backpacks and tuktuks

alpaca tastes yummy

2005-12-14T22:31:00.000Z

But I haven´t tried guinea pig yet. Someday, I am sure it´s time will come, but right now I am content eating cute little furry things that keep my fingers warm with my new fingerless gloves, and keep my belly full.

Other food highlights have been a Turkish restaurant in Arequipa, and an unlimited supply of muesli, fruit and yoghurt with honey in the Colca Canyon. You know, the best backpackers are run on their stomachs. And of course, mine is still expanding, just in time for Christmas.

After Nazca, we got the overnight bus to Arequipa, which was quite comfortable. The journey, or at least, the bits that I was awake for, was quite picturesque, driving through the desert, and of course, Arequipa is a beautiful city. It is known for the white rock that is used in building, called silar. The whole of the city centre is constructed from this rock, and it is incredibly striking with the sun beating down on it. Perhaps the most famous attraction in Arequipa is the Santa Catalina convent, which was built by a wealthy Spaniard in the 16th century, and is a city within a city. Furthermore, along with beautiful winding alleys and courtyards with cloisters, the two main colours that the monastery are painted in are a bright cobalt blue, and gorgeous sienna-orange. It makes for a very peaceful and enjoyable couple of hours strolling through the many rooms and streets.

The architecture in Arequipa, as I mentioned, is fabulous, including the amazing churches in the Plaza de Armas, and, even better for me, the little courtyards and alleys up which you could find fantastic cafes and resturants to while away a couple of hours reading or writing. Sometimes that is the best thing about travelling - that chance just to be on your own with a book and a crepe. Aaah, bliss!

From Arequipa we went to the Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world. The first is right beside it, and I can never remember the name. I have to say though, that the Grand Canyon is more spectacular, perhaps because it is wider - the narrowness of the gorge that makes the Colca Canyon makes it rather hard to comprehend the scale. What is fabulous about the Colca is the fact that it is home to condors, and we spent a hour looking for these huge birds. I am no bird lover, but I do have to admit that they were spectacular.

Whilst in the Colca, I indulged in another bout of horse-riding, which was tons of fun. Our guide spoke no English, but he was nice enough to speak super basic Spanish, so that I could understand him, and translate for everyone else. (Yes, GCSE spanish really does have a use.) We rode up to an Incan village ruin, which was in the process of being restored by DESCO, which is a Peruvian institution, I assume aimed at protecting Peruvian heritage. I also met Scooby at the ruins, who was the most adorable little puppy dog, who was rather fond of tugging at my leg, and trying to me to play with him. Come on, it´s a puppy dog, how could I resist?

We ended up in a restaurant which did local dances along with food. Now, normally I hate that kind of thing, and I wasn´t best pleased about it, but the final dance made up for it, because it had such a bizarre story line. There was a boy and a girl, and then one of them would get sick, and fall on the floor, shaking with fever. The other one would then take a rope and whip them, and then when that didn´t cure them, they would sit on their head, acting out the sick person drinking their pee! If that isn´t the strangest dance storyline, I don´t know what is.

Right now I am in Puno, a port on Lake Titikaka. It´s quite a happening little tourist town, and in a minute I am going to get myself some cake, at one of the many restaurants along the main pedestrian drag. The tourists come to see the Floating Islands (Uros), and the other islands on the lake. I went out yesterday, and it was a pretty good trip. The floating islands were amazing - they are made from a special reed which grows in the lake, and are anchored down. If they weren´t anchored, they would be blown around in storms. The people who live there now seem to mainly be supported by tourism, which is a shame, but their lifestyle is fascinating, with everything being linked back to this reed - their land, their houses, their food. The other island that we went to we actually stayed on - Amanti. There were maybe a hundred tourists who stayed with families on the island when I was there, which was also a little weird, but it was amazing to see such a simple life - no running water, no electricity, and lots of potatoes growing in fields run by irrigation (it hardly ever rains up there). The kids in our family were fantastic - they were only 3 and 5, and were so much fun. Furthermore, there was a tar heel sticker in the courtyard of my family´s home, so I felt right at home. Some other tourist had given it to them.

Whilst we were on the island the boys played a football match against the locals, and I went for a hike up the mountain (it was more of a hill, but since the summit was 4,600m above sea level, I definitely get to call it a mountain) where at the top there were some Incan ruins. I was accompanied up the hill by three little boys playing various musical instruments, which made for an incredibly novel motivational factor. Maybe this is the key to getting up the inca trail - have my own band supporting me!

This morning we went to another island, and then home. I am absolutely exhausted now, and will sleep like a baby before catching the bus to Cusco tomorrow. I am most excited about that. It is where I have been looking forward to most in Peru.

back to tuktuks

2005-12-08T21:52:00.000Z

Peru has tuktuks - my website title makes sense again. Although, they are not called tuktuks, they are called combis. And I haven´t had a chance to ride in one yet, though I will, I am sure, before I leave. I have ridden in the twingo taxis. I don´t know if anyone knows about Renault Twingos apart from me and my dad, but they are these impossibly small, box-like cars that are very popular in France, and all the taxis here seem to be based on them. They have too many stickers stuck all over them for me to see whether they are actually twingoes, but I shall do some more research on it over the next few days.

Being in Peru is making me feel like a real-live backpacker again, which Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and Patagonia all sort of knocked out of me. There, everything was easy, because everyone spoke English, or I wasn´t having to make decisions or work anything out. Peru is much more challenging in that respect, which is good. It is good to end my trip on a proper culture shock again. There are dogs in the streets, the houses are made of bamboo and that woven straw-like material, most of them seem to have only three and a half walls, a large proportion of the population like to sit outside of their houses and do nothing. I often wonder why the greatest philosophers have not come from Cambodia, Laos, and now Peru, since all the people do is sit and watch the world go by. With all that time thinking, surely great thoughts must emerge? I know, I am being naive. But still...

I haven´t tried Inka Kola yet, but I think that even my sweet tooth will be defeated by it. Everything here is very sweet, and I am over sweet foods. An excess of dulce du leche has sickened me. I actually have to admit that the food here has managed to completely underwhelm me, and no one in the entire country, can fry an egg. The lack of bon cuisine is actually good, since it now means that I have two weeks to diet, which I sorely need, in time for Christmas. It would be nice to come home thin and tanned, but neither of them are likely. Oh, I can´t be mean about all the food - the fruit is fabulous and cheap.

I arrived in Lima a few days ago, and it was the shithole that I had been led to believe, and I was in the nice part, Miraflores. I had to go out and change some travellers cheques, and of course the banks were charging 12%. I eventually found one of those dodgy dealers that you have to count back the notes twice to make sure that they are right, and that you are sure the notes are either stolen or counterfeit, although they look too grubby to be the second. Who cares, when the commision is only 3%? I then wandered around a bit, was unimpressed, and went back to my room to get my last dose of CNN for a long time.

The next day we headed to Pisco, named for the drink, which turned out to be a bit of a shithole (I am sure the Lonely called it charming, or with character.). However, from Pisco you head to the Islas Ballestras, which are the "Little Galapagos", and they themselves were pretty awesome. It was the usual deal of a tourist company picking everyone up late, dumping you at a cafe to "wait", meaning "buy", and then take a tour of the islands. I actually felt quite happy at the familiarity of the set up. The islands were cool in that there were thousands of inquisitive sea lions, and zillions of birds, including pelicans, tropical cormorants, penguins, although I didn´t manage to spot any boobies. I am not sure what a booby looks like, and that might have been part of the problem. Kate should have been there to help me out.

From Islas Ballestras we went to Huacachino, where you go dune buggy riding and sandboarding. I did sandboarding in New Zealand, and dune buggying in Oregon a few years ago, so I thought I knew what to expect. Of course, I hadn´t counted on the Peruvian attitude to things. Our seatbelts were tied to the buggy instead of being adjustable, and today I can hardly move my neck. (I am just picturing my mother´s face right now. Don´t worry, it is the last "adventure" sport I do) The sandboards were based on snowboards, apart from there was no way of controlling them or stopping them, which we only found out after we watched the guide fall over as well. I gave up on that sport pretty quickly. Huacachino though was a pretty nice place - a little oasis in the desert, with a lake in the centre of the two street town. Looked like a cool place to spend some time. We headed onto Nazca though, so we could take a flight this morning.

Upon arriving to Nazca, it turned out that there was no electricity, and therefore no running water. Hardly ideal. But what can you do? The hotel was good enough to heat us a bucket of water to wash in, so it was like having an Asian shower. Not great, but not horrendous. The beds were comfortable, and that´s the main thing.

This morning was an early flight over the Nazca lines. One thing that I have discovered whilst travelling is that I love to be in small flying things, and a four seater aircraft was no different - I loved it! The fact that strange, mythical lines in the desert were on display was simply a bonus. The lines themselves were actually awesome, especially since they are no more than 5cm deep in the desert. Of course, no one knows really why they are there, although the theory that I like is that they were drawn using the movements of the stars. I am going to a planetarium show tonight to learn more about it. And then, a night bus to Arequipa, the white city.

Home in two weeks today. I am really looking forward to it, but it doesn´t mean that I am not having a good time here. I am. It is an interesting country, although I can´t say that I love it yet. I think that the lack of Spanish might be the main barrier, but I couldn´t say for sure.

europe on the other side of the world

2005-12-04T22:15:00.000Z

Buenos Aires is one of the most European cities I have ever been to. There are coffee shops everywhere, where people eat croissants and drink coffee. San Telmo has a fabulous flea market, and there are Catholic churches abound. It is truly beautiful, with cobbled streets, antique stores, and kids playing futbol everywhere. Furthermore, there is the fantastically colourful and beautiful La Boca to visit - a sort of slum-like area where the corrugated iron roofes and walls have been painted orange and teal and pink. Amazingly wonderful to wander, and even better to photograph. Of course, you have to share it with thousands of other tourists, and the ubiquituous tango dancers who perform in the street. It´s a fantastic city to wander, and with the added bonus of great restaurants and fabulous ice cream, a good place to spend a wkend recharging my batteries before heading to Lima tomorrow for my final leg of travelling. In only 19 days I go home, and I have to say that I am looking forward to it.

for once, nothing doin´

2005-12-01T18:37:00.000Z

I have spent the last couple of days doing absolutely nothing, and that has been really rather nice. Catching up on reading and emails, drinking hot chocolate and finally being on my own has all recharged my batteries. I was beginning to worry that I was going to be constantly exhausted for the next 3wks and would never have any time to sleep. Instead, I have managed to get drunk in an Irish bar, survive a Beagle Channel cruise (not exactly exciting, and I like lighthouses), drink my body weight in the fabulous hot chocolate at Tante Sara, and avoid everyone I have been hanging out with. I can´t help it, sometimes I need to be a loner. There is not tons to do in Ushuaia though, it is a port town which thrives on tourism, being the most southerly city, and the starting point for the majority of Antarctica cruises. Everyone here wanders around wearing fabulous amounts of North Face with the biggest cameras I´ve ever seen, basically waiting to leave. This all gives the town a rather transient feel. This morning I did head to Tierra Del Fuego National Park, and did a rather lovely walk along the coast. The Beagle Channel is very interesting in that it is a channel through which the Atlantic and Pacific meet. If I had better Spanish, I could find out whether this creates any interesting currents or weather patterns, but unfortunately I am linguistically challenged. I am good enough at asking for what I want, and translating what barmen or waiters are saying for other people (what can I say? I am ruled by my stomach), but real conversations? Not a chance.

Tomorrow, the heat of Buenos Aires. I have to admit to looking forward to being warm and wearing flip flops again. Although I will miss the sunshine until 10pm at night. I will never get tired of that.

it's the end of the world

2005-11-29T18:31:00.000Z

I have made it to the end of the world. I've dropped off the mainland American continent, and am now on the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire), in the Argentinian city of Ushuaia. It's been a lot of fun getting here.

After leaving El Chalten, all grubby and tired from SuperTrekking, we headed to El Calafate, a tourist town that has sprung up due to it's proximity to the Perito Moreno Glacier, which is one of the largest glaciers in the world that lies outside of the poles. It is huge. Unspeakable gigantic. And even more fun than being a giant chunk of ice, it actually calves off hunks of ice into the lake on a regular basis, so there were tons of icebergs (ice cubes for those who had been down to the Antarctic) in the glacial lake, and every so often you would hear a huge crash as another piece came heaving off the glacier. This made for exciting watching, and we spent a pleasantly warm (a surprising state of affairs in Patagonia) lunch watching the iceberg, in the hope that another piece would come of. Of course, I managed to betray my Northern Irish roots by suggesting we chucked on a molotov cocktail to speed up the calving process, but thankfully no one took up my suggestion. We also took a boat ride out to the glacier to get a full view of the front of it, which was beautiful - lots of clear, blue ice in incredible formations, betraying any sense of gravity or other natural powers. What must have been truly amazing would have been to dive under the water and see the glacier from below, but of course, that is manically dangerous, what with the potential of an iceberg landing on your head.

After Calafate we crossed the border and went back into Chile, stopping at Puerto Natales, another little tourist town. The main attraction of Puerto Natales is the fact that the Navimag, a boat which sails the Chilean fjords between Puerto Montt and Puerto Natales arrives here, and the proximity of Torres Del Paine National Park. Torres Del Paine is probably the most famous national park in the Patagonia region, and rightly so. It hosts not only fantastic scenery, but some amazing hikes, including El Circuito, and the "W". I did two legs of the "W" whilst I was there, unfortunately leaving out what looked to have been the most spectacular leg (I do have to say that our Tucan guide has not impressed me with her information, and I ought to have relied more upon my old friend Lonely), which was the Frances Valley. Having said that, the first hike we did was the hike to the Torres themselves, which was a lot of fun. It started with a pretty tough hour, then an easy hour, and then a 45min scramble up some boulders to make it to a fabulous viewpoint which is so close to the towers of granite that you can almost touch them. By the time we made it though, the weather had closed in and it was snowing, so we headed down. However, for some reason we decided that it was clearing, so we burned up the scramble again for a second summit, which wasn't really worth it from a photographic point of view, but certainly made me feel that I was at least deserving of large amounts of South American Dairy Milk.

Something in me said that double summits were not enough physical punishment for my body, and I signed up for 8hrs of horse riding through the park the next day. What an amazing experience, alhtough I am still aching from it today! We had an amazingly, authentic gaucho guide, complete with red beret, fabulous leather boots (something that I was deeply envious of, because I have permanent bruises on my calves from my stirrup straps), and a beautiful multi-coloured woven belt. We went trekking through the forests and lakes and rivers of the park, doing a couple of river crossings and several fabulously long canters, on horses that certainly knew their way around the park, although it didn't always make for easy riding. Still, the entire day was absolutely amazing, and at the end of it, we were taken back to the very humble home of the gaucho for coffee and bread with rhubarb jam, which was a sharp reminder of how touch gaucho life seems to be.

Our own campsite was far from tough. Unlike the freezing night I spent SuperTrekking, this time I was using my own sleeping back, the fabulous and faithful Blue Kazoo, so naturally I was toasty warm all night, although the air mattress I had been given had a leak, which did nothing for my already tortured back. I have been plagued by a sore back since I fell off the motorcycle, but I think it is more a case of bad beds and constantly dragging my backpack places. Hopefully it will settle down when I do. The campsite was also complete with the usual tightrope, which I had a go on, and did a little better than last time, managing a whole two steps before having to grab the boys beside me and getting off. We also had generous amounts of wine and food, and were basically well taken care off. Even the weather wasn't horrendous, only raining on the last day. Oh, the final day in the park we did a walk out to the Grey Glacier, which was good, but having seen the opening of the Frances Valley, I know that I would have preferred that leg of the "W". However, transport in the park was problematic, being both expensive and not running the ful timetable, meaning that some hikes were not very accessible whilst we were there. IT was funny though, because Patagonia so far had been pretty empty until we got to Torres, which was positively heaving. I am not sure I would even want to be there in high season.

After Torres, we drove down to Punto Arenas, with the intention of checking out the penguin colony. Penguins proved to be as stupid as I had thought they would be. I wonder if they get frustrated with falling over all the time, and their pathetically short legs. I know, they are extremely graceful when they are in the water, but watching them on land is just too funny for words. I could have done it for hours if it hadn't been so windy that it actually hurt my ears.

And so from Punto Arenas across the Magellen Straits, some more driving, and then Ushuaia, the most southerly city inthe world. The city has a great feel about it - good time tourism is the main order of the day. It is the jumping off point for Antarctica, and right now the boats are empty due to an airline strike, so berths are going very cheaply. Still not cheaply enough for me to jump aboard, but it is extremely tempting. There is also meant to be a deluge of outdoor stores here, but I haven't spotted a bargain, so maybe not. It's a shame, because I was going to get everyone something North Face for Christmas, since I knew that would bring a smile to some faces. Instead, you are all just going to have something strange and colourful from Peru. That is, assuming the airlines stop striking, and I'm not stuck here for ages.

trektastic

2005-11-28T01:42:00.000Z

I haven´t posted for a while, mainly because I simply haven´t had a moment to myself for the last two weeks at all. For the most part, this has been fine, but I am now in serious need of some me time.

Enough of my complaining. I have been having an amazing time for the last two weeks seeing some incredible wide open spaces. Patagonia has the biggest sky I have ever seen - bigger than in Montana or New Zealand. It just goes on forever. However, to get to the big sky, you have to travel for about 2000km on a dirt road, which is not exactly relaxing. Ruta 40 runs down the Patagonian plains of Argentina, and it seems to be the emptiest road in the world. On the first day that we drove it, we saw 2 vehicles, and the second 4. Not the ideal place for hitchhiking or breaking down. Along the drive was also acres and acres of pampa, and the odd wild, or not quite so wild horse. There would also be evidence of human life, such as barbed wire fences and dirt tracks leading out into the distance, but no actual people. There were most likely estancias out and over the hills, but of course, if you have that much space, why would you live near the road?

Bariloche was the first stop in Argentina, and it was a swanky little ski town, filled with chocolate places and cable cars to check out the views. It was very cute, but not really much more than that. After that, two serious days of driving brought us to El Chalten, which is situated right in the centre of Fitzroy National Park. This was my absolute highlight. We hooked up with El Chalten Travel for a two day experience called, originally enough, SuperTrekking. SuperTrekking involved hiking out to a camp, and then dumping our overnight stuff, and then hiking out to the Torre Glacier. This was a fairly tough, muddy hike. We were lucky that the day was fabulously clear, because the last four days had been snow and rain. One of the initial challenges of the day (apart from actually ending up with the wrong trekking company) was crossing the river on a zip-line that we had to pull ourselves along, hand over hand. I found it quite relaxing to stare up at the blue blue sky, so didn´t fancy being hurried, but there were 15 other people who fancied a chance at this, so of course I was yelled at for taking my time.

Once we had crossed the river, it was still another two hours to hike to the glacier, where we did some ice climbing. Ice climbing is rapidly becoming my favourite activity, mainly because it is an activity that completely empties my mind. Whilst climbing, there is simply no space in your head for anything else apart from where you put your axes in and where to place your feet. It´s a great feeling. Unfortunately, we did only one climb before turning back to camp. Camp was fantastic. It was maintained by some climbing guys, who in return for maintaing camp and cooking meals, get paid to go climbing. The camp was gorgeous, in full view were the most amazing mountains that I have ever seen - the Cerro Torre, which are really three chimney like spires that shriek up into the sky. Amazingly beautiful, especially when they glow red-orange in the sunrise. A completely fabulous moment.

The rest of the second day was spent hiking through the park, under Mt Fitzroy, which is also a dynamic rock lifting up into the sky, although it lacked the fiercesome beauty of the Cerro Torre. Our guide also pointed out some puma tracks, which was great, a couple of wild horses, some condors, and then we saw a penumbra round the sun, which was great. Francis actually didn´t want to point it out, because he thought he had blinded himself, but we all saw it, and it was amazing. A sort of brown shadow emanating from the sun. I have no idea why they happen, but I am sure it is something to do with atmosphere and clouds. Anyway, we arrived back at El Chalten grubby and tired, to be bundled onto another bus and to try and sleep again for a couple of hours before getting to El Calafate, the town of the huge Perito Moreno Glacier. More coming soon.

I'll be sliding down the mountain when I come

2005-11-15T20:13:00.000Z

I've spent the last couple of days in Pucon, which is about 800km south of Santiago. It's not quite Patagonia yet, but it's getting there. The main reason to be in Pucon is to climb Villarica, an active volcano that spits out toxic fumes and you can see lava from the edge of the crater. Yesterday's attempt was cancelled due to bad weather, and so instead I went for some training in the gym, somewhere I haven't been since I have been away. In that sense, it was quite novel. I went with a couple of guys from my tour bus, and so we had a "plank" competition, which unfortunately I lost. Turns out I'm not as strong or as fit as I used to be. After that, all the good work done by my 5k was cancelled by hanging out in a coffee shop and eating muffins. Pucon is very much a little ski town, and has a Swiss chalet feel to it, with all the buildings being very tasteful and wooden. Tres chic.

Anyways, today's volcano attempt was successful in that I got to climb the volcano. It was vaguely unsuccessful in that I was utterly bored the entire time I was climbing it (coming down was another matter). The reason for my boredom was the complete cloud cover that we were climbing in, and so the scenery of complete white (we were climbing on snow) did not change for 4hrs. The only thing that was quite amusing was the fact that the climb was completely orchestrated, I think by CONAF's (the national parks people in Chile) request. So there were hordes of people climbing up in single file, and you could see them making their way up the mountain like lemmings. Amusing for a while, but not enough to really make me wonder why I was climbing. The reason I was questioning my motivation is that my original motivation was to see cool volcanic landscapes, and to check out the crater. I then realised that it was going to be so cold that the crater was going to be enveloped in steam, and there was no point. This was actually true - at the top we saw nothing but cloud, although it stank. And my face was partly frozen, as were the tips of my hair. A good look, but not as good as the stripe I have across my forehead from sunburn where my hat was. Anyways, like I said there was no view, but that doesn't mean that the hike was in vain, because we did do one of the most fun descents ever -sliding down the entire mountain on our bums in chutes which have been dug in. It was awesome! Of course, the 4hr ascent took only 45mins to get down, but so worth it. Plus the sun had come out, we could see the summit, the snow was white, and basically, the craic was great. So a wasted morning turned into a great afternoon.

Tonight, the boys are cooking up a steak night for the girls, which is how it should be, and then tomorrow, we're heading for the steak country that is Argentina.

bienvenidos a santiago

2005-11-11T00:31:00.000Z

Contrary to popular belief, I have actually made it to Santiago, although the sim card for my phone did not, and I am now incommunicado. It's like being in the dark ages. Well no, not really, and it will save an awful lot of money, not having the temptation of constant communication available. C'est la vie.

All the guidebooks rave about Santiago's "European"ness. Well, I guess. Yes, there are some beautiful squares, with amazing buildings, and I saw a fantastic open-air photography expo, but it was still extremely grimy, smoggy, with a distinct lack of signs, anywhere. This didn't detract from my pleasant wanderings of the city. I did it in what I call Cara style. Vaguely point myself in the right direction, and wander along stopping at whatever takes my fancy, and hopefully I'll end up at the right spot. It worked very well indeed today, and like I said, I happened upon a great photography display, a school singing pop hymns at San Cristobal (the sight of a very big Virgin Mary, on top of a hill overlooking the city), and some very interesting cafes. The cafes intrigue me no end. There are two main chains - Cafe Haiti, and Cafe Caribe. They both seem to be the same as each other, so far. Anyway, neither of them have anywhere to sit, instead you kinda hover at a counter. So much for relaxing the afternoon away, thinking deep existential thoughts. And even if you did have deep existential thoughts, you would be distracted from them by the waitresses, whose uniform consists of the shortest skirts I have ever seen. No wonder the majority of the clientele was male.

So, the Lonely claimed that I was staying in the "boho" part of town. This morning, I thought that was a stretch, to say the least. I have however, kind of found the cool, studenty part of my wee area, and yes, I do rather like it, although to call it boho is still pushing the boat out. Ah, the Lonely. Sometimes it misses so much by trying so hard. Something I have learnt not to fall for is anywhere the Lonely says "has charm". It's a translation for "is crap, but I'm a traveller, and I love slumming it".

Something has been confusing me for a while, and whilst I am sure it is perfectly simple, I just cannot get my wee blonde head around is the whole crossing of the international date line. I mean, how did I go from 12hrs ahead of my parents, and being awake when they are asleep, to somehow being 5hrs behind them? And how did I get two Wednesday, 9th Novembers? I can't live a day twice! (To make up with this grave error in the universe, I slept through the second one). But seriously, when I was on the plane, what exactly happened. I know that I was alive, and only for 10hrs, but were other people living more? So confusing. Does time really stretch? Someone please help me out on this one.

frequent flyer points

2005-11-11T00:17:00.000Z

I actually do not collect any frequent flyer points, which in light on the recent amount of time I have spent in international air space, is an absolute crime. Anyway, I do have a couple of comments about some airlines.

I started out of Auckland on Singapore Airlines, who were pretty damn good - reasonably spacious seats, good food, complete with menu, so that you could identify what your food was, and, most importantly for a daytime flight, an in-flight entertainment system that included a screen in your seat, and a hard-drive with over 30 movies to choose from. So many that I had a hard time choosing, before eventually going for The Wedding Crashers, and then Crash. Top marks for Singapore.

The rest of my flights were with Lufthansa. For some reason, Lufthansa have a good reputation. God knows why. They suck. Their planes are cramped, their entertainment system is of the old school of screens in the middle of the aisles, their food was shitty (the options really were "chicken or beef?". Not even an explanation of that the chicken and beef were!), and they were late. I had the worst seat in the plane, on the very back row. Now, when I got this seat on LAN, I could still recline, and it was comfortable enough. Not so on Lufthansa, whose seats are cramped enough as it is. Worse is when the guy in front of me reclines so that his seat is actually touching my knees, and there is nowhere for me to go. The flight´s only redeeming features were the two guys beside me who at least sympathised with my pain and made me laugh. Oh, and Lufhthansa kept pushing their revolutionary Flynet service, which is an in-flight broadband service. Well, I don´t want an overpriced ability to check my email (which I couldn´t do anyway, since the seats are so small that laptops are actually at risk if the person in front decides to recline in their seat), I want some choices in my in-flight entertainment. No points for Lufthansa. And negative points for (a) using Frankfurt as a hub - it´s dark, dank, smells of smoke, and has no comfortable seating and (b) grossly overbooking its service to Tel Aviv, meaning that about 30 people did not get on the flight they had booked. Why like this?

Air New Zealand. Ah, I cannot speak highly enough of Air New Zealand, mainly because of their classy service. Their staff were fantastic, their seats comfortable and spacious, and their food fantastic. I had waffles with bacon and maple syrup for breakfast. How awesome is that?

Coming from New Zealand to Santiago, I flew with LAN, so back to the oneworld team, after my dalliance with staralliance. Absolutely no complaints - seats were good, entertainment fine, although they could have had more choices, and the food was okay. Something to note about every single flight I took - I was hungry each time. I don´t know whether it was my fault, or the length of the flights (usually around 10hrs, with just 2meals), or the airlines, but I was starving for much of the flights. Maybe I´m just a greedy bugger.

Anyway, 3wks with no flights at all. Bliss.

more random Israeli notations

2005-11-10T20:52:00.000Z

We went to the movies, twice. And both times, there was an intermission. This is apparently in all movies. Now, I didn´t like it one bit, since it seemed that as soon as things got interesting, there was a ten-minute break, but apparently this is entirely necessary, since Israelis cannot be expected to keep quiet for a whole two hours. Hmmm. Still, they also had popcorn, so I can´t complain.

The best frapuccino in the world is not available at Starbucks. Instead, it is at Aroma, the only place in Hebrew that I can recognise. Hey, needs bring about learning. Anyway, they have a fabulous drink called Aroma Ice, which is lighter and more coffee-y than a regular frap, and therefore delicious. For cold days, they also have a yummy coffee thing which has lumps of coffee at the bottom, all melted and yummy.

Aaah, the food. Highlights include real falafel (of course!), which was just amazingly delicious, with greasy greasy "cheeps", and yummy tahine. I could never finish one, although this state of affairs suited Ori just fine. Also, eating falafel meant that no other meals were required for the day. And the best junk food? Bamba. Like eating peanut butter in wotsit form. Yes, a hard idea to get your head around, but entirely delicious.

The nightlife was fun too. Things don´t get going until late, and my favourite bar was "The Bell". Maybe because free drinks were to be had all night from the Upper West Side kid who was happy to provide the alcohol, since "we were all Jews". Ah well, never mind.

Jaffa (no cakes)

2005-11-10T20:51:00.000Z

Archway in Jaffa
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

Yes, my favourite biscuit and an old port collide all at once, and the result is a beautiful old town, complete with tiny cobbled alleyways, views of the surfers at Tel Aviv (who knew?), and at least 10 weddings having their picturesque photos being taken. Remind me never to get a dress made in Israel. Each one of the girls was wearing the most ugly attempts at couture I have ever seen. Meringues seemed to be in vogue, and lots of blonde hair. Not a good look on what were otherwise probably quite pretty Arab girls. Having said that, nothing could dampen the beauty of the gorgeous cobbled streets filled with tiny artist´s galleries that was Jaffa. This was so close to one of the most ghetto places I have ever been, which was regular Jaffa (not the old town), where girls wore white knee high boots, car exhausts may have been gun shots, and everything was generally run-down and horrible. Still, driving through during the day meant it was all pretty safe. After wandering Jaffa, we headed to the flea market, where, like all flea markets, gorgeous furniture jostled with ghastly attempts at tastefulness, and bargains could be had, if you were patient. Definitely a place I could have spent hours if (a) I had a place to live, (b) I had space in my backpack) and (c), if I had any spare cash, which I most definitely don´t. 7 months of travelling has most definitely taken a toll on my finances! Still, only 6wks left to go. I think I can handle it, especially if I stop eating.

The Middle Eastern San Francisco?

2005-11-10T20:44:00.000Z

Bahai Gardens, Haifa
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

I wasn´t too sure of this title myself, but that is how the tourist information referred to the city of Haifa. Haifa is on the Mediterranean coast, and was indeed pretty, although not, admittedly up to San Franciscoan standards. What was notable, however, was the Bahai Gardens. These are the center point of the Bahai religion, of which I am completely ignorant. The gardens, however, were amazingly beautiful and luxurious. I am not a huge fan of wandering around tended places, being a bigger fan of the great outdoors, but this place reminded me so much of my grandfather, and how much he would have loved it, and I couldn´t help but be impressed.

Yes, I am a heathen

2005-11-10T20:41:00.000Z

The second coming
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

It was time to see some sights outside of Jerusalem. First stop - the Dead Sea, officially the lowest place on earth. For the entire time that we were below sea level, I had to hold my breath. And it was for 2 days!!! I had no idea my lungs could be so strong. Okay, not really, but it was still a strange feeling to be so, well, low.

The Dead Sea had a kind of viscous, oily texture, and I can´t say that I loved it. I mean, it´s dead, for a start. Plus, there are very few free beaches, lots of entreprenurial chaps have set up nice businesses charging for admittance. In exchange for however many scheckels (I have to admit to not spending a single penny whilst in Israel - my darling boy took care of the finances), you got a sun lounger, a shower, and access to some mud and very salty water. We didn´t shell out, and instead kind of snuck on for about 5 minutes just to test the water. Maybe next time, if it is warmer I will take a dip and feel its redemptive powers, but I wasn´t tempted this time.

The detour to the Dead Sea was on route to Masada, a clifftop structure constructed by King Herod and later used in a siege against the Romans. After walking up the Snake Trail (we declined the easy option of taking the cable car), we reached the summit, which was a remarkably well preserved ancient (2,000+ years) fort-like structure. Parts of it had been rebuilt, which I didn´t agree with, but most of it was "as is". It was an incredible structure, and easy to defend, being on the top of a bitch of a hill. Eventually, the Romans actually built a ramp up to the fort. And to do this, they employed 10,000 Jews. Clever guys those Romans. I have to admit to not really knowing what they were fighting over, but probably that Judaism was bad, and that Romans were good. Still, the Romans eventually won, after years of siege. It was an impressive place, and you could see huge dust/sand storms on the other side of the Dead Sea. There were also plenty of carrion birds, it being the desert. Ori didn´t know that crows poke out baby lambs eyes, so now he doesn´t like them any more. That´s a good thing.

After Masada we drove north past Jericho to the kibbutz where Ori´s grandfather had lived. I have to admit to knowing nothing about kibbutzes, apart from that they were vaguely socialist, and that they weren´t doing so hot. People keep leaving them, because they are restricted by what they can do, since what they do must be for the good of the kibbutz. This means that if the kibbutz needs more cattle-hands, then you can´t go be a computer programmer. Even if you are a wuss and scared of dear old Bessie the cow. Okay, I have probably got that totally wrong, and will feel the wrath of the kibbutzen when they read this, but the basic fact is that they are having a hard time at the moment. Whenever we went there, the first thing that we noticed was being stared at. Like nothing else. This is because outsiders are not common, especially ones who aren´t speaking Hebrew. So eyes followed us as we went to the supermarket, as we wandered around the supermarket, and as we went back to where we were staying. This didn´t really bother me at all, since being blond in Nepal and being a girl in Vietnam has basially left me being immune to large numbers of people staring. The next morning, we wandered around, and the main thing that I noticed was that it was blissfully quiet - such a peaceful place. We went to where Ori played as a kid, and it was such a good playground. Much better than anything I had. A really beautiful place.

The kibbutz was in the north, near the Sea of Galilee, which was our next stop. The Sea of Galilee is notable for being the second lowest place on earth (I´m still holding my breath), and for some religious dude apparently walking on it. It also is home to some seriously vicious currents, and tons of fish. Ori used to swim the length of it (I wish I knew how long it was, but it looked a really long way), and he says parts of it were so shallow that he could see how the standing trick was done. I however went one better, and found a tyre slightly submerged, and stood on that. See, any fool could do it. And this is what two thousand years of Christianity is founded upon? Oh dear. Actually, it was a pretty nice place to hang out at, and on the other side of the sea is Jordan. I love looking over borders. I think it comes from living on an island, and therefore land borders are pretty surreal. It was lunch time then, so time to start driving West.

The Chosen Land and the Holy People

2005-11-10T20:21:00.000Z

IMG_3521
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

It´s funny to think that I am one of the most sacriligeous, heathen people I know, and yet, I have been to perhaps the most religious country in the world, the centre of the three great monotheistic religions. And despite the lack of theological guidance in my life, it was an amazing experience.

I was in Israel to visit my boyfriend, Ori, a native to the Holy Land. He was able to show me around and give me the insider´s viewpoint, although the occasional refrain of "a map might have been useful" was sometimes heard. He couldn´t help getting us occasionally lost; he actually hasn´t lived in the country for about 5 years. Still, he proved to be an exceptional host, and managed to take me almost the entire lenght and breadth of the country. The only major place that we missed was Eilat, and we can do that next time. By the way, Israel is pretty small, so the length and breadth took us only 2 days.

Ori lives just outside of Jerusalem, so it made sense to start there. Jerusalem is the seat of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, and also home to some of the biggest religious conflicts in Israel. Notably, all peace plans for the Middle East leave a sort of blank space where discussion over the future of Jerusalem should be, for fear of not bringing parties to the table. Nobody really knows that the future of the city will be.

Anyways, aside from politics, it is an amazing city. Ori first took me to the Old City, where the streets and archways are around 3,00o years old. It is here where the Western Wall is, one of the holiest sites in Judaism, and where men and women (separately) come to pray. Many write their prayers on small pieces of paper and stuff them in the cracks. The stones that were used to build the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall) are up to 2m thick, and no one knows how the stones were put in place. They were built before the Pyramids. I have to admit to not going up to the Wailing Wall myself, mainly because I am a non-believer. With so many people coming to make religious pilgrimages, I would have felt bad to just wander up and check it out myself. I think that harks back to the same reason why I cannot take pictures of monks. Maybe because of my lack of relgion I have a fairly large respect for those who are.

The streets of the Old City are compact, narrow, and filled with people. They weave in all directions, and I never knew where I was going. This was a good time to have a guide, but even if I hadn´t, it wouldn´t have been too hard to have latched onto one of the many tour groups being shown around the city. These comprised mainly of Eastern Europeans, who had, without a doubt, the worst fashion sense I have ever seen. There was one woman in jeans that were pvc from the knee down. Another woman had a fitted flower printed pvc shirt. And it was hot out. I can only imagine how much she was sweating. It was truly grim.

Through the windy streets we went, and ended up in a very important church - that where Jesus was buried. I have to admit to not being to hot on the whole ascension thing, but I saw an amazing building, said to be his tomb, that was decorated with a glorious mismatch of candles, and some very, very holy dudes who were allowed inside to pray. I also saw a broken piece of rock - I have a feeling it broke when Jesus lay on it, but I´m not too sure. Anyways, I think this church was the last stop on the Via Dolorosa - the walk of tears, on which Jesus carried his cross. Anyways, the church itself was extremely beautiful, and not in an over the top, grandiose, European Catholic way. It was large, certainly, and had amazing high ceilings and art-work, but it was lacking in the masses of gold that is so often used in Europe. To get to this church, we walked through some of the oldest Christian churches in the world, which were being tended by what seemed to be Ethiopian monks. These were tiny rooms, small, dark, low-ceilinged and almost stark. All incredibly fascinating.

After exploring the Old City, it was time for modernity. A couple of days later, we went to Yad Vashem - the Holocaust Museum. I have been to Holocaust museums all over Europe, and the famous one in DC, but to go to one in Israel is particularly special. Of course, there was little new to tell, but that didn´t make the memorial any less special. In fact, it was the "extras", that which was outside of the museum, which was particularly special. Ori told me how he would take his soldiers there, since education in the IDF was particularly important, and seeing all the soldiers there was interesting. The most special, or touching part of the whole area, was Children´s Memorial, an amazing trick of light and dark and mirrors, where 6 candles are endlessly reflected against mirrors in the dark to represent the 6 million who died. It was amazing. More amazing to think that the modern state of Israel, and many of the people who live there today, had lost so many to the Holocaust itself. A very intense place.

the very top of new zealand

2005-10-23T23:29:00.000+01:00

I have seen where two oceans collide, and it was beautiful. You could actually see the change in colour of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean, and there was even a random wave, right out in the middle of the sea. It was incredible. This all took place at Cape Reinga, the most northern tip of New Zealand. It was an amazingly beautiful and spiritual place - the Maoris believe that it is where souls come when people die to depart from the world. It was a very typical, end of the world kind of place - windswept, cliffs, crashing seas. Perfect.

I went up with a company called Awesome Adventures, who were okay, but, like most tour companies, tried to do way too much, and so you only got to spend a little time each place, which was disappointing. It was part of my cut-price Kiwi Experience pass, so I guess it was value for money, but I would be pissed if I had payed top dolla for it. It was a very long day, with a ton of time in the coach, although driving along Ninety Mile Beach was cool - it's a recreational highway in New Zealand, and it actually closer to 90km, but still cool. We also went sandboarding, which was fun until a dumbass Swiss guy tried to do it from this really steep place where there was no stopping area, and knocked himself out. We helped him when he came to, and the DOC got him in an ambulance. I helped him, but had no sympathy.

Tonight its back to Auckland, and then a couple of days tidying things up before Israel. Too exciting to be true, apart from the minor detail of 3 flights to get through to get there. Eeesh.

hangi and volcanoes

2005-10-20T04:16:00.000+01:00

It's my last week in New Zealand, and so I am attempting to cram as much as I can into each day, despite being completely exhausted. Sometimes, I have to admit, travelling does wear you out, but then again, I am kidding myself with the logic that if I am really, really tired, then I might sleep on my innumerable flights to Israel. Either that, or I will be so exhausted that I will sleep for 10 days and poor Ori's family will think that the Irish are lazy layabouts. Which mightn't be too far from the truth, but it wasn't me who said it.

Anyway, what have I been doing? Well, firstly, the finest day hike in NZ for a start. The Tongariro Crossing bills itself pretty highly, and the fact that you have to get up at 5.30am to get a bus at 6.20 from Taupo means that it had better be worth all that effort, but my god, it was. I went with Farideh, a girl I met in Christchurch, who is currently being employed as a kayaking guide for the summer in Taupo - nice work if you can get it. Actually, she told me I would make a great guide, so maybe I'll jack in my lucrative career in financial IT and become an "ever-summerer". Anyways, I was in safe hands, since she is all trained in lots of wilderness guiding, although she managed to identify some mist as a lake, fall over on the volcanic rock, and we both thought that Lake Taupo was the ocean. (Well, it is the largest lake in NZ, and, as we keep getting reminded, you can fit Singapore inside it.) Anyways, despite these clear setbacks, we had a fabulous day. The weather was clear enough to see Taranaki, a beautiful cone-shaped volcano in the far distance, which was incredible. It did look like Mt Fuji, and has been used as a stand-in for it. The hike itself was fun - there was one super-hard bit at the beginning, the aptly named Devil's Staircase, and then after that, it was just amazing volcanic landscape for miles. We could see the snow-covered Ruapehe, Tongariro, and another volcano who's name I can never remember, apart from it was used as Mt Doom in LOTR. Having said that, I could see no resemblance, again. I need to go watch those movies again and see whether I recognise the landscapes. I think I may have said this before, but I have a theory that the whole LOTR being shot in NZ is actually a grandiose scheme by the New Zealand tourism board which holds no truth whatsover. It's worked out very well for them.

The trail took us across a couple of volcanic craters, which were incredibly with steaming back and red rock, and then down to a triptych of emerald lakes, which were stunningly beautiful, and then to a blue lake. All these lakes were coloured because of their incredible chemical toxicity, although I had to wonder how many Maori and Westerners died of arsenic poisoning before people worked out not to swim or drink from those amazing waters. Finally, there was 4hrs of wandering through native bush, which looked rather like Scotland, and we were home. What a fantastic day. The sun shone, the craic was good, and we were pleasantly worn out when we were done. Even the trip home was eventful, with a light aircraft crashing into a house just 5mins before we drove past it. Rather scary looking crash site, but both the pilot and his passenger survived.

Last night I got to Rotorua (which my bus driver just loved saying), and then headed straight to a hangi and cultural experience. A hangi is a traditional Maori meal cooked underground by heated stones, but before we got to eat, we watched an hour of traditional dances and exercises. Wow. If I had arrived in the eighteenth century and been confronted by a Maori warrior dancing and being all ceremonial in front of me, I would have been on the first boat off. I'm surprised NZ has any Europeans at all. Those dudes were scary. It was an amazing sight though, and definitely to be recommened. The food was amazing as well (lamb! sweet potato! chocolate log!) and we even got to see glow-worms. A great night indeed.

This morning (see? It never stops) I went to Wai-o-Tapo Thermal Wonderland, which was very interesting - amazing colours, and lots of bubbling mud pools and hot hot water. It did remind me of Yellowstone though, and the geyser was pretty touristy (they added soap to it!). Still worth heading out to though. Finally, this afternoon I gave myself a rest by heading to Starbucks and having a nice wee capuccino. And tomorrow, the rushing around starts again, by heading to Auckland via the glow-worm caves at Waitomo. I'm excited about that. Pretty blue lights everywhere!

the more time I spend here, the better it gets

2005-10-16T08:20:00.000+01:00

It's true. Everything about New Zealand just gets better and better. I have just spent an amazing couple of days in Abel Tasman National Park, doing one of the most beautiful hikes I have ever done - the Abel Tasman Coastal Track. It helped that the sun was shining the entire time, accentuating the golden sands of the utterly empty golden beaches and the amazing green of the calm calm waters. The track was almost deserted, and it was just me, meandering along a fairly easy track that hugged the coast, dropping down into amazing coves and estuaries (these weren't quite as much fun since they involved getting wet, wet feet), then rising up again to the cliffs to give a perfect bird's eye view of the coastline. It was a truly inspiring walk, and easy enough to take 2hours off in the middle to laze on a beach, contemplating how wonderful life was and to do some reading. How perfect. I then arrived at the spartan but comfortable DOC hut to bunk down for the night with other trekkers. I was quite surprised by how long people were taking to do the hike, but then again, my pack was pretty light, so I guess I could go faster. Although some may not believe it, I really can travel light when I absolutely have to. Anyways, no electricity meant an early night (the beach was beautiful in the dark, but I always prefer starlight to moonlight - the only disappointment of the trip. And if that's the only disappointment, well then things are good!), and my trusty blue kazoo kept me cosy all night. Ironically enough, waking up the next morning proved to be my biggest lie-in in a long time, since I didn't haul my ass out of my sleeping bag until 8.30am. Well, my kayaking team weren't picking me up until 9.30, and with no towel, I wasn't exactly in a position to linger in the shower. The kayaking team, Kaiteriteri Kayaks, were fantastic. My guide was an enthusiastic and exuberant guy called Tassie, and there were another 7 of us kayaking. We ended up covering about 18km, which I thought was pretty impressive. The coastline was completely beautiful, calm in the coves, and blustery out at sea. It was actually the closest I have ever come to capsizing a sea-kayak, with the waves being about 3ft. Still, a ton of fun, particularly if you timed the paddling right to catch the wave. We were well-fed and happy little paddlers as we covered the coast, checking out tiny private beaches and Split Apple Rock, all whilst telling (making up) Maori legends about the naming of all the beaches. A really fun day, which was suitably exhausting.

I got the bus and ferry up to Wellington today, and it is just a wonderful city. Of course, I think that any city which has a street of bohemian cafes playing cool music and serving fair trade coffee is awesome, but this one also has great shops and apparently an amazing museum - Te Papa, which I am checking out tomorrow. Unfortunately, because of weather restraints, I am burning up to Taupo tomorrow afternoon to try and do the Tongariro crossing on Tuesday, when there is a weather window. Otherwise, it simply wouldn't be happening, but that's a good thing - the faster I get north, the more likely I am to be able to see the far north, which I am really trying to do, if I have enough time. Ah, time, such a pressing restraint with only 10 more days in New Zealand. I already have a list as long as my arm of all the things I want to do when I come back.

reading list

2005-10-13T06:44:00.000+01:00

Travelling alone makes you really value your books. Furthermore, they become a kind of economy. Every book read can be traded for a new book, albeit the choice of second-hand books is most definitely random. I want to try and keep a track of what I've read, and I am certainly open to suggestions about things to look out for. The books so far, in order, are:

1. The Promise of Happiness: Justin Cartwright.
2. Bergdorf Blondes: Plum Sykes.
3. The Cutting Room: Louise Welsh.
4. The Other Side of the Story: Marian Keyes.
5. Generation Kill: Evan Wright.
6. The Snow Leopard: Peter Matthiesson.
7. Angels and Demons: Dan Brown.
8. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Jean-Dominique Bauby.
9. The Reader: Bernard Schlink.
10. Dance Dance Dance: Haruki Murakami.
11. Where the Heart is: Billie Letts.
12. The Russian Debutante's Handbook: Gary Shteyngart.
13. Boo Hoo: Ernst Malmsten.
14. Absolute Friends: John Le Carre.
15. The Lost Continent: Bill Bryson.
16. Spies: Michael Frayn.
17. The Sportswriter: Richard Ford.
18. The Handmaid's Tale: Margaret Atwood.
19. The Right Stuff: Tom Wolfe.
20. The Lovely Bones: Alice Sebold.
21. The Love Secrets of Don Juan: Tim Lott.
22. The Witches of Eastwick: John Updike.
23. Travels With Charley: John Steinbeck.
24. The Quiet American: Graham Greene.
25. The Curious Incident of the Dog at Nightime: Mark Haddon.
26. A Long Way Down: Nick Hornby.
27. The Line of Beauty: Alan Hollinghurst.
28. The Rule of Four: Ian Caldwell.
29. Tuesdays with Morrie: Mitch Albom.
30. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: Haruki Murakami.
31. The Secret Life of Bees: Sue Monk Kidd.
32. Transmission: Hari Kunzru.
33. Oryx and Crake: Margaret Atwood.
34. Independence Day: Richard Ford.
35. Birdsong: Sebastian Faulks.
36. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: Carson McCullers.
37. 50 Things You Want to Know About World Issues: Keith Suter.
38. The Stone Diaries: Carol Shields.
39. A Lesson Before Dying" Ernest Gaines.
40. Atonement: Ian McEwan.
41. The Alphabet Sisters: Monica McInerney.
42. The Kite Runner: Khaled Hosseini
43. The Little Lady Agency: Hester Browne.
44. I Don't Know How She Does It: Allison Pearson.
45. I Am Charlotte Simmons: Tom Wolfe.
46. Sophie's Choice: William Styron.
47. The Unbearable Lightness of Being: Milan Kundera.

warmth!

2005-10-13T06:34:00.000+01:00

For the first time since I have been in New Zealand, I actually had too many clothes on. How shocking. Today was definitely skirts and sandals weather, but I was in my canvas trews instead. Wowee. Well, the bus driver did tell me that Nelson was the sun capital of New Zealand, and he wasn't wrong. It was glorious today. The only shame was the fact that I was in town and not in Abel Tasman, where I head to tomorrow for an overnight hiking and kayaking trip. Fingers crossed the good weather holds.

Nelson has got to be one of the most liveable towns I have ever seen. Everywhere you look it is just green! The town is built on small hills that rise out of the coastline, and lots of the green forest has been left in place, which makes it incredibly picturesque. Furthermore, the town has way too much temptation on the commercial front (yes, my credit card took another beating, and I have yet more books to weigh down my backpack), as well as vineyards and galleries to tempt the more culturally minded. I had such a good day wandering the streets, having coffee, buying books (definitely my favourite thing to purchase), and then stopping into Queens Gardens, of which my Grampa would have been pleased about. There were mainly roses in the gardens though, and not enough rhodedendrons for his taste. Many of my childhood memories consist of being taken round various National Trust gardens in Northern Ireland and checking out vast bushes of rhodedendrons. I have to admit they are not my favourite plant, but he was a big fan.

Tomorrow I have to get up at 6am to be picked up at 7am for the Abel Tasman trip. This morning was my first lie-in in forever, and even then, I only lasted until 9.15am. I think it is clearly a sign of growing up that I can't lie in bed forever. I actually rather miss it. Although, I am sure, if I try really really hard, I will be able to do it again. But not whilt I am in New Zealand - too many things to do.

Today I deliberately fell into a crevasse

2005-10-11T07:21:00.000+01:00

Well, I actually allowed myself to be lowered into the crevasse on a rope, with the intention of climbing out of it. I had actually paid for this experience, and better than that, was enjoying it. Ice-climbing has definitely been a highlight of my time in New Zealand, and Fox has been a pretty good place to me.

I've been in Fox about four days now, and yesterday I managed to get out in the chopper for the heli-hike. This was so cool - we got to see beautiful blue caves and archways, as well as deeep crevasses and amazing seracs being pushed up from the ice, all tinged blue from the sun. The ice was clean and free from dirt, and also, maybe best of all, we got to ride in a helicopter. This is rapidly becoming my favourite form of transport, and in order to continue this expensive habit, I will either have to join the armed forces (unlikely), become rich and famous (even less likely) or become one of those people who goes up in helicopters to look at traffic congestion (an interesting career choice which I hadn't considered up until now). I don't think there are many helicopters in the hectic world of financial IT. Still, you never know.

We had about an hour and a half of ice-time, which doesn't sound like much, but we didn't have to go through any crappy moraine, just beautiful clean ice, and furthermore, it was driving rain, so we were getting pretty chilled, despite the 10 zillion layers that had been kindly loaned to us by Alpine Guides. So an hour and a half was plenty of time to wander about, take beautiful photographs, and get a feel for the sheer size and power of the Fox Glacier.

But I really hadn't had enough here, had I? So, this morning I dragged myself out of bed at another ungodly hour (lie-ins just aren't happening in New Zealand - even when I slept through my flight I woke at only 9.05) to be a little bit more daring and see the ice with a completely different perception. Abel was our guide, and he was fantastic. He kitted us up with our crampons, ice axes, harnesses, helmets, backpacks, Columbia windproofs, (why rip my jacket with an ice axe when I can rip somebody else's instead?) and more warm clothes. Once we were adequately kitted out, it was out to the glacier, where he taught us basic moves, such as french technique and using our toes and axes. Then, we attempted faces. The first one was pretty cool and pretty easy - just a simple wall of about 20m, no real features to deal with on it - all pretty nice. Then, it all got a bit more complicated. The next climb we did was really awesome. We (there was only two of us learning - the other guy was a 6'4" German guy who had already climbed, so I didn't feel too bad about sucking compared to him) abseiled into a crevasse that was about 25m deep and only about 1.5m wide at its narrowest point, and then climbed up. It was plenty of fun, and a lot more challenging, particularly since I was entertainment for a day climb, who I know were willing me to fall. I only did that trying to come up over the overhanging lip at the top. Fine and dandy. We had a damn hard climb after that involving a funky leap to start with, and then, on the final climb, my arms just died. I could have cried with frustration, pain, exhaustion, anger, everything, but instead I just had to quit, which sucked. I mean, I shouldn't really feel any shame about it, but it's hard to try and tell your arms to do something and they quite simply wouldn't move. Abel lowered me off the climb, and when I reached stable ice, my whole body was shaking with fatigue. That was the last climb though, and it was a completely thoroughly rewarding day. I do have to admit that I am tempted to go again when I get back to Scotland, or maybe at the glaciers in Patagonia. I am sure that pleases my mother greatly.

Tomorrow I'm sitting up a bus for 12hours to get to Nelson, which I am actually looking foward to, since my whole body is pretty damn exhausted. My knees are completely bruised for falling off the ice onto them. They are going to be blue tomorrow I am sure. Once I get to Nelson, I am planning on doing the Abel Tasman trek, but I am undecided how much I will kayak and how much I will walk. I guess it all depends on the weather, which will, in all honestly, be most likely rain. Like the rest of New Zealand so far!

when mobile phone batteries die...

2005-10-09T03:10:00.000+01:00

You get stuck with a day of doing nothing. Last night my mobile phone battery died, meaning that the alarm didn't go off the next morning. (This is a big design fault, because on my previous nokia, even if the battery died, there was enough juice in it to set the alarm off.) I woke up at 9.05, precisely the time I was supposed to be boarding a funky little helicopter to go sweeping over the Fox Glacier. It was even a beautifully sunny clear day. I was not a happy bunny, although I clearly needed the sleep. I signed up for the 12noon flight, but of course since then, in true NewZee fashion, the weather has closed in and it has been raining for hours. So the day has been spent reading a book instead, which had actually been rather pleasurable. Sometimes, it is nice to just sit and read and chill. Furthermore, the book I'm reading, Birdsong, definitely needed a couple of hours dedication to actually get into it.

Almost everything I have wanted to do in New Zealand has been cancelled due to weather - Siberia Expeditions, the heli-hiking, the Routeburn Track. A heli-trek up to Chancellor's Dome was cancelled because of filming on the upper glaciers, and the train to Arthur's Pass, one of the top five great train journeys in the world is also not on whilst they build a tunnel. I'm pretty upset about that one, since I am a bit of a train geek. Still, I've been having an amazing time here, and basically this is a trip for learning where I want to go next time. I also have more time on the North Island, which will be fun too, since originally I only had a week there. Now I'll have about two. I'll just have to come back in the middle of summer here, and book all my hut passes months in advance. Oh, and save about $5000 for all the fun things I have missed out on. Ah, my poor wee credit card!

mountains and mountains and sounds/fjords

2005-10-07T04:26:00.000+01:00

I've been in New Zealand for almost two weeks, but it feels like so much longer, because I have been doing so much. It is such an incredibly beautiful country, although the bus system sometimes leaves a lot to be desired.

After leaving Christchurch from Kaikoura, I headed down to Mt Cook, which is the highest mountain in NZ. I stayed in one of the nicest backpackers I have been in - the YHA in the park itself, and it had a funky, stuck in the middle of nowhere atmosphere, and therefore everyone was pretty sociable. I think the cameraderie of being stuck in a national park in the absolute pouring rain had something to do with it though. Still, the next day cleared halfway through my hike up the Hooker Valley, and I had some amazing view of Mt Cook and the surrounding peaks. Fabulous. Although my feet have eiher changed shape, or my boots have, because they have started to blister me, despite the fact they caused me no trouble in the Himalayas at all. Strange.

After my illustrious hike it was another bus ride to Queenstown, the adrenaline capital of the world, or the capital of stupid sports, whichever you prefer. I wandered into the Southern Laughter backpacker, and immediately met someone who wanted to go hiking, and six people who wanted to go drinking, so it was a fine start, although the hangover the next day was none too pleasant. After a day of lolling around feeling vaguely sorry for myself, I signed up for the rite of passage that is bungy jumping with AJ Hackett, and a jetboat down the shotover river, just to make sure that I managed to scare myself as stupid as possible in the shortest amount of time. Bunjying off the kawarau bridge turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, although being the second person of the day is not advisable, because you have no idea how long the experience will be (about 10seconds, of which maybe 3 are the initial freefall), or how you are going to be rescued from the cord (ungracefully hauled into a boat). It was a whole lot of fun, and I didn't get dunked, which is what I asked for. The only bad thing was discovering that I have gained 6kg (6kg!!!!) since I was in Thailand. How horrendous.

With that sobering thought in mind, I headed down to Te Anau, the gateway to Milford Sound with Richard. The plan was to do some hikes, maybe on the Routeburn track, but the weather wasn't really happening for us, so we took a cruise on Milford Sound, which was incredible. We drove down in the pouring rain, watching thousands of waterfalls stream of the sheer granite rockfaces, before the landscape opened up into the sound, which is actually a fjord. It was completely shrouded in mist, and continued to be for the first half of the cruise, until we came out onto the Tasman Sea. We then looked back, and the sun was shining, the fog was lifting, and the full force of the sound, with Mitre Peak, a mile high, forcing its way out of the deep water. It was completely spectacular. It is said that really there are two Milford Sounds - Milford in the sun, and Milford in the rain. The joy of the changeable weather of Southland is that it was possible for us to see both within a 2hr period, and then to drive back along the same drive, seeing incredible alpine peaks which had previously been hidden just added to the magic of the day.

Some activity had to be undertaken in Te Anau, so Richard and I did a day hike on the Kepler Track, which is actually a 3 day hike. It was fun to be actually hiking again, since the weather was good - cold, but good. Having said that, there were a lot of trees on the hike. Hiking just made me want to do more, but weather and transport are big issues down here, and neither of them were working out well for us. Still, I already know that I am coming back here in a couple of years, so hiking will be given another chance.

If you can't hike, what is the best way of seeing the Sound? In a tiny plastic unstable boat right at sea level (although Richard and Johnny did have to ask the altitude!). Sea-kayaking on Milford Sound was an incredible, beautiful experience, with highlights being 4 bottlenose dolphins playing with us for 45mins, and spotting a penguin swimming along. The lowpoints would definitely be the snow, the hail, and the rain that were a constant the whole time we were out, although we were exceptionally cosy in our 8zillion layers as provided by the kayaking company (Fiordland Wilderness). We were out for about 3 or 4hours, which was a mite too long, and my wrists are now absolutely agony for some reason. And again, once we were off the water, in only an hour, the weather cleared to become absolutely beautiful.

So, I am all done with Southland, and have come up to Wanaka, the last town before Mt Aspiring National Park. I was very excited about doing a Rob Roy Valley trek, but the weather is looking a little messy, so maybe I'll go horseriding or something else instead. Spring seems to be a pretty changeable time of year down at this part of the world, so sun one day, snow the next. One thing I know for sure is that I am going for a couple of drinks tonight with two guys I met in my backpacker, the Purple Cow. We'll be heading to Shooters, the local nightspot. Fun times.

misty galway days

2005-09-29T09:57:00.000+01:00

Kaikoura in the rain looks exactly like the West of Ireland, and it filled me with a silly, happy feeling to be so far from home in a completely familiar environment. Hiking along in the damp, mizzly rain, a sharp wind coming off the sea, wandering along steep, craggy cliffs (but not too close to the edge, Mum!), and coming across the odd sheep. How perfect.

Even more perfect was for the sun to burn the fog away to reveal snow-capped alpine peaks cutting across a perfect blue sky and rushing down to the sea, to go running along a perfectly flat beach path whilst looking up at mountain faces and feeling the sun warm on my back.

More perfect still was to spend a morning in a nippy little catermeran looking for dusky dolphins on a perfectly clear day, in the hope of swimming with them. Of course, perfection would be actually swimming with them, but unfortunately, today they weren't playing ball. Never mind. Maybe I'll get a chance to swim with them up in the Bay of Islands - I still had a glorious morning out on the ocean, checking out very big birds (albatrosses) and watching the cute little dolphins swim around the boat.

And the only downer? Coming a close second in a pub quiz on account of not knowing enough about sex. Damnation. This is after getting lots of very hard science questions right, revealing my inner geek and my knowledge of when the atomic clock was developed, as well as how many bits to the byte, and where the US Masters is played. My father would be proud.

oooooh it's cold

2005-09-27T10:12:00.000+01:00

New Zealand is a lot colder than Australia, particularly the balmy climes of Airlie Beach, but especially if you go to the International Antarctica Centre, where you can experience a simulated storm in -18 degrees - nice! Actually, a whole lot of fun, and also a good learning experience about what people actually do at the South Pole. Apart from studying seals and penguins and thousands of years of ice, they also have toga parties, get drunk, and go swimming in the ice. Pretty normal really.

This fascinating place is in Christchurch, where I flew into yesterday afternoon. I have immediately fallen in love with NZ, mainly because the people I have met already are awesome. I'm staying at Base, where everyone stays, pretty much, it seems, and have met zillions of people, who are all doing Kiwi Experience. I actually am not doing it, since I would like to have a bit more freedom to go where I want when I want, but it does seem to be a great way of meeting people. I've gone for a more public bus pass, which is pretty a-b, no frills. That's more what I wanted though. Tomorrow I'm heading up to Kaikoru, where I can swim with dolphins and go whale watching, as well as do some cool hikes along the coast. Then its down to Mt Cook. I'm naturally very excited about all the incredible scenery, and have actually been going running to try and get myself a little fitter for hiking.

Base backpackers are a bit swanky, and I'm staying in the Sanctuary, which is girls only, and I get free Aveda shampoo, as well as a towel. The towel was what swung it for me, since I am more than sick of my ratty trektowel. Tomorrow though, its back to real backpackers, and some serious serious budgeting. New Zealand, it has to be said, is an expensive place to be, especially if you want to do things like dolphin swimming and kayaking and ice climbing. That's the unfortunate but great thing about travelling - you get all these amazing opportunities, but at the same time, there is a pressure to experience everything. Maybe I'll have to start selling my belongings or something.

blue seas, blue skies

2005-09-25T00:41:00.000+01:00

Whitehaven Beach on Whitsunday Island is undoubtedly the most beautiful beach I have ever been to. It was absolutely incredible. Swirling white sands, turquoise waters, and absolutely deserted when we arrived, which was also amazing. The only drawback was the fear of swimming because of the pesky jellyfish (box and something else incredibly evil), which if they stung you could render you paralysed, or in intensive care. Not so fun. Some girl (not in our boat) did get stung whilst we were out sailing, and was vomiting profusely. Poor thing.

Anyways, back to the fantastic time I had sailing around the Whitsundays. We were on a 53' boat called Ragamuffin II, and used to be sailed in the Sydney-Hobart race. She was gorgeous. 53' isn't a whole lot of boat compared to the 80' maxi-yachts we saw, but she was nippy, and it was fun to sail her properly, and feel her keel come almost entirely out of the water when the wind was just right. Tons of fun. Plus, the people I was sailing with were excellent fun - 2 med students from Cardiff, who were a blast, an American exchange student, a South African girl who's next stop was India, two OC girls, an Irish couple, and a warring German couple. Furthermore, our crew were just two people, Ian and Andrea, who were engaged, and we were also able to spy on their relationshop as well - nothing like a bit of gossip to draw people together! The first day we sailed to Whitehaven, the second we sailed around a bit more (sorry, don't remember any names) and had the best steak I've had whilst travelling done on the barbie, and the third we went to an incredibly swanky resort on South Molle Island where we were able to swim in a pool, hike to a viewpoint, play golf in our bikinis (but we didn't do that one) and drink cocktails, before heading back to harbour and a night of fun in Airlie Beach. We all came back tan as anything, not so hungover, and in fine, fine spirits. The ebullient mood continued right into the early hours of the morning, possibly due to the free jugs of sangria provided by the yachting company that night. One dodgy club, a wet t-shirt competition, and a trip into an Irish bar made for a fun night out, and I crawled into bed for 3hrs sleep before getting my flight back to Sydney. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get anyone's email address, and so all my new friends are gone forever again.

Yes, back in Sydney. Well, Bondi to be exact, for my last days in Australia. Australia is a funny place, and I haven't exactly loved it. Places have been incredibly beautiful, and I have loved them individually - Melbourne is a great city, Byron has an awesome vibe and good surf, the Whitsundays are truly beautiful, but so much of backpacker culture on the East Coast is purely obsessed with getting drunk, and I am rather over getting drunk all the time. Don't get me wrong - I still love to party, and that's exactly what I did in Airlie, but it's not why I travel; its not the be all and end all of why I'm here, and for a lot of backpackers it does seem to be the case. Furthermore, it does sometimes seem to be a little Britain, which is a million miles away from where I want to be. I have been told that New Zealand is completely different, and I'm really looking forward to meeting backpackers who aren't travelling just to wreck their liver.

mothers and daughters

2005-09-19T04:30:00.000+01:00

I have just left my mother and headed up by myself again to Airlie Beach, the jumping off point for the Whitsunday Islands, apparently the jewel in the Australian crown. Spending a week with my mammy was fun; we saw and spent lots in Sydney, and then headed up to Byron for a few days of r&r. Sydney was much nicer than it was to me last time, maybe because this time I didn't have giardia. We stayed in the rather swanky Rocks, although our hotel was far from that indeed. It was more on the pokey, dark side of things. Russell Hotel, no thanks. Having said that, it didn't dampen our spirit, and the first thing that we did was hit the shops. We're girls, that's what we do. And besides, I had a whole backpack of clothes to replace. Looking through my belongings, I am unsurprised to see that almost everything that I came away with has been thrown out and replaced by cheap Thai gear, and expensive Sydney/Melbourne purchases. So yes, a Sportsgirl trip later, lots of Love Kylie underwear, some fun in Borders, and a whole new backpack, we felt we had given our credit cards a good workout.

The next day was focused on two, intertwined premises - food and Bondi. Food was covered with a breakfast at Bill's, in Darlinghurst, which was amazingly wonderfully fabulous. I had these amazing ricotta hot cakes with banana and honey butter (this was about a week ago, and I can still remember), and mum had corn fritters, or something like. After that, a quick hop on the train and bus, and we were at Bondi, where we watched the surfers (I lusted after the waves), and went for a long, rambling walk over the cliffs, through some random woodland, a cemetary, and eventually ending us up in some small town a couple of miles down the shore. It certainly worked up an appetite for an incredible meal in a beautiful setting at Bondi Icebergs. Icebergs is set up off Bondi beach, so you can watch the waves break, even in the dark, from the almost entirely glass building. The menu was fabulous, my pear and rose bellini a dream, and naturally my mother felt an urge to make conversation with the table of drunken 30-somethings beside us. I thought I was over being embarrased by my mother, but clearly not. We caught the late night bus home feeling a teensy bit drunk and slightly overfull from the chocolate cannoli that was had for dessert.

A trip up to Byron was always going to be fun, and it managed to provide one of the most memorable 20seconds of my life - surfing with dolphins. I was out at Cosy Corner, where the waves were anything but cosy, instead packing a fair punch, when suddenly 5 dark-dolphin shapes were spotted flitting through the waves, having the time of their lives. They surfaced a couple of times amongs the surfers, and then swam off to have their own fun. I had always heard that dolphins enjoy a surf, but it was absolutely incredible to see it for myself. The surfing in general was amazing - it was so good to remember how to do it, and feel my body get better at it, more attuned, more natural. Of course, dreams of surfboards are far-off, since the hassle of carrying one around would be a nightmare, but I did check prices. A heart-stopping $549 for a minimal. No thanks.

That is something that I have noticed. Australia is expensive. And it's not just me who thinks so. My mum was here five years ago, and believes that everything is much more expensive than it was before. Shame.

Before I met Mum, I spent a few days in Melbourne. I have to say that it is one of my favourite cities now: chic, fun, and a great public transport system. I had a blast wandering Brunswick St, checking out St Kilda's, and bar hopping down tiny, grotty, dark alleys to find amazingly cool, chic bars like Murmur at the bottom of them. A lot of fun. Also, the Great Ocean Road truly does rival Highway 1 in the US for picturesque roads, mainly because of the incredible 12 (11? One fell down) Apostles, which was the site of my first helicopter ride. I think I might be an addict.

So now the Whitsundays. Its warm here, which makes a change from the rest of Oz so far, and the town seems tuned into parties. Fun times. I'm going to go hunting for a kayak trip tomorrow, and be even more active, and go for my second run in Australia, since the first, in Byron, went so well, and now I have a high-tech watch to make sure that I am working hard. Awesome.

back to traffic lights and jogger

2005-09-07T02:36:00.000+01:00

Yes, I have reached Western civilisation again, and I can tell by the number of people running around Sydney Botanical Gardens. The Sydney Marathon is on Sunday, so there are countless people in training. Still, that didn't keep me in the city for long, and I'm now in Melbourne. I'll be in Sydney so often over the next couple of weeks, so I thought I would take my chances with the weather, invest in another sweater and some more socks (4months of never wearing socks means that I only have 2pairs), and head south to Melbourne. Not before I checked out the baby grand canyon and the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains, which were beautiful, despite the huge numbers of Japanese tourists. Then, I threw my belongings in my bag (they all fit very easily now that I am wearing my fleece, my rain jacket, and my fleece!), and ran to the bus station, where I caught the overnight bus to Melbourne. This was a remarkably similar experience to buses in Thailand - we were shown a movie (Top Gun), we stopped at inopportune times (3am), and the bus broke down. Nothing changes, or is it a sign that Thailand really is a western country? Still, getting to Melbourne has filled me with a great sense of optimism. Poor Sydney. It wasn't that I didn't like it, I just didn't give it a chance. Its hard when your stomach is emptying its contents on a fairly regular 10hr basis. Who gets food poisoning on arrival in Australia? How unfair. Anyways, I'm going back with my mummy, so I don't feel so bad. Melbourne seems chilled out, I am staying in a great backpacker - its only been open a wk, so everything is fresh, clean, and works. The shower was incredible. And tomorrow, I hit the Great Ocean Rd for some fantastic scenery. Today, though, its all about Melbourne's cute shops and tiny lanes, and apparently, great bento boxes for lunch. Yummy. Just whenever my appetite has finally come back.

ori

2005-09-04T10:05:00.000+01:00

img_2011
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

Here's a demonstration that my photo skills can move beyond rice paddies and sunsets! This is a picture of Ori, my boyfriend, and its basically for my friends and family, so they can put a face to the name I have been raving about so much. I think he's pretty cute anyway. It was taken in a hammock in Thailand on our last night. Shame he's gone back home to Israel right now.

last day in Asia

2005-09-04T05:01:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's true, I finally leave Asia today after 4 and a half months of bumming around it. I have to say it has been a lot of fun, but for the last week, which has been spent in Bali, I have really been looking forward to Australia. This is particularly good since I wasn't that fussed about it whenever I actually booked my flights, but now I can't wait. I'm meeting my mum, which will be so much fun, but I'm also looking forward to general shininess and hot water and price tags. The numbers on the price tags mightn't be so much fun though.

Bali, however, has turned out to be beautiful. I have been on an organised trip with Intrepid, which was okay. I mean, it was good in that I didn't have to make any decisions or make any friends, per se, since that was all arranged for me. The timing of that was great, because after having Ori and Kate just leave me only a day or two before, I would have been particularly inept at it. However, I didn't feel that we did all that much. Or maybe it was everything that we did was at an obscene hour of the morning - climbing a volcano to watch the sun come up, and therefore starting at 3.30am, or getting up at 5.30 to check out the dolphins playing in the sunrise. I guess, if you start that early, then the day finishes pretty quick to. The volcano climb was fabulous - climbing under the southern stars to a beautiful sunrise, and then getting to run down black volcanic sand was an absolute highlight. Wandering amongst the rice paddies and acquiring a crowd of twenty children following us was also fun - I felt like the pied piper of Hamlin. I also did the best snorkelling I have ever done, at the most beautiful drop-off. Barracudas were spotted, but no sharks. There were thousands of fish, and the sea was the most incredible blue I have ever seen. It was amazing. Plus, it also gave me further proof that I am no longer a whitey - every other person there got sunburnt, and I just went a little more tan. Ha! My Irish skin-tone has finally been beaten. For it all to fade again with the Australia and NewZ spring. Grr.

I have my own "place" in Ubud. Its this coffee shop called Kafe, and everything is organic and macro-biotic. They also run yoga classes. I can see my dad rolling his eyes at me. Furthermore, the profits are invested in education for Balinese kids, so you can drink your honey lassie with a clear conscience. Its great. I'm going to hang there reading today until its time for my ride to the airport and my overnight flight to a whole new country. I'm excited.

best and worst just an hour apart

2005-08-27T06:11:00.000+01:00

Yep, that's Bali for you. I arrived last night, and went to Kuta, the most common tourist destination in Bali, and it turned out to be hell in a 5mile radius. If anyone has visited Virginia Beach, you never need to go to Kuta. KFC, Starbucks, Hard Rock, Planet Hollywood, Pizza Hut, and every other Western brand you can think of lined up along a strip beside a fairly grubby beach, which admittedly, had good waves, which weren't even that crowded. I only stayed an hour and a half, but that was more than enough for me. I got a shuttle bus to Ubud, where my Intrepid tour starts, and dear lord, what a difference. Ubud is a small artist's town in the centre of Bali, and damn, its so beautiful and tasteful. Its a Luang Prabang, a St Ives, a Westport. Furthermore, my hotel, which is supposed to be for backpackers, is the most luxurious place I have ever stayed in my life, the Balmoral excepted. Balinese sculpture ever, a little private place for me to take my tea and contemplate life, and a pool with a wall of sculpted gods looking down on my as I bathe. Dear lord. Luckily its my birthday, so I feel that it is just about justifiable.

My birthday present to myself? A mocha frappucino and a raspberry muffin from Starbucks. Tomorrow, its back to the muesli, fruit and yoghurt.

put the credit card back in the wallet

2005-08-25T14:19:00.002+01:00

Wow. I'm in the consumer heaven commonly known as Singapore, and yes, it has been a challenge of a different degree of what I am used to. Western country, western systems, western prices. Ouch. But so much fun to wander into a shop, not be forced to look at ten things, and wander out again, completely painlessly. Is this what the world is really like? How easy.

Chinatown was gorgeous, both traditional, with beautiful gentrification. Orchard Road was a shopping mecca. I think Kate maxed out all her cards, but then again, she goes home tomorrow, so she can handle it. The airconditioning, the subway, the cleanness - this is a great city. Such a change from Asia, and a real reminder as to what I have been missing. Furthermore, there is no tourism scene. People really do go shopping at Levi, they do have coffee in Starbucks, and they really do take clients to posh dinners at French restaurants in Chinatown. Topshop was filled with Sinaporeans. Yes, Topshop. I was pleased as punch when I saw it, and still managed to come out with nothing. Backpacker shopping is no fun! Having said that, its to Bali tomorrow for one more week of Asia-dom, and then Oz, where I meet my mum. That, I cannot wait for. A little something to look forward to whilst I miss the Israeli boy.

full moon epidode III: the final conquest

2005-08-25T14:19:00.001+01:00

Yup, back to Koh Pha Ngan. It seemed a shame for Kate and Ori to be down on the islands and not go to the Full Moon Party, and of course, who better than a true veteran to show them around. We stayed at Had Yao for the few days beforehand to chill out, and just enjoy our last few days in Thailand. Lots of beaching (the poor Israeli started to peel, which was unfortunately amusing!), lots of reading, lots of early nights. It was really great just to chill out. The place was filled with Israelis, like the rest of Koh Pga Ngan. I hadn't seen so many altogether before. Of course, once we moved to Haad Rin, Ori kept meeting people he knew. Typical.

The Full Moon Party was just as to be expected. Drinking, dancing til dawnm meeting old friends, everything. Kate and Ori had a good time, although Ori couldn't really handle the Irish pace, and had to take a wee break in the middle of it, but other than that, no complaints at all. We saw some of Ori's friends, we saw the English boys, we saw Casey. All good fun. Of course we got home at about 10am, and then we decided to move back to Haad Rin, and so on very little sleep we managed to find the best bungalows I have stayed in on the sunset side of the town. A very traditional backpacker way to end the trip for Ori.

Another backpacker tradition that was accomplished was to rent motorcycles, and come back in pain. Kate has some lovely scratches all over her arms from riding up some steps, and I have a sore back from falling off the back of Ori's as we tried to go up a hill and change gear at the same time. More people have bandages in Haad Rin than anywhere else maybe in Thailand, and all for the same reason. No real damage done, apart from to our wallets as we had to pay for the damage to the bikes, which is incidentally, how the rental places make all their cash. To rent out a bike at 150B ($4) a day is a loss-maker, so they recoup all their profits through the inevitable accidents. Bastards. Pain and poverty.

So, Ori has gone home, which of course is horrible. Right now I have Kate with me, so I am not alone, but tomorrow I arrive in Bali all alone and with no accomodation. Back to square one, and I'm not looking forward to it. Travelling with someone is a lot of fun, travelling with your boyfriend who looks after you and stops bad things happening (motorcycle injuries excepted) is fantastic, and I'm really going to miss it.

koh phi phi

2005-08-25T14:19:00.000+01:00

Long ago as it was, I can still actually remember Koh Phi Phi. The trip down was the usual rip-off - stop at each and every little restaurant for a couple of hours to make sure that you'll buy your water and food from them, waiting around for a couple of hours, and arriving 4hrs after the scheduled arrival time. Even arriving on a grey, mizzly day did nothing to dampen the sheer beauty of the island. It was absolutely incredible, and that was only the open, touristy side, not the protected national park.

Phi Phi was flattened by the December 26th tsunami, and you could still see where the wave rushed through the central narrow stretch of land between the the beaches. Before that, the island played host to luxury resorts and high-end hotels. Backpackers had few places to go. Now, all those resorts have been washed away, and yes, they are being rebuilt, so now is the time for all those low-budget travellers to head to Phi Phi. Not that it is exactly a cheap place compared to the rest of Thailand, even to Koh Pha Ngan (300B a bucket!!), but still, a what price beauty? And besides, you get that warm feeling inside of helping a community get back on its feet every time you buy another banana-nutella roti. What more could one want?

Ah, the beauty. We took a day trip around the islands, and visited Maya Beach, where "The Beach" was filmed, which was truly gorgeous and spectacular. What the movie didn't show, probably because they moved them before filmed, was the huge rocks that are in the water, and hamper the dramatic dash that the aqua water demands as an entry. To go that like is to ensure a painful stubbed toe. Still, the white sands, the karst landscape, the turquoise water - as good as all the pictures.

Phi Phi is known for its marine life, and its one of the two diving centers in Thailand (the other being Koh Tao). Part of our boat trip around the island included some amazing snorkelling (although the standard of actual snorkels impeded my enjoyment of this. I swear mine had a leak in it, because I ended up with many mouthfuls of sea-water) over coral reef. It was so exciting just to be swimming through shoals of gorgeous blue and yellow striped fish (I am sure they were in Finding Nemo somewhere), and Ori managed to spot a moray eel. Unfortunately Kate cut her foot on some coral, which subsequently turned all pussy, but is now clean and better. However, right after she cut it, I grabbed her leg for a joke, which naturally scared the complete bejesus out of her, thinking that I was actually a shark, drawn by the scent of her blood. Funny.

More beautiful beaches followed, as well as a visit to Monkey Beach. This I found hysterical. I have no love for monkeys whatsoever, but the site of two of them going at it (monkey business!!!), and then a group of twenty turning on all the tourists and chasing them into the sea was hilarious. They were pretty grumpy monkeys, but I just found them stupid. What sort of animal which cannot swim chooses to live on a beach?

Other activities available on Phi Phi including cliff jumping (starting at 8m and finishing at 20m) and swimming with black tip reef sharks, which are apparently harmless. The reason I am inlcluding the fact that I didn't do those is to let my mother know that I really am behaving myself whilst travelling, and therefore she shouldn't kick me out of the inheritance! Not that she would do a mean thing like that, but I know that she does worry about me, like all mothers inevitably do.

The nightlife in Phi Phi centred around a bar complex called Hippies. If you are going there, and they are advertising a free bbq, don't bother eating dinner, because it is great, and there is so much food. They had the same guy do the same acoustic set every night, which started off okay, but got tedious. After that, some drinking games, and then a fire show, which was actually fantastic. There were maybe 8 or so koi dancers, and they were actually pretty skilled, rather than the random westerners you see in Koh Pha Ngan do it. After that, the night turned into a blur of buckets and dancing, like all good nights do. Still, the big party was yet to come....

back to the islands (part III)

2005-08-11T09:51:00.000+01:00

After a fairly relaxing couple of days in BKK, we're off to Koh Phi Phi tonight - we being myself, Ori, and my little sister, who is proving to be wild with her baht, which is rather amusing, to say the least. Bangkok has also been bringing out my inner consumer who had gone into hiding for a while. Ori and I headed to MBK the other day and I ended up coming home with 2 pairs of jeans, with a few additions here and there from Khao San Road. After 3months, everything in my backpack disgusts me, and I threw out a lot of my belongings this morning, which was very therapeutic. Of course, the free space has already been filled!

Bangkok also provided Ori and I with our first "Lost in Translation" moment. On Monday we had to go to the Israeli Embassy to pick up a new credit card for Ori, and then, since we were downtown, we decided to go to a movie. We went to the first mall which we came to, which was the World Trade Centre, and tried to find the movie theatre. All we knew was that it was on the 7th floor. The problem was that the signs for both escalators and elevators seemed to lead nowhere, and when we did find an escalator, it would go up one floor and then stop, so we would have to go a-hunting again for the next one. At one stage we actually had to go down an escalator to come up again to a different part of the same floor. A clever ploy to get us to spend more money. Along our journey to the 7th floor, we also came across the most high-tech library ever, with a host of western magazines. All in all, including distractions, the journey to the movies took about 3hrs. The movie was "The Island" and was pretty good. Not as exciting as trying to get there though.

Talking of getting there, the worst journey is S-E Asia has got to be the bus ride between Bangkok and Siem Reap, mainly because for 8hrs you are in a mini-bus with no suspension driving along an unpaved dirt track, praying that you don't break down, because if you do, it's every man for himself. We made it, but it was the definition of bone-shaking. That's the last of those until S America, thank goodness.

ancient wonders of the world

2005-08-04T10:09:00.000+01:00

Angkor Wat was just as incredible at its reputation had led us to believe. As one of the wonders of the world (don't ask me what the others are), it had a lot to live up, especially since I am not one for ancient ruins, but this was amazing.

It is a big site, with several temples being unmissable. Angkor Wat itself was just phenomenal - big khmer chedis rising up out of a castle like structure, with a fabulous causeway leading out to it. The Bayon was my personal favourite, with its hundreds of buddha faces and fabulous bas reliefs carved into the wall. It was particularly spectacular in the afternoon with the sunhighlighting the faces and creating weird shadows. And finally, Ta Phrom, which is being overtaken with mosses, greenery, and trees growing right through the architecture. The Lonely describes it as being right out of Indiana Jones, and well, for lack of a better description, it was. We saw maybe ten or more other temples, all of which would have been amazing anyway, without having been a part of this huge site. Awesome, in the true sense of the word.

On our second day of touring, with our fantastic tuk-tuk driver, we got up for sunrise, which was unfortunately cloudy and anti-climatic. This was countered by a spectacular pink sunset from the top of Phnom Bakheng - maybe one to two thousand people gathered there to watch it. It was one of those beautiful big, pink, grey and orange sunsets that you get on hot, clear days. Fabulous.

Today we're having a chill day in Siem Reap, the city that has sprung out of Angkor Wat. We're staying away from the centre, and have just walked in today. Cambodia is the only country I have come across to offer iPod recording in the bootleg CD stores - what a great concept. Unfortunately, however, the cheap copied books that were so rampant in Vietnam don't exist here, so I might have to splash out on books -up to $5! I know, I sound such a skinflint.

Kate comes to Bangkok in a week - I am incredibly excited about this. I get to show her around, maybe buy some new clothes (mine are all falling apart, although I did get a cute Siem Reap t-shirt yesterday which has been Israeli-fied - that means the neckline has been all cut), and then go back to the beach. Wunderbar. Although, it does mean in a couple of wks, I also have to say goodbye to Ori. Not good.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning

2005-07-31T08:30:00.000+01:00

Crossing the border into Cambodia was a complete relief. Vietnam was gone, and there is no way that I will be going back. A certain Israeli quote (not from Ori, I might add - he is far too diplomatic) was "damn Americans didn't finish the job". I can see his point. It was a shit-hole of a country, and for the prime reason of the people. Even before Ori had his bag stolen and had to bribe the police and others to get it back, the people were still horrendous. No matter what deal was struck, they always wanted more. Everything was a scam, and everyone was out to rip you off. Besides that, they were just plain mean, and that's tiring. So, yes, no love for Vietnam from me.

We did meet one guy who did love it. He was an American who claimed to have left the country because of the election. For a start, I have no time for "political exiles" such as this - if you are so disappointed with the state of your country, stay and do something, become politically active, rather than just upping sticks. Of course, the real reason might have had much more to do with economics or personal reasons, and that's fair enough as well. Anyways, he was doing the usual US bashing that people are so quick and happy to take part in, myself included (but I'm allowed to; I have a degree in American Studies - I'm a qualified US basher), when it occured to me: this was a guy who had moved to a country where he wasn't even allowed to express such opinions, or rather, the general population weren't allowed to express such opinions. What was up with that? Ironic, no?

Enough with the Nam bashing. Cambodia is a dream. The people are amazing - strikingly beautiful, as well as generous and lovely. Phnom Penh is a great city - wide boulevards, a river, actual sites such as the Royal Palace, and a nice little backpacker enclave beside the lake. Lodging is cheap, but it is back to Thai guesthouse standards, rather than the fancy hotels we have been used to. Still, we have a great chill out area over looking the lake, and as many movies as we want to watch, which is good, because it rains a lot.

Cambodia has already provided amazing experiences. The Royal Palace was great for monk chat - I got hit on by a group of 6 young monks (not quite monklings though), and then we spent about a half hour talking to a monk who studied international relations and was fascinated by Islamic Fundamentalism, which of course Ori was able to chat on. We also went to S-21, a school that was transformed into a high security prison and torture ground under the Pol Pot regime. It was chilling, eerie, fascinating, gruesome and amazing. After that, we went to the Killing Fields, where the mass graves of over 8,000 victims were found. What is so incredible is that Pol Pot fell in 1979, the Khmer Rouge continued to fight until 1991, and so there has only been peace in the country for 15 years, and yet there is such maturity, such hope, such development. It is incredible. All around you is evidence of the war; Cambodia is a nation of amputees, and everyone over the age of 40 will have had some experience of the civil war, but this is a truly modernizing city. Furthermore, to be able to turn their history into a economic resource, and that's what it is - millions of tourists come to the Killing Fields, and yet to have maintained its dignity, is a testament to the strength of the people here. Where Vietnam is bitter and angry, Cambodia is strong and hopeful. An amazing country.

Talking of peace, I heard about IRA declaration of ceasefire from CNN the other night. It is interesting to learn of such news in a place so far removed - your reaction is almosr more true from having nothing else to bounce off. And in all honesty, my immediate reaction was "what's new?". There has supposed to have been a ceasefire since 1997. I feel a cynic, but until I see something to prove otherwise...

I meet my little sister in 10 days time. I can't wait. It's so exciting to be able to show her another place, and it will be great to see a face from home. I'm at the stage where I fantasize about home things: magazines, foods, radio1. Ha ha.

mighty mighty mess

2005-07-26T07:13:00.000+01:00

What an amazingly tumultous couple of days I have had. I'll go over the immediate, before working backwards though the last week or so.

What started out being a fabulous night turned very sour, very fast. Ori, Sarah and I were celebrating the fact that we had bought tickets to Saigon, enabling us to leave Vietnam asap (its a hell of a country - not the romantic idyll that I had imagined it to be), so we had a fabulous dinner, and then headed to Nha Trang's hippest night spot - the Sailing Club. There, we met up with Casey and the English boys, starting up a fun, fun night of drinking and dancing. All good so far. That is, until Ori's pouch was stolen. In it was his passport, his cash, his credit cards, his flight home: everything important basically. So, from there, things take very much a downward turn. We spent all night looking for it, in the vain hope that someone would have taken the cash and dumped everything else. No such luck. So yesterday, on very little sleep, we tried to get everything organized. Getting a police report was of course impossible, because "only boss can stamp". Where was the boss? Out of town. God bless communism. Ori's working on it today. After a couple of calls to Israel, an office was found in Hanoi that will be able to issue him a new passport, but it means a 36hour bus ride back up the country, and we all know my feelings on Hanoi. So yes, its less than ideal. Some things have come out of it though. I don't keep my mobile on whilst travelling, but I'm damn glad I had it, or else it would have taken forever to get this even close to being sorted out. So anyone just about to head off, do take it with you. I am going to miss going to Cambodia, which is a real shame, because I was incredibly excited about Phnom Phenh and Angkor Wat, but still, such is life. And besides, my parents will be incredibly relieved; they have been sending me a lot of "take care of yourself" emails regarding it. So that's a whole country skipped. I'll be back in Bangkok around the 8th August instead. I guess I'll just have to come back sometime instead. And in the meantime, amuse myself by drinking hot chocolate and reading a lot of books in Hanoi.

Even excluding the last 36hours, I have really not liked Vietnam one little bit. Yes, Hoi An was rather beautiful, but in the way that a small French village is beautiful - hardly breath-taking. And that is how all of Vietnam has been. Nothing has quite lived up to the Lonely Planet's raving about it. Instead, everything has been work, and not really worth it. That is why we were so excited to be leaving for a new country. Still, twas not meant to be.

Hoi An is famous for its tailors, and I did manage to get some things made. This was incredibly challenging. Buying off the shelf is so much easier than tailoring - you can see instantaneously if something doesn't fit or doesn't work. This was particularly true for the evening dresses which I attemped to have made. In the end, the tailors just made a complete mess of both dresses, and I refused to take them. The material was pulled, and they were completely incapable of making them fit properly. This bad experience was counted by the sensible clothes I had made - a fabulous suit copied from a Chloe pattern (I do have champagne tastes after all) and a beautiful cream winter coat. Sweet. Plus, it does mean that I don't have to buy either when I get home - smart thinking, eh? But I have to admit to still being gutted about my lack of evening dresses. Oh, and of course, UNESCO has its mucky paws on Hoi An as well. Typical. Is there anywhere in Vietnam it hasn't marked off as having important education, scientific, or cultural resonance? Nope, and god knows why.

unesco schmesco

2005-07-18T13:04:00.000+01:00

Vietnam is littered with UNESCO World Heritage sites, and I am making my way through them. Ha Long Bay is beautiful bay with over 3000 limestone karst islands rising out of emerald water, which is simply breathtaking. What was not quite so breathtaking was our crew on our boat, who were the grumpiest group of guys I've come across, even after they had had their usual 4pm opium toke. That didn't detract at all from the beauty of the landscape, or the usual fun of jumping into the ocean (sorry, the Gulf of Tonkin) from the top deck.

After our wee excursion to Ha Long it was back to Hanoi, whose only redeeming feature is the coffee shop Baguette et Chocolat. It broke the bank every time we went, but the hot chocolate was sheer sex in a cup. Ooooh. But even that couldn't make me love Hanoi, just simply tolerate it. Ori and I did have one of our most Western experiences there though - watching MTV's TRL in our hotel room. Shamefully (or not?), we didn't know any of the songs that were played. None of them were good, that was for sure.

One of the worst features of Hanoi was the rip-off effect. Every meal was a serious dent in the budget, and to come to Ninh Bimh was a relief, just for the fact that dinner was costing 10,000dong ($0.60) rather than 30,000 or 40,000. Granted, we didn't exactly know what we were eating, but it tasted gooood. I had been reliably informed that Vietnamese cuisine is one of the best in the world, but in all honesty, I have yet to come across, this, even in the street food. Still, better keep trying! Nuoc mia however is delicious - its a drink made from ground sugar cane. Soooo yummy - a bit like "granny lemonade" for the family members who are reading. Still, can't drink it too often otherwise it will leave serious holes in my teeth.

communism in action

2005-07-12T08:02:00.000+01:00

Today's activities included going to see a dead dude preserved behind some glass. Before we got to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum though, we had to contend with some serious communist bureaucracy - we could only approach the mausoleum from a certain side, and a very anxious soldier whistled and waved at us until we had walked three sides of a square, and were deemed to be approaching from the correct side. Once there, it was a long but speedy queue - the body is only viewable between 8.30am and 10.30am, so the soldiers kept us moving swiftly on. Actually, the body itself was rather weird, but then again, I'm not much one for preservation like that. Much more for cremations, if you ask me. Formaldehyde just isn't a good look.

After being hustled through the serious one way system that comprises of the Mausoleum and its grounds, we wandered through the Ho Chi Minh Museum. Now this was hilarious. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to any of the exhibits - artists names such as Picasso and Chagall, with no examples of their work, and then random plastic sculptures alongside examples of Uncle Ho's speeches. An extremely Vietnamese experience.

I'm not sure if this is an example of communism in action, but there doesn't seem to be much of an idea of commerical competition here. By this I mean that if there is one paint shop on a street, there are ten. I know that if I was going to open a paint shop, then I wouldn't pick the place where there already were a whole bunch of them - I'd look somewhere else to fill the hole in the market. This hasn't yet occured to the Vietnamese, but like I said, it might be something to do with all that communism.

24hours of hell and more

2005-07-11T11:19:00.000+01:00

Riding an aircon bus from Vientiane to Hanoi for 24hours didn't seem too bad an idea at the time. Oh, how I was wrong. No air con, random stops, breaking down at 4am, and then the hilarity of soviet bureaucracy made it the trip to make me swear never to do that trip again. If anyone else is considering it, think long and hard. But then again, it was only 24hours of my life - a measly 1% of my trip so far. And we did make it all the way to Hanoi, something which I really didn't think was going to happen when the bus wasn't able to change gear. At that point, I was wondering if I was going to spend my last minutes in an excruciatingly hot bus plummeting over the edge of a cliff because the driver couldn't switch down to go round a corner.

So Hanoi. Hanoi has always struck images of old colonial French charm in Asia. How wrong was I. The city lacks any form of charm, instead being filled with motorcycles and tiny stores selling the same thing. The Vietnamese are not a people filled with grace, or rather, those living in Hanoi. Tourism seems to be at a point when tourists are no longer seen as a novelty, but they are also not a critical part of the economy, and therefore are pretty much unloved, and seen as cash cows. Buying a bottle of water is a struggle, with touts trying to get as much as 10,000dong for a bottle of water. Yes, that's only $0.60, but its still a rip-off. And that's what the whole city feels like right now. Having said that, I met a Glaswegian in a bar last night who tells me that Saigon is much friendlier.

Ah yes, the bar last night. Well, we managed to find the one bar in the city who was having a birthday - the Spotted Cow. Free Tiger beer was flowing all night, along with the occasional shot of tequila, and birthday cake. Goooood night. We spent it hanging out with some English guys who have been doing the same route as me since Chiang Mai, which is pretty hilarious. Sometimes, Asia just seems very small. Talking of small, Casey also turned up today, and its been a blast to hang out with her again.

Another Hanoi treat has been breakfast. I had the best breakfast I have had in several years - hot chocolate, brioche and pain au chocolat, all with a social conscience. Baguettes and Chocolat is a restaurant a la Fifteen, where disadvantaged kids are given a chance to be trained to work in the service industr. This is an added highlight to the airconditioned respite that it offers from the city. If I don't want to do something, Ori now bribes me with brioche. I am easily bought.

kop chai lai lai

2005-07-05T07:28:00.000+01:00

Yes, I really haven't talked enough about the wonders of Lao. It is an incredibly beautiful and yet strange country. Luang Prabang is a gorgeous town heavy with French influence, right down to the cafes along the Mekong, and yet also resplendent with wats in a similar style to those in Thailand. The most obvious French influences are in the coffee, which is strong and dark, and the baguette that comes with so many meals. After so long without bread in any form, these are a welcome treat. A baguette with fried eggs is a breakfast of champions.

One of the highlights of Lao so far has to be the waterfall about an hour outside Luang Prabang. We took a tuktuk out there, and something I have now learnt is to not look at where you are driving, because the speed at which the driver whips around blind corners is rather scary, to say the least. Still, we surveyed both the journey there and the journey back (although there was an unfortunate accident involving a chicken) and also a great hike up to the top. Of course it turned out there was an easy path up, but we took the veritable scramble which ruined my oh-so-lovely havainas and gave me umpteen bruises. Still once at the top there was a fantastic swimming hole with a couple of different jumping off points - a nice easy one which was about 3m high, and then a more challenging 5m one. I did end up jumping from the 5m, but it took a long time to psyche myself up. I wasn't helped by the crew of Israelis who were chanting "jump jump jump" - it seems I don't perfom well under pressure. Once they left it was easy enough to propel myself into the water.

The bus ride from Luang Prabang to Vang Vien was a fastastic insight into Lao life. The Lonely (aah - traveller speak - referring to the Lonely Planet as the Lonely) has one of those little boxes warning of the dangers of route 13, but still, what are you going to do? Riding along I saw countless chickens and pigs wandering hamlets, along with groups of kids with few to no clothes on, usually peeing in the road. To top it off, boys aged 14 and up would be walking along the road with AK-47s strapped to their back. There was also a kid on the bus with one, but I was reliably informed that it was missing the vital ammunition holder, and therefore was nothing to really worry about. Great.

And so we have settled in Vang Vien for the next few days. I am still travelling with Ori, and we are trapped here for the next couple of days whilst we wait for our Vietnamese visas. Still, its a nice place to be trapped - plenty of things to do, if you like the great outdoors. The landscape is blow your socks off amazing - wild limestone karsks rear out of the landscape, covered with dense forest. Yesterday we took a caving and kayaking trip. I have found a sport I am fairly confident in saying that I don't want to be doing again - just not a caving kinda gal. Especially since I nearly got swept down river and a Ori had to grab my lifejacket. However, the kayaking was a total blast, and we didn't even tip over. This is a good thing, in that we were being trusted with cameras and wallets.

Vang Vien is also a little bizarre in that there are a couple of places which just show "Friends" back to back for what seems 24hrs a day. Its like living in a strange vortex. Today's going to be a chilling out day, so I'm sure to be sick of the kerazy six by the end of it. Once that happens, it will be time for Ori to watch Star Wars for the first time. How can a 25 year old not have seen Star Wars? A situation that needs to be rectified if ever there was one. Luckily, to help me I have Josh, who travelled through the islands with when I arrived in Thailand, and he is a man dedicated to the cause if ever there was one, even getting soaked up to his knees last night in a vain effort to fix the sound system on a tv. A bar which was partially submerged - quel Lao.

lao lao

2005-06-30T10:59:00.000+01:00

Luang Prabang is meant to be a gorgeous town, and it does seem to be from what I have seen of it, which is only one street. I unfortunately got food poisoning (second time ever, which isn't so bad) and so was ill all of yesterday. Totally recovered now though, and about to hit up the town.

To get to Luang Prabang, I took the 2 day slow boat from the Thai border. I read somewhere that the people you meet on the slowboat are the people you travel through all of Asia with, and I can see why. I met the most amazing family of Americans who are just the sweetest ever, including their nine and eleven year old kids, a Texan accountant who does improv (Elena), a cool Dutch girl (Jolen), and Ori, from Israel, who is just plain amazing. (I have a big crush on Ori). Despite the fact that we were stuck on a boat together for two days, the craic has not stopped flowing, and we are still hanging out on a very regular basis. Fantastic. I could not be a happier traveller at the moment. Well, one thing would make it slightly better, and that would be if I actually went and explored the town, which I'm about to do. And of course, there will be much Beer Lao drunk tonight. Reputedly the best beer is Asia, and it lives up to its reputation.

finally getting out of Thailand

2005-06-26T02:55:00.000+01:00

Yep, a whole new country beckons. I am getting a minibus (yes, I swore I would never do tourist travel again, but after having spent what felt like most of my life, but really was 8hrs, waiting for trains in Bangkok train station, I am just going to pay extra and get the hell out of here) to Chiang Khong in an hour, and from there I am crossing into Laos, and getting the slowboat to Luang Prabang. I am excited by this development. Laos sounds very cool indeed, although I am only going a couple of places there - Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Viang Vehn, and the Plain of Jars. And yes, I probably horlixed up the spellings of most of those places, and "real" travellers will be disgusted.

Serendipity strikes just whenever I need it most. I was pretty grumpy and down on my last day in Haad Rin - I was wishing that I had already left the island, I wasn't travelling with anyone, and was generally cursing at the whole travel thing. This is actually the first time I have had the travel blues, but I knew that they had to strike sometime. It wasn't even sunny, so I couldn't work on my tan, and there was nothing that I felt like doing. Anyway, on this day of grumps, my darling little mobile rings, and its Casey, who wants to travel to Laos with me. Talk about perfect timing. So we agree to meet, and to travel up together. Now, the glories of fate can't smile too kindly on me, because she then proceeded to get food poisoning and miss our train, but we're going to meet in Laos in the next couple of days. Wunderbar.

all partied out

2005-06-23T06:24:00.000+01:00

Yes, I most certainly am, and the rest of Haad Rin seems to feel the same. Its overcast and cool today, not a day for working on your tan. I am feeling most definitely ready to move on, and really that I should today, but my train ticket isn't until tomorrow, so I'm just kicking my heels around here. That's okay though, I can certainly handle a few days on my own doing some reading, writing in my journal, just being calm. The last few days have not been like that at all, due to certain events like Full Moon Parties.

I went to the Full Moon last month, and this one was just as fun, if not more so. I achieved my aim of jumping through the ring of fire, which was fun. I also managed to stay up until the sunrise, which was fantastic. The trick? Not to drink too much. I was having enough fun anyway, and had gotten drunk the night before on the beach. How come I was having problems staying up later than 11 in Chiang Mai and Pai, and then here, staying up til 4.30am and then 8am the next day poses no problem whatsoever. Interesting.

I was down here with Steph and Emma, two i-to-i volunteers, and then we also met two different volunteers, Clare and Rob, which was a lot of fun. The Californian kids were also here, but I didn't see them so much. Haad Rin gets pretty crowded around Full Moon time, and thousands of people converge here to have a mother of a party. There was the usual wandering and losing people, and I also met people who knew people I knew, in that weird, small world kind of way. If anyone is speaking to Johnny Moore (I don't have his email address), ask him if he knows a Conor from Calgary who worked at Camp Montana. Strange.

Partying isn't the only thing I have done whilst here. I took a muay thai (Thai boxing) class, which was hilarious, if a total workout. I was dripping sweat onto the mat the whole time. It was me and another English girl who were learning to beat the crap out of each other, and the sport is damn hard. It required a level of coordination that I am quite simply lacking. Same in aerobics. The whole class goes left, and I go right. I learnt how to do funky spinning kicks though, and how effectively and repetitively kick a guy where it hurts. Tres useful I'm sure. My punching isn't so good though, and my instructor was very clean in telling me I would dead every time I punched, because I let my guard down. Somehow, I don't think its the sport for me.

on the road again...

2005-06-18T04:05:00.000+01:00

One of the best things about travelling alone is that you can up sticks and go wherever you. For instance, if you are feeling a little bored of the mountains and jungle, as beautiful as they are, then sure you can get on the bus down to the islands for a Full Moon Party instead.

This wasn't a decision that I made purely by myself. Chance had a strong hand in it. Fair enough, I did wake up yesterday morning and think, "man, I could go to the Full Moon Party", but didn't really think too much about it. Then, I missed the bus to Mae Hong Son by two minutes, and was going to have to wait a couple of hours until the next one. The next bus which came was a bus for Chiang Mai, and just before it was pulling out, I got a call from Emma saying about the party, and bam! That was that. I was on the bus in a matter of seconds, and in Bangkok by 5am this morning. In 24hrs, I will be on a beach in tropical paradise (again). Sweet.

all by myself

2005-06-16T11:59:00.000+01:00

Before I left, I thought that travelling as a single gal would be viewed as some sort of weird handicap - like why couldn't I find anyone to come with me? I could not have been further from the truth. Instead, most people seem filled with admiration that I have actually had the get-up-and-go to just go by myself. That has certainly been a pleasant surprise. Meeting people has been no problem whatsoever. Sure, the Californian guys just left town, but tonight I am meeting Celine, a French girl, in some bar to watch movies and hang out. The best places to make new friends? At bus stations, train stations, airports - places of transit. Hanging out in guesthouses is also a good one, but not quite as high a success rate. Furthermore, if you meet people on a bus, you can always escape from them. Not so much with the whole guesthouse thing. Yes, there are plenty of people you meet that you don't want to hang out with either!

I have taken to using the Thai "powder' for keeping me cool. It doesn't seem to have another name beyond powder, and it comes in a cool, old-school tin. I don't know how it works, apart from it kind of heats my body up, in a weird, tiger balm esque way, but this for some reason stops me from getting hot and sticky. Backwards I know, but it works.

the sleepiest little town in the world

2005-06-16T08:53:00.000+01:00

Pai certainly deserves that title. I have been here for a couple of days, and managed to accomplish nothing. A very pleasant nothing, I might add. Pai is well known for being a sleepy backpacker's place, rather than a party backpacker's place, and the emphasis is on doing nothing. I have been to three different trekking outlets today, and in each one, the proprietor has been fast asleep. What they are tired from I do not know. Still, nothing like a nice afternoon nap, is there?

The boys whom I was traveling with, Will and Gaylin, have gone home. We waited a couple of hours for their bus, I eventually wandered off, and then when I came back, the bus had pulled up. It was fun travelling with them for a while. Company is always cool, particularly in the form of laid back kids from California.

The point of coming to Pai is to do some trekking, but this is causing some problems. It is not exactly high tourist season here, and so there aren't too many treks happening. I have to go back to each of the companies at around 6pm tonight to see whether they have managed to drum up enough customers. Bit of a pain. If I don't get to trek tomorrow, then I will head off to Mae Hong Son, another mountain village, and check that out. I also applied for my visa to Laos today, so I'll be able to head off there soon. Very exciting to say the least.

chiang mai

2005-06-13T08:15:00.000+01:00

Chiang Mai is Thailand's second city, and it up in the North. To get from Kanchanaburi to here, I had to go back to Bangkok. I engaged a partner in crime for this - a Canadian guy named Tom who had just come from India. Nice enough, but going through the idealist stage that 19 year olds do, which I have sadly left behind. Yes, I know that Nike are a big bad multinational corporation who keep children locked up inside cages for 23 hours a day, but I still like their shoes, okay? No, he wasn't that bad, but I was happy enough to leave him upon arrival in Chiang Mai. Whilst I was in Bangkok for a couple of hours, I did those endless tasks that I seem to have to accomplish whilst I am there - booking flights for Kate and I, buying some more medical supplies, boring stuff like that. I also met some volunteers randomly, as you do, and even more randomly, a guy who I went to school with over five years ago. Stranger and stranger, but all very good.

I had not been looking forward to the night train to Chiang Mai. In a fit of feeling broke, we opted for the sleeper with no air-con, and I spent a long time imagining that I was going to be sweating all night. Actually, it was a fantastic experience, just making me love trains even more. My bed was comfortable, I had a huge window that I could open, and a nice little curtain that gave me privacy. I spent the night reading, listening to Graceland, and getting excited by watching the world not quite speed by (Thai trains only go about 40miles an hour). I also slept like a baby for a good 6hrs. A great way to travel, and to be recommended to anyone.

Dumping Tom in Chiang Mai was made easy enough by meeting two Californian brothers, who I have been hanging out with since then. Pretty cool guys, and makes a change from defending my meat eating beliefs. Last night we ate faux mexican food (sometimes you need a break from Thai food, nice though it is. And besides, at home, its not like people eat Irish food all day every day. So its okay to change the scene once in a while) and went to the Night Market. Chiang Mai's night market is absolutely huge. You could walk for days around it and still not see everything. My personal highlights were some puppies we found - playing with them was obviously therapy to get over my fear of dogs. Actually, I don't really have a fear of dogs, but puppies are fun. There was tons of hill tribes goods - gorgeous clothes, and beautiful ornaments to take home. Definitely to be recommened for the shopper in all of us. But no, I came away empty handed, thank goodness. My backpack certainly does not need anymore things inside it.

Today I made another trip to the hospital. Yet again I was registered as a full blown patient with my own hospital card. I actually managed to forget my passport, but once I made up a passport number, they seemed happy enough to take me on. I was able to give them my correct blood group, so I'm sure that makes up for it. Every time I go to the hospital they weigh me, and so in the last 2 weeks, I have been weighed more times than I have in the last 10 years of my life. Each time its the same - a solid 62kg. I think that's pretty normal, but I'm showing no signs of the mass weight loss that most people get whilst travelling in Asia. Not fair.

Walking to the hospital was a good, "real Chiang Mai" experience. I love walking through a city because you see much more than just getting a taxi, and this was no different, particularly since the Lonely Planet map had left out half the streets (as usual) so I ended up wandering some back streets through people's laundry etc, which is always fun. After the hospital it was more wandering hoping to happen upon some wats, which I did, and were fascinating. For being such religious places, I rarely see Thai people paying their respects to Buddha, but then again, I suppose wandering into a British church doesn't necessarily bring about masses of people praying. Thai buddhism, I am also learning, is much more centred on Karma, and doing good to bring about good, rather than the path to self-enlightenment, and so that may have something to do with it. And that's my Buddhist fact of the day

lazy laziness

2005-06-10T12:16:00.000+01:00

Today, I have managed to achieve nothing. This is a certain possibility whilst travelling, although whilst in Belfast I was certainly also able to have days of nothingness. Well, I have done some things, but my calorific burn has remained low, to say the least. So, how was my day wasted? I wandered out for breakfast - the traditional traveller meal of banana pancakes, and my first ever one. It was rather yummy, and I can see why the trend caught on. Then it was a pause for a banana shake whilst I wrote up my journal and wrote some postcards. Then I lay in a hammock for a while and finished my book. Instead of having lunch, I walked up to the cemetary and got some durien from a fruit stand. Durien is a Thai fruit that is brown and spiky on the outside, and about the size of a pineapple. It tastes like custard avocado, and is just as fattening. It also smells disgusting after a couple of hours, so must be eaten right after it is peeled. It is banned in most hotels, but I snuck mine into the garden, along with some green mango with extremely chillied sugar. I started a new book as well, and wrote a friend a letter. And that brings me to now. So no, not much happened at all, but it was a perfectly blissful day indeed. Tomorrow is going to be work, so it pays to take a day off every now and then.

Guidebooks are every traveller's best friend. I am currently using two - Footprint guide to Thailand, and the Lonely Planet's South East Asia on a Shoestring. Now, normally I loathe Lonely Planet and love Footprint, but Footprint keeps letting me down, not least today when I was looking at confusion at its map of Kanchanaburi, and realised that it had been drawn wrong. It doesn't inspire faith, does it?

war heroes of all kinds

2005-06-10T04:49:00.000+01:00

I have been having a lovely couple of days in Kanchanaburi - the town with the infamous "Bridge over the River Kwai". During WWII, British, Dutch, Australian, and American POWs, along with over 100,000 Asians, were conscripted by the Japanese to create a railway between Thailand and Burma for transporting supplies. Thousands and thousands died under the hands of the Japanese, and Kanchanaburi is the sight of two cemetaries for the POWs, the bridge itself, and a base for visiting Hellfire Pass and riding the Death Railway, all of which I did yesterday.

Hellfire Pass was so called because of the light of the torches and burning dynamite used to blast the rock to create a gorge for the railway to pass through. To visit the sight is eerie and strange. It is no longer an active railway (the Thais dismantled it, not out of respect for those who perished building it, or as a symbol of the end of the way, but because it wasn't economically viable to run a line to Burma, and because they wanted to keep the Burmese out), but the original woodent tracks are there for you to walk along as you go through the pass. It is maybe 10 metres high and 3 metres wide, and about 30 to 50 metres long, and this was simply blasted by men who were starved to death, working skeletons. The pictures and museum were pretty harrowing. A worthwhile trip for anyone interested in WW2 history, especially since the Allied effort in Asia isn't as widely recognised and known about as the European experience.

During the Siam period of Thailand, elephants were used in battle. Well, I'm imagining those battles were pretty slow, with lots of pauses whilst the elephants stopped to tear down some shrubbery, or decided they couldn't be bothered to move. After the trip to Hellfire Pass, we went elephant trekking, which, to be honest, the ethical traveller inside me couldn't decided whether this was morally wrong of me. The trekking was at a Karen village. The Karen are one of the many hilltribes in Thailand, and their village looked pretty poor and washed out. It certainly wasn't a tourist hotspot, despite the enticement of riding an elephant. The elephants themselves were chained by one leg to a pretty pathetic stump of a tree, so if they had wanted to make an escape, they could have surely run for it. Although I'm not sure if these elephants had a gear for running - they were the slowest moving beasts I have ever come across. Even with my limp, I walk faster than them. I know that speediness is not one if their strong points, but these were war animals! I had read all these interesting things in Ayutthaya about the corralling of the elephants being the most exciting event of the year. I'm beginning to doubt that now.

The seat on the elephant was made of bamboo, and was neither comfortable, nor particularly safe. I spent large quantities of my ride hanging on so that I wouldn't fall on the elephant's head (going downhill) or off its ass (going uphill). My guide also had the bright red mouth of a man high from chewing some sort of natural drug in these parts. I can't remember the name, but it is like a naturally occuring form of speed. That would explain his incoherent muttering the entire time. Like I said, elephants are slow moving, and they also sort of lollop along - not a smooth ride. And most of the time is spent not going anywhere as the elephant spies another bit of greenery to tear down and munch. An interesting experience, but not one I am dying to repeat.

Something I did love however, was bamboo rafting. This is not a high octane experience, but incredibly relaxing and fun. The rafts are made of huge sticks of bamboo, and are about 2 to 3 metres long, and about a metre wide. They are held together with string, and steered by a guy standing with a big bamboo stick - a bit like a gondola. We travelled downstream through the pouring rain, which added to the whole jungle experience. Incredibly fun.

The last stop on our trip was the train ride home along the Death Railway. Part of the railway that was built during the Second World War is still in use, although the original tracks and bridges have been relaid. The train was most definitely the third class option, with wide, wooden seats. Nothing wrong with that, and it was clean, and therefore perfectly acceptable. It was packed with hordes of school kids getting home, and so there were no seats available. I have a theory that if you are allowed to something, then it is probably safe. I am aware that I really ought to revise this theory whist travelling in Asia, but before I did, I had one of the best train rides ever, because I was able to spend a good part of it hanging out of the side of the train, holding onto two bars, like they do in old movies. It was particularly fun looking down whilst going over high bridges. A great experience, and no mum, I won't do it again.

first the train, then the bus

2005-06-08T09:05:00.000+01:00

Today I have moved on again, this time to Kanchanaburi. It was all rather exciting - I had to take yet more public transport. You know, as a sidebar, it would be possible to see almost everything (everything being most major towns and tourist attractions) without ever braving public services. There is a travel agent on every corner armed with a minibus and endless choices of where they can take you. Anyways, back to my buses. Yes, so I had heard on the grapevine that I needed to get a bus to Suphan Buri, and then from there change and get the 411 to Kanchanaburi. I am always a little dubious about bus travel, but it was the only option, so I thought I would give it a go. I wandered up to the bus area (station is too strong a word) in Ayutthaya, saw a big yellow bus with Suphan written on it, and jumped aboard. All well and good. Then from there, once I got off at Suphan Buri, all the bus staff saw that I was farang, and obviously wanted to go to Kanchanaburi instead. So this dude grabs me and my bag (one in each hand) and hauls me across a patch of grass and throws me on a bus. Little did I know that he was actually the bus conductor (he had no uniform), and not a random guy with a penchant for dragging people around. And so this is how I made it to Kanachaburi and its infamous River Kwai in three hours, a whole hour less than every one told me. Nifty. I like buses.

For all my love of public transport, I think I am going to take up one of these travel companies offers, and hop aboard for a whirlwind tour of all Kanchaburi has to offer. Lucky me.

photo spot

2005-06-07T15:44:00.000+01:00

colorful flowers
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had a blast at the flower market. This is one of the many photos I took, and I just love it for two reasons. One, the bright colours, which have come up really well, and secondly, the fact that you can see the dye on the flowers. Gotta love a bit of fakeness. Anyway, this is a nice bright picture. I did consider blogging the gory ones of my open wounds instead, but thought that would be on bad taste. They are on flickr though, and you can click through on the photo if you do want to check out my injuries.

what's a wat?

2005-06-07T09:33:00.000+01:00

I have made it out of Bangkok, thank goodness. I am in the ancient city and former capital, Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya was plundered by Burma, and all of its wats (temples( were destroyed. Now, it is a mass of ruins, and a modern city tacked onto the edge. It works rather well actually. I got the train here, which was a long, sweaty, un-airconditioned couple of hours, but my first genuine taste of Thai public transport. The clientele are a bit more ghetto than in Britain - more akin to the greyhound in the US, which makes me think that the price of cars here must be rather affordable. However, the experience was certainly not traumatic by any means, and I will be doing it again tomorrow whenever I head to Kanchanaburi - the site of the epic bridge over the River Kwai.

A lot of people commented to me before I left on the Westernization, or rather, Americanization of Thailand. Certainly, a lot of Ayutthaya reminded me of American towns whilst I was walking through it - big wide roads designed for cars to drive quickly though, sprawl rather than a centre, and pavements not exactly designed for walking. However, it would be completely wrong to say that Thailand is becoming America - it is just apparent that there is a strange juxtaposition between fantastically maintained infrastructure, such as the road system, and most of the population still living in corrugated iron homes facing a polluted canal, with four mangy dogs and several chickens running around the house.

whenever it rains it pours

2005-06-05T15:10:00.000+01:00

Too true in Bangkok. It has rained most nights here at around 6pm, usually for about half an hour. However, tonight the heavens truly opened, and it rained for about 2 hours, flooding the streets and the shops. Very exciting. Although apparently the flooded areas were seething with cockroaches, but thankfully, this is something I have managed to avoid.

I am getting another rabies shot tomorrow. I have received conflicting advice as to whether I need these extra injections, but you can't overdose on rabies vaccinations, so I might as well get some extra protection. My bites are looking a little more infected than they have been, but then, it might just be part of the healing process. Tomorrow is my last day of antibiotics, so I'll have to see how the body fares without the added drugs. And all this wandering around means that my bandages get dirty faster, so I've been having to change them far more, which means that I am spending 200baht ($5) every other day on gauze and sticky tape. Fairly rushing through my cash. I am trying to start a budgeting thang, but man, it is hard. Maybe travelling alone for the next wk or so will be easier though - it is less easy to be tempted when I am alone, and not surrounded by other people saying "just one more drink". Though of course, I haven't been drinking for the last week for fear of walking into something and doing some terrible damage to my bites. What a wuss.

a little bit more wandering

2005-06-04T06:11:00.000+01:00

Last night all the other i-to-i volunteers came to town, and it was nice to see some friendly faces, and actually have people to talk to! As usual, we just hung out on Khao San, which was a bit frustrating, because, as exciting as all the bright lights and loud music is, I think I am a bit old for that sort of thing. Drunken people falling over and lady boys is not really my scene. There are a couple of other people who feel that way, so maybe tonight we'll be doing something different. We did go to a cool jazzy-rocky live band bar, for a while, which was fun, but my legs started to hurt, so I called it an early night.

This morning I decided to have another adventure on the river boat, and this time I pulled it off with complete aplomb. I headed to Pak Klong, which is a wholesale flower and vegetables market. As usual, whenever I got off the river taxi, I had no idea where the market actually was, since maps are no good at actually getting their position right, and it took about 20mins of fruitless (geddit??) wandering before I finally stumbled upon masses of flowers being sold right on the street. It was fabulous. I must have taken about 50 photos, and I was the only westerner there. Nobody minded the fact that I was just wandering around, camera in hand, with clearly no view to buy anything, which was good. So I had a nice time with the wandering, and made it back in one piece on the river boat. This afternoon I was contemplating Star Wars, but I might just lie by the pool and work on my rapidly fading tan.

flying fish

2005-06-03T09:29:00.000+01:00

I gave myself a mission today, which was to go to the flower market at Thewes to take photographs, which I managed to some degree. Far from being the photographer's dream that it is supposed to be, it was a bit like wandering around a garden centre. There is another wholesale flower market that is open incredibly early in the morning, or rather, middle of the night, and I might try and go to that tonight with some friends. The other volunteers are in town, and I am sure I could convince some of them that this would be a worthwhile trip.

I used the river taxi to get to Thewes, and it seems that everytime I get on the river taxi, I end up either or the wrong one, or missing my stop. It is not the easiest service to use, with no rationality over which stops the driver chooses to stop at. This time I ended up in a random green leafy street of houses, and had to wait a half hour before I caught another taxi back down the river. This is before I managed to not get on the taxi that just crosses from one side to another. Being completely illiterate in this country is not good. Strange signs mean nothing, and public transport is just guesswork.

Like I said, whenever I made it to the market, it was a bit of a let down on the whole photography point of view. Still, I did some wandering, and came across a food market. The main thing being sold was fish, and it was amazing. There were catfish and snakefish so fresh that they were still flapping on their trays, with water being occasionally sloshed over them to keep them alive. This sloshing means that every so often an energetic fish escapes by leaping up into the air, riding the wave of water, and flops unceremoniously onto the path in front of an innocent browser. I saw this from 5 feet away, thank goodness. There were also buckets of what looked like tadpoles, and endless buckets of filled with eels, all slithering away on top of each other. I have to admit that they gave me the heebie-jeebies a little. I came away without any purchases, since I'm not sure that my new, more down-market inn would have the facilities to cook up a fresh pig's head. I did consider a turtle in a bucket for my sister, but I wasn't sure whether it was meant to be a pet or to be consumed.

All that wandering meant my legs were starting to be a bit sore, so I headed for the ever-reliable Sawasdee House for a sit-down and general relaxation, before I meet the other volunteers. They are in Bangkok for the weekend, and they usually want to party, although this weekend, I will definitely not be partaking. The last thing I want to do is drunkenly stumble into something, which I often do whilst under the influence, and set back my healing by several days. My bites are just starting to look like bad cuts rather than horrible bites, and I'd prefer them to stay that way.

back at the doctors

2005-06-02T07:15:00.000+01:00

After having been convinced by my mother to return to the doctor, I have now been given more rabies vaccine, and also been told the good news that my wounds are healing well. That makes me over the moon. I have also been given permission to do more walking. Yeh! A little bit more freedom. Actually, it still hurts rather a lot to walk, but now I think I might be able to get a taxi to a market and have a wander and take pictures, or something like that. I feel that I am certainly on the road to recovery.

I was officially the most annoying patient today, and my doctor was very patient with me, but it was actually a bit of an accident that we actually started to understand each other. In Thailand, there is no concept of "pre-exposure vaccination" - that is, preventative vaccination, so he couldn't understand why I had only had three injections. It was a small chart that revealed this possibility, but he has advised me, to be ultra safe and sure, to have all five injections, and I'll be protected in the future. I'll go with that. Who knows what sort of dogs are in Vietnam and Cambodia?

So, I treated myself with having my favourite breakfast in my favourite brekkie joint - muesli, fruit and yoghurt along with toast at the Sawasdee House. I would move here if they had a lift and a pool, but they have neither, so I'll stick with my vastly expensive (25GBP/night) hotel.

Oh, and I did my laundry. The mundanity.

always a talking point

2005-06-01T04:39:00.000+01:00

In order to keep an eye on my bandages, I have been wearing shorts and skirts for the last two days. This also has the added bonus of people giving me pitiful and/or intrigued looks as to why I have both legs bandages, as well as explaining the gimp walk. I have managed to generate lots of sympathy for myself, but of course I'm not complaining.

The sympathy is much needed, because today I had the unenviable task of cleaning and dressing the cuts myself. Rather painful, and took at least 45 minutes of dabbing things here and there, and trying not to freak out about the small, yet deep hole in my calf. I also found a small amount of pus in a shallow cut on my knee, so I'm debating whether I need to go and get it checked out again. Its the typical thing of not thinking that its enough to warrant going back to the hospital, in case I am wasting their time. Man, on this, I wish I had a second opinion. If only I had followed the family path and gone into medicine!

Today is going to be spent by the pool reading magazines. Yes, that might sound like a holiday to some, but whenever you are forced into not moving at all, it gets very frustrating. I definitely sympathize with my mum and her broken hip now. (Not that I didn't before mummy dearest!)

new hospital new treatment

2005-05-31T12:54:00.000+01:00

Once I checked back into the lush ViengTai hotel, I taxied downtown to the Bumrungrad Hospital. Wow. It looked more like a high class hotel. The taxi drove me up to the imposing entrance, a nice man in a white suit opened my door for me, I wakled inside and about three "customer service representatives" came rushing up to help me. Amazing. Just the sort of place I was looking for. Yes, I know, not a true travellers experience, but I had had that yesterday with my emergency hospital trip - this time I wanted safe, reliable, Western care. Come on, I have a dog bite! I am running a high risk of infection!

So, I hobbled over to the escalator that took me to the clinic, past a starbucks and a mcdonalds, and over to patient registration. I am now a fully registered patient in Bangkok, and have an ID card to prove it. After that, I limped to the surgery, where I was told I was the next patient in line. I was enjoying this standard of service! First they weighed me, and even their scales were nice, telling me I had lost 3kg. I personally thought I had put on weight, but maybe my tummy is just bloated from too much white rice. Then it was my temperature, and my blood pressure. Finally, I was allowed to see the doctor. My doctor was a Thai man who had great English - he should do, having practised as a GP for twenty years all over Scotland. He was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a Fellow at both Glasgow and Edinburgh University. We had a lot to talk about. After an argument over whether I needed another rabies vaccination - he said no, I said yes, he being the doctor won - he looked at my wound, and gave it a good clean out. I was slightly worried, but unsurprised that the hospital yesterday had not dressed it well, by "packing in" my deep puncture wounds, but they have now been cleaned propery, and I have been given more antibiotics, as well as a whole bag of medical supplies for me to clean the wound myself. Yippee. Actually, I really am not looking forward to cleaning it out myself, since it will give me the heebie jeebies dealing with a big hole in my leg, and every time I have it cleaned it is so painful the doctor has had to hold my leg in place. Still, I have to be a grown up sometime. And at least this way, I can trust the cleaning, and monitor it myself. First sign of any problems, and I am straight back to the hospital. Unfortunately, after having spoken to my mum and my sister, as well as doing a Google search, chances of infection are reasonably high - around 20%. Not quite so reassuring. Kate tells me if I am infected, I'll need my leg cut off. But then, I can have an attractive stump, and nike are making a customisable shoe that will look good with my springy prosthetic leg. I've got all my options covered.

Sigh. Another evening downpour in Bangkok. Not good for the girl who can only hobble. Think I will be doing a lot of websurfing here tonight until it clears up.

a cautionary tale

2005-05-31T05:34:00.000+01:00

Well, it turns out that Thai people don't go running very often, and the reason is that it is an incredibly hazardous activity. I took off yesterday afternoon, and had not been gone ten minutes whenever I had to be driven back to school on the back of a moped. The reason? I had been attacked by two dogs, one for each leg, who had managed to sink their teeth into my right calf and my left knee. It was a very strange experience. Right before it happened, I suddenly realised that I was going to be bitten. It wasn't very sore at the time (shock), but I did fall down in shock, and also the realisation that I didn't really know how to fight them off. I had been fighting the one who was attacking my knee, when the other sunk his teeth into my calf, which is a much deeper bite. An all round terrifying experience. The owner of the dogs got her son to drive me back to school, and from there I was taken to hospital. It was incredibly efficient - none of this hanging around that goes on in British casualty. Instead I was put in a wheelchair, wheeled in, and some nurses right away started to clean my wound. The doctor gave it a cursory once over, asked me why the dogs had bitten me, and then the nurses started poking cotton buds soaked in iodine right in the deep cuts (where the canine teeth really sank in. Now I know why they are called canines!), which was agonizing. I had to grab a pillow to stop myself screaming out. After that, I got another rabies shot, waited around for antibiotics, and was charged 1250 baht. Apparently, I can claim this from the woman who owns the dogs. Yes, like I'll be going back there.

I have to have the wound cleaned by a hospital every day. I also have to keep it dry at all times. Now, bearing in mind that there is no bath where I stay, and the asian toilet is too painful to even use (squatting is out of the question and makes me whimper in pain), I have skipped town and headed back to the incredible luxury of the ViengTai hotel, where I have air conditioning, a double bed, a western toilet, and most importantly a bath shower. This means I'll be able to wash my top half whilst keeping my legs dry. What I do is sit down in the bath with my legs away from the taps, and turn on the shower. This means my head gets wet, but not my feet. I also have to buy clingfilm to make sure this works. And I have to do this for at least 7 days. What a nightmare. Plus, I can't even walk further than 100 yards, so its not like I can go sightseeing. I am going to go to the cinema a lot, I think.

So yes, that's the latest news from me. Please send me emails so that at least I can have some entertainment each day.

I'm now a fully fledged teacher

2005-05-30T10:04:00.000+01:00

Ha! I wish, but I have had my first day of teaching. I only had to take three classes, and two were quite easy, because they were 16 and 17 year olds. The 14 year olds were a nightmare, plus there was around 50 of them in the class. How on earth am I meant to control that, never mind teach them any English.

Its strange. Whenever I write things on the board, they understand and can say them, but if I ask them simple questions, like "what age are you?", "do you have any brothers or sisters?", then they don't understand at all. It's kind of book smart English they have. Well, maybe not the smart!

Tomorrow I have a day off, so I will do my laundry and go for a run. I would like to go for a run right now, but am starving, so I would run the risk of collapsing, potentially on the highway. No, I'm not actually going to run on the highway, but I haven't yet found anywhere I feel completely comfortable running yet. So that will be tomorrow's other challenge. I don't fancy getting run over by the multitude of trucks that Thai people drive.

Casey has invited me down to Koh Tao to do a PADI at the end of this week. Tempting that it is, I do feel that I have to stick out at least two weeks. Having said that, it depends on how I feel at the end of this one! Its bad to have other options like that. Though to be honest, I should probably cut back on my spending and not do it. I am saving money by being here (although it was damn expensive to sign up in the first place).

I have been meaning to write this for a while, and today I noticed it again - the Thai reliance on Nestle condensed milk. I have had it so far on pancakes, as Thai iced tea (yummy), and as part of a mocha frappe thing that would give Starbucks a run for their money. Today, it was on an iced dessert. I noticed all the kids were having it, and thought, oh sugary sweet thing that children eat. Then all the teachers went and got it as well. Its a bowl of ice, with sugary pink flavour drizzled over it, and then condensed milk. There are lychees and coconut jelly (the inside of underipe coconuts) as well as sweetcorn hidden in the ice. Weird, and incredibly sweet. Not sure I'll be having again. God help the Thai dental system.

I have a new friend to visit in Bangkok - David who I trekked with in Nepal did some more trekking and seems to have done himself some damage, and is currently in a Bangkok hospital, which sucks. So I'll have to go visit him next weekend, as well as the beach trip that some of the volunteers have planned. All systems go round here.

meeting n greeting

2005-05-29T06:09:00.000+01:00

I have spent the last day in Bangkok meeting other i-to-i volunteers. I am not the only person who has been stranded in the Thai countryside with no hope for escape, so that is reassuring, to some extent. Everyone seems less than enthused about our volunteer group and our country co-ordinator, Ram, who has been described as the man of misinformation. So that also bodes well.

There are about 15 volunteers with i-to-i in Thailand at the moment, and I have met about 10 of them. They are a split between 18 or 19 year olds taking their gap year, and 23-24 year olds who have just finished university. There is one Canadian, Stephanie, and one Australian, Reuben, and everyone else is British. Everyone seems pretty warm and friendly, so weekends will mostly be fun I imagine, although I am not digging the reliance on the Khao San Road for all needs. Too pricey, too touristy. But then again, maybe after having spent a week speaking no English and eating rice for breakfast, then I'll want the glaring lights and British pop music on offer.

Last night I went to see some muay thai, or Thai boxing. I have always hated the concept of boxing (what? people beating the crap out of each other for fun? That's not a sport), but for some reason, Thai boxing seemed intriguing - I'm sure its the aspect of "the other", or whatever. Anyway, it was an enjoyable spectacle, although the kids who were only 13 or 14 weren't much of a match - it was a bit like u14 rugby games. The older guys did kick some ass, but we have a suspicion that the matches were rigged, because one of the bookies's and another blinged up guy in a white suit seemed deep in conversation, and then told us that the last fight would end in the second round, and it did. This is after they took our money from us making bad bets already. Hmmmmm.

So, its back to Pathum Thani tonight, where I'll have to plan my lessons for tomorrow, and get generally nervous about the whole state of affairs. At the moment I'm still at the blind faith stage. I think I'll need more than that when I am in a classroom with 50 kids tomorrow though.

drugs

2005-05-28T07:39:00.000+01:00

No, not the mood-enhancing kind. The health ones instead. I thought that I was getting a stomach of steel due to the fact that I hadn't been ill since I have been in Thailand (70% of travellers experience illness in their first two wks of being in a country), but no. Today I was reading my antimalarial fact sheet, and duoxycycline, the anti-malarial I am taking, is also used to prevent traveller's diarrheoa, and in fact, I have just been protected by modern medicine. Bring on the dodgy fish!

well, its certainly going to be a challenge...

2005-05-28T06:44:00.000+01:00

I am certainly going to experience the "real Thailand" during my teaching placement, that's for sure. I have already eaten curry for breakfast with my kareoke-mad family next door, met tens of teachers whose names I cannot remember and barely pronounce, and treated myself to an Asian shower. More on that in a minute.

Ever since I got my job with HBOS, I have to say that I have been less than enthused about my teaching job in Thailand, and now that I have finally arrived, I have to say that the enthusiasm is still no longer there, mainly on account of the logistics of my placement. I am in what seems to be a village, which centres on an evening market. There is no public transport whatsoever, no post office, no phone boxes, just the semblances of some open-fronted stores. Now, the bareness of the town would ordinarily not bother me, but I have been placed in this school as the sole volunteer, and with no public transport, it makes it a tad difficult to even visit other volunteers. In order for me to get around, I am to ask the school driver, and apparently he will take me where I need to go, but its hardly very autonomous, and certainly restricts the places I can travel. I have Tuesdays off, but god knows what I will do with them! I think that I will be able to go for my daily run that I have been promising myself though.

My lodgings are rather random. I have a spacious, clean, though not overly furnished room, complete with microwave and refridgerator. (For those who saw it, it is very like my room in Chapel Hill, without the built in wardrobes). The school have been kind enough to provide me with several litres of water, tissues, some bread, and some jam, which I have to admit was rather thoughtful. Its a good thing that I like sitting on the floor, because there are no chairs. I do have a fan, and the windows have mosquito screens, so I can leave the windows open to try and keep the room cool. However, leaving the windows open means that I am subjected to kareoke from next door at all ours of the day. It never stops. This is a family who don't have their own home, but have a flat-screen tv hooked up to a kareoke machine. Well, of course they don't have their own home if they waste their money on that sort of crap! So my Virgin freebie ear plugs were put to good use last night. Like I said before, my room is clean, which is not something that I can honestly say for the bathroom. The shower is unreliable, as is the water supply. If the shower isn't working, then I am to give myself as Asian shower. I did this last night - it involves taking a bowl of water and throwing it over myself. Not too bad. However, if the water isn't running, I am to get a bucket from the slimy canal and wash myself in that. No thanks. I'd end up smelling worse than when I started!

I'm tempted not to teach at all, and just pack my bags and run. But that isn't very sportsmanlike of me. So I'll stick it out for a few weeks, and then see what happens.

lucky strike

2005-05-25T10:28:00.000+01:00

lightning
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

This is the photo I talked about earlier on. It was taken during an awesome lightning storm on Koh Pha Ngan. There was lightning every night at the beach we were at, and we had tropical storms a couple of times. The lightning of this storm had a frequency of about every 15 seconds, so I just set my camera to rapid shots, turned the flash off, and set the exposure to -2. I got a ton of total blackness pictures, but I also got this, which is pretty cool.

spendaholic

2005-05-25T10:25:00.000+01:00

khao san
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

You would think with the fact that I have had both cards and cash stolen that I would be able to cut back on the old spending issue, and start living like a monk. Ha! This is Bangkok - spending is what people do. Well, that and a few other extra-curricular activities which also involve the exchange of cash. So, what did I buy? The list is as follows:

3 books - one on buddhism, one Thai phrasebook, and one by Michael Frayn. Now, these aren't too bad a purchase, because I did trade two books in for them.

2 pairs of full length fishermen's trousers - one white, one grey.

2 brand t-shirts - one Tao (Coke), one Singha (thai beer)

1 fake roxy t-shirt

1 short skirt in yellow

1 longish cotton wraparound skirt in blue - tres good for the old teaching.

1 pair of cotton trousers with strange chinese writing down them.

Random cheap jewellry, including a gorgeous eye of shiva.

So yes, I admit that is a lot of shopping. I just couldn't help it. So now I know that I have to cut back, or start selling my soul on ebay. And cut back I will. Only street food from now on - none of this 50B pad thai nonsense! (Just to say, all of my purchases were between the 100-200B mark - that's $2.50-5 in US. Still, it all adds up.

I also posted my belongings home today, which was great. I even have a little tracking coupon, even though I sent them sea mail. One more of my tasks ticked off then. Still have the whole "learning thai" thing to master though.

a couple of inevitabilities

2005-05-25T05:22:00.000+01:00

I suppose that if one of the biggest and most famous parties in the world is happening on the same tiny island that you are on, you really should go. That was the attitude Casey and I took to the Full Moon Party, and it more or less summed it up. We wandered around, we talked to people, it was good fun. The whole place had a carnival atmosphere, with people doing koi, a ring of fire to jump through (or stumble through, as most people seemed to do), lots of different sound systems, and everyone drinking buckets. I had a good time, but not a great time - I wouldn't plan a trip around it, that's for sure. We got home at around 6am, and then I had a taxi to get at 10am (later delayed until 11.30), so it was a long night which turned into a very long day and night again travelling back to Bangkok. I'm not very sure how it happened, but I managed to get booked onto the car ferry rather than the passenger speedboat to Surat Thani. I was certainly not the only person who was in this situation, and with only two rather pathetic fans to keep us cool, it was a very long, sticky journey, hardly helped by the hangover fevers. From there, it was another long bus journey, and a couple of hours hanging out in Surat Thani, before our spiffing VIP bus back to Bangkok. I did manage to sleep through the whole bus journey home, and then sleep some more whenever I arrived in Bangkok at 5am this morning.

However, travelling by tourist VIP bus will not be happening again for me. The reason? On the way down, my secret stash o' cash, and Casey's secret stash as well, were both taken from our backpacks, making me $200 lighter. And on the way up, my credit card was taken from my wallet. Nice. So yes, no more tourist bus for me. Public transport all the way.

I'm in Bangkok now, and I start teaching in a couple of days. This situation is worrying me greatly, and I really have no clue how I'm going to manage this, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow whenever I meet my coordinator, Ram. I have just found out that I am the only volunteer starting out this week, but hopefully there will be more than just me teaching. If there isn't, I'll be running like the wind.

definite lack of activity

2005-05-22T08:16:00.000+01:00

Moving beach was the greatest decision. Haad Thien was pretty, but it just wasn't as beautiful as where I am now, which is Mae Haad, or Koh Ma. Most definitely wonderful, and tres quiet. Casey and I are in a bungalow for 150B (ok, so the water doesn't run clean, but still, we have to sea to wash off in!), and all we do is wander and read. We barely talk to each other all day. Perfect. It doesn't help that she has a gimpy foot as a result of drunken incidents in Haad Thien that were nothing to do with me, but it does mean that she has to keep it dry - no snorkelling for her. I haven't actually been snorkelling yet, and tomorrow is my last day, so I am definitely going to go tomorrow. Each time I think about going at the moment, I get a wave of lethargy. The curse of the Thai islands.

I did manage to achieve the unthinkable last night. We get the most beautiful lightning storms here - huge clouds with the lightning flashing through them, so close that you can almost touch them. Its gets windy, but has only rained once. Last night I took my cheapy digital camera out and managed to get some amazing shots of the lightning. It was a combination of luck and logical thinking that I got them. I used the option which takes continual photos, and for every 10 photo of pitch black, I got the most amazing shot of lighting shooting through the clouds. It was very addictive though, and Casey had to tell me to stop before I had a memory card filled with lightning shots. One is so perfect it is getting blown up and put on my wall. Its the only time I've been pleased to have a digital, I think.

Kate, my little sister, and I have been emailing back and forth about her coming out to see me. I'm going to take her to the islands on both sides, and I'm already getting excited about showing her stuff, and taking her places, and she isn't even coming out until August. By then. I will have been to three more countries. Hard to believe.

bungalows and blue seas

2005-05-19T10:16:00.000+01:00

I've been staying for the last week on Koh Pha Ngan, at the Haad Thien beach, although tomorrow we are moving beaches. It is blisteringly hot, and we only sunbathe in the morning. In the afternoon, its more hammocks and dozing. Although yesterday we were rather active, considering the circumstances, and got a boat ride to check out another couple of beaches. Typical of all Thai negotiations, what we bargained for before we left changed once we were in the boat. People say that Thailand is the land of smiles - certainly not among taxi drivers and long tail drivers. Those guys never smile, and instead pout and sulk through most of their journeys.

I am travelling with three other people - we are a cute little travelling family. It consists of Josh from Melbourne, Sarah from Sydney, and Casey from Tennessee. We met on the airport bus, and have been together ever since. Most amusing, and puts to death my fears about being lonely.

Our bungalow is rather small and dark, and inhabited by lots of creatures as well as ourselves, such as a big big lizard that wanders the walls, and far too many mosquitoes. Even though we have a net up over the bed, we still get bitten. Poor Sarah also got attacked by sand flies, and her legs are just covered with bumps. The mosquitoes and the heat at night mean that sleep is fairly fitful. I make up for it during the day with countless naps though.

One of the strange things about moving from country to country is adjusting to a new economy. Life in Nepal was so cheap that Thailand seems pricey. Realistically, I know that it is not, and my money goes pretty damn far (good game - getting your bank balance in baht. Now that makes you seem rich!), but the shock of everything being doubled in price isn't fun. Plus, it makes bartering hard, because what is a fair price?

Although nutella and banana crepes may not be strictly a Thai cuisine, they are damn good, and readily available, and therefore far too tempting. Any plans for losing weight have definitely gone out the window. Not that I was really expecting too. Sarah is also a girl after my own heart. Every afternoon, she is like, "I need cake!". The Sanctuary does do pretty good cake, it must be said. And excellent iced mochas. However, there is also large amounts of far too healthy food on the menu for all the fasters and health nuts. Its draws quite a strange crowd, that place. Trendies mixed with people who are serious about their yoga and feel a need to align their chakras each morning. Certainly not for me. Still, its the other side of the island tomorrow for about 5 more days of sunbathing. Awesome.

land of temptation and plenty

2005-05-14T07:34:00.000+01:00

Thank goodness I am leaving Bangkok today - it is the city of spending cash! I walk down the street and I become poorer, I swear. It is also the city of frustration. I spent so much money yesterday trying to get through to British Airways to change my flights - I finally got that done, many bhat later. I still have some other stuff to book, like my surf school, and jillaroo school. I'll try and do that this afternoon maybe. I'm now going to be home in time for Christmas, which is niiiice. I then tried to post my belongings home, but since it is Saturday, the post office isn't open. What a pain, but it seems that post offices all over the world are designed never to post anything! I'll do it when I come back to Bangkok in about 10 days. Since I'm going down to the islands tonight, I have decided to leave almost everything at the hotel, and just take down my day bag - I'm thinking that all I will need is a bikini, some shorts and vests. I was only going to spend 5 days down there, but I can see this turning into 10. At least.

I had one of my best Thai experiences today. I swear, this country is consigning to make me fat, and I just had some green mango with chilli sugar - mmmmm, delicious. Definitely a highlight. I have also been breaking quite a lot of food rules, like drinking drinks with ice (or consisting almost solely of ice, as was the strange snow cone I had yesterday), and eating yoghurt. Yoghurt, I am sure is good for you, since it gets your body used to strange bacteria. And so far, so good. (Now I'm going to jinx myself!).

Am most definitely looking forward to laying on the beach for a few days. Casey is staying at the Sanctuary so she can do yoga, and I will most definitely be joining her a couple of times to stretch out the old limbs. Am also taking my running shoes in case there is a nice path to go running. Am very much craving exercise at the moment - I think my body might be in shock after having trekked for so long. Besides, if I don't take some exercise soon, all that mango and pad thai is going to start showing up around my middle!

tuk tuks!

2005-05-12T05:03:00.000+01:00

If someone had told me that my first night in Bangkok would be spent eating grasshoppers and racing tuktuks round the city at 2am, I would have told them to take a very long walk. But that's pretty much exactly how it was spent, along with watching a guy eat a scorpion (he removed the stinger) and drinking long islands from a bucket - all with people who I met on the airport bus. Awesome and hilarious. Khao San is ten million times tackier than I ever imagined, everyone here is tan, and since all six of us had flown from Kathmandu, we spent most of the bus journey marvelling at the fact there seems to be a highway system here, and the roads were actually paved. Wonders will never cease.

goodbye to nepal

2005-05-10T15:44:00.000+01:00

IMG_0339
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

I am leaving Nepal tomorrow to fly to Bangkok. I have to say that I have got quite fond of ramshackle Kathmandu, where all the buildings look only half-finished. Am sure that Thailand will be filled with other such delights, like the food. Will be avoiding fried food for the first couple of days for sure.

Before I leave, I do feel that I should make some sort of comment on the political situation in Nepal at the moment. Whilst I have been here, the King has lifted the state of emergency that he had imposed whenever he dissolved the government. However, it is unclear what this actually means, or whether a new democractic government will be elected. There is no free press here, so information is hard to come by. A UN human rights investigative body flew in last week to look at the human rights situation regarding free press, but I haven't seen anything about it since. There has also been a representative from the US here, but whether US aid has been promised has also not been clear. It seems that foreign aid in the form of security has been requested. This billboard is outside the Royal Palace, and I don't know how long it has been here. It does seem rather incongruous, in light of the recent events. Reminds me of communist propaganda, to be honest. On a more urbane note, the familiar ring of mobile phones has started again. Before I went trekking, the mobile phone services in Nepal had been switched off by the King. I also didn't meet any Maoists whilst I was trekking, although my Sherpa guides were searched by the army for weapons (ie being part of the Maoist army) whilst in Sagamartha National Park.

Early flight tomorrow after a bakery breakfast. Its a good thing too, since my rupee stash is running low. Time to break out the baht!

statements

2005-05-10T02:50:00.000+01:00

One of the best things about Kathmandu is that instead of bread before a meal, you get popcorn.

I didn't change my pants for 5 days whilst hiking.

I also didn't take a shower for about seven.

Buying magazines is twice the price of buying books, but sometimes a girl just wants to read Vogue.

Getting your laundry done means your whites come back with brown stains. Yummy.

If you go to an Irish bar, there will be an annoyingly loud Northern Irish guy discussing the football.

Diet coke does not exist in Kathmandu, and if it does, it is three times the price of the regular stuff.

Solar power means that toilets and showers don't work in the morning.

ra-ra soup and fried potatoes

2005-05-09T12:23:00.000+01:00

Like I mentioned before, food was a serious focus of the trip. This was because Nepalese tea houses do not do fine dining. This is fair enough. One of the things that you become very aware of in the Himalayas is that everything is either sherpa or yakked in, and sherpa or yakked out. That is a very physical, tangible existence. The sight of men carrying huge tins of tuna on their back climbing ahead of us was most disconcerting, and you certainly couldn't begrudge the tea houses their lack of choices. However, eating the same food for 14 days does begin to wear. And the choices were - rara noodle soup, fried noodles, fried potatoes with vegetables, spaghetti, momos, and some soups, and a lot of omlette. Oh, and dal bhaat. Each person had their own personal favourites, although we tried to mix it up as much as possible. Like I said, meat was off the menu. I have to say, my favourite meal of the day was definitely breakfast (hello porridge - dad would be proud of me. Maybe not the copious amounts of sugar I put on as "energy"). Anything after that was just perfunctuary eating. That's why coming back to Kathmandu and eating a chicken basket today, and steak last night, has been positively thrilling. The best thing about Kathmandu so far has been Mike's for breakfast. It was this place recommended to me by Nepali native (Patrick) and we had to walk through a fairly slummy neighbourhood to get there. Just when I was beginning to lose faith, I saw this green sign with the label Mikes, and we found this little oasis of colonial style. And the best breakfasts ever. David got the most huge huevos rancheros I have ever seen, I got waffles, corn bread and bacon (I was overwhelmed by choice and had to get it all!), and every one else got other such culinary delights like eggs benedict. It was less of a breakfast and more of an event. And just perfect for warding off the slight hangover that I had from last night's partying and early start today. My body clock for some reason thinks that 6am is a perfectly reasonable time to get up. Grr. Might well be going back tomorrow.

I've seen bigger

2005-05-09T12:07:00.000+01:00

No matter what I see for the rest of my life, I will always be able to answer with "I've seen bigger". It was the catchphrase of the trip, and been immortalized on our Rum Doodle (a restaurant famed for its summitteer board in Kathmandu) foot last night. The trek was absolutely fantastic. Great experience, great people. Today, most people left, and now its just David and I left in Kathmandu. I think we are heading to a party tonight with some people who are volunteering here. You just seem to stumble into these kinds of things here.

But the trek. Where should I start? For a start, it wasn't half as hard as I thought it was going to be, which was incredibly reassuring. I had fears that I wouldn't actually be able to enjoy the views and take in the whole experience because I would be lagging behind everyone crying in pain. In fact, it was completely opposite to that. I loved every minute of the trekking itself, apart from maybe the treks back to Gorak Shep and Periche. By that stage, I was just exhausted, and my whole body was on auto-pilot.

Constant themes of the trip, apart from having seen bigger, was conversations about food (mainly meat, because we weren't allowed any - buff burger anyone?), the state of the toilets, and endless games of yanesh, which is an Israeli card game. The toilets were for the most part asian-stylee, which means squat. Easy enough for a guy, not so easy for a girl who has been trekking for 9hours. Our Sherpa leader, Oam, told us to keep an eye on our pee, and make sure that it was clear, so there were frequent comments opn that as well. Its amazing how open you can be with people who you have only known for 4 days! For some reason, altitude seems to be a diurectic, because at one stage every time we went to the bathroom, we seem to pee about 3litres. Most disconcerting.

Staying in guesthouses was a lot of fun, especiallly since you saw the same people over and over. There were the group of posh girls we didn't like, the Isralis, the Ruso-Israeli couple, and the Danish twins. A nice little sense of community was to be had, and even today in Kathmandu we saw a couple of the same people. There's no escaping!

Probably the best part of the trip was the trek to Kala Patthar. Kala Patthar means black rock, and it was the literal high point of the trek, being at an elevation of 5,600m. And man was it a slog to get up. For the last 25m of black rock that you had to scramble up, I was nearly in tears, but up on making it, turning round and seeing a 360 degree panorama of the Himalayas, with Everest poking up encircled by a halo of cloud, and 3,000ft drops of both sides takes your breath away. Doesn't kill the appetite for a snickers though! Snickers were the lifeblood of my trip. Without them, I am not sure I would have made it beyond Namche Bazaar.

final destination

2005-05-09T12:06:00.000+01:00

IMG_0245
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

Yep, this is a picture of the infamous Everest Base Camp. To get here, we had to hike 3 hours from a place called Lobuche to Gorak Shep, and then a further 3hrs after that, to an altitude of 5,300m. That's pretty damn high, and across pretty shitty terrain. Shitty as in a great big glacier that is strewn with huge boulders, just to make it even more of a challenge. I don't think I have ever been as exhausted as I was that day. One hour after Gorak Shep, I knew that my legs literally had nothing left in them. They were walking on pure habit, and a bit of mind over matter. We had been hiking for 8days at this stage, and climbed around 5,000m total. (The trail has a lot of ups and downs). That's pretty tiring. The worst of it was that every step that went closer to Base Camp was another step I would have to come back at the end of the day. And all to get to an empty camp of lots of tents. Totally worth the pain.

There were two highlights to walking to Base Camp. Not the views, because you are getting too close to the mountains to really get a sense of perspective beyond huge. However, the Khumbu Ice Field is just amazing. It is this incredible ice glacier that looks like a frozen sea mid-storm. Huge peaks and troughs in the ice as it moves. The second highlight was a couple of pretty big avalanches. They just tore down the side of the mountain and sounded like thunder. Anyone caught in them wouldn't have stood a chance. Such power.

finally made it

2005-05-09T11:53:00.000+01:00

IMG_0239
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

Yep, I'm back in Kathmandu after an incredibly boring couple of days. Gnawing off my arm and gouging out my eyes did at one stage seem sensible ways of passing the time. But instead, we had a a rather, no wait, very bumpy plane ride from Lukla. It took much longer than the scheduled 30 minutes because just as much time was spent going up and down as was spent going from west to east. Still, we're here. Arriving back in Kathmandu was like coming to a mad centre of civilization. We stared at the masses of people and literally called out all the things that we were seeing. Pashminas! Fruit! Rickshaw! Internet! Two weeks of trekking in the mountains and you would think we were savages. And Kathmandu is a rather mad form of civilization in all honesty. I am sure that I have mentioned the drivers, and the mad dogs, and the meat in the streets, and the strange men with their violins. Pure madness, in a good way.

Now, onto this rather glorious photo. It is off Nuptse, a huge rock of a mountain behind which lies Everest. If you are in the right place (ie high enough), and the clouds are right, Everest poke over Nuptse's left should, usually trailing a plume of cloud. Whenever that happens, its an amazing sight. The bottom of the picture shows the Everest Ice Field, which the climbers cross on their way to camps 1 through 4. Whilst we were at Base Camp (bottom left of the picture, but probably too tiny to see), we saw some guys carrying back the body of an American who had fallen into a crevasse. Dangerous place.

The dangers of altitude were rammed home to us pretty often. One of our trekkers, a great guy called Jeff, ended up with serious AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), with a pulse ox of 43% (it is normally 85ish at the altitude we were at), and cerebral and pulmonary edemas. If he hadn't gone down when he did (on the back of first a sherpa and then a horse), then he would have died. Once he reached the Himalayan Rescue Centre in Pheriche, he was reassuring told that "they hadn't lost anyone on the bed this season". Luckily he wasn't their first. A helicopter to Kathmandu later, and he is now nearly right as rain. Right enough to come for dinner and have a few beers last night anyway. Damn lucky escape though.

misty rainy day

2005-05-07T04:49:00.000+01:00

I am currently writing from one of the most expensive internet cafes in the world it seems, waiting for a flight back to Kathmandu. I am in Lukla, having completed my trek (much more on that later), and it is incredibly boring. As a measure of my boredom, I am reading a book by Dan Brown, the guy who wrote the Da Vinci Code. Yes, times really are that hard. And yes, it is total crap. Guess I should also say thanks to all you lovely people who leave me comments and claim that I am still on the Lisburn Road. Big fat liars!!! And there will soon be photos to prove it. If I ever get back to Kathmandu. An Israeli guy just told me that the weather is looking good next week. Lukla really is not that exciting. My highlight has been eating an entire box of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles. So much for the Base Camp diet.

temples and chucking

2005-04-24T11:51:00.000+01:00

I have now been in Kathmandu for a couple of days, and am getting much more used to the place. I have seen lots of temples - both Hindi temples, which are the triple roofed kind, and Buddhist ones, which are white, and have the all seeing eyes on them. All very fascinating, and photos to follow. I have also been rather ill, and as yet haven't eaten more than a couple of bites of bread a day for the last 2 days. Not much fun! Still, all part of the process, if you ask me. I also passed out this morning at Durbar Square, right outside the temple of the Kumari (the kumari is a living goddess - she is only 4 years old, and will be a goddess until her first period), but I was with my tour group, so they have all looked after me very well. This afternoon we went to see the temple where they hold cremations - all very Michael Palin; I watched, but didn't take any photos - it seemed intrusive, although lots of other people were.

Tomorrow we fly to Lukla, where we start our trek. Everyone seems to be quite nervous, in that no one has actually done that much trekking before. Everyone seems to be like me, and have signed up for it on a whim. The last group who did it told us we would cry - good omen! Anyway, no internet contact for about 2wks. Wish me luck for the trek.

am arrived

2005-04-22T09:30:00.000+01:00

Have arrived in Kathmandu. Its all rather overwhelming, at first in a scary way, now in a rather relaxed fun way. Have only been here about 12 hours, but have managed to find myself on the back of a motorbike driving across town (traffic is completely mayhem here - people drive on all sides of the road, and people walk down the middle it seems) to a restaurant I don't know with a guy I don't know who buys me dinner. Tres strange. I don't think my mother would approve! Still, I survived. Am having quite heeby-jeebies about the water here, and must get around to buying a couple of bottles of mineral water. Still, I ate 12hrs ago and haven't been ill yet, and I think that's a good sign. Nepali food is grim -like Indian but worse. Its tres non-cultural of me, but I'm sticking to Western until the trek forces me to change. That way I can experience the delights of sausage-chicken pizza. Yummmmeeee.

goodbye goodbye

2005-04-20T10:55:00.000+01:00

So I'm off today. I have such jitters its untrue. I'm sure that once I actually leave, then I'll be fine, but the thought of spending 6hrs in Heathrow on my own just getting nervous is killing me. See, I'm panicking at the thought of panicking. I am such a loser. Gone is my cool, calm exterior. Now I just want someone to hold my hand!

Man, my bag is so heavy. I am currently consoling myself with the thought that a lot of the stuff will be posted home from Kathmandu after my trek is done. Somehow I don't think that longjohns are so useful on the beaches of Thailand. My other worry is that I am going to be so unfit for my trek to Everest Base Camp. Then again, Cara was reassuring me last night, saying that I would be dying for the first few days, and then it would be grand. She also told me to take a picture of myself in a bikini before I went, and then after, to see whether I am going to be truly emaciated at the end of it. Certainly a possibility.

Of course I didn't sleep particularly well, so I'm really tired this morning. I am going to be shattered by the time I actually arrive. Blurgh. But yes, of course its going to be so worth it. My poor wee mammy is pretty sad though. But I'm going to meet her in four months, and even then, I lived in the US for eight months whilst I was studying there, so its not like I haven't been away for so long before.

I don't think I'll be posting her for a couple of weeks, most likely at the end of my trek. Then I hope you are all going to come flooding back to hear my stories of Maoists, blisters and tea-houses.

rain rain rain

2005-04-18T20:21:00.000+01:00

It has rained here for three solid days. Man will I be glad to get away.

Yes, I am finally getting to the excited stage. It comes after the stress of how the hell is this going to fit into my backpack stage. Right now, it doesn't. But I'll make it!

music and books

2005-04-17T16:21:00.000+01:00

Seeing as I am going to be bereft of any new music for a long time (something that is not so good about ipods), I am stocking up, taking my cues fromRollingStone, as usual. So, I'm taking my chances with Beck, Martha and Rufus Wainwright, and then as a wee old school treat, Paul Simon. iTunes is horrendously addictive, although you should really be able to buy the killers there. As for books, all I am in the mood for are tales about UN failures - Emergency Sex is one such book, and one about Rwanda called We Would Like to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Even though that's what I'm in the mood for, I'm not taking it, instead opting for some lighter fiction. Oh, and Bergdorf Blondes for the plane. Can't wait. It'll make me think of Emma - she used to tell me funny funny stories about the fashion fashion girls of NYC.

Last minute stresses

2005-04-17T15:47:00.000+01:00

So, today I realised that I didn't have a fleece to take with me. I wasn't in the remotest bit bothered by this, until Kate and Dad started giving me the heebie-jeebies, and now I'm panicking and thinking that I'm going to be cold unless I go and get one. Yes, I am officially a loser. And not just a regular loser, but a chubby one. I read somewhere that you burn 6,000 calories a day at altitude, and therefore I will naturally lose loads of weight whilst I am trekking. I am therefore taking advantage of this by munching as much as possible before then, with eating fish and chips on Friday, followed by a Ben and Jerrys sundae and nachos at the cinema, and today I have had a nutella and banana toastie and lots of chips and salsa as well as regular meals. No doubt I will be cursing the excess baggage whilst I am trekking!

the things I'm thinking

2005-04-14T12:27:00.000+01:00

Even though I'm not going to be in Australia and New Zealand until September and October, they are what is consuming my mind at the moment - I think it is because my mum is coming out to meet me, and so I am wondering how I am going to fill my days whilst I am there. I have pretty much decided I am going to see very little of Australia, and instead going to focus on "skills". Ha ha ha. What I really mean is that I am going to sign up to surf school, which should be hilarious, but not as hilarious as Jillaroo school. Me running around on a horse chasing some sheep? Awesome.

passport back in my grasp

2005-04-12T10:14:00.000+01:00

Sigh. The doorbell just rang, and with me only being in my underwear, and my mum only having one leg, I had to grab an old dressing gown (I will never be as chic as Audrey manages to be in Breakfast at Tiffanys - I'll probably never be chic in all honesty!) and run downstairs to face the postie. Luckily, he was nice enough to say that my package did look pretty damn important, and therefore was forgiving my undress. And now I have my passport back in my grubby mitts, with a very unexciting Thai visa in it - it even says Cardiff in it, which totally ruins all designs on worldliness if you ask me. But still, it means I have a year's worth of comings and goings, which is rather nice. Nothing worse than a visa stress, I can assure you. So, if I had to leave tomorrow, I could, which is also good.

still waiting...

2005-04-12T09:33:00.000+01:00

Right now I am waiting for my passport to be sent back from the Thai Consulate in Cardiff, hopefully with a three month Thai visa in it. Its not a good state of affairs really, to be leaving in a week without a passport. But obviously at this point in time, there's not much I can do about it. I did speak to a lovely welsh lady at the Thai consulate on Friday before I sent them my passport, and she seemed to be very nice and trustworthy, hence me sending her my passport. Now I'm not so sure!

Back into town now to do some more shopping, and hopefully I'll actually learn some Thai. How do I expect poor Thai kids to learn English if I can't speak a word of Thai? Yes, no chance. Oh, I so wish I hadn't been so keen to save the world back in November!

still getting ready

2005-04-11T19:57:00.000+01:00

It doesn't matter how much preparation I seem to do, every morning I seem to wake up and think, "oh crap, I have to do that". I mean, imagine if I had only given myself a couple of days to get my ass in gear? I have no idea how I would have managed. It doesn't bode well for when I get back and have only a week to get myself sorted for Edinburgh. But never mind. Today's main feats involved getting lots of drugs, posting things, and fighting with my sleeping bag. I think I have won, but I'm not sure. Oh, and ordering casheesh, which is always fun. I think its because I do everything in dribs and drabs and waste lots of time sort of "wandering" that I don't get things done faster, but honestly, who could be bothered. But then again, I should be spending some quality time at the gym getting in training for Everest. Eek.

packing and preparations

2005-04-09T21:00:00.000+01:00

IMG_0022
Originally uploaded by scarlettholly.

How on earth is this all going to fit into my backpack? But fit it must, because this is what is going to accompany on my 8mth exodus around the world. I feel like I should be able to take less stuff, but in all honesty, there isn't even that much there. And certainly not that many clothes, which, for those who know me, will be shocked. Instead its all sleeping bags and mosquito nets. Quel glamour.