You miss things on a first look. Sometimes you miss a lot.
In
Pokhara, for instance, I arrived in the mid-afternoon, headed over to
North Lakeside to find a room, and then took a wander. It was pretty
enough, with sun on the lake, and clouds behind the heights. Colour me
blond, but I vaguely noticed that there was no snow and they didn't
look so high. The next morning I went for a walk. The sky was
cloudless, and there to the north behind those not-so-heights were
genuine snowy mountains. Much prettier. There's a little more to
Pokhara than meets the casual glance too. The tourist ghetto is on the
northeast side of the lake; it's pretty enough with its bookstores,
cafes, restaurants, bars, hotels, travel agents, internet cafes, money
changers, trekking shops, supermarkets, houses, and practically
nothing else. The central city is a few kilometres away through
suburbs, and there's a few things southeast of the lake, but I didn't
realise just how much of Pokhara there is until I hiked up the
not-so-height of Sarankot and saw the Pokharan sprawl. It really is a
fair-sized town, and the lake area is an important but relatively small
part of it.
So it's time for a little journal housekeeping - things missed, shifts in perspective, sights yet unseen, events unhappened.
General
* Formatting has been corrected, though blog-bugginess has made me
want to scream. It doesn't output numbered lists, for instance,
despite rendering correctly in the editor.
* Spelling errors have been corrected. Some were just embarrassing -
"centremetre", for instance? Some things that may be seen as errors,
though, are my preferred variants (eg "eg" rather than "e.g.", "their"
rather than "his or her", and "noone" rather than "no one" or
"no-one").
What ever/what-ever/whatever.
* Grammatical errors have been corrected, though many probably
remain. When you rewrite sentences multiple times at speed, it's easy
to miss things.
* I've removed all the category tags. Trying to pigeon-hole my entries using single tags is painful. If they ever add multiple tags, and I can be bothered, I'll go through and tag things properly.
#1. Start of Tour
People who've visited Bali months after me report the same thing - Kuta is very deserted.
#2. Kuta-Ubud
I've hardly
used my sleep sheet in my travels.
#3. West Ubud by Bike
One of the risks with monkeys is they are potentially rabid, so if they
bite or scratch you need to go and have shots. Another is that some
will snatch glasses, keys, and other things that a traveller finds it
useful to retain.
#4. East Ubud by Foot
Well, apparently not risking bird flu since you can't catch it by ingestion.
#5. Miscellanea [Ubud/Bali]
Perceptions of places:
edited... tick; filtered... tick; verbose... big page-filling tick;
possibly entirely inaccurate... tick tick tick; frequent...
BingoDamn. No.
Photos: Well, with one exception I'm glad to say that I stuck to that resolution.
Dogs:
I am still not a dog person, but I'm far less nervous around large dogs
than I was, perhaps because there are so many dogs roaming free, and
it's rare for them to bark, much less growl.
Language: On Java the stress patterns were a bit different to Bali.
Freezer Bags:
They're highly recommended because they're soft and easy to tie. It
helps if you keep your passport in one at all times, inconvenient
though that is.
Extra long shorts:
Surprisingly unnecessary as cargos roll up easily and allow one to
Tiffin in Raffles. One pair of shorts that doubles as a swimming
costume is more than sufficient.
Excessive Detail: One of
the benefits of further travel has been that I have learned to filter
and edit somewhat. Many details are just Too Much Information in a
linear piece -- pavements in Ubud... sheeeeeesh. On the other hand, if
I'd ever do a piece comparing Pavements of the World, then the
information might have a place (the piece might well be horrible, but
at least the information on Ubud pavements would fit well).
Extra 8 kg in pack:
Extra 11 kilos in pack would be nice not to have (at last weigh, my
pack plus daypack is about 23kg) but I'm a bookaholic with an at-times
three a day habit and I've accumulated more clothing including a Real
Towel -- those microfibre handtowels just don't do the trick. I've been
loathe to throw things away because the heavy useless things (sleeping
bag, sleeping mat, water filter, heavy-duty rain jacket) would also the
most expensive to replace, and it's likely that they'll be necessary in
future. I left winter items in Kolkata, but that was more bulk than
weight. The master of travelling was Richard, whose pack was a ridiculously light 7kg (and he was
getting rid of some of that by dumping winter gear).
Extra 8 kg on body:
I'm down below 70kg, and while I could probably afford to lose more, so
could you. One of the best weight loss tales ever is about the two-pill
diet solution that was sold at the turn of the 20th century. You'd
take one pill when you wanted to start losing weight, and another when
you'd lost enough weight. In the first pill was a tapeworm egg, in the
second was vermicide... which only goes to prove that some details are
just Too Much Information even in a non-linear piece.
Salesmanship:
A common opening gambit in Nepal and (to a lesser degree) in India has
been "Where do you come from". It's a general enquiry, of course, but
the followup for touts and beggars is generally different. Someone
making conversation will normally ask how you like India or bring up
cricket. Someone after something in Nepal would often attempt to give
the capital and national animal. More common in India than Nepal is
"Ah, I have a friend in...". You also get asked for Australian coins
quite frequently. "Where do you come from?" can also used to determine
how much they'll try and charge you.
Sugar:
Artificially-sweetened soft drinks are extremely rare, and often need
to be imported. Interestingly, in some countries such as Thailand and
India they add salt to juices and lassis, which is good for rehydration
even if it does taste a bit wierd.
#6. Northeast Ubud by Motorbike
There are times when riding pillion on a motorbike has been
unavoidable. Sometimes this hasn't been particularly particularly
wise, given the difficulty of balancing the driver, myself, and my
backpack.
Incidently*, I was involved in one very minor accident in
Yogyakarta, but the bike was at low speed and I was the hapless
pedestrian who failed to notice the "left turn permitted on red" sign.
"Look to the right, look to the left, don't look to the right again..."
[*Is there a term more appropriate than this?]
#7. 24 hours in Bedugul: Culture Shock by Nightfall
One
of the very few choices I've made that I (mildly) regret was to leave
Bedugul after only one day. I've made lots of other snap decisions,
and they've mostly been correct decisions, but this one was made for
the wrong reasons. Ah well, I can always go back sometime.
#8. Lovina: Seven words written on seven subjects
I'll never write in this style again.
#9. Bali to Java: Whistlestop tour
Buses: Moral: pack less, carry less.
Surabaya: Still the most insane traffic I've seen. Everywhere else including Bangkok and Bangalore has been a relief.
Kraton population: The figure of 25000 was probably Yogya rather than Solo
#10. Solo: Palaces and Music
I really should have picked up a CD or tape of dangdut music while I was there.
#11. Solo: Hindu Temples in the Hills
We went and visited a tea plantation in Darjeeling. The season's
picking had finished the week before, but the lady in the tea house at
the entrance gave us an amusing presentation of Tippy Golden Flowery
Orange Pekoe tea (which only requires a couple of seconds to brew!)
with lots of spiel as to why it's named as it is, how to brew it, how
the leaves can be used thrice, and the different grades of Orange
Pekoe.
#12. Yogyakarta: Temples and Volcano
The
earthquake hit Yogyakarta a week after I left. Thousands died, but
fortunately Merapi never had a major eruption (things settled down
within a few months); I was told that there was the potential for
Merapi to put out enough lava to reach Prambanan and the northern parts
of Yogya.
#13. Yogyakarta: Batik Sellers
Did I pay the higher price for my small purchase? Oh yes, yes
indeed, but I justify the extra expense as being a valuable learning
experience, so it's an investment in my development as a traveller.
It's psychologically interesting, by the way, how absolute price
matters far less than relative price. If the price of something is X
for a local and [X * (100+N)%] for a foreigner, there's an acceptable
increase of N% where a particular traveller won't mind, but this is
pretty much unrelated to how much the item or service would cost in
one's home country (as long as it's definitely cheaper) - it's more a
balance between daily budget and perceived utility. And so you see and
participate in absurd and petty haggling over ridiculously small sums -
have you ever gone to the wire for a saving of what you realise later is 2 cents Australian?
There
are places where most tourist attractions have a gouge of somewhere
between 400% and 2400%. In other words, foreigner price can be between
5 and 25 times the local price. Take the Sun Temple at Konark in
Orissa, for instance. Local price is 10 rupees, foreigner price is 250
rupees. On an absolute level, it's about A$7.50, which is cheaper than
the cost of entry to pretty much any major tourist attraction in Australia, and the
Sun Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage site so you know it's important
and magnificent and worth seeing. On a relative level, though, 250
rupees is the cost of a day's lodging and meals in neighbouring Puri,
so by those standards it's pricey. And such markups are common* - 15
times for Kolkata's Indian Museum, 10 times for the interior of its
Victoria Memorial. On the one hand I certainly have the capacity to
pay - it just means I spend more and save less. On the other hand, if
I'm rather templed out or museumed out, then a foreigner price of more
than about 5 times local is a great disincentive to see yet another
one, no matter how fantastic it may be.
[*India's markups for
tourist attractions are fresh in the memory, but as far as I can recall
only Cambodia has had markups of a similar magnitude]
#14. Miscellanea: Java
And you think you have it rough:
A room of one's own, indeed a bed of one's own, is a luxury. Many
hotel/hostel staff sleep in foyers and halls. The internet cafe I'm
posting from has people sleeping on thin straw mats in the stairwell.
Ice Cream: It's Walls pretty much everywhere.
#15. Singapore
From
talking with others, it seems that one's impression of Singapore varies
depends on where one has been immediately beforehand. In other words,
if you've been somewhere with cold showers, squat toilets and bedbugs
it's wonderful; if you've been living the highlife in a major
metropolis it's sterile
#16. Kuala Selangor: Trees and Wildlife
West Coast Malaysia has so many oil palm plantations; green and brown
walls extending to the horizon. Much like pine plantatations, their
foliage is so thick that the ground underneath tends to be devoid of
any other vegetation since little direct sunlight penetrates. Coconut
palms are far friendlier to other plants.
#17. Taman Negara: Journeys
One
squirmsome thing our guide did was to allow a leech to crawl over his
hands - he wasn't worried because he said that the skin was too tough
for the leech to bite; he wasn't bitten. Like so many things,
familiarity with leeches really seems to reduce squirmishness with them
- Chok Eng, who'd grown up on the peninsular's East Coast was rather
unconcerned by all the leeches at FRIM.
The service at the
restaurant was so slow because they only had a single burner so could
only cook one dish at a time, and we'd all ordered different things -
it's a common problem for small eateries with lots of customers.
#18. Melaka: Food and Museums
The Assam prawns I had there were one of the best dishes I've ever had.
I'd visit Melaka again just for them, and the fact that there are
museums worth (re)visiting helps too, in particular the small
architecture museum.
Alas,
sometimes people who deserve excoriation in print don't get it because
of potential ramifications for others - there's a minor saga from
Melaka that I won't record; if you feel that you really need to know
it, ask me in person.
#19. Fragments from Pulau Penang:
Fruit: At the time I thought I'd had lychees so that's
what I wrote but they were actually rambutans. The two fruits taste and
look similar once peeled, but the skin of a rambutan is red and spiky (but soft),
while that of a lychee is rough and brown.
Flies: On east coast Malaysia and in Thailand there were lots more flies.
#20. Kuala Lumpur: Interludes with Friends and Friends of Friends
Fish Heads: I've no problem with a baked fish with the head left
on, but the thought of a bowl of soup with a fish sans body sitting in
it is mildly discomforting, which I realise is irrational.
Dancing: Somewhat tricky when the only shoes you have are hiking
boots - clubs generally don't allow sneakers. One gains a new
appreciation for the Stomp dancers.
