carbon footprints

Highlights

2007-05-30T23:02:00.000+01:00

This is a slideshow of some of our photos - currently it starts in Sydney (January 07). Click on the 'play' button to start the slideshow:

Click below to read about some of the highlights of our trip:

Click the links below to see posts by month or country:

Back to the UK

2007-05-29T19:29:00.000+01:00

Monday the 16th April was the final day of our trip; we were catching the plane to Heathrow at 10 past midnight that night. The Songkran celebrations had officially finished on Sunday, so we were able to walk around a bit more freely. We had lunch in Cafe Corner and browsed the markets one more time. In the late afternoon we had booked a massage at Ethos, so as to relax us nicely for the overnight flight. Although Thai massage isn't always relaxing; some of it is nice, and some of it involves your body being bent into strange shapes by the masseuse.

After the massage we had one last meal at Mai Kaidee. We were just about to leave for the airport when we saw Hayley walking down the street towards us - we had last seen her on Koh Tao two months ago when Claire did some yoga with her. The girls had a quick chat, and then we had to go and pick up our bags and get a cab to the airport.

When we checked in at Suvarnabhumi, we found out that our flight was delayed until 3am. We were very tired, but whiled away the extra hours sitting around on sofas in cafes in the departure lounge. Claire has a brief text message exchange with her Mum, who was going to be picking us up at the other end and was very excited. When we did finally get onto the plane we were very tired, but that worked out quite well because we went to sleep almost straight away. We woke up somewhere over the Mediterranean.

Our share of the final 12-hour flight contributed 2.78 tonnes of CO2. For the whole 474, the total emissions would have been about 572 tonnes. For our whole trip, our share of the flights counts as about 11.2 tonnes of CO2.

When we left the UK in October 2006, the concepts of 'carbon footprint' and 'carbon offsetting' still seemed to be quite niche ideas that only environmentalists talked about. Six months later, back in the UK, carbon offsetting was being discussed in the Sunday papers, and the huge CO2 emissions from air travel had become a common topic in the news. Recently a backlash of sorts has started against carbon offsetting. Certainly there are some problems with carbon offsetting (see my previous post about it), but I think it can be a useful thing to do if the offsets are well managed and tree-planting as a way of offsetting is avoided (See ClimateCare.org for an example of a good carbon offsetting organisation).

Still, we recognise that carbon offsetting our flights is just a stepping stone towards reducing our air travel more substantially. While we were away we met several travelers who were traveling without flying; Angela was traveling from Australia to Wales over land and sea, and Simone had traveled from Switzerland to China by train. We hope to take similar steps in future, although we will be visiting Heidi and Steve in New Zealand, so we may have to fly for part of that journey. It is admittedly hard to imagine us being able to get to New Zealand and all the way back again without flying.

When we landed early on the morning of the 17th April, Claire's parents, John and Angela, picked us up from Heathrow. They expertly managed to arrive in front of the Arrivals building just as we walked out the door. The weather in the UK was very warm and summery that week, so that the climate was almost the same as the one we had just left. We had a very sunny re-introduction to the UK, and our adventures together continued ... but the blog ends here!

Thanks to the readers whose feedback spurred me on to keep the blog going, and thanks to my Mum who (as I discovered when I got home) has been printing out the blog posts and carefully re-arranging them with scissors and glue so that they fit onto an A4 folder and appear in chronological order instead of back to front : )

Songkran in Bangkok

2007-05-28T00:18:00.000+01:00

Our six month trip ended with us getting covered in water and plaster-paste for three days in Bangkok. Back in Vietnam we'd made plans for the final days of our trip, such as visiting the Damnoen Saduak floating market or the Chatuchak weekend market. But at that point, we hadn't realised our stay would coincide with Songkran.

As it turned out, we didn't get further than a few blocks from the Khao San Road; water-flinging crowds were everywhere and the Bangkok traffic was even worse than usual. It was an interesting experience though.

(The crowds on the Khao San road)

Click here for a video of the Khao San road taken from outside our guesthouse (4.9 meg) - look out for the water entering stage-right near the end.

Each day, armed with a small bucket of water and my water pistol, we pushed our way through the crowds and traffic to visit nearby cafes. There's a little road called Tanao Rd to the east of the Khao San road that has the famous Mai Kaidee veggie restaurant, and also another one called Ethos. We also paid a couple of visits to Cafe Corner which is one of the few places in Bangkok that servers veggie organic food.

(How we looked when we made it to Ethos)

(The state we were in when we got to Mai Kaidee)

(Claire on Khao San road after the crowds have gone home)

One afternoon while we were sitting in Mai Kaidee, a tall guy with long dark hair was visiting the cafes along the street, apparently selling books from a stack he was carrying around. I wondered if he was a Hare Krishna or Jehovah's Witness, and prepared to stare intently at the table in order to avoid catching his eye. But we wasn't peddling enlightenment - he'd self-published a unique little travel book, and we ended up buying a copy. It was called "Vagabonding in the Axis of Evil", and it recounted his adventures hitchhiking across Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. As you can imagine, to be able to hitchhike through those countries, he obviously didn't really think of the populations of those countries as 'an axis of evil'. As his book explained: "Walking and hitch hiking around the world is a way to show that hospitality is somthing global, regardless of cultural differences and media inspired paranoia".

The author was an Argentinean guy by the name of Jan Pablo Villarino, and I later discovered that he was an underground celebrity of sorts, one of the worlds better known hitchhikers, and founder of Autostop Argentina, the only South American hitch-hiker's network. He has a blog, written in both Argentinian and English, which can be found here:
http://acrobatoftheroad.blogspot.com

The book we bought had a great chapter about his visit to the Kurdish Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq, which also appears on his blog. Here's a few extracts to give you an idea of what its like to be an Argentinian hitchhiking in Iraq:

I changed ten dollars to Iraqi dinars and hit the road without more plans than advancing through the mountain road network towards Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. My map, with its designs of miniature camels in the Eastern Deserts and oilfields in the Persic Gulf area, caters more for getting school boys interested into geography lessons than to guide a foreigner in the aftermath of the war.

While in the country he was introduced to the politicians at the Kurdish Parliament:

I am received by the Information Advisor to the President, who totally unaware of the answer he was going to get, asks: "How do you travel?"
"By thumb" -I replied.
Since in Kurdistan that is the same as replying "by shoulder" I am demanded a practical demo. Out of some closet, a camera of 'Kurdistan TV' appears, and so I find myself hitch-hiking imaginary cars inside the Kurdish Parliament. As there is actually not much to explain, but the red light on the camera is still on, I put in stage the techniques which apply in different countries, and explain that palming-down is more accepted than thumbing in Eastern Europe, while showing your thumb is an insult in Iran. It is one of those absurd moments for which I will always be grateful to life, the first hitch-hiking lessons on the Kurdish TV.

You can read more about his adventures in the Kurdish Autonomous Region here (in imperfect but poetic English):
In the country that attempts existing ...
He's planning to get the book properly published next year sometime.

Whereas the Songkran celebrations in Chiang Mai had mostly involved water, in Bangkok many Thais were carrying little pots of liquid plaster which they would smear onto your face as you went by. Because it was very crowded, it was hard to avoid getting 'plastered'. Also the crowds made the waterfights a bit more face-to-face, with people often just pouring bottles of water over each others heads. It was hard to photograph the streets, for fear of getting the camera soaked, but I did take the following shots by wrapping the camera in clear plastic:

(A bubble machine spews foam onto the Khao San Road)

(Faces in the crowd, with plaster)

Our guesthouse was quite a nice one called Buddy Lodge, and it had a pool on the roof, so we had a sunny refuge from the messy streets. We knew that we would be back home soon, so we wanted to properly appreciate and enjoy the warm climate for the last few days. The blue sky above Bangkok was actually the first blue sky we'd seen since Hue in Vietnam; northern Vietnam, Laos and northern Thailand had all been covered in a blanked of hazy white cloud due to the annual tree-clearing fires. People don't usually head for Bangkok to find cleaner air, but thats how it was for us...

Songkran in Chiang Mai

2007-05-27T22:00:00.000+01:00

On the 11th of April, Claire and Simone joined me again at Tawan Guesthouse in Chiang Mai, and the Songkran celebrations were beginning in earnest.

Over the previous few days, lots of street stalls had sprung up selling water pistols. It's not every day you get to take on a whole country in a waterfight, so I reasoned that I'd better get myself tooled up. I bought a large-capacity pump-action waterpistol with attractive blue-orange styling and a shoulder strap.

We were staying near the East Gate of the citadel, and that turned out to be one of the epicentres of the water-hurling. People roamed the streets with waterpistols, buckets or just bottles of water. The locals' preferred way of joining the fun was to get a huge barrel of water into the back of a pickup truck, fill the rest of the back with a bunch of their friends armed with buckets, and drive slowly around the log-jammed roads of Chiang Mai throwing gallons of water at everyone.

(Me vs a pickup truck, and me vs batman and a load of other people at the East Gate)

(Me vs some girls in a tuk tuk)

Trying to cross the junction into the East Gate was watery cross-fire mayhem. Songkran falls in the hottest part of the Thai year, so after a while you got used to being soaking wet and it was quite pleasant. Quite a few of the more experienced Songkranner's had armed themselves with icy-cold water though, and getting caught by a bucket load of that was always very bracing.

(Lots of wet people just inside the East Gate)

Generally, a ceasefire was called as the sun went down, and in the evenings we were able to walk out and sample Chiang Mai's many restaurants in a relatively dry state.

On the 13th we had booked the overnight train down to Bangkok. We needed a lift to the train station, but the roads around where we staying were bumper-to-bumper with pickup trucks and tuk tuks throwing water at each other. We covered our backpacks and bags with bin-liners, and walked a few hundred meters back through the traffic to find some clearer roads. Walking around with your bags definitely doesn't protect you from being a target. Claire took the water pistol for this bit and provided defensive returning-fire towards anyone who tried to get us. Which was quite a few people.

(A decorated bike near the station)

Once out on the clear roads, we found a pickup/taxi vehicle and clambered in. We got to the station OK, despite a lot of the roads being closed for a big Songkran parade. Our train left three hours late in the end anyway. This was our eighth overnight train journey since arriving in Southeast Asia, and one of the longest. We started about 5pm and lumbered through the Chiang Mai countryside, with a few track-side groups of revellers throwing buckets of water into the train. We played travel scrabble, which some of the Thai passengers found very interesting. Eventually the guard came to re-arrange our seats into large and comfortable bunk beds, and we settled down to sleep. As usual, it was easier to sleep with the train clunking and rattling along. Whereas when it stopped in a station, I woke up.

(On our way back to Bangkok)

Back into Thailand

2007-05-26T00:09:00.000+01:00

On the 7th of April we returned to Thailand, via the Houayxai-Chiang Khong border crossing. We wanted to head towards Chiang Mai, but it was a bit late in the day to get a bus all the way there, so we got the public bus to Chiang Rai instead.

Steve, who we had met on the Gibbon Experience, joined us on the bus, and also a Swiss girl called Simone who Claire had got chatting to while finding a lift to the bus station. Northern Thailand was hot and sunny, but also had the same smoke-haze that had been hanging over Laos.

It was big chunky bus with only about eight passengers. The bus surprised me by leaving on time; in Vietnam and Laos I had got very used to buses that didn't leave until they were more than full. We chugged along in the heat with all the windows open, and Claire sliced up a watermelon and passed pieces round to Steve, Simone and some of the other passengers.

Suddenly the female bus conductor was running around the bus trying to close all the windows ... what was going on? A couple of litres of water sailed in through the window that I was trying to close, and went all over me. Then I remembered: we were getting near to the Thai New Year.

"Songkran", the Thai New Year is celebrated every year on the 13th to 15th of April. In theory it is an important religious and spiritual festival, in which Thais pay respect to their parents and ancestors. In practice, however, it is mostly remembered and celebrated in the form of a huge three-day waterfight involving everyone in the country. And the waterfight starts early in the Thai countryside - as someone later explained to us: "In the cities it lasts for three days, but in the countryside people have less to do, so it starts early".

So my soaking on the bus was due to a group of children who had been waiting at the side of the road with buckets of water. We saw, and enjoyed a 'lucky' dousing from, quite a few more groups like that before we reached Chiang Rai.

After Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, it was very noticeable how much more developed Thailand was. There were many more cars per moped, and the people were more smartly dressed. And it was much easier to get a proper cup of tea (rather than Lipton Yellow Label with condensed milk). Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam were ravaged by war for many years, and Laos and Cambodia also stagnated under a besieged form of cold-war Communism, so the difference in development is easy to explain. But Thailand is also unique in the region, in that it is the only Southeast Asian nation never to be colonised by Western powers. I wondered how big a link there were between those two factors - how instrumental was Thailand's lack of colonisation in helping it to escape from war and political upheaval? Someone's probably written a thesis on that.

We stayed at Chiang Rai for one night, and then caught a bigger bus down to Chiang Mai. Steve caught a plane down to Bangkok, from where he was heading to Angkor Wat. Simone came down to Chiang Mai with us, although she couldn't get on the same bus so followed us down a few hours later.

(The garden of Tawan Gueshouse, Chiang Mai)

At Chiang Mai we headed for the Tawan guesthouse that the Americans we had met in Nong Khiaw had recommended. It had a nice garden, and cheap simple rooms with lots of old decorations and furniture. Chiang Mai was quite busy in the run up to Songkran, but we managed to get the last room, which turned out to be a triple. So when Simone arrived and found us a few hours later, we were able to share the room with her.

It was a Sunday night, so we strolled down the main street just inside the East Gate of the Citadel, where the market was in full swing. Click here to see a video we took in the market (8.7 meg). Chiang Mai is well known for its handicrafts, so there was lots of interesting jewelry and ornaments. More importantly though, there was a stall selling chocolate waffles cooked to order.

We had eight days left of our six-month trip, and while Claire and Simone were keen to travel northwest for a couple of hours to visit the charming town of Pai, I was more inclined to enjoy some quiet time, to catch up with reading and blogging. So I stayed put in Tawan Guesthouse while Claire and Simone went to Pai for two nights.

I'm not sure exactly what they got up to, but here are some of the pictures that Claire came back with:

... and also this strange video of the residents of Pai (5.3 meg).

The Gibbon Experience

2007-05-25T22:44:00.000+01:00

So basically, the Gibbon Experience is brilliant. Its a three-day, two-night trip into the jungle, near Houayxay in Laos. You go in a group of about twelve people, and you sleep in big treehouses at the top of very tall trees. They have a network of zip-line cables in the jungle canopy, and so you explore the jungle by zipping along the lines, which are hundreds of metres long and sometimes over a hundred metres above the ground. You also get to explore the jungle on ground-level by foot. Its called 'The Gibbon Experience' because there are rare Gibbons in that part of the jungle. You'll hear them singing, but you probably wont see them because they are very shy. You will get to live somewhat like a gibbon though, hanging out in the treetops. Although most gibbons don't live in trees that have bathrooms with running water, and they don't get hot meals are bought to them three times a day.

Apart from all of that, what's really brilliant about The Gibbon Experience is that it is primarily a conservation effort - the treehouses and the cable network are there to show the local people that they can make a living from the jungle without chopping it down and burning it. Its also run very responsibly, with the local villagers being involved and enthused. It was originally set up by a very innovative conservation group called Animo, but eventually the plan is to hand the whole operation over to the local Laos villagers.

Here are some pics and videos to set the scene:

Videos:
My first go on a Zip-line (3.1 meg)
Claire filming while zip-lining out of Treehouse One (12.0 meg)
A film of Treehouse Two taken from the zip-line (6.6 meg)

Some audio I recorded:
Insects chirping on our first evening in the treehouse
Birds we heard while trekking through the jungle
The very strange calls of the Gibbons
The dawn chorus on our third morning

If it sounds like something you want to do, you can book it at the official web site: http://www.gibbonx.org.

Hear more about our experience of the Gibbon Experience below ...

Day One - 5th April

On the first morning, our group of 13 people was driven out into the jungle in two 4x4s. Two hours on a half-built road, and then one hour off road over a steep dusty track. We arrived at the base village and then our guides led us into the jungle on foot for an hour to reach the actual treehouse network. The guides are all local villagers, so there were no slick introductory speeches. "My name is Bing and I'm your guide for this trip. Please come to me with any questions or problems. We hope you have a great time." - nothing like that. They just waved to us and indicated that we should follow. I think they were shy about using the English that they were still learning. Over the course of the three days they became less shy, and were keen to learn new words and card games.

As we arrived at the kitchen/training hut where we would be shown how to use the zip-line harnesses, two little beings bounded out to see us. One was a little monkey, and one was a baby bear; both were orphans that were being looked after by the guides until they were big enough to go free. We gave the monkey a banana, and then it stole Lyndon's glasses and ran off (the guides knew how to catch it). The baby bear was fascinating to watch, it was the same size and furry-ness as a teddy-bear. It climbed onto Louise's lap, hoping to be fed. Then, while we climbed into our harnesses, the bear and monkey rolled around the floor with each other. And the bear tried to eat Alex's trainers.

Then it was time for the group's first zip-line. The guide gave as a careful demonstration, and then we took it in turns to zip through the air into Treehouse One. Its a strange feeling, watching the trees flash past, with a whirring sound in your ear and the cable whizzing past next to your head. Claire and I have both zip-lined before (at the brilliant Go-Ape in Bracknell), but these lines were much longer and higher and the scenery was much more beautiful. Over the next three days, we zipped about forty or fifty times. There's a video of my first zip here.

We all looked around Treehouse One, marvelling at how high up we were, how they had managed to build the treehouse, and watching the pig which spent presumably happy days cleaning up the scraps under the tree. One of the younger guides made us some coffee and Laos tea, and then courageously used his basic English skills to explain the schedule for the next few days, and the safety rules. Then we were zip-lining again, with different members of the group being taken to the different treehouses (click here for a video of the zip out of Treehouse One - 12.0 meg). We organised who would stay in which treehouse amongst ourselves. Claire and I got the two-person 'honeymoon' Treehouse Two for the first night.

(Zipping into Treehouse Two, me in the 'lounge' of the Treehouse, and the view from the treehouse)

We got to Treehouse Two in the late afternoon, and the guides showed us where everything was and then left. The Treehouse was made up of a circular living area about 8 meters across, with a trap door leading down to a bathroom that had a sink, shower and toilet. The (drinkable) running water was supplied from a stream on a nearby hill. In the living area there was a bed with a big, thick mosquito net, a sealable plastic box for storing food, a table and some stools, and a camping stove and kettle. There was lots of condensed milk and Laos tea. We had some of our own teabags so we made a cuppa and enjoyed the views.

Click here for a video taken inside the treehouse (6.2 meg).
Click here for a video of Claire arriving by zipwire (2.5 meg)

Having a cup of tea up a tree is great. You can hear the birds and insects all around (click here for a recoding). We could see the hills and valleys of the Bokeo Nature Reserve stretching off into the hazy distance. As dusk approached, I had to zip out of our tree and walk down the little hill to meet the guides who had brought us some candles. Even walking a short distance through the jungle as the light faded, I got an idea of what it might be like to be a creature in the jungle at night. Everything was pale and shadowy, and the trees seemed much closer together. I had the disquieting sense that anything could be lurking nearby and remain undetected. Animals in the jungle at night probably spend a lot of time standing still and listening very carefully.

I got back to the treehouse without being eaten by anything (there are tigers in Laos, but not in the area we were in). We spent the rest of the evening dining and chatting by candle-light and soaking up the jungle atmosphere. It was completely dark, with insect sounds all around us. Moths were attracted by our candles, and a large flying cockroach. A couple of big-ish spiders hung out on the ceiling. Occasionally we heard rustling noises in the trees nearby, or down on the ground below. Shining my torch down to the ground did not illuminate much. We felt miles from anywhere, which indeed we were.

In the middle of the night we were woken by a thunderstorm, which often pass over this part of Laos in the night in April. The rain rattled on our ceiling, and lightning flashed, and the thunder thundered. We had been told that if the storm came too close, we should evacuate the tree and go to a nearby shelter-hut. However it did not seem windy enough to threaten our tree so we stayed put. The storm passed, and we drifted back off to sleep. Being in bed up a tree while a thunderstorm passes over is great.

Day Two - 6th April

On the second day we awoke early, and climbed out of our netted bed to listen to the morning sounds of the jungle. We had been told that the guides would take us for a little trek before breakfast, as the morning is the best time to see animals in the jungle. We saw the guides arrive at the foot of our tree and beckon us down, and we zipped across to our little hill and then walked down to see them. We asked them if they could take us to see some animals. They looked a bit blank. "No animals near here" they explained. "We go zip-lining?" they suggested, hopefully. There were four long zip-lines near Treehouse two, stretching accross two valleys in pairs, with a tall tree in the centre acting a a hub for the four wires. We did a couple of circuits of the four wires with the guides, which was indeed good fun, and gave us a chance to practice our landings. If you brake too early, you might not make it to the landing platform, and then you have to pull yourself in by hand. If you brake too late, the wire can run out rather rapidly. Braking too late was generally preferable to braking too early.

We wanted to explore the jungle a bit though, so we told the guides we would go for a walk on our own, following the path to Treehouse Three. It was still quite early, about 6:30 am, and we heard lots of birdsong and the odd rustle in the bushes.

Click here to hear a recording of the morning birdsong in the jungle.

As we walked through the trees, we heard some very distinctive, strange calls. A kind of whooping that rapidly changed pitch, at times almost sounding like a radio being tuned. We had been told that we would hear the Gibbons singing, and we wondered if that was what we were hearing. It was hard to imagine what creature was making the noise; it sounded like neither bird nor ape. How could these strange sounds could come from creatures with vocal apparatus so similar to ours?

Later, back in the UK, I learnt that some Gibbons produce their song using a throat sac which they can inflate to produce very loud calls. I compared what we had heard with other recordings of Nomascus Concolor gibbons, and it turned out that we had indeed heard (and recorded) the Gibbons.

Click here to hear the strange calls from that jungle morning.

The path wound on towards Treehouse Three, rising and falling over the hilly landscape. We saw ferns, strange flowers, and marauding gangs of tiny ants and termites. As we descended some steps in the path, we heard rustling far above us. Claire looked up and saw a flash of black fur, and a pair of black legs disappearing behind a tree trunk. We waited, very quietly, to see if we could see the Gibbons again. They seemed to be throwing small seeds and bits of bark down at us.

(Can you see the Gibbons? Neither could I. They were there, though.)

The Gibbons had hidden, or moved on, so we moved on too. We reached the zip-line into Treehouse Three and went in to visit. No-one was home, because they were out for an early-morning trek like us. We made ourselves a cup of ovaltine, and enjoyed the tree-house ambiance.

(Claire enjoying the view from the kitchen, and Damien pausing by his front door to take some photos)

When the Treehouse Three dwellers returned, we chatted for a bit, and then headed back to our own wooden platform for a late breakfast.

Click here for a video of Treehouse Two taken from the zip-line (6.6 meg)

We stayed up our tree until midday, then zipped over to Treehouse One for a group lunch. There, we heard what the other treehouse dwellers had been up to. Treehouse One had been evacuated in the middle of the night during the storm the night before; the winds had been quite strong in that area of the jungle, and the guides had shouted over from the kitchen area on the nearby hill, telling the group to evacuate. So they had enjoyed the unique experience of ziplining out of a tree in the dark, in a storm. Soon afterwards the storm had passed, and they were able to return back to the treehouse.

The group from Treehouse Three had spent the morning zipping over to Treehouse Five and then trekking back. Treehouse Five is the most remote of the treehouses, and the biggest. The people in it were in a separate group to us (the 'Waterfall experience', as opposed to the 'Classic Experience'), but evidently the guides could take us to visit it if we asked. We all arranged to swap treehouses for the second night, and then Patrick and I went over to see the guides in the kitchen hut to see if they could take a group of us to Treehouse Five that afternoon. It was already about 3pm, so they said they could take us, but that we would have to move quickly, and take torches with us in case it got dark on the way back.

We set off, in a group of seven with two guides. We went back past Treehouses Two and Three, and then came to the longest of the zipwires in the jungle. The guides told us it was about 400 metres long, and it took a long time for each of us to zip accross it. The wire crossed a large valley, and the view was beautiful. From there we trekked along the jungle paths some more. It was a hot jungley day, despite the shade of the trees. The humid experience of jungle trekking was punctuated by two more refreshing zips through the air before we reached our destination.

(the zip-line into Treehouse Five)

Treehouse Five rests in a tall tree in the middle of a valley, with three zip-lines going in and out of it. We met the Treehouse Five group who were on the first day of their excursion, and had arrived in their tree that afternoon. Gemma and Nasser, a couple we had met on the Mekong boat, were there; we had told them about the Gibbon Experience on the boat, and they had managed to get places. They were enjoying the treehouse, although Nasser was troubled by the close attention paid to him by the local bumblebees.

It had taken about an hour and a half to get to the treehouse. We stayed for half an hour to chat and rest, and then set off back to our own bases. There were no ziplines on the way back to our neck of the woods, so we had a long trek back through a valley with a slow trickling stream. It was about 5pm when we started the journey back, and the day was starting to cool.

It took about two hours to get back, including a steep climb up a hill towards Treehouse Three. Five of our group were stopping at Treehouse Three for the night, but Claire and I carried on back towards Treehouse One with the two guides.

(Treehouse Three viewed from below, and our guides for the trek)

We reached Treehouse One just as the sun was setting. We both had a cool refreshing shower and then sat down to a candle-lit dinner with our tree-mates Alex, Lyndon and Tina. Claire cooked up a 'chocolate' fondue for dessert, using the condensed milk and ovaltine provided in the treehouse. Then we sat and played cards as the night time insects chirruped around us.

Day Three - 7th April

Early on our third day in the jungle, Claire, Tina and Lyndon zipped off to watch the sunrise from the 'hub' tree between the two valleys. I was still tired from the day before, and so opted for some extra time in bed.

Click here for a video Claire took from the hub tree (8.1 meg).

Meanwhile, I had emerged from our bed-net and made an audio recording of the morning chorus ... click here to hear it.

One of the guides arrived in our treehouse to make coffee and lay out some breakfast. I was the only one there to enjoy it though. I munched on fresh pineapple and played cards with the guide, while Claire and Lyndon ventured off towards Treehouse Three to find some gibbons. They did not spot any gibbons, but Claire found some squirrels, energetically leaping from tree to tree.

After a few hours I met Claire and the adopted monkey by the Treehouse One zip-line. The monkey had been trying to climb onto people's shoulders quite a lot, which can be off-putting if you're not expecting it. When he climbed up onto Claire's shoulders though, we realised that he just wanted to do some grooming. It was his way of making friends.

Click here for a video of the monkey making friends with Claire (6.6 meg).

Click here for a video of Claire's return to Treehouse One (3.2 meg).

At midday we were all back in Treehouse One for our final meal in the jungle.

(Clockwise from left: me, Alex, Louise, Patrick, Fergus (half-of), Anna (half-of), Tina, Lyndon)

Soon, it was time to leave our arboreal lifestyle and venture back to Houayxay. On our way past the kitchen-hut we got to say goodbye to the guides, the baby bear and the monkey. We walked for about an hour to get back to the village.

(Claire and the bear, and some women from the village gathering corn)

At the village we crossed paths with the new group who were just about to head into the jungle for their three tree-top days. Among them was a couple with two daughters about eight or ten years old - it was great to see children going to do what we'd just done. The 4x4 came to pick us up, and because there was thirteen of us, some people had to go on the roof. There was no shortage of volunteers though, Patrick, Damian, Alex and one of the guides all clambered up there with our bags. We bumped our way back along the dusty hilly track.

When we reached the main road, we clambered out of the 4x4 and were ushered round the back of a house, where we found a long table overlooking a stream, and we were served some delicious lunch. There was also a big cool-box full of cold drinks and beer, which got everyone quite excited.

Then it was time for some of our group to part ways - Damien, Louise and Patrick were catching a bus towards central Laos instead of heading back to Houayxay. Inexplicably, Louise had some hula-hoops with her, so we all had a go on them before their bus arrived and they clambered aboard.

On the road back to Houayxay, we discussed St Patrick's day parades and road building techniques, and played the 'movie/actor' game. Then we were back at the office, where we picked up our bags and headed in different directions. Most of the group were catching the two-day boat along to Mekong to Luang Prabang. Claire and I and Steve were crossing the border into Thailand. The border crossing was two minutes walk from the Gibbon Experience office, and consisted of a motorised canoe across the Mekong. As we boarded the canoe, we said goodbye to the Gibbon Experience, and goodbye to Laos ...

Mekong Cruise to Houayxay

2007-04-26T16:27:00.000+01:00

After our day in Nong Khiaw we took the public bus back to Luang Prabang. Luckily the bus was so full of passengers that the bus driver didn't bother to stop and pick anyone else up, so we got back to Luang Prabang in less than three hours. In one village the bus was briefly stopped by a brightly coloured 'roadblock' made of ribbons that some children were holding across the road. We wondered what was going on. The bus driver dutifully stopped, and then the villagers handed out little paper flowers for everyone to pin onto their clothes. Then we drove on, with the little festival left unexplained.

In Luang Prabang we then had a half day to prepare for our journey to Houayxay and The Gibbon Experience. We bought our boat tickets and visited the night market for the last time.

On the morning of the 3rd of April we were down at the riverside early to get on our longboat. It was only about half-full, although we had heard that the boats coming the other way down the Mekong could get very crowded. We set off and chugged up the river for 8 or 9 hours. It was warm and reasonably comfortable, but the Laos haze hid a lot of the scenery, and so sleeping and reading were the main ways the pass the time.

We stopped for the night at Pak Beng, which used to be a tiny village but is now a ballooning sprawl of guesthouses and restaurants, its growth fed by the many and regular backpacker-laden boats. We ran the gauntlet of touts and then Claire explored and chose a room for us to stay in, while I guarded the bags.

In the evening, we ate at the Mr Sivilai's restaurant, outside which there was a sign promising good conversation from Mr Sivilai, and good cooking from his wife. The sign was correct on both counts, and we enjoyed hearing about Mr Sivilai's 14 years as a monk before he left the temple and married his girl and went to start a restaurant at Pak Beng. He had a very gentle and friendly nature, and so it made sense that he had spent over half his life meditating in an orange robe.

While we were eating, a little girl wandered up to our table - I think she was a niece or relative of Mr Sivilai. She told us her name was 'Oop-thai' and sang us some songs, before busily getting to work with the multi-coloured crayon Claire produced from her bag. She enjoyed playing with our camera, and ran off round the little restaurant to photograph the other tables. We gave her the multi-coloured crayon to keep, and she skipped off very happily.

The next morning we picked up some breakfast from Mr Sivilia, and then spent another eight uneventful hours watching the hazy Mekong banks drift by. At Houayxay we checked in at the Gibbon Experience office, and then found a guesthouse in which to spend the night. On the roof we met a couple of English people who had just finished the 'Gibbon' that day. They were very excited and told us that we were in for a treat ...

Nong Khiaw

2007-04-23T13:59:00.001+01:00

It was an 8-hour boat trip up the Nam Ou river from Louang Prabang to Nong Khiaw. The boat driver expertly navigated us upstream through the rocks and rapids in the wide river. Some of the scenery was beautiful, but haze from slash-and-burn argriculture often obscured our surroundings.

Nong Khiaw itself was in quite a dramatic setting, on the west bank of the river in the shadow of some steep hills. Somehow the money had been found to build a huge 50-metre high concrete bridge to carry the main road accross the river to the east bank, where we found a guesthouse. We checked into a wood and straw hut with a simple bathroom and a view of the river. Shortly after 6pm the power was cut off, and the whole village was in darkness until about 10pm. We ate in an open air cafe lit by candles and moped lights. The ubiquitous haze meant that no stars were visible, and so the darkness and the haze made Nong Khiaw feel like it was insulated away from the rest of the world.

Early the next morning we went back to the boat-parking area to find out about boats to Mung Noi. We knew it was about 1 hour upstream, so we hoped to get there, trek to a cave we had heard about with a river running through it, and then get a boat back to Nong Khiaw in time to catch the bus the next morning. It soon became apparent that we wouldn't be able to travel to that timetable; the boat drivers said there was only 1 or 2 boats a day in each direction, and the times didn't fit our plan. Whatever happened, we wanted to get to the Gibbon Experience on time, so we abandoned the Mung Noi plan and went to explore Nong Khiaw instead.

We had heard that there were some interesting caves east of Nong Khiaw, so we hired some bikes and headed that way. While Claire was giving some stickers to some local boys, they asked where we were going, and then offered to show us a nearby cave. We followed them off the road, along a path towards one of the tall hills that overlooked the area. At one point the boys stopped, giggled, and motioned for us to hide behind some bushes, while a group of women wandered past a nearby stream. They explained that their mothers were there - apparently the boys did not want to be seen guiding tourists around.

After following a winding path through the bushes that we never would have found ourselves, we reached a little cave. The boys showed us how the hanging curtains of stalactites could be used as a musical instrument, and a stalacmite formation in the back of the cave that looked like a Buddha. It was refreshing to be in the cool air of the cave after the hot trek through the bushes. After showing us the cave, the boys, predictably, asked us for some 'kip'. We usually give little gifts or stickers to children, rather than money, but they had been amusing and useful guides so I gave them about 50 cents each. I recorded the noise of the insects outside of the cave - click here to hear it.

The boys led us back and then happily departed on their bikes. We stayed to relax by a wide, shallow stream that we had waded through on the way to the cave. Small flocks of white and orange butterflies fluttered around as we both swam in the water.

I made some recordings of the sounds we heard at the stream:
Stream and insects
Stream and bird

We picked up some terrible sandwiches to have for lunch, and then cycled further east to visit the larger and more well known Tham Pha Thok caves. Villagers lived in the caves during the 'secret war' to escape the bombing. The caves were in a high limstsone karst which towered over the nearby rice fields.

We climbed up some concrete steps and a couple of bamboo ladders to reach the cave entrance which was high above the ground. This photo was taken inside the cave, looking out onto the landscape.

Back on the ground, we explored the rice fields for a short while. Click here to see a 360-degree video taken in the fields (7.8 meg).

As we cycled back into Nong Khiaw, Claire stopped to give some stickers to a couple of small girls. Lots of other children rapidly materialised around Claire, and she carefully stickered every one of them.

That evening, before dinner and the nightly power cut, we treated ourselves to a Laos herbal sauna. The sauna-building was on stilts, with a wood-fire burning in a boiler underneath it. Lots of herbs were added to a pot of water over the fire so that the sauna-room was both hot, steamy and herbally. We oscillated in and out of the sauna, either cooling down by sitting on the verandah (in my case) or with buckets of cold water (in Claire's case).

A change of plan

2007-04-23T13:22:00.000+01:00

(Strolling down the main street of Luang Prabang with a couple we met at Kouang Si, while the traders set up their night market stalls)

A week or so before we went to Laos, back in Vietnam, we had heard about a Laos eco-tourism project called 'The Gibbon Experience'. Bascially, the project raises money for forest conservation by allowing visitors to sleep in treehouses, and explore the jungle via a network of zipwires. It sounded absolutely brilliant, but when we tried to book it from Hanoi we were disappointed to learn that it was fully booked until the 17th of April, by which time we would be back in the UK.

So instead of doing that, after Luang Prabang we had planned to go up-river to Nong Khiaw, and then visit the small town of Mung Noi. A bloke we had met in Cambodia had told us that Mung Noi was a great place to relax and go trekking.

On the 30th of March, coming back from the Kouang Si waterfalls, we randomly met a Dutch couple who had booked the Gibbon Experience for the 5th of April but had just cancelled it that afternoon. They had been travelling in China and taking Larium (an antimalarial drug) and it had rattled their nerves somewhat and they no longer wanted to spend two nights sleeping in trees. We quickly emailed the folks at the Gibbon Experience and requested that we could take their places, and they quickly replied saying that we could.

We were very excited about this. However, we had already booked seats on an all-day boat going to Nong Khiaw the next day. We worked out that we could still go to Nong Khiaw and Mung Noi, stay for 1 or 2 nights, get the bus back to Luang Prabang, and then get to 2-day boat west to Houayxay and arrive in time for our Gibbon Experience booking on 5th April. It was a bit rushed (well, if you can call sitting around on boats for three days 'rushed'), but it looked like it would work.

Back Home Today!

2007-04-17T17:07:00.000+01:00

We arrived back home today (17th April), and Claire's parents picked us up and have been very kindly feeding us with teas and pub lunches as we try to stay awake. After six months and ten days, its funny what you miss - we went to the supermarket this afternoon and it was really exiting to buy some teabags and muesli. We are back in the land of kettles and fridges.

The blog, of course, is three weeks behind as ever, so I will try to finish it off over the next week or so.

Kouang Si

2007-04-14T15:45:00.001+01:00

The beautiful Kouang Si waterfalls are near Louang Prabang. Claire went to visit them twice - once with me, and once with some Irish friends we had met, when I stayed in bed with a headache.

Kouang Si is spread accross a large area, with many waterfalls and pools descending down a large hill. As we approached through the forest at the base of the hill, we passed many little cascades and streams.

The path bought us to the base of the main fall, and then we climbed up a steep path to reach the pools higher up.
Click here to see a video taken at the base of the falls (9.2 meg).

Upon reaching the pool, we climbed in for a dip. The waterfall into this pool was falling infront of a small cave which could easily be swam into. Many people had scratched their names into the walls of the cave, including Claire who had drawn a heart containing our names on her first visit : )

(Claire in the first pool, and the view down from the edge)

We climbed up an overgrown path that led round the hill from the first pool. It looped up and around the hill to the top of the waterfalls. It was great to be exploring among the trees and flowers.

From the top of the hill we followed a small, steep path down to another series of pools. The waterfalls at this point were wide and curving, creating a beautiful curtain of falling water. From there, the water slid accross some smooth rocks into a deep pool, which was perfect for jumping into. Click here to see a video of Claire taking the plunge (6.0 meg).

We had a great day at Kouang Si. The rushing water and green jungle create a lovely atmosphere, and even if there are a lot of tourists at the base of the waterfall, you can wander off on the paths and find your own pools. And in the hot climate of Laos, it doesn't take long before you find yourself actually under the waterfall instead of looking at it from the dry ground.

Almsgiving

2007-04-11T06:34:00.000+01:00

One of the things we did in Luang Prabang was take part in the daily almsgiving to the Buddhist monks. Well, actually Claire did it twice, but I only did it once, because it involves getting up at 5:30 am.

Theravada Buddhism is the main relgion in Laos, and most Lao males join a monastery and become monks for at least a few months. Many remain for longer, with some living the monastic life for the rest of their lives. Most of the monks that we saw were young men, maybe in their mid-teens. Some of them were older, and some were very old.

Each morning, the monks go on an alms round, during which lay people will give simple foods such as sticky rice to the monks. As well as giving the monks something to eat for breakfast, this represents a symbolic link between the monks and the lay people. For the lay people it is a way to have a link to the spiritual life and make merit. For the monks, it is a way to foster humbleness and respect for the wider society that they exist in.

When we got up to take part in the alms round, some ladies swiftly appeared to sell us sticky rice and little food parcels to give to the monks. Tourists were in the minority though. Most of the people giving alms were locals, who had prepared the food themselves, and were giving it every morning.

Carbon and Culture in LPB

2007-04-11T06:32:00.000+01:00

On our fourth day in Luang Prabang, we got chatting to an Australian girl called Angela over lunch. It turned out that she was on a very interesting journey - her plan was to travel from Sydney to Wales, in 10 months, without flying. Like us, she was concerned about the environmental impact of air travel, so she had taken a step we aspire to take someday, and planned her trip to avoid air travel altogether. She had taken a cargo ship from Sydney to Singapore, and then come overland to Laos via Malaysia and Thailand.

The Sydney Morning Herald had become interested in her story, and when we met her Angela was in discussions with them about publishing an article. As a committed environmentalist, obviously Angela was keen to publicise the idea of traveling without planes. However, in an ironic twist, her contact at the Herald felt that an up-to-date photo of Angela in Laos would help get the story published, and wanted to fly a professional photographer over from Malaysia to get some shots. So, because she wasn't flying, they wanted to fly someone over to see her.

This seemed to demonstrate that unnecessary air travel was not something the Herald was concerned about, even though it suspected its readers might be, and that it might shift a few extra copies by running stories about it. Still, Angela felt that at least some of the journalists at the Herald were taking the environment seriously, so eventually she agreed to meet the photographer as long as the flight was carbon balanced.

A week or so later, the story appeared - you can read it here:
Going green on a slow boat to the world

While in Luang Prabang, Angela was volunteering as an English teacher at a local reading project called '@ My Library' (on Thanon Setthathirat, not far from the night market). We popped in the next morning to chat to some young monks who wanted to practice their English. The children using the library had borrowed cameras and taken some great photos, which were displayed around the walls of the main room. We wouldn't have noticed the building if Angela hadn't told us about it, and it was very encouraging to see this kind of project happening. We chatted to Angela quite a lot over the next day or two, about Yoga, the environment, and how to get to India overland from Laos. I think she's in Nong Khiaw now, volunteering in a wildlife santuary. We wish her well on her adventure. You can read Angela's blog here:
http://www.platial.com/abaker/places
(Click on the blue triangles on the map to see her comments and photos)

While we were at the Library we noticed that there was a 'Childrens Cultural Centre' just the other side of the Thanon Setthathirat road, that was putting on a show that evening, so we bought tickets. It was an interesting show, organised and performed by local teenagers.

The show started with some traditional Ipok puppets, who danced around to some music (click here to hear the music). Then there was a short puppet-play, about preserving Laos culture. In keeping with the play's theme of cultural preservation, the play was performed in Laos rather than English. So some of the plot twists were a bit lost on us, but it was a nice sentiment.

Next the children took the stage to perform some traditional Laos dances. This photo is from a traditional Hmong dance, which was, incidentally, similar to one of the dances we had seen the children from NACA Orphanage do back in Phnom Penh. Click here to see a video of the dance (5.7 meg).

This photo shows a dance that had something to do with handkerchiefs (I did have a leaflet explaining the significance and cultural context of all the dances, but I seem to have mislaid it). Click here for a video of a different dance involving sticks (7.2 meg).

Perhaps the highlight was the performance of a Laos fighting dance. Like Capoeira, it blended fighting with dancing, but the moves were different, and the physical contact actually occurred rather than being suggested. Click here to see a video (5.6 meg). And click here for a recording of the rythmic music.

The show at the Children's Cultural Centre was well worth the admission. It certainly wasn't the slickest of performances, but it was great to see the teenagers enjoying themselves. After the show the troupe stood outside the little 'theatre' (more of a shed, really) to say goodbye to the audience, and Claire took this photo of one of the girls' costumes.

Luang Prabang

2007-04-11T06:27:00.000+01:00

We immediately liked Luang Prabang, it is a charming little city. Of course lots of other tourists like it too, and hence you see plenty of them there, but its still a nice place. We spent almost a week there.

On our first evening we strolled down to the main street, and found the night market. Every evening the main street is pedestrianised, and hundreds of little handicraft stalls spring up.

To the west of the night market is the main restaurant area, which is also peppered with interesting little craft shops and less interesting travel agents. On our first evening we wandered up and down, eventually chose a restaurant, went to an empty table and found ourselves sitting right next to Thomas. It was only two days since we'd said goodbye to him, but it was great to see him again. He was leaving for northern Laos the next morning, so we probably wont cross paths with him again until we all get back to Europe.

Luang Prabang is crammed full of temples and monks, to the extent that the whole city is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The most noticeable monument is the stupa on top of the Phousi hill. At night it is lit up in green, and seems to hover over the city like a UFO. We hired bikes and went to visit Wat Xieng Thong in the west of the old city, and took these pictures:

The sky was always hazy while we were in Laos - due to the fires farmers light every year to clear the land. At the time we heard that northern Thailand was also very hazy, and Chiang Mai had been declared a disaster zone, with flights unable to land. It reminded us of the hazy first week of our trip, in Singapore.

I know I've mentioned pancakes a lot on this blog, but despite Luang Prabang's reputation for good food, it wasn't that easy to find a descent breakfast pancake or bowl of muesli. Here I am at the bookshop/cafe called L'Etranger about to sample a nicely laid out muesli breakfast (it turned out to be good, but too small).

We stayed at a guesthouse called Jaliya, in a little bungalow in a nice garden. You see a lot of birds in small cages in Southeast Asia, which can be a bit depressing. There was a green parrot outside our room in quite a big cage, but he still looked a bit sad. In the morning we usually heard the parrot squeaking, and the children from the nearby school reciting things in Laos. I recorded this strange mix of sounds - click here to hear it.

(A flower in a Mekong riverside restaurant, and a bridge over the smaller Nam Khan river)

There were quite a lot of power cuts while we were in Laos - perhaps they were having the same problem that Vietnam had been having. The main street was quite pretty during the power cuts, with all the restaurants and shops lit by candles. When the power was on, you could often spot monks in the internet cafes. They were keen to practice their English and computer skills.

Flying to Laos

2007-04-11T02:00:00.000+01:00

We were supposed to be minimising our air travel on this trip (see Carbon Balancing), but when it came to crossing over from Vietnam to Laos, we decided to fly from Hanoi to Luang Prabang.

There are several overland bus routes from Vietnam to Laos, the main one being from Hue through to Vientiane, but they all take 24 hours or more. Our friend Sarah bought a ticket for the Hue to Vientiane bus trip, and was reassured that she would be on an air conditioned bus the whole way. We later heard from her that she had actually been carried on three different cramped minibuses on the Vietnam side, and two big local buses on the Laos side. One of the Laos buses was crammed full, with plastic seats down the aisle and seven people standing in the stairwell.

The more northerly and mountainous bus route from Hanoi over to Laos was rumoured to be even harder going, and we heard lots of stories about Visa scams on the Laos border. So, in short, we were put right off the idea of an overland crossing.

Not that Laos Airlines was necessarily an easy option. In the past they have been known to have a bit of a dodgy safety record. But some internet research reassured us that their international flights were reliable. It was actually a very nice flight, on a half-empty ATR-72, and on board we were given yummy pastries in a nicely decorated Laos Airlines box.

We will be carbon balancing the flight, of course.

Laos Facts

2007-04-11T00:03:00.000+01:00

Laos calls itself the "Lao People's Democratic Republic" or Lao PDR. Westerners call it Laos, and the extra 's' is apparently there due to a mistake by the French.

Laos has been a one-party Communist state since 1975. But, like China and Vietnam, it is now encouraging private enterprise and so is not really Communist anymore.

Laos has a population of about 6 million, and its economy grew by 7.2% in 2006.

Laos was heavily caught up in the Vietnam war, but due to international agreements about the supposed neutrality of Laos, the war was kept secret. On one side of the Secret War were the North Vietnamese troops keeping the Ho Chi Minh trail open, with the help of the local Pathet Lao communists. On the other side of the war was a US-backed and trained force of Laotian Hmong tribesmen, led by General Vang Pao.

On a per-capita basis, Laos remains the most heavily bombed nation in the history of warfare. From 1964 to 1973, the US flew 580,000 bombing runs over Laos, dropping nearly 2 million tonnes of ordnance. At the time, the bombing was kept secret.

Rice is very important to the culture and Buddhist religion of Laos. Laos has a very wide range of rice varieties - Laos farmers have names for over 3,000 of them.

Leaving Vietnam

2007-04-11T00:01:00.000+01:00

The evening after the Perfume Pagoda, we went for a goodbye meal with Thomas at 'Baguette Et Chocolat'. Thomas was leaving for Laos the next day, and Claire and I the day after that. Yurg and Camille, who we had met in Bac Ha, were also in Hanoi, so they came to join us. It was great to be together again, and after the meal Yurg, Camille and Thomas headed off to 'beer junction' in the Old Quarter. Beer Junction is what we called the crossroads where four or five pavement cafes sell glasses of cold beer for about 7 pence each. Claire and I were tired after the trip to the Pagoda, so we headed to bed.

The last few days were spent shipping stuff home from the International Post Office by the lake, doing some last minute shopping, and (in my case) lying in bed with a bit of a fever and a headache. I was briefly concerned about being ill, but it was nothing serious and soon passed.

Then on Sunday 25th March we flew to Laos (yes, we flew - I'll explain why later). We did lots of interesting and memorable things in Vietnam, but I found myself to be very relieved to be leaving the place. I think this was because of the fast pace of our travels there, and the slightly hectic mood which seems to infect everything. The hectic mood is perhaps inevitable in a country with 84 million people, most of whom seem to be riding a moped at you, or trying to sell you something.

I'm glad we visited Vietnam, it was often fascinating, but I was ready to move on.

Perfume Pagoda

2007-04-10T09:00:00.000+01:00

Reunited in Hanoi, we thought about how to spend our last days in Vietnam. We had been recommended to visit the Perfume Pagoda, and it turned out that the annual Chua Huong festival was currently happening, in which tens of thousands of Vietnamese Buddhists travel to the Perfume Pagoda on a pilgrimage. Pretty much every travel agent and guest house in Hanoi had day-tours to the Pagoda, so we booked ourselves onto one.

After two hours on a minibus, we transferred to a small metal rowing boat, and enjoyed an hour of leisurely travel on the Yen Vi river. Click here for a video of the boats on the river (3.2 meg).

The boats deposited us at the bottom of the hill, and we climbed a stony, muddy slope lined with food stalls towards Thien Tru temple. We discovered that one of the American girls in our tour group was American-Vietnamese - both her parents had fled from South Vietnam to the US in 1975. It was her second visit to Vietnam and it was fascinating to her about her perceptions of the country. She told us about an area in Orange Country, California, which known as Little Saignon, and has the biggest Vietnamese population of anywhere outside of Vietnam. She said whenever she visited the area, she couldn't understand why everyone drove so crazily there. Now that she has seen real Vietnamese traffic, she understands.

We had heard it was a two-hour hike up the hill to reach the Pagoda. I had been half-heartedly looking forward to this, as I felt that I needed the exercise. In the end, our guide recommended that we take the cable car instead, because the footpath up the mountain was clogged with thousands of pilgrims.

Halfway through our cable-car journey, we rattled through a small station and I saw something that I've never seen before in my life: Someone was sweeping up money with a broom.

It turned out that the tradition during the festival is to drop money on the path as you climb up to the Pagoda. In Vietnam, there are no coins, and the smallest note is 200 Dong (worth just over 1 US-cent), so people drop those. If you're traveling up by cable car, the only place you can drop the notes is at the half-way station, and so the cable car doors open briefly to let you do exactly that.

The view from the top of the cable-car.

We walked along some stony and muddy pathways (it was beginning to rain slightly) and reached our destination - Huong Tich grotto, otherwise known as the Perfume Pagoda. Its not really a Pagoda at all, but it is quite an impressive cave with some altars inside. It was very busy, with a constant stream of pilgrims descending and ascending the 120 steps down into the cave. This photo was taken right at the back of the cave, by the main altar.

Our guide explained to us what the pilgrims were doing, in their visit to this place, the most important of Vietnam's Buddhist sites. "They pray to get rich and stay healthy" he said, as crowds pushed around us, some of them carrying trays with offerings of packets of biscuits and canned drinks. Another group of pilgrims were catching drops of water dripping from a stalactite, and wiping it on their faces. "They do this to become beautiful" our guide explained.

Some years ago, I went on a meditation course in a semi-detached house in Clapham and was told all about Buddhism by the calm and friendly group of tie-die clad English Buddhists who had set up their sangha there. As they understood it, one of the fundamental aims of a Buddhist was to spend less time wanting things, and more time simply reflecting on the wonder of existence. There were no gods to pray to, and what happened to oneself depended on the karma one had created in one's previous actions.

What I was seeing in the Perfume Pagoda bore absolutely no resemblance to this. Buddhists praying to get rich and become beautiful? Who were they praying to?

Perhaps this was the result of the influence of Chinese Confucianism, or, more likely, it was the result of the ubiquitous lucky-charm salesmen who, year on year, try to persuade their customers that they have to do this or that to have better luck.

If you look at what the historical Buddha actually said, his teachings seem to resemble a philosophy of life rather than a religion, and I don't think he ever meant for them to become an organised religion. He encouraged his followers to work things out for themselves, and not just accept written scriptures or teachings. But, I guess, over thousands of years, tradition and ceremony got woven into the ideas, and they became formalised and ritualised. What we saw at the Pagoda was the rather muddled result.

When it was time to go, we went back down the hill, and back into our rowing boats, along with hundreds of pilgrims. The Perfume Pagoda is perhaps the only place where we saw lots of Vietnamese tourists - these were regular Vietnamese people who were making an exiting pilgrimage to a special place. Us Western tourists were vastly outnumbered by them, and they seemed very happy to see a boat full of Westerners, and they all waved and called out 'Sin Chao' to us as they floated past.

As well as regular Vietnamese, we saw boat-loads of monks and nuns on the river as well. This group interrupted their singing for a few seconds to say hello to us.

Hanoi again and Halong Bay

2007-04-10T08:55:00.000+01:00

After Bac Ha we had planned to visit Sa Pa, but we met a lady who had just come from Sa Pa and she told us it was so misty that no exploring or trekking was possible. So on Sunday afternoon we headed straight for Lao Cai instead, to catch the train back to Hanoi.

This time we didn't manage to get a sleeper berth. Only airplane-style seats were available. So the 12 hour overnight train was something like being on an airplane, except that all our luggage was with us instead of in the hold, and there were no luggage racks to put anything on. We slept with out backpacks wedged under our chairs and lying in the aisles, and our hand luggage became pillows. There was a crying baby, a drunk guy talking when everyone else was trying to sleep, all of that kind of stuff. We managed to get some sleep though.

Claire and Thomas were both up for going to visit Halong bay, either the same morning that we arrived in Hanoi, or the one after. But I felt like I had earned a license to stay still for a bit. We had been in Vietnam for 19 days, and had not spent more then 2 nights in any one place. The distance we had had to cover meant we had had to keep moving. We had six more nights in Vietnam until we went to Laos, and the idea of spending them all in one guesthouse sounded like real luxury to me.

So by the time we had found our way from the train station to the old quarter of Hanoi, we had a plan. We would all stay in Hanoi that night. Then I would remain in Hanoi, relax, eat pain-au-chocolate and look after the bags, while Thomas and Claire went on a two-day, one-night trip to the legendary Halong Bay.

The plan worked very well. I found some great pain-au-chocolate, in a place called 'Baguette Et Chocolat' (11 Cha Ca, Old Quarter) which, like Koto, is staffed by disadvantaged youths being trained up for the restaurant industry. Thomas and Claire went to Halong bay and had a great time too. Here are the photos. (Of Halong bay, not the pain-au-chocolat)

Many boats started off together from the harbour into the bay, but the bay is so big that very quickly the boats lose each other, and everyone seems to have the place to themselves.

Click here for a video of the view in Halong bay (7.0 meg).
Click here for another vidoe of the view, this time featuring Thomas (6.8 meg).

Halong bay has 1,969 limestone islands, and some of them are hollow with caves inside.

Floating shops keep the tourists stocked up with confectionery. You only have to be in Vietnam for about 20 minutes to realise that, economically, its about as Communist as the markets of Marrakech.

On the first evening everyone got the chance to go Kayaking from the boat.

A view of a 'junk' on the bay, taken from the kayak.

Thomas' blog also has some photos:
Thomas' pics of Halong bay

Bac Ha Market

2007-04-10T08:50:00.000+01:00

On Sunday morning, we all got up very early at 6am to catch the market early. But we needn't have bothered. Very sensibly, most of the Flowered Hmong did not hit the market until 9 or 10am. We retired to a cafe to fuel ourselves with banana pancakes, and waited for things to start happening.

Once the market got going, it was very colourful, despite the drizzly rain.

Click here to see a video of the market (7.0 meg).

Some Hmong ladies show their wares to Claire.

This lady is trying to sell me an embroidered Hmong bag.
"Me no shopping."

Some Hmong ladies buying brightly coloured fabrics.

If they manage to sell an embroidered bag to the right kind of tourist who'll pay a somewhat inflated price, its big money for the Hmong ladies. Being at the market, we got the sense that as a society, they were just on the cusp of realizing this. There were quite a few of them trying to sell the bags, but not too many. Yet.

A Flowered Hmong mother and baby.

Groups of Hmong were coming and going in the streets near the market all morning. I wondered if the different coloured head-scarves represent different family sub-groups within the tribes.

Before Thomas, Claire and I caught the bus back to Lao Cai, we last saw Yurg and Camille surrounded by a group of several bag-wielding Hmong ladies. I think they ended up buying quite a few bags.

Mopeds carrying unusual loads was a running theme in Vietnam.

Exploring Bac Ha

2007-04-10T08:46:00.000+01:00

Vietnam has a very well-worn tourist trail running from Ho Chi Minh in the south to Hanoi and Sa Pa in the north. Most people are travelling between those two areas, and stopping in the same places, so you tend to keep seeing the same people. It feels a bit like you are running along on rails.

By going to Bac Ha instead of Sa Pa, we got off the trail a little bit. Even Bac Ha is on the trail once a week - when the market happens on Sunday lots of day trip minibuses converge on the town. But on the Friday and Saturday it was fairly quiet, and when we all ventured out into the countryside on the Saturday, we really felt like we were seeing some genuine rural Vietnamese life.

We planned to all travel out past Ban Pho into the countryside on motorbikes. We eventually got going on two hired bikes and one moto-taxi, but soon a problem developed with Yurg and Camille's bike. They had to ditch it, and went off to explore the terraced hills near Ban Pho on foot. Claire and I then ended up on the back of Thomas' hired bike, and we puttered off along the road past Ban Pho. Three on a bike actually worked pretty well - we were only chugging along the road very slowly, Thomas was a great moto-taxi driver, and there was lots of space on the back.

We went a few kilometres beyond Ban Pho, slowly climbing higher as the road wound around the sides of the terraced hills. On one long curve of hillside road, there was a great view, and a group of Hmong children playing with spinning tops. They all called out hello to us and we stopped to say hello to them.

The boys were dressed mostly in black, and the girls in the traditional and very colourful Flowered Hmong style. The boys all had wooden bullet-shaped spinning tops, which they set spinning by winding up with string that was then pulled away quickly with a stick. The game seemed to be for one of them to start a top spinning, and for the others to try and hit it by throwing their tops as they set them off. In practice this meant that rapidly spinning bullet shaped bits of wood were constantly bouncing past our legs and heads, which lent an air of general chaos to the proceedings.

Some of the girls were shy at first, but when Claire started showing them the photos and videos she was taking on the little screen, they were very happy to be photographed. Meanwhile I borrowed a spinning top from one of the boys, and managed to get it spinning OK. I got a bit tangled up in the string though, which they all found hilarious.

All the children got smiley-face or bubble-car stickers, and Claire give two of the older girls some hair clips that they had been admiring. We were climbing onto the bike ready to move on when two other small girls appeared, and so another round of sticker-giving occurred.

We drove on over the brow of a hill, where the sealed road ran out and we were driving instead on dusty gravel. In the next valley, low cloud was creeping across the landscape below us, obscuring our view of the little hamlets and terraced hills which seemed to stretch off in every direction. We ate our lunch of spring rolls in french bread, and then headed back to explore some other roads we had seen on the way up.

Up a side road we found a farm, or group of farms, with some pigs, geese and dogs that sleepily growled at us. And lots more dramatic misty views of the landscape.

Click here to see a video taken from the motorbike (3.6 meg)
Click here to see a video of the view from one of the hillside roads (6.0 meg)

There were quite a few buffalo around, working in the fields, and on the way back through Ban Pho we saw a boy riding one. As we got back into Ben Tre, the town was noticeably busier, with lots of tourists arriving in preparation for the big market the next day.

Meeting the children was a real highlight, as they just wanted to play and have fun. They were just familiar enough with tourists not to be shy, but no so familiar that they became too demanding. The interest that tourists have in the hill tribes is helping to protect them to some extent - the fact that they can be a tourist attraction just by existing is encouraging the mainstream Vietnamese to respect their cultures and traditions much more. On the other hand, tourism is a weathering process that often eventually destroys what it is aiming to showcase.

What must it be like to be a Hmong child in northern Vietnam? Do they know about pop music, computer games and soft drinks yet? All of these things are available in abundance in Ben Tre, only 5 km away, so I guess they probably do. I guess their culture and traditions are unlikely to survive for much longer. But then, the world is not a zoo, and cultures are not museum pieces. All over the world, the next generation are going to be encountering changes that we can hardly guess at yet.

For more pictures of the day, see Thomas' blog:
Thomas' pics of Bac Ha

Arriving in Bac Ha

2007-04-10T08:43:00.000+01:00

The train deposited us at Lao Cai station at 5am. We ignored the small army of minibus drivers who wanted to take us to Sa Pa, and rode the local bus for 3 hours to get to Bac Ha. Bac Ha is a small town in the hills of northern Vietnam. Although the town itself is fairly normal, it is transformed every Sunday, when the Flowered Hmong hill tribe come in from the surrounding villages to visit the weekly market.

We arrived on a Friday, which gave us a couple of days to explore before the big market. Near the end of the bus journey, a couple of Flowered Hmong women joined the bus, which gave us a preview of what to expect. They wore skirts and tunics woven with many bright colours, and covered their heads with especially colourful headscarves.

We located some banana pancakes, and chatted to a French couple called Yurg and Camille that had been on the bus with us. Claire went off and found us a nice cheap room, and we caught a couple of hours sleep in the late hours of the morning.

The nearest Hmong village to Bac Ha is a little place called Ban Pho which is a couple of hours walk away. In the afternoon, Claire, Thomas, Yurg and Camille were up for the trek. As for myself, I must admit that I was more interested in large plates of spaghetti than hill tribes at that particular time, so I stayed in Bac Ha to eat and chill out, while everyone else went trekking.

This is what they saw:

Two small Hmong girls were walking from Bac Ha to Ban Pho at the same time as Claire, Thomas, Yurg and Camille. The girls were carrying large baskets on their backs, so Thomas and Yurg volunteered to take them instead.

As is our custom, any local children that Claire encountered were given little stickers. Here is a small group of stickered boys.

Outside of Bac Ha, the hilly landscape is covered with terraces.

An elderly Hmong woman.

Thomas offered some of his biscuits to these young girls, but you can see the disappointment on his face here as he realises that they have taken the whole packet and are not going to give it back.

Hanoi

2007-04-09T17:41:00.000+01:00

On the 14th of March we arrived in Hanoi. In the centre of the city is Hoan Kiem lake. To the north of the lake is the old quarter, which is all narrow streets with pavements blocked by shop-fronts, and too many mopeds. To the south of the lake is the French quarter, which is all wide boulevards, and too many mopeds. As throughout the rest of Vietnam, a lot of the buildings are narrow, and when the Vietnamese build upwards, they decorate the front of the building in bright colours, but leave the sides as blank concrete, in anticipation of their neighbours eventually building up to the same level.

(A fruit seller, and an example of Vietnamese street wiring)

We went with the tout that literally met us at the door of the train, and ended up staying in the Hanoi Spirit House. Claire and I got a cheap (but damp) room for US$5, and Thomas managed to negotiate an even cheaper bed: for US$1 he was allowed to sleep in the staff dorm. This was great in theory, but in practice meant that in the middle of the night he suddenly found himself sharing his bed with a sleepy staff member who had climbed in in the dark.

We had heard there was good food to be had at the Little Hanoi restaurant. However, in Hanoi the standard business practice is to name your new establishment with the same name as an already succesful establishment, preferably one listed in the Lonely Planet. We found a street with three Little Hanois on it, and went for the first one. The food was pretty good, but they couldn't make us fruit shakes due to the periodic power cuts which Hanoi was experiencing. The lack of rain meant that not enough hydroelectric power was being generated, and power was being rationed.

One of the famous tourist attractions in Hanoi is the Water Puppet Theatre. Vietnam has a long tradition of water puppets, dating back at least 800 years. We queued up to get tickets, and ended up going straight in.

Inside the theatre, we found a stage with musicians on the left, and a large pool of water infront of a curtain which hid the puppeteers. For an hour we watched scene after scene. Some of them were based on daily life in rural Vietnam, such as fishing and boating. Some of the scenes depicted Vietnamese myths, such as the story of the turtle in Hoan Kiem lake to which the king returns his magic sword. The music was interesting, and the puppets were clever and well animated. But after about 40 minutes it started to drag a bit. I sat and reflected on how they could make the performance a bit more relevant by incorporating some scenes from the daily life of modern Vietnam. Perhaps a scene where a tuk-tuk driver leads a trio of backpackers to a damp guesthouse and earns commission? Or a scene in which a bus driver fits as many passengers as possible into his bus, while simultaneously hiding scores of packets of cigarettes down his trousers?

Click here to see a short video of the Water Puppets (2.7 meg).
Click here and here to listen to two different recordings of the music.

The next day, we had a night train booked to Lao Cai in the far north of Vietnam; from there we planned to visit Bac Ha and then Sapa. In the afternoon we went to visit Koto restaurant, and the Temple of Literature.

Koto, like the Friends Restaurant in Phnom Penh, is a restaurant-project that is staffed by disadvantaged youths being trained as professional chefs and restaurant staff. The food was very good, perhaps the best we'd had in Vietnam, and only a little more expensive than usual.

After Koto we went over the road to visit the Temple of Literature. Its a sort of very old university, which was founded in 1070 and based on the Confucian philosophy. It is famous for its large stone monuments which record the names of successful 'graduates' from 1484 until 1778.

Then we got a cyclo back to our guesthouse. Our plucky cyclo driver skillfully pedalled us the wrong way past five lanes of busy moped traffic. He was pretty safe, because we were the ones stuck out on the front of the cyclo, like a battering ram.

Click here to see a video of the maneuver (8.4 meg).

Then, after one more meal in one of the Little Hanois, we went to pick up our train tickets. We had booked the train via the guesthouse, and they had told us to pick the tickets up at 7:30pm, to catch the train at 8:40pm. At the Spirit House guesthouse, the travel agent guy rummaged through some drawers for a while, and eventually found the ticket. He frowned as his handed them to us. "Train is at 8pm" he said, "You go station now". Suddenly we were in a rush. Thanks a lot, Spirit House.

I had wanted to get a cab to the train station, but there wasn't time to find one, so we had to go by motorbike taxi. Moto-taxis are often the only way to get around in Vietnam. My first encounter with them was in Cambodia, and I was very reluctant to get on one, what with my brain being full of strange Western ideas like crash helmets and road safety. In practice, once you're on one, you realise its not as dangerous as it seems. The bikes rarely go faster than jogging pace, and drivers in Cambodia and Vietnam are very used to weaving past each other and giving enough space. Still, I had developed a policy of only using them as a last resort, and here we were taking the last resort again. Interestingly, if you can find one, and persuade the driver to use the meter, metered cabs in Vietnam are almost always cheaper than negotiating with moto-taxi drivers.

We got to the station OK, and as we hurried towards the trains, we were met by a Vietnamese guy who took our tickets, glanced at them, picked up one of our bags and rushed off saying "Follow me! I show you!". We were in a hurry so we went jogging after him, but I could feel a scam coming on. The guy had no uniform, and when I tried to take our tickets, or indeed our bag, back from him, he shrugged me off. He led us past a couple of different stationary trains, and onto the correct carriage. He showed us to our cabin, and started demonstrating to us where to stow our luggage. This was our fourth night-train in Vietnam, so we didn't need a demo. We maneuvered him out of the cabin, so that we were inside it, and he was in the corridor.

Predictably, our self-volunteered porter asked for 20,000 dong (about US$1.50). I made a stand. This was easy to do, because Thomas was between me and the him. "We did not ask for your help." I said, "And when I try to take back tickets, you no give. When I try to take back bag, you no give. We not pay".
"We could have found this carriage on our own", Claire chipped in, "we did not ask for your help."
He stared at us, looking mean and angry. Or at least, he stared at Thomas looking mean and angry. I was further into the cabin, safe from his stares. He eventually stomped off, acting as if we'd pulled a scam on him. We shut the cabin door and locked it until we were sure he wasn't coming back. It would have been easy just to pay him the relatively small amount of money he was asking for, but we felt we shouldn't be rewarding that sort of behaviour.

Despite our rush to get the train, it didn't leave until 8:40pm. Claire, Thomas and I had three of the bunks. The final one was taken by a Vietnamese tour guide, who talked on her mobile phone for about an hour, and then woke us up in the middle of the night by answering a late call and telling the caller (I presume, because the conversation was in Vietnamese) that she was on a night train.

For more Hanoi pics, see Thomas' blog:
Thomas' pics of Hanoi

Hue

2007-04-07T14:47:00.001+01:00

Hue was once the imperial capital of Vietnam, and in its centre is an old citadel which is still beautiful despite being badly damaged during the war. Nearby, at carefully chosen locations down the Perfume River, are several Mausoleums designed by the Vietnamese Emperors themselves to be both their retirement homes and their final resting place. We caught the four-hour bus to Hue from Hoi An, and then met up with Thomas and Sarah again, who had travelled up ahead of us. We tried to play a game of pool in the evening, but Vietnamese pool tables all have tiny pockets which are very hard to pot balls into. We were also all a bit rubbish at pool anyway, so it took a very long time.

The next day we decided to hire bikes and visit some of the Mausoleums. We cycled west out of the city, along the south bank of the Perfume River. The photocopied tourist map we had showed that we should be able to get to the Tomb of Tu Duc by taking a left turn at some point, but which one to take was not very clear. It was great to be on bikes again, but we were soon getting a bit lost. We stopped and quizzed various locals with the two-word question "Tu Duc?" and they pointed in various directions. We met a french girl who was walking around. She didn't know where Tu Duc was, but pointed us down a side road and said there was a nice pagoda down there. We were getting hot on the bikes, and we weren't too fussed anymore what sort of imperial monument we saw - a pagoda would do. We cycled off to find it.

Soon we saw an ornamented temple-like roof over the brow of a hill. Maybe that was it? We cycled over the hill and down a steep path towards a gated compound that contained some imperial-looking buildings. Thomas' bike didn't really have any brakes, so he had to slow down by dragging his flip-flops along the ground. That didn't help much, so he zipped past the gate and up a dirt track until his bike stopped. The gate was locked, and a man inside the compound looked at us suspiciously. "Is this the pagoda?" Claire asked. Then I noticed the sign above the gate. The compound we were trying to get into was the local waterworks. It was quite a nice looking waterworks, so we took a photo of ourselves in front of it anyway.

A few minutes down the road we found the Tomb of Tu Duc that we had been originally looking for. Near the entrance to the complex, the owners of a row of identical road-side street cafes called out to us. They all offered to look after our bikes for free if we ate lunch in their places afterwards. I got suspicous - were they suggesting that something bad might happen to our bikes if we didn't eat with any of them? Was it some sort of bicycle protection racket? We decided to chance it, and locked our bikes together. They tried to sell us tokens that meant our bikes would be guarded, but we declined them. Let them do their worst.

The Tomb of Tu Duc was very peaceful. Apparently the Emperor had been a poet, and had spent many years of retirement living in the complex and writing poems before he died. There was a nice lake, lots of landscaped clumps of trees, and the tombs of the Emperor, his close family, and his favorite courtesans.

We got back to our bikes and they were still there. We had some lunch and a cold suger-cane drink, and then headed off on the bikes again. We abandoned our earlier plans to see two or three more tombs, and headed straight back to the Perfume River. We wanted to catch a boat accross to see the big Pagoda on the north bank.

Standing on the bank of the river and waving our arms eventually worked. One of the passing dragon-boats came to pick us up and deposit us on the north bank. During the short journey, the boat driver's wife efficiently sold us some cold drinks and a model boat made of straw.

On the north bank of the river, we again needed to park our bikes. A uniformed chap in the corner of the car park told us it would cost 10,000 dong each for him to look after our bikes. We told him we didn't want him to look after our bikes, we just wanted to park them. He told us we couldn't. A few of his mates were hanging around watching us. Was it their job to steal any bikes that the uniformed man wasn't watching over? Just then a retired Canadian guy turned up on a yellow mountain bike. He'd been having similar bike-parking problems to us, but he had a big long bike chain, so we chained our four bikes to a nearby lamp-post. Let them do their worst.

The pagoda was quite nice but we couldn't go up it. There were several huge bells nearby, and some large stone turtles. It was a hot sunny day, and while we were cycling we were kept cool by the air, but whenever we stopped to look at something we were hot and sticky. We chatted to the Canadian guy, and then went back to our bikes. Which were where we left them.

We cycled back along the north bank of the Perfume river to Hue, and said goodbye to the Canadian. Claire and I went on to see the citadel, but Thomas and Sarah had already seen it so we arranged to meet them later. The Imperial City is a square walled mini-citadel with a moat that sits inside the main citadel. You have to pay to get inside it, but Sarah had told us that it is just as nice to cycle around the outside of it, so we did that.

By now it was about 5pm, and elderly Vietnamese were out taking their evening stroll along the narrow, quiet path between the Imperial City walls and the moat. We wobbled past them on our bikes. Near the end I swapped bikes with Claire, and discovered that she had spent all day riding the worst bicycle that I have ever pedalled. The steering was out of line, and the pedals were wonky. It was like trying to ride a clothes rack.

The bridge back across to the south side of the river was crammed with mopeds and cyclos, so we stopped to record the phenomenon of Vietnamese traffic.

Click here for a video of the two-wheeled traffic on the bridge (7.4 meg).

Other photos from the bridge:
Photo of cyclo with cabinets.
Photo of cyclo with furniture.
Photo of cyclo driver grinning at us.

As the sun set, we returned to our guesthouse and gave back the bikes. We found a nice restaurant for a goodbye meal for Sarah. She was getting the 24 hour bus to Vientiane in Laos the next morning, whereas we and Thomas were booked onto the overnight train to Hanoi. As we ate, a woman selling snacks over the road had a terrible electronic ice-cream-van-like tune emanating from her snack trolley. I went over to pay her 20,000 dong to turn it off, and she was very nice about it.

Then we picked up our bags, said a final goodbye to Sarah and were whisked off to the train station on motorbike taxis. We bought some bread for breakfast, and then Claire and I found our way to our 4-berth train cabin. Thomas was in another cabin slightly further along the carriage. Our cabin mates for this journey were a quiet old Vietnamese woman, and an old Vietnamese man with a white beard and a terrible cough. When we arrived in the cabin he jumped up out of bed to help us stow our luggage away, and promptly had a terrible coughing fit. This did not bode well for our night's sleep, but once he settled down his cough did not bother him, or us, much. The train to Hanoi took 18 hours, and so we were on it until midday the next day. After the old woman got off the train in the morning, Thomas came to join us in our cabin for the rest of the journey.

We had a little chess tournament, which Thomas won easily, and the old Vietnamese man insisted on talking to us in Vietnamese. He was pretty friendly though, and was delighted when we took a photo of him.

There's some more pictures of our cycling trip on Thomas' blog:
Thomas' pics of Hue

Hoi An

2007-04-07T14:26:00.000+01:00

On the 10th March we arrived in Hoi An, which is an old Vietnamese town famous for its tailors and silk market. Originally we were going to head straight past it to Hue, but then we heard from other travellers that it was the best place to get clothes made.

The morning we arrived, Claire and Sarah went off to look at the market and tailor's shops while I relaxed and emailed. Here's a sleepy woman Claire spotted in the market ...

Claire bought two silk Vietnamese dresses, with one custom made in the silk market, and one custom made in a tailor's shop. The day after was spent visiting the various shops and trying things on and suggesting alterations. This pic is of a seamstress in the market working on one of Claire's dresses. A tailor-made silk dress with satin trousers costs about 20 to 25 US$.

Sunset near the market.

A lantern shop by night.

While in Hoi An my old blue day bag, which had been my faithful companion throughout the whole trip, finally broke when the strap snapped. I took it to the girls in the market, and they said they could make a new one. Mr Ba Lac, their 80 year old grandfather, sat up most of the night making a perfect copy with the materials of my choosing. Apparently he quite enjoyed it because he was bored of making clothes all the time, and this was his first ever bag. Thomas also liked the idea of having a tailor-made bag, so he had another copy made for him. We even got to try them on before they sewed on the straps. The bags were very well copied, although I must admit that the main zip has since broken on both Thomas' and mine. Here you can see the original bag (right) and the copy made for me (left).

Nha Trang

2007-03-29T16:04:00.000+01:00

Vietnam is a tall, thin country; to get from Ho Chi Minh in the South to Hanoi in the North, you have to cover a lot of miles. Fortunately they have a good train network, so we tried to cover as much distance as possible by overnight train.

The sleeper trains in Vietnam have cabins with four or six beds in, so whenever we took the night train we were sharing with other people. On our first night train from Ho Chi Minh to Nha Trang, we shared with two Vietnamese ladies who were great cabin-mates apart from the fact that they talked non-stop. After the lights had been out for an hour, they were still talking, so I dropped a subtle hint by getting out of bed and politely explaining "We go to sleep now". They seemed to get the message, and after that we got a pretty good nights kip.

Nha Trang is famous for its islands and diving, so our main reason for stopping there was to get underwater again. We did two dives with a nice dive shop called Coco Dive. Our Divemaster was a local Vietnamese guy called Hoang, and the water was clearer (and the coral better) than anything we had seen in Thailand. We saw a cuttlefish, which was pretty exciting because they look so strange, and hover around like spaceships. My beard had grown back by this time, so to get the dive-mask to fit properly I had to quickly shave my moustache off on the dive boat. For the next two weeks I looked like a member of the Amish.

Playing cards after the dive.

The evening after our dive we met up with Thomas and Sarah again, and the next day we went to see some of the local sights together. Here we are infront of the local Reclining Buddha.

Up the hill from the Reclining Buddha was this huge gong, which an old woman was gonging every 30 seconds. Click here to hear a recording of the gong.

On the top of the hill was this White Buddha, which was built in 1963 to commemorate the Buddhist struggle against the South Vietnam Diem regime. Several monks set fire to themselves in 1963 to protest against the treatment of monks and repression of their religion. Their pictures are around the base of the statue, surrounded by sculpted flames.

We went out to the islands again with Thomas and Sarah, this time to go snorkeling. Again, the visibility was great and we saw lots of fish and coral.

The Vietnam flag flying from the dive boat.

Me, Sarah and Thomas on the dive boat.

After Nha Trang we caught the night train up to Da Nang to get to Hoi An. Sarah came along with us, and this time we were in a six-berth cabin. Again we shared with two Vietnamese - this time a sweet elderly lady and a snoring middle aged man. I was in the bunk above the snorer, and in the middle of the night I was trying to work out what I could drop onto him to stop him snoring; it would have to be some object that I could pretend had fallen by accident - maybe a pillow? Fortunately for him, his snoring stopped before my plan came to fruition.

Ho Chi Minh City

2007-03-29T15:26:00.000+01:00

We had heard that Ho Chi Minh was a hectic city with millions of mopeds, so we only scheduled ourselves one night there - enough time to locate the railway station and book a sleeper train to Nha Trang.

There are indeed millions of mopeds in Ho Chi Minh. To cross the road you have to walk slowly out in front of them, making eye-contact with each approaching driver. They're generally pretty good at driving around pedestrians and each other without crashing. In a way the mopeds are a perfect traffic solution for such a big city - no matter how many there are, the roads are never gridlocked. In ten years time when everyone wants to drive a car, there may be big problems.

We've seen a lot of mopeds all over Asia, but Vietnam definitely has the most. People who've been to Southeast Asia (or indeed, to any developing country) will know that you see some pretty amazing things on mopeds and bicycles. Perhaps an entire family of two adults and three children. Perhaps someone with all their bedroom furniture stacked up on the seat behind them. Perhaps someone transporting a few hundred kilos of bananas.

In Ho Chi Minh, we saw this all-time-favorite case of moped cargo:

Online photo album

2007-03-29T15:20:00.000+01:00

All of the photos that we have uploaded since January have been automatically added to an online Picassa photo album at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ianr74/CarbonFootprints

So those of you who just look at the pictures can now see them all at once without any of the writing : )

Ben Tre

2007-03-29T11:42:00.000+01:00

From Can Tho our friends Thomas and Sarah headed straight up to Ho Chi Minh city, but we wanted another stop in the Mekong Delta so we made our way to Ben Tre. In theory, we could get there by boat from Can Tho, but again there were no public boats going, so we had to get a bus, a ferry, and then another bus.

The second bus was a lot less crowded than usual, and this Vietnamese woman dozed peacefully.

Ben Tre turned out to be a nice little place, with a small lake in the centre of town that had fountains and was lit up at night. A french couple called Germain and Aude were on the bus with us, and we located a cheap guesthouse together, and arranged to go out and hire a boat the next day for a river tour.

Early the next morning we headed down to the market by the river. On the way we took this video of some Vietnamese people exercising en-masse in a school yard (3.4 meg).

At the market the ubiquitous moto-taxi drivers asked us what we wanted, and by drawing pictures and gesturing we explained that we wanted a boat tour. One of the drivers produced a mobile phone and phoned a friend. We wandered round the market and bought some fruit for breakfast.

10 minutes later an English-speaking boat driver turned up. We negotiated a three-hour tour of the nearby canals and rivers, and off we went ...

South of Ben Tre, accross a rickety bridge, is a network of canals, villages and rice fields. We relaxed in the boat as we put-putted around. It would have been a good place to hire bicycles as well, as there was a maze of bike tracks and bridges among the canals.

Click here for a video we took on the canals (2.9 meg).

Eventually the canals got so narrow that the driver parked the boat and we explored on foot for a little while. He lead us to a coconut-toffee sweet factory, which was apparently one of the tourist attractions of the area. They had a human production line going, with the toffee being cooled in strips, cut up and then wrapped in rice paper and packaged into bars. It was interesting to see at first, but when Germain asked about the working conditions, it became clear that we were looking at a sweat-shop. The young ladies packing the sweets were working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, with 1 day off every 3 weeks. They were paid by the weight of sweets they could pack, an so maybe were making $4 a day. Their hands moved incredibly fast as they wrapped each individual toffee up in a square of paper. When one of them stopped to talk to us, Germain noticed that her hands were shaking. I wondered why there were only young women working on the packing line. "Perhaps its just something the girls do until they get married?" I suggested to Germain.
"But how are they ever going to meet anyone?" he replied. Fair point.

Back in Ben Tre, we headed back to the guesthouse to check-out and get a bus to Ho Chi Minh city. Claire snapped a photo of this sleepy cyclo-driver. I wondered how much he made each day compared to the girls in the sweet factory.

Germain and Aude have their own blog (en Francais, naturellement) at: http://alestrindnouvo.over-blog.com
They have been traveling through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam at a slower pace than us, and have taken some great photos.

Can Tho

2007-03-24T11:37:00.000Z

The city of Can Tho is the biggest settlement in the Mekong Delta, and is famous for its floating markets. When we arrived into town we located Sarah and Thomas, and learnt that we would have to get up scarily early the next day in order to get on a boat tour. People who know what I'm like early in the morning will know how scary 5:30 am sounded. But we managed it, and before the sun had risen the next day, the four of us were out on the delta in two boats, each piloted by an expert Vietnamese lady.

Sunrise on the Mekong Delta.

We went to the floating market known as Cai Rang. It turned out to be a wholesale market, so there were big boats carrying lots of produce, rather than lots of small shop-boats.

Some potatoes for sale.

After the market, our trip took us through the narrow green canals around Can Tho. This was actually the best bit of the trip, relaxing in the boat and watching sights flow slowly by.

Click here for a video we filmed on the canals (5.2 meg).
And click here for another one (4.7 meg).

We got out of the boats at one point, and our guides showed us some local agriculture. Claire borrowed the guide's pointy hat.

Some lillies growing near a rice field.

Our boats had motors but on some of the canals the guides switched off the engine and rowed. They asked us if we wanted to try rowing as well. The oars were fastened to vertical poles so that you could row standing up, with the oars crossed over. It was pretty easy to get the hang of, and actually seemed much less strenuous than rowing sitting down. Thomas couldn't quite get it right though, and his boat kept hitting the sides, which the Vietnamese guides found hilarious.

Our Austrian friend Thomas has his own blog, and you can see his pictures of the trip here (including some of us):
Thomas' pics of Can Tho

Chau Doc

2007-03-24T11:33:00.000Z

Our boat from Cambodia to Vietnam took longer than expected. But by then, I wasn't that surprised, and was starting to double any time estimates that I heard from travel agents. The initial minibus trip to the river port was advertised as one hour, but actually took more like three. The boat then left an hour late, but once we were on the boat I didn't mind so much, as I could watch the shores of the Mekong river drift slowly by.

After the border checkpoints, we changed boats, exchanging our little Cambodian fishing boat for a more comfortable Vietnamese long boat. We arrived at our destination, the Mekong Delta town of Chau Doc, at about 4pm.

On the boat we met Sarah, from New Zealand, and Thomas from Austria. We were all heading the same way accross the Mekong Delta so we decided to travel together for a bit. In the end we got on so well that we kept meeting up all over Vietnam and saw most of the country together.

Most tourists from head straight to Ho Chi Minh city, so in Chau Doc we were slightly off the main tourist trail. Although there were still some hotels and restaurants, it was definately a Vietnamese town. We arranged to visit the nearby Sam Mountain the next morning with Sarah and Thomas. In the morning I got up early, and went out in search of banana pancakes. The streets were busy with locals cycling or motorbiking to work. I saw small groups of Vietnamese women, cycling together and dressed in identical lavender-blue silk pyjamas with long flowing tails. Perhaps it was some sort of school or college uniform. I located some pancakes, and then we all got together and headed off to Sam Mountain.

5 km from Chau Doc, Sam Mountain is a big hill with pagodas and a good view of the surrounding landscape. Wanting to avoid motorbike-taxi travel if possible, we hired two 'cyclos' (bicycles pulling a rickshaw-like trailer) and travelled to the base of the hill. Amoung the myriad of shops was this food stall where Claire bough a Dragon Fruit.

Halfway up Sam Mountain, we realised that the weather was too misty to see the famous views at their best. The steep path up the hill was amusingly lined with empty cafe after empty cafe selling cold drinks.

Most of the cafes had hammocks, so we promised ourselves a hammock session on the way back down the hill. At the top we ate the Dragon Fruit (it tasted something like a very mild Kiwi fruit) and chatted.

A picture of the aforementioned hammock sesh, on the way back down the hill.

Then, after one night in Chau Doc, we all caught various buses to Can Tho, our next destination. We had wanted to catch a boat down the river to Can Tho, but apparently there were no public boats (only tour boats) so we caught a public bus instead. Claire is used to traveling by public bus in developing countries, but it's still a bit new for me. We were on the bus 20 mins early, and it left 40 mins late; every few minutes the driver would start the engine, inch forward a bit and then stop again, waiting for more passengers. Eventually we got moving, and I noticed that several of the women on the bus were pulling enormous numbers of cigarette packets out of their bags and stuffing them down their clothes. Later I learnt that, in Vietnam, transporting cigarettes from city to city is illegal - a throwback from before Doi Moi. So these woman were smuggling them on the public bus, though exactly who they thought they were going to fool, with their clothes padded out like the michelin man, was not clear.

Some Vietnamese History

2007-03-21T08:26:00.000Z

Sadly, Vietnam is most famous for it's wars. I've pieced this bit of history together from the 'Rough Guide' and Wikipedia ...

Before the arrival of the French in the last 1850s, Vietnam was divided, combined and invaded a number of times. The Chinese controlled the North of the country from 111BC until 938AD, after which the local Vietnamese aristocracy took control. By 1400AD the Champa kingom in South Vietnam was also controlled by the North. A series of dynasties rules the country from 968AD until about 1500AD, after which the North and South were divided for about 300 years. After the short-lived Tay Son rebellion in 1771, the Nguyen lords from the South took control of the whole country in 1802. That was when Vietnam was called Vietnam for the first time.

The French arrived in 1858, and by 1887 they had conquered the whole of Vietnam, which they combined with Cambodia and Laos and called the Union of Indochina. Although the French started to build western-style infrastructure, life was hard for the conquered Vietnamese. Taxes were high and peasants were forced from their land to work on cash crops for export. Unsuprisingly, seeds of discontent were sown. There were various native, anti-colonial movements, but they were dispersed and divided until the 1930s when a young communist called Ho Chi Minh persuaded them to unite into one Indochinese Communist Party. In the 1930s, for a downtrodden people suffering under a foreign regime, Communism was not a suprising choice. It would have seemed like a smart new idea in those days. The Indochinese Communist Party started preparing for a hoped-for revolution to drive out the French.

Then World War II happened, and in the space of five or six years, Vietnam was controlled by several different armies of occupation. First, the Japanese took control when Germany occupied France, and the Vietnamese revolutionaries, now called the Viet Minh, suddently found themselves fighting the Japanese instead of the French. Then, when Japan surrendered at the end of the war, Vietnam was briefly given over to Chinese control in the North, and British control in the South. Soon, however, France was in control of the whole country again. In the North, this happened after a three-way agreement between the French, Chinese and Ho Chi Minh's recently founded republic. Ho Chi Minh asked for French troops to replace the Chinese troops, in return for Vietnam becoming a 'free state' within the French Union of Indochina. The French did not however give Ho Chi Minh his 'free state', and so the Vietnamese war against the French began.

At first it was a guerrila war fought mainly in the mountains, but when China turned communist in 1949, both China and Russia began supporting Ho Chi Minh's Republic, and Communist Vietnam began to receive a lot of military aid from them. In those cold-war times, this development quickly catapulted Vietnam up the list of international concerns. By 1954, America had funded the French military with at least $3 billion.

The French wanted out of the war though, and as the Viet Minh gained ground, the Geneva Conference in May 1954 negotiated a ceasefire between the French and the Viet Minh. The compromise solution was to divide Vietnam into two, with Ho Chi Minh controlling the North and the western-backed Bao Dai controlling the South, pending nationwide free elections within two years. Neither Bao Dai or the USA endorsed the agreement however, due to concerns about the communist North.

Aftere the Geneva Conference, Ngo Dinh Diem ousted Bao Dai in the South, and started a campaign to silence opposition in the South. The Viet Minh groups remaining in the South were targeted, and also religous groups such as the Hao Hao and Cao Dai sects. Over 50,000 citizens were killed.

In the North, Ho Chi Minh's government started to construct a socialist society. After years of war, the country's infrastructure was badly damaged. Food production was centralised and tens of thousands of 'landlords' were tried. Estimates of the number of landlord executions vary, but between 3000 and 15,000 may have been executed or starved. Some contemporary American estimates were much higher.

Under the Diem regime in the South, the remaining Viet Minh teamed up with other repressed groups such as Catholics, Buddhists and non-communist nationalists. They called themselves the National Liberation Front but were mainly known as the Viet Cong in the West. Most historians agree that North Vietnam was pulling the strings, even though the Viet Cong were supposed to be independent of Ho Chi Minh's republic.

From 1955 to 1964, America did not send its own troops, but supported Diem's govenment in the South, with direct funding and also by training the South's army - the ARVN. However in the battle for hearts and minds, Diem's repressive regime was losing ground to the Viet Cong. In 1963 the US encouraged a coup in the South, and Diem was shot. In August 1964, two American warships were allegedly attacked by North Vietnamese units, in what is now called the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Exactly what happened is still debated today, but the incident lead to a huge escalation of the war, with the US sending regular troops to Vietnam for the first time.

From 1965 to 1969, the USA dropped around 800 tonnes of bombs per day on Vietnam - twice as much as had fallen in all of World War II. Meanwhile, by 1967 there were almost half a million American troops in Vietnam. As is well known now, the US troops found themselves bogged down in a guerrilla war which they could not win. However at the time, US army propaganda fed an optimistic story back to the American media and the government in Washington. In January 1968, the communists launched the Tet Offensive, a synchronised attack on over a hundred urban centres accross the South. Militarily, it was not a success, but such a huge uprising after 3 years of war led many Americans to re-consider the war.

By 1969, US troops were withdrawing from Vietnam, with the hope that the South's own army, the ARVN, could continue the war on their own. In the Paris Accords of 1973, a ceasefire was established between the North and South, and the last American units were withdrawn. The ceasefire did not last; the South tried to regain lost territory, but the North was still supported by the Soviets and China and a big push by the North led to the fall of the South on April 30th. The Vietnam war was over, with the communist North in full control of the country.

The Vietnam war is infamous for its high death toll. Over 50,000 Americans died, and over 250,000 Southern ARVN troops were killed. The North says that 1,000,000 of their troops were killed, along with twice that number of civilians. Taken along with the war against the Japanese and the war against the French, the fighting in Vietnam lasted for 30 years. In 1978 Vietnam would go to war again, to invade Cambodia and drive out Pol Pot.

After the war, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was in bad shape. The land had been very heavily bombed, and the economy was smashed. The Communist regime rounded up anyone with connections to America, and sent them to re-education camps. Religous groups once again were subjected to repression. Many people fled the country and were resettled overseas. By the 1980s, the only thing keeping Vietnam together was Soviet aid.

In 1986, economic reforms known as 'Doi Moi' were introduced. Essentially, Vietnam then became a free market economy, although the government remained officially communist. The economy improved steadily, with tourism, oil and manufacturing all bringing in money. In 1997 there was a setback when the country was hit by the economic crisis in Southeast Asia. Since then, the economy has recovered steadily, and in 2006 Vietnam has the second fastest rate of economic growth in Southeast Asia. Despite the economic reforms, there has been little political reform. The Communist Party of Vietnam retains control over all government institutions.

Phnom Penh Again

2007-03-20T12:37:00.000Z

We spent the last four days of February back in Phnom Penh again ...

We stayed near Boeng Kak lake (again). This is a picture of the flowers at the guesthouse.

An after-breakfast hammock session in the Freedom Cafe.

Phnom Penh has its own Royal Palace which is similar to Bangkok's, but a bit smaller. This is me infront of the silver pagoda, so called because its floor is covered with silver tiles.

This statue of King Norodom inside the royal palace compound was a gift from France in 1875. Cheekily, the French used a spare Napoleon statue and simply replaced Napoleon's head with that of King Norodom.

While wandering around near Boeng Kak lake, we walked past this house where the locals were engaging in some sort of ceremony. There was music, dancing, a model of a ship, and bananas and coca-cola being scattered onto the floor. Perhaps it was part of a wedding - we asked around, but no-one could speak english. Click here to hear a recording of the music.

On our last evening in Phnom Penh, we went back to visit the children at NACA Orphanage again. We bought some pictures to colour in and some crayons, and everyone soon got colouring. We saw another impromtu performance of some of their dances, and then general chaos ensued as footballs and badminton raquets appeared and we were asked to play. It was great to see the children again, but after about an hour it was getting near their bedtime so we said a final farewell.

Then, early on the 1st of March, we caught a boat to Chau Doc in Vietnam ...

The Only Train in Cambodia

2007-03-20T04:31:00.000Z

There is only one passenger train in Cambodia. It goes from Phnom Penh to Battambang on Saturday, and then goes back on Sunday. Its a very old train, and it takes 18 hours to cover a distance that only takes 6 hours in a coach. The carriages are completely neglected, with holes in the wooden floor, litter everywhere, and wooden chairs that are falling apart. And thats just in the 'luxury' carriage. Locals ride in the empty goods wagons, where they hang up hammocks. Passengers can also sit on the roof.

After reading about the train on the excellent Seat 61 web site, and seeing a great video of the train on YouTube, we thought we'd give it a go. We travelled half-way to Phnom Penh, from Battambang to Pursat, and it was one of the highlights of our visit to Cambodia.

On the Saturday afternoon before our journey, we went to the train station in Battambang to check that the train really was going that Sunday. We walked through the deserted train station and out onto the tracks. Because there is only one slow passenger train (and possibly a freight train or two) using the tracks each week, most of the time villagers hang-out on the tracks and children play on them. We wandered around a bit on the tracks, and gave out some stickers to some of the local children. Back in the station, we asked around and eventually a taxi-driver pointed out the timetable to us (click here to see a picture of it). The timetable made things slightly clearer, so we went back to our hotel, ready to return early the next day.

At 6:30 am on Sunday we were back at the station, with a hammock and our bags, and found the train waiting there (although with no engine as yet). There were three carriages with wooden seats, and because we had paid the 'foreigner' ticket price we were entitled to a seat. However the best place to hang a hammock was in the goods wagons, so we set to work hanging it up.

Apart from us, there were a few locals on the train, and about five guys in uniform who may have been soldiers, police, or train conductors - we're not sure. There were also two other westerners - two German guys based in Singapore who were visiting Cambodia for the weekend. While Claire was swinging in the hammock in the goods wagon, a friendly soldier/policeman bloke with a machine gun (see pic here) wandered up and indicated that we should sit in the proper carriage instead, because we had paid extra. Claire resisted for a while, because the goods wagon hammock was much more comfortable than the carriage, but then several other soldiers arrived, and it was clear that they wanted the goods wagon for their own hammocks.

So we moved into the proper carriage, and some more soliders/policemen demonstrated how the hammock could be hung from the luggage racks between the seats. The more senior looking soliders/policemen did the same, although it was not as comfortable as the goods-wagon hammocks because you couldn't swing without hitting the window sills. But eventually everyone was happy with their hammock positions, and at about 7am the train started off. Soon after the soldiers/policemen wandered into the next carriage and played a very long game of cards. We took turns in the hammock, and we also used a small cushion from one of our airplane flights to make the wooden seats slightly more comfortable.

The train rattled along very slowly, about 20 kmph, and the badly maintained track and carriages meant that the carriage often wobbled noisily from side to side. Overgrown bushes near the track would whip their branches into the glassless windows as the train scraped past them. The countryside was wide and flat in the early morning light, and the train passed through many villages built around the track, sometimes stopping to let locals on and off from the goods wagons. The villagers often looked a little surprised to see westerners on the train, and everyone we waved to on the way waved back.

After a while we climbed up onto the roof to enjoy the view. There was plenty to hang on to, so it wasn't as dangerous as it might sound. It was great to see the landscape all around us, and the train tracks stretching off into the distance ahead. We waved at more villagers.

After about 20mins we got back in the carriage. More locals had got on and hung up their hammocks in the goods wagon.

We recorded some videos:

Click here to see the train passing a village (5.4 meg).
Click here to see a video of the inside of the carriage (3.5 meg).
Click here to see a video of the locals in the goods wagon (5.5 meg).

Cambodians have come up with an ingenious way to make use of the underused train tracks. Locals have constructed their own 'unofficial' bamboo trains out of bamboo, motorcycle engines and recycled tank parts. The bamboo trains carry passengers and cargo from village to village along the track (you can read more about the Bamboo trains in this article). We saw this one following our train, so I went to the back and motioned for them to come closer so I could take a photo, and they happily obliged.

After about three hours the train stopped in a larger town for ten minutes, and locals came to the window selling water and snacks. We saw a freight train moving slowly in the opposite direction. For most of the way, there is only a single track, so this town must have been one of the few places that the trains could pass each other.

Then we were rolling again. Later we stopped at a small village and four smiling elderly men got on. One of them was a bit deaf and so spoke very loudly. They sat on the wooden seats near us, and the loud one spoke at length to his friend, who occasionally replied with a single syllable. I wanted to record the noise of the train at some point, so I did it while the sweet old men were talking. You can hear them (and of course the racket of the train) by clicking here. Half an hour and a few villages later, the old men got off again, and the loud one waved to me as we moved off.

As the morning wore on, we took turns to sleep in the hammock. The soldiers/policemen finished their card game and climbed into their hammocks to sleep as well. I wandered into the next carriage at one point, and found two piglets on dog leads being looked after by a group of children.

Eventually, we reached Pursat at about 1:30pm. After almost 7 hours on the train we were ready to get off. The German guys were ready to get off too, although they had originally planned to go all the way to Phnom Penh. We wandered along the road in Pursat until we found somewhere where we could buy bus tickets. We then rode the bus for three and a half hours to get to the capital. Meanwhile, the train continued on its way, reaching Phnom Penh at about midnight.

If you've got spare time, patience, a hammock and maybe some cushions then the Only Train In Cambodia is an interesting and unusual way to travel. However Cambodia is investing heavily in roads, and the train and track are being completely neglected, so it might not be doing its slow clunking weekly trip for much longer.

Siem Reap to Battambang

2007-03-19T08:21:00.000Z

After visiting Angkor, we spent one more day in Siem Reap and then caught a boat to Battambong.

Here's a picture of me trying to find out the 'local' price of a kilo of tangerines in a night market.

Claire went to a blind massage parlour, of which there are many in Cambodia. All of the staff were blind, although Soma, the lady running the parlour, had two little daughters who had normal vision. The little ones made some mischief by pulling the sheet off the massage table after Soma had laid it out - Soma did not notice, so Claire had to quickly get the sheet back on the table herself. Later, while Soma was massaging Claire's shoulders, Claire felt some little hands joining in to massage her feet! Claire says it was the best massage she has ever had, although when she first walked in, the sight of a row of blind masseuses staring vacantly into space as they massaged their clients was a little disconcerting.

On the 24th of February, we caught a boat from Siem Reap to Battambang. It was a small boat, and legroom was a little cramped, but we saw some great floating sights as we chugged accross the Tonle Sap lake and up the river Sang Ke.

On the Tonle Sap lake, locals build huge fish traps. Here is a picture of one of the fishermen and his temporary lake shack.

Going up the Sang Ke river, we passed through many floating villages. Click here for a video we took from the boat (6.8 meg), and click here for another one (7.5 meg).

The water level of the Tonle Sap lake and surrounding rivers can change by as much as 9 metres from season to season, so villages either have to float, or be on very high stilts.

Here is another floating church. We also saw a floating police station.

Here a family and their pet are seen infront of a large bambo floating crane. The crane uses counterweights to lift a large fishing net in and out of the water.

As we got up the river and the water got shallower, our boat driver had to rev harder and harder to keep us moving. Eventually the boat could take us no further and we were transferred into two 4WD pick up trucks. I counted 20 travellers in the back of ours. We chatted and mused on how this part of the journey had not been mentioned by the travel agents in Siem Reap, as we bumped along a bumpy track for 40 minutes. As we neared our destination, the 4WD got a flat tyre, so we all piled out temporarily and Claire took this photo. We eventually reached Battambang at 3pm - an unsurprising 3 hours later than advertised.

Angkor Day Three

2007-03-14T12:22:00.000Z

Angkor Wat is the largest and most impressive temple at Angkor. It was built sometime around 1100AD, and it is designed to match the Khmer's idea of the home of the Hindu gods - Mount Meru. Around 1400AD it was converted from a Hindu temple to a Buddhist temple, and it has remained in use as a religous site to this day. With its outer walls and moat, it covers an area of about 1 square kilometre, making it possibly the largest religous structure in the world.

So as not to spoil ourselves, we saved Angkor Wat till last. Many tour groups go to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise, so it is very busy in the early morning. We arrived at about 11:30 am (after some breakfast and another trip to the bakery) and it was pretty quiet.

Around the outer gallery of the main temple, there are about 800 metres of carvings (bas-reliefs), the majority of which are chaotic battle scenes from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana. The Ramayana has cropped up in our journey before - we also encountered it in the Kecak dance in Bali.

A view of the second gallery, looking up from the outer gallery.

There were steep stairs leading from the second gallery to the third (inner) gallery.

The inner gallery had many carved Apsaras figures like this one. Angkor Wat has over 1800 Apsarases in total, and they are all slightly different.

The central tower of Angkor Wat. Click here for a video we recorded from the inner gallery (9.6 meg).

The view west from the inner gallery.

These young monks climbed the same stairs as us. Soon after, one of them turned up picking his nose in another photo we took (click here to see it).

Back down in the outer gallery, we took this photo in the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas.

These Cambodian performers were posing for photographs with tourists back at the main gate. Click here for a short video we took of the exterior of Angkor Wat (3.5 meg).

Angkor Wat was about as impressive and interesting as huge old temples can be. The 'Rough Guide' had a good paragraph to sum it up:

While the architecture of the ancient Khmer manages to inspire awe even in its ruined state, it is important to remember that when we look at the monuments today, we see only what did not perish with the centuries – stone, brick and stucco. What we don't see are the ornately carved pavilions of golden teak that housed troupes of court dancers, minstrels, high priests and the god-kings themselves. Gone are the decorative embellishments that would have brought the monuments to life: the sheets of gilded copper that covered unadorned stone walls and towers, the parasols, banners and tapestries of delicate silk that gave colour to dimly lighted galleries and antechambers, the finely woven mats of aromatic grasses that covered rough stone causeways. Important elements which, when combined with the grandeur of bold stones rising up to dominate the jungle canopy, would surely have evoked paradise on earth.

The temples of Angkor were the ancient Khmers greatest creation, and also an important element in their downfall. As each king tried to build bigger and better temples to improve upon those of his predecessors, too much time and energy was diverted away from defense.

However, almost 1000 years later, the distant descendants of the Kymers are benefitting from these huge endeavors. Angkor is a symbol of pride for modern Cambodians, and is drawing more and more tourist dollars into Cambodia every year. Although tourism brings its own problems, after years of war and strife the million visitors per year are clearly welcome.

Angkor Day Two

2007-03-09T08:10:00.000Z

For the start of the second day of our Angkor exploration, our Canadian mentors had advised that we get up very early and head for Banteay Srei. Banteay Srei is quite a long way from Siem Reap (about an hour by tuk tuk) and is one of the most beautiful Angkor temples, but it gets very busy after 8am when lots of tour groups start arriving.

We were visiting several temples dotted around Angkor on our second day, so we hired a driver for the whole day. We found this driver called Sha Phoan who was very happy to drive us around for US$15. This was less than most drivers had quoted; we presume he was very happy to get the gig because he couldn't speak any English, and so didn't usually get the Angkor tourists. He transported us around very happily and competently.

We set off from our hotel at 6:30am, and the sun rose while we drove the long drive to Banteay Srei. We passed through the south of the Angkor site, and then through paddy-fields, patches of jungle, and the odd small village. Click here for a video of a temple we passed on the way (7.5 meg).

We arrived at Banteay Srei at about 7:45am. It is a small temple made of red sandstone, which looks very beautiful against the green background of the surrounding jungle.

We had about 20 fairly quiet minutes in the temple before streams of tourists started to arrive in big buses. This gave us just enough time to get some nice photos before everyone stood in the way.

Banteay Srei is also noted for its elaborate carvings.

Click here for a video we took at Banteay Srei (4.7 meg)

After Banteay Srei, we tuk-tuked back to the main Angkor area for about an hour. On the way Claire spotted this Cambodian family sitting in their hammock - she stopped to ask if she could take a photo, and they promptly all got out of the hammock. Claire carries stickers of smiley faces and cars to give to children on occasions like these, so after they all had stickers (which the grandmother particularly enjoyed) they posed for this photo and then all looked at the camera screen with great interest to see how they looked.

On the road to and from Banteay Srei we saw several customised 'tractors' like this one. It's a mix of tractor, go-cart and lawn mower. Note the handle-bars held by the driver. To turn sharp corners, the driver has to hop out of his seat and walk the handlebars out to one side.

On the way back from Banteay Srei, we also passed a school where these children were playing in the playground. Claire went in to give out some stickers, while our driver chatted to a guy in a hammock at the school gate. The stickers went down very well, and then we took a couple of slightly chaotic group photos of the children. Click here and here to see them.

The second major temple we visited that day was Preah Khan, a peaceful temple which has been left more or less as it was found by Europeans in the late 1800s, overgrown with trees and with parts of the buildings tumbling down.

This tree with its roots winding amoungst the stones has become a famous image of Angkor.

Click here to hear a recording of the birds and insects that we could hear from this spot.

After Preah Khan, we headed up Phnom Bakheng, which is a hill near Angkor Wat with a temple on top. It's one of the oldest Angkor temples, built around 900AD. Most of the tuk-tuk drivers encourage tourists to come here for sunset, when it gets very busy, with tourists, tuk-tuks, people selling things, and elephants, but we went up at about midday and it was virtually deserted. Click here to see a short film of the view from the top (6.6 meg). And click here to hear a recording of some birdsong we heard on the path back down the hill.

Next up was Ta Prohm, another temple with trees running amock amoung the stones. It rained briefly while we were there, and we sheltered under the crumbling ceilings with many other tourists. Then everyone took turns to be photographed by these roots. It was much busier than the similar Preah Khan.

Cambodia is littered with thousands of unexploded landmines, and hundreds of locals are injured or killed every year. In Agnkor we saw many bands like this one - men who had lost limbs getting together to play music. The 'Cambodian Wedding Music' that they play is a pleasing mix of plucked and wind instruments, sounding (to my ears) something like a mix of Indian and Indonesian styles. Click here to hear a recording of one of the bands.

Our last temple of the day was Banteay Kdei. It is known for the quality of its carved figures, but by now it was 4pm and we were a bit templed-out, so we didn't stay long.

Another Buddha statue at Banteay Kdei. Our day of temple-gazing ended at about 4:30pm, and Sha Phoan tuk-tuked us back to our hotel.

Angkor Day One

2007-03-06T10:04:00.000Z

The Angkor World Heritage Site is a large area in Cambodia where hundreds of temples and stone structures built by the ancient Khmer empire have been reclaimed from the jungle. The temples were built between 800AD and 1400AD, with some of them such as Angkor Wat being very well preserved, and some being reduced to little more than piles of rubble.

The area is now visited by over a million people every year, including many Cambodians who are rightly proud of their ancestor's creations. A picture of Angkor Wat is the centrepiece of the Cambodian flag.

In Phnom Penh we had met a pair of Canadian guys who had cycled from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap to see Angkor. They recommended the following three-day itinerary to us, which turned out to be a very good one:

Day One: Visit the walled city of Angkor Thom, with the famous Bayon temple.

Day Two: Hire a tuk tuk for the day and visit several smaller temples that are scattered around: Banteay Srei (get there before 8am), Preah Khan, Phnom Bakheng, Ta Prohm, Banteay Kdei.

Day Three: Visit Angkor Wat, thereby saving the best till last.

So one the 20th February, after breakfast near the market in Siem Reap, and after stocking up on ginger-bread (literally, bread with lumps of ginger) from the Blue Pumpkin bakery, we set off for Angkor Thom. All the Tuk Tuk drivers were keen to drive us round for the whole day for US$20, but we just wanted a short one-way trip to Angkor Thom, which we eventually got for US$2.50.

Angkor Thom is a square walled city, with each side about 3km long. In about 1200AD it was the capital of the Khmer empire, when the Angkor area as a whole supported a population of around a million people. Angkor was much bigger and grander than any European cities at that time - London then had a population of about 50,000. Inside the walls, only the stone structures remain - mostly temples. We entered Angkor Thom via the South Gate, shown here.

In the centre of Angkor Thom is the Bayon Temple, famous for the stone faces which are on all four sides of its many towers.

Experts in Khmer Architecture apparently don't rate Bayon too highly, thinking it too messy. But the faces give the temple a human appeal that some of the grander structures lack. The aforementioned Khmer Architecture experts have trouble agreeing about what the faces represent, but some reckon its the face of King Jayavarman VII.

Bayon, like many of the Angkor temples, had Buddha statues scattered around it, which were dressed in robes and attended to by shaven-headed Cambodians. The attendants weren't wearing orange robes, so we weren't sure whether they were monks or not. Possibly not, because they seemed to be more interested in cash than monks usually are. For a small fee you could burn some joss-sticks and pray infront of the statue, to bring good luck.

North of Bayon was the Terrace of the Elephants. There were many carvings of Elephants being ridden into battle, carrying people around, and (apparently) lifting up cows with their trunks.

All over Angkor, stalls and vendors offer food, drink and handicrafts, although they usually keep a respectful distance from the main temples. If you walk anywhere near the long rows of stalls, the many stallkeepers call out to you all at once, a self-defeating tactic that leads to many tourists giving them a very wide berth.

Likewise, Tuk Tuk and Motorcycle Taxi drivers are never very far away, and eager to offer you a lift, preferably for the next three days. East of the Elephant Terrace we saw this chilled out group of them playing cards.

It took about 4 or 5 hours to see the highlights of Angkor Thom, which are all within walking distance of each other. Here's a picture of Claire's feet at the end of the day.

Siem Reap by Boat

2007-03-06T09:07:00.000Z

On the 19th February we travelled from Phnom Penh up to Siem Reap, which is the nearest town to the famous Angkor World Heritage Site.

We had decided to travel by boat, which takes about 6 hours. It cost about US$22 each, which is way more than the bus (about US$6), but we were keen to avoid buses in Cambodia if possible - we heard so many stories about them breaking down. And travelling on the water sounded so much nicer. I had imagined a nice open boat with lots of space for lounging around on, but I should have guessed that space would be a luxury not often afforded on Cambodian transport.

There were two boats waiting for us at the quay, and they both looked like a cross between a train carriage and a small aeroplane, with a long thin passenger compartment with doors only at the front. The windows were quite small, so it was dark and quite cramped inside. An entire group of American tourists got out of one of the boats, complaining that it was like a coffin inside, and that the owners were cramming too many people in. They reclaimed their luggage and stamped off to get a bus instead.

We got on, and sat in airline-style seats, of which there were two rows down each side of the compartment. When the boat appeared to be full, some more Asian tourists got on (they might have been from Singapore) and sat on fold-out chairs which filled most of the central aisle. Another American family sitting behind us lost their confidence at this point, and hurredly got off as well.

When the boat set off on its journey, however, things improved. Lots of people got out of their seats and sat on the roof, so there was more space. Meanwhile the boat was powering along in the water very quickly but very smoothly. I think it was probably the fastest boat I've ever been on.

The hours passed by, as we travelled up the river and into the huge Tonle Sap lake. As we neared Siem Reap, we entered another river-way, and passed several floating villages.

(A floating church)

(A floating school)

Click here for a video of passing boats near the floating villages (10.7 meg).

Then we got a tuk tuk from the harbour to Siem Reap itself (Click here for a video we took on the way - 3.7 meg). The tuk tuk driver insisted on showing us to a guesthouse of his choosing, and for once the place seemed OK so we checked in. Then we explored Siem Reap for a few hours and then rested, in preparation for our exploration of Angkor over the next three days.

NACA Orphanage

2007-03-03T11:48:00.000Z

We had been thinking for a while that we would try to visit some orphanages when we got to Cambodia. So upon arrival in Phnom Penh we asked around to find out which ones were properly run - we had heard some stories about orphanages where all the money is channeled away by the owners, instead of spend on the children. Eventually, from looking around on the internet and looking at posters that we saw, we heard about the Lighthouse Orphanage and NACA Orphanage, which both sounded like well run establishments. We decided to visit NACA Orphanage which was a few minutes walk from the Boeng Kak lake where we were staying. We had heard that it was a small orphanage and was not often visited.

(For a great story about someone else's visit to the Lighthouse Orphanage, see this blog entry)

Claire had been carrying all kinds of little gifts for children all through the trip, so we got lots of them together to donate (click here to see a picture of the stuff). Then we headed out to find the orphanage.

We were not quite sure what we would find. We ventured down a dusty little alleyway as directed by our map, with lots of small concrete houses next to each other. One of them had its metal sliding-gate opened, and it turned out to be the NACA Orphanage. As soon as we arrived at the door, little children were calling out 'hello! hello!' and running up and hugging us. The few adults that were around beckoned us in and motioned for us to sit down and play with the children. The orphanage was one big downstairs room with a little dorm upstairs. There were straw mats laid out on the floor, and little lockers along one wall for the children to keep things in. There were about 25 children, aged from 5 to 15.

We both sat down with circles of children around us. Claire started giving out stickers, and I produced a pen and a notepad, to try and teach 'noughts and crosses' to some of the smaller ones. All of the children were very keen to show me that they could write their names in English. Now and again children would walk up and hug us; you could easily tell that they were missing the close contact that parents give.

The Cambodian lady running the orphanage didn't speak much English, but she thanked us for our bag of donations, and explained that the children were getting ready for a show on the riverside. We had heard that the children did a Cambodian Dance show on Sundays, but today it seemed that they were doing an extra special show in the centre of the city. The adults continued to try and get some of the children into their costumes, while we entertained the others.

Click here for a video of Claire playing with some of the children (3.2 Meg).

Click here for a 360-degree video of the main orphanage room (7.2 meg).

Eventually the children excitedly arranged a row of plastic chairs in front of a makeshift stage, and sat us down. We were to watch their rehearsal for the dance at the riverside. The younger children, aged from 5 to 9, did two group dances, and then a couple of the older boys did a more acrobatic 'monkey' dance. All the children did very well, especially the younger ones. During the rehearsal, some of the older children looked on and gave advice to the dancers. It was great to see them all so involved in the dancing and helping each other. As well as being a fun thing for the children to do together, the dancing was evidently also a good source of income for the orphanage.

We recorded three videos of the rehearsal dances: Click here to see a bit of the younger children's first dance (3.6 meg), click here for the second dance (9.9 meg), in which a little baby amusingly wandered onto the stage, and click here to see the 'monkey' dance (10.1 meg).

After the rehearsal, it was time to go to Sisowath Quay for the real thing. The children took our hands and asked us to come along with them. They took the mats and musical instruments that they needed outside, and everyone piled into a little minibus. The lady in charge indicated that it was OK for us to take up some space in the bus, so we got in with them. And so the minibus containing us, a driver and about 22 children made the short journey to the riverside.

(a photo from inside the minibus)

At Sisowath Quay, we all piled out. The lady in charge (we never did find out her name) used some straw mats and carpets to make a stage on the boulevard next to the river. Meanwhile the children had a picnic on a nearby lawn. We played with the children and helped move things around while a small crowd of locals, moto-taxi drivers and cold drink sellers gathered around us.

(Claire and some of the boys at the riverside)

(a photo taken by one of the children)

The lady in charge spent a long time making sure all the children and their costumes were clean and tidy, while the crowd waited patiently. Then the band started to play, and the performance began. The children danced four dances, with long gaps in between while their costumes were adjusted and checked. A crowd of about 100 people looked on, most of them locals, with a few westerners dotted around.

We also recorded three videos of the performance: Click here for a bit of the first dance (13.1 meg), click here for the second (3.7 meg), and click here for a bit of the final monkey dance (7.8 meg).

The performance was also recorded by the owner of the local Hope & Anchor bar, on a very professional looking camera. We chatted to him and he explained that he had helped the orphanage organise the outdoor performance, by arranging for the police to give permission. In return he was filming the performance for a film he was planning to make about life in Phnom Penh. He knew the lady in charge of the orphanage, and was very impressed by her dedication to the children.

At one point, an elephant wandered past, briefly stealing the show.

Before the last dance, one of the Hope & Anchor staff talked to the crowd in Khmer, presumably explaining about the orphans and asking for donations. At the end, many of the crowd came forward and dropped a few notes into the carboard collecting box. Most of these people were locals, and it was heartening to see that they were still able to space some cash, despite all the problems in modern Cambodia.

Then the crowd dispersed, and the lady in charge bought all of the children a nice cold drink. It was time for us to go, so we said goodbye to the orphans, and told them we would visit again when we returned to Phnom Penh in a weeks time. They cheerfully waved us off as we rumbled away in a tuk-tuk.

It had been a very special day for us; the children were so positive, and so appreciative of our visit. It was really encouraging to see how they put their hearts into their performance, and how they looked after each other so well. Its hard to imagine growing up without parents, and even harder to imagine doing so in somewhere like Cambodia. We could see how NACA, and other orphanages like it, are giving these little ones a chance to have a happier childhood. Hopefully they will also have a better foundation for their future lives.

Phnom Penh

2007-02-28T07:37:00.000Z

We arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, early on the 16th February. Phnom Penh is quite a small city, and aside from the busy streets full of motorcycles and bad pavements that many SE Asian cities seem to have, its fairly charming. There are some remnants of French architecture, baguettes and French patisseries are fairly easy to get hold of, and there is a nice riverside area called Sisowath Quay where tourists and locals wander along the riverfront, picniccing, socialising and (in unfortunate cases) begging.

Click here for a video of some Phnom Penh traffic near the central market (6.0 Meg).

We found a place to stay near the Boeng Kak lake, which has become Phnom Penh's backpacker area. The backstreets near the lake are full of the usual backpacker staples of travel agents, money exchanges, bars and tuk tuk drivers, which can become a bit dreary. But some of the guesthouses have nice cafes and balconies overlooking the green vegetation of the lake. Its nice to chill out there, as long as one of the lakeside bars doesn't start playing the loud music that they mistakenly assume that Westerner's want to listen to all day long.

Phnom Penh has many reminders of Cambodia's nightmare in the 70s, and most of them are now major tourist attractions. Posters near our guesthouse advertised day trips to see the mass graves at the Choeung Ek killing-fields, and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, at the site of the former S-21 torture chamber. We understand that its important for people to know about what happened, but we didn't want to go and see these things.

Perhaps the weirdest attraction in Phnom Penh is the Thunder Ranch shooting range, where Western tourists go and spend $30 to fire an AK47, $100 to fire an M60 light machine gun, or $200 to fire a rocket propelled grenade. I guess it makes some money for some Cambodians who probably need it, but as another blogger has pointed out, it must be very disconcerting for locals to see a tourist shoot a weapon for a few seconds for the price of 60 days of work. Needless to say, we didn't go, but many one-day city tours go to the shooting range after visiting the killing fields.

Despite the tragic history, Phnom Penh is a mostly pleasant place to stroll around. Near the temple-on-a-hill that the city is named after, we saw many monks, and many monkeys. Like Thailand, the Buddhist monks here wear orange robes, and they sometimes also carry smart yellow parasols.

All over the city, we have seen lots of Cambodians enjoying themselves. Weddings are happening all over the place, families picnic by the river, locals chat together in Kymer restaurants, and sing in Karaoke bars. There is a definite mood of optimism, and Cambodia has been experiencing rapid economic growth for several years. As usual though, the benefits are not reaching as many people as they should.

Like many Asian cities, poverty is often visible, and the city has its share of beggars and street children. However many Cambodians in bad circumstances seem to find more positive ways to support themselves than simply begging. For example, people who have lost limbs from landmines get together in bands and learn to play musical instruments. People that have been blinded learn massage - there are many all-blind massage parlours. Street children are often seen carrying boxes of books which they sell. The books are usually Lonely Planet guides, and books about Cambodia. Unfortunately, most of the books that have been published about Cambodia make for harrowing reading. Hopefully some happier ones will be published someday soon.

Some Cambodian History

2007-02-27T10:07:00.000Z

Cambodia's heyday started sometime after 800 AD, when several rival kingdoms were united to create the Khmer Empire. For almost 600 years the empire thrived, sending armies deep into the areas of present-day Thailand and Vietnam, and building huge cities and temples in the Angkor area. Successive kings tried to outdo their predecessors with more and more ambitious building projects, which became a drain on resources which eventually crippled the empire and left them open to attack.

In 1594 the Kymer capital fell to the Thais, and after that much land was reclaimed or taken by Thailand and Vietnam, shrinking Cambodia to a small buffer state. The French arrived in 1863, and controlled Cambodia until just after World War II when King Sihanouk started campaigning for independence. This was formally recognised in May 1954.

Things got worse when Cambodia was caught up in the Vietnam War. In 1969 Sihanouk (now an elected, but despotic, politician) allowed the US to bomb Vietcong guerrillas hiding in Eastern Cambodia. Inevitably, there were hundreds of Cambodian casualties. As discontent grew, Sihanouk was pushed out of power in 1970. The Vietcong meanwhile moved deeper into Cambodia, and the country became fully engulfed in the war as the US and South Vietnamese pursued them. With the country in chaos, a communist group called the Khmer Rouge grew in power, and started taking control of large areas of the country.

This summary of the Khmer Rouge years is taken from the Rough Guide to Cambodia:

Khmer Rouge forces marched into Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975 to the cheers of the Cambodian people. The war was over, and peace would prevail, they assumed. Unfortunately this was not to be. From the very day that the Khmer Rouge arrived in Phnom Penh, a systematic process of communist re-enginerring was ordered, presumably by Communist Party leader Saloth Sar, or Pol Pot as he was subsequently known. The deranged attempt to transform the country into an agrarian collective, inspired by Maoist ideology, proved a monumental human disaster and caused international outrage, but little action. The entire population of Phnom Penh and other provincial capitals were forcibly removed to the countryside to begin their new lives as peasants working on the land. They were the lucky ones. Pol Pot ordered the mass extermination of intellectuals, teachers, writers, educated people, and their families. Even wearing glasses was an indication of intelligence, a "crime" punishable by death. The brutal regime lasted four years before invading Vietnamese forces reached the capital in 1979; by this time, at least one million, perhaps three million Khmers had died as a result of the Kampuchean holocaust [from a total population of about eight million]. Pol Pot and his supporters fled to the jungle bordering Thailand, from where they continued to wage civil war on successive governments in Phnom Penh.

The new (also Communist) Vietnamese-backed government saved the people of Cambodia from the carnage of the Khmer Rouge, but the Vietnamese move was seen as Communist expansionism by the international community. This led to the perverse situation of Thailand, Britain, China and the US supporting a Cambodian government-in-exile dominated by the murderous Khmer Rouge and led by the previously deposed leader Sihanouk. The cold-war logic of the Western countries presumably being that the Khmer Rouge only killed their own and didn't pose a threat to the West, whereas the Vietnamese appeared to be expanding. Support from outside for the various factions allowed the fighting to continue in Cambodia for the next 12 years, until the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1991.

Then began what was, at the time, the biggest UN operation in history. A UN project called UNTAC were called in to run Cambodia for eighteen months, and set up free and fair elections. The ceasefire did not hold as it was supposed to, but the elections were fairly successful, with a huge turnout of voters.

Since then the Cambodian People's Party (partly made up of people from the previous Vietnamese-backed government) has grown in power and influence, led by Hun Sen, now the most powerful man in Cambodia. Sihanouk took the royal role of King again for a while, before abdicating due to ill health in 2004. Kymer Rouge guerrillas continued to make Cambodia a dangerous place until 1996, after which their power declined. Pol Pot (still hiding out in the jungle near Thailand) died in 1998 and this marked the end of the Kymer Rouge guerrilla war.

Cambodia is peaceful and stable now, but there are still many problems. Unexploded landmines cover large areas of the country, the population is expanding rapidly with more than 50% of the population under 25 years old, poverty is widespread with a huge gap between the poor and the well-off, and corruption in the government and civil service is widespread.

Leaving Thailand (for now)

2007-02-26T09:23:00.000Z

On the 14th February, we left Koh Tao and got a boat over to Chumphon. From here we picked up the sleeper train back to Bangkok. On the way down we had booked a first-class cabin (fairly cheap - about 34 pounds for both of us), and although it was quite comfy, it was too cold due to the unstoppable air conditioning. On the way back we travelled in a second-class sleeper, which was one third of the price and actually more comfortable because it had fans instead of air-con. Although in the 2nd class carriage we got woken very early by people walking along the carriage loudly selling breakfast and coffee.

So we arrived in Bangkok early on the 15th, very well informed by the food vendors as to what was available on the train. We found a little room near the Khao San road, and then posted letters, did some blogging, and had some food. Then on the 16th we were up early again to catch our flight to Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

Originally we had planned to travel to Cambodia overland, but before we first arrived in Thailand we were advised that we might be denied entry, because technically you need to be able to show (via plane tickets) that you are leaving Thailand again within the 30 day visa limit. So before we got to Thailand we decided to book a budget flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh for the 16th Feb, so that we could prove we were moving on. In the end, Thai customs just gave us visas without any questions at all. The flight was cheap, but it was a bit of a shame because we were keen to avoid flying if possible.

We will be returning to Thailand for about the last two weeks of our trip. On this first visit we haven't done much cultural stuff and we haven't really had much real contact with the locals. We've just been relaxing and diving and so on. When we come back we plan to get to know Thailand a bit better.

Politically, Thailand is still re-organising itself since the coup in September. They are re-writing their constitution, and trying to unravel the complex trail of alleged corruption that Thaksin left behind. There has been lots in the Thai news about Bangkok's new recently opened airport, Suvarnabhumi. When we went through it, it looked pretty impressive - the terminal building is the second largest building in the world - but there is much talk in the Thai media about corrupt business deals and sub-standard materials. Many are pointing the finger at Thaksin, who is said to have rushed the opening of the airport. But it's hard to work out how many of the problems at the airport are real, and how many are political point-scoring by Thaksin's many opponents.

Meanwhile Thaksin has appeared on CNN and given an interview to the Wall Street Journal. Generally it seems that Western businesses did well under Thaksin and so are sympathetic to his views. In response, the coup administration claims that Thaksin's economic policies were reckless and will cost Thailand dearly in future.

It's all pretty complex but this amusing Salon.com article makes an attempt to sum it all up:
Thailand takes off the gloves

Here's a couple of quotes from the article:

... The Wall Street Journal has now taken to calling the military government "incompetent" and describing its new policies as "batty." The new government may not be Castro redux, but in today's day and age, it is something that may be equally repugnant to the masters of capital: a flag-bearer for resistance to globalization ...

... Meanwhile, the international investment community is beginning to look back with longing at the pro-free trade regime of Prime Minister Thaksin. Sure, he may have been a corrupt demagogue who bought the people's love with handouts, but, darn it, he was a corrupt demagogue who believed what we believe!

Diving off Koh Tao

2007-02-23T12:17:00.000Z

Koh Tao is famous for its underwater wildlife. On one afternoon we went snorkelling off of the beach at Ao Kul Jeua. The water was very clear and we saw a reasonable number of fish, some coral and lots of sea cucumbers.

We also went diving. When Claire was exploring on the first day, she met a guy called 'Chill' who worked for a neaby dive-shop called Big Bubble. On our last day on Koh Tao we booked a dive with Big Bubble, and did two dives with a charming german Divemaster called Diane (nicknamed Din to the thai locals). She took Claire and I for two dives, one at White Rock, and one at Twin Peaks. Both sites had very clear water while we were there.

(Me and Claire)

(Claire and Din)

(Me)

On the boat we met a Belgian couple called Tanguy and Jetje, and we met up with Jetje, some of the other divers, and a random group of 19 year old lads from the New Forest that evening for a meal. Jetje and Claire chatted while I talked to the youngsters. They said they hadn't met anyone else as young as them travelling, and I congratulated them for hitting the road so early after A-levels; it's taken me over 12 years.

Later on we met Hayley and Silvanna again in the same restaurant. The whole time we were in there, a loud chorus of frogs could be heard just outside. They were having a very lengthy frog-conversation, presumably about flies, or lillypads or something. Click here for a recording of them.

Tanguy and Jetje, the Belgian couple, have their own blog (click here to see it). Its written in Dutch but there are some good photos.

Chilling on Koh Tao

2007-02-23T11:13:00.000Z

On the 10th February we left Ko Phangan and went to spend four days on the nearby island of Koh Tao.

A week before in Bangkok, we had met a pair of vegetarian German dentists, who recommended a resort on Koh Tao called Moondance (after that, the conversation moved on to dentistry and fillings; I think that must be the first time I've ever shown the inside of my mouth to a couple of people I've only just met in a restaurant. But they were quite interested).

So we got a water taxi from the main port around to a little bay called Ao Kul Jeua. Moondance had one bungalow left, so we took it for the first night. Moondance was indeed a nice resort, but the bungalow wasn't that great, so the next day we moved to the next-door resort called Sunset.

Both resorts were in a lovely little bay with a small beach and very clear water. It was a very relaxing spot, but for more a bit more liveliness we could walk for 10 minutes east around the coast, to reach the village of Chalok Baan Kao. Here there were a few bars, and lots of restaurants and dive shops. Approaching the area at night was very pretty, with the lights from the bars reflecting on the water while the music drifted over to us. Even here though, it was still pretty relaxing; nothing like the party areas on Koh Phangan.

Koh Tao also had quite a few doggy inhabitants. Claire bought a dog-brush, and any dogs that we passed while walking around were treated to a brushing-session, which they all loved.

Koh Tao is a bit less developed than Koh Phangan, and has a great rocky coastline, with piles of boulders interspersed with palm trees. Scuba diving is one of the main activities, and so there were always dive-boats passing by the beach. Claire saw several flowers that she wanted to photograph:

Claire met two other girls who were interested in doing yoga. Hayley, from Brighton, and a German girl called Silvanna who was living in China. They did a yoga session together on the beach, and then we all went to a restaurant on the top of the hill and talked late into the evening with a french cartoonist. It was a good evening, chatting philosophically while the crickets (or whatever they were) chirped in the trees.

More H+S Wedding Photos

2007-02-23T10:21:00.000Z

Regular readers will remember Heidi and Steve's wedding in New Zealand in November; the official photos are now available from Sterling Images.

Click on this link to get to the photos:

Sterling Images - H+S Photos

There are hundreds of photos to look at, they are divided into three groups: Ceremony, Group Photos and Location Shoot. The Location Shoot photos are particularly good - they were taken when everyone else was up at the reception.

You can order prints of various sizes starting from 12 NZD per print. The photos will only be available to view and purchase until the end of May 2007.

Hammock Land

2007-02-23T09:53:00.000Z

On the evening of the 2nd February we took the overnight train from Bangkok down to Surat Thani. In the morning, a bus ride and a two and a half hour ferry ride got us to the island of Koh Phangan. I visited Thailand on my own in the summer of 2002, and so this was my second time on Koh Phangan. The island is famous for its Full Moon parties, and on my first visit I made the mistake of being on the island while the party was happening. It was an interesting spectacle for 20 mins, but not really my kind of thing. Luckily, this time we arrived the day after the party, so most of the 10,000 partygoers had left or were in the process of leaving. This meant we had a much better chance of finding a beach bungalow where we wanted.

Although Koh Phangan is quite busy, it is also quite basic due to the lack of decent roads. The majority of the accommodation on the island is made up of wooden beach bungalows with a bed, a mosquito net, a simple bathroom and a hammock out the front.

We stayed at Mae Haad View resort in Mae Haad bay on the North-West of the island. Heidi recommended this idyllic spot to us after she and Steve spent some of their honeymoon there. There were lots of hammocks, so Claire and I were very happy.

There were quite a few stray dogs on the island, although they were in much better condition and much more used to human contact than the dogs we had seen in Bali, or that Claire had seen in India. Locals told us that there were fewer dogs and happier dogs on the island now due to the work of Phangan Animal Care, who have neutered a lot of the stray female dogs.

On our first night, there weren't any bungalows free in Mae Haad View, so the owners put us up for one night in the nearby town of Chaluklum. On the beach there we met this very friendly doggy. He came up and gently grabbed Claire's skirt with his teeth, and then yelped and showed us his injured foot. He had a deep wound on his front paw, which was healing but obviously painful, and it was clear that he had come to us to ask for help. Sadly, it was late at night and we were going back to Mae Haad in the morning. If we had encountered the doggy in the daytime we might have been able to find out where the Animal Care place was, and take him there somehow. Instead, Claire spent some time massaging his head and stroking his tummy and giving him some much-needed love and care. Then we had to leave him on the beach, where we had found him. We hope that someone else was able to help him get to the vet in the days that followed.

In Mae Haad we had lots of nice food and saw some nice sunsets. And we swung in lots of nice hammocks. However, we heard rumours that much of Ko Phangan is run by Thai gangsters. Apparently rival businesses will sometimes resort to using guns to settle disagreements, and people opening new premises will be bullied into paying 'protection money' to the businesses already in operation. This tarnished the 'island paradise' image somewhat.

My time in 'hammock land' was actually quite busy, because I did a four-day scuba-diving course. Claire, naturally, had already done this about ten years ago. So while she explored markets and secluded coves, I was plodding around the beach in a wetsuit, weight-belt and air-tank.

Most people go to nearby Koh Tao to do diving courses, but I did the course with the Mae Haad branch of Haad Yao Divers. I was glad I did because there was only one other student with me so it was a very small group. For the first two days we studied theory and went for short dives off the beach. Then on the final two days we went out on boat trips to dive sites. Breathing underwater takes a bit of getting used to, but by the last day I was getting the hang of it. Claire joined us for two dives on the last day, when we went to Sail Rock. We saw lots of fish, but the visibility underwater was not as good as it usually was, due to recent storms. We had a disposable underwater camera, which tend to give low quality photos, and are quite hard to use when you've got a mask on, but we had a go anyway:

(Me underwater)

(Stefan, my instructor)

(Murky waters around Sail Rock)

The Grand Palace

2007-02-15T11:01:00.000Z

Like most people visiting Bangkok, we went to visit the Grand Palace, a large complex of royal buildings near the river.

Royalty is very important in Thailand - the current King Bhumibol is apparently universally loved and respected by Thais. King Bhumibol does indeed seem to be a remarkable monarch. He is a painter, photographer, author, translator, jazz musician, inventor and sailboat designer. All this despite losing sight in one of his eyes when he was 21. His picture is seen everywhere, in homes, cafes, on billboards and on government offices.

The Grand Palace used to be the official residence of the King of Thailand, and is now used for royal ceremonies and entertaining foreign dignitaries. It also contains Wat Phra Kaew, the most important Buddhist temple in Thailand.

Here are some pictures of Wat Phra Kaew:

The temple buildings are all very beautiful, but are also very close together which makes them hard to capture on camera. The main central building houses the Emerald Buddha, a small but religously important icon, which tourists are not allowed to photograph.

Click here for a video taken in the grounds of Wat Phra Kaew (7.1 Meg).

And click here for another one (11.2 Meg).

Click here to hear a recording of birdsong and bells in the Wat.

Outside of Wat Phra Kaew lies the rest of the Palace grounds, where we took these photos:

Bangkok

2007-02-15T06:57:00.000Z

Bangkok is a major transport hub in South East Asia, and so this was the first of at least three visits to the city that we would make. Its not a spectacularly nice place by any means. For our first visit we softened the impact by booking a nice hotel along Sukhumvit Road for a few days. It cost only slightly more than the humble Sydney hostels we had been staying in previously. We had a nice room to relax in, and a huge buffet breakfast of every conceivable breakfast item imaginable to look forward to each morning.

(A statue by the hotel pool, and some intricately carved breakfast)

The eastern bit of Bangkok where we were staying is full of tall hotels and shopping malls, somewhat like Singapore but much less clean. The western bit along the river is much older and messier, and that's where the famous Khao San Road is.

The Khao San Road is a mecca for backpackers in Bangkok, and consists of a busy pedestrianised road full of markets, bars, restaurants, massage parlours, tattoo parlours, internet cafes, second hand bookshops, travel agents and so on. Although its a huge tourist trap, getting to other parts of Bangkok is quite a hassle due to the traffic, so people who are only in Bangkok for a short time tend to base themselves somewhere around Khao San and not go much further. Some of the positive points about it are the lack of traffic and great food. And the clothes and trinkets in the market stalls often catch one's eye.

Click here for a 2 min 30 second recording of the sounds heard when walking along the Khao San road.

(the ubiquitous trinket sellers, equipped with wooden frog toys, and some Hare Krishnas who danced along the road)

Click here for a video of the Hare Krishnas adding to the general chaos of the Khao San Road (3.2 Meg).

(A cat alseep at a music stall, and Claire at the brilliant May Kaidee veggie restaurant)

No trip to Bangkok is complete without a ride on a Tuk Tuk. Bangkok is a labyrinth of congested roads, from narrow back streets to five-lane flyovers. Tuk Tuks have a slight advantage over Taxis in that they can slip down narrower side streets. Even more manouverable are the motorcycle taxis, but not many travellers risk a ride on them. Strangely, most of the congestion in Bangkok seems to be caused by empty taxis forever circling around the city. Taxis and Tuk Tuks make up well over half the traffic.

This is a picture of one of the Tuk Tuks we took. The driver gave us a very cheap price for the ride, on the condition that we went into a tailor's shop and looked interested for at least 15 minutes - the shop then gave him petrol tokens in exchange for bringing us along.

Click here for a video of part of our Tuk Tuk ride! (9.5 Meg)

Beard Removal

2007-02-15T06:34:00.000Z

As some of you have noticed, my lack of bothering to shave has led directly and inevitably to me growing a beard. While this new facial development hadn't really posed any problems up to now, by the end of January it was starting to get out of hand, and I wanted to get rid of it while we were in the hotter climate of South East Asia.

I didn't have a beard-trimmer with me, so I needed some advice about the best way of shaving it off. Hence I visited the internet's premier message board for the discussion of beard-related issues:
www.beardboard.com

I posted my question in the 'facial hair help' section and awaited the responses of the global bearded community. It turned out that I had under-estimated their enthusiasm for beards somewhat. Although there were some helpful suggestions, many of them wanted me to keep the beard at all costs. You can read my question and the responses by clicking here.

In the end I managed to remove the beard without incident. For those that are interested, here are some pictures of before and after:

Before
After

On a plane

2007-02-15T06:17:00.000Z

Our flight from Sydney to Bangkok turned out to be a British Airways one, rather than a Quantas flight. I must have been away from home for too long, because for some reason I found this comforting. Even though all airplanes and crews are pretty similar, I was unaccountably pleased to learn that we would be looked after by cabin crew who had familiar accents and understood the overwhelming importance of tea.

Our share of the footprint for the 9-hour flight was 2.13 tonnes of CO2. For the whole 747, it was probably around 440 tonnes.

Just one more long flight to go now, the 12-hour hop back to Heathrow in April.

Sydney on Australia Day

2007-02-11T09:40:00.000Z

After the Blue Mountains, we took the train back to Sydney on the afternoon of the 26th January. That day was Australia Day, the anniversary of the creation of the first European colony in Australia. We wanted to be back in Sydney that evening to see some of the celebrations, and also because we had tickets to see a concert at the Opera House.

Once in Sydney, we checked into our hostel, quickly got ready, and then headed over to the Opera House on foot. On the way we walked around Hyde Park where a large outdoor concert was being attended by many Aussies wrapped in flags and waving inflatable kangaroos.

(Us infront of the Opera House. The crowds on the steps are watching the Australian Open on a huge outdoor screen)

As the Opera House is so famous, I had wanted to see something in it while we were in Sydney, so I had booked two tickets to see Eva Yerbabeuna's flamenco show in the Concert Hall. I don't know anything about Flamenco, but that looked like the most interesting thing on that week. The dancing was amazing, lots of stomping, clapping and swishing dresses that were far too long and were expertly dragged around by the dancers (the dresses are known as Bata de Cola apparently).

After the performance we spent the next few hours in the same way we had spent our first evening in Sydney; relaxing by the waterfront with hot chocolate and tea.

Environmental issues were again in the news in Australia, as they had been when we visited Melbourne. The water shortage was leading to media discussions about the inevitability of using recycled water. Meanwhile the Prime Minister had tried to set an example by installing a water tank in his offical residence, however he was prevented from doing so because Kirribilli House is a listed building. On Australia Day, the 'Australian of the Year' award was given to Professor Tim Flannery, a long time critic of the Australian governments stance on climate change.

The next day, we were wandering around Sydney again. We went to Circular Quay where we saw lots of street performers, including this didgeridoo player. He was playing over a backing track, you can listen to the sounds by clicking here.

Then we headed for the market at The Rocks, and then finally went to the Touch Gallery, which exhibits some of the artwork which Nelson Mandela has produced for charity auctions. Most of the pictures were simple sketches of scenes from his time in prison, coloured in bright colours and accompanied by handwritten comments. One interesting picture was an accidental hand print he had made when we rested his hand on a canvas. By chance, it turned out to have an outline of the African continent on it.

On the Sunday we met up with Caroline, Scott and Toni, friends of my family from long ago. I think I last saw them when I was about 10, and my parents last saw them when they visited Australia in 1991. Caroline very kindly gave us a tour of the beaches and sights west of Sydney, and we met up with Scott and his friend and Toni and her husband for lunch. We soon found plenty to talk about despite not seeing each other for 22 years.

(Foreground from left: Us, Caroline, Scott, Toni and Simon.
Background: thousands of people crammed onto Bondi Beach)

(Coogee Beach)

At the Royal Botanic Gardens, Caroline recommended this essential photo spot for its view of the Opera House and Bridge. Then, after a chocolate ice-cream, we said goodbye to Caroline and headed for the open-air cinema.

The open-air cinema was in the Botanic Gardens, with a huge fold-out screen above the water. It was a lovely way to watch a movie, with the Sydney skyline framing the screen. Click here to see a video of the screen unfolding to get an idea of what it was like (4.9 Meg).

The movie we watched was Ten Canoes, the first major film to be made entirely in an Aboriginal language. The story-within-a-story showed the importance of storytelling in Aboriginal tribes. It was a good story, and also a fascinating look at the tribal lifestyle before the arrival of Europeans.

Finally, on Monday 29th January, we left Sydney and headed for Thailand, to start the final South-East Asian leg of our trip ...

The Blue Mountains

2007-02-11T08:14:00.000Z

We went to visit the Blue Mountains for a couple of days, as they are just a couple of hours west of Sydney. It turns out they're not really mountains though - they are a series of cliffs around a plateau. So you look down into the gaps rather than looking up at triangular mountains. They are sortof blue though, the air has a blue-ish tinge due to all the oil from the eucalyptus trees.

(some flowers in the mountains, and the 'Three Sisters' rocks)

Click here for a video taken from Echo Point near the Three Sisters (9.3 Meg).

The Jenolan Caves are the oldest discovered open caves in the world, and were nearby, so we went to see them too.

Here are some pictures from the Lucas Cave:

And here are some from the Orient Cave:

Click here to see a video taken inside of one of the Orient Caves (9 Meg).

On our final day in the area, we went to Scenic World to have a ride on their cable car and railway, and see some more of the Blue Mountains. We walked around in the forest on the plateau, and took this video of a Lyre Bird (click here, 3.3 Meg).

(some more blue mountains, taken from the 'Scenic Skyway' ride)

Arriving in Sydney

2007-02-03T15:04:00.000Z

The flight to Sydney took about 3 hours (0.48 tonnes of CO2 was our share of the emmissions). After getting through customs and eating some fruit very quickly (Australia is very strict about its bio-security laws) we took the train to Central Station. The city was preparing for Australia Day on the 26th January, so all the hostels were very busy. We eventually checked into a little chinese-run hostel near Central station.

Sydney, we discovered, has a big Asian population, and some parts of George St reminded me of Singapore. We quickly found some great Thai food at 'Crocodile Senior Thai', which gave us a nice preview of what we would find a week later in Bangkok.

On our first evening we walked up through Hyde Park to get to the harbour area. Hyde Park turned out to be full of possums, which gave us a chance to see some up close. Until then, we'd only seen them flattened on New Zealands long fast roads.

The waterfront by the Opera House was a great place to relax in the evening, with romantic views and a hot chocolate and a tea. It reminded me a little bit of the South Bank (my favorite patch in London). But Sydney's waterfront is much bigger and prettier than London's, and on the South Bank (for some reason) it's annoyingly difficult to find a hot drink after 10pm. Not a problem in Sydney.

(The Opera House, the Bridge, and the view from The Rocks)

For the next couple of days we wandered around central Sydney. It was very warm and sunny, with the occasional quick shower of rain. We visited Darling Harbour, The Rocks area (under the south end of the bridge), and a few nice Veggie restaurants. Then we left Sydney for a couple of days, to visit the Blue Mountains ...

Leaving New Zealand

2007-02-02T04:30:00.001Z

We spent our last four days in New Zealand in Auckland. On the Friday night after giving back the Spaceship we met up with Calum and Iona, who we had met on the Gili Islands. It was great to catch up with them - they are starting their drive around New Zealand soon, after working in Auckland for a couple of months (you can view their blog here).

(Auckland by day and by night)

We spent much of the four days with Heidi and Steve - Steve had flown up from Nelson for the weekend, and they were looking at houses. Being with them, we caught some of the excitement that comes from starting a new life in a new country. Heidi now had a big shiny 4x4 to drive around in, had lots of interesting leads for jobs, and Steve had an encouragingly positive meeting about his music career. The houses that Claire and I looked around with them were very impressive - you get a lot more for your money in New Zealand, evidently.

On Saturday evening we went to visit Peter and Sally, some New Zealand friends of the family that had come to the wedding. Again, we enjoyed some fantastic Kiwi hospitality. Peter and Sally had kept a detailed diary of their recent trip to Europe, and it was very interesting to read about the places we call home through the eyes of visitors.

On the final evening, Heidi, Steve, Claire and I went for a 'special dessert experience' at the Movenpick Ice-Cream parlour in Mission Bay. There was much debate about whether to share deserts one between two, or have one each. Steve and I were mostly fighting for the 'one each' corner, and we eventually prevailed. I am duty-bound to point out that the girls don't normally eat a whole dessert to themselves.

The next day (22nd January), it was time for us to say goodbye to Heidi, Steve and New Zealand and continue our trip. It may be a year or more before Claire and Heidi see each other again, so it was quite a special goodbye.

We wish them happiness, contentment and excitement in their new lives. And good luck on the housing ladder : )

Goodbye to OB1

2007-02-02T04:18:00.000Z

On the 19th January we returned our Spaceship OB1 to the depot in Auckland. This was a less tearful affair than I had imagined. Although OB1 and Nunki had been our home for 50 days, we were ready to move onto the next phase of our trip.

Here's a few stats:

Total days with the Spaceships: 50
Total nights sleeping in the Spaceships: 42
(we spent 8 nights in beds)
Total kilometres covered: TBA
Total petrol expenditure: 910 NZ$ (about 18 NZ$ per day)
Total petrol usage: 625 litres
Total CO2 emissions: 1.4 tonnes
(based on BP's estimate of 2.30 kg CO2 per litre petrol)

We have offset the CO2 emissions via www.climatecare.org.

Other Spaceships we spotted on the road:

While we were in Nunki:
Jupiter (@ Hanmer Springs), Picard, OB1, Tin Man, Alien, Henry (@ Wanaka), Bones, Kirk, Amidala (@ Te Anau), Cosmo, Jabba (@ Queenstown), Scorpio, Vostok (@ Twizel), Jar Jar (@ Mt Cook), No Name (@ Christchurch)

While we were in OB1:
Hubbel, Metro, Navigator, Kirk (again) (@ Kaikoura), Spaceman (@ Blenheim), Asteroid (@ Raetihi), Stin (@ Whakapapa), Cyberman (@ Taupo), Radar, Moonraker (@ Rotorua), Sidious, Henry (again), Newt (@ Coromandel), Elroy (@ Auckland).

Thats a total of 27 different Spaceships sighted, which I am proud to point out beats the record on the Spaceships web site.

Greenpeace Esperanza

2007-02-02T03:00:00.000Z

We had discovered that the Greenpeace ship Esperanza was docked in Auckland, so when we returned there we went to visit it with Heidi.

The Esperanza is Greenpeace's newest and largest ship, and it was staying in Auckland in between trips to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, where Japanese ships are hunting whales.

Commercial whaling officially stopped in 1986, but Japan and a few other countries have continued to hunt whales, claiming it was for 'scientific' reasons - a claim no-one ever takes seriously. I had assumed that that whales are hunted because the meat is a delicacy in Japan, but on the tour of the Greenpeace ship I found out that this was not the case. Recent polls in Japan show that 95% of the population never or rarely eat whale meat, and that more than 70% of Japan's population do not support whaling in the southern ocean.

The Japanese Fisheries Agency now spends Japanese taxpayers money sending the fleet out to hunt in the (supposedly) protected Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Back in Japan, the whale meat cannot be sold and so the Japanese government is spending more money trying to persuade people to eat the stuff. So it seems that the whale-hunting is not about economics, its about Japan showing the world that it wont be told what to do.

Inside Japan the issue is often portrayed as a patriotic one, related to the tradition of eating whale meat. The Japanese branch of Greenpeace is trying to counter this with a campaign - to explain that being against Whaling does not mean one is against Japan.

Here are some more links:
AFP news report about the Esperanza
Greenpeace International Homepage
Greenpeace Oceans news
Esperanza crew blog
Esperanza departure press release

Claire and I have been Greenpeace supporters for a long time. Although no organisation can ever be perfect, Greenpeace generally do great work, and so it was very inspiring to have a look around the ship and meet the crew.

Whangarei bird encounter

2007-02-02T02:39:00.000Z

On our way back from the Bay of Islands, we stopped at Whangarei to visit the Native Bird Recovery Centre there. It was only a brief stop, but due to the antics of the birds we had a very memorable time there.

As soon as we had parked, a very tame Myna bird came and perched on the Spaceship. After looking around inside briefly, he came and sat on my shoulder. The way this wild bird was comfortable to just perch on me made it very endearing, although his chirps we quite loud and we were slightly concerned that he was going to have an exploratory peck in my ear.

Click here to see this unexpected bird/human interaction caught on camera (6.0 Meg).

Then he hopped over to Claire's shoulder and it was her turn. Click here for a video (7.7 Meg).

The Native Bird Recovery centre is a charity bird-hospital which also does a lot of educational work with schools and the public. Once we got inside the centre itself, we met another friendly bird. He was small and brown and we didn't find out his species. But we did find out that he wanted to sit on us and not get off.

Click here to see a video of this bird having a good look around Claire's hair (5.7 Meg).

There were lots of other birds at the centre, including a talking Tui called Woof Woof, some Pukekos and some Doves (Click here to hear a recording of the doves). There were also some nice gardens, in which Claire photographed this flower.

Then we drove back south to Auckland, to spend our last few days in New Zealand with Heidi and Steve ...

Auckland and North

2007-02-02T02:12:00.000Z

The blog is getting really behind now, so I'll be extra brief....

On the 13th January we met up with Heidi in Auckland (Steve was in Nelson, overseeing the construction of the Combi Van). It was great to see Heidi again and hear all about the honeymoon in South Africa and Thailand. This pic is of Heidi's room in a houseshare in Ponsonby - the house is owned by an artist and he has painted huge pictures on all the walls.

We spent two sunny days with Heidi looking around Auckland, and she joined us in the Spaceship for a cup of tea (our first and only guest tea-drinker in the Spaceship).

Then on the 15th Jan we drove up towards the Bay of Islands. This is a picture of the bay taken from the road to Russel. As you go north from Auckland, you hear more and more Cicadas in the bushes. Click here to hear a recording of them ...

We stayed in the 'Top 10' Holiday Park in Russel, and then the next day went to the nearby Long Beach. In the evening we went to stay with Dick and Donella, the parents of Heidi's friends Georgina and Jess. They had a lovely house near Paihia, and again we experienced some great Kiwi hospitality.

The next day we did the walk from Waitangi to Harurua Falls and back. Click here to hear more cicadas, and click here to hear the sound of the waterfall.

A uncurling fern that Claire photographed on the Haruru Falls walk.

Coromandel Peninsula

2007-02-01T09:55:00.000Z

After Rotorua, we headed up to Tauranga and then round the Coromandel Peninsula (this was back between the 10th and 13th of January) ...

At Tauranga, we went to Mount Maunganui to climb the extinct volcano known as Mauao. The weather was improving after the rain of the last few days, but there will still some low clouds around, which we climbed through at some points. That night we went to stay with Val and Phil, a friendly couple we had met back in Ohakune. They very kindly put us up in the spare room, and we also met their lovely cats, Shelly and Sky.

The next evening we started driving round the Coromandel Peninsula. It was rainy and foggy, and we drove mostly in the dark and stayed the night at a very busy and muddy holiday park at Hahei. The next morning the weather was better, and we drove over to the nearby Hot Water Beach - we had been advised to get there for low tide at 9am. Hot Water Beach is famous due to the hot water spring which comes up under the sand. At low tide, if you find the right spot, you can dig a hole and it will fill with hot water. Which you then sit in.

In our minds, we had imagined a large expanse of beach, filled with a honeycomb of jacuzzi-like hot-water holes each holding one or two people. The reality was a bit more messy than that - the hot water was coming up in a relatively small area, and groups of people were joining forces to dig a couple of holes around the hot water source. Some 'old hands' advised us that the tide would not stay out for long, and that it was best to work on an existing hole than try to dig our own. So we all took turns shovelling sand that kept flowing back into the holes, and sitting in the 6-inch deep hot water that had collected in the holes. As the tide came in, the holes were successively flooded with cold seawater, until it was all over.

It wasn't exactly relaxing, or anything like sitting in a spa pool, but it still quite a unique sea-side experience.

Click here for a video of the digging and sitting (3.6 Meg).

After Hot Water Beach, we went back to Hahei, and walked along the coastal path to Cathedral Cove.

It's a pretty little cove, famous for the large cave that links it to the next cove along.

Time was getting on, and we were due in Auckland that evening to meet up with Heidi. Instead of driving on round the peninsula, we took the shortcut road from Kaimarama to the peninsula's west coast. It was another unsealed-road experience, with lush rainforest scenery. We stopped briefly to look at some huge Kauri trees and a waterfall, and the spaceship got impressively dusty and muddy on the gravelly road.

Zorbing

2007-01-27T12:32:00.000Z

On our way out of Rotorua we stopped to do a bit of Zorbing. Zorbing, if you haven't heard of it, means climbing into an inflatable double-hulled ball and rolling down a hill. Often it is done with a bucket-full of water inside the ball with you.

Now, this may sound like a silly thing to do, but having done it I can assure you that it is a very serious activity, not to be taken lightly, and that while Claire and I rolled down the hill in our Zorb we solemnly contemplated our lives, our future, and our place in the universe.

No, not really. Zorbing is indeed a very silly activity, and while Claire and I rolled down the hill we giggled like a pair of idiots. Here's some pictures:

Basically, after we had both clambered into the Zorb, they poured some water in with us, zipped us in, and pushed us off down the hill. The water makes the inside of the Zorb slippery like a water-slide, so its nearly impossible to stand up. Our descent lasted about one minute, and it was somewhat like being in a washing machine. Which was fortunate, because the clothes we were wearing needed a wash anyway.

I had a second go after that, and opted for the 'Slalom' Zorb which rolls down a zig-zag track, so that you get thrown around more. Click here to see a video of my progress down the track (12.0 Meg). From the outside it seems quite slow, and you can't really see how much I was being thrown around inside the ball. I struggled hard to stand up and run inside the Zorb, but the floor kept becoming a ceiling, and my feet kept ending up pointing into the air, which made me laugh quite a lot.

Taupo and Rotorua

2007-01-27T12:09:00.000Z

After the Tongariro Crossing, we headed up through Taupo and Rotorua ...

The morning after our long walk, we rested for a while in Whakapapa village, and then went on the short walk to Tawhai Falls. There was a little sandy beach near the falls and some rocks to sit on, and it was a very peaceful place to rest.

Driving North out of Tongariro National Park, we got this view of Mount Ruapehu.

After a quick dip in the Tokaanu hot mineral pools near Turangi, we drove onwards towards Taupo, and saw this beautiful sunset. Once in Taupo itself, we had difficulty finding a quiet spot to park the Spaceship for the night, and ended up settling for a road-side spot somewhere near the race track.

The next day we found the free Reid's Farm campsite near Huka Falls, where we saw these swans. Taupo is a big centre of tourism with lots to do, but we spent most of our three days in the area relaxing and reading. And eating some great buckwheat pancakes in the Fine Fettle Cafe.

On our way out of Taupo we stopped to see Wairakei Thermal Valley. The volcanic activity was fairly modest while we were there (smoke coming out of the ground, slightly bubbly mud, etc), but we saw some great wildlife ...

... Here's a Peacock we saw at Wairakei. Claire followed him round for ages, and eventually he put on a display for her.
Click here for a video of the Peacock (13.7 Meg).
Click here for a video of a Llama charging (4.8 Meg).
Click here for a video of our attempt at herding a single sheep (9.0 Meg).
(After helping out with the sheep, they let us do the volcanic valley walk for free)

We told the good people at Wairakei Valley that we were heading on to Rotorua, and they recommended Kerosine Creek to us. Its on a side road about 25km south of Rotorua along State Highway 5. Its a lovely hot water stream in a scenic reserve which is free to go into. Just after a waterfall there is a large pool of hot water to climb into - the temperatures lovely, and the pool is large and shallow. Perfect for a morning bath, which is what we had there the next morning.

When we got into Rotorua, we went to Te Puia, which consists of a Geothermal park and a Maori village and cultural show. Apparently the best Maori 'shows' are in villages outside Rotorua in the evening, but Te Puia was a good value way to spend a rainy afternoon.
I recorded these snippets of sound from the show:
Click here to hear the welcoming song.
Click here to hear the Haka.
Click here to see a video of part of the stick-juggling dance (6.2 Meg).

Te Puia also has a geothermal park, and this is a picture of the large Pohutu Geyser there.

It was very rainy while we were in Rotorua, so after Te Puia we checked into a nice little motel which had a jacuzzi in each room, and spent more time relaxing and reading.

Generally the weather was good for our New Zealand trip - usually when we had booked an activity or planned a walk, we got sunny and dry weather for it. But there was a lot of rain while we were in the North Island, and the rainy summer was making the headlines in the local papers. Several people we've spoken to who visited New Zealand in various different summers have had similar stories: The weather wasn't very good, and that the locals told them it "wasn't usually as bad as this". This phenomenon of successive disappointing summers which everyone claims are unusual had me wondering: Are New Zealanders conspiring to pretend their weather is better than it really is? Or are they in denial about how bad its getting?

Still, we're from England, so we can hardly complain about the weather.

Tongariro Crossing, Sortof

2007-01-23T12:40:00.000Z

New Zealand has many National Parks, but Tongariro National Park is quite special for several reasons: It is the oldest National Park in New Zealand, it is a World Heritage Site, it contains several important Maori spiritual sites, and it has volcanic landscape not found in the South Island.

Hence we knew we would definately like to visit the Park and do some 'tramping' there. The most famous walking track in the Park is the Tongariro Crossing, an 8-hour trek which crosses between two of the Park's volcanoes. Several people had recommended the walk to us, so we decided to do it too.

It turns out that the standard way to do the Tongariro Crossing is to pay a bus service to drop you off at one end (usually Mangatepopo) early in the morning, and then pick you up at the other end 8 hours later. However, by the time we had found out where the buses go from, we had missed them all - the latest one drops walkers off at about 9am.

Rather than wait until the next day, we hatched an alternative plan - if we parked at the start of the walk and walked for 4 hours, we could reach the highest and most interesting point in the Crossing. We could then return the way we had come, back to our car. We would miss seeing some of the sight of the crossing, but we'd see the best bits, and wouldn't need to be picked up anywhere. This plan also meant that we wouldn't be walking along with a whole bus-load of other people.

So we drove to the Mangatepopo car park at the start of the crossing, sorted out our clothing and provisions, and started our half-crossing at 1pm. We were expecting our walk to take 7 or 8 hours, which was slightly daunting, but we had already done several 4-hour and 5-hour treks in the South island and not found them too taxing. The weather was perfect, with a blue sky and no clouds to be seen.

The first hour and a half was spent tramping along the mostly flat Mangatepopo valley. The volcanic landscape in the valley looked very different to the things we'd seen in the South Island, but didn't inspire us to take many photos initially. The vegetation was low and scrubby, with occasional dark patches where lava flows had dried up and were being re-colonised by mosses. We occasionally passed other walkers going the other way. Ahead of us we could see the impressively volcano-shaped Mt Ngauruhoe to the right, and the less-conical-but-still-volcanic Mt Tongariro to our left.

At the end of the Mangatepopo valley we encountered the hardest part of the track - a 45 minute climb up a rocky slope, to the Mangatepopo Saddle. It was pretty hard work, but was at made quite interesting by the lack of a specific path to follow. Regularly spaced sticks indicated the rough direction we should take, but there were many different ways of clambering over and through the rocks.

At the top of the climb we reached a flat 'saddle' area between the peaks of Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. We had a rest, enjoyed the view, and started taking more pictures.

(Us infront of Ngauruhoe, and the view back the way we had climbed)

Mt Ngauruhoe has the distinction of appearing in the Lord of the Rings movies as Mount Doom (in some scenes, at least). During our walk we pretty consistently referred to it as 'Mount Doom' rather than 'Mount Ngauruhoe'. Mostly I think this was because we weren't sure how to pronounce Ngauruhoe.

About two and a half hours had passed. The next stage of the walk was along a very flat area called South Crater which lies between the two volcanoes. Then we started climbing another steep slope towards Red Crater. Here we got our first views to the East.

(A rock outcrop on the way up to Red Crater, and the view east)

Click here for a video we took at this point (8.1 Meg).

We reached the highest point in the crossing (1900m) three and a half hours into our walk. There were excellent views of the Red Crater, Mount Doom, and the landscape all around for many miles. Volcanic smoke seeped from cracks in the rocks, and the Red Crater was very steep (and red) with strange rock formations caused by the previous volcanic activity.

Click here for a video of the views at the highest point in the crossing (10.2 Meg).

We could see glimpses of the Emerald Lakes from the high-point, and so we scrambled down the gravelly slope the other side to get a better view of them. This was the furthest point we reached on our walk, and here we stopped to enjoy the view and eat some falafels.

From there we could also see Blue Lake, also known as Rangihiroas Mirror, which is a sacred Maori site. Beyond the Blue Lake, the huge Lake Taupo could be seen in the distance.

By now it was 5pm, and we had been on the move for exactly four hours. We scrambled back up the gravelly slope, and took some more photos from the highest-point:

(Us infront of 'Mount Doom')

(Claire infront of the Red Crater)

Then it was time to head back. As we walked back accross the South Crater, the sun was at a much lower angle in the sky, casting long shadows on the landscape. However we knew that we still had about four hours of sunlight left.

Climbing back down the steep slope to the Mangatepopo Valley was hard on the knees, and we had to take care not to slip, but we got down faster than we had climbed up. At the base of the hill we took a short detour to look at a waterfall called Soda Springs.

The waterfall was very picturesque, and Claire soon stepped into the little rock pool at its base to get her hair wet. Meanwhile I was feeling very thirsty; it had been warm and sunny all day, and we had finished nearly all of the water we had bought with us. Seeing all the water cascade over the falls was tempting, but the leaflet we had with us explained that the water was unsuitable for drinking due to its high mineral content.

After the falls we had a 90 minute walk back along the Mangatepopo Valley. The sun was descending lower and the volcanic valley looked much prettier than it had on the way up.

It was just getting dark as we got back to the car at about 9:20, just over eight hours after we had set out. We drank lots of water and tea, then had a quick snack and went straight to bed. My feet stuck out the end of the duvet, enjoying the cool air, and we drifted off to sleep.

Driving around a bit 3

2007-01-21T04:15:00.000Z

We arrived in the North Island about midday on New Years Day. Our crossing on the BlueBridge ferry was uneventful, and I suspect that the small number of passengers and crew that were on the ferry with us were mostly hungover.

Our first stop in Wellington was the Museum of New Zealand 'Te Papa Tongarewa'. All the displays were very well laid out and eyecatching, and it was somewhat like being in a shopping-mall of facts and history. Rural New Zealanders are apparently very fond of corrugated iron, and this is a picture of a corrugated iron Holden made by the artist Jeff Thomson. Before giving it to the museum, he drove it all over NZ, to everyone's delight.

We also saw some interesting displays of Maouri items, and a film about the Treaty of Waitangi. The political story of the treaty is long and complex, and I'm still trying to get my head around it. It's a unique New Zealand phenomenon, so I'll try and write something about it later.

Driving north, we passed a small town called Marton, and our atlas showed that there were some gardens there called Mungoven Gardens. It turned out to be a garden belonging to a private house that was open to the public. We had a nice quiet stroll there, and then chatted to the owners to find out the names of all the flowers Claire had photographed.

A Passion-Flower from Mungoven Gardens.

Driving north from Marton, we decided to take a back-roads route up to Raetihi. We drove on minor roads which included about 20km of gravel track, up the Whangaehu valley. It was very green and hilly, and it was great to get away from all the traffic on the main roads. We spent the night parked in a field gateway, miles from anything, with two stray cows standing in the road watching us.

The next morning we continued our bumpy journey through the back-roads, but our progress was soon blocked by hundreds and hundreds of sheep who were coming out a gate and trotting up the lane ahead of us. We tried driving amoung them for a short time, and then gave up and pulled over. We watched them walk past.

And walk past.

And walk past.

Eventually, a man, a horse and four dogs appeared, bringing up the rear of the procession. The man apologetically told us we'd picked an unfortunate time to be on the road, and advised us to wait an hour or two. So we stopped for breakfast and several cups of tea.

When the sheep had cleared, we drove to Raetihi, and then on to Ohakune, where we checked into a 'Top 10' holiday park. Ohakune is on the border of Tongariro National Park, and so in the afternoon we went walking. This is a picture of Mount Ruapehu, which is an active volcano.

Our first walk in Tongariro was a 90 minute stroll to see Waitonga Falls, which was a very beautiful waterfall. This was just a warm up though, for the 8-hour Tongariro Crossing walk which we were planning to do the next day ...

Leaving the South Island

2007-01-21T03:24:00.000Z

As I write this, we're in Auckland with Heidi and Steve, preparing for our flight to Syndey tomorrow. But the blog is several weeks behind, here's a few photos from our last few days in the South Island:

In the evening after our dolphin encounter, Claire made some food at a picnic spot in Kaikoura. Some hopefull gulls gathered around. Click here to hear the noise they made when we threw some bread for them.

We spent the night parked amoung pine trees just south of Kaikoura. The next day was very rainy, and we stopped for brunch at Hislop's cafe before driving on. The food was good, and here you see a picture of me and the food.

Our next stop was Blenheim, where we walked in the lovely park and Claire took this photo of some roses. We spent the night of the 30th December parked under a tree on a quiet side-road just south of Blenheim.

On New Years Eve we drove to Picton, and then drove out along the road east of Picton to find a quiet spot to spend the night. We eventually parked on a windy road on a steep hill east of Waikawa. We had planned to spend the evening playing chess and scrabble, but were so tired that we went to bed at 11pm and slept through midnight. Early in the morning we woke and drove back the Picton, to catch the 8am ferry to the North Island ...