to do, so we spent four hours there and didn’t see another person in the whole time, we had found a secluded beach everyone dreams of, with just a few fish and longboats sailing past and the odd sea eagle hovering overhead. Well ok, we did find the other two people we lost earlier over some rocks in the next cove along, but after discovering they were naturists, we let them hang out on their own!

All the beaches on Lipe have snorkelling right from the shore so that's how we spent our time, and we returned to our little beach and again had it to ourselves all day, although a wobble of tiny jellyfish (what is the collective for jellyfish anyone?) decided to join us so the swims became more exciting trying to avoid the electric shocks every minute or so!

On our last day we decided to be slightly more adventurous than usual and hired a sea kayak with the aim of circumnavigating the island. Now the island is not very big, we guess about 5km around it, but we didn't account for the strong currents that seemed to hit us all the way, never giving us a break. For every stroke on the right we had to do about 6 on the left to counteract it and keep us straight and from heading out to sea and at some points no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get the kayak to turn so Ryan had to do most of the work, I did try though, honestly! Kayaking is another good way to find secluded beaches as we found a few new ones to try out, although the last one we had to share with a motley crew of hermit crabs that made the beach look alive when they all moved at the same time.

Ko Lipe is part of the Tarutou National Park of about 40 islands, the only one with development and consistent tourism. The Lonely Planet says not to come to Lipe because it will create more tourism and new developments that may risk development on the other islands. However, when the government made these islands a national park, they moved all the community of Chao Leh (Sea Gypsies) to Lipe and stopped them from fishing, so they allowed them to develop Lipe to make a living. Therefore, if you don’t come here, who will support the community? Catch 22 we think. But just to keep this place as beautiful as it is, please don’t come to Lipe. it’s our little slice of paradise, for 5 days anyway! Next stop...

Trang

Our original plan was to spend 3-4 weeks islands hopping and not touch the mainland, but after one island we headed to Trang, a small town on the southern coast, a 3 hour ferry ride from Lipe. We headed here for a few reasons; one, because being on an island felt we weren't really in a new country and wanted go to the mainland to see more of Thailand. Two, we were running out of money and essentials so needed to get to a bank and supermarket and not pay the high prices of Lipe plus there wasn't an ATM there. Three, a bit of sea kayak sunburn and a nasty heat rash for me meant we needed a few days off the beach! There isn't much to say about Trang as there is no tourism here, just a few hotels and markets, but I think that's why we liked it so much. It's a cool town to wander around and see the every day life of Thais without the sightseeing tours driving past, just lots of colourful tuk-tuks instead.

Plus, everything was at least half the cost of staying on Lipe so we had more of an idea of how much we should be paying. We ventured to the night market to sample the local food and managed to purchase from a few stalls with a lot of sign language and only two words of Thai. Sitting down eating our food on the steps of a university thinking I was at last becoming a seasoned traveller, I suddenly went "what the heck, it's an elephant, it's a bloody elephant walking down the street" Ok, I may have used the F word a few times to describe what I saw but I just couldn't believe I was seeing an elephant just walk down the street. It doesn't matter how used to things you think you are, there is always something just around the corner that will shock you. I have only ever seen elephants in zoos before, which is why I was slightly taken aback!

Krabi

Next we headed up the coast to Krabi, about 2 hours by bus from Trang. It was cheaper for us to bus it to the next town and start island hopping from there rather than get straight back on the boat again, plus you see so much more of local life from the windows of a bus then from a boat. Krabi is meant to be a mecca for rock climbers with grand limestone karsts along the coast and river. We did a day trip by long boat to Railey, a climbing hot spot and mainland peninsular, where the karsts looked impressive to climb. However, having spent nearly an hour on choppy seas, with the longboat driver stopping to ask if he could have a cigarette break, whilst the waves pounded us, didn't put me in the best of moods, especially after realising the only way to access Railey is by boat! So we decided to give climbing a miss this time.

Luckily the second longboat ride was much smoother. Again, there wasn't much to do in Krabi apart from eat with the locals at the a great night market with main meals being very cheap, about 50p.

Ko Lanta

Our second island on the itinerary was Ko Lanta, a large island just off the Krabi coast, about a 2 hour mini bus and two quick ferry rides away. I saw my second elephant here but it didn't shock me at all, so over them now. The island was a bit of a disappointment though as the beaches were not as nice as we thought, even though we stayed on the 'best beach' on the island. We had to book our hotel in advance as there are no buses to get around so we needed someone to pick us up from the ferry. It turned out we had chosen quite a 'swanky' place so we hung out here for two days, literally hanging in the hammock, and then moved on to...

Ko Phi Phi

Wow, what can I say. Ko Phi Phi (Pee Pee) is beautiful. We knew in advance this island was going to be very 'touristy' (who are we to complain, we are tourists after all) and can get busy in the high season, but we were so surprised at how lovely it was as our ferry sailed into the bay. There are a lots of people, resorts, hotels, bars and restaurants, but it's mainly all centred in the main village just off the pier, it doesn't cover the whole area. There is something for everyone here from backpackers to the rich list, all night beach parties to quiet hill top retreats, fancy diners to cheap local markets, lazing on busy beaches to secluded quiet coves, trekking, snorkelling, diving and much more. The main village is a maze of alleyways that are fun to get lost in.

Phi Phi is made up of two islands, Phi Phi Don is the larger inhabited island, and Phi Phi Ley is uninhabited and is most famous as the setting for The Beach with Leonardo DiCaprio (how excited was I to come here, but don't tell anyone, it's not cool to admit it). Of course we had to take a day trip to see the famous Maya Bay, where the film was set. It doesn't matter though if you recognise the location or not, or if you've not heard of the film, it's still worth seeing, it's absolutely stunning.

Just to fuel my aversion to longboats, the trip to Maya Bay was part of a full day snorkelling trip in a rickety old longboat. Trying to get out of one in the sea while wearing flippers is not the easiest thing to do and the bruises on my arm prove that. The snorkelling was great and we encountered lots of beautiful fish including a school of biting fish, that decided to nip me at quite an alarming rate, enough to draw blood on a couple of occasions, I thought I was being attacked but a shark but when I saw the size of them I felt a bit daft. I wasn't the only one to come away with injuries though as Ryan was unfortunate enough to tread on a spikey sea urchin and still has some blue splinters in his foot to mark the occasion.

Our stay was on the cusp between the dry and rainy season here, so we had a spectacular thunderstorm one night that flooded most of the lanes, and when it rains in Phi Phi it really Pee Pees it down (Sorry Ryan made me write that!). Whilst eating out one night, we discovered the origin to the saying 'Cool Cats'. Don't worry they weren't waiting to be cooked, just keeping out of the heat.

I feel I should mention the Tsunami here. Even though there were many people and areas affected by the disaster all over Asia, Phi Phi was nearly obliterated on that day. The low lying village sits on a spit of land between two bays. When the Tsunami hit it drew back water from both bays and hit the village from both directions. Over 2000 people were killed just from this one location. Today, most of the island and businesses have been restored, but there are still a few reminders around, including ruined buildings and piles of debris. But the locals are still smiling and moving on with life, as they can only do and they helped to make our time on Phi Phi really special, we had a fantastic time here.

Travel observations:

Food - on our trip we have met lots of people who have said we will love the food in Thailand when we get there, but we didn’t want our expectations get too high in case it was nothing different to other countries. Well, everyone we met was right, the food is so delicious. Every meal so far has been better than we could hope for and there is loads of variety from different coloured curries, stir fried dishes to sticky rice, my mouth is watering just writing about it. However, the best 'dish' we discovered on Phi Phi is Snow Ice, lots of sugar, E numbers and condensed milk, just what you need on a hot day.

Bathrooms - I never enter a bathroom now without pausing at the doorway for about 10 seconds to inspect every corner for creepy crawlies so to avoid unsuspected attacks whilst in the shower.

Sea Kayaking - please remember to apply sunscreen to your face before setting off and not remembering to do so over an hour later!

Weather - we’ve stopped checking to see what the temperature is, it’s either hot, or hot, or a bit hotter.

We’ve just arrived in Phuket, where we plan to, erm, head to the beach, what a surprise. I think I need it after writing this epic. I think I can safely say that so far, I LOVE THAILAND!!!

Until next time,

Jo & Ryan

Sorry, most of the pictures are just of beaches, longboats, sun and sea.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157615033865715/

West Coast Malaysia

ryanandjo — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 13:16:00 GMT

Cameron Highlands

We headed to the Cameron Highlands for a change of scenery, as the name suggests they reside about 1500m above sea level where the climate is far cooler. However, there are some disadvantages to escaping the heat and humidity, one is that to get up to those heights involves many twisting windy roads, and although the transportation thus far has been excellent the bus tyres could not cope with the rigorous strains of scaling these heights and not far from our intended destination of Tanah Rata the bus blew a tyre. Thankfully there was mechanics garage in the next town and we all hopped of the bus for a quick change of tyre, that was impressive to watch.

Another issue that arises from being so far above sea level is that nothing ever dries properly and remains damp (no where has heating) When looking for accommodation we noticed the smell of mould that we had experienced previously in Mt. Bromo, and thought nothing of it as eventually you get used to it and the smell subsides. So we checked in to a hostel and settled down for the evening. This time however with no natural ventilation the smell didn't disappate, in fact it seemed to get worse. On top of this the bed mattress was the most uncomfortable mattress either of us has ever slept on, every spring seemed to be broken and dug into the body, making sleep almost impossible to the point where we considered sleeping on the hard, cold floor. If that wasn’t enough our room was next to the shared toilets and showers and the sounds emanating from that direction aren't those that one really wants to hear!

Our second attempt at accommodation was much better. There were some pets there to keep us entertained, including the world's stupidest dog that waited until you were in the guesthouse before barking to notify the owners of your presence, although thinking about it, being a guard dog for a guesthouse must be a little confusing. Also, the world's loudest cat, every morning you could be woken by the cat as if it were a cockerel signaling daybreak, when we saw the cat however it was a small ginger tabby kitten, it was amazing that the noise could come from something so small.

We booked ourselves on a tour to see some of the local attractions, our tour guide as you would expect was very knowledgeable about the flora, fauna and area we saw. He was also a closet photographer. He would direct us to which shots we should take and demand that he take pictures of us in the shots he had suggested. Many of which can be seen in the photos.

Our first stop was at peak of Gunung Brinchang, giving us a vista of the whole area from 2035m. From these dizzying heights you could tell why the Cameron Highlands are famed for tea, so naturally part of the tour was a visit to a Tea Plantation.

After being told the process of the production of tea from plantation to tea cup we were given a sample of some of the local brew, it was very nice but the only purchase we came away with was some sachets of blackcurrant Ice Tea.

As part of the tour we got to visit a native tribe, a tribesman took us ‘into the wild’ and showed us how he hunted and climbed trees etc, he even let us have a go with his blow darts,

However, it all felt a little contrived and again he had all the set poses for the pictures he thought we should take. That said it was a pleasant experience, at least until we got to their accommodation. The house itself was nicely crafted from bamboo from the local jungles, however they decided they wanted to put on a dancing show for us. This in itself should not be a problem, however they wanted someone to help make the music for them to dance too. They decided to pick the most uncoordinated, rhythmically challenged person on the tour to help them! I managed to keep rhythm pretty well after initially thinking it was an impromptu session, settling into a nice rhythm i was glad that at least i wasn’t having to show off my dancing prowess!

This was all about to change, before i knew it i was on the dance floor strutting my stuff (read, reenacting the Genesis i can’t dance video ), i hadn’t even realised that a another tour party had arrived and everyone was watching.

The next day we set off on our own jungle trek, having had a taster on our tour and having not been put off by the leeches, we decided that we would try and navigate our way around some of the local trails. What started off as 1-2 hour trek, turned into a 6 hour jungle adventure due to the amount of fun we were having, including Jo landing shin deep in quick mud! Many of the paths were closed and we made up our own route as we went along finally reaching our chosen destination at the top of Gunung Berenbum for a spot of packed lunch before making the trip back towards home.

We worked out a route back to a guesthouse that was famed for its quintessentially English tea and scones. Jo had been looking forward to them since we arrived and after our adventure we were looking forward to a treat, however when we arrived we were shocked to find that a little, tea, flour, butter and jam cost 4 times the amount of a average main meal. We decided to head back into town where we found a cheaper alternative.

Penang

Upon trying to book a bus out of the Cameron Highlands we found that all the bus companies were booked up and only hostel provided minibuses still had seats available, but they would be at the almost work like time of 7am! ;-) The mini bus would also not go to our exact destination either, but we would be dropped off and have to catch a ferry the rest of the way. The journey went without a hitch, the minibus was comfortable enough for the 4 hour trip and we managed to negotiate the ferry crossing to Penang with ease.

The walk from the ferry to our accommodation took 20 minutes and gave us a taste of what we were in for, heat, heat, mixed in with a serious amount of humidity! We chose a room with A/C to dry off and also found that it came with free wifi, so we were able to set up webcam sessions to wish our respective parents happy birthday.

Like in Melaka many different countries have settled and remained in Penang and their influence is visible in the cities architecture, we spent some time walking around the streets taking it all in, where did i mention it was hot! Penang is also a little thread bare on footpaths, but much like Indonesia everything seems to run smoothly without them. While taking in the local sights we came across some locals playing draughts/checkers on the streets where the normally wooden pieces are replaced with different beer bottle tops. Although i’m sure they weren’t all drank in one sitting, but there’s a challenge!

The assortment of cultures has had a real impact on the cuisine in Penang which has made it the culinary capital of Malaysia, which would make you think we spent our time sampling the local delights, but in fact our diet consisted of peanut butter sarnies for breakfast and cheese sarnies for lunch and pretty much curry for dinner every night! Also in Penang we were able to apply for 60 day visas for Thailand and once the visas were successfully obtained we headed for some ‘downtime’ in............

Langkawi

There’s not much to really say about Langkawi. Blue skies, golden beaches, unbroken sunshine, 35 degrees everyday, duty free alcohol! Living right on the beach is so demanding!

However, after 5 days on Langkawi we’ve decided on a change of scenery. Not because we’ve become tired of it, but we’re off to Ko Lipe in Thailand for more of the same, although a little more secluded if that’s possible!

Ryan & Jo

Malaysia Highlights

Place - Cameron Highlands (Jo) , Melaka (Ryan)

Attraction - Petronas Towers (Jo) Thaipusam (Ryan)

Food - Capitol Satay (Jo) , BabaNonya Laksa Melaka (Ryan)

Beer - Tiger (Both)

LowLights

First Hostel Room, Cameron Highlands (Both)

Finding Petronas Towers were closed on Mondays (Jo)

For those of you thinking of possibly traveling to the region: Averages in USD

Accommodation - $10-15

Main meal - 80c - $1.50

620ml Beer - $3 (Langkawi - $1.50)

330ml Soft Drink - 40c

Bottle of water - 50c

Photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157613742320550/

Melaka & Koala Jumper

ryanandjo — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 07:20:00 GMT

Melaka has been occupied by many countries over its time, the Portuguese in the 16th century, the Dutch in the 17th century and the British from the 18th century, with Melaka and Malaysia only gaining Independence in 1957, so the architecture of the town has many European influences. The town hall and clock tower are some of the oldest Dutch buildings in the East and part of the old Portuguese fort and ruin chapel still rests on the bukit (hill) looking over the Straits of Melaka.

However, there is only really one way to describe Melaka and that is as a city of M’s. M can stand for many things here, but the three main ones are museums, meals and malls.

Anyone interested in Museums just has to visit Melaka. There seem to be about 100 museums here, although that might be a slight exaggeration, I will name a few of them for you so you get my point. We have the Melaka Stamp Museum, Kite Museum, Education Museum, Malaysian Youth Museum, Independence Museum, Islamic Museum, Peoples Museum, History Museum, Literature Museum, Maritime Museum, Cultural Museum, Government & Democracy Museum, Architecture Museum, Spinning Top Museum and the Enduring Beauty Museum. We impressively managed to visit 7 in the 3 days we were there and then we were museumed out.

M stands for meals because of the variety of food on offer here, including Malaysian, Chinese, Indian and also Portuguese, Dutch and Nonya (a mix between Chinese and Malaysian). One night we went out with Stephen, the guy who runs the hostel we were staying in, plus some of the other guests, to a South Indian restaurant and had a banana leaf banquet, which tasted very good indeed!

Another night we visited the restaurant Capitol Satay, where the stainless steel tables have vats of bubbling satay sauce in the centre, then you purchase skewers of uncooked food, like chicken, sausage, liver, fish, tofu, vegetables and many which I didn't have a clue what they were, and then cooked them yourself in the vat. Such a good idea and lipsmackingly delicious!

The other M stands for Malls. There are just loads of them towering around the centre of town, creating an underground maze of shops and stalls, with the most impressive being the ‘Mega Mall of Melaka’. It’s easy to get lost in them, although this isn’t a chore as the air con helps cool off from the heat and I have never been one to complain about window shopping, although I managed not to spend any money this time. Well, we spent a few ringetts on some cheap dvds (read as $1 pirate copies) as there was a dvd player in the hostel we could use, so took the opportunity to catch up on a few cinema releases we have missed. After 3 days it was time to move on to KL, where I had been informed the largest mall in Malaysia lives!

Kuala Lumpur

or Koala Jumper as I have affectionately renamed it, is a 2 hour bus ride from Melaka. The transport system so far in Malaysia has been wonderful, with full air con buses with reclining seats, leg and foot rests and motorways where drivers stick to the lanes provided and don't try to make 4 lanes out of 2 and no pot holes either, bliss!

When we arrived in KL or KJ we set about looking for a hostel recommended to us, and eventually found it 2 hours later via walking about 3km, catching the train and the monorail too. Then we realised if we had walked 600m in the other direction from where we started we would have found it a lot quicker, but at least we already had a mini tour of the city. The room we got at the hostel was about the size of a shoe box with no window, and a shared air con unit that sat resting in a hole in the wall between the two rooms, so you had to hope the neighbours liked the same temperature as you, but it was cheap so we were happy. When we checked in the guy on the desk warned us that as it was a Friday night there would be noise from the bar downstairs, but we said no problem we could use ear plugs if it got too noisy. Blimey, waving a piece of cotton wool in front of a sub woofer speaker would have been as effective as using ear plugs, the music just got louder and louder until 3am with the beds and walls shaking from the bass...we checked out the next day. We could have joined them, but we were wearing our cardigans that night.

Someone had told us we must visit the Batu Caves just north of the city, a set of caves containing Hindu shrines and the worlds highest Murga statue.

It turned out we would be there for the Hindu Thaipusam festival, where pilgrims march every year carrying 'Kavadi' on their heads and shoulders, performed as acts of penance and to repent sins. The Kavadi range from small milk pots to large brightly decorated ornate frames that are very heavy. So we went on the Sunday, the last and most important day of the festival. The only word that can describe this experience is CRAZY!!!!!!!!!! There were over 1.2 million people there that day. The men carrying the heavy 'Kavadi' attach the frames to their body using the mortification of flesh method of attaching hooks to the skin, so when the frame moved it would pull the skin and create pain, to remind them why they are on the pilgrimage. Some also put spears through their mouths and cheeks so they can't talk and have to endure the pain in silence.

Each Kavadi carrier needs a team of about six helpers to make sure they don't fall and someone carrys a seat behind so they can rest when needed. This is such a test of endurance for them.

One guy turned himself into a living Kavadi by hanging from hooks through his arms, back and legs. It was fascinating but gruesome at the same time.

We headed over to climb the 272 steps up to the caves, thinking it would be much easier for us to do than for the guys carrying the frames. We got around 50m from the entrance then we had to move slowly along with the building crowd. This was at midday and the heat had risen to about 33 degrees. It took us an hour to move about 20m and the crowd was getting frustrated and people where pushing in from all directions, it was crazy, hot, and like nothing we had experienced before. We couldn't move in any direction and everyone was getting crushed. It got too much for us and we fought our way out to the space at the back and never made it up the stairs, we certainly didn't have the endurance for it. It turned out that none of the travelers we met on the bus back had made it either, you really had to be dedicated to make it up there!

We spent our time in KL wandering around Chinatown, the Merdeka (Independence) Square, and the parks and gardens. A few times just wandering we came across impromptu Chinese Dragon street performances. The performers drive around in a pick-up truck and block a street off and start performing. One performance had a two man dragon climing up posts with small foot plates on top and jumping from one to another, great acrobatics and cool to watch.

We saved the biggest KL attraction to last visiting the Petronas Towers on our last morning. Tickets are on a first come first served basis, so we got up early to join the queue for a visit to the skybridge. We did this on a Monday. The Petronas Towers are closed on a Monday. Aaarrrggghhh! Oh well, we were suitably impressed by the view from the ground, they are an awesome structure and beat any skyscraper I have ever seen.

We went back at night, sat out a two hour thunderstorm (in the pub) to see the towers all lit up, and they certainly have the wow factor.

We are now in the Cameron Highlands, 4 hours north of KL, planning on doing some jungle trekking and tea tasting, the tea plantations on the way up looked beautiful, but we'll save that for next time...

Jo & Ryan

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157613742320550/

P.S. Happy Birthday to Jo's Dad on the 14th and Ryan's Mum on the 16th!

Singapore

ryanandjo — Mon, 2 Feb 2009 03:37:00 GMT

We arrived in Singapore and realised that neither of us had noted down the address of the hostel we had pre booked, so that one of us could pick up a replacement bank card. Thankfully Changi airport came to our rescue with it’s free internet terminals, I’ve always liked Singapore airport! After writing down the relevant details we caught the MRT, a fantastic, inexpensive, clean, efficient, well designed transport system. Although i understand the reasonings, i could have done without TVs on the trains and the platforms showing images of the Madrid, London & Mumbai bombings.

After arriving at our hostel in the Little India area of Singapore and extensively checking the connectivity of the 24 hour free WiFi in the room, we decided to head out for some dinner, and for something we hadn’t eaten since we left Australia, a curry! In searching for a restaurant it became very clear how quickly you become accustomed to your surroundings. In Indonesia if the pathway is blocked or more likely didn’t exist then you’d walk on the road, it shouldn’t work but everyone does and expects it so somehow it does, in Singapore however it doesn’t, we better get used to our new surroundings and fast!

We allowed 3 days to explore Singapore, which eventually turned into 4, mainly because i couldn’t drag myself away from the Wifi and i couldn’t drag Jo away from the shops and stalls of Orchard Road and Chinatown respectively. When i did finally manage to succeed we found the Funan Mall, a 6 story mall dedicated solely to IT, suddenly roles were reversed, not to be thwarted though it was still Jo that came away with the only purchase!

Along with all the shopping we have also managed to squeeze in some of Singapore's other attractions, colourful temples of contrast to those in Indonesia, museums, art houses, Raffles hotel and the Battle Box, where we were shown around by a strict sergeant major, who told us when and where we could go on the tour, he was highly amusing and when we found out the he used to serve in the Army everything made sense. He more than made up for the fact that the wireless headsets were sketchy at best and the commentary was therefore difficult to follow.

While here we’ve also started to try some of the fruit that we had seen in Indonesia but hadn’t wanted to barter for when we had no idea of the correct price. So now we have tried the delicious dragon fruit, both purple and white inners, starfruit and sour sop amongst others, there is after all only so much rice and noodles a person can eat.

On our last night we decided to head back into the heart of little India and have another curry while the opportunity presented itself, not knowing when good Indian food would next appear on our menu. Rather than have a ‘normal’ dish we both went for ‘thali’ a traditional dish, that should fulfill our cravings for the near future at least.

Another day, another country, we’re now in Melaka, Malaysia (although Malacca has a better ring to it). We can now cross ‘border crossing by bus’ off the list of things to do on the trip. Strange though it was, disembarking the bus to depart the island of Singapore and then being in no mans land for all of a causeway before stopping again at Malaysian customs to gain entry to our next destination.

Until next time

Ryan & Jo

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157613332979582/

Signing off Indonesia

ryanandjo — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:43:00 GMT

From 'Yogya' we decided that it was time to experiment with a different form of transportation (mainly due to the fact that we had used most of our 9 lives on the roads already). Java unlike Bali has a train service, so we decided we should experience a train journey. However after hearing many other travelers stories of hot, squashed, smoke filled travel where foreigners are stared at in economy, we decided that we would upgrade, bypassing business and go for ‘eksecutif’. It was definitely money well spent, the seats were comfortable, there was a TV, the A/C worked, a free meal and drink was provided, no smoking and the little girl sitting on the opposite seats was so scared of us she could barely look at us, everything as you would say was perfect, then it started to rain. Shortly after, the roof started to leak onto the arm of Jo’s chair, having looked around we noticed that the only spare seats were in front of us and they too had sprung a leak but of course nobody else was affected, after a wry smile we managed to nullify the issue by placing a cup on the arm of the chair to stop the splash and we continued on our merry way, arriving in Jakarta on time!

We only spent an evening in Jakarta due the fact that everyone we spoke to about it had said that it wasn’t a nice place and they wouldn’t recommend spending any more time there than you had too. Like New York, Jakarta is also known by the name of a fruit, the ‘Big Durian’, a prickly armored fruit with one of the most pungent smells imaginable, so much so that along with the no smoking sign in the hotel room, there was also a no durians sign. It’s probably not fair to judge a city on such a short period of time, but in the evening we already decided spending the extra day in Yogya was worth it, and in the morning things actually looked worse. All that said the journey to the airport was pleasant and we arrived earlier than expected.

We arrived so early that the our flight time was not yet listed on the departures board and a check in desk was not yet open for our flight. We decided to try the frequent flyers desk to see if we could check in early and we told that i flight had been canceled! Thankfully as we had arrived so early we could leave on an earlier flight, however the only problem now was that it drastically reduced our time in the book shops, which as it turns out was probably a blessing as 6 books is probably enough! We managed to board our plane without further incident, saying Selamat Tinggal to Indonesia.

Highlights

Place - Ubud (Jo) , Yogyakarta (Ryan)

Attraction - Monkey Forest (Jo) Borobudur (Ryan)

Food - Sate Ayam (Jo) , Pedas Mie Goreng (Ryan)

Beer - Bintang (Jo), Storm Pale Ale (Ryan)

LowLights

Kuta (Both)

Probolinggo to Yogyakarta journey (Jo)

Gili belly (Ryan)

Ryan’s Gili belly (Jo)

For those of you thinking of possibly traveling to the region: Averages in USD

Accommodation - $8-10

Main meal - $2

620ml Beer - $2

330ml Soft Drink - 40c

Bottle of water - 20c

No photos, so until the next blog, so long

Ryan & Jo

Java

ryanandjo — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:44:00 GMT

Our stay in Lovina was very relaxing and we spent our days lazing by the pool and chatting to other travellers staying at the hotel, it was too hot to do anything else! Just outside the hotel was a warung (small cafe selling home cooked food) where we ate one night and went back every day for lunch and dinner, well we didn’t have much choice as every time the owner saw us she wouldn't let us pass without chatting and ushering us into the warung, not that we are complaining as the food was excellent and felt like having a mum to cook us meals and she always made Ryan extra hot dishes to his liking.

Leaving Lovina we had booked tickets on the night bus into Java with the aim of heading to Mount Bromo. We were told to just to walk up the road to the main street and stand on the corner, the bus will pick you up when it goes past at 7pm, although it might be as early as 6.30pm so best get there about 6pm to be sure you don’t miss it. With so much confidence in us that we would catch the bus we stood on the roadside from 6pm. Every person who passed us either waved, smiled or stopped to say ‘going to Java hey, have a good time’ or ‘waiting for the bus, hopefully it will be here at 7’. Our confidence in the bus arriving started to dwindle quite substantially, but eventually the bus turned up at 7.45pm after it missed us waving at it and it slammed on the brakes further down the road! Well some people say travel can be uncomfortable but this was not, the a/c bus came with pillows and blankets and snack included, which meant for a comfortable night ride, oh except for the bus driver who coughed and cleared his throat every 6 seconds and hit every pot hole on the roads, meaning sleep was nearly impossible. When we did drift off to sleep the bus decided it was time to stop for dinner, at 1am! But we got to watch the Obama inauguration while eating noodles at a road side cafe somewhere in Java.

One small problem with getting the night bus meant our destination, Probolingo, was the first stop for the bus and we arrived there at 3am! Not much is open at that time, except for one small tour bus operator, who was so glad to see two tired and weary tourists looking very bewildered as we were escorted into his office. The deal was he could arrange transport for us up to Cemoro Lawang, our final destination to see Mt Bromo, or we could sit on the roadside for 6 hours waiting for the public transport to start. We didn’t have the energy to barter or wait for a cheaper ride, so threw some money at him and headed up the mountain and eventually found a room and headed to bed at 5am, what a journey.

Bromo

The Mt Bromo area consists of 3 volcanoes lying within the Tengger crater, Bromo, Batok and Kursi, with the highest mountain in Java, Gunung Semeru, looking down from behind. The town is nearly 2500 ft high, sitting on the edge of the Tengger crater. The next day we woke up eager to see the view, unfortunately we could only see clouds and rain rolling in as we were so high up, so the view was not impressive and we started to worry that we wouldn’t get to see the big attraction.

We decided to go for a walk into the national park and try to climb Mt Bromo, but half way across the baron wilderness of lava sand it started to rain heavily and drenched us so we turned back, still a little disheartened.

The temperature was at least 10 degrees colder than anywhere else in Java, although at night it felt like -5 degrees and sleeping with a woolly hat on was essential. I’m not moaning about the cold though as it meant we got to wear all the warm weather gear we had been lugging around in the heat, thinking why did we bring all these, every single piece of it was worn, all in one go! The best time to view the panorama is at sunrise so we went on a tour that consisted of a convoy of jeeps slowly climbing up a steep mountain in the dark, which took us to the best viewing point, starting at 4am! I was beginning to wonder if there really was a need to get up so early for anything in this world when, luckily for us, the rainy season clouds did not appear and the view as the sunrise began was spectacular (please refer to many many pictures I took of the occasion)

The jeep convoy then made its way down to the foot of Mt Bromo so we could do the climb. We were sharing the jeep with a family of four from Malang in Java and the daughters were eager to practice English with us, so we all stuck together and did the climb up Bromo as a team. The two girls were 15 and 8 years old, and we found out the eldest is doing very well in school and trying to win a place on an exchange programme to study in Cambridge, so she was very surprised when we told her we are from Cambridge as it's her dream to visit there, so we exchanged email addresses so she can ask us anything she wants to know about UK.

After the climb and looking down into the volcano and across the strangely moon like surroundings, we caught our ride back to Probolingo to catch a coach to Yogyakarta. The coach turned out to be a mini bus with broken a/c and it was doing a drop off in Surabaya, so the journey would be 3 hours longer than planned, so an 8 hour journey turned into 11 hours, but the two of us and 2 other travellers made the most of it and moaned in unison. The driver asked if it was ok if he picked up some other passengers, which was fine, but meant we were all packed in to the bus in sweltering and polluted conditions with a chain smoking man who made the situation worse than it needed to be. It seems everyone smokes here in Indonesia, it’s quite a shock to see people smoking in restaurants and buses when you are so used to no public smoking. Anyway there’s not much you can do but sit back and dream of the shower you will have at the end of the journey.

Yogyakarta or ‘Yogya’ to the locals

We arrived in Yogya at 11pm and went looking for a hotel, which took a while but we found a decent room in the end. Yogya is a much bigger city than we expected but Java in general is the most populated island in Indonesia and everything here is bigger, nosier, more commercial and industrial than Bali and Lombok. Next morning we looked for a cheaper room and found a wonderful losmen (homestay) with Gandhi, just down Gang II, a small laneway filled with cheap eats and rooms, in the Sosrowijayan area. It only has 4 rooms, full of art work, free hot and cold drinks, and a very friendly and helpful family, we can’t recommend this place enough if you’re thinking of staying in Yogya. One morning while eating breakfast we heard a huge whoomp noise followed by a loud bang and lots of shouting, which we couldn’t understand. It turned out someone had walked into an unstable electric cable just down the lane and had been electrocuted and thrown into a fence. Luckily they didn’t die, but it just shows how precarious the infrastructure can be compared to other countries.

The first day we went for a ‘jalan jalan’ around Yogya and kept meeting people who wanted to speak English, and then bumping into them again and again with them insisting they take us to places we should visit. We weren’t sure whether to trust them or not as Gandhi had warned us about the pickpockets and diversion tactics in play, but all turned out well. One person took us to a museum about the independence of Indonesia in 1940's, and this must be the cheapest museum in the world as it only cost us 7.5 cents each to get in!

Next morning we started at 5am (no more early mornings from now on please) to visit Borobudur, a 9th century Buddhist monument, one of the top three to see in SE Asia. The construction is amazing as no cement was used, the pieces just fit together like a jigsaw puzzle to stop it collapsing. There were over 400 Buddha statues but now only 150 as others have been sent around the world to museums. The stone walls are covered in engravings that tell the story of Buddha. There’s not much else to say about it than it was spectacular.

The number of school kids at Borobudur must of out numbered us by 1000-1 and most of them asked to have their photo taken with us, which made me feel like a celebrity! We kept hearing people say 'hey mister, hey missus' then giggling and running off. Even the school teachers got in on the act, getting even more excited than the kids. One girl had written down some questions and wanted to interview us so she asked what we thought of the place and Indonesia, how long we been here etc and then she asked Ryan 'Can I have your phone number'!!! she was only about 14 but seems to have a good pulling tactics already.

We also visited Prambanan, a Hindu temple complex, which was amazing, although it’s under going restoration after much of it was destroyed by the 2006 earthquake in Yogya that killed nearly 6000 people.

Apart from that most of our time in Yogya has been spent relaxing, and exploring the city, the Sultan’s palace, a ruined Water Castle and a bird market, although we didn’t stay long here as the cockfighting was about to start.

Observations:

People like to say ‘good morning’ to us, even in the evening, which always makes us smile.

People ask us where we are from and when we say England then say that our English is very good, they don't seem to understand that we have no choice but to speak ‘good’ English, although i'm getting used to speaking pidgin English, it’s much easier.

Learning Indonesian and using a phrase book has helped us a lot, especially the phrase ‘Jalan, Jalan’ meaning just taking a stroll, as soon as people ask where we’re going and if we need transport, which is very frequent, we just say that and they back right off, amazing! I think it kind of means ‘mind your own business’ but in a very polite way!

30 days of travel = 30 bad hair days.

Next stop is Jakarta, but only for one night before we catch a flight to Singapore on the 29th. Is it too early in our travels for us to book a nice hotel room to stay in??? Who cares, it’s booked and a night of semi-luxury awaits us in Jakarta.

Farewell

Jo & Ryan

4 new photo folders at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dojo77/collections/72157612586374143/

Ubud

ryanandjo — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:03:00 GMT

The plan was to explore each of the Gili Islands, but in the end we stayed on Gili T for a week before heading back to Bali and Ubud. The journey was long (12 hours) but pretty uneventful except a small diversion off the road to avoid a monkey and oncoming traffic, although describing any journey on the roads of Indonesia as uneventful is stretching the truth somewhat. The ferry journey was also a bit of a shock to the system as we thought we knew what was in store having completed the journey once, this time however it took an extra 2 hours and seating was no longer indoors on soft comfortable reclining seats, but outdoors on hard wooden benches.

Ubud is the cultural capital of Bali, with its museums, temples, arts and crafts from its Buddhist and Hindu heritage. What it also has is a monkey forest of which Jo has decided to provide you with a picture of all 600 inhabitants, ok not quite, but when you see the photos you'll get the impression that she did! Thankfully the forest of macaques was only 200m from our homestay( where we stayed in Room 101, and Orwell couldn't have described it better in 1984, oh, what torture it is having fresh hot running water for the first time in two weeks!)

So we managed to make it up in time for the morning feeding session, but this didn't stop one of the cheeky kleptomaniacs stealing one poor tourists breakfast after she put it down to pay for the pleasure of visiting the forest.

That doesn't mean that we're not cultural enough to see the historically significant aspects of the area, although i must admit we're pretty 'templed' out at the moment, having visited Goa Gajah or the Elephant Caves which were rediscovered in the 1920's, Gunung Kawi a group of stone memorials believed to be carved into the cliffs around the eleventh century amongst so many other temples and places of worship and ritual.

Despite all this stunning architecture from the old world it has been something far more easily viewed that has captured are attention, that being the rice paddy fields, they dominate the landscape of the region and some of the work that goes into creating the irrigation system is amazing both in architecture and spectacle, but you can have too much of a good thing and we are wondering how many we will see on our travels.

During our travels around the region we also visited a coffee and spices plantation, with a coffee roasting demo.

During the trip I've started to drink hot drinks for the first time, breakfast comes with tea which i have gradually gotten around to drinking, it's amazing what putting something in a beer glass can do to the flavour of a drink.

Coffee was always going to be a stretch and i was planning on trying coffee when we got to Columbia and i think I'll revert back to that plan, despite our imminent arrival in Java. We also went up Mount Kintamani to view the area from a high vantage point, but the only view we got was the inside of a nimbus cloud, however due to the poor view we did get a half price lunch after we decided to walk out of the buffet restaurant our driver had taken us to for lunch with a view. Not wanting us to leave they offered us 2 for the price of 1 as long as we didn't let any of the other patrons know, we weren't even trying to barter but it seemed rude not to stay after they had been so accommodating.

Lovina

We have now moved on to the black sand beaches of Lovina, where we have managed to negotiate a homestay price on a hotel room that has a nice swimming pool for us to laze around, although the room does come with it's drawbacks. The doors are not made for tall(ish) people and i managed to cut my head open on the entrance decoration. Thankfully nothing serious, but a permanent memento of our travels to go with the others i have acquired over the years.

From here we plan to head to Java and Gunung Bromo as we make our way west to Jakarta.

Ryan & Jo

Gili T

ryanandjo — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 04:50:00 GMT

Heir to the Throne

Gili Trawangan or 'Gili T' as it's known to the locals is the largest of the 3 Gili islands, that said it has no motorised transport (transport is provided by horse drawn carriages that sound like Reindeer due to the small bells they wear to let you know they are coming), no police, fresh or hot water, ATMs, dogs and only intermittent electricity at best.

However, it more than makes up for those with its fantastic snorkeling, white sandy beaches and crystal blue sea.

Gili T is the reputed 'party' island of the 3, a claim that comes from the fact that you can buy magic mushrooms and are offered them at every turn. They are officially illegal but with no police to enforce the law a relaxed attitude is taken.

Along with magic mushrooms you will also find a great deal of cats, who quite frankly without dogs around seem not to have a care in the world. The only thing that comes close to outnumbering the cats are the mosquitoes, so we both permanently smell like walking advertisements for insect repellent.

The island itself is only about 5km in circumference, so after finding ourselves a nice little homestay we decided that we would walk around the island and check out the best beaches and snorkeling points. What started off as a nice leisurely stroll turned into more of a trek, with Jo setting new world records for slowness in walking. About half way around we realised that we hadn't taken anywhere near enough water with us, thankfully we managed to find a hotel and stopped to rehydrate, not only did we pay for our drinks but we also left them a swimming pool around the table due to the amount we were perspiring. As we already resembled people who had been for a swim fully clothed we decided it was time to show the locals the marvels of our pale English skin and hit the sea to have a dip to cool down.

The time we have spent here has been very relaxing, it's the location of our first homestay and a better one i think we'll struggle to find elsewhere. The banana and honey pancakes for breakfast are to die for.

That said not all has been perfect. Despite Gili T being a small island where you would expect somethings to not work as you would expect, our homestay is the scene of our first flushing toilet. Which is a good job as we are both experiencing a touch of 'Gili Belly', which was due to catch up with us at some point. We have also had our first spider incident, neither of us are experts in the field but what we'll describe as a huge hairy spider ran past our feet one evening while sitting on the porch continuing up the wall and into an ajar window leading into our room. I would like to say what followed was pretty but trying to knock 'Shelob' out of the room with a broom while trying to keep our distance ended badly for the spider, we could have had ourselves a mosquito catcher and a sleepless night! Our pale skin has disappeared to be replaced by a lovely shade of pink with the obligatory 'tan lines' but thankfully nothing painful.

Traveling Observations:

No we would not like any Magic mushrooms

No i am not Zinedine Zidane, especially when you are not comparing football prowess

Bob Marley is Indonesia's version of Che Guevara

Ryan & Jo

To Lombok we go

ryanandjo — Tue, 6 Jan 2009 03:59:00 GMT

After a couple of nights in sleepy Sanur we decided to make a break from Bali and head to Lombok, as Indonesia is made up of over 17,000 islands we thought we would cross a few off the list before we leave, only 16,998 to go. The evening before we had arranged for a bemo (mini van with two wooden benches to sit on, typical Bali transport) to take us to Pandangbai so we could catch a ferry to Lombok. Unfortunately, we missed our meeting time as there was a little dispute to settle with the hotel. To cut a long story short, the hotel we originally booked to stay with in Sanur was fully booked when we arrived but they arranged for us to stay with another hostel, saying that we pay them the room cost and they would pay the other hotel as they had an 'arrangement', we knew it sounded dodgy at the time but we went with it, especially as the hotel was on the seedier side, we were glad they were booked up. So when we tried to check out in the morning of course they tried to tell us we hadn't paid. After a long dispute of Ryan telling the hostel we had paid at the other hotel and them phoning the other hotel a number of times, Ryan speaking to the hotel manager; the hotel manager turning up to play the 'you have paid sir?, you haven't paid sir?' game, it was eventually sorted an hour later. As compensation for 'upsetting' us and making us miss our bemo they arranged for another to take us, and managed to get it a lot cheaper than we had originally bartered, so it turned out to be a good for our budget.

Once we arrived in Pandangbai, we had missed the last direct ferry to our destination for the day but there was a ferry in 5 minutes that would take us to Lembar, Lombok's main port. We needed to get a tourist ticket because we didn't have time to find the local ticket office and suss out how to get a ticket, so we improved our bartering skills again by getting half price tickets that would also transfer us to the town we wished to go to. I say half price, but we probably still paid too much, but with the ferry about to leave we didn't want to chance missing it over a few thousand rupiah.

Oh, just an after thought, we became millionaires the other day when we withdrew 1,000,000 rupiah from the ATM (no lost bankcards this time) Ok, it's only worth about US$100 but a first is a first, no matter how small.

The ferry ride took 4 hours to cover the 25km distance between the two islands and the view as we left Bali was spectacular seeing the white sandy beaches dotted along the coastline with volcano Gunung Agung as a stunning background. On arrival we met with our transfer guide and headed over to the beach town of Senggigi, travelling through Lombok's capital Mataram and seeing countryside in between. Lombok is meant to be how Bali was over 20 years ago and we could see a difference instantly, as it's much less crowded and developed, we would definitely recommend anyone thinking of heading to Bali to add a trip to Lombok to the agenda. Our local guide started to explain the places we were passing through but once he and Ryan discovered they were both Liverpool fans the conversation steered straight to football for the remainder of the journey. Once in Senggigi we quickly found a cheap and basic hotel to stay in, it was here we were to experience our first power cut. On our way back from getting dinner we noticed the town was very dark and returning to the hostel we found we couldn't see where we were going and nearly fell into a ditch. This is when we realised we should have taken our head torches out with us, we'll remember to do that in future. We did get back to the room safely only to realise no electricity meant no electric fan, which meant stifling conditions in our tiny room, thinking we were going to suffocate and never get to sleep. Thankfully the power returned later and we could get a good night sleep, or so we thought...We knew we were staying directly behind the town Mosque as the semi-reliable Lonely Planet had informed us and we had heard the evening prayer calls but we weren't prepared for the predawn wake-up call at 4am and there was no way to sleep through it being transmitted over loudspeakers!

The next morning, weary eyed, we got up to catch our bus transfer to Bangsal, where we were catching a ferry to the Gili Islands.'Gili' means small and these three islands, Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan, are just 1km from the coast and within virtual swimming distance of each other, but swimming is not recommended as the currents are too strong. To get to the islands we had to get a wooden long boat, hauling two backpacks of approximately 15 kgs each full of electrical equipment when knee deep in water is quite a tricky excercise, needless to say only Ryan experienced this while I watched on in amusement.

Travelling Observations:
I have never walked as slowly as I have in the last couple of weeks. The heat makes me walk at the slowest pace possible but it gives me time to take in all of my surroundings, I guess that's what travel is all about.

Geckos - these are found in most hot climates so are not uncommon to most people, but they are often known to be shy, retiring little creatures scuttling away at any movement, until you meet Lombok geckos that is. The first encounter was when one decided to run up Ryan's leg as he was on the toilet in the middle of the night scaring the life out of him. The second was when I was sitting on the porch of our room peacefully reading when I felt a splat on my hand and looked up to see a gecko had cocked it's tail up and peed on me, cheeky little sh!t. I swear it winked at me too.

We did intend to have a week or two of relaxing before we threw ourselves into the experience of travelling, but our first week turned out to be more hectic and stressful as our first two stops were not places we wanted to spend a good length of time, so trying to work out where to head and how to get there came sooner than expected, but the trip has certainly started. At last we can relax here on Gili Trawangan for 3, 4, 5, days or more, but there is nothing to do here but read, sleep, swim and snorkel in turquoise sea. More on that next time...

Salamat tinggal (yes, we have learnt a word or two of Bahasa)
Jo & Ryan

P.S. The internet connection here is slower than my walking speed so no pictures yet, we'll upload them all when we get back to the main land

Bali

ryanandjo — Sun, 4 Jan 2009 03:52:00 GMT

Our flight into Bali arrived almost an hour ahead of schedule which meant that we had plenty of time to make New Years celebrations, or so we thought. Arriving in our first foreign country on New Years Eve seemed like an idilic notion and a perfect way to start our trip, however in hindsight arriving late at night on one of the busiest celebratory days of the year was not the wisest idea! Our taxi driver doubled up nicely as traffic conductor, at numerous times getting out of the 'taksi' to clear the gridlock. Many of the major roads were closed to non pedestrian traffic and those that weren't were crammed full of cars just big enough to fit on the narrow road and scooters, oh so many scooters! Chaos was the only word we and the taxi driver could use to describe it but we made it to our hotel and saw the New Year in with a Bintang.

We spent the first 3 days in the town of Kuta, which is the busiest, most popular resort area in Bali and the budget accommodation capital of Indonesia. This is where the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 occurred, so a visit to the bomb memorial listing the names of those killed in 2002 was in order to pay our respects.

The weather here is around 28-33 degress and about 85% humidity, so it's hot and sticky. The 5km beach at Kuta is a surfers dream with big swell on most days. Unfortunately, it is not the cleanest beach and the sea is quite murky so it doesn't make for somewhere to relax and cool off from the heat, and because we're not surfers we decided to make our first move over to the smaller town of Sanur, 30 minutes east. We stayed in a small hotel down a quiet lane just a short stroll to the beach and the town is more relaxed and quieter than Kuta, much more our style (read that as we are now in our cardigan wearing 30's and can't party like we did in our 20's).

A few travel errors to report so far:

Know how much a taxi from the airport should cost before arriving so you don't pay quadruple the amount.

Don't enter the wrong pin number 3 times in at an ATM or it swallows your card, one of us didn't already know that!

Don't be nice to the street touts as they will run after you for hours offering sunglasses for one dollar, no, two for a dollar, no, three for a dollar!

No dodgy stomachs to report yet, although no flushing toilets either. Next stop Lombok or Ubud, we haven't decided yet, and will let you know when we have!

Ryan & Jo

Darwin

ryanandjo — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 10:11:00 GMT

We're off ....... or are we? There is some debate between us to whether our journey has actually started, as we're still in Australia and it doesn't feel like the start of a 18 month trip, so we'll let you decide if this is the first travel entry of our blog or whether it is just a precurser. Anyway here goes..... We've been in Darwin for a couple of days and the weather has been less than spectacular. We knew that we were coming in the 'wet' season but we didn't realise that we'd have to circle Darwin for 30 mins waiting for the wind to die down and then another hour on the tarmac because the ground staff were too scared to operate the 'airdeck' until the threat of lightning strikes had passed. I'm sure we'll have plenty of delays to report along the way, so we'll leave this one at that and label it 'minor', it's not like we're pushed for time!

The weather has held out on occassion for us to see some of Darwin's attractions, the number one attraction being......... feeding fish!

What seemed like the entire travelling population of Darwin turned up for a one hour window to each feed the fish two half slices of bread, with the guide feeding meat to the carnivores and whoa betide you if you threw one of your crumbs into her section of water. Ok, so i'll admit it was more interesting than it sounds, fish have been coming to 'Aquascene' to be hand fed over the past 50 years and watching fish fight over whole bread rolls and flipping each other out of the water to get at them was entertaining.

Darwin is small compared to other cities in Australia but has a bohemian, relaxed atmosphere and would be a great base to explore the NT, but with only 2 days we'll have to save those trips for another time.

The second highlight of Darwin was coming 3rd in a local pub quiz and winning a prize, although we won't mention that there were only 6 teams taking part!

Anyway, just a short one to get us going, next stop Bali, Indonesia.

Ryan & Jo

Nearly time to leave

ryanandjo — Fri, 5 Dec 2008 03:48:00 GMT

We have one week left at work and we are moving out of our place next weekend. We are pretty much organised and ready to go. After that we have a week in Sydney staying at a friends place, then we head to Melbourne to spend Christmas with Ryan's family. Then two last days in Sydney before heading to Darwin. We are only staying there for 2 days then we fly to Bali on New Years Eve to start our trip.

Trial runs of packing the backpacks have been successful with still a little room left over, so maybe I should buy more clothes to take with me!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas

Jo & Ryan

Shopping & Vaccines (ouch)

ryanandjo — Thu, 9 Oct 2008 01:51:00 GMT

Ouch, money disappearing quickly (and not because of the credit crisis) and my arm is very very sore.

With only two ish months to go, our backpacks are bought and we're shopping for all the travel gear and gadgets we need, or don't need, but want just in case. Flight out of Australia still hasn't been booked but that's not important yet, or so I keep telling myself. Had two rounds of vaccines and more still to come. Geez they hurt, well Ryan has got away lightly with no pain and less injections than me, but I always get the nurse saying 'unfortunately this one's going to hurt you Jo'! or am I just a wuss?

Anway, this is just another test so we can get used to 'blogging'.

Tarra

Jo (& Ryan)

The decision has been made...

ryanandjo — Mon, 4 Feb 2008 04:33:00 GMT

Ryan and I have decided to leave Australia at the end of the year to spend about 18 months travelling around the world. At the moment we're just reading up about countries and deciding where to go and what to do. We don't want to do too much planning as most of the decision will be made on the road but we're doing enough just to get a rough idea of where we will head and for how long. It's very exciting planning something that's so far ahead but I'm sure the year will fly by and we'll be living out of a backpack before we know it. We've also got a lot of saving to do, so my natural skills to count every penny and be a miser are coming to the forefront. 'We can't afford to do that' is frequently heard along with 'That money could be spent on a weeks accomodation in Thailand', which is becoming annoying to myself let alone Ryan.

The plan is to head to South East Asia first travelling through Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. We'll then head into China or across to India with a visit to Nepal inbetween those two. Then we'll return to Australia to finish off the parts we didn't get round to whilst living here, then to NZ, then over to South America working our way up to Central America, Mexico and all the way up to Canada. That's if our money hasn't run out by then...

Anyway this is just a test blog really and to let you know what our future plans are. I doubt we will update this until nearer the time of departure and when we are on the road. So until then, farewell.

Have a great 2008.

Jo (& Ryan)