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Camino de Santiago PHOTOS are HERE
INTRODUCTION
This a review of our 900 km walk along the Camino de Santiago in Spain that we started walking in March of 2010.
The Camino de Santiago is a Christian pilgrimage trail that goes from St Jean Pied de Port in France and finishes in Santiago de Compostela in the west of Spain. Actually, the Camino in Spain is really the convergence of many separate Caminos that spider-web across Europe from many different countries such as Sweden, Holland, Germany and even the United Kingdom. The purpose of the Way is to pay homage to the tomb of St James the Apostle – Santiago in Spanish – which lies in the Cathedral in the city of the same name. The Camino has been walked for one reason or another, from pre-Christian times by Gallic tribes following the setting sun in the western sea, through the 8th century when Catholic pilgrims starting visiting the tomb of St James. After declines in popularity at the time of the Black Plague and again during Franco’s dictatorship, the Camino has in recent years become very popular again.
We had heard time and time again from various travellers that we had encountered throughout our travels, about the magic of the Camino. There have been many books such as Paolo Coelho’s The Pilgrimage and now there’s even a Hollywood movie, The Way, that have done their best to convey what the Camino is all about. We hadn’t met anyone that had not emerged a changed person after their journey along The Way and it had intrigued us for a number of years.
Having decided to set out on another one of our Big Trips, we thought that this would be the perfect time to live the pilgrim’s life for a month.
We had heard about the Camino de Santiago from other travellers, about how fantastic it was, how it can be a life-changing experience, the relationships formed with other walkers, etc. But we didn’t hear that much about the actual walk itself. The practicalities of it. Before we left, Michaela busied herself with researching the Camino; what to pack, what the terrain is like, the weather, etc. While I on the other hand did very little research at a all. It’s only a long walk, and it’s Spain – there’s no real mountains, only hills. How hard could it be?
 Only 790 km to go. How We Did It
Before I get into our walk, I’ll explain a few of the basics.
Many people ask us where we stay while walking the Camino. Along the way, there is a network of Pilgrim hostels called Albergues, which are only available to the walkers of the Camino: the Pilgrims (Peregrinos, in Spanish.) They are very cheap, usually about 5 Euros for the municipal or church-run places, or up to 8 Euros for a private place. It’s always bunk beds, sometimes there are kitchens, some have internet. Not all have heat, but we carry sleeping bags and are not cold. Many have washing machines, and they always hot water. The rules are that it’s lights-out at about 10:00pm and you have to be out at about 8:00am. You are only allowed to stay one night and each albergue gives you a unique stamp inside your credencial (Pilgrim passport) which is proof that you have actually walked the Camino.
The albergues with kitchens are great – if there’s a shop in the village – because Spanish food is quite expensive and often not very good – sorry to all the Spanish reading this. For breakfast we usually ate in the bars. Bars in Spain are a bit like English pubs in that they don’t just serve alcohol. They act as the meeting point in the villages. They open early in the morning and serve very good coffee and Spanish-style breakfast – croissants with butter and jam. Not exactly good fuel for trekking. We took to buying muesli, ordering hot milk from the bar and eating the cereal out of coffee cups while the Spanish and Italians were eating cookies smeared with butter for breakfast. When we cooked in the albergue and had extra food we usually ate it for breakfast. the Latinos were completely disgusted to see us eating leftover pasta or lentils in the morning. They were hungry after two hours, and we weren’t, so whatever works! For lunch it’s usually eating in the bars again, where it’s often Spanish tortilla or sandwiches consisting of 90% white bread and 10% filling – usually Serano ham and and a thin slice of cheese.
 Warming up in a bar Dinner is the big meal of the day for the Peregrino, and most restaurants offer what they call the Menu, with an accent on the U. (can’t work out how to do the accents on this keyboard, so excuse the mis-spelling of Spanish words.) The Menu consists of a starter, a main (almost always meat) and a dessert (flan, glorious flan.) Oh, and all the house wine you can drink. We gave up trying to be vegetarians after about the first day, and as for the free wine… Well, it’s difficult not to drink when it’s free and good. Even in the supermarkets, a nice bottle of wine will set you back all of 2 Euros. Food in the shops is really cheap, and if we could have cooked more often we would have. We weren’t all that impressed with Spanish food, although the coffee is great, cheap and readily available. Spanish cheese is also very good, and the pastries are really good. Nati and Michaela got through the first few cold days chanting “cafecito… panaderia…” (coffee… bakery…)
 Crawling into Pamplona We carried all of our gear, by ourselves, in backpacks. Mine weighed in at about 9kg and Michaela’s was about 6kg. However, with food and water, this added about a kilo and a half to each pack. The first few days were tough. We’ve done a bit of trekking, but not for a while, and not usually for this many hours in a day. We averaged about 27km per day. 10kg doesn’t sound like a lot, but after walking 6 or 8 hours, you start to notice it. We were slightly obsessed with weight before we started. Well, Michaela was; I thought the Camino would be a walk in the park, and I didn’t pay too much attention to what I packed. It’s a good thing I have a wife to look after me, because I would have broken after a couple of days. We took the bare minimum of clothing: hiking boots, flip flops, 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of underwear, 2 t-shirts, a fleece, long underwear, sleeping shirt, sleeping bag, water bottle, hat, rain poncho, rain trousers, gloves, woolly hat (touque to us Canadians) wind jacket and toiletries. We also carried trekking poles, a small camera and a guide to the Camino (not necessary, but handy for planning distances, and checking services in the next town.) Washing socks and underwear became a daily ritual when we arrived at the albergues. It’s a pretty common sight to see Peregrinos walking with assorted bits of clothing pinned to their backpacks. Sleeping in tightly packed rooms with other stinky walkers (some very stinky indeed) plus eating, drinking and walking together quickly causes you to lose any inhibitions you might have about hanging your wet underwear from your backpack for all the world to see. After a while the packs seemed a lot lighter; they almost became part of our bodies. I think we became a lot stronger as the days went, and Michaela’s obsession with weight did work in our favour. She had a super-light model backpack that came in at just over 600 grams, while mine was a bulky 1.7kg. We saw some people with enormous backpacks. 50-70L brutes. As they say on the Camino, Big Backpack, Big Ego.
 Walking clothes lines The Camino is well marked from St Jean Pied de Port to Santiago by yellow arrows or St James Shells. The arrows can be metal road signs, or more often simply yellow spray paint on the side of a building, on a tree, stone, pole, etc. The arrows always guide you. It’s almost impossible to get lost. I say almost, because some people did, but it’s pretty tough. Whenever we would come to a fork in the road, or we felt we hadn’t seen an arrow for a while, all we had to do was stop, take a look around and we would find the way. Sometimes the arrows aren’t that apparent, but take a look around and they are always there. Sometimes you might feel lost, and that’s because the Camino doesn’t always make it easy. However, if you take the time to look for the clues, the way is always there. In the morning, as we would emerge sleepily from the albergue, the first instinct would be to look for the arrow. Whenever we would exit a building, we would look for the arrow. Even in the towns, the Camino would be marked out in shells lining the street, or in arrows artistically imprinted into the roads. Even the manhole covers had shells on them. Each town would decorate the Camino in their own way, but always with the arrows and shells. We felt rather important to enter some towns and have the way paved specially for us.
 Spot the Arrow The Way itself is not really a trail, but goes through forests, fields, dirt roads, city streets, along motorways, can be paved, dirt, or mud. The Camino passes through anything in its path and you pass along the Camino.
And now onto the walk itself.
Continue reading Camino de Santiago
China PHOTOS are HERE
In Yunnan we wanted to hike the Tiger Leaping Gorge, which the guidebook describes as China’s premier hike. Seeing as there’s only about four hikes listed in the book, that’s not saying much. For such a huge country and with such a diversity of landscapes, there don’t seem to be a great deal of trekking routes mapped out, but give it a few years and I think there will probably be some excellent treks to do around China.
On our way to Tiger Leaping Gorge we had to stop over in the “traditional town” of Lijang. Like Dali, Lijang is firmly on the route of the Chinese tour buses and their accompanying excited holidaymakers, all dressed in fashionable outdoor gear despite not actually doing much resembling outdoor activity besides playing follow the flag with their tour leader. Lijang, is indeed a very beautiful town. The houses and shops are built in traditional style and the cobbled streets with small canals running along side are very nice to look at. All of the trappings that one would expect from a Chinese town are there: red paper lanterns, neon lights, stone dragons, etc. There is shop after shop after shop after shop after… selling tea, jade jewellery, “traditional” handicrafts, yak meat, silver jewellery, buffalo horn hair combs and more tea. Every shop is playing not only the same music, but the exact same song. Over and over and over. There are actors dressed up in traditional minority cultures costumes for Han Chinese tourists to pose with. Again, it’s possible to find the real town, but you really have to dig. It’s all very cute and pretty and perfect, but there’s no soul to it. I guess if you’re on a whirlwind package tour of China you might find it interesting, but we didn’t.
 No thanks...
 Chilling in Lijang We were warned ahead of time by other travellers that Lijang was a bit over the top, and that we might want to stay in Shuhe, which is another “traditional village” still located within greater Lijang. Shuhe wasn’t much different except that there was even less English spoken than in Lijang. One good thing about Shuhe however, is that, like Lijang, there’s a glut of very good hotels. If you’re willing to stay in a Chinese hotel where no one speaks English, you can get some very good deals. Non-English speaking hotels are generally much cheaper than hostels catering to western tourists where the staff speak English. For example, you can usually get a proper hotel room with a good bed, private bathroom, TV, heater, slippers and the rest of it for the same price as you would pay for a couple of dorm beds in a hostel. Just don’t expect to ask directions to the bus station.
 Trinkets in Lijang From Lijang we went to Qiatou, which is the village from which you start trekking to Tiger Leaping Gorge. Despite being nothing more than a dusty, middle of nowhere, nothing to see concrete-building town, we found the people very friendly. I don’t think many tourists stay over night in town so we had many heads turning as we walked the shops looking for real coffee from which to make our morning brew – real brewed coffee is really expensive in China, and we only managed to find Nescafe…
 Noodles for breakfast Tiger Leaping Gorge
 huh? After we finally found the start of the trail, which as is often the case with trekking, a lot more difficult than you might think, we began the trek. Apparently the Tiger Leaping Gorge is one of the deepest in the world, depending on who you speak to. Whether it is or isn’t it sure is big. And with 5000m + mountains to look at, it makes for a very picturesque 2 day trek. The trek itself isn’t too difficult, and actually you can do it in one long day of about 8 hours. We took our time and did it over two shorter days. The terrain covers everything from terraced fields to pine forests to unforgiving sheer rock cliffs. There’s plenty of places to stay along the way, all of which seemed to be very clean, well-equipped and friendly places. At this time of year, with the weather a bit iffy – we trekked one day without seeing any mountains – there aren’t that many trekkers.
In true Chinese style, they’ve monetized the trek as much as possible. There is a 50 yuan (about $8) entrance fee, but then there are certain lookout points where good photos can be taken where there’s a random local person demanding yet more money for the privilege of taking a picture. If you do the trek, absolutely do not pay for a single photo-opportunity point. It’s a mountain and there are hundreds if not thousands of great places to take pictures along the way, without paying a single penny. At the end of the trek there’s also the chance to go down the steep walls of the gorge and down to the river. Some clever buggers have built trails or scary ladders down to the river and charge for this privilege as well. As near as we could tell there’s not a way around these, but I’m sure there must be if you look hard enough. This part of the trek is very beautiful, and actually we found the climb back up from the bottom of the gorge to be the toughest part of the trek – we took the very steep “ladder” route.
 We have to go up there? From the gorge it was back to Lijang and then back to back train journeys for a total of 24 hours via Kunming and then on to Chengdu in Shichuan province.
Shaxi
Actually before we get onto Shichuan, I can’t forget to tell you about Shaxi. Shaxi is a small village between Dali and Lijang and probably our favourite place in China so far. The town used to be on the caravan trade routes from China through Tibet, Nepal and onto India and at one time was a prosperous trade town. We visited a town like this, Bandipur, in Nepal, on the same trade route, so it was very interesting for us to compare the two towns. Like Bandipur you can see the former prosperity beneath the somewhat humble modern town. The houses and shops all have the traditional curved Chinese roofs, the roads are cobbled and there are nice little canals running along all of the streets. Interestingly the buildings are built with adobe using local materials. The streets are pleasingly narrow, twisting and with plenty of dead ends and blind alleys to explore. The residents are incredibly friendly. There’s not much in the way of tourist infrastructure besides five or six quaint family-run guest houses (all equipped with wi-fi internet!) and a couple of restaurants with English menus. But what more do you need?
The local industry is farming, and the surrounding area, a beautiful valley surrounded by green mountains, is filled with farm land growing rape-seed, soy and dozens of vegetables. China, from what we have seen, makes excellent use of their arable land. Every little bit of ground has some kind of food growing on it. Even in towns and cities, if there’s some dirt, someone’s planted a garden. There are huge tracts of land covered with things like onions, cabbage, garlic, soy, rice, peas, all the vegetables you see in the local restaurants. And amazingly, everything is tilled by hand. They don’t even use animals, from what we can see. As you travel by bus or train, all of the land is abuzz with men and women hoeing the earth or spreading manure on fields. They do seem to use a lot of chemicals, but the use of manure as a fertilizer is good to see. The media at home slates China for it’s environmental record, but they do seem to have some really great environmental practices in place. The cities are full of electric motorcycles (silent) and bicycles. Every restaurant has a slop-bin where the excess food is collected and taken out to re-used as fertilizer someplace else. There doesn’t seem to be a formalized recycling program, but there’s always people zipping about with big loads of cardboard or bottles on the backs of motorbikes, so they must be re-using it somewhere. We have seen the depressing, coal-smoke blackened industrial towns that you sometimes see in magazines, but for the most part everything is extremely clean (except for the toilets.) It also seems like China is very self-sufficient. They grow their own food, and everyone knows they make their own consumer products and industrial goods. It’s very good economic practice. They don’t rely on anyone, and instead everyone relies on them.
Sorry, I lost my train of thought for a minute. Back to Shaxi. Most of the time the town is a pretty sleepy place. But on Fridays, which coincidentally was one of the days that we were in town, the town comes alive with the weekly market day. At this time the town is absolutely heaving with people as everyone from the surrounding villages comes down from the mountains to buy or sell their goods. There is a vast vegetable market selling absolutely everything. China has more vegetables than I imagined existed. There’s the usual array of junk like cheap clothes, DVDs and plastic buckets. Lots of farm tools are on display and the meat market is particularly er… interesting. People in this part of the world wear large baskets on their backs that they fill to overflowing with goods, kind of like our backpacks. The dentists set up shop on the side of the road and pull teeth in the open air. We saw one dentist, cigarette planted firmly in his mouth, pull a hand full of fake teeth out of a plastic bag and proceed to glue them into some old guy’s toothless mouth. Many of the people that come to town are Yi or Bai people and they come out for market day dressed in their best outfits. We saw many women with wonderfully large square headdresses, looking a little like the mortarboards students wear on graduation day. I think they were checking us out more than we were checking them out. When we sat down in a busy noodle shop for lunch, a table full of ladies in traditional outfits stopped what they were eating to see just how us “round eyes” would handle our chopsticks.
 China: Old and New
In Shaxi we also did a really nice day trek up into the surrounding hills. There are no trails as such, but if you pick a point and head for it – the temple way up on the mountain served as our target – you can’t get lost. The way up took us up through sleepy little villages and through vegetable fields, walnut tree groves and cross-country through a tangle of bushes and trees. On the way down we explored a village, trying to find some place to eat – we were unsuccessful – but we did happen upon a very old Taoist temple that one ancient guy unlocked and was very proud to show us around. He shouted at us in Chinese (all Chinese people have just one volume – LOUD) and pointed at things with his cane. We have no idea what he was trying to say to us, but we were very happy he took the time to tell it.
Shaxi is wonderful. A real gem, and real place – a town with character, soul, and real people. There’s absolutely no tour groups heading here, and only a few western tourists and the odd Chinese venture out here. But get here soon. Like everywhere in China, development is coming fast. The road into town is being widened and lined with footpaths, flower beds and trees. It looks like the tour buses are being readied.
 Temple in Shaxi's Main Square Speaking of development, it’s hard to describe the scale of the changes that the government is putting through. As we travel by train, we see huge pylons for multi-lane freeways being put in, in remote places where you think there’s no need; at least not yet. Whole neighbourhoods are being levelled and new high-rises are being built. We read in one English-language magazine in Chengdu about a nearby city that had a very atmospheric old-town. Demolition of this particular area was due to begin in 2010 but a few planning snags were encountered (maybe the residents didn’t want their houses smashed in) so there’s still time to check it out before the wrecking balls fly. The cities are immaculate with huge roads, cycle lanes and wide footpaths. Road construction is absolutely everywhere, and the cities are full of huge projects for housing complexes and shopping malls. It’s quite mind-boggling.
Chengdu
Chengdu is another one of China’s cities that you’ve likely never heard of yet is bigger than most of Europe’s great cities. There are nearly 11 million people in Chengdu. Despite it’s enormity, it’s a really pleasant place and again, nothing remotely close to the “horrid” place I’ve seen described on travel forums. From Chengdu we had hoped to get up into some of the Tibetan areas (not official Tibet – too expensive and only accessible with an organised tour) but the weather is just too cold and we’re just too tired. The thought of more long bus rides isn’t appealing right now, and instead we’ve set our sites on the end of China and instead of venturing out too far, we instead booked a direct, 26 hour, train to Beijing.
 Spicy Beans But first we spent a few days in Chengdu, extending our one month visa in nearby Leshan (a really nice small city) and enjoying the wonderful Sichuan cuisine. Did I mention how good Chinese food is? Well Sichuan food is even better! Spicy is the name of the game. Spicy tofu (my new fave) spicy hotpots, spicy eggplant, spicy dry-fried beans. Amazing. Pan fried peanuts are another unexpected treat – delicious! Kung Pao Chicken…. Mmmm….There’s still the usual array of unusual Chinese delicacies like beetles on a stick, rabbit heads (why?) dog, fried dragon flies, pig snouts, one dish called “all kinds of stomach pieces,” “ belly burst” and other odd things that we’ll never try. But stick to vegetables or recognizable things and the dishes are amazing.
Chengdu is famous for having a panda breeding centre, and how could we leave China without seeing the county’s most famous residents? We booked a tour of the facility through our hostel, which gets you out there before the crowds arrive, but the guide was in a hurry to move us along most of the time – do it yourself if you can. The centre has dozens of pandas, many of which are on display in enclosures that get you very close to the animals. They are every bit as cute and cuddly-looking as you would imagine. They don’t do an awful lot except munch bamboo, but they are really great to see. One group of four little guys, not much bigger than large teddy-bears, were really funny as they all tried to sleep in a tree. They looked really uncomfortable, and they kept squirming around trying to find a comfortable position (kind of like me on rock-hard Chinese beds) and looked a little like black and white fuzzy fruits hanging in the tree.
 Panda Fruits Near the end of our tour, we were lucky to see a mother and baby interacting. The mother was play wrestling with the little guy, pretending to squish him as she lay here much larger arm across his body. The little guy managed to escape when Mum went off to chew some bamboo, and climbed on top of a downed tree trunk trying to “hide.” Soon Mum was back and pulling him off again. The baby laid flat on his belly, grasping the tree with all fours, in a vain attempt to hang on. It wasn’t to be, and soon he was tumbling onto the ground and “attacked” by Mum once again.
 Holding on for dear life Speaking of babies, small children in China have the most peculiar clothing. Their trousers all have a slit in the back, that allows them to do their business on the street (and I do mean on the street) without having to pull their clothes off. They don’t usually wear diapers or underwear, so almost all little kids have their bums hanging out the back of their trousers. It looks really funny, and I guess it’s practical (the Chinese are nothing if not practical) but I can imagine their little bums get cold in the winter time.
 Pee Break With the end of our trip soon arriving, we thought that we would stock up on a few things before heading home. We desperately need real clothes and shoes, and a few cool electronics wouldn’t harm anyone either. China’s the superstore of cheap stuff right? Everything’s made here, so it’s gotta be a bargain. Wrong! Unless you’re buying absolute shite plastic clothes, shoes, electric gear, everything is incredibly expensive. Almost anything that looks like it’s good quality is priced at London levels, or higher. We couldn’t believe it. I can understand western brands being pricey (despite the fact that they are all manufactured in China) but even Chinese brands are costly. And not very good quality by the looks of it. I really don’t know how the Chinese people can afford it. We did manage to find a few things in the end, but electronics we stayed away from after my fake memory card experience, and shoes we had no luck with as our big European feet aren’t catered for.
Beijing
 Police Officer in Tiananmen Square After maybe our longest train journey ever, of 26 hours, we arrived in China’s capital, Beijing!
There’s a ton of things to see and do in Beijing, and this is probably the place in China that sees the most international tourists. For the first time in a while we’ve seen tour groups of white western tourists alongside the Chinese tour groups.
We started things off in Tiananmen Square, which is said to be the largest, and perhaps the ugliest, public square in the world. A big concrete square surrounded by big concrete buildings. Aesthetically pleasing it isn’t, but it’s one place in China where interesting Communist iconography is still visible. In addition to the famous giant portrait of Chairman Mao, there is a group of statues celebrating the People’s Revolution, Mao’s pickled body, which we didn’t see because it was Saturday and there were, literally, millions of people queuing to pay their respects. There’s also a giant pair of TV screens extolling the greatness of China’s tourist attractions – domestic tourism being the new revolution. There were so many people in the square. It’s a huge place, but we had to push our way through the crowds. We saw a lot of police officers too, randomly checking people’s ID’s, most of these people appeared to be ethnic minorities.
 "Bird's Nest" National Stadium We visited the Forbidden City, which was home to China’s emperors, and famously off-limits for anyone except invited guests. We watched Bernardo Bertalucci’s The Last Emperor a few days before so we could get into the swing of things. The city is an absolutely giant place. It contains 980 buildings and covers 7.8 million square feet. There are beautiful palaces inside, lots of trees, gardens and courtyards. And dozens of gift shops. Perhaps the most interesting thing inside the complex was in one of the cafeterias. We ordered rice and chicken, which came pre-packaged in a plastic box. The person in the cafe opened the box, poured some cold water inside and said it will be ready in 15 minutes. I looked around for a microwave, or some other heating device, couldn’t find one, and asked again, how we would get it warm. She told me again, “15 minutes” and started serving other customers. Soon, and to our surprise, the box started steaming and then got hot! It turned out that in the bottom of the box was a material that reacts with the water and then begins to get hot, cooking the food. Weird, but kinda cool.
We visited a couple other temples, thanking our fake student cards obtained in Thailand that allowed us to save quite a few yuan on entrance fees. But the big attraction we saved until last.
The Great Wall is perhaps China’s most famous attraction. Much of the most easily accessible parts of the wall are near to Beijing and there are innumerable tour operators organizing trips out to see it. We wanted to do it ourselves, but after a bit of research, we opted to visit the wall with a tour from Leo Hostel which was near to where we stayed, and which is said to take you to a “Secret” part of the wall. Our group only had about 10 people, and indeed this part of the wall seemed hidden from the rest of the tourists. It wasn’t secret as there was still a ticket booth, but there were only about 4 other visitors and much of the wall was delightfully un-restored. We clambered along the wall, which was steeper and harder to climb than we had imagined, but which was incredibly beautiful. It seemed to go along forever, over steep mountains where you’d think that no army would be able to climb anyway.
 Great Wall Back in Beijing we spent a lot of time wandering around town, visiting some of the many hutongs which are areas of alleys that are home to the remaining traditional houses in the city. They are great to explore, with lots of tangled little streets filled with shops, street vendors and neighbours chatting to each other. In one hutong we stumbled upon a street full of pet shops and people selling dogs and cats out of the trunks of their cars. You could buy turtles arranged by size, fish, hamsters, birds and oddly, lots of pet crickets in elaborate wooden cages. At least we think it was a pet street. Maybe it was a food market. The hutongs are rapidly being demolished to make way for high-rise buildings and shopping malls. It’s a shame as these places really have character and life. It’s easy to criticize China for simply chucking people out and destroying their homes in the name of progress, but like many things here, I’m finding that they don’t do things too differently than we do in our countries. At home we would evict these people from their simple houses in the name of health and safety instead.
 Hutong Kids
 Chinese Dog I have to say that Beijing is perhaps the biggest city that we’ve ever visited. Officially there are 22 million people and it covers a space the size of Belgium. It’s vast. It’s busy, as you might imagine, but like most big cities in China it doesn’t feel crowded. At least not compared to say, Indian cities. There are dedicated bus and cycle lanes, every street seems to have six car lanes and the metro is fantastic. The advantage of a one-party system is that it’s possible to think long-term with regard to planning, instead of thinking in 4 year blocks, with most of the time spent on campaign planning. In China they make a decision for building infrastructure and then they just do it. So what if the project will take 50 years. They have time.
 Music Hall in Beijing So, that’s it for China. So, what are my China conclusions? China left us feeling a little underwhelmed. You’d think because it’s China that it would be amazingly interesting. But we found it just…OK. The cities are nice, clean, function well and are modern. We didn’t find a great deal that’s interesting, except to watch the Chinese eat – that’s an experience, there’s lots of slurping, spitting of bones onto the table or floor, throwing napkins all over the floor, and breaks for cigarettes. The places that should be interesting, like old villages, have been done up for the tourist market and have been turned into theme parks. It’s left us not wanting to even check out places that on paper look interesting, because we know what we’ll find when we get there. Chinese people are pleasant, but not amazingly friendly. That’s not to say that they are un-friendly. Maybe distant, ambivalent? They won’t initiate a conversation with you or smile at you unless you do it first. Kind of like city people at home, I suppose. The language makes it difficult to talk to everyday people, as very few people speak English.
 What is THAT? I think to really see the interesting bits of China you have to get out into the far-off places like Tibetan regions or into the far western Muslim areas. Typical, Han Chinese areas are nice, and if you’re a tourist on a short trip you will probably enjoy it, but as travellers we found places to be without soul. Chengdu has a “Folk Cultural Experience Zone” for example, with shops selling high-end goods traditional handicrafts and housed in “traditional” buildings, none of which are original.
Another thing that I noticed is that, thanks to Communism I suppose, China is not a very religious country. One of the things that we find fascinating in the places that we visit is the religious practises of the cultures there. Religion brings music, temples, colour, festivals, ceremonies, and devotional practices. China has temples, but they seem quite disused or set up for tourism (with an entrance fee.) If people are religious or not, that’s their business, but for us, countries with a more active religious culture are more interesting places to visit.
Saying all of that, there are many good things in China. The food, as I’ve mentioned, is fantastic. Train transport is very good, and hostels and hotels are great. Chinese massages are also excellent– just don’t expect a relaxing experience: think massage therapists nattering to each other, a TV on in the corner and other clients talking on their mobile phones.
 Not all the food is good: chicken heads And despite the language barrier, if you are a little prepared with a phrase book and relevant Chinese-written notes for taxi drivers, train ticket offices, etc, you’ll be fine without many Chinese words. Even if you do think you’ve learned a word, chances are you won’t be understood anyway.
I think if we came back to China we would start in the west – Kashgar is way up there on my list of places to see, I’m already forming an itinerary for Central Asia, Pakistan, Western China and Mongolia – and head into the Tibetan mountainous areas and skip the rest of China.
 Tea shop in Dali As you can probably tell, we’re getting harder and harder to please. Maybe it’s time to go home… And that’s where we’re headed. NOTE: this report is very late and we have, as many of you already know, landed back in good old London.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this last instalment of our travel blog and indeed the entire journey. Thanks very much for following our adventures for the last 14 months and thanks for all of the comments. If anyone wants any travel advice, I’m happy to help. Advances for book deals are also warmly welcomed.
Len y Michaela
p.s. there might be just one more blog entry coming. I didn’t write much about the Camino de Santiago so stayed tuned for that report.
Average Costs to Travel in China:
1 Yuan Renminbi (RMB) = $0.15 USD = £0.09 GBP
Prices in Beijing are almost double for everything
Dorm Bed in a hostel: 30 RMB ($4.60)
Private Room in a hostel: 100 RMB ($15.35)
Meal in a simple restaurant for 2 people: 40 RMB ($6.14)
Overnight train journey per hour: 17 RMB ($2.60)
1L Bottle of Water: 2 RMB ($0.31)
entrance fee to Forbidden City: 60 RMB ($9.25) 20 RMB with a student card
Wifi Internet is free almost everywhere
 Stinky Tofu Exclusive Agency
China PHOTOS are Here
Guangzhou
We arrived in Guangzhou (aka Canton to you history buffs) which is one of China’s biggest cities at over 10 million people. We had some feelings of apprehension about our arrival to China. We had heard stories of Lonely Planet books being confiscated and bags being searched, but nothing at all happened. We breezed through immigration in a couple of minutes and the only oddity that we encountered was a small panel under the immigration official’s desk asking you to rate their service, complete with 3 different levels of Smiley Face buttons. My official got a big “Well Done!” Welcome to China!
Upon exiting the Metro from the airport, we got into the taxi queue and were immediately introduced to queuing, Chinese style. Instead of waiting patiently for the next taxi to pull up, people were instead running out into the street to intercept the cabs before they could make it to the next person waiting. We too were forced to run out into the street to try our luck. One time a Chinese man grabbed the door as Michaela was talking to the driver, and we thought he was trying to help us communicate. Instead he opened the door and hopped instead and the taxi sped off. Nice. Luckily an English fellow who lives in Guangzhou and speaks Chinese, helped us to get a cab and even explained to the driver where we wanted to go.
We had also heard horror stories about Chinese cities with their pollution and traffic. Guangzhou, as it turned out was a very pleasant city. There’s a perpetual haze about that might be clouds or might be smog, but there’s not feeling of being polluted in any way. On the contrary, the streets are spotless, the buildings in the downtown area are gleaming, towering high rises, the people dress cool and trendy like in any other modern city, and the metro is a hyper efficient marvel. We were struck at how western everything was, at least in the centre of the city, where there are huge shopping malls filled with western fashion shops (complete with western prices) Starbucks, Costa, Mac Stores, people chatting on iPhones, wearing super cool glasses and designer clothes. I guess this is the new Chinese middle class. Outside the shiny downtown area, things looked much more Asian, a little dirtier (but still pretty clean by most Asian standards) and the people dressed more conservatively.
After so long in Indonesia it was nice to be in a proper, functioning city once again, and we used the opportunity to stock up on a few replacement parts for our slowly decaying gadgets. We went to the giant IT neighbourhood with endless multi-story towers selling every single computer component known to man. There are shops selling only power cables, others selling only PC cases, the streets are lined with people doing quick laptop repairs, memory changes, right there on the street. I loved it. I bought a new memory card at a very good price (turned out to be fake – 100MB instead of 32 GB) and a new battery for the laptop (I bought a double capacity 6-cell battery, which also turned out to be fake – it works, but is only a single capacity 3-cell) so the preconception of cheap Chinese crap held true in this case.
The idea that no one in China speaks English is also very much true. Well, not entirely of course, but for the most part, people speak far less English than any other place that we have travelled. Staff in hotels, restaurants, people on the street certainly do not, and unless you go into a tourist restaurant you won’t find an English menu. Luckily most restaurants have pictures on the walls, or have the meat and vegetables laid out in a refrigerator so you can point at what you want. There are no English magazines, newspapers or shop signs. And if they do happen to have an English translation of something, the meaning is often entirely incomprehensible. We had fun trying to get a taxi to the nearest Metro station from our hotel, which was nowhere near it said it was on the website and was instead way out in some industrial zone, and despite the receptionist typing frantically into a Chinese/English translator on her computer and her writing the Chinese directions for the taxi driver, we were not dropped off at the Underground, but instead at a shop called “Metro.”
Our friend Nuno, who we walked with on the Camino back last March (we’ve now passed one year on the road) just so happened to be in Macau, only 2 hours from Guangzhou, so we decided to meet up and to travel for a little while. What a coincidence! The Camino continues!
After a couple of days in Guangzhou, we travelled on our first sleeper train to Guilin. Chinese trains! We love them already. Like Indian trains, you are supplied with sheets, pillows and blankets. The train is very clean, civilized and very comfortable. There’s tranquil music played, hot water for tea (the Chinese really do drink a lot of tea) and food served. Very nice! They aren’t all that cheap, but they do save you a night in a hotel.
Guilin and Yangshuo
We arrived in Guilin to rain and fog. It’s only spring in China and the weather isn’t ideal. In Guilin it felt a lot like English winter. Cold and wet. Oddly the shops, restaurants and hotels all keep the front doors wide open and sit inside with big winter jackets on. In the hotel rooms however, there is heat! Real heaters! And hot water! And big thick, clean blankets! And clean bathrooms! And free internet! So far, Chinese hostels/hotels have been amazing. Everything works and everything is so clean. What a change from the rest of our trip. Mind you we’re only a couple of weeks in, so we’ll see if this very nice trend continues; but for now it’s great.
Let’s see… what did we do in Guilin. Well, in Guilin you can visit some impressive looking rice terraces (too foggy) or you can take a boat down the Li River to look at the karst mountains (too foggy, too cold!)or you can visit a park (7 pounds entry! nope) or a hill (3 pounds to climb the hill. nope.) Free internet in the hostel? Check. Free tea all day? Check. Delicious Chinese food? Check. In Guilin we loafed about, and soaked up China, enjoying ourselves immensely. I think we did quite well.
Near to Guilin is the town of Yangshuo, which is firmly on the Chinese tourist trail because of the karst mountain scenery in the area. Well, apparently there were karst mountains, but because of the fog we couldn’t see them. And with the rain not pausing for one second, it was too wet to explore the countryside. So without the landscape to enjoy, what is there to do in Yangshuo? Well, not much really. Besides a road filled with Chinese discos and shops selling tacky tourist stuff (which the Chinese tourists – all one million of them, it seemed- were going ga-ga over) there’s not a great deal to do besides eat and drink coffee. And with the coffee priced firmly at tourist prices we sat a good many hours in McDonald’s which had the double draw of having cheap, good coffee and central heating. Not exactly a Chinese experience. But we did get our fill of Chinese food. Oh wow, is Chinese food amazing. I don’t know what it is that they serve in Chinese restaurants at home, but it surely isn’t the same stuff they eat here. An unbelievable array of vegetables, all fresh and cooked with mouth watering spices. Tofu, meat, fish, soups, stir fries, hot pots, noodles. The variety is huge and the taste is amazing. There’s none of that gelatinous, bright orange, battered stuff. So far we’ve only had one bad meal, and possibly eaten dog on two occasions, although we can’t confirm that, but Nuno’s stomach told him it definitely wasn’t chicken. After trying my damndest to get some proper spicy food in Indonesia, I told one restaurant to make my food spicy, and boy did I get spicy. Both Nuno and I were sweating, and my eyes wouldn’t stop tearing for a good twenty minutes. When they say spicy, they mean it.
 Not ALL Chinese food is good - Chicken feet in a bag? The other thing to do in Yangshuo is to take a boat ride down the Li River. Our hostel was offering tours (everyone wants to put you on a tour, it seems) but we thought we could get it cheaper if we went to the river ourselves. We took the bus upstream and got to the place where the boats leave. They call them bamboo boats, and it sounds romantic but the reality is that they are boats made of plastic tubing and don’t really resemble bamboo in any way. Anyway, we had one guy in our group, The German, who spoke decent Chinese so he set out negotiating for us. The Chinese were getting the boats for 120 yuan (that’s about $20) but for us they weren’t taking less than 500 yuan. (about $80) What a rip-off. One Chinese girl actually spoke to a boat man for us, told us that he agreed to take us for 120 yuan, and then when she was off down the river, he changed his price back to 500. The crooks. Communists? I don’t think so. So, it was nothing doing and after a couple of hours of trying we bussed it back to Yangshuo and back to McDonald’s. We finally did take a boat on our last day. It was still miserable out, but we thought we’d better do something so we booked it with the hostel and off we went. The boat ride was okay, but nothing special. The scenery was nice, but nothing we hadn’t seen before, and the weather didn’t help. And the ride down the river isn’t exactly tranquil. There are hundreds and hundreds (no exaggeration) of boats filled with Chinese tour groups doing the exact same thing as you. After enjoying very pleasant boat cruises in Myanmar and Laos, without the crowds, I really could have done without this one. Still, it was a nice day out and we had fun with Nuno and Rosana, a Brazilian girl we spent a few days with.
With Yangshuo’s rainy day activities exhausted we boarded another night train to Kunming, in Yunnan province, which is wedged between Tibet, Burma and Laos in the south-west of the country. Kunming is a pleasant city, though there’s not a great deal to do, but it is a useful place from which to transit to some of Yunnan’s many sites. We did check out the market, which was interesting for the wide variety of edibles on sale. In addition to the mind-boggling array of vegetables on sale, most of which we’d never seen before, there were roasted dogs – you can tell by their long curled up tails – frogs, turtles (how could they?) eels, fish, snails, and animal parts galore. One thing we’ve noticed is that the Chinese seem to eat everything on the animal. Chicken heads, pig feet, you name it. They seem to love chicken feet, and it’s funny to see pre-packaged ones being sold in convenience stores to be munched on like we would eat potato chips/crisps.
With us heading north and Nuno heading south it was time to part ways. It was really nice to have a friend with us for a while, and Nuno especially, as he’s perhaps the most “Born Traveller” that we know. He’s a poet and a musician and despite being Portuguese, he has a greater English vocabulary than I do. He doesn’t know everything though. “So what is oatmeal anyway? A vegetable?” Nuno, we’ll miss you.
From Kunming it was in the bus towards the mountains to Dali. Apparently Dali is the original backpacker hangout of China. You wouldn’t know it today as throngs of Chinese tourist groups dutifully following the flag of their tour guides have “discovered” the town and have overrun the place. Instead of banana pancake sellers there’s jade jewellery shops, (the Chinese are mad for jade) and “ethnic minority” actors wandering about posing for photographs (you have to pay of course.) The town itself is pretty though, and has been completely restored in traditional style. It’s hard to tell what is actually old and what is made to look old. The side streets and the area outside the city walls however are still quite “real” and the tourists don’t usually venture off the main street, so you get to see Dali’s residents going about their business in peace.
We wanted to do a short trek up the mountain behind the town but when they tried to charge us 30 yuan (about $5) we declined and instead hired bikes for the day and cycled along the lake. That too should be a 30 yuan entrance fee just to visit the lake, but we took a “shortcut” through the vegetable fields and skipped that charge too. The ride was pleasant enough, but most of the villages that we rode through seemed deserted. Everything seems to have been recently done-up and every building looks the same. But in one village there was a single building, it looked like a rickety old temple, that hadn’t been given a paint job. As we stopped to take a photo, an old man sitting on the front step motioned us over. We walked up to what at first appeared to be a temple, but on closer inspection turned out to be a kind of club-house for the old men of the town. They were sitting around smoking cigarettes and home-made pipes, chatting quietly, but mostly sitting in silence. They motioned us up a set of narrow stairs and when we arrived onto the top level, we walked into what looked like an illicit gambling den. It was nothing of the sort of course, but about a dozen ancient looking fellows were all sitting around playing mah-jong, almost all of them wearing the traditional communist attire of blue “Mao” suits complete with “Mao” hats. I guess old habits die hard in the countryside. No one spoke a word of English, but they motioned for us to help ourselves to tea and they pulled up a couple of rusty stools for us to sit on. I was wearing shorts and one man started laughing and then got off his chair to stroke the hair on my leg; Chinese men normally being quite hairless, he was intrigued by mine. He then gave my beard a rub – not a good specimen by western standards - causing his mate to stroke his own chin thoughtfully, it contained just three hairs.
After a few days in Dali we went further up the mountain to the lovely village of Shaxi. Finally, we’ve found it. A real Chinese town, without the ticket booths and the tour groups and the tourist shops. But more on that one next time.
Chinglish of the Week
 Interesting Chinese Tourist Attraction This one was on a packet of what I guessed was some sort of erectile dysfunction cream that was on sale in our first hotel in Guangzhou:
LEIXIN nursing liquid for man
The hotel sells only a guesthouse
Unpack package, look upon as usage, a price closing entries of the same family branch
The product adopt modern living things to seep through a technology develop but be accomplished. The prompt energy restraint private parts virus. applies to sexual intercourse specially restrain a bacterium around cleanings of male scholar genitalia. has characteristics such as moistening. there being no a stimulation, uses brisk comfort of queen. In romantic life journey its cleaning, bacteriostat function. make you have no worries about one’s family.
Usage: Take a product rubbing 2-3 clear needed location minutes directly and then use Shimzu to wash being OK.
Indonesia Photos are HERE
North Sulawesi
Sulawesi is the crazy looking island that lies to the north of Java and Bali, to the east of Borneo and just south of the Philippines. To the east of Sulawesi there’s nothing much but ocean for a very long way. With three weeks left in Indonesia, we figured that we could start at the top, way up there in Manado, and then work our way down south to Makassar, seeing a good chunk of the island.
We landed in Manado quite late and headed straight for the very noisy road which contained all of the hotels listed in our Lonely Planet guide. Every second vehicle seemed to be a bemo, or mikrolet, as they call them up here, those blue little vans that tear around the city picking up and dropping off passengers. And every one of those mikrolets seemed to have been kitted out with sound systems worth more than the junky vehicles themselves, and they thump thump thump’d their way past our hotel with monotonous regularity.
Our hotel turned out to be the usual scruffy place, which smelled of stale cigarette smoke and had miniscule water pressure. Actually by morning the water had dried up completely, and despite me telling the guy at reception, Jeffrey, a couple of times that it wasn’t working, he didn’t deem the problem serious enough to remove himself from his lying position on the floor in front of the always-on television. Whatever… we weren’t planning to stay long; we wanted to get over to the nearby island of Bunaken as soon as possible. Even though tourists come to Manado and then head straight over to Bunaken, Jeffrey had no idea when the public ferry left, so I found my way to the port myself to find out.
Walking to the port, I started to notice that the Sulawesi people were a little bit different than in other parts of Indonesia. Almost every person that passed me, usually in a mikrolet or buzzing by on a motorbike, shouted wildly at me, “Hey Meester!!” We get this a lot in Indonesia, but not with such wild enthusiasm. They would see me coming and start pointing and laughing hysterically with their friends, shouting “Hey Meester!!” or “Bulay!!” which means foreigner, at the tops of their lungs. When I finally found out the information that I needed and was heading back, with a bunch of bananas in my hand to supplement our nutrition-less breakfast, they thought this hilarious for some reason, and I found myself wanting to run back to the hotel to escape the hyena-like laughter and shouts of “pisang!!” or “banana!! Meester!!!!!”
After lunch we hopped onto the public ferry. A small wooden boat loaded up with cargo, people and plenty of cigarette smoke for the short 1 hour trip over to Bunaken. As we approached the island, a place right out of the dictionary description of a tropical island, complete with wooden shacks, fishing nets, palm trees and jungle, we could also see an enormous cathedral-like church looming over the tiny village. There can’t be more than a few hundred people living on the island, and most of them live in shacks, so the giant church looked completely out of place. On the island, we stayed at Daniel’s Homestay, which like all places on the island doubles up as a dive centre. Bunaken, they say, has some of the best diving in Asia. They say… because every dive spot claims it’s the best in the world, but anyway. The coral around the island is only about a hundred metres from the shore, is very shallow beneath the water for a few metres, making it perfect for snorkelling, and then drops off very dramatically down to unknown depths, making it the perfect place for wall diving. The coral is pristine and beautiful. It might be the best coral that I’ve ever seen. Snorkelling is great too, and we went out quite a few times over the next few days.
Daniel’s Homestay however, wasn’t great. There seemed to be about 20 juvenile young men working around the place. And by working, I mean loafing about, smoking, playing cards, smoking, shouting, smoking, shouting, smoking, and smoking. We felt like the hotel was really a clubhouse that all of these guys just hung around and that we were somehow imposing on them, despite the fact that we were actually paying for the privilege. On our first night, they decided to have a party, not the guests, but all of the workers, and they stayed up, in front of the guest bungalows until 1 am drinking beer, playing guitar and singing at the top of their lungs. Michaela took it upon herself to tell them to shut it, and they moved off to a place in front of another bungalow, and simply kept some different guests awake. The next day, some of those workers, who were also dive guides (they don’t have Dive Masters here, only unqualified Dive Guides) were too hung over to dive, so a lot of the day’s dives got shifted around to people that were less under the weather. The next night they were quiet, although that didn’t stop us putting in ear plugs. Wearing ear plugs on the beach… so sad. But the next night they were at it again, and this time some other guests woke up to tell them to keep it down. There were two Aussie girls staying here, and the night of the party, one of the workers came into their room while they were sleeping, what he was planning to do, I’m not sure. Another girl complained that one of the dive guides tried to “kiss” here under the water. What a place. So, even though the island was nice and the snorkelling was great, we had enough of the bad vibe and we headed back to the mainland after only a short stay.
 Sulawesi Bus Back in Manado we boarded a succession of mikrolet and buses to travel a relatively short distance and we arrived in Tangkoko National Park. Sulawesi lies on what they call the Wallace Line, which means that it’s the dividing line between Asian and Australasian flora and fauna. What this translates to in English is that there’s lots of weird stuff in the jungle. Tangkoko has lots of weird stuff. We splurged one day and decided to take a guided day-trek from Mama Roos Homestay, which unlike Daniel’s was very friendly and a nice place to stay. We started just after 6am, which was just in time to see a group of “critically endangered” Black Sulawesi Macaques coming down from their treetop sleeping places and onto the ground to forage for food. The macaques are unique to only a couple of forest reserves in North Sulawesi and the biggest groups are here in Tangkoko. There is a permanent research station set up here to observe the monkeys and because of this, they have lost their fear of human beings. This makes it great for tourists like us as we can get up close to the animals. We followed a group of about 50 monkeys for the better part of two hours as they slowly ambled their way through the trees, shouting at each other, the little ones play fighting and the bigger ones stopping every now and again for a quick mating session. The monkeys are about 50 cm high when they walk on all fours and sit maybe 70 cm high when they sit up. They are jet black except for a very pink, hairless bum. During mating time, the bum on the females puffs up like a balloon and goes bright red until some lucky male hits the jackpot, after which time it deflates to normal. They have no tails, and because of this they spend most of their time on the ground. Our guide, Andre, was very knowledgeable, his father being a park ranger, and he having spent two years working with the researchers, knew the names of individual macaques and was a wealth of information. The jungle here borders the ocean on one side, and after some time the monkeys hit the beach. Like sun-seeking holiday goers, as soon as they reached the beach, they stretched out all over the place and began lazily grooming each other; which looked like the most relaxing thing in the world, as some of them were practically asleep as one or more mates lovingly searched their fur for insects. Funnily, that evening when we too were relaxing on the beach, we saw the local women come out and start doing the exact same thing on each other, going through each other’s hair, looking for bugs, chattering away. I guess we aren’t too far removed from our furry cousins.
 Chilling on the beach We felt really lucky to get so close to the monkeys, like being in a real-life wildlife documentary, but we had other animals to find. After trekking around in the thick jungle, spotting huge insects and spiders, massive trees and giant-leafed plants, we came to the sleeping tree of the tiny Tarsier. These little bug-eyed, furry critters, only 15 cm high, live in the cracks and crevices of a vine-covered tree, only coming out to hunt for insects at night. Apparently these little guys usually stay in the same tree, so they’re easy to find. Getting them to come out however, is a different matter, and they needed to be coaxed out with a little food in the form of a big green grasshopper. Just a few seconds after the unlucky grasshopper was placed on a branch by our guide, the tree-hopping primate came flying out like a furry bolt of lightning, grabbing the insect and retreating back into his dwelling place.
 Tarsier We were also lucky enough to catch a glimpse of a pair of hornbills, who’s incredibly loud whoomp whoomp wing flapping could be heard long before the birds were seen. We also saw a snake, plenty of lizards and all sorts of creepy crawly insects to leave us feeling more than satisfied with our short trip into the jungle.
The village bordering the park was also a very nice place to visit. The people here are all fishermen, and they can be seen out repairing nets on the beautiful black stone pebbled beach, while their children perform daredevil acts in the two metre high crashing waves. They are really friendly, with the adults wanting their photos taken and the kids shouting at us to watch them “surf” in the waves on broken pieces of styro-foam. They live a very simple life, in houses made of rough timber built right on the sand. The houses didn’t contain much more than a couple of rows of plastic chairs, and more often than not a pair of gigantic speakers, which were often pumping out either rock ballads of the 80’s and 90’s or surprisingly good European-style dance music. Odd.
Being Sunday andNorth Sulawesi being primarily Christian, we were told that we might struggle to get transport out of the village any time before noon. We were in luck however, and a private car took us to the next town, where we caught a mikrolet to the next town, then a bus, then another mikrolet to a second bus terminal, followed by yet another bus to our next destination, Tomahon.
Actually Tomahon wasn’t our intended destination. Where we were planning to go was towards Central Sulawesi to the city of Palu. The thing is, is that the bus ride to Palu is an incredible 30 hours. At least. Everything that we had heard of this journey made it sound like hell on earth. Bad roads, bad seats and 30 Indonesian men chain smoking the entire way. I think by now we have accumulated enough traveller cred that we don’t need to prove our toughness on yet another terrible bus, so we splurged again and opted for a flight. So with 2 more days to kill until our plane, we went to Tomahon.
Tomahon was two days of pure relaksi. Once we could get a room that was clean that is. It was 3pm by the time we arrived and despite the workers sitting around playing on their mobile phones and chatting, all of the rooms were still dirty from the noon checkouts. After much coaxing, they finally cleaned one for us and we could unpack. We stayed in a simple, but nice little bungalow on the cool slopes of one of Indonesia’s many imposing volcanoes, reading and watching movies. This particular volcano was belching out smoke one morning, which according to the locals, was pretty normal. Yikes.
 Normal behaviour from the volcano Well, it wasn’t all relaxation. This being Sulawesi, things can get loud, and even though we were staying in a tiny village, with lovely green hills and water around us, the evening brought forth more of the thump thump thump of loud music accompanied by howls and shrieks of laughter. In went the ear plugs. This was a Sunday night. The next morning the local church started playing a sermon and gospel music over loud speakers at 5am! The church! I expect this from the mosque, but now the churches are getting in on the act too. So much for sleeping in. At breakfast that morning, our peace was disturbed again, in a more brutal way. As we were sipping our coffee, we could hear a dog wailing incredibly loud. We looked around and saw a man beating the dog with a long length of stick as hard as he could. I started shouting at him to stop, and ran over to pull him off, but by the time I got halfway to him, the dog was dead and he nonchalantly tossed it’s body into the previously tranquil little creek flowing through the hotel grounds. The dog was “crazy” they said. Rabies, I hope they meant. I guess you’ve got to do something about a rabid dog, but it was quite shocking to see.
Central Sulawesi – Palu and Tentena
We are by now quite sick of Indonesian food. Rice, rice and more rice. We both like rice, but here in Indonesia they don’t do anything with the rice. It’s just rice. They have one so-called “speciality” which is called nasi goreng which translates literally as “fried rice” and that’s all it is. They put sometimes throw a few scraps of chicken into it, or throw an egg on top and called it nasi goreng spesial, and it always comes in an odd red colour, whose origin I know not. The spice islands are in Indonesia, but they certainly don’t use any spices in the food. The only spice they use is MSG, and luckily we’ve learned how to say
“no MSG” in Indonesia. The food is bland, except for a pot of hot sauce on the table, which is sometime good, but more often than not so drenched in putrid smelling fish sauce that it’s inedible. They use surprisingly few vegetables for a country so rich in fertile soil. Most of the food that is served in restaurants is cooked in the morning and then left to sit in a little cupboard to be served throughout the day. Not exactly fresh. The locals eat chicken and rice three times a day. They advertise chicken on boards outside of restaurants like we would advertise potatoes as the day’s special in a restaurant at home. “Ooh look! This place has chicken and rice. Let’s go inside!” Normally we eat almost exclusively local food when we travel. Sometime we go for a pizza or pasta, but normally we make due with what the locals eat. But in Indonesia we’ve had enough! So on our way to the airport in Manado we decided to go to Pizza Hut. You can’t go wrong with a Pizza Hut pizza can you? Well… we should have known better when the special of the month was Corn Flake Pizza and their Italian Pasta section featured spaghetti with soya sauce. But a vegetarian pizza from good old Pizza Hut can’t be bad can it? Starving, and now running late for the plane, we ate our pizza in the back of a taxi to the airport. The first thing we noticed was that it tasted kind of sweet. Like all bread in Indonesia, the crust was sweet. Odd, but not bad. The second thing we noticed was that the sauce was sweet too. Very sweet. And what’s this? It wasn’t tomato sauce either, but mayonnaise! Mayo on a pizza! The tomato sauce was in the form of ketchup in packets thrown inside the box. Ugh. That’ll teach us. From now on stick to nasi goreng.
We arrived in Palu, which is the capital of Central Sulawesi, after a very long day (but not 30 hours in the bus) waiting around to change planes in Makassar airport, browsing through bookshops at their Newsweek magazines from 2004 – really. Palu was uninteresting except that it had a shopping mall where we stocked up on a few fresh clothes, ours having started to look pretty ratty after nearly daily wear for almost a year. We encountered more of the same hysterical, maniacal laughter from people here that we found in Manado. In the shops in the mall, whenever we tried to pay, the staff couldn’t stop laughing and pull themselves together long enough to take our money. On the street, young Continue reading January & February 2011 Indonesia: Sulawesi
Indonesia PHOTOS are here
Our original plan after Myanmar was to go to China, which makes a lot of sense geographically as it’s right next door. However, you can’t travel overland from Myanmar to China and we couldn’t get a plane ticket to Kunming, in the south-west of the country, sorted in time, so instead we booked a flight back to Thailand. Then we thought, from Thailand we could either fly or travel overland via Laos into southern China. But then we started looking at the weather in China, and it was decidedly chilly! Well below freezing in many of the places that we wanted to visit. We thought that we would like to go back to Indonesia before we finally go home sometime in the summer, so we thought instead that we could do Indonesia now, thereby waiting out the Chinese winter. So it was decided. We bought a ticket from Bangkok to Jakarta and after a few days of gorging ourselves on delicious Thai food before the inevitable return of oh, so boring, Indonesian fare, we flew off.
The reason we wanted to go back to Indonesia is because we’ve been investigating the possibilities of starting a little import business to supplement our normal salaries whenever it is that we return back home. We’ve seen some great things that we think would do well at home, like textiles in India and furniture and jewellery in Indonesia. We wanted to spend some time doing research on what possibilities there were in Indonesia, and seeing as we’ve got the time, we thought we’d do it now.
Furniture Shopping in the Rain
While travelling in Bali back in December, we saw some really fantastic furniture and home decor pieces. Wonderful teak and mahogany chairs, tables, wardrobes and so many other beautiful pieces. It’s all really well made, looks great, and seems cheap. Once we started investigating however, we discovered that most of the pieces are made not in Bali, but in Java, so that’s where we headed.
We landed in Jakarta and stayed, in one of the worst hotel rooms we’ve ever stayed, just long enough to get eaten alive by voracious mosquitoes and to decide that the pollution and traffic of Jakarta weren’t very interesting . We booked a train out to Jepara, in the centre of the island of Java the very next day.
We tried a very weird soup of fiery ginger, peanuts, sugar balls and gelatinous candy. Yum?
Jepara is absolutely not on the tourist map, and besides an OK beach, there’s not a great many reasons to visit the place. It is however, quite a pleasant little city, with few cars, leafy, clean streets and a pleasant town centre. The only foreigners you see around town are in the furniture business and they are here because Jepara is arguably the furniture making capital of Indonesia. On nearly every road and in all of the surrounding villages, you see everything from huge furniture factories, with hundreds of employees, to lone craftsmen sanding down chairs in their garages.
We had arrived in Java in the rainy season, and in Jepara, it surely did rain. It absolutely poured! We stayed for a week, and I don’t think we saw the sun once. Luckily for us, we met Daniel, an elderly Chinese Mennonite, who’s brother-in-law’s family owned our hotel. Semi-retired, and with not much to do, he drove us around almost every day for that week, taking us to different furniture factories, taking us out for lunch and even inviting us for dinner with he and his wife. There are quite a few Chinese in Jepara, and most of them are Mennonites. Daniel looked after us like grandchildren, texting us every morning to find out how we were, making sure we had enough to eat, took us to the beach – in the rain – and even helped us to book a bus out of town. He took us to a lot of places we never would have found on our own and we learned a heck of a lot about the furniture business in talking to all of the manufacturers and other western furniture-buyers. We haven’t decided anything about furniture just yet, but we are a lot more clued up on how the furniture biz works and it was interesting to see furniture craftsmen in action.
Yogyakarta
After a week of dreaming about chairs, we had had enough and hit the tourist trail again, making our way to Yogyakarta. Pronounced Jogjakarta, or Jogja to the locals, Yogyakarta is said to be the cultural and artistic capital of Java. Making our way from Jepara to Yogya took a lot longer than normal, because of the massive eruption of the volcano, Merapi, back in December, killing hundreds of people and destroying the main highway connecting the north and south coasts. We weaved our way through tiny, traffic clogged back roads, through small villages hidden in the jungle, with make-shift signs pointing the way to Yogya.
Now it just so happens that my Mum and her husband, Ed, were going to be holidaying in Bali at this time, and this was one thing that made our decision to return to Indonesia a little easier. We hoped to surprise my Mum, and with Ed having convinced her that they should visit Yogya, we were going to meet them there. Unfortunately, the surprise didn’t hold and she found out what we were up to, but it didn’t make her any less happy to see us of course.
Continue reading January & February 2011 Indonesia: Java and Bali
 Novice Monks initiation Burma Photo Highlights are HERE
All the Burma Photos are here
Myanmar, formerly and currently known as Burma, depending on who you speak to, is one of those places, like Iran or northern Iraq, where, when you mention to people that you’ve been there, they put on a surprised look followed by a statement to do with the fact that they didn’t know that you could actually go there. Americans especially, have often said to us that they’d like to go visit the country, if only they could get a visa. Well, of course you can get a visa. In fact it’s quite easy to do, and no more difficult than getting a visa for any other country. All it takes is a trip to the embassy armed with a couple of passport photos (no eye glasses) and the correct forms filled out, and that’s it. Easy. We often make a lot of assumptions about places, based on what we’ve heard from someone else, without having actually taken the time to investigate for ourselves. Often what we have heard is not close to the truth. Sometimes though, it is pretty close to the truth, as in the case of Burma’s government, which is well and truly awful. But anyway, even if a country’s government is bad, and which country’s government isn’t corrupt and greedy anyway, that doesn’t mean that the people of that country don’t appreciate you taking the time to visit them, despite the fact that many people at home will tell you that you “can’t go there” or that you shouldn’t. The people of Burma are extremely proud of their country and are very happy for you visit them.
 Mandalay "Bus" The Lonely Planet for Myanmar differs in a couple of ways from their other guidebooks. One is that they devote an entire section to the question of Should you go? They do this because the famous dissident, Aung San Suu Kyi, stated that tourists should boycott the country in protest to it’s government and against the fact that the government owns a lot of the tourist infrastructure. I don’t see them writing a section on this topic in their guidebooks for Vietnam (notorious human rights abusers) or America (notorious bombers of faraway nations) so why they should do this for this particular country bewilders me. (note: as I write this, Aung San Suu Kyi is now asking for foreign businesses to invest in Burma, I guess that includes tourism.) The second thing that I found odd in this guide is their section on gifts that you should bring in to give to the people of Burma. I agree that the people in the country have less than us, but who in the world doesn’t, and that perhaps they have less even than the people in their neighbouring countries. However, they are some of the happiest people that I’ve ever seen in my life. So I’m not sure that bringing sweets or pens or whatever and handing them out is going to help them in many ways. Have the writers of Lonely Planet never been to Nepal or Laos, where I’m sure in the not so distant past when tourism was less, that bringing these less-fortunate people gifts was the good thing to do, but now every single child greets you with an open hand and cries of “bon bon, school-pen, one rupee!” I’m sure that medicine and things are good for people to have, and probably helping out a school or charity is a nice way to do some good, but handing out gifts definitely isn’t. We in the west are still stuck in this mindset that physical goods, or money create happiness. I’ve seen enough places now that I can most definitely say that it DOES NOT. Once basic needs are covered, the road to happiness is up to the individual. That road sure doesn’t get any easier with balloons or bon bons. We in the west are probably the most miserable people in the world and we have everything. So, if you come to Burma, or any other poor country for that matter, leave the gifts at home and instead come with a plan to spread your money around to the people that need it by shopping in local markets, staying in small hotels, buying local handicrafts,etc. Also, talking to people, listening to them and having them listen to you – a cultural exchange - is more valuable than any handouts that we give. However, the most important things that you can bring to any country, rich or poor, are a smile and an open mind. They are the most precious gifts that we can share with anyone.
 Kids in Mandalay Tourists are welcome to visit Burma but there are a few stipulations. First of all, it is not possible to cross into the country by land. Despite the fact that the country shares large borders with China, Bangladesh, India and Thailand, you can’t cross into the country via any of them. Flying in is the only way in or out. Fortunately Air Asia has twice daily flights, very cheap, from Bangkok. Air Asia is great by the way. Friendly staff, nice planes, soft seats – a budget airline with class. Ryanair take note!. The other issue for tourists is that much of the country is off limits to foreigners. Why is it off limits? Well, we’ve heard various reasons – none of them from official sources – such as that the government runs a vast and not so secret opium growing operation, they have secret gem mines, teak plantations that they want to keep under wraps, hydroelectric projects that may or may not upset environmentalists, secret cities being built – really! – and the simple fact that they don’t want pesky foreigners running wherever they like and checking out things that they shouldn’t be seeing. That doesn’t mean that there still aren’t a huge number of places that you can visit, and no there aren’t police or military tailing you or anything like that. If you stay within the allowed areas, you can do and see pretty much what you like. 
Yangon
 Buddha Statue in Shwedagon Paya
 Yangon Street We arrived in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, on a short flight from Bangkok. Our first thoughts on this crumbling, decaying city with it’s bustling streets and faded British-built colonial buildings was that it looked an awful lot like Havana. Our second thoughts, on exploring the back streets with their impromptu street markets filled with vendors selling everything and repair shops repairing everything else, rickshaw men, goods being transported by human power, crazy electrical wiring and greasy street food stalls, was that it looked an awful lot like India! Burma is in an interesting place, geographically. A very big country, it stretches from the Himalayas, which border Tibet, and India, through to hot plains near Bangladesh, mountains near China proper, and a long, skinny section of coastline that runs parallel to Thailand. It’s crammed between some really distinct, powerful cultures, and seems to be a melting pot of people, not to mention having it’s own native mix of dozens of indigenous peoples. We saw lots of Indian people, and ate wonderful Indian food – complete with the stares and shouts and noise that goes along with Indian dining – saw a huge amount of Chinese, both Burmese born and travelling business-men. We even met Nepalese people – and ate some really amazing Nepali food too! We were surprised at the mix of people that we encountered. It’s nice to still be surprised every now and again.
 Indian Dinner and lots of attention in Yangon So despite that fact that Yangon is big, and not particularly nice, we loved it. After taking a holiday in Thailand, it was nice to get back into it again. And it was nice to get a little India fix; a place I’m still missing terribly. While roaming around Bogyokse Aung San market, a touristy place that isn’t particularly interesting in itself, we stopped for tea in one of the lanes between the market buildings and encountered a very intriguing site. Myanmar (if you haven’t caught on, I’m interchanging Myanmar and Burma – fair to everyone that way) is famous for gems, namely jade and rubies. In this particular road, full of tiny tea stalls, the gem traders were conducting their business over tea. All around us were men, many of them slightly shady looking, with handbags loaded up with jade and rubies, armed with nail files and lights to check the quality of the stones. We chatted to a couple of the traders, and took lots of photos too, as they scrutinized the pieces, filing bits away, or holding them up to the sun to check for clarity. I love seeing this sort of thing. You assume that jewellery is all sold in well-lit, nicely decorated shops, but more than likely this is the kind of place where those pieces start their journey to Hatton Garden or your local shopping mall.
 Gem Traders in Yangon The big site in Yangon, and arguably in Burma is the huge Buddhist monument, Shwedagon Paya. A paya is the same as a stupa and if you don’t know what a stupa is either, think of it as a stone monument that looks like an upside down ice cream cone, inside of which is usually housed some sort of holy relic. Shwedagon Paya is the most important Buddhist pilgrimage site in this country of devout Buddhists. Probably built in the 15th century, although no one really knows, it is covered in gold plating, decorated with dozens of Buddha figures, and with over 5000 diamonds on the tip of the paya including a single 76 carat stone. It’s bling beyond belief. It sparkles and shines, especially with the changing afternoon light – great for photos. The paya is built on a hill, in a complex surrounded by smaller, but only slightly less impressive payas. It’s a great place to sit and observe not only this wonder of architecture, but more so for people watching, as people from all of the country come here to pray and to give offerings to Buddha.
 Volunteers sweeping the floor at Shwedagon Paya  Shwedagon Paya One thing you’ll find in Burma is that once out of earshot of other people, the people here always want to tell you about their government and how they are getting literally robbed blind by them. Our taxi driver to the bus station, who drove a car that he claimed was 60 years old and was a strange amalgam of Japanese, Chinese and Korean parts, and who continuously apologised for the rattling that his taxi was making – the windows were gleaned from a different make of car and didn’t fit properly, and so kept banging around as we made our way over the atrociously pot-holed road – was telling us about the tax that he has to pay for his taxi, and that the government does nothing to fix the roads. He might have been exaggerating about the age of his car, but he wasn’t exaggerating about the state of the road. The government is filthy rich. Myanmar is not a poor country. The people are, yes, but the government is fabulously wealthy. Burma has a military dictatorship that has control over, and gets rich from, the country’s fantastic array of natural resources. Western nations have placed heavy sanctions on the country – you don’t see many western products here, aside from Coca Cola, which is brought in via the black market in Thailand and is crazy-expensive – but other countries like Thailand, Korea, Bangladesh, and most importantly, China still maintain economic ties. The Burmese people primarily blame China for the state of their country, and not the actual generals that run the place. They say that without the help of the Chinese the generals could not stay in power. With China growing so rapidly, and needing electricity and raw materials, Burma is the perfect place to do business. And with the government owning literally everything, doing business with private individuals is out of the question. And what does a military government need to govern? Well guns of course. They get technological know-how as well. I read in an English-language paper about the dozens of hydroelectric projects being planned, almost all of which are to be built by Chinese companies – and with most of the electricity being sent to China. So in a country where the stars are particularly spectacular at night due to lack of electricity for street lighting, the electricity generated by the country’s rivers is being sent to a foreign country. Kind of like the situation in Nepal, where they have notorious issues with electricity and cooking gas. Not for lack of resources, but because they too have opted to sell their natural resources to a bigger, more powerful neighbour. In Nepal’s case, India.
 Monks playing football in Hsipaw Distances are long in Burma. From Yangon we took the night bus up north to a town called Kalaw, which is located in Shan state. Well, we meant to go to Kalaw, but the bus driver forgot to tell us to get off, and instead of a 12 hour bus ride, we awoke, groggily, 15 hours later, near Nyaungshwe which was to be a later destination for us. As they say in India, “what to do?” We shrugged our shoulders and found a place to stay. After the heat of the last few months, the cold in Nyaungshwe was a bit of a shock. At over 1500 metres, the nights can get quite cold. And at 6am, when we arrived, it was bloody freezing. Near zero anyway. You have to remember that no one has indoor heating or insulation like in the west. The best they can do is a lot of heavy blankets. Oh and hot showers! Surprisingly we had hot showers in almost every place that we stayed in Myanmar.
Inle Lake
 Fisherman on Inle Lake using the one leg rowing technique Nyaungshwe is the place to stay for visiting Inle Lake. My thoughts about lakes are usually that a lake’s a lake. But in the case of Inle, it’s a very special lake. There are numerous small villages where people live and make their living on the water. Literally on the water. Their houses are built on stilts and their mode of transportation is a canoe. Sometimes the canoe has a motor, but often it’s powered by oars, or rather a single oar, paddled in a very strange manner, unique to Inle, whereby the rower paddles the oar with a single leg as they stand in the canoe. It looks weird, but seems to work. The lake is surprisingly fertile, and small islands, both natural and artificially grown in “island growing” farms are used to grow a huge amount of vegetables, namely tomatoes, which supply the the entire country. Most people, us included, hire a boat and just let the driver take them to the usual touristic sites, like cigar factories, weaving operations and the famous “Jumping Cat” monastery – where the monks have taught cats to jump through hoops, inadvertently putting their monastery into the Lonely Planet, and thereby bringing in hordes of tourists, none of which care a great deal about seeing the monastery, interesting though it is –but if we were to do it again, we would just hire a boat for the day and get him to take us through the villages, skipping the “shopping” tour along the way. Simply cruising through the villages on stilts, and seeing the houses reflected in the perfectly flat water was one of the highlights of our visit to the country.
 Houses on Inle Lake Nyaungshwe, despite being a bit touristic in town, was a really pleasant place to stay. It had the feel of a small, but important town; a crossroads for the area, with a bustling market crowded with interesting locals, Shan people, dressed in colourful traditional dress, the women often wearing coloured towels on their heads to signify their particular village. The streets are busy, but with people and not cars – there are relatively few motorized vehicles in Myanmar. The bullock cart is a common sight, as are cycle rickshaws loaded high with goods. Bicycles seem to be the vehicle of choice and we made use of this mode of transport as we cycled the dirt roads around the lake. The climate is quite dry – hot during the day and cold at night. The countryside is very pretty, with small villages of bamboo houses and rice fields, sugar cane and vegetable gardens. We ate some of our best meals here in Nyaungshwe, and some of the cheapest too. For about 10 cents we could get a skewer of eggs, potato or fresh broccoli roasted over charcoal by a man running a busy little street barbeque, while across the road his sister ran a stand selling deliciously spicy hotpots filled with all sorts of vegetables, Shan-style noodles and tofu.- for just over a dollar. Oh, and tea is always free in Burma! there’s always a thermos of hot Chinese-style tea on every table, and you can drink as much as you like and sit there all day if you want to do that too. How civilised.
 Shan Women in Nyaungshwe
 Nyaungshwe Market We visited the nearby city of Taunggyi, which is the capital of Shan state. Our guidebook didn’t list anything particularly interesting there, but it’s nearness to the Chinese border intrigued us, so we travelled there to check out what sort of contraband we could spy. Localized transportation around Myanmar is mainly comprised of pickup trucks with covered backs. These are loaded to the gills with passenger and goods until the point of bursting, and then more people are squeezed in. We rode in a small pickup with 23 people loaded into the back. Taunggyi was a really interesting place, as it turned out. The market was full of weird and wonderful food like mushy rice mixed with fresh strawberries and wrapped in a banana leaf, tofu soups with tofu in all forms from firm to liquid, sweet sticky cakes, spicy noodles and everything else under the sun. There was also on sale every form of cheap plastic Chinese junk imaginable, from flip flops to Sony knock-off radios. We looked around for the gem market, but never did find it. We did however, have one guy try to sell us gems and jewellery on the street, and even though we told him we weren’t buying, he was happy to show us all of his items anyway. We could have stayed around Nyaungshwe for a lot longer – it’s a peaceful place filled with very friendly people – but it was only the start of our trip so we had to move on. We moved on as far as Kalaw, our intended first-stop, where we trekked a little around the hills, wandering through Mandarin-orange groves – those lovely easy-peel oranges are everywhere, and cheap! – checking out more Buddhist pagodas and payas and getting lost in the process.
 Bullock carts in Nyaungshwe
 Look What I Bought!  cigar-smoking man on Inle Lake Mandalay
 Nuns begging for alms in Mandalay From there we went to Mandalay, Burma’s second largest city, and honestly not the nicest place to hang around. It’s very polluted – the air is awful – and there’s a lot of motorbikes. Yangon, in contrast has no motorbikes: they are banned by the government to keep people from being too mobile. At this point we had had enough of pagodas and monasteries and we didn’t feel like visiting anymore here. We got talking to a trishaw driver who seemed like a nice enough guy and we hired him to take us around for the day, with the condition that he didn’t take us to any of the usual tourist attractions. It wasn’t all to be, as he took us to one big pagoda with a giant Buddha totally covered in and in my opinion mutated by, gold leaf, and then to a place where they actually make gold leaf – hand beaten by loin-cloth wearing men armed with large wooden mallets; very interesting, actually. For the rest of the day, he lived up to his promise and we cruised around residential areas, past the riverside where we saw people washing clothes, selling used fertilizer bags, used oil drums, peanuts, used Western clothes and all sorts of other things. I have to say that Burmese people are some of the friendliest people in the world. Driving around, our arms were sore after waving to people all day long, and our cheeks were hurting from smiling so much. We got endless smiles and funny shouts of “bye bye” from hundreds of kids as we were pedalled about. It’s difficult even to walk very far down the street as you are constantly stopped by people wanting to talk to you, or to have their photo taken, or to press their shy children to shake your hand. It’s lovely, but can get tiring after a while. But the people are so sweet and kind that you somehow find the energy to keep waving, smiling and shaking hands even when you don’t think you can do it any longer. We joked that in India we found out how mean and nasty we could be, while in Burma we were finding out how kind and nice we could be. Travel often puts you in such wildly different situations that you find out so much about yourself, about the good and the bad parts you didn’t know you had.
 Beating gold-leaf in Mandalay Our trishaw man, by the way, turned out to be a lovely guy and some of the best experiences of the day were had in sharing a very long lunch with him, over cups of sweet milky tea as he told us stories of his family life, his experiences on the trishaw (a bicycle rickshaw with two passengers sitting back to back, in a kind of side-car) and general life in Mandalay. He told us about his bicycle rental business that he had a few years back, that went bust when tourists stopped coming to the country for a few years. He had to sell his bicycles and took up being a trishaw driver instead. He said the money is pretty good, but it’s hard work pedalling people and deliveries around all day. He also told us about life in their bamboo house, their fear of fires in the houses with paper thin walls; their original family home had burned some years before. It wasn’t all sob stories though. He was a happy man with a big smile; a proud father, he showed us photos of his family and told us about what his kids are studying in school. I can never get over the smiles in this country. I asked one person why everyone smiles so much. He told me that they smile because they are people without hope, and that when you have no hope, the only thing you can do is smile. Makes you want to cry.
 Mr Htoo, the Trishaw Man
 Mandalay Palace Hsipaw
 Farmer in Hsipaw After Mandalay we bussed it back into Shan state, east to Hsipaw. The area around Hsipaw is quite similar to Nyaungshwe, with rolling hills and an arid climate. Rice fields abound, as do the intricate and beautiful waterways that irrigate the crops. The town itself is not large but gets a heck of a lot of traffic in the form of lorries taking things to or from China. Away from the single main road however, is a quiet, simple place with a village feel and as was becoming the norm, had a welcoming, hospitable populace. Many people come to Hsipaw to do some trekking and that’s what we ended up doing too. We did a small day trek out to a surprisingly large waterfall, via the town’s rubbish dump, and through an interesting conglomeration of cemeteries with sections for Buddhist, Chinese and Muslims. We also signed up for a two day hike into the hills that promised a stay in a traditional Palaung village. The trek was easy, very pretty, and took us through many villages, where we seemed to accumulate crowds of dirty, runny-nosed, but smiling children wanting their photos taken. For the evening we did indeed stay in a traditional village, in the Chief’s house, in fact. We visited so-called traditional villages before, most of which seemed to hang on to their traditional ways simply to cash in on tourist money – fair enough I suppose – but this village, and indeed many places in Myanmar, are as they have been for centuries. People live in small houses with bamboo-panelled walls and dirt floors, they cook with wood or charcoal (even in the cities they cook in this way – I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone use kerosene, and definitely not gas) dress in traditional clothing and till the land by hand or with wooden ploughs pulled by buffalo. They do have electricity, although not in all places and definitely not with any regularity. The villages are wonderfully beautiful though; the houses fit so well into their surroundings, there are little windy lanes running here and there, flowers and plants everywhere, children playing with homemade toys or sticks and other bits of natural material. There’s a small monastery with all of 7 monks. And a single nun. It’s idyllic, and indeed the people seem happy. The Chief’s wife made us a fantastic meal of locally grown vegetables, soy and rice, and we even sampled some of the local rice-wine. They didn’t put on any special performances for us or try to sell us anything at all. They made us feel welcome though, and let us into their life for a few hours, which was very nice indeed.
 Trekking around Hsipaw We stumbled upon a cool trick while staying in the village. We were photographing some children, when one of the bigger kids, a girl of maybe 11 years old wanted to see how to use the camera. After a short lesson, she had learned the basics and was soon photographing all of the younger kids, turning the steps of the monastery into a virtual photo studio, telling the children to pose in this way and that way and even getting the novice monks in on the act. She took some really great photos, the monks making funny poses and the one of the woman coming home from the fields being particularly good.
 Monks posing for photos  Woman coming home from the fields near Hsipaw We met a lot of really interesting travellers Myanmar. There were a fair share of package tourists – mainly French – and of course a good deal of backpackers. But we seemed to be meeting a lot of older people, not your usual backpacker types, that seemed to have discovered Burma before the rest of us and have been coming back ever since. They are the type of people that have seen all of the sights and are happy to just sit in a small village, drinking coffee, enjoying the tranquillity and chatting to friends they’ve made over the years. They’ve been coming long enough to know all of the gossip and to know the secret gems hidden in little nooks and crannies that aren’t in the guide books. I envied these people, as they were really able to take things slowly, something that needs to be done to really appreciate this country where nothing moves very quick at all.
 Palaung Village in Shan State As travel to much of Myanmar is restricted to certain areas, it’s necessary to do a little backtracking; something that goes against the backpacker code – at least in the opinion of many travellers. So backtrack we did, from Hsipaw back to Mandalay, where we stayed just long enough to catch the next bus out to Bagan.
Bagan
 Bagan Temples Bagan is Myanmar’s star attraction. Once the sight of a royal city, there were built over the centuries something like 4000 Buddhist temples, most of which are still standing, and which dot the landscape like thousands of magical little mountains. The area is vast, and the best way of seeing most of the more impressive monuments is by hiring a small horse carriage to drive you around. If you’re wondering how you might go about finding a horse carriage to fulfil this particular job, you needn’t worry as there are literally hundreds of horse-men lingering around town, particularly outside of hotels, all of them trying to convince you to take up their services. Make sure that you find a sturdy horse though, as the day is long and the roads can be quite rough so you want a horse that’s up to the job.
 Goat Herders aroung Bagan Being pulled around the dusty landscape by horse carriage, past ancient stone walls and through royal arches, around towering monuments, all the while waving at herdsmen and simple village people it was easy to imagine how life must have been around Bagan those many centuries ago when the temples were being built, and still used for more than just a tourist attraction. That’s not entirely true of course, because many of the temples are indeed still used by he local populace. And many more temples are still being built today. In the merit-based system of Theravada Buddhism practised here and in Thailand, Laos, etc, the building of temples generates a lot of good merit – credit for your next reincarnation – and the rich and powerful in Burma are trying to generate as much positive credit as they can to counterbalance any negative credit they may have accumulated in this life. Most of the temples can be explored and poked around. There are often stairs ascending to the upper levels which award fantastic views over the surrounding countryside and across the Irrawaddy River. The inner sanctums often contain wonderful carvings, endless Buddha statues, and sometimes long walls covered in beautiful frescoes. Exploring the temples, armed with a torch, and while listening to the screeching of bats in the dark corners is a bit like your very own Indiana Jones adventure.
 Sunset over Bagan
 Dancing in Bagan But as interesting as the temples of Bagan undoubtedly are, it’s once again the Burmese people that really make the place. True, you have to put up with armies of souvenir-sellers plying for your business, and young kids trying to sell you postcards. But give them a smile – you’ll undoubtedly get an even bigger one in return – and you can have fun with the people. If you don’t buy, you’ll still make friends, and even if you can’t resist the charms of one or two of the sweeter ones, buying a trinket or packet of postcards certainly isn’t going to break the bank. One little girl was after us to buy postcards from her just before we were going to climb one of the temples to watch the sunset. I gave her the old, “Maybe later..” routine, of course she told me she would remember me, and every time I glanced down to the ground where she was standing many metres below us, she would give me a big smile, with a point at her head in a gesture indicating that she wouldn’t forget. She didn’t forget, and eventually I had 10 postcards and she had a dollar.
 Shaking on a deal for postcards Burmese men are mad about football. Satellite TV is illegal in the country, and the state only provides a couple of propaganda-filled local channel. (Local joke: What colour is Myanmar TV? Green – it’s all military) But of course illegal satellites are on sale just about everywhere, and every little tea house can switch between Indian (Tata Sky,) Thai, Chinese or Arab satellite channels. I think the primary reason that they want so many different TV channels is not to get “free” news from the west, but instead to watch European footie! They watch English, Spanish, Italian and even German football here. I saw people gathered around a small telly watching some Arab league matches, and even Chinese football. They know more about football than anyone I know. I had quite a few good evenings as the only white person in an open-air tea house drinking thick sweet tea and nodding and commenting along with a hundred weathered looking local men matching some English Premier League match on a small TV. I remember one particularly busy tea house, where one unfortunate young guy was punted out of his seat by the bar-keep in order to give me a good seat, which was filled with trishaw drivers, quite a few monks and a bunch of other chain-smoking men watching Manchester United v. Liverpool on one TV, with English commentary from India, while on the TV next to it was the same match, albeit with about a 5 second delay, from Thailand with Thai commentary, while on yet another TV, there was Teletext cycling through live updates of Italian Serie A. Eventually the Thai match was turned off and the Italian matches were put on. All of them it seemed, as the barman flipped through channel after channel showing a snippet from each and every Italian match being shown. Unlike fans in Europe, however, nobody is particularly loyal to any one team. They like Man U, but they also like Liverpool: something quite unthinkable in England. After a few days in Bagan it was getting to be time to leave the country, so we boarded one last night-bus back to the (former)capital, Yangon. The government has built a new capital city between Mandalay and Yangon. One that is safe from cyclones, and potential sea-based invasions. Apparently it’s a state of the art place with shiny new buildings, reliable electricity, water fountains and even a zoo. Most of it is accessible only to to government employees or military personnel (same thing) and the locals tell stories of vast underground bunkers below the streets. Interesting in a paranoid-dictatorship kind of way. Yangon sure isn’t a shiny new place, and I doubt there are underground bunkers, although some of the rabbit warren-like markets sure feel like bunkers sometimes. It seemed like all of the hotels in Yangon had raised their prices in the last couple of weeks (crazy-fluctuations in the black-market value of the US dollar/kyat I suppose is the cause) and we had to change hotels from the last time that we were here. This time we stayed near the Indian district, in a weird, but friendly place with 8 floors (no lift)and boasting the world’s best breakfast; as seen on Discovery Channel apparently – although I’m not sure one likes to see their breakfast make it onto Discovery Channel, right after World’s Deadliest Spiders or something.
So that’s it. In just under 4 weeks we saw the big sites of Myanmar, plus a little more. Really, it was just a taster, and it feels like the country demands much more than a 4 week visit. Even with the travel restrictions, there are so many off the beaten track places that you can check out. And besides, just having the chance to spend some more time amongst the people here warrants repeat visits. I probably say this about most places that we visit, but the people really are amazing here. They rise above their obviously difficult lives, and make the most of what they have. They still manage to smile, and smile a lot, even when logic says that they should be depressed, miserable people. They are a good example to the rest of us, I think.
Next up, we’re wishing that Air Asia had a frequent flyer program, as we continue travelling along the most illogical route around Asia and we go to Indonesia Again
abrazos, Michaela y Len
Burma Photo Highlights are HERE
All the Burma Photos are here
Average Costs to Travel in Myanmar
There are NO ATMS in Myanamar.
You need to take US Dollars with you. Forget Euros. Exchange rates are dicatated by the black market and rates are definitely best in Yangon. Take care when changing money on the street. If the money changer’s offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Watch out for the folded note trick where they count the same note twice and make sure you separate each note and count it before you give them your money. Better to change in a travel agent instead. Your US Dollars must be in pristine condition – no folds, tears, stamps, pen marks or scuffs of any kind. And the higher the denomination the better the rate you will get. Also, they don’t seem to want any $100 notes where the serial number starts with AB or CA. Try to get brand new, perfect condition $100 notes and you’ll be fine. The exchange rate when we arrived was about 850 kyat to $1 for $50 or $100 notes but was down to around 800 by the time we left.
 And they want PERFECT U.S. Dollars Meal in a local restaurant: 2000 kyat ($2.35)
1.5 L Bottle of water: 300 kyat ($0.35)
1 hour bus ride in a local bus/pickup: 750 kyat ($0.88)
1 hour bus ride in a “luxury” a/c night bus: 1000 kyat/hr ($1.18)
Simple room with hot water for 2 people $13 – usually priced in USD
Internet: 1000 per hour ($1.18) – slow as hell, but usable – although not according to the French girl that I saw start crying when she couldn’t get onto Facebook.
1 hour taxi ride: 5000 kyat ($5.88)
 Michaela having traditional makeup/sun-block applied Where We Stayed and What We Ate:
Yangon
Ocean Pearl Guest House
www.oceanpearlinn.com 215 Bo Ta Taung Pagoda Road
it was $15 for a double room with a/c, hot shower and breakfast but when we tried to go there again, they had raised their prices to $18, which is quite steep for this place. It’s clean and the staff are friendly. They offer free airport pickup.
White House Hotel
No. 69/71 Konzaydan St, Pabedan, Yangon 0095-1-240780, 0095-1-240-781 whitehouse@mptmail.net.mm
$15 for a really small, but clean room with shared bathroom and hot water. Includes “the world’s best breakfast” a vast buffet of everything under the sun. Great location, close to the markets and with views over the city from the 8th floor. Tons of good Indian places in the Indian quarter on Anawratha road. the little hotpot stands along most roads are also very tasty and cheap.
Nyaungshwe
Bright Hotel 081 29137, 53 Phayngdaw Seiq Road
$12 for a small double room with hot showers, includes a good breakfast on the sunny terrace overlooking the sports ground/army helicopter pad. not a bad place, but nothing special. The location is good though – on a quiet road with nice views of the hills and a pagoda. Pancake Kingdom their slogan is “Are U Tired of Rice?” Watch out for their signs around town. The place that started the pancake craze in town, this place serves delicious crepe-style pancakes. Banana or strawberry are particularly good. They have tasty forest honey to top things off.
Probably the best place to eat in Nyaungshwe is the Shan noodle stand/barbeque stall near the market. It opens up at dusk and serves up fantastic Shan hotpots and noodle salads, as well as a wide variety of skewered meat and veggies to throw on the BBQ. Super cheap, super tasty and very popular with the locals.
 Children with sandalwood sun-block in Mandalay Kalaw
Eastern Paradise Hotel 081 50311 Thirimingalar Road, Kalaw $12 for a big room with hot shower – you need it here. Includes breakfast.
The room was like a proper hotel room – neat, clean and everything in working condition. Get a corner room on the top floor as it gets more sun, which is nice when it’s so cold in the mornings.
Sam’s Family Restaurant Aung Chantha Road, across from the Nepali Restaurant very cheap, very very good Burmese food with really friendly staff. We unfortunately only discovered this place on our last evening in Kalaw.
Everest Nepali Food Centre Aung Chantha Road across from Sam’s Restaurant delicious dahl baht (Nepalese Thali) and tasty masalai chai. They make their own yogurt for lassi with fresh milk. Not that cheap at 2500 kyat but the dahl baht is so big you probably won’t finish it.
Mandalay
Nylon Hotel Corner of 83rd & 25th Streets 952 33460, 66550, 60757 nylong@mandalay.net.mm $12 for a small room with leaky pipes or $14 for a very nice room with bathtub. Includes breakfast. In the heart of the action in Mandalay. Helpful staff and very clean rooms. The Nylon Ice Cream shop across the road is great.
Mann Restaurant. just down 83rd street near the Nylon Hotel. Tasty, good value Chinese food popular with tourists and taxi drivers. Very busy in the evening. The chapati stand on the corner of 26th street is super cheap and a fun experience, but oh boy is the food oily. Skip the Nepali restaurant. The staff were grumpy and the food was cold and not tasty.
For a great tour of Mandalay, take a trishaw ride with Mr Htoo. mr.thoo67@gmail.com He hangs around between 83rd St and 25/26st where most of the hotels are in Mandalay. A lovely guy, he can take you around for the whole day for about 10,000 kyat. Skip the pagodas and ask him to take you by the river and to the jade market instead.
 Tesco Delivery: Burma style Hsipaw
Mr Charles Guest House
$10 for a double room with shared bathroom. everyone goes here and they seem to have a monopoly on tourism in Hsipaw. Still, they provide excellent service and have the hottest showers in Asia. Their treks with Jo-Jo are good value at 10,000 kyat per day.
Law Chun (Mr Food) Namtu Road (the main road) just past the cinema. Tasty Chinese food and big portions. Mr Food is a nice guy. Very popular with locals as well as tourists. The noodle stall just in front of Mr Charles is very tasty and really cheap. 300 kyat for a big bowl of noodle soup and a small salad.
Bagan
May Kha Lar Guest House
061-60306, 02-6706 on the main road in Nyaung U. 12,000 kyat for a double room with A/C and hot water (bathtub!) including a very good breakfast. Their pancakes are great. rooms have nice wooden panelling and wooden floors. The lady that runs the place is lovely and is full of info about Bagan. Aye Tha Har Vegetarian & Cocktail Restaurant good, homecooked vegetarian food (and cocktails) at the very end of Restaurant Row near the New Park Hotel in Nyaung U.
 Proud Family with 2 new babies in Old Bagan The Moon Vegetarian Restaurant
Their slogan is “Be Kind to Animals” After eating here you may never have the want to eat meat again. By far the best food we’ve eaten in Myanmar. Try the tomato curry, papaya salad and pumpkin curry. The brown sticky rice is amazing too. In the cluster of restaurants, which all seem to be vegetarian, near the Ananda Temple in Old Bagan
We tried eating pasta in Nyaung U, given that every restaurant seems to have pasta and pizza. My suggestion would be to stick to the Burmese food. Of course street food is always good to eat as well. There are tons of Shan noodle stalls, hotpot places serving spicy, delicious local food. A good chance to mix with the locals and to eat what they do. The markets are a fun place to nibble on weird new foods too.
 Noodle soup in Yangon
Flores Photo Highlights are HERE
ALL the Flores Photos are HERE
We had read that travel in Flores could be tough. Rough roads, infrequent transport, and only a single “highway” snaking its way through this mountainous, jungle covered volcanic island, are said to test the patience of travellers that make their way out here. Most people that visit Flores only fly to the west of the island where they can visit Komodo National Park, to check out the famous Komodo Dragons, or to dive in the marine-life rich waters of the region. We decided to start at the opposite end of the island to see what the place had to offer.
 Sunset on Kanawa Island Flores is a large island in the east of Indonesia. Unlike the predominantly Muslim population across the rest of Indonesia, Bali excepted, Flores is a Christian island; a holdover from the days when the Portuguese controlled this island way back in the 16th century. The Portuguese influence also explains the very un-Indonesian name, Flores, ‘Flowers’ in Portuguese. We flew to Flores from Bali, taking off 2 hours late from Denpasar airport, with a quick stop en route that turned into another two hour delay when the airplane door couldn’t be properly sealed. Not very encouraging. When we finally landed in Maumere, in the east of Flores, the airplane door wouldn’t open again and we all had to exit via the rear doors. What a welcome to Batavia Airways and Indonesian air travel.
 flores from the air Snorkel Lessons
Maumere is a port town with not a lot to offer, but the small villages up and down the coast have some very nice nice black-sand beaches with beach-hut style accommodation. We stayed in one place a few kilometres out of Maumere where we had a very relaxing time lazing around in crystal clear water of bathtub-like temperatures, snorkelling and reading. Being low season we were the only customers in the place. One afternoon, three local spear fishermen were hunting for dinner around where we were sat. Seeing me with my snorkel and mask they became curious as to how it worked. These guys were armed with homemade spear guns of carved wood and with a bicycle tire tube to propel the spear. Even their goggles were home made. One set was of some kind of moulded epoxy or plastic, but clearly not store-bought, while another, amazingly, was carved of coconut and fitted with regular glass, possibly from a window or drinks bottle. Compared to their gear, my snorkel and mask looked decidedly high tech. They couldn’t speak a word of English, besides “good” and “no good” but indicated with hand gestures that they would like to try it out. I gave them a quick lesson, explaining that they didn’t have to hold their breath and not to breathe through their noses but to use the snorkel instead. What ensued was a hilarious episode where these three really tough guys, with sinuous bodies and the ability to swim for two or three minutes under water, were reduced to childlike states as they gasped and splashed, alternately laughing and panicking as they struggled to master the snorkel. At first they hated it – breathing under water being totally foreign to them – shaking their heads and repeating “no good, no good.” One would go too deep and breathe in sea water, coming flying up for air as his comrades were killing themselves laughing. Another would simply hold his breath and not use the snorkel at all, shrugging his shoulders as to what the point of the strange device was. Finally one got it and when he went cruising along under the water, his mates were clambering to not be the one who couldn’t figure things out. Eventually everyone got the hang of things and we even got to the point where I was trying to teach them how to free dive. That, it turned out, was a little too much to handle for one day. Even so, in the end we got a lot of thumbs-ups and “good, good.” from the fishermen as they returned their new toy and went back to fishing with their tried and tested gear.
 Maumere sunset A Free Lunch
From Maumere we ventured into the mountains in the middle of the island to the small village of Moni, the starting point for visiting Kelimutu Volcano. On the way, in our shared taxi transport, we stopped at a small warung for lunch. We got talking to one local guy who could speak a bit of English, about his job Continue reading Flores and Kanawa
Bangkok
We love Bangkok. It’s a backpacker’s dream come true with it’s wonderful mix of modern yet exotic Asian culture plus western comforts, mixed in with plenty of fun and of course delicious food. We’ve been to Bangkok on a few occasions now, so it felt a little like coming home again.
Arriving in the Kao San Road area (but not exactly on Kao San Road – that place is a nuthouse) is like arriving in the backpacker equivalent of Victoria Station at rush hour. That’s like Grand Central Station for you non-Londoners. 24 hours a day there are backpackers coming and going, luggage on their backs, the Bangkok veterans scanning the landscape for changes since their last stay, while the newcomers stare at the hustle and bustle, and frenetic action, with wide eyes and gaping mouths. Street vendors selling t-shirts, souvenirs, and used books crowd up against food stalls which are in turn crowded up against open-air massage tables. All of which are crowded into the gaps between the doorways of more proper shops offering tailoring services, travel agencies, hotels, restaurants and bars. Tuk Tuk drivers solicit for business, the hill tribe ladies with their frog-sound makers and odd hats peddle bracelets while massage ladies shout “ma-saaaagggee!” at the hugely diverse groups of travellers coming and going, from all parts of Asia, that seem to converge here. Bangkok really is the junction for Asian travel. We bumped into people here that we had met previously in Indonesia, and even another long-term travelling couple that we had met in India a few months before.
It’s so much fun to walk the streets around Bangkok. There are so many interesting things to check out. It’s great fun to be a food-tourist, as there’s so much weird and wonderful stuff to try. The usual menu of Thai dishes can of course be tasted at hundreds of food stalls, but there’s also lovely things as pre-cut mango or pineapple to snack on, plus mini coconut pancakes, gooey bean curd sweets, odd-tasting sweet coconut filled mini tacos, syrupy Thai coffee, and of course mango sticky rice. The Thais serve everything on the street. It’s quite easy to go an entire holiday in Thailand, never setting foot in a proper restaurant, eating possibly the best food on the planet. We never tire of Thai food. It’s wonderfully flavourful, perfectly spicy, healthy, fresh and ready in 5 minutes.
Bangkok is so alive. Some people hate it; I hated it at one time too. It’s loud, brash and most definitely in your face, but it sure isn’t boring. But it’s got it’s quiet pockets too; those that you discover while wandering through the many little sois, where you might find a locals-only food stall or the tranquillity of temple courtyard – complete with yellow robed monks, and resident chickens and ducks. You can get everything, see everyone, do anything. It’s one of the great cities of the world and we find it very easy to spend time here.
While in Bangkok we decided to check out the cinema. We went to the very upscale, and very expensive, Siam Paragon shopping centre and bought a couple of tickets to the new Harry Potter film. What a cinema! The best cinema that we’ve ever been in. Complete digital projection, amazing sound, huge comfy seats and delicious popcorn. The film was pretty good too. If you’ve ever been to Thailand you’ll know that the Thais completely adore their king. Before the film starts, the national anthem is played, while a montage of the king is shown on the screen, during which time everyone in the cinema gets to their feet to honour him.
Speaking of the King, the reason that we flew to Bangkok at this particular time was so that we could be there for the King’s birthday celebrations. As I said, the Thais love their king. His photo adorns every shop and and home, not to mention every street corner and building. People even wear pink t-shirts, which is the king’s colour. All of this adoration is not just government propaganda or the work of some public relations team; they really do love him. If you speak to any Thai person about the king, they will gush over him, like he’s some benevolent grandfather that cares for the nation as if it were his own children. They will list off the wonderful things that he has done for the country, and how they worry for his health. He’s very sick and has been living in the hospital for the last year or more. Almost without fail however, after listing the king’s many good qualities, they will voice their dislike of the king’s son and heir. For whatever reason, the crown prince is universally disliked and most people worry about the day when the king passes away. Many people want his daughter to take the reins – something not possible under the current constitution – or if that is not possible, for the monarchy to be abolished. They really don’t like that guy.
 King's Birthday Celebrations The king’s birthday however, is a huge day of celebration. A national holiday in fact, when what seems like the whole of Bangkok comes out to celebrate. A major road artery was closed down for the night, and we arrived there to watch the happenings along with millions of pink-shirted locals and we were first treated to a fantastic fireworks display. In Thailand they often light paper lanterns; a tall, say one metre high, paper tube with a cross brace on the bottom that holds a circle of fuel-soaked material. The fuel is then lighted, which makes the paper lantern rise up into the air like a hot air balloon. You can often get them on the beaches, and they are quite pretty when set off at night. After the fireworks display, thousands of these lanterns were lit, and simultaneously let off into the night sky. What a sight. Millions of us all stared up into the sky, grinning like small children. Soon thousands more were let off, then more, and more. The sky was full of lanterns, like stars. And then more fireworks were let off. We didn’t know where to look, at the fireworks or the lanterns. Soon paper lanterns were being passed amongst the crowds and we too started lighting them. It was such an amazing, beautiful sight. And I really mean that. It really was beautiful. The king’s birthday celebration wasn’t a military display or pompous parade, but instead just a simple, heart-warming show designed to make his people happy. And they really looked happy. There was no drinking, no shouting, no bad behaviour; only a lot of mobile phone cameras pointed at the sky, and a lot of big, big smiles.
 Huge crowds at the king's birthday Besides the King’s birthday, we were also in Bangkok to receive some friends from London, out for a pre-Christmas holiday. Mandeep, Harvey and Spencer were in Thailand for the first time. We spent the better part of a day before they arrived, trying to find the perfect place to stay. Someplace that fit our budget, but also a hotel that someone other than a grubby backpacker would find comfortable. In the end, we moved up a few levels of comfort and they probably moved down even more, but I think we were all happy in the end. It was really great to see people that have fresh eyes, arriving in someplace like Bangkok for the first time. Travelling for such a long time (just about 10 months now) is great, but sometimes seeing so many things day after day makes you a bit immune to the sights and sounds around you. It was a little bit of a reminder of how we were when we first started travelling to see how the guys reacted to arriving in Bangkok. Tuk tuk rides, street food, worries about mosquitoes, smells (“Oh really? I hadn’t noticed that sewage smell…”) lady-boys, weird and wonderful things for sale, are some of the things that we don’t even think about that often. Seeing their general wide-eyed wonderment at the world around was a small kick up the backside, telling us not become complacent about the really wonderful life that we are living.
It was great to see some friends again after so long. We did the tourist thing in Bangkok for a few days, checking out the Grand Palace, Reclining Buddha and visiting the totally mad budget shopping malls before hitting the beach.
Koh Chang
We’d never been to Koh Chang before, but it’s proximity to Bangkok and its fine weather made it a good place to visit. Koh Chang is one of the biggest Thai islands. It boasts some fine beaches, a wild jungle interior and is still relatively behind in terms of the out of control development that occurs on some of the more popular islands.
After a six hour bus ride and thirty minute ferry crossing, we caught a shared taxi straight to the backpacker hangout of Lonely Beach. Lonely beach is where most of the young people and budget travellers congregate and where there’s a party practically every night. There’s plenty of simple eateries, tattoo shops, dive shops and lots of bars. Actually, it’s a pretty nice little place, with a cool, relaxed vibe and friendly locals. We checked out some of the other villages that are centred on different beaches, and despite the constant boom boom boom of dance music in the evenings – ear plugs do wonders – we concluded that it’s pretty much the best place to stay on the island.
We spent about a week in Koh Chang. We rented motorbikes and zipped around the island, searching for the perfect beach. We ate amazing food – each tiny, family run restaurant was better than the next – did some snorkelling and generally enjoyed a perfect beach life. Oh, and we partied a bit too. There’s a party almost every day that rotates through the bars around Lonely Beach and the DJs are surprisingly good. We lived like typical Thai tourists for a few nights – a holiday within our long holiday - and drank Thai whiskey out of plastic buckets and danced in our bare feet in the sand before making our way back to Bangkok to catch a flight to our next destination: Myanmar.
abrazos a todos,
Len y Michaela
Thieves on Buses in Thailand
It’s quite well known that thieves operate on the night buses that travel around Thailand. When you deposit your backpack under the bus for the journey, thieves who are most likely working along with the bus company, will dig through your luggage at their leisure while you are sitting upstairs watching the movie or enjoying the scenery. Despite knowing that this happens, and despite the fact that I warned my friends not to leave any valuables under the bus, I left some cash in my big backpack which of course disappeared by the time we arrived in Koh Chang. My four crisp 50 dollar bills were replaced with crisp new 1 dollar bills. Your insurance more than likely will not cover lost money either. By the way, I hate our insurance company, who don’t seem to cover anything. But that’s another story. Watch your stuff in Thailand!
Bank Charges in Thai ATMs
All banks in Thailand now seem to charge an extortionate 150 baht (about $5) fee to use their ATMs. After much searching around on the internet for ATMs that don’t charge, I did manage to find some help. There is one single, tiny bank that does not charge a penny and that’s Aeon Bank. Unfortunately they have very few ATMs in Bangkok, but luckily one is near to Kao San Road. I’ve heard that there are more in the MBK Shopping Centre, but I haven’t seen them. Here’s how to find the ATM that will save you a lot of money:
Walk to the Wat/Police station end of KSan Rd
Turn right, stay on that side of the road, walking past the police station
Cross over 2 streets (I think 2) There is a department store on the corner
Keep walking straight ahead through the many stalls on the footpath
On your right you will see a supermarket, you can’t miss it as it has big open doors and the checkouts are just inside the doors. It’s the one selling processed meats in the front.
Enter the supermarket and there is the AEON machine (and others) next to the front doors
Bangkok
O Bangkok
Around the second bend of Soi Rambutri, which is the small, mature version of Kao San Road, that sits behind the wat just opposite the police station next to Kao San.
520 baht for a nice twin room with hot shower and fan. Includes free wifi or use of the computers in the reception. Nice perks like towels, toilet paper and soap. Try to get a room with a rear window as you don’t get so much street noise.
Have a drink at “My Bar” one of the small footpath bars on this same quiet end of Soi Rambutri. Say hi to Crazy, the owner.
Koh Chang
Magic Garden Bungalows
At the end of Lonely Beach village – not on the beach – opposite BB Divers. 400 baht for a bamboo bungalow with fan, mosquito net and hot shower. Includes free wifi, but the connection is poor. Their restaurant is good, staff are friendly, they show 2 free movies every night in their Jungle Theatre. They host one of the rotating parties in the village.
Bus to Koh Chang cost us 350 baht including the ferry crossing. We talked to people that got the ticket for 300 baht, so have a look off the main tourist roads in Bangkok for a cheaper deal.
Motorcycle rental is pretty much the same anywhere, and is 200 baht per day for an automatic bike. They seem to be gas guzzlers though, so make sure you fill up your tank before heading off to the other side of the island. You might run out of petrol like we did.
Watch out if you are taking the bikes to Long Beach. The road is awful and two of our bikes got tire punctures.
Look out for Klong Prao beach. Almost totally deserted and possibly the nicest on the island.
Next up, Myanmar (Burma)
 Merry Christmas from Bangkok
Extending an Indonesian Visa
Indonesia heartlessly issues just 30 day tourist visas on arrival. For such a huge, fantastic country this is hardly enough time to see much of anything. I wanted to stay longer in Indonesia, and I had heard that it was now possible to extend the visa on arrival (VOA) but I struggled to find out any reliable information on how to do it.
After some digging around I found out that it was possible, so I’ve decided to share my experience on how to extend an Indonesia tourist visa on arrival.
How to do it
The easiest way to get a 60 day tourist visa for Indonesia is to do it outside of the country at an Indonesian embassy. However, I tried to do this in Kuala Lumpur and was denied for no apparent reason. I later found out that the embassy in KL rarely issues the longer visas.They were pretty good about it though, and refunded all of my money.
By the way, don’t wear shorts, flip-flops or beach-style t-shirts to an Indonesian embassy or immigration office. I found this out the hard way.
If you enter Indonesia on a 30 day Visa on Arrival (VOA) and want to extend, with a little time, it’s an easy enough process.
- Get some passport-sized photographs made. I think you need two photos. You’ll also need a copy of your passport and current visa. The immigration office will also have photocopiers if you forget. You might need a copy of your outgoing plane ticket but I was not asked for this.
- Find an immigration office, called imigrasi in Bahasa Indonesian. I used the office in Denpasar, Bali, on Jalan DI Panjaitan(0361-227828; 8am-2pm Mon-Thu, 8am-11am Fri, 8am-noon Sat) just up the street from the main post office in the Renon area of Denpasar. Renon is really close to Sanur, and also easily reachable from Kuta.
- Go into the office and fill in the form for the Extension of Visa of Arrival, hand this in along with your photos, passport copy and passport. The officer will tell you to come back in 7 days.
- Come back in 7 days, and pay 250,000 rupiah to the cashier. Next the immigration officer will tell you to come back tomorrow. Really…
- Come back the next day and collect your passport with an additional 30 days from the day your current visa expires.
I’m not sure if you’d want to leave extending your visa until the last minute, but giving it about week before it does should be OK.
I found the immigration office surprisingly stress-free, the staff were friendly and I was in and out in less than an hour on every occasion. Despite the time required, it was a pretty straightforward process.
Bali PHOTO HIGHLIGHTS ARE HERE
All of the Indonesia PHOTOS are HERE
 Ubud Cremation Tower Guardian We’ve found ourselves in a bit of a Catch-22 with regard to getting the latest travel update out to you, our faithful readers. You see, we’ve been seeing and doing so many really cool things that we haven’t had a chance to write. The flipside of that is that because we’ve been up to so much, we really should be writing more often. You see my predicament? It’s a tough life. Incidentally, Catch-22 is a great read – check it out. It took me two attempts but now I see why it’s become such a classic.
So what’s been happening? Well, in the last six weeks we’ve visited 7 different beaches, motorbiked around 2 islands, visited 3 volcanoes, saw Komodo dragons, snorkelled above a sunken 2nd World War ship, seen a whale, dived with sharks, manta rays (4), swum with countless turtles and stingrays, seen a royal cremation ceremony, checked out temples, soaked in scalding hot rivers, visited traditional weaving villages, travelled in boats, buses, bemos and planes, and heard enough “hello misters” to last a life time. Oh, and dived with dolphins. Whew. We’ve been busy!
So, here it is, better late than never, the first of two instalments on Indonesia!
Kuta
 Surfer on Legian Beach With Michaela on a quick trip home to Austria, I experienced something totally foreign to me: solo travel. I’ve never travelled without Michaela and I was looking forward to the experience. Here would be my chance to experience the life of the lone backpacker: meeting loads of people, going wherever I felt like going, and partying with strangers. I started my bachelor’s experience in Bali, one of Asia’s most popular tourist destinations, specifically in the infamous city of Kuta (well, actually I stayed in Legian, which is practically part of Kuta, just a little quieter), infamous for drunk Aussies on holiday, surf, a big beach and as the site of the nightclub bombing a few years back that killed over 200 people. Kuta has more designer beach and surf-wear shops than you can shake a stick at, street after street of shops, packed with bloated, sunburned holiday makers wearing Bintang Beer wife-beater tops. T-shirt shops selling clothes with slogans like “up the bum no babies” and “Tom (or any other name you like) is Gay.” Scooters with surfboards strapped to them, and others dubbed ojeks that act as taxis ferrying around topless young men and bikini-clad young women off to get wasted in the massive nightclubs, clog the narrow streets. Endless strings of touts trying to convince you to part with your rupiah in the form of tours, hotels, “ma-saaaagge” magic mushrooms, girls or offering you ojek rides with calls of “trans-PORT” and a funny “look at me, I’m driving” arm waving motion. There are bars after bars and restaurants after restaurants all offering free wi-fi –I’m still enamoured with this particular offering – and western-style menus and cocktails at near western-prices. It’s a pretty full-on place. So here I was in one of the big party spots of Asia, all alone with the world at my feet and all I could think to do was to take advantage of the free wi-fi. I dunno, but the idea of getting wasted with a bunch of crass, underdressed, over-drunk, 19 year old Australians didn’t appeal to me. If the Aussies in Kuta are anything to go by – and I’m sure they’re not – then Australia must be the most low-brow place on the planet – which I’m sure it isn’t.
I had some ideas of what I wanted to do with myself during the next ten days, and diving ranked high on the list. I still wasn’t sure where to go just yet, but then I heard about a very important royal cremation ceremony that was to take place in a couple of days in the nearby town of Ubud.
Ubud Part 1
 Some of the wonderful flower varieties in Bali Although on the tourist map for quite some time, Ubud received a popularity kick with the recent book and movie starring Julia Roberts, Eat, Pray, Love. By the way, the scene where she arrives to India is classic – the Indian experience in a 30 second video bite. Bali, by the way, is a Hindu island. Indonesia is of course the most populous Muslim country on earth, but there are a few islands (there are over 17,000 islands in Indonesia) that practice different beliefs. Hinduism came to Indonesia from India many centuries ago and much of the archipelago was Hindu for a long time, but Bali is the last remaining island where the religion is still practiced amongst the majority of the populace. Although you see statues of the elephant-headed god, Ganesh, and characters from the Mahabaratha and Ramayana, that’s just about where the similarities with Indian Hinduism stop. One obvious difference is that the Balinese haven’t gone down the cartoon character route when displaying the gods and goddesses. Instead they are portrayed in heroic poses, and even Ganesh tends to have a “wise old elephant” look instead of the sweets-gobbling fattie so loved in India. The temples also look nothing like those in India. The Balinese have a wonderful eye for beauty, and their temples are stunning works of art, decorated with elaborate stone carvings, adorned with plants and a rainbow of flowers. Everything is spotlessly clean.
 Dewi Antara Homestay, Ubud The Balinese culture is truly unique – I’ve never seen anything like it – and Ubud is the perfect place to get an up-close look at that culture. The entire town of Ubud, is like a living, breathing display of Balinese art, religion, design, music and culture. It is perhaps the most beautiful town that we’ve ever visited. At first when I arrived I was slightly confused as I walked around the streets looking for a guest house. Was every building a temple? High walls surrounded all of the buildings, the only access to the inner courtyards being via an elaborately decorated door, guarded by gargoyle-like statues of grotesque little creatures – adorned with fresh flowers, sarongs, headbands and offerings of rice and cigarettes. The walkways into these courtyards, that I assumed housed temples, were laid out with lotus-flower patterns in the tile-work, tiny square boxes made of palm leaf filled with coloured rice, and fresh flowers were put out in patterns on the ground. Even the roads had these little displays of offerings placed carefully in the middle of the busy intersections. I could see over the walls, fuzzy-looking pyramid-like rooftops that looked like temples, but surely not every building in town was a religious one? It wasn’t until I ventured inside one of these compounds, with a sign out front advertising a homestay, that I discovered that these were in fact common family homes. Balinese families traditionally lived in large compounds with houses for their entire extended family, inside the high walls. Also inside these compounds are the family temples where the family goes every day to pray and offer up gifts to the gods.
 Roadside offerings The inside of the compounds are thoughtfully decorated with a huge variety of trees, colourful flowers and statues. Everything is exquisitely well-kept – the Balinese always seem to be sweeping – and everything is done with purpose. No little flower is out of place. I always imagined Japan being like this – so conscious of every little detail – and I was really surprised to find that way of thinking here. Nowadays, as families move further from home, these compounds are often too big for the family members that live there, and many of them have been turned into home-stays. I stayed in a lovely little place run by a friendly family that went about their business, sweeping, putting out offerings, as if I were just a normal part of the scenery. Watching the women put out offerings, something you see a hundred times a day in Bali, is something that I never tire of. They always make sure that they dress in traditional sarongs – many people, young and old, men and women, still wear the sarong as part of their wardrobe – and sash tied around the waist as they go out with a large tray filled with holy spring water, fresh flowers, rice, palm-leaf packages, even biscuits and cigarettes that they place around the entrances to buildings, on walkways, in their cars, on motorbikes, on statues, on windows, and anyplace else that could involve you needing the gods’ help. Even the bathrooms in Bali are decorated with fresh flowers – the backs of toilets and even the tops of urinals have flowers placed out every day.
 Offerings at a small shrine in Ubud Ubud is famous for being the epicentre of Balinese art and you can find an endless array of cloth, handicrafts, furniture, paintings, home decor, clothing, jewellery, handicrafts all made to a really high standard and all looking exceptionally beautiful. Even the shops themselves are wonderfully designed, decorated with fountains, flowers (of course,) statues, and unique furniture. Yes, it is incredibly touristic as you can imagine, but unlike many heavily visited places, Ubud didn’t make you feel like running away. Instead, I felt like I could spend a lot of time there.
The cremation ceremony was to celebrate the death of one of Bali’s kings – there are nine kings, as far as I know – and I was told that this was to be one of the biggest ceremonies in recent years. The ceremony, I was told, would involve the carrying – by human power – of giant towers and statues through the streets of the town, and finally arriving at a temple where the structures would be burned, along with the body of the king inside. It sounded exciting!
Continue reading Bali and a Gili
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