Escape... Asia

Singapore

2008-09-16T00:45:00.001-07:00

Singapore has to be one of the smallest countries we’ve visited. Afterall, it’s just one small island – about 42 by 24km in size. With a few mini islets off its coast. That’s all. But it’s one of the richest places in Asia per capita.

OK, it doesn’t have the spectacular location of Hong Kong, or the intriguingly vibrant districts of Tokyo, but it is well worth seeing at least briefly. If you can get over the slightly restrictive nature of the place. This is ‘Fine City’ – tie your shoe laces in the wrong part of town and risk a $500 billing. Ouch! Now I’m all in favour of stopping littering and smoking in public places, but you’re not allowed to cross the road anywhere within 50m of a pedestrian crossing, and then ONLY WHEN THE GREEN MAN IS LIT! It might be 04.00 in the morning. There may be no cars moving within a radius of a mile. But you have to wait for the green man or they WILL get you! Oh, and leave the chewing gum behind – it is completely illegal in Singapore. Really. I don’t know what they do if you’re caught in possession, but I’d rather not find out!

Saying that, I don’t mean to be too harsh. It’s a nice city. Clean, modern, and with lots of thoughtfully planted trees and green areas everywhere. They really do make an effort to keep the place nice. And if you like shopping malls, Singapore is heaven. I’ve never seen so many. In fact, in central Singapore it can be hard to find a shop that’s not in a mall. There are hundreds of them – all modern, gleaming, and packed with expensive designer shops. Not a place to visit on a budget, especially as there are more than a fair share of Haagen Das and Ben & Jerry’s Cafes.

Singapore island may be mostly built up, but in the middle is a really nicely preserved area of rainforest. It has a pathetically sweet ‘Park’ in a small section of the forest, where very friendly paths lead you between huts and view points that are barely 10 m apart. But the bonus here is the monkeys – they are really tame, and are happy to sit only a few meters away from you (even Mothers with young babies – we watched one as she breast-fed a tiny snip of a young one)! The rainforest outside the park area is a bit more like it. You can walk through trails up to the summit of the highest point on the island – an impressive 163m above sea level! OK, it felt quite high after traipsing up the slope in tropical conditions and rainforest humidity. We’re not that pathetic. Really!

Anyway, now we leave Asia, and move continent (and therefore blog page) to Oceania. We’re a bit sad to be leaving, but we’ve spent nearly half our year doing loops around the continent, so I suppose it’s time to move on. I hope Australia is nice! The posting will be on www.catch-up-with-the-sun-oceania.blogspot from now on (as this site is running out of storage space for photos). And on the main page of course for general things. Like comments on leaving Asia…

Singapore Photos

2008-09-16T00:17:00.001-07:00

Singapore waterfront - on a very nice day! Not quite Hong Kong Harbour, but still nice. Below you can see Gary in the same area - by some Chinese lanterns for a local celebration. The other photo shows him scrambling across a very scary bridge in the tame rainforest park in the centre of Singapore island. Ever the brave adventurer!

You can find some remarkably tame monkeys in the park! These two were very nonchalant about our presence, as you can see from how close we got when taking the photo! The Mum was far more interested in ensuring her son didn't have fleas...
A strange thing we've noticed in Asia is the use of fish to clean dead skin off feet. it's a luxury Spa therapy apparently. But we've never come across it in a shop window before! Look at all the little fishes attacking these blokes feet! It was fascinating to watch - quite a crowd of passers by like us gathered to gape and take piccys.

Pulau Tioman

2008-09-04T02:57:00.002-07:00

This really is remote! Pulau Tioman is a reasonably sized island 2 hours by ferry off the East coast of Malaysia. And there’s really not much here apart from a jungle mountain, pristine beaches, coral reefs, and a few huts! All of which are very beautiful of course. To give you an impression - we are staying in one of the most developed regions of the island, Air Batang, but this village consists of a sparse row of huts and small houses on the line between the edge of the beach and the start of the jungle. It’s beautiful, and to our eyes almost untouched by humans, but still, this is meant to be one of the most built-up parts of the island! The main road here is actually a concrete footpath that motorcycles can navigate up and down – there simply aren’t any cars.

Which leads to pretty impressive local wildlife. When we left our room the morning after arriving, the first thing we saw was a group of monkeys playing only 10m away. They didn’t like us and backed away a little (to say 20m), and then continued playing as if we weren’t there! The same morning we encountered our first significant reptile – a monitor lizard over a meter long. It looked just like one of the cast of dinosaurs in a 1970’s B movie! They can actually get to the size of alligators apparently – the largest one we’ve seen was a 2m monster. And we’ve walked under trees filled with sleeping fruit bats, seen wild goats, avoided inch-long ants and chased weird unidentifiable mammals – humans are definitely outnumbered here…

We’ve also seen a bit of the marine life. We wanted to continue diving, so we spent 2 days doing the PADI Advanced Open Water Course, which involves some underwater navigation, a deep dive (to about 30m), and three other dives of your choosing. We opted for a wreck dive, fish identification, and a night dive. And on these we saw lots of lovely fish, coral and urchins as usual, but also a few turtles! Best of all, we came across a huge, almost spherical jelly fish (over a meter diameter) which had a school of small fish constantly living in it and swimming around it. The whole effect was spectacular and very beautiful. But oddly enough I think we saw our most impressive marine animals off the jetty while waiting for a ferry – four turtles surfaced to take gulps of air, while little squid chased each other and tropical fish before hiding under the pier. But all these were swiftly outdone by a large octopus which came along and settled on a rock for a while, before scooting off head first, tentacles following!

Continuing with the activities, Gary had his first chance of the holiday to play a round of golf. He was a little bit out of practice at first, but he soon got back into it. I was designated ‘caddy’ – which involved driving the silly golf buggy around and agreeing enthusiastically with his choice of club from time to time. A taxing job! We actually spent a lot of the time watching monitor lizards basking in the sun and families of monkeys playing on the golf course. It was a really pretty place: beautifully manicured, and situated on the coast, just by the beach but ascending up rapidly to the rainforest levels. Our favourite bit was the 7th hole as you actually had to hit the ball across a small bay from the tee to get to the green. Gary cleared the sea successfully, but got trapped in the largest bunker we’d ever seen – the beach!

Anyway, our next stop will be Singapore (apart from a night’s stopover in the fishing town of Mersing on the way back from Pulau Tioman), which should offer a good contrast to this coral-jungle island.

Pulau Tioman Photos

2008-09-04T02:57:00.001-07:00

Air Batang (or ABC as its known for short). This is a view south, from the headland path which leads towards the next cove, Penumbra Bay. You can clearly see some of the coral reef in the clear blue water!

The beach by Telek (the main village settlement on Pulau Tioman) looking up towards Air Batang to the North. This whole island has a very pretty coast-line.

The 7th hole! We're standing on the tee, taking the photo. You can see the green in the distance, just the other side of the massive beach-bunker. Gary cleared the sea well, but couldn't quite make it past the beach. It was funny to see him traipsing through the sand to retrieve his ball! You can also see a nice wet weather front closing in from the sea - we sheltered in the nice golf buggy (silly things).
Monkeys! There were plenty on the golf course (along with lizards), although not on the fairway of the 7th hole oddly enough. This mummy-babby pair were elsewhere though - they were part of a group that actually walked right over our heads on power cables in Air Batang before jumping into the surrounding trees. Below are some more island residents! These monitor lizards were babys compared with the 2m monsters we came accross - they're only 1-1.5m long. But they posed for photos much much more readily, letting me get within a meter, whereas the big ones just ran away :( Which is probably why the big ones are so big - caution...

A visitor to the ferry jetty just as we were leaving the island! For some reason the pier is a popular place for turtles to surface to take a breath of air, before descending into the depths again and swimming away. We saw four in only half an hour! I was lucky and caught this one just as he took his gulp - you can see his head out of the water if you look closely.
And to finish off this selection of photos, how about a spectacular sunset? This section of Air Batang bay was just by our hotel, and offered dramatic evening views from the terrace of a very nice pizza place called Sunset Corner. A few hours later and the clouds on the horizon became an impressive (but distant) thunderstorm.

Melaka

2008-08-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

If you take a bus two for two hours south from Kuala Lumpur, you’ll find the costal town of Melaka. It’s a pretty little place – nominated as a world heritage site only one month ago – and therefore has big pseudo-Chinese gate advertising boards stuck up all over town to celebrate! Very traditional!

We only expected to stay here a night or two, but got off to a bit of a bad start. Our lovely Rough Guide placed the bus stop quite central to town on the map, but unfortunately for us it was wrong by more than 3km. So we trekked, rucksacks and all, from miles to the north of town before finally getting to our hotel. And as it seemed a nice place (and we fancied passing out for the afternoon) we thought we’d stay a night or two more.

Melaka has the distinct feel of a cross between Louang Phabang and Macau. It’s a small colonial town first developed by the Portuguese, but then taken over by the Dutch, and finally by the British. Before going to full Malaysian control again. So it has weirdly European buildings in places, ruined churches and forts, all surrounded bys distinctly Asian regions – there’s a particularly nice China Town for instance (which is where our hotel is). Altogether a quiet, sleepy place - nice for a few days rest and relaxation. Our hotel has been great too – it has a piano in the lobby which guests are allowed to use. This is the first time we’ve seen a useable piano in a hotel in all our travels, so Gary took full advantage and gave two brilliant performances – especially considering he a) didn’t have music and b) hasn’t played in over 6 months!

Anyway, now we’re moving on again, another early start (groan), across to the East Coast of Malaysia. We plan to spend the next week in Pulau Tioman, an island 2 hours by ferry away from the mainland. It hasn’t really got any roads, and so the only way to get from village to village is by walking or by boat. And as we’ll probably be staying in a wooden shack we may be out of contact for a while! But hopefully it will have some nice rainforest trails and diving to keep us entertained. We’ll post some more when we get back to civilisation!

Melaka Photos

2008-08-28T08:53:00.001-07:00

This is the Dutch square at the centre of town. For some reason all the historic buildings here are painted this red colour, making it all very festive. There's also a miniature windmill behind the small Vicki (unfortunately just out of shot). The best thing about the square are the rickshaws though - these things would give Indian rickshaw drivers a stroke! They are all yellow, festooned with plastic flowers, and have their very own car radio-cassette players - complete with extra-loud sub-woofer under the passenger seats. You can hear them coming miles away and hide from the touts! Probably not the original intention...
Gary in the heart of China Town - very quaint buildings and very nice weather for once.

More of China Town - this time Vicki's by a very authentic temple with some really beautiful Dragons carved into the stone around the doors.

Kuala Lumpur

2008-08-26T07:13:00.001-07:00

What are our first impressions of Malaysia so far? Well, all very nice, but it’s a bit damp! It’s like being home in Wales…

Kuala Lumpur is Malaysia’s capital of course. We arrived very glamorously with the fantastic Air Asia to the aptly named ‘Low Cost Carrier Terminal’ of Kuala Lumpur Airport – which is built a whole 20km away from all the other terminals to ensure that the quality passengers don’t catch anything nasty off us cheap-skates. But we’re definitely not proud! We jumped aboard a nice cheap SkyBus and headed into the budget part of the city (China town). You might gather from all of this that Kuala Lumpur (or KL as it’s universally called here) is a bit spenny. Not too bad, but definitely a step up after Thailand.

Kuala Lumpur is an odd capital. The centre is actually quite small and walkable, and is covered by a reasonable SkyTrain/metro system. It has lovely areas of greenery with jungle trees and exotic plants… I suppose the rain is the price you have to pay for a lush landscape! A good deal of the centre of town is given over to plush shopping malls, the most exclusive being that under the Petronas Towers (where Gary actually managed to buy his first pair of shorts today – yippee!).

It’s also got a very tall communications tower – the 4th highest in the world – which we managed to climb just before one of those tropical rainstorms that have been dogging our footsteps. We just managed to do a circuit of the platform with great views over the city before the front closed in, giving us a visibility of say 10 yards…

Anyway, we’ll be moving on to Melaka next (southwards), and then hopefully find some nice little tropical island to test out our new scuba diving skills!

Kuala Lumpur Pictures

2008-08-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

Kuala Lumpur has several tall buildings! The Petronas Towers are impressive twin structures with a linking skybridge - a very small Gary on the bridge in front of them gives a good idea of the scale. Surrounding the towers is a nice park area with lakes to compliment the plush shopping malls nearby. Alternatively, the Menara tower is the 4th largest in the world, and the viewing platform gives an aerial perspective of the Petronas Towers... We saw a spectacularly gloomy view of it as a Thunder storm approached!

Phuket

2008-08-18T22:10:00.001-07:00

If you head south from Bangkok, the shape of Thailand looks a little like the tail of a comma stretching out towards Malaysia. Phuket Island is a little north of the tip, just off the west side – the Andaman coast. It was this part of Thailand that suffered devastation at the hands of the Tsunami a few years back, but now most buildings have been reconstructed so well it’s hard to tell (apart from the occasional sign directing you to the ‘Tsunami Evacuation Point’!). Phuket is not quite the idyllic Thai Island that travel agents describe in their hard-sell – it’s too big for a start, and a bit over developed in places. But it still has beautiful stretches of palm-lined sand, crystal clear water, and – of course – loads of Go-Go bars and sweet Thai girls on the hunt for a sugar-daddy!

But Phuket does have some truly picture-perfect miniature islands off it’s coast – and they were the real reason we came here. Well, at least their coral reefs were. We thought that this trip around the world would be the perfect time to learn how to scuba dive – we actually have time for once! And of course over the next few months we’ll be visiting Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Tahiti… I suppose Thailand is really the start of the beach section of this trip.

So, we checked into a hotel in Patong Beach as it has the biggest concentration of dive shops on the island (and incidentally the highest concentration of Go-Go bars…), and signed up with West Coast Divers for the PADI Open Water Course. This is the standard introductory course for scuba diving – after finishing and passing you become a ‘certified diver’ and can go on dive trips to a depth of 18m. Easy peasy? Erm, well, sort of.

The theory part certainly wasn’t too bad - you just had to read a 200 page manual, watch a video and answer a few questions, before finishing off with a very friendly MCQ exam. After all the exams we’ve done over the last few years… no problem. Then you had to swim 200m and tread water for 10 minutes. That was fine too – although my wonderful tendency to sink like lead made the treading water a tad tiring! Next we were introduced to our scuba gear. Air tanks, regulators, BCDs, weight belts, depth gauges, fins, masks… hooking it all up was bad enough, but after putting it on you feel as cumbersome and ungainly as an astronaut. And the stuff is as heavy as anything – really disconcerting as you’re about to try and swim in it!

Fortunately the equipment is designed to be ‘neutrally buoyant’ with you in it: neither sinks or floats (unless you inflate the buoyancy control device of course, at which point you can pop out of the water like a cork if you’re not careful). And actually swimming underwater with it is relatively easy – once you’ve started. I had a bit of a nightmare trying to start since my ears really didn’t like adjusting to the pressure changes as you descend through the water. It took me ages to get my ears ‘equalising’ properly by swallowing, blowing my nose, jaw wiggling – and sucking loads of Thai sweeties! It was worth it in the end though, as after our training in a practice swimming pool we graduated to spend the last two days diving off the shore of Ratcha Ya and Ratcha Noi – two tiny untouched islands off the south coast of Phuket.

So now we’re both certified (certifiable?!) divers and have seen lots of pretty fishes, coral, and the odd cuttle fish and sting ray. On to Malaysia!

Phuket Photos

2008-08-18T22:09:00.000-07:00

Patong Beach, Phuket Island. It may not be quite the picture perfect Thai island, but it's not bad! Perhaps less busy than could be expected as it's low season. This is supposed to mean lots of rain, but since we've been here there's been none at all for a change. Just absurdly low hotel rates! And below you can see sunset over Patong Beach. As I said, not bad at all.

Some of our first scuber-diving endeavours... You can see a nice friendly moray eel which I spotted trying to hide in a cave in the coral. And just to prove we did do it there's a nice shot of us hovering (elegantly?) above the reef! It is really pretty down there - very silent and still... a totally different world.

Bangkok... Again?

2008-08-16T02:53:00.001-07:00

This is starting to feel like a recurring dream. Our trip has certainly shown us that there are a few places you end up returning to again and again when travelling around in Asia... first Hong Kong, now Bangkok. And I suspect Singapore will be the same! OK, no problem – we like Bangkok, and Hong Kong is one of our favourite cities anywhere, but still, at this point our trip around the world feels like going around a big round-a-bout. But perhaps to some extent that’s Amit and Karyn’s fault for getting married in London. It’s a shame we couldn’t convince you two that a nice romantic wedding on the beach of a remote Thai Island was a good idea…

Anyway, this is just a brief stop in Bangkok before travelling down south towards the Thai islands on our way to Malaysia. I suppose this is the first part of our trip around the world that is on the traditional route – most people leave out China and Japan. And for the first time this year we might actually get to swim around in the sea, and hopefully learn to scuba dive before hitting the Great Barrier Reef in Australia.

Return to Bangkok

2008-08-09T10:07:00.001-07:00

I think it would be fair to say that Bangkok has had a bit of a facelift over the last few years. We were last here in 2005, and stayed (as cheapskate students) on Thanon Khao San in Banghalamphu. Now we’ve returned to Bangkok by ourselves we’ve come back to this notorious backpacker haven (as cheapskate unemployed wasters). But we were surprised –it’s gone a bit more upmarket: they’ve actually paved the street and got rid of the potholes! This place has a lot of life - the street has a permanent market selling typically hippy-backpacker things: sarongs, tie-dye, sliver piercings, hair braiding, and of course plenty of tuk tuk touts! Perhaps the most interesting touts come out in the evening to invite innocent bystanders to ping pong tournaments...

Actually it’s not just Banghalamphu that has gone upmarket in Bangkok. The down town areas have changed completely as well. In the space of three years luxury shopping complexes have sprung up complete with all the idiotically expensive designer brands you would expect to see in Tokyo or New York. This place really does seem to be trying to reinvent itself, and with some success.

Some things do not change though. One of the most startling things about tourists in Thailand is that women are hugely outnumbered. And that a lot of the men are old (65+) and particularly ugly - and usually have really red sunburn all over their bald patches by the time you see them! As you might guess, they are often seen in the company of a sweet young Thai girl with whom they have, of course, quickly struck up a beautiful platonic relationship. Well, lots of the Thai girls we’ve met seem to want ‘English men’, so if it makes them happy…? but you can’t help but wince at the contrast in these couples.

Anyway, enough of Thailand for the moment. Now we’re having a brief holiday from our holiday, and returning to the UK for a week. My friend Amit has very inconsiderately decided to get married, so we’re having to go all the way home for it. Git. So we may see some of you a little sooner than March 2009!

Return to Bangkok Photos

2008-08-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

Bangkok may be a huge, sprawling city, but it's evenings can be quite beautiful if you perch on a roof-top. Just forget that pretty colours mean pollution... we've seen lots of nice sunsets this year, haven't we?...!
The Thanon Khao San - probably the truest home of backpacking world wide. With one lonely Vicki trying not to be noticed by the tuk-tuk and 'Nice Suit?' touts while standing in the middle for a photo. Not an easy task!
But this place really comes alive in the evening, especially on the weekend. then it's difficult to move for the crowds, and the entire street feels like the inside of a night-club - thumping music, beer girls, cocktails, and of course the obligatory touts.

Vientiane

2008-07-26T03:58:00.001-07:00

Is Vientiane Asia’s sleepiest Capital City? Well, I never thought I’d be able to say I’d visited a Capital smaller than my home town Neath, but I have now! For those of you who’ve never seen Neath, to give you an idea Vientane is probably about the same size as Newbury or Epping – much smaller than Cambridge!

But Vientiane is much quieter than all of these towns. This place makes the dreamy Louang Phabang look like a hive of activity. It’s a low rise, leafy, incredibly quiet town on the banks of the Mekong River. A pleasant enough place for whiling away a few days – especially as the French colonial past means that there are several excellent bakeries and you can get a great espresso! There’s the usual quota of nice Wats and Chedis too. These seem to be more delicately decorated than those we’ve seen so far in Thailand (although still heavy on the gold paint), but they are generally fairly modest structures. This is apparently because many the temples were destroyed in Siam-Lao Wars, and only enthusiastic restoration has returned any to something of their former glory.

One slight drawback to coming here in July is that it is in the midst of the rainy season. And here the rainy season is a little more than a shower or two a day – you get truly psychotic weather. One moment it’s a nice warm morning, with friendly white fluffy clouds in the sky. A few minutes later a 10 second gust of wind seems to bring in huge grey storm clouds that instantly drop a small lake of water on you! This is intense rainfall - you can’t see more than 20 meters because of the density of raindrops, and the streets become small rivers and ponds in no time, leaving you trying desperately to keep your flip-flops on as you dash for shelter wading through water up to your ankles! But this doesn’t last long. Within a quarter of an hour the clouds will have swept away, and a startlingly hot sun will dazzle you from a brilliant blue sky, making you quickly don sunglasses and suntan lotion to avoid becoming a sun-scorched frazzle. But don’t worry – the lotion will be washed off thoroughly in half an hour when the whole process gets repeated and you are left drenched and dripping again!

Vientiane Photos

2008-07-26T03:58:00.000-07:00

Gary on the banks of the Mekong river. That's Thailand in the background, with some ominous clouds looming (that probably soaked us later). It's a very quiet capital - you wouldn't believe from the reeds that this is actually the riverside walk at the centre of town!

Of course Laos was once a French colony, and this inspired some fantastic baguettes, and some less fantastic town planning. This is the Patouxi: Laos' answer to the Arc de Triomphe. Complete with pictures from the Ramayana and spiky Lao adornments. It's at the end of a road that doesn't quite match the Champs-Elysees...

They do like gold paint out here! This is the Golden Stupa of Pra That Louang - one of Vientiane's most celebrated Buddhist complexes (and a symbol of Laos we've been told). And everything possible is covered with Gold. Not very French.

Louang Phabang

2008-07-22T03:26:00.000-07:00

This town is an odd place. Completely different from anywhere else on our travels so far. It’s absolutely beautiful – a very quiet small town perched on an outcrop of land at the confluence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers. Louang Phabang is literally in the middle of nowhere, completely surrounded by mountains covered in lush tropical forests, with little fluffy white clouds rolling picturesquely between the peaks. But despite this remoteness the town is literally teeming with westerners! Millions of them! We were surprised by the numbers of tourists in Chiang Mai, but this is something else again. Perhaps it’s the density: a relatively small number of visitors crammed into a tiny town. But the result is just weird – in this distinctly oriental backwater you are far more likely to meet a westerner walking down the street than a local.

I suppose this is because Louang Phabang is considered one of Lao’s most important historical sites. It has the old imperial palace and numerous Wats – but in all honesty these are sweet, modest buildings for the most part, and the we found the real attraction to be the town itself and the surrounding countryside. Louang Phabang has no big buildings – no huge hotels, 24 hour stores, carparks etc – not even a McDonalds or Starbucks!!! Instead you have lovely quaint Oriental-French colonial houses clustered in quiet palm-tree lined streets. It was deemed a protected site by UNESCO in the 1990’s, so modern monstrosities literally can’t be built (legally anyway). As a result, despite the influx of visitors, it remains a quaint, untouched, pretty place. But with lots of nice hotels and stylish shops selling local textiles and handicrafts. A kind of boutique tropical-mountain lost paradise. With millions of westerners everywhere!

To be fair to the visitors here, most are pretty untouristy-tourists. Not the type to follow the flag around with tour guides, bum-bags, giant cameras, and chequered shirts, constantly shouting ‘Wow!’ or ‘Gee!’ at the tops of their voices. The people here are generally the quieter, independent traveller (although a few groups – mostly from the USA – do exist).There are a fair number of families too, although the kids generally look a but bored wandering around Wats with Mum and Dad.

One lovely legacy from the French connection in Laos’s history is that they do bake wonderful bread here. You’ve no idea how good it is to have a fresh crispy baguette after a few months in Asia! The drawback is paying for it. The currency here in Laos is a nightmare. The official currency is the Kip, which is one of these incredibly volatile, silly currencies – to give you an idea £1 is about 17,000 kip. So paying for our bus tickets to the Capital city Vientiane cost over a quarter of a million Kip! As a result the hotels, shops, and even tuk tuk drivers are happy for you to pay in American Dollars or Thai Baht – but prices are stated in kip. So for the last few days we’ve been busy converting between 4 different currencies just to work out how much a can of coke costs! Ah well. I suppose a bit of mental arithmetic is probably good for us in our year out. It wouldn’t be on for us to have a holiday or anything now, would it?

Louang Phabang Pictures

2008-07-22T03:25:00.000-07:00

Louang Phabang. In the middle of nowhere isn't it? This beautiful view over the Nam Khan river fascinated us - fluffy clouds would roll by between the mountains making it quite ominous at times. And the little island village in the background with wooden huts is incredible!

It rained quite a bit here as usual. The small streets were all like this - lined with jungle plants.

The Mekong river just before sunset from a lovely hill in the middle of Louang Phabang. The hill was capped with a golden Chedi of course, and had an impressive collection of Wats and Golden Buddhas.

Chiang Mai

2008-07-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

After a few months in China and Japan it was really strange to see loads of Westerners in Bangkok. OK, this was no big deal. But we were really REALLY surprised at the number of Westerners in Chiang Mai. It's incredible. You can walk down a street in the middle of town and expect to see more westerners than Thai people. Really weird! And a bit of a culture shock after our relative solitude in Eastern Asia!

Chiang Mai is fun none the less, and deserves it's place on most tourist's itinerary in Thailand. It is a relatively sleepy town surrounded by mountains, a painfully slow 12 hour train ride north of Bangkok. Unfortunately we've lost the Chinese and Japanese Shinkansen... The main area of the town is surrounded by a (almost totally ruined) city wall, and an impressively geometrical moat full of really aggressive fish. Everywhere is leafy, green, quiet and laid back - if you forgive the noise made by tuk tuks and sawngthaews (4x4 trucks converted into minibuses) as they roar past.

And it's really cheap. Our plush guest house was only 10 pounds a night, and we'd eat out for about a tenner every evening too. We even picked up a lovely wall hanging for around six quid (after careful tactical haggling). This place is even cheaper than India and China - which is saying something. But then again it is the 'low season' - i.e. the 'rainy season'. Hot and humid, and you're guaranteed to get soaked at least once each afternoon! Actually, it's not too hot compared to Delhi (we can take anything after that oven), and if you do get soaked at least you dry quickly. Usually!

Chiang Mai is probably most well known for its temples. This small town actually has almost as many as Bangkok, which is saying something. On every corner you have a golden Wat, or a wooden Wat, or sometimes even Wats with huge stone centrepieces. We visited the most famous today - Wat Phra That, with it's famous Golden plated Chedi (big pagoda-tower thing). It's situated in a fantastic position on top of a mountain overlooking Chiang Mai - great views (of a weather front which shortly rained on us as it happens), but as it's so far from town you have to brave a very twisty hair-pin-bend-filled ride on a dreaded sawngthaew to get there.

Anyway, in order to get back into the middle of nowhere (away from all this western influence), we've decided to leave Thailand temporarily tomorrow and fly to Laos. Most people haven't heard of Laos - it's a little country nestling between Thailand and Vietnam, north of Cambodia. Scarily for us it's airline 'Lao Air' has one of the worst safety records in the world, although after extensive online research this appears to be for internal flights only. Their international aircraft are meant to be much safer. As safe as any other regional airway. We hope this is right! Oh well, we'll tell you in a few days time with any luck...

Chiang Mai Pictures

2008-07-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

At last! After many attempts we've finally found an internet connection in Laos that is just about fast enough to let us upload Piccys. So here is Gary in Chiang Mai by the lovely tree-lined moat.

Our favourite Wat in Chiang Mai - complete with impressively ruined Chedi. To give an idea of size, note the small Vicki at the base. It must have been REALLY impressive before it crumbled!Below you can see a few more pictures of us by Wats - Gary at a particularly Golden Chedi, and Vick at the base of the steps up the mountain to the same Chedi. We particularly like the serpentine statues lining the sides of the steps - many headed 'Nagas' (like the Hydra of Greek mythology I suppose).

Gary with some more serpents - this time with beaks...?!

A night time photo of a float paraded around during the festival of lights (it past our internet cafe just as we finished writing the Chiang mai blog entry above). There were loads of floats like this one - very festive, bright, colourful - and lots of Thai ladyboys!

Bangkok

2008-07-13T00:06:00.001-07:00

Strangely, the first thing that struck us about Thailand was the huge number of Westerners around. They’re everywhere! Not just in the hotels and around major sights, but just wandering around town like we do. It’s absolutely bizarre after months in China and Japan where you get used to being the only European for a 10 mile radius. If you do happen to meet another ‘gaijin’ in the depths of Toyako Onsen or Luoyang you say hello out of sheer astonishment!

But no, here in Thailand foreigners or ‘farang’ are very common. And as a result, Thais speak excellent English. Or at least it seems superb to us after our Chinese experiences! Just as well as Thai is another nightmare tonal language, so we can have a bit of a rest from the mime / draw / struggle technique.

We arrived in Bangkok about a week ago, and have spent a very restful few days wandering around various parts of town. Our hotel had a very relaxing swimming pool on the roof, and an even more relaxing Irish Bar directly below it, where you could get bargain soothing margaritas in the day-long happy hour! This is in a way just as well, as Bangkok is huge, and a bit of a struggle to get around if you want to avoid tuktuks and taxis. Since we trust the drivers about as far as we could throw them that leaves only the metro, skytrain, and lovely boat rides down the river. And walking of course. All nice options, but given the heat (and the daily downpours you get in the rainy season) it’s good to go somewhere calm afterwards.

One other option to de-stress is a Thai massage. Erm, unfortunately we stayed very near to one of the red-light districts, so we were never sure if the cries from shop fronts of ‘massagee?’ meant a nice foot rub, or a more comprehensive service! We’ll have a go at out next stop Chiang Mai instead where apparently there are safe shoulder rubs on offer everywhere.

While in Bangkok we had a quick wander around several Wats (temples or monasteries), and the Grand Palace. The buildings here are very different from those in China. OK, they all have an oriental slant, but in Thailand they are seriously into gold leaf decoration, and very edge must be as pointy as possible. The Wats in the Palace were particularly sharp – everywhere you look there were building edges, mounds, statues all topped with at least one spike directed to the sky. Basically a parachutist’s nightmare! The dominant religion here is Buddhism, and so you get your fair share of Buddhist images and statues too. We saw a particularly impressive golden reclining one in Wat Pho about 46m long! It had absolutely huge ears and toes.

Anyway, our next stop is Chiang Mai, before hopefully popping across the boarder into Laos. Gary’s parents had to leave us to start their long journey home yesterday – interrupted of course by a luxurious stay in Bombay where they’re booked into a Taj - the poshest 5 star hotel in town (well, it is their wedding anniversary!). In contrast we’re off to a £10 a night jobby up North! We’ll be returning to Bangkok several times in the next month or two, so we’ll probably end up posting more pictures of pointy Wats soon. You never know, we may even brave a ‘massagee’. Just maybe.

Bangkok Pictures

2008-07-12T23:37:00.000-07:00

Bangkok Grand Palace, with Gary and his Mum and Dad. Lots of gold paint on the buildings you might notice. I liked the trees too - they were cut like the lolly-pop trees kids draw! If you look below there are a few more pictures of the Palace, with yet more gold paint. Lots of gold. And lots of pointy spikes everywhere too!

As well as the gold paint and mirrors, the palace was lavishly painted. We were particularly intrigued by this detailed mural of the Ramayana - it seemed to be more of an extract from the Karma Sutra!

Return to Hong Kong and Macau

2008-07-10T04:34:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong seems to be the most sociable venue on our trip so far. Last time we came here about 2 months ago we met up briefly with TJ. This time, Gary’s parents came out from the UK to join us for a short holiday. We convinced them to travel around with us for a bit – from Hong Kong to Macau, and then flying on to Bangkok before they returned to London (with a short stop over in Bombay for a few nights). In other words, their own mini world tour! One of Gary’s dad’s first encounters in Hong Kong was from a shifty bloke who offered a “Punjabi Luxmi” – clearly Gary’s mum wasn’t sufficiently visible since, as it took some time for Gary’s dad to realise, the shifty guy was offering a Punjabi virgin!

As you might have gathered from our previous entries, we love Hong Kong. The vibrant life this city has is amazing. But we were a bit worried that retuning here at this time of year was a tad risky as it’s meant to be the rainy season: very hot, very humid, and very, very wet. But I think Gary’s parents worked some sort of miracle, giving us the best weather we’ve had on this trip so far. Beautiful sunny days, cool breezes, brilliant blue skies with little fluffy white clouds – gorgeous. The only time we thought we’d get rained on was when we took the tram to the top of Victoria Peak for a walk around the mountain. Then the clouds rolled in from the sea in a really ominous way all around us, but still managed to leave us with lovely glimpses of the city below. Very odd views! Even then if only spotted with drizzle for a minute or so before clearing up again to give us the most beautiful night-time panorama across of Hong Kong we’ve seen yet.

One drawback of Hong Kong is that it is expensive to fly out of the place. Luckily the neighbouring gambling haven of Macau is presently taking advantage of this, offering cheap flights to other places in Asia. I managed to wangle flights to Thailand for less than £50 each, so we popped across on the ferry to see the bright lights and glitzy fountains – and yes, the giant golden pineapple casino the ‘Grand Lisboa’ is as hideously fascinating as ever. Oh, and the silly fountain outside the ‘Wynn’ Casino seems to have a bigger repertoire of cheesy songs with choreographed water / light / fire shows than we thought. Our favourite this time was a rendition of an 80’s hit which came complete with fireball eruptions during every chorus: ‘I need a Hero!’ WHOOMPH!!!

This time we managed to stumble upon a dancing festival in the middle of town, near the façade of a famous Portuguese Church that burnt down in the last century. Pure skill in our timing as always! We saw a Chinese Dragon Dance, and then watched as troops of girls from different countries marched past in fancy national dress, posing for photos. The best was the group from the USA. They went Hawaiian style – i.e. dressed in only streamer skirts and bikini tops made of coconuts! The UK girls were much more boringly outfitted in black trousers and T-Shirts with ‘London’ written across the front. Very dull.

Our luck with the weather held out beautifully. It was gorgeous the day we walked around Macau, fine when we got to the airport the next morning, a bit cloudy when we boarded the plane… and THEN the rainy season hit with a vengeance! Our plane was stuck on the runway for about half an hour in a torrential downpour with winds so strong you could see and feel the wings shaking. The very competent pilot managed to take off quickly in a break in the weather, but it was a pretty shaky, turbulent flight. We seemed to escape Macau in the nick of time!

Anyway, on to Thailand. We’ll let you know how we get on in Bangkok. Perhaps we’ll have more offers of ‘massagee?’ from some Thai Luxmi! You never know your luck!

Return to Hong Kong and Macau Pictures

2008-07-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong harbour with Gary, his Mum and Dad. They brought fantastic weather with them to Asia - beautiful bright days considering it was the rainy season.
The weather did turn slightly ominous when we climbed to Victoria Peak. Cloud rolled in around the island in a very spooky way as you can see here. Luckily we got to shelter before we got soaked!
Sunset from Victoria Peak. Nice view!
The Symphony of Lights (a choreographed music / light display) across Hong Kong Harbour. Lots of lasers and lights on a very clear night.
In Macau, with our usual skill, we managed to arrive at the main sights in the centre of town in the middle of a dance festival! We were treated to a fluorescent orange dragon dancing to drum beats, and then loads of international parties who shimmied outside the church. Very festive.

Shanghai

2008-07-06T03:11:00.001-07:00

Our final stop in mainland China – Shanghai. Travelling overland from Beijing has been great (OK, I know we cheated by flying to Xi’an, but it was MOSTLY overland). And it was not nearly as difficult as we expected. There were linguistic problems, but nothing you can’t get around with repeated attempts at an impossible language, miming, scribing Chinese characters in advance, and drawing pictures to explain what you want! We did amuse plenty of the locals with our attempts as you can imagine.

Shanghai itself is nice. It’s probably the place in China we’re most likely to return to soon – except for Hong Kong of course. It’s a very lively city, with areas of colonial architecture (looking a lot like London) mixed in with modern skyscrapers and bordering the narrow twisty alleys of the old town. It has a lot of life, both the old and new town areas. The only drawback to this is in places like Nanjing Road – a modern street bursting with lively shopping arcades and malls – where your footsteps are dogged with touts screaming ‘copy-watch, bag, shoes’ and thrusting brochures in your face. They usually give up on you pretty quickly if you ignore them, or if you crush their brochure to get it out of your way! Accidentally of course!

We wandered through many regions in the place as you might guess based on our travels so far. And they all have a lot of life – with the exception perhaps of the financial skyscraper area of Pudong. But even there the waterfront is lovely for a stroll, with fantastic views back over the river to the Bund. The Old town is a bit of a contradiction. It is centred around a lovely little Chinese Garden called Yu Yuan which, like the gardens in Suzhou, draws huge numbers of tourists. So, this being commercial Shanghai, the businesses have moved in forcefully, and built huge Ye-Olde-Chinese-e Style malls around the place. This sounds really tacky (and it is) but it still teems with life, and is actually very nicely done – lots of cool oriental roofs with soaring beams, dragon-shaped ornaments, and so on. But if you move 20m from this area you’re back in small twisting people-packed streets, ducking under overhanging laundry every few yards while jostling with hawkers and tiny old Chinese ladies screaming at their neighbours. A smidge different!

The areas around Nanjing Road, Remnin Square and the Former French Concession are again shamelessly commercial. This is where the big multinational chains have moved in. You get the usual McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks trio, but also for some reason there are loads of Haagen Dazs Cafes. We counted 11 of the places during our wanders – I’ve never seen more than one in a city before, not even the big capitals like New York, London or Tokyo! But here they are present in force, only to be outdone by Cold Stone Creamery who mix chocolate bits and brownie with fudge into your ice-cream freshly every time you order. Nice!

Anyway, tomorrow we leave mainland China to return to the SAR of Hong Kong. We stay there a few days (and Meet up with Gary’s parents who have decided to have a quick holiday with us) before catching the ferry to Macau (only an hour from Hong Kong) to fly to Bangkok. Then our Thai adventures will begin. But we will miss China. We already miss Japan! We’re not going to want to stop travelling at the end of the year at this rate are we?

Shanghai Pictures

2008-07-06T02:36:00.001-07:00

The Bund of Shanghai - on the one nice fine day we had in the place! This is taken from the town side over the river towards Pudong (the area with all the futuristic skyscrapers). I had to perch patiently on this wall for a while while Gary tried to fit the top of the Oriental Pearl Tower into the photo. I don't think he quite managed it...

Gary on the other side of the river. This lovely waterfront area was the only lively bit of Pudong we could find. And it had an obligatory Haagen Das of course. Below you can see another photo of Gary in Pudong, with the Bund behind him across the river. And there's yet another picture of him in Nanjing road - we managed to escape the 'copy watch?' touts long enough for a photo. Just about!

Vicki in Yu Yuan, Shanghai's attempts to rival the gardens of Suzhou. OK, it's not quite as good as those, but it's still a very beautiful place for an hour's stroll. The downside are the hordes of red-capped Chinese tourists of course.

We've talked a lot about carp in this blog - so here are a few in case you haven't seen them before. These lovely giant goldfish are usually in all the Chinese and Japanese gardens, and go crazy at feeding time as you can see here in Yu Yuan. Half of the fish forced themselves out of the water to get a few breadcrumbs!

Old Shanghai. This contrasts the Bund, Pudong and Nanjing Road slightly. We especially liked the washing-lines in the twisty streets.

Hangzhou

2008-06-29T05:59:00.001-07:00

Our last stop before Shanghai! Travelling through China has been a lot of fun and we’ll be sorry to see the end of our nice loop from Beijing down southwards, but at least we have Hong Kong to visit again soon.

Hangzhou is very close to Shanghai – only just over an hour away by the lovely comfy bullet train. It’s meant to be one of the most scenic places in China, but our first impression of the place wasn’t actually that great. Mainly because practically every downtown road there is being dug up – including the one outside the Railway Station (so navigation was interesting as there weren’t any road signs) and the street of our hotel (so we had to jump over a deep muddy moat to get to the door). But after we got out of the roadworks it was actually really nice, and well worth going to.

The town is built on the side of an incredibly scenic lake. It reminded us a bit of Udaipur in India – lovely water, hills in the background, but no silly palaces unfortunately. What it did have instead was gardens. Actually you could say the entire 3km long lake was surrounded by one massive garden. Very, very pretty, especially as the entire complex was beautifully maintained and stunningly intricate. We walked a circuit around the shores, and across its two long, garden filled causeways – approximately 14km in total! Luckily there were wonderful pagodas and pavilions every now and then which gave lovely views across the lake which were good for a scenic break.

The only real downside was the weather (again). After we arrived and dashed to the hotel there was a truly spectacular thunderstorm, which we missed getting drenched in by the skin of our teeth! Later it cleared up beautifully, so we went for a stroll by the side of the lake at sunset and saw another silly musical lighted fountain show (this one very cleverly and convincingly mimicked waves and opening flowers to some very cheesy Chinese Pop numbers). Unfortunately the next day was overcast, and the heavens decided to open completely halfway around our 14km lake circuit. We got home slightly damp…

Anyway, it was worth the sogginess for a truly lovely walk.

Hangzhou Photos

2008-06-29T05:54:00.000-07:00

The lovely lake Xi Hu at sunset, with a silhouetted Vicki looking a bit sheepish. It is a lovely place - imagine a 3km long lake, surrounded completely by gardens with willows, bridges, pagodas etc. It contrasts completely with the roadworks going on everywhere throughout Hangzhou town itself.

Gary at dusk by the lake, with more willow trees and a pagoda in the background.

Now this is where it starts to get a bit damp. But there were stupid people like us braving the weather, and even boaters on the lake who didn't seem to be too bothered by it.

A rare break in the clouds! Gary by some pretty water lilies.

One of the Pagodas lining the lake, with a small, damp, umbrella wielding Vicki somewhere in front of the escalator leading up to it! It's a very modern pagoda - built directly over the ruins of an ancient one that are preserved in a glass chamber below the building (straight ahead as you enter). This space-age pagoda comes complete with glass lifts which zoom you up to the top floor. Very authentic! But it still looks pretty.

Suzhou

2008-06-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

Suzhou is a small city just an hour east of Shanghai, and conveniently for us, on the bullet train line from Nanjing. So we travelled there at high speed in extreme comfort – we were in a carriage so swish we felt obliged to get our laptop out and play with it just to fit in with all the businessmen! I think we’ve got Chinese travel cracked now – as I’ve mentioned before our method for getting train tickets works a treat, and we even managed to get from the train station to the hotel using their bus system this time. Not bad since we can’t understand Chinese, and they can’t understand a word we say… Luckily numbers and maps most withstand linguistic problems!

Anyway, Suzhou is a very pretty place, renowned in China for its canals and gardens. So lots of the streets have lovely green tree-lined pavements and mini waterways running down the sides. Luckily while we were there it didn’t rain too much like in Nanjing, so we were able to look around reasonably well for a change without running for shelter every five minutes.

We scrambled around three gardens – have a look below for pictures as usual. And I mean scrambled. Perhaps the most fun was a rock garden where the rocks were all meant to look like lions (although we only found one that really did). This garden consisted of a few courtyards arranged around a medium sized pool surrounded by a labyrinth of rocks. You’d follow a path up some steps, over the top of the rockery, then down another flight, duck into a cave which would take you underneath where you’d just been, only to climb up another flight of steps to another part of the rockery for a different glimpse over the pool. And then you’d go through another twist and turn and descent and cave… and so on and so on. It was great fun, but a bit wearing on the legs after a while! You felt like you’d climbed a mountain instead of strolling around a peaceful rockery.

The other gardens were a little more what you’d expect – pools, pagodas, ornamental trees (including some bonsai ones which Gary hadn’t encountered before) etc. Saying that, the largest garden had a pool with by far the largest carp we’d ever seen – these were black monsters about 3 feet long. The gardens were all peaceful and pretty, despite all the visitors – including of course the usual flag-following, red-capped hordes of traditional Chinese tour groups. Why they all wear matching baseball caps when on tour is a mystery to me, but hey, each to their own. What I don’t like is the way some of the tour group leaders have microphones and loudspeakers, allowing them to broadcast their annoying voices to everyone within 100 meters – really really irritating! Saying that, we’ve seen a fair few European tour groups out here too, but these tend to be a lot smaller than the Sino packs, lack microphones, and are mostly French. They are still pretty annoying and best avoided though!

Suzhou Photos

2008-06-24T06:59:00.000-07:00

This picture of Vicki was taken by the pool of humongous carp in the Garden of Humble Administrator. We think that given the garden is absolutely gigantic, the 'Humble' Administrator who had it built was probably not all that humble. Not very humble at all! It may be huge and elaborate, but it's also very very pretty though - lots of pools with water-lilies, bridges, pagodas, pavilions, and of course elegant trees and plants.

Gary emerging from a cave in the Garden of the Lion Rocks. you get an impression of the sort of labyrinthine nature of the place - all prettily arranged around a pool with the usual Chinese Pavilions...

More of Gary - this time in a very realistic alternate universe where he has grown taller than mountains. As you can see, there were really impressively realistic bonsai displays - this one with the strangely shaped rocks was especially good as it looked exactly like a miniature version of a (very pretty) mountain range.

Yet more ponds, water-lilies, trees, pavilions, and this time Vicki with a boat. I think get the idea! A nice town Suzhou, but just as well it didn't rain!

Nanjing

2008-06-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

Nanjing has a reputation in China for being hot. So hot in fact that it’s described locally as one of he ‘Three Furnaces’ – the hottest places in China each summer. Well, we’re brave – or at least after Delhi’s 41 degree Celsius we thought we could survive anything – so we didn’t let that put us off. And just as well as Nanjing is a nice place to visit. Very lively, some lovely parks, good for wandering, has a great subway line, and it wasn’t at all hot when we were there. My one complaint would be the rain – Nanjing was more of a shower than a furnace!

It never really stopped raining! I’ve rarely seen weather so miserable – and you have to remember this is written by a Welsh girl. It just drizzled on and on and on… Which is a bit of a shame as we got soaked repeatedly (even after buying a spare umbrella), and we didn’t wander around and explore as much as we’d have like to. We did manage to have a look at a big park full of lakes and islands at the north of town during the only break in showers in the 5 days we were there, but even then we got a bit damp at the end of our stroll. Truly impressive wetness.

In a way Nanjing is one of the better places in China to survive wet periods. This is mainly because it is thriving – it has lots of shopping arcades and malls or covered areas to explore. And they are worth exploring as they are so different from the ones in the UK. Our favourite was an endless underground labyrinth called ‘Fashion Lady’ which consisted of two layers of interconnected cave-like tunnel networks, lit with lots of neon and fake flames. It was entirely filled with tiny boutique girls fashion shops – although how you’d ever find one you specifically wanted I don’t know as it is impossible to navigate in the place. Just finding an exit is a major undertaking! It’s like an entire underground (and highly fashionable) city, complete with restaurants packed in a long row, gaming arcades, and of course more and more shops.

Anyway, we’re now moving on to Suzhou now, a smaller town with pretty gardens and canals. And we get to travel by posh Chinese Bullet trains again – while in Nanjing we perfected the art of buying rail tickets in China! And this is a very useful skill to have believe me! All you have to do is check a rail timetable on line in English, chose the train number you want, and then write down your request in Chinese on a slip of paper. Hand this to the ticket office person (who will speak only Chinese) and you get exactly what you want with minimal hassle as long as you book a few days in advance to ensure the train isn’t full. You just have to remember to write down all the details, translating to Chinese symbols using the Rough Guide of course: town names (departure and arrival places with a nice friendly arrow from one to the other), date of travel (the Chinese write dates in exactly the opposite to the way we write dates in the UK), train number and time of departure (easy – no translation needed!), soft-seater class, number of tickets, and thank you at the end! Simple! Ah well, it worked a treat to leave Nanjing, and you do get a real sense of accomplishment for buying your own tickets in a completely different and very difficult language – especially if you manage to totally avoid agencies and hotels.

Nanjing Photos (in the rain)

2008-06-19T04:20:00.000-07:00

Umbrellas in Nanjing!

If it wasn't raining it looked pretty bleak, as you can see across the lakes towards the centre of town. This is partially due to the Chinese smog though - most places over here don't see a truly blue sky very often.

A very neon-lit arcade - with a very blue Vicki feeling self conscious in the middle.

A very scared Gary about to go for a hair cut. This is his first of the holiday (put off until his hair got incredibly long and floppy due to cowardice). He definitely needed it!

An even more scared Gary after the haircut... He wants to go back to Peppy's in Cambridge for another one! Very fussy if you ask me :)

Zhengzhou

2008-06-15T03:18:00.000-07:00

Zhengzhou is attractively described by the Rough Guide to China as the most important railway terminal in the country – and as such ‘hard to avoid’. Well, I suspect it’s true – afterall we used it as a stop off to break up the journey for a few days between Louyang and Nanjing on the way to Shanghai – but it’s a little unfair on the place. It’s actually quite a nice, lively, pleasant town. We spent a nice day or so wandering around, especially as there is a Haagen Das Café you can stop off in when you feel like a rest!

One drawback is that although Zhengzhou is modern, leafy and pleasant, has good supplies of chocolate and ice-cream, unfortunately it doesn’t have many good coffee shops. We tried what we thought was a safe café for lunch, only to discover a sandwich that was a little like the Indian interpretation of Chinese food – pretty dire. A shame as it’s nice to have simple western food from time to time, no matter how much you like Chinese.

Moving on from Zhengzhou was interesting too. The rail station is huge, but actually really modern. We got the tickets a few days before we left by trying to write down destinations in Chinese symbols along with dates of travel, times and train numbers. Unfortunately we got served by a really unpleasant woman who was evidently unimpressed by our efforts, and just jabbered at us in incomprehensible (and very very fast) Chinese – not even trying to be helpful. So when the tickets came back with the right date but the wrong time of departure and train number we feared the worst. Especially as Zhengzhou is a long way from Nanjing and we had been hoping to get what we thought was the only fast train of the day. Instead we suspected we were going to be stuck on wooden seats for about 10 hours in a packed, unreserved smoking carriage. Not great. But we were really lucky – we ended up on what was effectively a Shinkansen bullet train! We whizzed off at over 100mph in great comfort, guzzling instant noodles made with the boiling water that’s always supplied freely, just like the locals do. Not bad as the trip only cost £15 each and covered over 500km!

Anyway, we are now in Nanjing, which also seems nice, apart from the fact that it hasn’t stopped raining since we arrived. Just like home :)

Zhengzhou Pictures

2008-06-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

The Pagoda in the middle of Zhengzhou - it's a strange double pagoda, and reasonably modern. Strange! But a nice way to display a clock tower. Gary in the large leafy park in the north of town. It's a curious park - it has the usual pagodas etc, but also has a mini theme park complete with roller coaster, water-slides, boating lake etc - as you can see below from the picture of Vicki.

Luoyang

2008-06-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

Luoyang is off the beaten track. OK, it’s not in the middle of nowhere – it’s actually reasonably sized city even thought it’s not a well known tourist destination. The main reason I’m feeling a bit removed from civilisation at the moment is due to extreme chocolate withdrawal symptoms. You can’t get any here unless you pay really really extortionate prices in a posh hotel lobby – and I’m not that desperate! Everywhere else we’ve travelled we have managed to get hold of the odd bar, or perhaps a chocolate brownie in a coffee shop, but not Luoyang. It simply hasn’t been infected with chocoholism yet. Grr.

Ah well, we’ve only had a brief stop here on our way down the Yellow River towards Shanghai. The main attraction is a very extensive set of carved out caves on the banks of the river – Buddhist monuments carved since 492 AD. You could describe the work as prolific. Looking from a distance at the river cliffs where the caves have been carved is like staring at the side of a sponge or a termite mound – thousands and thousands of caves, niches, and nooks of varying sizes are all crammed into the cliff face with no area of rock untouched. I’m reliably informed by the Rough Guide that there are 1350 caves, containing in total over 110,000 carved statues. Lots in other words. Most are reasonably small – less than 50cm high – but a few are immense. The most impressive cave has a Buddha in the middle who is 17m high and has ears 5m long!

Anyway, it’s a nice place to spend an afternoon wandering around. Tomorrow we are off again though, this time to Zhengzhou – or at least I hope we are. We bought train tickets today in the station office, where they speak and write no English. We suspected as much though, so we prepared in advance by writing down the departure and arrival towns, dates, and train numbers all in Chinese format (including lovely drawings of the Chinese Characters for the cities). It sort of worked. I think. We ended up being served by a very unhelpful unfriendly woman, but we managed to extract from her tickets with the right towns on them with trains leaving on the right dates. Unfortunately that’s where the success story ends – the train classes were wrong (so we’re going to have to survive journeys several hours long standing up), and one of the tickets is for the wrong train, so we’ll arrive in the middle of the night. Ah well, I’ll have to work on my Chinese scripting. It’s easier than trying to understand and speak the language – trust me!

Luoyang Photos

2008-06-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

A very big Buddah with a very small Gary in front! This is the carving with the 5m long ears in case you were wondering. It must have taken a while to chisle out all the rock around him - especially as he is flanked by some really evil looking statues! The second photo shows Vicki with the same Buddah, from accross the river. This is the best place to get an impression of just how many of these caves were carved out of the rock. It does look like an ants nest doesn't it?

Xi'an

2008-06-08T05:04:00.000-07:00

Xi’an is a large city in the Shaanxi province – best known in the West perhaps as the home of the Terracotta Warriors. Actually it’s a really nice place too, so we decided to stay here for about a week to relax before setting off by rail down the Yellow River towards Shanghai.

Once again, like Beijing Xi’an demonstrates that in China they do everything on a huge scale. For instance the City Wall – in some ways it’s almost as impressive as the Great Wall. Well, it isn’t quite as long or situated in the same stunning scenery, but its actually taller and wider, and stretches for over 14km around the inner city areas. Best of all, it’s been well restored, and you can hire a bike out and cycle around the whole perimeter! We decided to go for a tandem and wobbled our way around, stopping occasionally at the various impressive watchtowers and gates. It’s a really nice way to see bits of the city.

When the city wall was restored to its present immaculate state, they also touched up the surrounding moat, and put in some gardens between the two. The result is a lovely strip of trees with pathways you can wander along as you walk along the outside of the wall. There’s even an outdoor gym section which has loads of exercise bikes, monkey bars, tyres, stretching things, twisting discs, and other metal contraptions which we couldn’t work out at all! A nice way to exercise in a pleasant garden though – much more attractive than the gyms you usually see in the UK.

Xi’an also has a few nice Pagodas – the main two are called the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Small Wild Goose Pagoda for some reason. They’re both made of bricks so look a bit like factory towers with shelves, but they are pretty big – the larger one is about 60m tall, whereas the smaller is only 45m high as the top was knocked off in an earthquake a few hundred years ago. Still, they are nice to wander around, particularly as they are both set in immaculate parks. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda is now surrounded by an area that’s almost like a theme park – it’s full of festive shops and stalls, but also boasts a gigantic fountain over 60m long that sends hundreds of jets of water up every few hours to pieces by Mozart. Very surreal! We managed with our usual skill to accidentally see a performance just as we came out of the Temple Complex surrounding the Pagoda. The show went well with a giant ball of lemon-flavoured candyfloss from one of the stalls!

Of course the main attraction of Xi’an is it’s proximity to the Terracotta Warriors. Although we spent ages trying to get into the place as they’d moved the entrance (and not signposted it very well), and were absolutely soaked in a sudden downpour, it was definitely worth the effort to get to. This is a truly weird sight. The warriors themselves are impressive – detailed, elaborate, human-sized – and there are LOADS of them. A few 1000 have been unearthed so far, but these are far less than half then number thought to be buried. Some have crumbled away, but many are in really good condition – especially those that face you as you enter the first excavation ‘Pit’. Rows and rows of the things just face you, lined up, lifelike, but absolutely still - they look really spooky! OK, this may be partially because quite a few are headless…

Anyway, tomorrow we leave for Luoyang, a relatively small place near some intricately carved Caves. It’s off the tourist routes, so it should force rapid improvements in our Chinese… wish us luck!

Xi'an Pictures

2008-06-08T05:01:00.000-07:00

The City Wall of Xi'an... impressively big! The Gate tower you can just see in the very very distacnce in the centre of the wall is actually huge, and positioned only halfway down the length of the wall. And do you like our wonderful bike?! Bits of the wall were up hill, and it was hard going on that thing I tell you! A fun way to get around the city though.
The spooky Terracotta Warriors. Lots of them. All of the heads are different - perhaps modeled after a real army. The really spooky bit is that many heads are missing though. Very surreal. Below is the Small Wild Goose Pagoda - which is actually quite big as you can see from the tiny Vicki in front of it! Not as big as the Big Wild Goose Pagoda though...

...although it is diffiuclt to tell from this photo of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, with Gary in a bamboo grove which formed part of the surrounding garden. The Big Pagoda also had the really silly fountain in which you can see me trying very hard not to get wet while eating a very large and fluffy candyfloss. They do excellent popcorn in Xi'an too.

Return to Beijing

2008-06-03T08:39:00.001-07:00

After our brief visit up north to Chengde, we thought we’d stay a few nights in Beijing before starting our trip down to Shanghai. Beijing is such a vast place that it’s impossible to see all of it anyway. Luckily we visited last year, and so we took in the Temple of Heaven and Yonghe Dong then – or this time we’d have been running around like mad trying to see as much as possible!

Anyway, since we enjoyed going to the Badalang section of the Great Wall of China so much, we thought that we’d try and see a less touristy bit. Unfortunately the drawback to the less touristy places is that they are difficult to get to – at least if you don’t speak or read Chinese! But none the less, we thought we would be brave, and selected a section of wall called Mutianyu – this is meant to be a partially reconstructed and partially preserved part quite close to Beijing. And easily accessible by a simple bus trip as we were reliably informed by the Rough Guide. So, we turned up at the crack of dawn at the bus terminal, only to find that no buses were going anywhere near Mutianyu of course. Luckily there was one going to Simatai, a section of wall 3 hours from Beijing that was supposed to be much more difficult to get to. So much for guide books!

So we hopped on the bus and were wizzed away to the back of beyond - disconcertingly going back north almost as far as Chengde! It was worth the 3 hour bus ride though as the Great Wall at Simatai is really well preserved and only needed to be slightly reconstructed. But best of all it ascends from a lake up a steep ridge, to a mountain top that is as jagged as a knife edge. Literally the ground falls away almost vertically from both sides of the wall as you ascend, giving you the most amazing views… I’ve stuck a few photos as usual below to give an idea, but if you get the chance you should really come to China and see this! It is truly incredible.

And to top it all off, at the end of a wonderful climb to the top of the mountain you can catch a rope swing (flying fox) to the bottom! OK, the ride is only down the last 100m or so (and is about 700m long), but it’s still a lot of fun. You get strapped into a harness, and then hooked onto a rope wire to go sliding down over the lake, with spectacular views of the Wall on both sides. You can go in pairs too, so Gary and I both wizzed down at the same time - which is great as not only can you have the adrenaline rush together but the extra weight makes you go even faster!

Anyway, although wandering around Beijing and the Great Wall has been fantastic, we have to move on. So we’re now leaving for Xi’an, home to the Terracotta Warriors, where we’ll probably stay for about a week. We’ll post pictures of scary pottery soldiers and (hopefully) even more scary food soon.

More Beijing Photos

2008-06-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Simatai Great Wall. You have no idea how difficult it's been to find an internet connection in Xi'an fast enough to load up this piccys. And next we're going into bits of China far less well connected... There may be gaps in the picture parts of the blog as a warning but we'll do our best. Anyway, here is Gary as we ascended to the top of the amazingly jagged crest of Simatai. But if you look at the photos below (taken in the opposite direction) you get an impression of how wiggly the wall is - and how far it goes! It just winds on and on into the distance...

Chengde

2008-06-01T08:44:00.001-07:00

Chengde is a relatively small place by Chinese standards – it’s a city with only a million or so inhabitants located 4 hours north of Beijing by train. OK, a very slow 4 hours – even the express seems to crawl at 30mph or so most of the way… But this is our first exciting venture into mainland China outside the Capital Beijing. Which is actually a bit scary, as not many people here speak English, and Chinese is VERY difficult for us to say even a few words correctly. It’s a tonal language – use the wrong up/down/flat/up-down/whatever intonation when saying a word and you change its entire meaning... Nightmare. Even saying ‘Thank you’ is difficult, and asking ‘How much?’ virtually impossible! Oh, and to make matters worse, at this point our reading of Chinese characters involves deciding whether it’s a nice simple squiggle or a nasty complex one, and trying to imagine the character as a man with a funny hat or a house or something. As you might imagine, this method doesn’t work well if you’re in a hurry. I hope this gets easier!

Chengde however was worth the effort. Its main attractions stem from the fact that Emperors used to come here as a summer retreat from Beijing – it’s relatively high in the mountains and so stays cooler (Gary liked this, I froze…). And of course, it was customary for the Emperors to live a life of simplicity out here in the sticks – their palace was therefore modelled after a Manchu village apparently. But a village with 200 odd rooms, umpteen numbers of servants, and a walled landscaped garden a few kilometres in radius with beautiful lakes and deer roaming freely around. Just like the common people lived!

But it was nice to wander around. The gardens were particularly good – again, like the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, they are built on a huge scale. They don’t do things by halves in China. The lakes have wonderful islands linked by sweet little bridges with Chinese Gates, and little complexes of pagodas, halls and covered walkways like the shores. Very idyllic, particularly as deer still wander freely and are happy to come close to tourists in search of titbits.

Another nice thing about the Imperial sponsorship of Chengde is that a large number of impressive Buddhist temples were built to the North and East of the town. And again, in a typically Chinese fashion these temples are big. Huge. One temple complex has over 60 buildings, the largest of these looking more like a fort than a temple. Which is great as you can explore them more or less freely.

The only downside we found to Chengde was food – we simply couldn’t find a restaurant that wasn’t either a tourist group trap (i.e. gimmicky, overpriced, and with no menu on display) or a fast-food joint. The Rough Guide to China was particularly unhelpful here – after saying ‘you can eat well in Chengde’ it listed only one restaurant (miles from where we were staying) and then miss-directed you to a vague area where apparently there were ‘lots of overpriced but OK tourist restaurants’. As I said, really helpful. Anyway, at least the starvation only lasted two nights, and we are now on our way back to Beijing, where the food is great!

Chengde Photos

2008-06-01T08:32:00.001-07:00

Gary meets a 'wild' deer in Chengde! We've never seen them so tame (most likely due to over feeding from the hoards of Chinese tourists that flock here) . The park which used to be the hunting ground of the Emporers is full of lakes and pagodas as you can see in the photo below. It's also completely surrounded by miles and miles of a large wall to keep the pesky peasants away from the game...
One of the magnificant temples in Chengde. It's difficult to convey the size of them - but to give you an idea the main hall in this one (the tall building at the back of the photo) houses the largest wooden statue in the world - a Buddist Goddess of mercy called Guanyin. She's huge (23 meters high), but beautifully carved and has 42 arms - each with an eye in its palm. Apparently there's an eye in her belly button too.

Beijing

2008-05-31T04:14:00.001-07:00

Beijing, capital of China. A massive, sprawling city. And soon to be home to the 2008 Olympic Games – i.e. a bit of a building site at the moment!

OK, that’s a little unfair – it’s a very nice, high class building site, with lots of modern, swish, gleaming buildings between the areas of construction work. And a really nice new airport to greet travellers. Overall, a big improvement on the Beijing we saw just over a year ago. But you get the distinct impression that work to give the city a sparkling image for the summer games is still very much ongoing.

I suppose this must be what happened in Athens a few years back, as I’ve heard that the Olympics caused the city to be transformed (although I’ve only ever seen the gloomy polluted old Athens). And it would be good if London is spruced up a bit for it’s Olympics in a few years time – it certainly could do with a good facelift. Beijing has a few advantages over London too, - after all, the UK has many nice historical sites and attractions, but it certainly does not have anything quite as magnificent as the Great Wall of China to entertain the visitors that come for the Games. On the other hand, London is a smidge less polluted than Beijing, so they’ll have a little less hassle getting the air clean for all the athletes.

We’ve spent most of our time wandering around Beijing so far, visiting various beautiful parks, the main shopping district (Wangfujing street), and of course the Forbidden City. Beijing is pretty large, with everything spaced out, so I suppose you might expect the Imperial Palace to be big, but nothing really prepares you for the scale of the place. Assuming the map in the rough guide is vaguely accurate, the complex is about 1 km wide and 2 km long – and the entire area is packed with buildings and courtyards – very little is given over to gardens. Walking through the length of the place seems to take forever, and that’s without exploring all the tiers of halls and gardens that lie to the East and West of the main palace buildings! If you climb the hill in the Jingshan gardens just to the north of the Forbidden city you get a really good view of the extent of the complex – a mass of glittering intricate yellow ceramic roves that stretches into the distance, the most southerly gates almost disappearing into the haze of the city. Have a look at the photos for some sort of an idea.

Well, I suppose you might expect a place like the Forbidden City to be built for the Chinese Emperors – afterall, apparently they very rarely left it, and enjoyed unbelievably opulent and extravagant lives within. This of course would have encouraged invasion, and as a result there have been a fair few Dynasties. And of course various attempts were made by Emperors to preserve their Empire from marauding heathens – the most ambitious being the Great Wall of China. This incredible (and totally futile) structure stretches from Shahaiguan by the Yellow Sea to the Jiayuguan Pass in the Gobi Desert, and is about 7 meters high and 7 meters wide for its entire length apparently. They do things on a fairly grand scale in China.

We saw the part of the wall that is most accessible from Beijing, and therefore also the most touristy bit. Saying that, getting the 70 km northwest of the city on Chinese public buses (where no-one speaks English, and all place names are only spelt in Chinese symbols on bus stops) was pretty challenging! We plan to be even more adventurous soon and use public transport to visit a quieter, more remote section of wall. Anyway, despite being one of the biggest tourist destinations on Earth, the Badaling section of the Great Wall was utterly magnificent. OK, you do get the hordes of Chinese tourists - mostly in Guided groups with 30 or so middle-aged people wearing identical red baseball hats follow a little red flag around! But actually the vast majority of these only visit the very middle of the Badaling section of wall. If you walk along the wall to the North or the South you easily get away from the crowds. The best bit is the scenery though – this section of wall is built along the top of mountain ridges, so if constantly rises and falls, twisting and turning to follow the highest and therefore most defensible line – almost doubling back on itself at times. It looks almost serpentine as it runs on and on into the distance.

Anyway, we’re leaving Beijing tomorrow to take the train up to Chengde. This is where some of the Emperors came in the summer to escape the heat of Beijing – so you can expect a few more pictures of opulent palaces and gardens to appear on the blog in a few days time!

Beijing Photos

2008-05-31T03:55:00.001-07:00

The Great Wall of China - complete with a cheesy 'One World One Vision' Olympic sign in the background. Nice wall though! This is the most touristy stretch at Badalang, but to be honest its still well worth a look - the wall winds up and down the mountain in a particularly serpentine way.
Gary with a nicely snake-like wall behind him!

And look in the other direction, and you see yet more wall winding up and down, on and on into the distance.
One of the gateways to the Forbidden City in Beijing. It is a truly huge complex, all tilled in yellow ceramic (the colour of the Emperor apparently) . It is very difficult to photograph the place simply because of the size - you get a better impression with the next photo... a view from the park behind the City. The artificial hill from which this photo was taken was made from the earth dug up when the moat around the Forbidden City was made!

One of the nice parks in Beijing - lots of water, pagodas, gates etc. Very pretty, and good to wander around after the vast grandeur of the Forbidden City.

Return to Tokyo

2008-05-26T02:27:00.001-07:00

This is the end of our two weeks in Japan, and we’ll be moving on to China later today. Sad, really. We spent the last 4 nights in Tokyo, as whenever we’ve been to Japan in the past we’ve always felt that we haven’t spent enough time here. It’s a huge fascinating city, with lots of life, bustle, and strange things to explore. And fantastic food to enjoy!

And after Nikko, which (although a very beautiful place) has a town-wide closing time of about 3pm, it’s been nice to stay somewhere where you can get a bite to eat any time of the day or night. We spent most of the time here wandering between places. We’d find somewhere we wanted to see (like Shinjuku or Ginza) and walk to it from our hotel in Roppongi. This way we got to explore the town a lot better than just taking the tube – you keep on stumbling across things like beautiful Japanese gardens, temples, giant replicas of the Eiffel tower, monstrous fish in big tanks, and so on. Have a look at the photos below to see what I mean. As I said, strange place!

I think my favourite temple in Tokyo is still Senso Ji. We came here a few years back in the middle of a festival, and I’ve had the most amazing photo of it on my laptop as a desktop ever since! OK, I didn’t manage quite such a nice photo this time around, but even though there was no festival on the place still had a carnival atmosphere. Very lively, good natured, and the temple buildings themselves looked absolutely immaculate. In fact, while we were there they were cleaning the giant 5 story pagoda with a Cherry Picker crane.

Another good place to see was the bay. It’d almost difficult to think of Tokyo as a coastal town, as most of the famous regions are well away from the sea. But actually it’s worth taking the monorail out over the massive Rainbow Bridge into the island of reclaimed land in the middle of the bay simply for it’s randomness! This place seems to be a strip a mile or two long, filled with giant shopping arcades. Not just any malls though, that would be boring! The best one has a Venice theme, and is decked out with silly fountains, painted ceilings, and (as every Italian city has) a huge Toyota show centre with silly little electric cars driving themselves around at track that circles the main show area. We found it a fascinatingly tacky place to spend a few hours, but many young Japanese girls were out in force spending hideous amounts of money in the designer shops.

Of course other places where you can also dispose of your life savings by buying shoes and a matching handbag are the posh department stores of Ginza and Shinjuku. These are also great to wander around, but they also have cheaper normal areas to shop in, and fantastic basements full of delicatessen counters where you can pick up really tasty gyoza (Japanese fried dumplings). Roppongi, where we stayed, also has it’d designer sections (mainly around the Ritz and the huge mall Roppongi Hills), but it’s also has some really odd areas. Probably the most bizarre is the life-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower – no, sorry, not quite a replica - the Tokyo version is 3m higher, and painted red and white for some reason. But I also liked the amusement arcade with the fish tank outside that was home to a small shark and a huge grey fish. Seriously, this fish probably weighed nearly as much as me!

Anyway, on to Beijing, where the writing is just as easy to understand as Japanese, and absolutely everyone speaks English! This next five weeks in China should be fascinating, but it’s unlikely to be easy…

More Tokyo Photos

2008-05-26T02:16:00.000-07:00

Roppongi Hills - a multi million pound shopping complex complete with Japanese gardens, sky-scrapers, designer shops, and or course a giant spider.
Roppongi also has an arcade for gamers. To lure you inside they've placed a giant fish tank on the street wall. This is one of the inhabitants (no, I don't mean me haha)! If you look carefully in the background you'll see a mini shark wizzing by.

Senso Ji - Tokyo's liveliest temple. A nice Pagoda too! It also has a very pleasant garden (below) with a sculptured waterfall, pond and series of bridges.

Tokyo Tower. It does look like the Eiffel tower, eh? Odd colour scheme though.

Japanese gardens are very beautiful. This on had a lovely lake (with greedy coi carp), and miniature hills to walk up and down.
Another nice Japanese shrine. This one was in Uno - one of the northern areas in the city. It's housed in a very extensive garden complex, along with many many more shrines.

Nikko

2008-05-24T06:36:00.002-07:00

Although northern Japan has beautiful forests, lakes, volcanoes and crabs, it definitely lacks the magnificent Shrines and Temples of the south. I think this is meant to be due to the relatively late colonisation of Northern Honshu and Hokkaido. So, to get our fix of Shriney-Templey things we decided to stop off the Shinkansen line just north of Tokyo, at the mountainous town of Nikko.

This is a really small place, very prettily located along a mountain river in the middle of forested peaks. It is mainly visited as it houses one of the most spectacular Shrine complexes in Japan – Tosho-gu. It was built following the death of one of the most powerful Shoguns in the 17th century, and made infinitely glitzier several years later by his grandson. Like most Japanese monuments its made completely of wood, but I think unlike most it hasn’t burnt down 5 or 6 times only to be reconstructed!

Anyway, the place is completely over the top! We haven’t seen this much gold and glitz since the lights of Macau’s casinos. Plus it’s a huge shrine complex, complete with mammoth prayer gates and a five storey Pagoda. And despite all the gilt it does look nice (lots of good dragons carved into the buildings), and it has a lovely location in a dense pine wood on the side of the mountain. Perhaps the nicest thing about the place is that Tosho-gu is only one of many shrine complexes in the immediate area around Nikko. This means you can escape the hordes of school children (with matching colour coded hats for each school) in the main area and wander through the pine glades to suddenly come across another impressive temple or Pagoda.

The downside to Nikko is that it closes a tad early. We researched this in advance, reading up in the Rough Guide like good tourists. We were reliably informed that the restaurants would be closed by 8pm, so we thought we’d get an early dinner by 6pm. Only to find that all the restaurants were closed! The place was a very pretty ghost town. We eventually did find somewhere (after about a mile of walking), and then returned to our hotel for a traditional Japanese bath, (which was so hot we nearly passed out after all the walking).

Nikko Photos

2008-05-24T06:36:00.001-07:00

Nikko, a peaceful, serene, beautiful town up in the mountains north of Tokyo. Where you'll only be disturbed by the gentle sound of running water, or millions of school children on a day trip in matching yellow hats. Wonderful.

Gary by a very lovely five storey pagoda - covered in glitz and guilt (and immaculate red paint). The Prayer Gate is pretty impressive too.

This is one of the holy sites - a sacred wooden bridge. You have to pay to walk over it, so the road bridge (which as you can see from the photo gives an excellent view of the holy one) is a better option. Oh, and I think it's only burnt down about 5 times since it was first built!

Sendai

2008-05-20T17:18:00.001-07:00

Well, we’ve left the wildlife of Hokkaido behind now, and have started back south into Honshu. Admittedly, the north part of Honshu, where its still pretty cold and overcast though. We decided to break up out return to Tokyo with a stop off in Sendai – a bustling town on the east coast of Japan. It’s a nice place – lively and modern, and has a few lovely shrines and old castle ramparts on a wooded hill just outside town.

The real attraction in the area is Matsumashima bay though – a large sweeping bay filled with loads of tiny islands of various shapes and sizes. This is (by some Japanese rating scheme that I don’t know anything about) ‘one of the top three views in Japan’. At least according to the tourist office and both club, who proudly write this information (in English) on the front of their caps. Hmm. Not that these adventurous sailors were doing anything particularly interesting when we visited, as no boats were allowed out due to high winds.

I don’t know about other ‘views’ in Japan, but the bay itself was a lot of fun. Actually I’d argue that I’ve seen much better views elsewhere, but the walk along the lake and chance to explore a few islands was really nice – and very Japanese. The best part was the way some of the islands closest to the shore were linked by bridge to the mainland – so you’d get a lovely red arched Japanese bridge to walk across on the way to have a look around the island. The little islands themselves were covered in pine tree woods, and inevitably housed a nice wooden shrine or pagoda, and one even had the ruins of some stone Buddhist temples.

The best island to explore was actually quite large. It was linked to the northern edge of the bay by a bridge about 150 m long. We turned up quite late, and so were lucky to be let across. The island it led to took us a good 30 minutes to run around before dusk fell.

Anyway, its back down south towards Tokyo next, as we don’t have too much longer in Japan before leaving for Beijing. We do intend to stop off for a night in a small town called Nikko first though, and then spend 4 nights in Tokyo itself before we leave. Japan is a lot of fun to explore!

Sendai Photos

2008-05-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

As we arrived in Sendai station, we heard loud drumming and some strage flute like instruments. It turns out we managed to arrive in the middle of some festivea with lots of music, dancing, and these portable shrine carts! Skill!
On the castle ramparts, looking back over the town. These guys seemed to be having fun dressed up as Samuri - lots of people wanted to have their photos taken with them - particularly 50 something ladies for some reason.
Matsumasima bay, with a few of its many islands.

One of the many bridges by which you could cross to an island. This particular island had ston Buddhist relics all over it, and a few shrines made of wood too.a

Hakodate

2008-05-18T07:05:00.000-07:00

OK. Now I have no issue with wildlife – I like animals, birds, fish, insects, anything really, with the small exception of spiders. Gary doesn’t like spiders either, in fact he likes them even less than me. And his dislikes extend to anything that scuttles really, be it insectoid or crustacean.

So you can imagine the look on his face yesterday when we were served some crab miso soup. Now that sounds fairly benign doesn’t it? Crab? Well, the crabs we get in the UK are pretty innocent, small things. Out here they look like they belong in a Scifi B movie! I’d like you to try to picture this miso soup turning up, with half a crab poking out of the bowl. Each of its legs was about 30cm long – about a foot for those of you who still like the old imperial measures! Imagine its body sitting in the big soup bowl, but the legs wouldn’t fit so they were curled over the side with the claws hitting the table top. It looked a bit like the soup contained a giant clawed hand with long spooky fingers, or a face hugger from Alien!

I looked at it, blinked, froze. And waited for Gary to see it as the waiter passed it over his shoulder. His face was a picture when he did! Absolute terror – eyes widened, expression froze, body totally rigid. And he stayed absolutely still for a good 20 seconds after the ‘thing’ was deposited in front of us. Then we looked at each other and wondered how the hell we were meant to eat it with only chopsticks!

We chickened out completely. We each took a nice safe piece of salmon sushi instead, and hoped it would go away. When it didn’t, we eventually managed to move it to an empty sushi tray so at least we could get at the soup. As we moved it all the hinges on its legs moved as if the thing was still alive. And please remember that each leg was 30cm long. With claws a good inch long at the end. Please consider that.

Anyway, things like this crustacean seem to be common here in Hakodate. This town is a harbour situated on a peninsular at the Southern point of Hokkaido. It’s not very densely populated for a Japanese town, and has large mountains surrounding it. We climbed one at the end of the peninsular yesterday to get a fantastic view – have a look at the photos below.

Wandering through Hakodate you see lots of evidence that it’s a major fishing port. Especially notable are the large tanks at the side of the road containing the catch of the day. Strangely enough, the local specialty seems to be crab. And now we know that the horror we encountered over dinner is actually a tiddler by Hakodate’s standards! We found one purple monster that had a body the size of a watermelon and legs each about a yard long. I’m truly not exaggerating. And they are everywhere! My favourites are the crabs that seem to be trying to escape from their roadside tanks – you’ll walk past to see them hooking a few huge claws over the side in a bid for freedom. Argh.

This morning we took the train to the nearby national park of Onuma Quasi. This is yet another beautiful wilderland of volcanoes, forest and lakes – this time convenietly a short walk from a rail station. Also, someone has in the past helpfully linked many of the small islands near the lake shore by a series of arching bridges.

We spent a lovely few hours strolling around, admiring the views, lily ponds, and 10cm long tadpoles. But probably the most impressive event of the day was again centered around Hakodate and its infamous crabs. As we wandered past the morning market on the way to the railway station I asked a fisherman if he’d mind me taking a photo of a medium sized crab he had on a weighing scales. He enthusiastically agreed, then picked up the monster and tried to hand it to Gary. My lovely boyfriend turned an interesting shade of off white and backed away, pursued by the friendly fisherman! In the end, when he could see Gary could probably run faster than him, the fisherman was more than happy to pose with the crab, as you can see below. It’s a shame it wasn’t one of the biggest specimens, but I think it’s enough to give you an idea…

Is this the real Japan? Or is it the sweet volcanic lakes and cherry blossom trees we saw in Toyako Onsen? I don’t know. We’re scared, but on the other hand we’re really enjoying exploring it anyway!

Hakodate Photos

2008-05-18T06:56:00.000-07:00

Meet some of the friendly locals in Hakodate! Do you honestly blame Gary for hesitating to hold this thing? He insists I emphasise that he wasn't so much of a coward to refuse outright! Hmm. Oh, and you must remember that there were much larger crabs than this one around.
The view from Hakkodate peak over the pensinsular and town. You could be lazy and take the cable car up here, but its actually really nice to walk up like we did.
Gary in front of the beautiful lake - volcano view of Onuma Quasi National park.
And after all the crab realted traumas, a nice way to relax in Hakodate is to use the foot spa in the centre of town. You just turn up and pop your feet in the steaming water. Really nice. I just hope no-one had vurrucas...

Toyako Onsen

2008-05-16T03:42:00.000-07:00

Ah. Now we are in Japan. I thought we arrived here a few days ago when we entered Tokyo, but I was wrong. This is the real thing. I think!

We are presently in Toyako Onsen. This is small town on the edge of a very beautiful circular lake, with a round volcanic island positioned in the very middle. It is famed for its lovely scenery and hot-springs, and apparently is on of the spas where the Japanese come to bathe (i.e. in ‘onsen’). However, they would also like foreign tourists to come here it seems…

As we walked from the bus stop along the lake-side to our hotel, laden with rucksacks as usual, we were approached by a very polite, young, friendly Japanese lady. She introduced herself as a TV director, and asked us (very very nicely) would we mind (please) being interviewed and filmed for a program on foreign tourists in Japan. There is apparently a summit in Toyako Onsen at the moment, aiming to discus ways of attracting more foreigners to the area.

Argh! Was the first thing that occurred to me. But she was so nice, friendly and polite that saying no would have been like kicking a puppy. And this is bearing in mind we had no hesitation to saying no to the strange guy in Hong Kong that wanted to take my photo for an ‘on-like fashion magazine’. So, Gary and I looked at each other, winced, and got wheeled in front of a film crew that magically appeared bearing a large video cameral and a huge fluffy microphone. We got quizzed on the Tourism summit, which we’d never heard of – I invented something about publicity being good for Tourism in Japan in general as its not widely known as a holiday destination in the West. We were asked about how Toyako Onsen itself should attract foreign tourists - bearing in mind we’d been there for all of 5 minutes, and had great difficulty finding the right train station, bus, and directions as EVERYTHING here is in Japanese characters and no-one speaks any English! Gary fielded this one with something about a very nice friendly lady who pointed out the right bus to us, and the announcements on the Shinkansen being well articulated in English. After this we were asked (painstakingly nicely) to walk into the tourist office and pick up a map. We did, feeling like right idiots, to be told that we acted ‘very natural’. Then (thankfully) we escaped, and fled along the lakeside!

Our traumas for the day were not over however. The hotel we had booked screwed up our reservation, and the bloke at the front desk was very rude. So we left that place and trekked around (rucksacks on backs) for an alternative. Everything here is really expensive. It must be where rich Japanese businessmen come to unwind. We eventually settled on a big plush hotel that was no more expensive than the less plush places. We were shown up to the ninth floor by a very friendly lady with no English, to a beautiful traditional Japanese room with a beautiful view over the lake, immaculate tatamis, a low table with green tea making facilities, but no beds in sight! She showed us where the dressing gowns were kept, and the bathroom (containing yet another really complex toilet with a warmed seat and several mysteriously labelled squirting buttons – I’m scared), and then she left. After a bit of exploration I found some bedding. Luckily this magically materialised into a bed later in the night while we were eating dinner (a huge, and quite tasty, complimentary buffet), saving us from having to work it out ourselves.

We also braved the cold wind in the afternoon to walk 5 miles or so along the edge of the lake to a volcano and back. This was really nice – there is a new volcano here called Showa Shinzan. It’s only about 50 years old – it first formed during the Second World War. Showa Shin was happily steaming away in the shadow of its bigger, more established brother on the side of Lake Toya. Yet again I think we must have seemed mad to hundreds of Japanese tourists. They were all bussed by their tour companies from train to hotel, to lake-side, to volcano, and back. Walk? Nah! They peered out of their big air-con busses at us as if we belonged to another species as we trekked up the long road to the lovely Showa Shinzan. Ah well.

Then finally it was back to the hotel for dinner, and firework-viewing over the waters of the lake. Weird day!

Tokako Onsen Photographs

2008-05-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

The film crew, and us, the foreign tourists. See - we have photographic evidence of this strange encounter! In the background you can make out the lovely lake Toya, and its volcanic island.

Our traditional Japanese room at the plush spa onsen hotel in Toyako Onsen. Low table, tatami floor, and no bed. But you do get traditional Japanese green tea making facilities tucked away in the orange / brown box on the table. Oh, and a nice red bean paste glutenous bun each. Sweet.
We seem to have mastered the art of the camera timer! Lake Toya and volcanoes, and a passing raven. There are lots of them out here...

Showa Shinzan, a new, miniature volcano. With lots of steam issuing from its peak.

Fireworks over lake Toya. You`ve no idea how many photos Gary took to get the perfect shot with lovely water reflections. This wasn`t easy, as the fireworks were started from boats that kept on moving!

The very lovely volcanic island of lake Toya - revieled in all its glory the morning we left Toyako Onsen. Until this point it had been partially shrouded in clouds.

Sapporo

2008-05-16T03:32:00.001-07:00

Well, we fled India early because 41 degrees Celsius was a bit warm. And I think we my have overcompensated.

We spent about 10 hours on various trains travelling north from Tokyo – 1050 miles north to be precise. And ended up in the region called Hokkaido - in the capital city, Sapporo. Which in a way is nice. Sapporo is a very vibrant, lively place. Nice to wander around. There are lots of tasty restaurants to choose from, and interesting department stores to get completely lost in. The basements of these are the best – they have delicatessent counters which hand out free tasters from time to time, so you can get delicious samples of dumplings, gyoza, and various scary Japanese foods. And the servers are so polite when you pass these food counters – they all call out ‘sumasen’ or something, smile and bow. When we left one department store yesterday at closing time we were virtually bowed to by 20 odd people at the same time. Very disconcertingly polite!

Sapporo is famous for its beer. According to Gary it has very good draught beer – ‘Sapporo’ brand of course. Unfortunately, as Gary has discovered by experimenting since we’ve arrived, not all canned beers you buy in Sapporo are safe. Ones with green in the label, or claiming to be ‘original’ are bad news. Those ‘brewed for your pleasure’ or ‘good times’ are worse! Apparently they tend to taste completely flavourless alcoholic water – a bit like dilute vodka. Nice.

Hokkaido does have a disadvantage however. It’s a bit like Scotland: renowned for its beautiful scenery and cold weather! It’s freezing here – and I thought Tokyo was cold. Ah well, bring back Delhi! Tomorrow we’re going to a national park of volcanoes, hot-springs and scenic mountains. I wonder how Scottish the weather will be.

Sapporo Pictures

2008-05-16T03:24:00.000-07:00

A very picturesque garden by the old government building in Sapporo. The blossom was out in abundance when we visited, but I think I was a bit more impressed by this than Gary!

We keep on meeting mini red and white copies of the Eiffel tower out here in Japan. Near this one was a silly long garden with some fountains (whose spray soaked me while Gary was very slowly taking this photo). Nice day though, with lovely clear blue skies!

Tokyo

2008-05-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

Japan. This is perhaps not the first place that springs to mind for a backpacking trip around the world as it’s so expensive. In fact, we originally didn’t plan to come here as we thought it would cost too much. But unfortunately, when we were buying the flight tickets we just couldn’t resist…

Ah well, staying in Tokyo is at least much cheaper than London. And for us, much more unfamiliar and fun! We came to Japan once before, about 5 years ago, for a conference. That time we caught the Shinkansen along the western part of the Islands and back, visiting Hiroshima, Kyoto, Himeji, Fukawaka, and of course Tokyo. And, as most of you know, we loved it! Japan is just such an amazing place to explore – very alive, very different from the west, very beautiful. And also very different from anywhere else we’ve been in Asia.

This time in Tokyo we’ve only stopped off for two nights, before departing on the Shinkansen to North Japan – the island Hokkaido. Two nights amounts to only a day wandering around, but even so it’s been great fun. We’ve been staying in Roppongi, a recently developed modern area, complete with the highest building in the city and a replica of the Eiffel Tower painted red and white! What more could you ask for? Yesterday we walked all the way from here north west to Shinjuku – one of the best known lively areas in Tokyo, full of restaurants, bars, shops, and Japan’s Times Square (really a huge department store block). Wandering between areas is great in terms of seeing lovely shrines, gardens and other random things (including dragish, gothic, punky teenage Japanese girls/boys/others). The only drawback is the weather – rainy, wet, cold and miserable – just like home! The first thing we bought (other than a train ticket and subway fare to get to our hotel) was an umbrella – one of those clear plastic ones that you only really get in Japan. Ah well, at least it’s more comfortable than Delhi’s heat.

Anyway, this is only our first, and shortest, visit to Tokyo on this trip now we are on the Shinkansen whizzing 1050 miles north to Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido. This seems to be the part of Japan most like Scotland. Probably nice and warm then!

Tokyo Pictures

2008-05-13T03:50:00.000-07:00

A modern entrance to a very modern shrine in Tokyo. This hill had a lovely cluster of temples on top, but best of all, around the side there was a series of escalators to take you up in case you felt a little tired!
Another lovely shrine (this one a little more traditional). The Japanese make great use of wood and lanterns in these things. Which can be a drawback too. Most of the temples and castles in Japan are actually reconstructed having burnt down 4 or 5 times!

Hong Kong

2008-05-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

This place is great. Hong Kong has to be one of my favourite cities. It’s just so alive.

We’ve been here over a week now, staying in Kowloon (on the mainland directly opposite Hong Kong Island). And strangely enough, even though Hong Kong is a lively bustling city, we’ve found it really quite relaxing. Strange. Maybe its partly because the temperatures are much lower than in Delhi (nice and comfortable at around 29 Celsius rather than 41!).

Anyway, we’ve wandered around the town as we usually do, visiting Victoria Peak on a beautiful clear day (see the pictures below). We’ve taken lots of ferries to get from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island and back – which was incredibly scenic tonight as we managed to skilfully (by accident) time our crossing so that it coincided with the nightly light show. This is when the major skyscrapers in Hong Kong’s waterfront show off, competing to light up and flash, all coordinated to a cheesy music soundtrack which you can listen to on the waterfront of Kowloon. It sounds incredibly tacky – and I suppose it is – but it also looks pretty good as you’ve got some fairly impressive buildings with neon and laser displays!

We’ve also wandered through loads of the parks around here. Hong Kong has in retaliation to its urbanisation developed some of the most spectacular parks I’ve ever seen. They are beautifully artificially sculptured to look natural (lots of waterfalls, ponds, exotic trees), but also include animals - pretty impressive ones. The Kowloon Park for instance has a massive pond enclosure, complete with a flock of flamingos. The Hong Kong garden competes with a gigantic aviary. But the clear winner of the animal stakes is the Botanical and Zoological gardens, which has huge, well-maintained enclosures of limas, orang-utans, sloths, flamingos, cranes, ibises, parrots, and loads of other birds and animals. And a jaguar! Sadly, when we visited the jaguar was not too well (a notice said it was ‘on medication’), and seemed to be sleeping at the back of the enclosure. On the other hand the orang-utans were definitely having fun, and there were three really sweet baby ring tailed lemurs climbing around or clinging to their Mums.

Another great thing about this part of the world is the food. Chinese food is for the most part really nice – and best of all, varied. Dim Sum, sea food, rice and noodley things, Peking Duck… lovely. We were also lucky to meet up with TJ briefly (one of our friends in Newbury for those of you that don’t know him), and we had some lovely Chinese foods we hadn’t come across before. There are a few scary ‘foods’ in this part of the world that we haven’t summoned up the courage to try yet: including chicken-feet, insectoid things, and plenty of restaurants that smell odd! Saying that, one of the nice things about Hong Kong is that you can very easily get good food from other countries than China: Italian, Japanese, Thai, or just a good sandwich! At least this stops you getting too saturated with East Asian cuisine! Unfortunately this wasn’t the case in India, where you try Indian interpretations of dishes from anywhere but India at your peril!

Anyway, on to Tokyo next – tomorrow. That should be fun! We’ll post some more pictures and notes soon. All the best.

Hong Kong Photos

2008-05-09T09:24:00.000-07:00

Gary at the harbour of Hong Kong. This was taken from the Kowloon (mainland side) towards Hong Kong Island. Not exaclty what you'd call a bad view!
On top of Hong Kong's Victria Peak at sunset. This is facing North Westish, towards China where the islands and mountains fade into the clouds.

Looking towards Kowloon from the Peak over Hong Kong at night. Again, another OKish view don't you think?

Us with TJ on his visit! Nice view from our hotel window over Kowloon too.

Hong Kong and Kowloon from the peak by daytime.

One of the very lively Markets in Kowloon. This one is in Mongkok, right next to two really incredible specialist markets: the goldfish market (where beautiful tropical fish hang in plastic bags awaiting new owners) and the bird market (the same idea but for birds in delicate wooden cages).

Macau

2008-04-29T10:24:00.001-07:00

OK, this is a little different from India! We flew into Hong Kong a few days ago, but only stayed there briefly before catching the ferry over to Macau (we’ll be staying on Hong Kong for a lot longer later). And Macau is very special. Have a look at the pictures below to see what I mean!

This has to be the silliest, tackiest city I’ve ever seen! At least it doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously (although I dread to think how many people have ruined their lives here). It’s basically the only place in China where gambling is legal - somehow the result of it being an old Portuguese colony as Hong Kong used to belong to the UK. So it tries to mimic Las Vegas - lots and lots of glitzy lights and noise. And silly buildings with even sillier fountains. For example, we’re staying in the Hotel Lisboa, which is part of one of the biggest casino complexes here (we thought we should experience Macau properly!). The Lisboa consists of an old hotel that looks like a fairy cake with scrolling neon lights, and a new wing called the ‘Grand Lisboa’ – which is a giant golden pineapple made of shiny gold reflective glass and absolutely covered with lights of all colours, which flash on and off in an incredibly tasteless coordinated way to create words and pictures! Crazy – hideous, but fascinating!

The casino next-door (the Wynn) is a much less ostentatious building – just a huge square of nasty coloured reflective gold glass. Nothing special around here. But to make up for this it has a big fountain outside which puts on music displays: we just witnessed one to the soundtrack of ‘Diamonds are Forever’! The fountain jets swirled, shot in the air, and cascaded, all coordinated perfectly to the cheesy music. And then to finish it off, at the end jets of flame erupted from around the outside of the fountain pool! Crazy!

As for the inside of the casinos, well, they are equally silly if the Lisboa is anything to go by. The foyers have the biggest chandeliers I’ve ever seen, and are full of gold, shiny black and silver marble, mirrors, priceless jade statues and of course replicas of ancient Egyptian artefacts (like the Tutankhamen funeral mask). You can also find fountains inside with flashing neon displays that surly induce epilepsy. And go down to the ground floor and you’ll see an endless parade of young, pretty Chinese girls immaculately dressed in a uniform of high heels, low cut tops, and very short skirts. Hmm.

The rooms are also completely over the top. Although actually not always too expensive – believe it or not we’ve got 5 star plus facilities here for only £65 a night. You get all the usual posh hotel things, but add to that a bath / shower / steam room with 100’s of water jets that looks so modern it might happily fly into orbit! And although the room decoration is incredibly flash and tacky, I have to admit the duvet is probably the most comfy I’ve ever slept under. Makes it very difficult to get up in the morning.

And this is forgetting the other attractions of Macau, which include a floating casino, Japanese fortress, and of course the mini Italy complete with Venice, the coliseum, and a 40 foot high concrete volcano with a flaming summit! But the entertainment industry dominates. Casinos, cafés, restaurants, bars, and course cabaret is open 24 hours, and free to enter- but you can’t take a camera inside the casinos so we couldn’t post any photos of the interiors.

Undoubtedly, the most tasteless and gaudiest monstrosity is the Grand Lisboa (the pineapple) Casino so we had to go there. We saw the largest ‘cushion-shaped diamond’ in the world (called the Star of Stanley Ho) on the second floor, but it just looked like a bit of glass the size of a ping pong ball. Funny thing was, as packed as the casino was, no-one seemed to be really enjoying the experience even when they won. So Gary decided to test the experience and condemned a 20 HK dollar note (about £1.30) into a slot machine having no idea how to work it and fully expecting to lose all of it. Within 10 seconds, when 4 lion faces appeared he suddenly thought he won an unknown amount and decided to quit while he was ahead: it turned out to be 15 HK dollars (about a quid) of winnings - the cashier did not look impressed when he exchanged the printout from the slot machine for a measly 35 HK dollars!

OK, we prefer Hong Kong. A much more tasteful and vibrant city. But Macau is really worth visiting if only briefly to see all the silliness. Every few minutes you wander down the street a new fountain erupts, or some new light combination or huge statue catches your eye – it just makes me giggle! Anyway, we’ll be here one more night, and then back to stay in Kowloon (the bit of mainland China immediately associated with Hong Kong Island) for a while. I wonder if Disney Land Hong Kong is finished yet…

Macau Photos

2008-04-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

This is our hotel complex! The Lisboa. We stayed in the old building on the right (the bit that looks like a multicoloured spinning top). The new bit (the Grand Lisboa) in the middle looked to us exactly like a giant gold, glittering pineapple. What do you think?

Vicki by the realistic replica of Pompei's volcano. 40 odd feet high, this giant mound of concrete issues flames from the top by night, and houses a gaming arcade as you'd guess. Nest door (right), is the original Italian-Japanese floating casino fortress. Just as the Romans planned.

Gary by the replica Tutankhamen head and (maybe fake?) ancient Egyptian thrones. These of course are the perfect decorations for any lift lobby!

Gary also graces the front of the pineapple at night. Nice shades of purples and greens, eh?

And finally, Gary pops up again in front of the elegant fountain of the Pharoah's Casino. Something tells me there might be more replica funeral masks inside...

Some glitzy lights around the back of the pineapple! Tasteful?

Chandigarh

2008-04-20T03:41:00.001-07:00

Hello! Hope you’re all having a good time in the UK (or wherever you are at the moment). We’re still in India, although sadly we’re coming up to the end of our time here. On the other hand that means we’re going to Hong Kong and Japan soon, which we’re really looking forward to.

We’re in Chandigarh at the moment – in the first hotel with a wifi connection we’ve been in! It is so nice to be able to access internet on our own computer, as most of the ones in internet cafes out here are REALLY slow, with really bad dial-up connections to the internet. Waiting 15 minutes for a photo to upload to the blog can be a painful experience!

Chandigarh, as Indian cities go, is really quite modern. It was built following the Partition of India to be the capital of the Indian side of Punjab. And it’s turned out to be a slightly weird mix: imagine a very green and leafy Harlow with loads of Rickshaws! Almost unheard of for India it has pavements, and roundabouts which the locals actually go around the right way (well, at least most of the time)! And functioning traffic lights that people usually don’t ignore. There aren’t any cows wandering the streets either. Weird!

It’s actually a pleasant town to wander around – it does lack the character and bustle of some of the places we’ve visited, but it’s great not to be constantly harried as a tourist, and the roads pleasantly shaded by rows of trees are nice to stroll down. Chandigarh also boasts a completely surreal ‘Fantasy Rock Garden’ – built by a local at the time the city was constructed out of the junk construction caused (rock, stone, tiles, plastic light and plug sockets, ceramics etc). It’s really strange, but very very different from anything we’ve seen before, and well worth seeing if you’re in the area (have a look at some of the photos below).

Anyway, we have to head off to Delhi next. We originally intended to go to the hill station of Shimla first, but we’ve heard that the Hong Kong Chinese Embassy is no longer issuing visas to China for anyone unless they are Hong Kong residents (due to increases in work load in preparation for the Olympics). I’m just glad we found this out before getting to Hong Kong – we can apply in Delhi instead, but it does mean cutting our stay up north a little short. Never mind. Anyway, all the best, and we’ll hopefully speak to you soon.

Chandigarh Photos

2008-04-20T03:40:00.000-07:00

Gary - at the bottom of a gully with a nice waterfall in the wierd 'Fantasy Rock Garden' in Chandigarh. Apparently this was started by one man who lived in the forest at the edge of town, and haulled junk from the town's construction back home to model wiht. Really really strange!
Another part of the Rock garden - this time with loads of broken bathroom tiles stuck on the wall as a collage. This place is not friendly to the disabled though - the passages from one section to the next are often really small as you can see here...

Gary particulary liked this roundabout - with it's immaculate golf green and bunker!

Amritsar

2008-04-14T02:45:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Amritsar a few days ago. And by pure skill (ie our usual combination of complete luck and mistiming) we have been here over the festival of Vaisakhi. I am reliably informed by Gary that this marks the harvest celebrations and solar new year for Sihks. And of course Amritsar has one of their holiest temples – the Golden temple.

With our usual talent, we thought we’d visit the Golden temple the day before the festival, so it wouldn’t be too busy. But it was busy! People everywhere – nice, colourful, and very good natured. Lots and lots of huge turbans on display. And although you could walk relatively easily around the huge sacred pool that surrounds the Golden temple, the walkway leading to the temple itself had hundreds of people on it, crammed together, queuing. They must each have waited for hours to get to the building. We wondered if it was because of the imminent festival, but only found out after we’d left that we’d actually got the date wrong and it WAS Vaisakhi!

Anyway, we had a very pleasant walk around Amritsar, visiting the silver temple as well as the Golden one. The silver temple is a Hindu version of the Golden temple – just not so big, not so Golden (it has gold plate on the front, but this runs out when you go around the sides), and the pool around the temple building doesn’t have the fantastic coi carp you can see in the Golden temple’s. But it’s still nice – and was very festive yesterday.

Anyway, we’ll be moving on to Chandigar tomorrow by bus. This should be very different, as where Amritsar is a bustling old town (with a few modern bits) Chandigar was built only in the last century after Partition to be the new capital of Punjab. So It’s meant to be the most modern town in India. It should therefore have lots of internet cafes, so we’ll write soon!

Amritsar photos

2008-04-14T02:37:00.000-07:00

The Hindu version of the Golden Temple in Amrtisar. We saw this one first, and it really confused us - we didn't reallise it was meant to be so much like the Golden Temple and so thought we were in the wrong place! Actually its nice, but nowhere near so impressive as the Golden Temple - and the Gold on it seems to run out in the sides of the building...

A nice festival atmosphere on the streets on Amritsar during Vaisakhi. To get into the spirit - Gary with a very bright orange pseudo-turban at the Golden Temple. Loads of men were bathing in the pool around the temple - along with the fishes.

Udaipur

2008-04-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Hello again. We’re still in Udaipur at the moment, although we are scheduled to fly to Amritsar in Punjab the day after tomorrow (in time for Vaisakhi, the Sikh New Year). We didn’t originally intend to fly up to Punjab, but we couldn’t get a train out of Udaipur until the 16th (probably due to the very unhelpful staff at Udaipur railway station rather than lack of trains). But at least we get to travel in style, avoiding around 20 hours of train travel!

We will miss Udaipur though (or at least I will – I’m not so sure about Gary as he remains very unromantic!). This is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. The setting of the town around the mountain surrounded lake, with silly palaces on islands, is truly idyllic. Every time I see the sun go down it amazes me – and I’ve seen plenty of beautiful sunsets before. It’s something about how the reflections on the lake, and the way the mountains seem to fade into the distance. I hope the photos below give you some sort of idea, but you really should see it.

Udaipur is also a nice town to wander around – very alive. Especially at the moment as the festival of Mewar (called Gangaur in most places) is on – something where Indian women parade and worship the Godess of marital happiness, Parvati I think. Very colourful and good natured as you can see from some festive pictures, although they don’t capture the drums and music.

Anyway, we’ll post something on Vaisakhi and Amritsar in a few days. Let us know how you are by posting and email as although we’re having a great time out here we still miss you all!

Udaipur Photos

2008-04-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

A typical sunset in Udaipur! This is how to spend the evening - get a cocktail and a meal overlooking the lake as the sun goes down!

The Mewar Festival in the square outside the Jagdish temple in Udaipur. Lots of colour and noise! They take these decoreted doll-like statues of several Hindu Gods down to the river after this and put them in boats.

A very huge and lovely elephant that caused complete chaos downtown - he went for watermelons, caused traffic jams, and then got all scared and crushed the windscreen of a rickshaw! The driver was not impressed.

The really silly Lake Palace - now a hotel which you have to pay at least $600 a night to visit. And the set for Octopussy.

The even sillier City Palace - huge, twisting, complicated and completely over the top!

Jodhpur

2008-04-05T10:01:00.000-07:00

Once again, we braved the overnight train, to arrive in Jodhpur this morning. Actually this train was only about 20 minutes late arriving – a big improvement on the 2 hour delays we’ve come to expect (on our 15 hour journeys…)! We arrived bright and early and raring to go at 5.30am (groan). Why do all Indian trains leave at really inconvenient times? Either they are overnight and arrive obscenely early in the morning, which is kind of OK for novelty value in a sleeper compartment, but in reality it’s really difficult to sleep – especially after you’ve wedged your bags around your head so no-one can make off with them. Or they leave in the morning / afternoon and arrive at about midnight - making finding your hotel and checking in a nightmare! Grr. I think that half the problem is that all the rail tracks are single gauge, so when trains pass each other one has to be stationary, on a passing bay. Which means you spend lots and lots and lots of time stopped, which makes for a speedy journey of course! Oh, and the trains seem to have been built at least 20 years before we were born. And let’s not even think about the toilets! Ah well, it’ll be on to the Japanese Shinkansen soon…

Enough of the anti-train rant. Jodphur, like Jaisalimer is good fun. It’s another fort town, this time we’re much closer to Delhi, out of the desert, and so the landscape is really rocky and hilly. And the fort is really different – far more impressive in terms of scale and grandeur, but not so lived in and with no curious temples and twisting walkways. Both are really worth seeing.

We climbed up through confusing sidestreets and then a rocky path to the fort this afternoon, and then spent ages wandering around it and admiring the superb views over the city. Jodhpur is a big place, with a lot of the buildings painted blue (hence its nickname the blue city). Have a look at the pictures for a better idea.

Anyway, we’ll be going to Udaipur by bus next – probably leaving the day after tomorrow. This place apparently has a palace turned hotel in the middle of a lake where a 007 movie was shot. Don’t think we can afford to stay there somehow… but will post piccys!

Jodhpur Photos

2008-04-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

The impressive Jodhpur fort in the early morning light... Again from the roof of our new, very very nice hotel!

Nice view from the fort over the city - plus a cannon and a Vicki

The blue city of Jodphur (on the other side of the fort). Another very nice view!

Jaisalmer

2008-04-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

We’re presently in the middle of the Indian Thar desert, in a fortified town called Jaisalmer. And this is a world away from anything I’ve ever seen. The fort is like a giant sandcastle! Literally, a big triangle of 99 curved outer-wall sections, filled with a thriving town inside full of winding alleyways, shops, hotels, and (as usual) cows. Very much lived in, but it does feel like you’re in a novel or on a different planet.

The downside of being in the desert is the wind – we’ve been blasted by a sandstorm, so have taken shelter in our nice hotel (which again looks like something from Arabian Nights)! The other downside is that storms lead to power cuts! The sandstorm developed into a thunder and lightning storm (complete with more rain than Jaisalmer is meant to have in all of April), and knocked out the power for a few hours. Which wasn’t such a bad thing - thanks to Georg’s leaving present (an extremely powerful torch) we managed to navigate across town for dinner, avoiding cowpats successfully! It was actually almost magical to see the town lit only with candles (and Georg’s torch).

Jaisalmer is literally in the middle of nowhere – out on the Western edge of India, not a million miles from the border with Pakistan. The train we took from Jaipur took 15 hours to get here (but it did seem to spend a very very long time stationary!). We spent most of the journey trying to sleep, or chatting to a couple from Ireland in the bay across from us. They were doing a practically identical world trip to us, except in reverse order (and so they’re nearly at the end or it) – it was good to hear about some of the places we’ll be visiting in a few months time.

Jaisalmer Pictures

2008-04-04T03:33:00.000-07:00

Gary meets a camel. And looks really happy about it! They're used a lot out here to pull carts and things, but tend to look really miserable - this one's bearing its teeth at Gary if you look closely...

Jaisalmer fort at night - from the rooftop restaurant of our hotel.

A haveli in the old town. Rich merchants and prime ministers would build these large houses, and then pay someone to cover the outside with really intricate carving. Completely over the top!

This gate to the lake is called Tilon Ke Pol. It was apparently built by a local prostitute, and the only reason the Maharajah didn't pull it down was because she put a shrine to the God Vishnu on top! So he had to put up with it's 'pollution' on the way to the lake :)

Jaisalmer fort gate at dusk. Really impressive, trust me!

Jaipur

2008-03-30T05:23:00.000-07:00

Hello. We've been in Jaipur for the last few days - the last corner of the Golden Triangle (along with Delhi and Agra). And so far by far my favourite city in India. Its a really nice place - atmospheric old 'Pink city' (yes, all the buildings in the old part of the town are painted pink - well, terracotta orange really), but some newer bustling modern bits too. And a really nice hotel for peanuts. Altogether a relaxing stay.

We've seen a lot of the centre of town, including the City Palace and Howa Mahal (Palace of the Winds), but we plan to come back here in a week or two so have left a few things to see for then (its on route to Urdipur, a town built more or less on a lake about 200 km south of here). Next we're off to Jaisalmer - an old fort town in the West of India in the middle of the desert. We plan to leave by sleeper train tomorrow night - I just hope this one doesn't break down on route!

Jaipur Pictures

2008-03-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

In the Pink City - cows compete with motorcycles and rickshaws in the busy streets as usual. The strange 2D Palace of the Winds - so the King's consorts could see the street, with no-one seeing in!

Jaipur City Palace: fantastically carved buildings and gateways (and hugely over the top decorations to the rooms inside).

In one courtyard there's a weird open marble hall in the middle. This has no walls, but contains 2 giant solid silver pots (nearly my height) and crystal chandeliers (complete with pigeons roosting on top!)

Agra

2008-03-26T02:28:00.000-07:00

We came into Agra, the second leg of the ‘Golden Triangle’ yesterday, on a train leaving Delhi at 06.15am. Painfully early start, but on the plus side on the train we were served breakfast – which scarily consisted of a strange potato thing in breadcrumbs, bread with jam, and a do-it-yourself tea kit – tea bags, sugar and creamer complete with a little flask of boiling water! Weird.When we got into Agra we visited the Fort in the centre of town yesterday, which is big and impressive, with beautiful views of the Taj Mahal over the river. And lots of monkeys chasing each other around the walls! Then of course today we went to the Taj itself. Another early start (groan) as it’s supposed to be best in the early morning light (and there are fewer tourists). I think the best word to describe it is elegant – big too. And very well preserved at the moment compared to the other monuments of its class we’ve seen (such as Angkor Wat and the pyramids – but the Taj Mahal is a lot newer).It was great wandering around, and then wandering the 2km or so back to the hotel. We did get hassled by a few touts on route of course (mainly rickshaw or tuktuk), but to be honest these touts are amateurs compared to those in Egypt! Nowhere near so annoying or persistent! Anyway, better go, as we have to book train tickets to our next destination – Jaipur. Speak to you all soon.

Agra photos

2008-03-24T04:01:00.000-07:00

The Taj Mahal (with a very small Vicki in the arch!)

Monkeys at Agra Fort, Taj Mahal in the distance

Delhi

2008-03-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

Hello! This is my first entry on this trip, in a grotty internet café in Delhi. Perfect.

I must admit we haven’t exactly rushed much over the past few days – well, we really needed a rest. After working hard over the last few weeks to finish all our various commitments, moving house to London and Wales from Cambridge, and loosing at least two nights sleep in the process we really needed a break. So we’ve spent a good deal of our first few days in India just sleeping!

We arrived in the early hours Tuesday morning, and checked into the ‘Godwin Deluxe Hotel’ in Ram Nagar – a region close to the main New Delhi Station, just next to Paharganj (cheap backpacker land), and about a kilometre north of Connaught Place (the centre of the business district where expensive hotels live). Its definitely one of the more lively areas of town – cows occasionally wander down the street outside the hotel, or bullock type things pull carts – attempting to compete with the rickshaws, taxis, and tuktuks (called autoricksaws in India I believe). Oh, and there appears to be some sort of festival on – one which involves throwing colour at people and lots of banging drums at 3am! They’re hitting them again at the moment – must go outside and have a look.

When we weren’t sleeping, we’ve wandered around town a bit too – around Paharganj and some of south Delhi. North and south in this city are like black and white. The North is much older, poorer, dirtier, whereas the south was constructed by the British (by mass destruction of the old city it seems), and is green, quite, calm, with lovely parks and some ancient Taj Mahal – type tombs scattered around. Certainly a contrast (see photos).

We plan to move on from Delhi tomorrow – not because we’ve seen enough here, but as our flight itinerary dictates we have to come back then we should leave some things to see then! We’re catching the train to Agra at 6.15 in the morning (groan) and expect to spend a few days there before going on to Jaipur to complete the ‘Golden triangle’. And then we’ll decide what we fancy doing next!

Delhi Pictures

2008-03-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

A really grand tomb in South Delhi - prizes for anyone who can name it as we've forgotten how to spell it!
India gate at Dusk - with a photogenic tree in the way

The Government buildings at dusk, near the Raj Path to India Gate
A local (cow) near the railway station
The same, grand Tomb in South Delhi - it's meant to be almost as good as the Taj Mahal. We'll tell you soon.

A not quite so grand tomb in South Delhi. WIth scafolding. I can't remember the name of it either though!