My Shoes Are In Mumbai

Buenos Aires

2007-02-04T12:55:00.000-08:00

Last stop, Buenos Aires. Hotspot of the Southern Cone and home to tango shows, ludicrously cheap music and language students on a jolly. As a contrast to the hooliganism and idleness of the rest of the trip, our time in the city was largely spent with an NGO called LIFE. The acronym stands for Luchemos por una Infancia Feliz y con Esperanza ("We Strive For A Childhood With Happiness And Hope"). Quite simply they work with disadvantaged children around the poorer parts of Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina, taking volunteers out to soup kitchens and schools where the kids can have a decent meal and play with each other and the volunteers. The organization also works to distribute food, clothing and school supplies, and arranges regular visits to dialysis wards in local hospitals. The children will often come from quite unhappy backgrounds of violence, abuse, family alcoholism and needless to say nutrition and education are often sporadic or nonexistent. Programs are run with the intention of providing a happy and safe environment for the kids to play and eat, so that they might have the sort of childhood that should be every person's right ... and that is distressingly absent so often.

The organization is pretty much run entirely by Lily and daughter Vicky, with permanent staff member Juan-Jose. There is a constant stream of changing volunteers from backpackers such as ourselves, usually on the way down to Patagonia, or occasionally from Spanish language students, who happen to find their way there by word of mouth. I had no idea what the volunteering work would actually entail, nor what environment we would be working in. The first Thursday was spent at the Juegoteca ('Playarea') in the district of Ciudad Occulta. This was a stark contrast to the luxury and ease of our base in Recoleta, with barefoot children running around in some of the poorest conditions we'd seen since leaving India. I wasn't sure exactly what to do at first - the instruction was simply to go and 'play', something I'd not done since I was of a comparable age. The awkwardness and reticence of adulthood was soon forgotten, in the shape of a tennis ball and a couple of rackets. It's amazing really ... two people can overcome barriers of age, language and culture by belting a spherical object around for a bit or sitting and doing a jigsaw puzzle together. La Farrera is another district that LIFE operates in, and again is an area which you would never, ever see as a tourist. Run down buildings that would probably be condemned in the UK, with only rudimentary electricity and plumbing in cases. Bus services are next to none, and regular taxis do not come this far out. Instead public transport is provided by a fleet of ageing Ford Falcons, which are often on their last legs and falling apart. My ride to the bus terminal was in one that had been in service since the seventies, had a hole in the floor and what looked suspiciously like blood stains on the seats.

Working with children is mostly a very rewarding experience, and dare I say it, something that you can learn from yourself. However, there are always going to be things that make you frown, though I was probably more prepared for this from the time spent in Pa Do Ta. What I'm talking about here is not so much out and out bullying, but seeing a kid who's quite happy doing his own thing and another coming over and giving them a bit of needle to get a reaction. Or twatting them over the head with a plastic truck. It constantly amazed me to see how confident some of the kids were, and it was mostly them directing the action and pulling you over to horse about with something.

The old cookery "skills" were rolled out again, with frequent visits to the soup kitchen at Los Angelitos, in the area of Ciudad Occulta. During our time around the world, Dan and I have had the importance of a good feed hammered home a good few times. Our stints at the kitchens mainly involved peeling up the veg in preparation for the cooks. There was a lot of waiting around between preparation and serving, and sometimes we questioned whether or not we were actually needed. That changed once the food was being dished out, and pandemonium broke forth. The language difference was occasionally an obstacle, but there's not much that can be lost in translation when someone points at a big pile of spuds and simply grins and nods. Yeah ... I understand perfectly. Lamenting over legumes was broken up by the spectacle of an unfeasibly large rabbit escaping from the backyard, and hunting around for morsels. It eventually clambered it's way into a box of spuds, where the big white bugger sat noshing happily away on the tuberous booty. At each session around 120 people were fed, including quite a few adults, some for taking leftovers home in a tub - a humbling experience.

Other hi-jinks involved adopting the role of the "Charity Mugger" - discussed previously on one of Dan's comments pages. So on a mild Sunday afternoon we stood around in the City of Fair Winds, the melancholy intervals of an old man playing classical guitar sounding across the park. Which made the time pass a lot easier, as there were precious few people prepared to put their hand in their pockets. This is the sort of experience that can change your perspective on a few things, if only for the duration of an afternoon. The reactions of people were varied to say the least. Clearly we had our work cut out for us anyway, given our standard of Spanish was some way short of being "confident". The majority of people don't acknowledge you at all, some almost run past, others even change their path completely and head for the safety of the church opposite. This at least brought a grin to my face ! Some have the cheek to refuse a donation then ask for directions towards the nearest payphones. Others look into the tin and exclaim '¡No Gracias !' ... the money isn't for you, Numbnuts. This was at first a deeply disheartening experience, and I actually found myself becoming slightly depressed at the slim pickings. The odd piece of change in the tin lifted my spirits rapidly, though. All in all, about twenty odd dollars worth ... nothing too "Life Changing" then. I think Liliana appreciated the support, however.

The focal point of our time with LIFE was surely the four day visit to Peruti, a village of around 500 people in the Misiones province and populated by indigenous Guarani. The Guarani were estimated to number around 400,00 by the 17th century, in tribes formed along lines of dialect when discovered by Jesuit missionaries. The Jesuits built a series of villages giving the Guarani opportunity to adopt a sedentary lifestyle. In 1838, Misiones came under control of Paraguay, but following the War Of The Triple Alliance, again came into possession of Argentina. This war (1864-70) was one of the bloodiest in the continent's history, fought over the strategic River Plate region, and pitted Paraguay against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. If that sounds like a tough prospect, it was. Ultimately, the results were the total defeat of Paraguay, Argentina emerging as the most wealthy and modernized state in the area and the abolishment of slavery in Brazil (which started with slaves in the military being emancipated and following from there).

The monthly trips that LIFE run to the village center around distributing clothes, head-lice treatment for the children, a program of family planning and AIDS education. We had our work cut out for us there - the water pump was in a state of disrepair, owing to the fact that a vital part of the mechanism had been stolen (presumably to sell for a quick buck). This meant that any water for cooking or cleaning had to be dragged up the hernia-inducing hill from the river. No mean feat, as the quantities of water needed meant at least twenty or so trips every day. A big theme of the visits are the clearing and disposal of litter around the village - it's heartening to see the kids so eager to help with this (naturally there's a small incentive for them to do so, with some sort of treat for every three bags of rubbish collected). I'm told that some of them are quite quick to nag their parents for help with this, and they're very keen to drag you off for an explore around the houses and fields whilst looking for "things that poison the land". Liliana has a fine line to walk on these visits, and naturally in negotiations with the Chief and other adults wants to avoid entering into the politics of the village too much. Difficult to do, as there are limited resources and items to distribute. In addition to this, it wasn't always clear if we were truly being welcomed by some of the older people in the village. The kids were immediately friendly and confident around a bunch of relative strangers (most people can only volunteer for at most two months at a time, so there's very little continuity in who turns up with Lily and Vicky), but there was a palpable feeling of distance with some of the adults.

The kids of the village line up for the food. You can see more photos of this on Dan's blog, I was charged with serving up hastily assembled burgers and orange drinks. It doesn't take Gordon Ramsey to work out that a hamburger cooked over a wood fire, left in a plastic tub for a bit and then flicked into a bun with some token lettuce and tomato isn't going to win any prizes for culinary sophistication. This did not bother our diminutive diners who wolfed them down ... and yes, there were a couple left over at the end, which I necked with great gusto (and half a litre of mustard). Yum !

Everything was going reasonably well until the sky decided to dump it's bladder on us on the Saturday afternoon. While the others huddled under the leaky dining area, Dan and I were kindly asked to charge about in the mud and deliver the benches back to the school house. Every kid in the village has their lessons there, and from what I remember there were no distinct classes - everyone just piles in together. I'm not sure what standard of teaching you could hope to impart to a class of this size and with such a range of ages and abilities. In the school at Pa Do Ta there were two distinct class rooms, even if the kids did wander between the two if they got bored. Or out the front door.

Yay for me, I'm covered in shit ! Our smiling troupe of volunteers ... a nicer and more patient group of people you couldn't hope to meet. Which is handy, given that the start and end of each day was spent bundling into an already overloaded van, vying for seating and floorspace with several hundred bottles of water. Before having several boxes of clothes and numerous trays of eggs plonked on top. This was taken on the day it pissed down with rain, and I'd been carrying innumerable buckets of water back and forth between the river. We paraded into the shop to buy some well deserved beers, and I was secretly quite pleased to be greeted with the undisguised look of total disgust from the charmers at the checkout.

Aside from such worthy deeds, most of the rest of the time was spent tirelessly shopping for music and tending a social life. Argentina had a rough time of it in the earlier part of this decade, though the economy is slowly getting healthier now. I look back at the time in this city with a large amount of fondness, and again it's because of the people we met mostly because of the trip to Misiones. It's only now with the benefit of hindsight I can see just how much of a difference this made - yeah, we didn't get to travel to Patagonia, but it doesn't matter because a few weeks hanging around with some genuinely nice people is worth more than all the "ooh, look at that" opportunities put together. And highlighted exactly what was missing during my stay in Melbourne (it could easily have been the other way around). So, a big "cheers !" to Lucy, Gregory, Anna, Matthew, Deanna, Marc, Olivia and everyone else who hung around with us in Buenos Aires.

Argentina is synonymous with Tango, a broad term which encompasses a number of different styles of music and dance, originating in the poor and immigrant areas of Buenos Aires and Uruguay's Montevideo. It's next to impossible to travel around Latin America and not take an interest in the music and dance - and Tango is certainly one of the more sensual styles. A cross between playing football and humping, the randy strolling is a sight whether it's on the streets of working class La Boca or in the context of a polished stage musical. Steamy stuff !

The antiques market in San Telmo on a Sunday is well worth a lot. It's great fun, wandering around the stalls and laughing at all the old crap. I've already mentioned the penny farthing, but other domestic curiosities include dog shaped walking sticks and an object that can only be referred to as "The Bonce". I myself have cupboard full of 1970s era video games and other rotting technology. I must get this fascination with useless rubbish from the old man, who I know for a fact has a rare collection of "objets d'irt" that he's rescued from the depths of the earth. Who knows what else the old scoundrel's got in the shed ?

Inevitably the last few weeks were spent counting off the days and champing at the bit with impatience. Unsurprising really, and various schemes were kicked around in the pursuit of sanity. A hop over to Uruguay did the trick for a few days, a mooching around picturesque Colonia del Sacremento, and dullard of the coast, Montevideo. There we met an incredibly offensive ex-pat who thought it jolly good form to insult our mate Gregory to his face and then boast about how big an insurance deal he'd just closed. Something on my face must give drunken bores the nod to come over and start talking such nonsense, and the only highlight of the evening was that we managed to get away before the subject of politics and current affairs came up. Which I'm sure would have been positively mind blowing.

The journey home was long, delayed and nerve-wracking. A lightning strike took out the control tower at the airport, and an hour into the flight a call came over inquiring as to the presence of a doctor - cue lots of people running along the plane with briefcases and determined expressions. Just the thing to calm a nervous flyer such as myself ... still, the live video feed from the tail made things interesting as we came in over the Sierra Morena. By the time I arrived back at Heathrow, I was almost too dazed to take in the wild cheers, painstakingly prepared banners and emotional reunions with my relatives.

Now I'm back to the comforts and ease that I've taken for granted all this time. Need some quick, unrestricted internet access ? A secure and clean place to sleep ? Or just some non-poisonous food and water ? Yours without a moment's hesitation. Not to mention all the family members and friends that I've missed so much whilst on the road. The first few days at home were spent feeling a bit dazed and lost as to what to do next, but at the very least sure that I made the right move at the right time. The anxiety and uncertainty that I felt in that cold, icy March of last year have completely dissipated, and I can look back with an immense amount of fondness for a journey that spanned three continents, sixteen countries, twelve months and five thousand photographs. An ever shifting backdrop of backwaters and bus stations, high seas and highways, inaccurate maps, tourist traps, deserts, glaciers, fields, forests, beaches, capital cities, rural villages, mountain trails and grotty bars. All the times spent looking nervously at bare electrical cables next to a shower head (which happens much more than you'd ever expect). All the times spent gripping the arm rests on a bumpy flight. All the times spent rolling up to a large, anonymous dormitory and wondering what conversational delights awaited (and yet sometimes they were, genuinely). Finally, the importance of traveling with a good friend who I could at all times trust and enjoy their company (very occasionally having some pretty intelligent conversations with) cannot be overstated. I have also been informed, by a reliable source on such matters, that my hip-hop skills have improved ... owed in no small part by spending most of the year playing the Rhyming Game. That by itself was worth every penny and sleepless night.

Right, that's your lot. Thank you for reading !

São Paulo To Buenos Aires

2007-01-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

Time, it's a rare old beast ... one of those things that they're just not making any more of. It stretches and flexes, pouring itself away. Time, lots of it - it's the ultimate luxury, taken for granted when young and lamented for as an adult. Possibly more sought after even than money ? Well ... maybe not. It's a good joke though, you come into this life with no idea just how long you've got, or even how to spend the hours you have. Most of it's just maintenance, tending the fire, keeping afloat. Eating, sleeping and working. Proportionally there's only a miniscule amount of time to do anything else ... sometimes life on the road is not that different. I've probably given the impression that the most of the trip has been packed full of experiences with no down time and no boredom. It's not really ... just because you're not doing a day job, doesn't mean any of the other stuff goes away. In fact it takes on a much greater significance, causing even more irritation and taking up more of the day than expected. If there's one thing they never tell you to pack, it's patience and stamina. Travel takes time, in ways other than sitting on a bus. Whole days get written off basically doing nothing productive or of any use, a contrast to being at home where I'd spend a large part of the working day scheming up plans for the most efficient way to use the weekend.

Eating is a large part of anyone's life. I only now realise how much it affects your mood when you can't, as at home when I'm hungry I just eat - that's all there is to it. Spending sixteen hours on a bus with only a tube of Pringles for sustenance inevitably means that when you get to somewhere like, oh I dunno, Phnom Penh and you're swamped with people all trying to grab your bags (which may or may not be an act of good-will) and coerce you into staying at their rotten and dilapidated hostel, you're already in a pretty foul mood. This is when tempers start to fray. And when this goes on for some time, not sure about how many dead flies is an acceptable amount to ingest when included with the food in front of you, means that the word "nutrition" is something to largely snort at.

So when you get the opportunity to eat well, you've got to take it. Typical lunch activities in São Paulo go like this ... turn up at one of the hundreds of 'Kilo' restaurants around, get as much stuff onto your plate at once (using a garden shovel in my case), get it weighed and cram it down your throat as quickly as possible. Less waiting than your average visit to the toilet, and the finest food you will find for the price. Massive amounts of fresh veg, high quality meat carved in front of you, all manner of beans, pulses, carbohydrates and puddings. And the fruit, the fruit ! Kiwis, strawberries, mango and peach ! Apple and orange, all within reach ! I stuffed myself every day until fat and gleeful. A bit on the pricey side at five quid a go, but at least I don't feel like I'm falling apart from malnutrition any more. This is often combined with a meat buffet - an procession of waiters do the rounds to irritate with endless offers of various carvings ... though the results are sometimes not what's expected. It was in a slightly run down gaucho themed restaurant that a vague look of revulsion crossed Dan's face in one of these episodes. Dithering over a few unusual yet convenient looking chunks, it took a few chews before I could surmise what it was. Numerous small kidneys on a sword ! Which turned the dining experience into a cross between Jamie's Kitchen and Predator (a combination I'm sure a lot of people will have fantasised about). Still, I've seen worse - the ant sandwich of Bangkok for instance. Do try, they're offaly good ...

Everyday life really is absurd, though. Laundry ... usually something to be largely put off for as long as possible suddenly becomes top priority at the most inconvenient times (usually when arriving in the middle of nowhere after a seventeen hour bus journey). It's easy to get through two T-shirts a day when you're sweating constantly from the heat and humidity, walking everywhere and carrying a heavy bag on your back, all day long. Disconcertingly easy to get done in most of Asia, next to impossible in some parts of South America. For example, the strange old fish that ran the laundry in Santiago mostly looked like he wanted to kill me for asking to get my clothes laundered. In Cusco they came back sopping wet. In Rio de Janeiro it took two and a half days to wash some T-Shirts. But it's São Paulo that really put the weasels in the kitchen. Of course there was no indication anything might be amiss, and we handed the entire cache of clothes over with a big smile. My word it looked professional ! Every piece itemised on the receipt, described by brand, colour etc. All very nice. Very. What ... is ... the ... catch ? The show-stopper is that it was all going to be dry cleaned. Even the pants (realistically, they probably need to be burnt instead). For the bargain price of 85 Reals (21 quid). I'm not exaggerating when I say I almost fainted ... the kindly bloke behind the counter saw my reaction and gave me a free fridge magnet and sewing kit (it's even got one of those things you use to thread the needle - I always wanted one of those !). Dan and I just stared at each other, trying not to cry. But y'know ... "they needed to be cleaned" / "at least they won't go missing" / "it's worth the money for the convenience" etc. Funny how quickly deluding yourself brings about a sense of temporary happiness. And well, at least I'll be able to get a worthy, well paying job quickly enough when I get back and become financially solvent again. See ? Lying to yourself ... it works.

So what is it that makes the dullness of everyday life more (and sometimes less) bearable ? It's the people you come into contact with. We originally planned to spend about two days on a stopover in São Paulo ... that was until Fernando (bottom left) and friends decided to show us just what the city was about. The nightlife. The established idea is that "Rio is beautiful by day, São Paulo by night". So we accidentally spent two weeks hanging around the city and going nuts. Yeah alright, we didn't do anything particularly ground breaking or culturally important, but one of the main themes that keeps coming up is the observation that you can't really make proper friends in an area unless you stay there for a while. I think we managed that in Sampa, mostly thanks to the efforts of Fernando (bottom left) and girlfriend Dani (to the right of me), and it still astounds me the level of kindness and hospitality we received from two people we had never met before. If two effectively homeless people from the internet said they were going to turn up on my doorstep, I'm not sure how I'd react. By rights Fernando should have pointed a pressure washer at us. São Paulo, like Rio, has a reputation for being somewhat dangerous - indeed in some parts of the city the traffic laws have been modified so that a red light at a junction simply indicates to slow down. Such is the danger of carjacking and other violent crime. The city center, while somewhat tourist unfriendly seemed as safe as anywhere else we'd been. It's a very different atmosphere to Rio, which is a strange mixture of Favelas, beaches and business districts all jostling against each other in close proximity. The worst problems we had were linguistic ones - Portuguese is a surprisingly tricky language to get to grips with, and I have no excuse for failing spectacularly at this. All through Brazil I had to wing it with a combination of stock phrases, pointing, and defaulting to English. Absolutely shameful, and the whole experience has only made all the more clear how important it is to make an effort with languages in general. Especially when it comes to communicating to a landlord who appears at random intervals that, for the last week, there's been a load of cat shit in the corridor, and it's the height of summer.

Brilliantly, the VW Beetle and Kombi are still made in Brazil and are a common sight on the street. I asked our mate Fernando if this was because of surf or beach culture in Rio ... he said no, they were pieces of shit and only sold because they were cheap. The truth comes out ! I still thing they're cool, and they perform functions you'd never see at home. Delivering post, acting as impromptu shuttle services, even as converted ambulances. Alright fess up, who turned the oxygen tanks into a bong ?

All things come to an end, and despite having some of the best times possible with Fernando and friends (who went "above and beyond" the definition of hospitality), there were a good number of miles to get rid of between São Paulo and Buenos Aires. A few days stop over in Florianopolis let me top up my sun burn, leaving a trail of peeling skin a thousand miles long.

This made me grin when I first read it. It's safe to say that I too am a bit sick of tourist activities. The sights and experiences are still amazing, but I think I'm a bit jaded with the process of standing in line with all the other drongos for that 'special shot' of some cultural or geographic icon. There's no quicker way of dissipating the awe of seeing something truly unique than being elbowed around by a load of tools with digital cameras. The Iguazu Falls were probably the last real tourist activity of the trip, and for all my moaning, were utterly breathtaking. This is taken from the Garganta del Diablo, and to me it's how I think people would have talked about the 'edge of the world' in less accurate times. The falls straddle the borders of Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, where the Paranu and Iguazu rivers meet - twice as high as Niagra in parts, and made up of 270-odd individual cascades.

Here's One Yule Like

2006-12-29T15:31:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ! It's been a strange and musical one this year. Mercifully, there was an almost total abscence of Christmas buildup in our part of the world. Owed in no small part to the fact that we were in a tent in the middle of Perú for most of it. Upon arrival in Santiago it was discovered that there was basically nothing in the way of any celebration going on, and not even very many people around. Ordinarily this might have been slightly depressing, so we did the only sensible thing in this instance ... bought some guitars. It's an old trick but a good 'un - when life starts to get you down, just buy another musical instrument and a load of beer. This is how we spent Christmas day ... wandering down the deserted streets of Bellavista with guitars on backs, a hot dry wind blowing the dust up and making a good thirst. Printing off masses of guitar tab and annoying everyone else with some unpracticed singing (which eventually attracted the attention of the carabineros on motorbikes, eyed our opened beers, looked uninterested and then buggered off). It was a blazing hot day where children rode their tricycles into each other and we played to other drunks until the booze ran out. In addition to this, Roberto was good enough to once again meet up with us and take us to a decent gig and be generally helpful and rad - thank you so much !

A word about the sad state of affairs with respect to online guitar tablature at the moment. This is where one person listens to a song, works out how to play it and writes it down ... when I was starting off you had to pay twenty odd quid for a book (costing nearly double the actual album), whereas (for the time being) you can get amateur transcriptions on the internet. In my mind this is not very different from just asking someone at school how a song goes, and obviously the accuracy varies just as much - if you really feel like it you can pay through the nose for the "official" transcriptions. This statement on the Guitar Tab Universe forums pretty much sums it up. Basically a great many tab sites are being forced to take their transcriptions of songs by the bullies at the record companies, who in addition to treating a lot of their paying customers like criminals in recent years are now of the opinion that telling another person how to play a song on an instrument constitutes copyright infringement. I must be some sort of criminal mastermind then, as I bought Dan a chord book for Christmas, which means ... he'll be able to play just about any song ever recorded ! And what's this in the photo ? Playing a C7 chord in public, heaven forbid someone should remember the sound of this and hum it back to themselves later. It's piracy all around ! What a dastardly plan, I regret nothing. In all seriousness, I cannot see how this is anything other than a very bad thing for anyone trying to learn an instrument. Quite clearly a free resource for improving one's own capabilities helps each new generation of musicians and feeds back into the industry itself. And in the words of my future brother in law "how can it be copyright infringement if it's mostly wrong ?". Very good point.

Ah, but this is what it's all about. We flew into Rio de Janeiro just before New Years Eve - this is our mate from school, Nathan (with girlfriend Lia and her mate Tatiana), impressing everyone with his Bossa Nova guitar skills. Outside our hostal in Urca, on the sea wall where the fishermen make very half arsed attempts to actually catch anything. I've not actually seen any fish around here ... perhaps they were scared off by the sound of the insects in the trees, who make a sound that wouldn't be out of place in the H.P. Lovecraft book I'm reading. Bossa Nova is a musical style that developed out of Samba and influenced by American Jazz. The compositions of Antonio Carlos Jobim were key, often performed by João Gilberto. The term Bossa means a natural adeptness and flair at something, with a certain charisma. I'm having a stab at learning some of this myself, and it's a real joy trying something which is a proper challenge again. The chord sequences are like nothing I've ever seen before, and while I can quite easily pop out the odd minor seventh or suspended second without looking them up or thinking too much, having a continuous stream of thirteenths and random add notes is well beyond my skill. This with a rhythm that I've not used properly before means that I'm basically lost ... fortunately Nathan is quite patient ! If you saw some of these sequences written down, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's complication for the sake of it ... but the results really do sound quite lovely.

People aren't afraid to just let go around here. There's no seeming chasm to overcome if you feel like playing some music or dancing in the street at any hour. These guys are playing in a style called Pagode, a variant on Samba - just outside a sidestreet bar. Everyone else drank down their beers and sung along. I saw this happen all over the place, a song would be playing in a reception and people would just start dancing with each other. Thanks to Lia we got to go to a few Samba clubs, which turned into some of the best nights out we've had on the whole trip (and certainly beat the shit out of going down The After Dark in Reading for the 300th time). Here's the setup : a Samba group on the stage with guitars and various percussion, and loads of people turn up to dance by themselves, with partners or to ask total strangers. There's no aggression or aggravation, people of all ages, and nobody really cares if you can dance or not. Best night out ever. Favourite tipple around here is the Caipirinha, pretty much the national drink. Take a load of Cachaça, dump it on loads of ice and whole crushed limes and sip vastly. Tangy, sweet and very, very strong - we sat around and drank whilst increasing the drowning humidity with our own sweat. It was like something from The Rum Diaries.

New Years Eve in Rio was always going to be something special ... between 2 and 3 million people gather on the beach, second only to Carnival (in which the madness goes on for several days) in terms of local importance. Offerings such as roses and floating boats to Yemaja, the sea goddess, are an integral part of the celebrations here. Of course this goes on all over the place - that's the beach at Urca on the left a few days before the big night. The mood was slightly nervous in the city, due to the fact that some buses had been burnt by some members of the local gangs coming from some of the nearby favelas (areas that are similar to slums, but created due to the mass displacement of a large population from elsewhere, usually rural areas). These areas were given a grim portrayal in the 2002 film City Of God, but it is thought that the earliest example dates back to around 1897 (though some sources cite it later at around 1920). The areas are characterized by extreme poverty, lack of amenities and utilities (only 50% of faveladors have access to an in-house toilet) and rampant crime associated with the drug trading that proliferates within and around the areas. Most of the infamy that surrounds the favelas comes from the fact that the drug trade that runs through the areas largely takes over the function of the state itself. Police generally only enter the favelas in large scale operations, and it's debatable who carries more firepower (I suspect it's the gangs) - it's disconcerting to say the least to see an officer on a street corner carrying an assault rifle capable of instantly cutting a man in half. A good deal of them are situated on the hills that dot the city, with the earliest settlers at the bottom (near water mains etc.) and later arrivals moving further towards the peak. So, anyone who is unfortunate enough to be at the top has the unenviable task of making several trips a day just to get water from the tapped water mains. Rio is an interesting case, in that the abject poverty and danger associated with the favelas nestles alongside some of the richest tourist areas in the city. There do exist tours for people who might feel like driving into these areas for a quick gawp at the poor sods who live there, but I have no idea how this might operate ... whether the drug lords themselves are paid off by the tour companies, or they agree to it as a way to keep the authorities off their backs. Either way, I didn't feel like participating in this ... not so much through any moral decisions, more it just seemed like a very dumb thing to do. The closest I personally came to seeing anything like this was on a regular bus journey that went around the outskirts, Dan and I sitting there with a 'whats all this' expression on our mugs.

The big night itself was spent whooping it up around the beaches. Highlights include watching Sergio Mendes perform his best known hit Mais Que Nada, while everyone on Ipanema went completely nuts and ran around in the sea. Deliberately missed The Black Eyed Peas, but instead went over to Copacabana to see a zestful firework display. Then we joined this drumming procession, 'helped' them out with some added percussion and danced around in a fashion that stretched the idea of playing around the beat to it's very limit i.e. not keeping to it at all. Then I eat a corn on the cob smothered with unwise amounts of salt and butter (Brazil is definitely the place for street food, you can survive on this alone). Obviously this tomfoolery couldn't last and I did my ankle in again, so we went home to play Oasis covers on the guitars with random pissheads in the pouring rain. Success all round !

"Take me out tonight ... because I want to see people and I want to see life" - you know it's going to be a good evening when you bundle into a taxi that's playing There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. New Year's Eve in Rio takes some beating. And beaten it is, by a typical Friday night in the Lapa district. Mini street parties abound everywhere, dancing, laughing, sometimes forming a roda (circle), around a Capoeira demonstration. This is one of countless examples of the African influences that were brought over, and developed during the 16-19th centuries when slaves were taken from Africa by the Portuguese. The modern day form is a martial art combining gymnastic skills, dance and a sort of (mostly) non-contact kickboxing. The crappy photo on the left doesn't do it justice really ... the action was characterized with exceedingly quick, improvised yet graceful roundhouse kicks, sweeps and feints. There's a lot of groundwork with the odd roll and jump, and even handstand-splits. The best example I can give is that it was used on one of the BBC's interludes they were using a couple of years ago. You can see the tops of the Berimbau on the right - a kind of musical bow that provides the buzzing, percussive tones that the dancers move to (in addition to drunken clapping from the other revellers). Rio gets a bad reputation in terms of safety etc., but I am beginning to think that the most dangerous thing I will see in twelve months of world travel will be Reading High Street next time I'm there on a weekend. It always strikes me as sad that some people have to cause violence to establish/re-affirm their status, instead of getting over their insecurities and enjoying/expressing themselves without caring what other people think.

Andes Is What Happened Next ...

2006-12-02T14:34:00.000-08:00

... Illness. It steals up like a rampant baboon in the night, wrapping it's feathery arms around the unsuspecting and ramming a plunger down the toilet of their dreams. Altitude sickness is a particularly fiendish adversary, there being no real logic to those that it affects, or the circumstances (apart from being very high up, obviously). Well, if you're young with a supercharged metabolism (Dan, Me), then it seems you're slightly more at risk. All of the people we'd met coming back from Cusco assured us that they'd had no problems at all in this department. Liars ! True, most people won't suffer from it unless they're over 3,000 metres above sea level, but I'm pleased to announce that Dan and I took to the beds at a wimpish 2,200 in Arequipa. This is a place famed for Mt. Misti, Andean condor spotting and all sorts of cultural curiosities. We didn't see any of that. We saw toilet bowls. Frequently. The usual advice for coping with altitude sickness is to descend to a more sensible level. Ah, but there's a stronger emotion that lurks in the souls of young men, more formidable even than self pity and self preservation combined ... boredom ! Cue an ill-advised dash up to Puno, a digestion hammering 3,800 masl (after climbing to 4,500 on the way). And spent another three days eating bananas, watching CNN and feeling as sick as dogs. Lower intestines like nervous accordions, brains like upturned bicycles ... watching the days peel away like the paint on the damp ravaged ceiling in Don Tito's. This was not the plan.

Almost a week was written off with a sentance of bread, water, moaning and acetazolamide. We'd planned to go and see a bit of Peru's equally rugged neighbour Bolivia, but travel in this part of the world takes time (significantly more than Lonely Planet's anorexic estimates). La Paz, the de facto capital, is exhausting enough to be overwhelming after only a few days. The streets are crammed full of people selling whatever oddments they expect to be able to sell e.g. an old bloke only selling sink plugs or rusty screws. Most disgusting wares were at the 'Witches Market', a delightful selection of dried toad corpses and llama foetuses. Still, if you can't flog your goods you can always make a fort out of them.

One thing that is immediately apparant is the fondness the populations of Bolivia and Peru have for any sort of parade or public gathering. I was greeted by a massive display of drums, trumpets and machine guns by the local cops as I stepped out of an internet café in Copacapana (just over the Bolivian border). Like I say, this is no unusual thing and there seemed to be something of this sort every few days, especially in Cusco though it is slightly more disconcerting to see the scene on the left, given that Bolivia has suffered around 60 military coups in it's history (more than any other country). The epic bus journey from Puno to Cusco later on was broken up nicely with a brass band practicing between the stone houses on the way across the plains.

Like Santiago, there is a definite culture of wearing smart shoes and keeping them well polished. However, in La Paz the guys who offer the service wear camoflage gear and ski masks. I admit I have no idea why this should be ... whether it started off as a way of masking one's shame or as a sign of solidarity as Dan suggests is unclear. This is a big contrast to Santiago, where there are fixed pedestals set up, and the guys sit around smoking, chatting and reading newspapers until another customer turns up.

Lake Titicaca - the world's highest navigable lake, split between Peru and Bolivia, contains the Uros islands. These are a collection of 43 artificial masses constructed of Totora reeds (which typically last around 30 odd years before a new island is constructed), stable enough for semi-permanant housing and keeping livestock. They were originally created by the Uro people, in order to escape domination by the Inca ... there are around 3,000 descendants of the Uro (though most live on the mainland). The lake itself is used by the Bolivian navy for exercises, as the country itself has been landlocked since The War Of The Pacific. This kid tagged along for the ride in the boat that his dad was steering, and proved to be a total riot, pulling on his dad's tracksuit drawstring and insisting on being allowed to 'help' steer the canoe.

The focal point for anyone's trip to Peru is inevitably the journey to Machu Picchu, often by way of hiking the Inca Trail. First stop was the Sacred Valley (generally defined as the area between Pisac and Ollantaytambo), a fertile agricultural region that was essential for the Incas and continues to supply much of Cusco's produce today. On the left is a shot of the village we visited, bumping up a winding and terrifyingly narrow mud track. The villagers make all manner of goods woven from Alpaca wool, and coloured with natural dyes - I love the sort of slings that the kids are carried around in here ! We stopped over in Ollantaytambo for a brief rest before hitting the trail at km82 the next day for a relatively easy going 12-14km saunter up to the Yunkachimpa campsite.

Our two guides along the trail were the tireless Percy (pictured left), and relatively new addition Herman. Reading the Inca Trail threads on travel forums will throw up a few horror stories about certain companies that operate around Cusco. Percy seemed to genuinely care about what he was doing though, and during our time with the group would refer to us as "his family". Sixteen people is a large group by my standards, and it all went as smoothly as you could expect. I was a bit puzzled by the fact that for the first few days there were no group meals or even some drinks around a table - surely it's important for people to break the ice and get to know each other sooner rather than later with tours like this. However, I think perhaps this was being kept in reserve for the end of the first days hike ...

... where Percy insisted that we should all introduce ourselves to the porters and each other. Twenty two porters in all, these guys work like you would not believe. They're responsible for carrying the camping gear, setting up the tents, cooking, carrying the duffel bags and just about everything else. It was all done amazingly smoothly, and they shot up the trail like greased springs, leaving us panting in the dust. They come from a variety of villages in the area, with Quechan as the native language. It was explained that there's a bit of prejudice towards Quechan culture in Cusco and other large cities, with a lot of pressure on people speaking Spanish rather than Quechan (or Aramaya). I felt like a bit of a cock sometimes greeting them along the trail with a bouyant "Buenos Dias !", but then again it was the only common means of communication. Well, that and handing out the coca leaves, which were always well received.

The undaunted adventurers, totally knackered at the top of the thousand metre climb to Warmiwañusca ("Dead Woman's Pass") - the highest point of the trek at 4,200 masl. The trial winds it's way up, down and around numerous different peaks, and the weather is extremely changeable with several microclimates operating at different elevations. On the way up to the pass the temperature dropped suddenly as a chill wind blew in from the top, and the air got noticeably thinner. Look at that, happy as children that have just heard their dad swear.

The downward spiral from Dead Woman's Pass. There are three high altitude passes along the way and the inclines are hard going in places. Altitude sickness thankfully wasn't so much of a problem along the trail for us, and I took advantage of the local custom of chewing Coca leaves to alleviate the symptoms of tingling extremeties and general knackerdness. They initially tasted like dried tea, but soon took on the consistency of wet grass at the bottom of a mower box. Yes, these are the same leaves that are used as the base ingredient for cocaine (scandalous !), but rest assured that's about all you can say in terms of similarity. Chewing coca is a big part of Andean culture, and given the perceived link to the illegal narcotics that flood the cities in the developed world, it's no wonder it's largely misunderstood and demonised by other countries' govenments. I learned a bit about this in the excellent Coca Museum in La Paz - coca had been a part of indiginous Andean cultures for thousands of years before the Conquistadores arrived. It was proclaimed to be 'demonic' despite the relatively mild effects and the fact that it was essential for coping with the excruciating work in the mines. Effects of chewing coca include a reduced appetite, a perceived increase in energy and increased ability to breathe properly in the thin air of the highlands. Note that there is actually the same amount of oxygen in the air up here, it's the pressure that is reduced, meaning that it's far more difficult to get the necessary amount pushed into the lungs (which amounts to the same thing, really). In any case, coca was so necessary to daily life in the hard times of the Spanish conquest that it was eventually worth more than the equivalent weight in either gold or silver (not that there was any shortage of that either, at least not before it was nicked). Over in Bolivia, Evo Morales has promised to legalize the cultivation of coca, asserting it's difference to processed cocaine (which is sure to get up the nose of the U.S.)

The attraction of the trail is not just the endless walking, sweating and lack of sleep. No, there's also an abundance of archaeological sites to explore. The stonework in these areas varied in appearance and construction techniques, but some it was utterly amazing, especially considering that iron and steel were not used in this area (gold and silver were). Some of it was shaped around stone formations found naturally, adding a great deal of strength, but the brickwork itself was exceptionally precise. Only hairline gaps were visible between blocks, and they were constructed in such a way to be virtually untouched by the earthquakes that rocked the area (unlike the later Spanish churches, which all collapsed). The terraces along the side of this peak are standard features at many of the sites in the area - opinions differ as to what purpose they serve, but it's mostly accepted that they serve as retaining walls - preventing erosion and landslides during the heavy rainfall in the wet season. Also present at the sites were wall holes for burials (mummification was extensively practiced, in the belief that when a person dies they should be returned to the earth and later resurrected). Percy also explained some of the more gruesome practices that took place including animal and human sacrifices - quite a few of the young women in the area were deliberately put to death. Those considered to be the most physically beautiful (provided they had not had their first menstruation) got the short end of the stick, as a sacrifice of this kind was considered to be an aid to the fertility of the land. Allegedly there was some sort of acclaim or prestige in this, as you would be acting as a sort of bridge between the human world and the spirit world, though I think humble anonymity would be much preferable.

So, did I suffer from vertigo along the trail ? Amazingly, for the most part I just got on with it, and concentrating on pumping the legs and getting up the slopes, trying to bite whole chunks of oxygen out of the thinning air. I had my concerns before the start as to how developed the trail was going to be - as in I had a horrible vision that big parts of it would be concrete steps, safety rails and all the trappings of a comfortable tourist experience. I'm happy to report that this was not the case at all, and there was pretty much no safety net the whole way. Perhaps a token piece of wooden railing on some rickety bridge somewhere, for about a metre at a time. The drops were sheer in a lot of places, but it wasn't until Machu Picchu itself that I had time to think about what I was doing, and some proper hesitancy set in (I saw one poor girl bawling her head off at the top of the Sundial). Let me explain what this sort of vertigo is like ... it's not that I just feel as if there's a danger of falling over the edge, it's as if I've already gone over. So you can imagine my horror when I heard that one of our group had done exactly that, whilst speeding along a wet cliff edge on the descent to Machu Picchu (this section inspires some seriously childish and outright dangerous behaviour as everyone tries to be first to the Sun Gate and beyond). I'm sure he realises the seriousness of the mistake now, but he had a very lucky escape in being able to grab some vines as soon as he went over. He was also extremely lucky that there were other people who noticed and were able to yank him back up - it could very, very easily have ended in tragedy.

The scene that greeted us as the sun went down just before the third night's camping at Chakiqocha. The following day involved a dizzying and joint-worrying descent of around a thousand metres before rolling in to camp at Wiñawayna (meaning "Forever Young" - you will be if you fall over the bloody edge). For the preceeding days leading up to this we had walked longer than most other groups in order to secure campsites further along the trail, with the idea being that on the last night we could camp 10 minutes from the gated entrance to the last descent. This meant getting the relative luxury of a lie in until 4am, but also necessitated camping on the edge of cliffs so steep that getting up for a pee in the middle of the night was a life or death exercise. I'm not sure if it was the sudden increase in oxygen, or the fact that I was lying on a slope leading off into the void, but I felt highly agitated the whole night and had serious trouble sleeping (even by the standards of an arch insomniac like myself). We then had a frenetic run down the cliff tracks in the pitch dark, flashlights flailing, so that we could position ourselves for a lead along the trail proper. Fat lot of good it did me, as I sprained my ankle five minutes after getting onto it. Normally this would just mean getting ice on it immediately and resting up ... however I had to hike six more kilometres and could not get a good look the rapidly forming egg until the evening. Thus I was hobbling around for a good long while afterwards. My weak ankles are a legacy of injuries sustained from nearly ten years of drunken skateboarding, from the multi-stories of Windsor to the gravel plagued slopes of Southbank. Like a lot of other teenage pursuits, my only regret is that I didn't do it more before the consequences caught up with me.

And at 2,400 masl sits Machu Picchu ("Old Peak"), at last. After all the hassle of hobbling up to the Sun Gate on a stick, I was greeted by the stunning sight of ... a load of fog. Fortunately it didn't last, and I made it down the gut wrenching gradients to join the rest of the group. Probably the best known, and least known about, archaeological site in South America. Lost to the rest of the world until 1911 when it was re-discovered by Hiram Bingham, an American historian at Yale. The site was covered with thick vegetation, and the main clearing and restoration efforts lasted from 1912 to 1915. Bingham was later accused of removing around 5,000 artifacts from the site. Despite efforts by the Peruvian government to get them back, they are still in the possesion of Yale. Left is the sort of scene you'd probably get on tourism adverts ... the soundtrack would probably be a load of dreamy synth pads, reverbed piano arpeggios and perhaps a frenetic Charango. Personally I'd add a sample of a shrieking bird of prey pouncing on a guinea pig and cracking it's skull open with razor sharp beak to feast on the nut flavoured brains inside. Which explains why I can never work in advertising ever again.

The original construction of the city was thought to have started in about 1440, and was inhabited up to the Spanish conquest of 1532. It's thought that it was primarily a retreat for Incan nobility (who were disposed once the spanish arrived on the scene - the Quechan workers were spared as they obviously were needed for such things as farming and other labour). As mentioned, the quality of stonework in the area is exceptional, and insulation was provided in the form of a mixture of clay, cactus juice and sand. Much of the stone is white granite, which due to a very slow crystalization process naturally forms cracks and fissures - exploitable with a few well placed holes and stakes. Once cracked into shape, they were polished off to a fine grade with white sand. The Inca were no slouches when it came to disciplines like geometry as well, as the sundial accurately points to all corners of the compass (it's not known how this was achieved). Percy seemed to think that the tilt at the top of it matched the tilt of the earth itself, calibrated with respect to other sundials hundreds of miles away. If this is indeed true, it's pretty mind blowing as it was achieved without any form of modern positioning systems and no way of practically verifying it.

This spitting git is a Llama, standard sight on the trail and elsewhere in the highlands of Peru. Like the Alpaca, it's a distant relative of the camel, a fact told to me by a racist man standing next to one in Tasmania. The Alpaca also happens to be a local favourite in restaurants everywhere, and tastes like beef but tougher and saltier. At the end of the hike I also got to sample some Guinea Pig, which tasted not unlike duck. I'm glad I ate one of the bastards, as there were a few of them milling around on the trails, blocking the way and generally making things far more difficult than they needed to be. I can also add them to the list of Gross Things Ingested, not limited to scorpion (tastes like roasted soy), wood grubs (tastes like Wotsits) and cat food (tastes like cat's breath).

THE OCHO !! There's only so much tramping you can do each day, and there was a fair bit of free time in the evenings (more than I would have liked really, as I had left all forms of entertainment back in Cusco). But the bored will adapt ! Favourite distractions included Sapo (literally "Toad") which involved throwing brass chunks at a realistically fashioned amphibian. Also cliff edge rounds of hackysack (yes the inevitable happened), and sixth form favourite "Shithead". Though I grew up with the orthodox rules of Windsor Boys School, I have no idea where the girls picked up the crackheaded idea that wildcards have to be played in sequence. And since when do you play below a six for crying out loud ? Everyone knows it's the eight. What the hell are they teaching kids today anyway ? Completely underprepared for the larger world. I think I displayed remarkable patience under the circumstances, especially as this is what my taxes are paying for. However, one excellent modification was turning it into an excuse for getting pissed, a language that transcends all cultural and educational barriers. When laying the now-neutered eight, the players will simultaneously roar "The Ocho !" as loud as they can, knock bottles and swig deep. I am told this is something to do with the film Dodgeball. I don't really care about that, all I know is that it scandalized all the other squares in the campsite and that I thought it was hilarious. The hand that Drew is about to play has not one, but three eights ... the resulting bellows almost derailed the train.

Gringo Starr

2006-11-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

¡Hola! ¿Que pasa? Los caballos estan al lado de la cocina. Talking bollocks ... my favourite hobby, and one practiced the world over in a rich tapestry of idiotic situations. Corporate strategy meetings, academic seminars, me and Dan in the pub, or indeed anywhere else - the list of conversational buffoonery is endless. I can now add a new category to this wonderous exercise - backpacker dormrooms. How wonderful it is listening to a group of idiots trying to act cool whilst simultaneously straining to impress each other. Perhaps banging on about the healing power of hexagons or some other such horseshit. Inevitably the first subject for discussion is what sort of trip everyone is on. Over the last seven months I have observed the desperate game of Backpacker Top Trumps ™ being played. The premise is simple. Each player seemingly has a set of cards in their minds, which correspond to each country they intend to visit, and each in turn has a score for things such as value for money (most of South East Asia wins on this one), popularity and most importantly, perceived kudos. This last part in turn is defined in a number ways but not limited to ease of travel in such a place (the harder it is, the cooler you are - India would win over Australia for example), with the most points won with how dangerous or 'hardcore' it's perceived to be (high scoring destinations would be Colombia, Afghanistan or Windsor). South America seems to be a sub-continent that generates a good amount of hyperbole, one-upmanship and generally inaccurate descriptions from the mouths of those that have not even set foot on the continent.

Santiago was to be the start of our four months in South America - flying in over the scene of the Andes, where the tops of the mountains greet you before the cloud cover and landing to the sound of applause from the other passengers ... a few hours before setting off due to flying over the international date line and the associated time zone trickery. First off, a big 'Thank You !' to our mate Roberto, who was generous enough to show us around despite a mammoth workload at University. He even went so far as to pick us up from the airport, what a gent ! He was as 'embarrassed' as us when we blundered into a café called Coffee With Legs. There's nothing lost in translation here ... I'm not sure what was more stimulating, the coffee or the barristas. Morals schmorals, not since Tokyo have the streets of a city been rubbed smooth by the tongues of two easily impressed young men - it's political incorrectness gone rad. A ten minute stroll around Santiago revealed scores of armed carabineros, brigades of street drummers and a whole lot of perros locos (indeed, some of them being chased around by the drummers). Roberto was also good enough to take us to see a band called Espia that his mate Jaime knew - there's a suitably fiery shot of their drummer.

A good proportion of our time in Santiago was spent trying to learn Spanish, leaving little opportunity for going further afield, though we did manage a day trip out to Valparaiso, a coastal town a few hours down the road. The Spanish lessons were invaluable, and were all the more enjoyable for a few impromptu air guitar sessions with our teacher, Francisco. It's always nice to be able to discuss the relative merits of Sepultura versus Napalm Death between conjugating verbs. In addition to this, we've been expanding our skills in the area of 'Jazz Cooking', as self catering saves tons of money on eating out (and obviously avoids any lurking meat for Dan). More to the point, normal cooking is boring and for nerds. The basic approach is buy a whole load of the veg that takes your fancy, sling it in a big pan and smother in herbs and spices (brilliantly these can be found for free in many kitchens). Notable successes include a form of minestrone soup without meat but with half a ton of curry powder in it and variations on familiar recipes donated by my mum. Hunt the garlic always was an Asker family favourite ("How many cloves today, Mother ?" ... "Four, dear !"). All washed down with the self descriptive Chilean drink 'Pap'. I'm happy to report that we fooled the lot of 'em - the bloke who runs Hostel Bellavista even went so far to ask "are you chefs ?". Ha ha ha ! Yes, yes we are and available for all corporate functions and weddings. Other excitement involved a visit to one of the houses of top Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (1904-73). He was a compulsive collector and hoarder, and filled his abode with all manner of wonderful crap ... I feel a strong sense of kinship with this, as I have cupboards full of rotting and useless technology that I've collected over the years. He also designed his houses to look like ships, even though he was afraid of actually sailing. The idea being that you could get the feeling of being at sea by getting arseholed on wine. Truly an inspiration.

A pertinent news story at the moment is that Augusto Pinochet, dictator of Chile from 1973-90, has just been placed under house arrest, after accepting full responsibility (not the same as an admission of guilt) for that which happened during his reign. Pinochet came to power as head of a military junta on September 11th, 1973 after ousting Salvador Allende, who had thus far led Chile through the 'Chilean Path To Socialism', with close personal ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro. Allende had implemented many radical economical reforms, nationalising major industries and leading programs for the seizure and redistribution of land of significant size. Mechanisms were set in place for helping the poorest of Chilean citizens, mostly through employment programs in the new nationalised industries. However, by 1973 the economy was suffering badly with hyperinflation and decimated exports. After the September coup, Pinochet effectively ruled in contradiction to Allende's policies, deregulization and privatization being the order of the day - to make Chile 'a nation of proprietors'. While his policies contributed to vast economic growth (dubbed by supporters as 'The Miracle Of Chile'), his rule was also characterized by sometimes brutal suppression of politcal detractors and opposition. Different numbers are cited, but the general opinion is that between two and three thousand people died under his and the military's orders in the 17 years he was in power.

After the charming bustle of Santiago, first stop in Perú was the tourist enclave of Miraflores - a nicely pruned and polished oasis for nervous foreigners to feel at ease. Our government approved taxi driver took great pains to warn us off wandering around anywhere other than Miraflores, or if we were feeling particularly adventurous, the town centre in daylight. Personal safety of course comes pretty high on the list of priorities in a strange, new town, but how well can you really say you know a place if you only stick to the parts that you're 'allowed' to go to ? While Santiago seemed to be relaxed, easy going and culturally similar to a lot of European cities, Lima by contrast seemed smog ridden and imposing. No matter, as Pisco was a few hours down the Panamerican Highway ... which is where I got a bit of a wake up call as to what the geography of Perú is actually like. I think most people would know that the country is bisected by the Andes with the coast on one side and the Amazon basin on the other. What came as a surprise is the fact that from the coast to the mountains is mostly desert, and I mean that in a very real sense. Pisco is famous for being the namesake of the Peruvian spirit, and a favourite for gringos and locals alike is the Pisco Sour. A drink which I can best describe as having two accurate syllables. The main reasons to visit Pisco, however, are the Paracas National Park and Ballestas Islands - described by some as the poor man's Gallapogas. That's good, we're skint. The town itself has it's own charms, and a good introduction as to what life is like in this region outside major cities. Similarities to parts of India, or to a lesser extent Cambodia leap to mind - kids kicking footballs along dusty roads that trail off into half finished housing areas, an old man selling melons from the back of a truck and searing mid afternoon sun, braved only by los perros locos and gringos stupidos. Come evening, the town people of all ages meet around the Plaza Di Armas, with no atmosphere of menace as the sun goes down. It seems like a good place to have a few short chats with some locals as well, who just come up and say hello without any sort of agenda other than to see who you are. Having said that, our linguistic pride was sorely bruised in Nazca as a four year old street urchin out matched us conversationally, whilst prowling for crisps. Quite frankly it was crushing having to repeatedly mutter 'no entiendo' whilst someone twenty three years my junior rolled their eyes. At least he condescended to refer to us as compadres.

If our route so far has been along a standard 'Gringo Trail', then I can at least say that it exists for some pretty good reasons. Left and above are some scenes from our jaunt around the Paracas National Park. The pelicans are one of several 'dung birds', who with the Guanay and Piquero generate significant amounts of Guano (bird crap). Due to it's nitrogen and phosphorous content it makes an excellent fertilizer, and was a main export for years. Needless to say I made sure I brought a hat on the boat. Overall an splendid way to see scores of sealions, pelicans and penguins in their natural habitat. Not flamingos though ... they never bothered to show up. Wankers.

The desert oasis of Huacachina provided the opportunity to go sandboarding, predictably enough, a few acrophobic flounderings proved enough for me. Curse this fear of heights, it bollockses everything up ... surfing is better anyway :( Best part in my opinion was charging about the dunes in some stripped out buggies. I like my vehicles like my music ... loud and fast, and our driver didn't seem to have much regard for his own safety, much less ours. I think he subscribed to the "Drive It Like You Stole It" philosophy. Well, if it's got a roll cage you may as well try to roll it. Rotational momentum, eh ? Makes the world go round.

The Inca culture of Perú deservedly gets a lot of attention from the outside world, but perhaps lesser known is that of the Nazca culture - which flourished through parts of the south west coast from 300BC to 800AD. I'm sure a few people reading this will be aware of their most famous legacy, the Nazca Lines. I was first made aware of this a few years back from my friend Clare, who thought I might be interested in this article. Theories abound as to how they may have been constructed, or what they mean, let alone why they were constructed in a way that was only visible from the air (covering an area of about 200 sq. miles). The lines themselves are constructed by removing iron oxide coated stones from the surface of the pampa, leaving the light coloured earth behind, and still visible thousands of years later due to the bone-dry climate of the area. They were re-discovered in the 1920s by pilots making passes over the pampa. Related cultures in the area engaged in shamanic rituals, taking peyote-like substances to 'cross over' into the 'real world' of spirits. In this way the animals and pointers could be viewed in the mind's eye. Another idea is that they were used in procession rituals that involved walking in perfectly ordered lines, usually as an end to rainfall or some other source of water (anyone who got it wrong might have been held responsible for the following draught). The whole subject is permeated by the theme of water, or a shortage thereof, and some academics are of the opinion that some of the lines coincided with a drought. Quite simply, without water there is no life, and nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than in a desert. It's a concern that continues to this day, and is a staple source of conflict and wars throughout history. In any case, one theory states that walking in exact patterns in this way could act as an aid to imagining them as viewed from above - I had to resort to flying in a light aircraft with a pilot who I suspect was quite hungover. The near vertical banking almost resulted in pebbledashed underwear.

Most of what is understood of the lines came about from research undertaken by Maria Reiche. The main part of her theory is that the lines and trapezoids were used as huge astronomical calendar, pointing to where the sun would be during the solstices. Dan and I wandered into a lecture by her close friend Viktoria Nikitzki. Viktoria gives the lectures from her own house, just off the main drag of Nazca, by a single bulb on benches made of small boulders and sand sacks, and while I got a bit irked at her dismissive attitude towards theories that were not wholly Reiche's (without, in my opinion, proper justification), there is no mistaking her commitment towards the conservation of them. And to no lesser extent the anger she feels towards the inability / unwillingness / corruption of Peruvian and UN officials in doing nothing to help this. The lines are technically a UNESCO protected site, though in reality this means bugger-all. Allegedly most donated funds go straight into the pockets of corrupt officials. You can see one of the clearest examples of large scale vandalism above - the Panamerican Highway slashed straight across two of the directional trapezoids.

Dodgy Geysers

2006-10-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

The time in Tasmania, and indeed the rest of Australia, came to an end too soon. It always does, no matter where you go or how long you stay there, it's never enough. There's always more places to go, more things to read about, more people you wish you'd had the chance to know better and some you wish you'd never met at all. Sometimes the planning goes well and you get a good amount of time in a place that you could happily stay a lot longer, sometimes you're just kicking around with too much time on your hands. So it goes ... and then a few things happen that remind you just how amazing it is to be able to visit certain places in the first place. Such is the case with New Zealand ... two weeks to see all that two islands of one of the most isolated and geologically active countries in the whole world. Impossible, of course ... but with a bit of planning and timing I think we did and saw some of the most interesting things on the trip so far. Regretfully this blog entry won't go into as much detail as I'd like as I basically don't have the time or resources to write all that I want to. Hopefully the photos can fill in a bit - shame this has to be a rush job, maybe I'll fill in some bits if I get some time in Chile.

Between leaving Melbourne and flying out from Sydney we spent some time checking out some of the jewels of the mainland's countryside and coast. Highlights include being bombared by divebombing cockatoos at a lodge in Lorne, going on a rubbish hike around the Dandenong ranges, being hassled by nervous emus in a volcano and taking in the sculptured drops of the Blue Mountains.

Auckland was our entry to the North Island. The moment we got outside there seemed to be a distinct feeling of unease in the air. It was the sunday before labour day, a bank holiday - lots of people milling around in the street, some taking advantage of not having to work the next day and looking the worse for drink while the purple glow of the sky tower made everything seem all the more ominous and uncertain. I don't usually feel ill at ease in cities, unless there seems to be lots of people just hanging around doing nothing. Better that they hurry about ignoring each other ? An unwelcome reminder of the British highstreets appeared in the form of a minor scuffle and some shouting. A disheartening introduction to the city, but we'd not planned on spending any time there at all - I've lost count of the number of places I've passed through only bothering to spend a few hours here and there or a night in a nondescript dorm room.

Not that it mattered, as a course was set for Rotorua the moment we arrived - an area with an outstanding collection of geothermal oddities. The local nickname is "Rottenrua" due to the pervading odour of Hydrogen Sulphide - think rotten eggs - which varies in strength throughout the day and is conveniently strongest just before bed time.

The Lady Knox geyser - spouts off at 10:15 every morning ... after being given a bit of a prompt ...

The Bridal Veil falls at Wai-O-Tapu "Thermal Wonderland" - this looks a bit like the inside of my stomach after that night out at Purple Sneakers. This is an overflow from the Opal Pool, a sulphurous spring.

After that, no time was wasted in getting down to the South Island, ending up in Picton for a welcome meet up with Dave and Jodie again. It was fantastic seeing them both again, and getting some sound advice from a pair of Kiwi-gurus (having a good few weeks head start on us). We stayed in what is possibly the best hostel in the world - The Villa. Free breakfast, free apple crumble, free bike hire, and free dog if you feel like a walk. All set in the sort of atmosphere that makes you wonder ... what's the catch ? Turns out the catch was we were forced to share a dorm room with a load of attractive German ladies. Oh, the trauma ! Bring back monosyllabic testosterone greetings and smelly socks. I had to hit myself over the head with my own shoe in the end.

It was decided that due to the watertight timeframe involved, some sort of motorised vehicle would have to be procured. After ten minutes intensive research we settled on a smaller, independant rental company as they were half the price of the larger chain companies. The reason it was so cheap is that our valiant steed was a Nissan Pulsar best described as "getting on a bit" and covered from front to back in scratches and dents. Still, it covers up any damage we may have done from taking car park entrances a bit quick. The downside is that, crime of crimes, there was no CD player. Working out how to raise the aeriel proved outside the range of our mental abilities, so buying some tapes became top priority - sign of the times, I had to get them from an antique shop. The creme de la crap is as follows :

Hot Chocolate's Greatest Hits (cigarette burns on case, bonus 'effects' from tape warping causing much amusement). "Everyone's A Winner" has the finest guitar riff ever recorded - cue a great deal of steering wheel percussion. Also impressions of Alan Partridge singing "It Started With A Kiss". You don't remember me DO YOU ?!
Australian Trucker Songs - pure joy, the faster instrumentals brought the Dukes Of Hazard element of my personality to the fore.
An Iggy Pop album, can't remember which one - not his best. Turned out to be the turkey of the bunch, strange given Bowie's obvious influence on it.
A Barry Manilow one - bought for a laugh, strangely enjoyable in the lashing rain. He's much better at scatting than expected.

First major stop was the Franz Josef glacier - one of two publicly accessable glaciers in the area. Shaped like a frying pan and 12km long, it's in a cycle of advancing and retreating, carving along the valley walls on either side.

Our intrepid explorers slog it out on the glacier, looking less like Scott Of The Antarctic and more like The Moomins. Note the Kea - a sort of mountain parrot in the background, who seemed a hell of a lot steadier on his/her feet than us with the aid of boots and crampons. It rained pretty much constantly, but we managed to convince ourselves that it was more atmospheric this way. Ha ! Pity the fools who chose to do it the next day when it was perfectly clear and sunny. How we laughed at them !

The ice on the glacier had a beautiful hue to it - deep blues, blinding whites and everything in between. This is due to the Rayleigh effect i.e. tiny particles of air suspended in the ice refract light at different angles. Here's a naturally formed ice tunnel - reminiscent of the Cu-Chi tunnels in Vietnam, I had a difficult time trying to get through this bit. Not because I found it too claustrophobic (doing my best impression of Bishop in Aliens), but because it was so bloody slippery. I got half way up, then lost my grip and slid all the way back down on my stomach, the reward being a pair of aching bollocks. Ow.

Kaikoura is awash with marine life of all sizes. You don't have to go out stalking whales to get your kicks, however. An idyllic clifftop stroll soon turned to a scene of violence and horror whilst crossing the carpark. Just like closing time in most British high streets, there's always some hooligan waiting to start tossing his orb about - this is the seal that ambushed Dan as he ambled around the corner. I had no idea they actually came this far from the sea. Now look here ... just what is it you're doing, lurking around in car parks anyway ? After our wallets, no doubt ... probably hopped up on the brine from tins of tuna. We should really have called the police and had the dreadful brute locked up. Is nowhere safe ?

There are over twenty million sheep in New Zealand (outnumbering people by a factor five ... pray that they do not start to self-organize). I like to think that this one would have the voice and personality of Kenneth Williams.

Kaikoura is the place to go for encounters with marine life, both on and off land. Ogling whales, pointing at penguins and seal gawping are all reasons it's a major stopoff on the South Island. Swimming with dolphins seemed a one off opportunity, however, so the scene was set for crowbarring ourselves into wetsuits at half five in the morning. And boy were we glad for them ... the Pacific measured a bracing twelve degrees as the sun was coming up and the dolphins were finishing their nightly hijinks - it gave surfing off Cornwall in March a run for it's testicle-shrinking money. Apart from being highly intelligent, it turns out that the dusky dolphins are also sex-fiends of the sea. Some of the examples our guide gave sounded outright scandalous ... I won't go into the details as my gran is probably reading this, but to be honest I would have thought twice about getting that close to the randy flippers had I known this in advance.

It was made very clear from the start that it was us that was the entertainment for the dolphins, and not the other way around. They're wild animals in the open ocean, and if they think you're a bit of a goon they don't stick around. They've got a reputation for being one of the most intelligent creatures on earth ... ten seconds watching us lot flounder around in the ocean desperately hooting to get their attention and it's clear who should be top of the food chain. I'm no stranger to saying and doing stupid things to get a few laughs, but this is the first time I've had to hoot the hits of Herb Alpert down a snorkel at a load of sea gits. If the dolphins didn't find it funny, the people on the boat certainly did. Yeah, tell it to Beadle.

All joking aside, this was an amazing experience - both actually seeing wild sea animals in their natural environment, and getting to learn a bit about them and conservation efforts from our guide.

Tasmanian Revel

2006-09-28T02:10:00.000-07:00

All around was total stillness ... not a single sound, save for my own tinnitus and a very occasional rustle of the wind in the bushes. I'd not seen another person for a good while, and I started to recall the series of events and decisions that had lead me to this particular situation, so very very different from the hassle, squalor and idiocy of St. Kilda. I'd decided to put my vast reserves of restlessness to good use, desiring to see The Great Outdoors - perchance the "Real Australia". I'd seen a large, red ship with "Spirit Of Tasmania" scored across it, so without thinking about the details too much bought a ticket and took the ride. Across the Bass Strait, where the Roaring Forties buffered the boat this way and that, corkscrewing it's way into the unknown. It got so bad that two previously tough talking blokes ceased their doom mongering, and stories of bearded women driving oil tankers, to start a vomit marathon. Gale force winds, five metre waves ; my beer leapt straight off the table but the crew sat around smiling, so I was untroubled too. At some point I must have slept because when I woke with a start there were dozens of bodies, snoozing on the previously empty floor. In the morning I found my way to Launceston, with no accomodation, transport or any idea what I was going to do. But that was the point - to let go, zoom out, let the details handle themselves. I booked into a fairly nondescript hostel, where the other patrons were thankfully insular.

The Cataract Gorge looked as if it might offer the scale and space I was looking for, so I went for a ramble around the First Basin. Despite the usual collection of other tourists, families and staff, ten minutes walk into the trail turned into a complete removal from any evidence of man. The silence and stillness was unlike anything I'd seen before - no sound or sign of another human being. I pressed on up the dusty track, the sun beating down and my head clear of any thought or worry. My only company was the weight on my back and the crunch and snap of an occasional twig. I couldn't say how long I'd been walking; I had a particular sudden sense that a good amount of time had passed without realising. I looked back to where I had walked, and realised that I had not seen another person the whole time, I suddenly got the feeling there was something else there and that I was being watched. I stood still, very still ... who could tell what sort of wildlife there might be around here ? Everyone knows the most dangerous animal in the forest is a human being ... but that didn't change the huge sense of foreboding. I pressed on more cautiously, aware of my surroundings and on the lookout. Sure enough, there was evidence of life everywhere - innumerable rustlings in the undergrowth, a darting sliver of an unseen creature, my every move startling or alerting something. I felt much more a part of my environment, actually in it as opposed to just crashing around in it. Perhaps this is a diluted form of how the animals feel - not just relying on sight.

Deep in the bowels of the open air cafe I encountered half a dozen or so of these strange creatures, previously unseen by man. They have a most striking plumage, a raucus call, and display not one iota of fear as they snatch dougnuts from slow witted tourists. I have therefore decided to name them "Rudebirds" - though I suspect they are not indiginous to the area.

Hobart, the state capital was to be my next destination, a straight out blaze through the highways and backroads of the midland. Johnny Cash for company, heading south at a hundred and ten per, grin as wide as the Cataract Gorge. I got my first taste of the splendour and variety of the Tasmanian countryside - vast yellow tracts of cornfields, mouth as dry as the scrubland, running my tongue around my teeth to feel the jagged mountains on the horizon. I stopped for a piss at St. Peter's Pass, and got a good laugh when two youths asked if I needed a hand trashing my rental car. They'd just seen Jackass and reckoned we could go and do a load of 'nutties' in the car park, perhaps write the car off, for the low, low price of $6 insurance. It seems that there's no shortage of dickheads, liars and chancers in this part of the world either - but I guess you can't expect everyone you meet to discuss Proust over a game of croquet.

40% of Tasmania is designated as reserves or national parkland, and after the trek about Cataract Gorge, I was keen to see more - this time at Mt. Field National Park (founded in 1916). A more taxing drive presented itself, long winding single lane highways, train tracks that appear from nowhere and disappear again into the forests. There were a disconcerting number of skid marks along the way, snaking their way between both lanes for surprising distances. It's very easy to get distracted whilst driving around here - the scenery dominates everything you see; sea birds swoop and glide alongside, gazing back through the window. Very important to concentrate for other reasons as well - it's possible to drive for hours without seeing anyone else around - particularly in the southwest wilderness area. Empty highway in front and in the sideview mirrors, there's no way you'd be found in the case of a crash or running out of fuel. The only other vehicles you might see are 18 wheelers loaded with timber, or a farmer shiftin' hogs in a trailer. At one point I suddenly realised that I had missed a turning and was in the depth of the Gordon Forest - about sixty clicks off course, and 1500m higher than I intended to be. I drove past decimated hills that had been razed almost clean of trees from logging. This is a heated environmental topic around here, with passionate views on both sides of the argument. I spent a good few hours trekking around Russel Falls and other parts of the alpine park, only seeing a handful of other people in that time. Again during that time I felt as if my senses were heightened, and any noise in the undergrowth made me stop in my tracks to see what was there. If you actually want to see any wildlife, you have to be extremely patient - the wild wallabies are, naturally enough, quite wary of people. Indeed, at one point I chanced on one sitting on a log, and had to walk a way down the path before very slowly making my way back again to let it relax.

This is the chap himself ... the Tasmanian Devil. Quite cuddly looking ... until he opened his gob for a yawn. Cripes, no wonder they're called the vacuum cleaners of the forest. On the drive back I noticed a sign for the Something Wild animal sanctuary - so I made a spur of the moment decision to drop in and see what it was about. I was greeted at the entrance buy a chap with a fully grown koala bear in his arms (and a huge scratch across his forehead).

Koalas are so snobby ! Just look at the expression on his face. They never want to look at the camera, either. I had to coax this one out with a few verses of "Waltzing Koala" - it listened to this for a bit, then had the nerve to hold up a placard with a score of 4 on it. Bloody cheek ! You can go back to stuffing your face with Eucalyptus leaves for all I care.

Baby Roo ! I can't deny it - this is here for the blatant "Aaah" value.

On top of the bottom of the world. The real jewel in my time in Tasmania was a trip up to the Cradle Mountain. I decided on an organized tour this time, as before I'd just rolled up to places on my own initiative. The weather is very, very changeable around here and I am told there are only forty days a year when it is really bright and clear for a significant amount of time. I somehow lucked out, because it was absoloutely perfect weather for the duration of the day. The air here is possibly some of the cleanest in the world, and the scent of some of the plants and herbs that grow up here envelops you. You can't see the expression on my face in this photo ... suffice to say there was an almost sheer drop behind me. You can also tell from the angle this is taken how much I had to walk down again from where Lee (our guide) was standing with the camera.

I also spent a bit of the day underground, in the Marakoopa Caves, which are described as 'active caves' as the limestone stalagtites and stalagmites are still forming. The dark, cold isolated and surrealness of the cave made me think that this was more similar to somewhere like Mars, rather than what was a few hundred metres above us. The strangest sight was the glow worm cavern - thousands of pulsing lime green points, hiding and then re-appearing behind the myriad stalagtite fingers. It was undeniably similar to the constellations of the night sky, yet we were 150m below rainforest.

Tasmania is one of the smallest states of Australia, but it has bewildering differences in geography even over small distances. From the vividness of the midlands, the landscape around the mountains took on a different and strange palette. The colours looked completely unsaturated, pale, cool - but also very defined and rugged. Not just the blues and whites of a mountainscape, but also burnt red earths and bleached, skeletal trees. Or the cool, secluded greens of the Gondwana forest, where moss lies like snow over every root and trunk. The cover of the tree canopy is so dense that despite the bright sun above, it's acts like a huge natural refridgerator. Lee explained that despite the beauty of the area, it was extremely important to have your wits about you, and to plan treks properly - the bush claims it's fair share of people who just wander off and are never seen again. During our drives about, I commented that much of the countryside looked quite English (particularly the village of Deloraine). This apparantly is deliberate, as the colonists who originally came here tried to introduce vegetation and wildlife from the British Isles, probably in an attempt to make it a bit more like home. Obviously this led to a fair bit of environmental damage, and the gorse in particular took a good hold on the land.

I'm told this a 'Paddymella' - a smaller species of kangaroo, much like a wallaby. Look closely at the pouch - it's not being rude, that's one of it's newborns.

And here's the wombat. Just ambling across the road as it pleased. It can't be seen here, but this one was also carrying a baby wombat in her pouch - only visible from the rear. When attacked, wombats will make a beeline for their holes, and present their arse to the outside world (I can see the appeal of such an action sometimes). I'm told they have a sort of toughened plate, much like the shell of a tortoise, and if a predator such as a dog tries to force it's way into their den, they make a small gap and then crush the skull of their foe against the upper wall. So don't try it !

Ah, the old 'looking thoughtful' trick, eh ? I know what you're about, my lad ... plotting another muffin heist I'm sure. This beaked sod had them away the minute you turned your back - I'll see you in court old son.

After The Goldrush

2006-09-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

Melbourne was formed in 1935 by European settlers, mostly heading in from Tasmania in search of better land. By 1951, the population had reached a steady 29,000, and broke away from New South Wales, thus forming the colony of Victoria. The discovery of gold at places such as Ballarat lead to a frenzied scramble to get as much of it out of the ground in as short a time as possible, and an explosion in immigration. This had the effect of easily making Victoria the richest state, and Melbourne the most populous city (at the time). Today it's the largest inland city in Victoria (even though it has a population of 90,000, the centre is best described as 'sparse', and had me scratching my head as to the exact definition of 'City'). We made a weekend trip out to the place in an attempt to find out a bit more about how the state was forged - I've put this as a separate post because I think certain members of my family might be interested in all this.

I had little idea of what Ballarat would be like in advance - aside from it being a little known song by The Lemonheads, and that it meant 'Resting Place' in it's Aboriginal spelling. We booked ourselves into a slightly dog-eared looking hostel which, despite having perfectly nice rooms, induced a distinct feel of unease in me ... maze like corridors, an undefined musty smell, slightly spaced out receptionist and vague signs alluding to different sets of rules for 'visitors' and 'permanent residents' - whatever the hell that means. Dan made some crack about it being haunted, but I never did like the idea of checking into a room which has a huge sign above it saying 'No Exit' ... ever played the old PC game Alone In The Dark ? It was like that. Anyway, we made a token attempt to hit the town, as it was Saturday night after all. Ballarat is no exception to anywhere else that we've been in Austalia in that it takes a lot of pride in the quality of food available - you certainly won't be complaining, provided you can afford it. There was precious little in the way of entertainment, so we took a chance on a fairly rubbish British themed pub. Unexpectedly, I was harrassed up by some rowdy old hens while Dan got the drinks in - apparantly I'm a "cuuuuutie". O technicolour harridan, how blootered ye are. Ballarat's oddballs weren't done for the evening, however ... a peculiar old fellow in the "Irish" pub insisted on chewing our ears off for the best part of an hour. Three topics only were discussed - "You boys are alright", "What time is it ?" and "You look just like Mick Jagger". Until he got so pissed he almost fell of his stool - ahh, how the world loves a drunk. Like the time in Rising Sun when a fight broke out to the strains of "What's New, Pussycat ?", the lesson is clear : avoid themed pubs at all costs.

Thankfully that wasn't the reason we were there, however. The economy of Ballarat these days is mostly about tourism - focused on Sovereign Hill, a sort of cross between Legoland and the set of Deadwood. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a lot less tacky than expected, and actually did a very good job of educating an addle-brained layabout like myself to the hardships of the time (the fact that it pissed it down for the first half of the day, turning the ground to mud, actually added an air of authenticity). Victorian London, awesome fashions aside, was probably not a huge barrel of laughs - unless you were filthy rich (not just filthy). On the tail end of the industrial revolution, I should imagine that grime, noise, disease, inescapable poverty, endemic crime and a lot of other miscellaneous misery were the order of the day. Small wonder those who could sold everything they owned in cities all over Britain, to gamble on a ticket to Australia and other parts of the colonies for the goldrushes - a continuing theme of the 19th century. Poor buggers, a lot of them did not exactly find the good life they were expecting, though of course some did become hideously wealthy. There's no getting away from how hard it would be working in these conditions - boys as young as 11 were shoved into the mines, and the backbreaking (and often fruitless) labour defined the spirit of the area for generations. Once most of the easy to get at gold (i.e. at the surface / in rivers) had dried up, there was still tons more below the surface. Extracting this was obviously beyond the means of most independant workers, so huge mining companies were set up to drill out the deposits, usually in quartz seams. The conditions were completely atrocious - dangerous, filthy, deafeningly loud, dark, hot, humid - not to mention the health dangers of all the dust. There wasn't much in the way of worker's rights or unions, and it was a hard, hard life. Other contributing factors eventually led to the Eureka Stockade - a rebellion that took place in 1854, which although didn't technically achieve it's aims, became known as the 'Birth of Australian Democracy'. The symbol of the revolt was the Eureka Flag, still used as an emblem for a wide variety of causes (there were several people wearing T-shirts with it on around town - I'm not absoloutely sure why this was). It depicts the Southern Cross - visible on the flags of Australia and New Zealand, and also the night sky.

This is the sort of place you can learn a little about a lot in a short space of time - it's always interesting how different strands of history and other subjects meet up with each other at certain points. I must confess that, other than electrical and heat conductivity, I had only a vague inkling as to why gold was valued so highly ... why not some other material ? Aside from looking nice, the answer is quite simple : it doesn't change much. It's quite uniform, and once you've got it out of the ground, you can put it out the way for years and years. Provided someone doesn't nick it, it will be exactly as left - it won't corrode or evaporate or anything else. Thus it was very popular with early merchants and traders - the fact that it's not exactly easy to find made it ideal for a form of money. There was also a rudimentary stock exchange going on, with shares in mining companies being sold to raise the capital for equipment etc. Many of the subjects discussed at Sovereign Hill were echoes of events going on elsewhere in the British Empire. It's easy to imagine the long term effect on a nation's psyche with events such as these - aside from the convict history (more on this in the next post), the lives of the people involved would have been based almost entirely around sheer hard work. Much stock was taken on the reliance of oneself, but also the importance of other people, appreciation of hearty food (rare that it was), and games and music in the camps that provided a relief, however brief, from the toil of the day.

There's a very remote chance you might still find some fluvial gold (i.e. found loose in water). This is me having a go at panning for it. Seven days I wasted on this, with the bare minimum of vittles ... did I find any ? Did I fu [post edited by Blogspot administrators due to outrageously coarse language]

Once the shiny stuff is out of the ground, it needs to melted down (at a temperature of just over 1000 C), for removing impurities and forming into handy bars - this is a demonstration of how the process works. The chap on the left there, in true Blue Peter 'here's one I did earlier' style, takes a pot of molten gold and pours it directly into a cast. He then dumps the lot into a water trough (producing an impressive amount of steam in the process, I almost expected him to start cackling or something), and in the space of a couple of minutes it goes from being over a thousand degrees to being cool enough to touch. About the size of two large chocolate bars, in English pounds it's worth around 28 grand.

Poop poop ! The 1850s answer to "Pimp My Ride". I do love Victorian era transport. Perhaps because I grew up in a house with a Penny Farthing parked in the hall. Given that I won't have a car when I get back, and my normal bike has got dodgy brakes, I think it may become my main mode of transport. If my parents have sold it in my absence, I shall never forgive them - they're crafty buggers, can't turn my back for a minute.

This was unexpected ... Neutral Milk Hotel have apparantly reformed. Yay !

Chairman Of The Bored

2006-09-14T23:04:00.000-07:00

Spring is finally here, sidling in like a compunctious wombat. The established cliche of Melbourne is that you can experience all four seasons in one day (Michael Fish would probably have something to say about that, but he'd be wrong). On the left we have the view over the south bank of the Yarra river, with Federation Square (leading off to the angular Melbourne film institute) in the middle. Dave and Jodie have now left for New Zealand - it was great hanging out with the guys for a few weeks, and I really hope we get to hook up again in NZ. While they were still here, we accompanied them to Genevieve Gauckler's exhibition - there were some good 'cut up' / digital collage works, I found the fast food and medical technology ones particularly interesting.

We also went to a retrospective look at the 'Skins And Sharps' culture of late 60s/70s Melbourne. From the photographs and film footage, it did not seem too distant from similar movements in Britain of the time, but with an edge that was distinctly their own. While I find the prominence and glorification of violence abhorrent, all the other factors of the movement seemed to be a distillation of youth culture - underage drinking, sexual politics and of course loud, urgent music (which was typical of the Aussie rock scene, and was a precursor to bands such as AC/DC). Stories of drinking and fighting up and down Swanston St. (now the main artery of the Central Business District) abound - a favourite trick was to fill the tram lines with petrol and throw a match into it. Very different to the mass of commuters and tourists lining up outside the cafes this morning. As Dan pointed out, this was very much their own scene, very particular to a certain time and place and not easily bought into - you couldn't just walk into high street shops and buy the required CDs and uniform to associate with a group of people in magazines that looked cool. I should imagine there was little room for likely pretenders. It was also interesting that the kids involved were a lot younger than I was expecting - starting at about 12, you would have been considered an old man by 19. It got me thinking about some of the paradoxes and ironies that occur within cultures such as these - a recurring theme is always conflict and nonconformity - towards parents, other groups and of course the authorities. Yet for all the championing of nonconformity towards outward society, there always seems to be the inward pressure of conforming to a specific set of attitudes within that group. The immediate reaction is to write it off as moronic, and I don't think I'll ever agree with the unrelenting machismo and violence, but it's important to remember just how young some of the "kids" involved were. There's a lot to be said for good employment rates, decent education, not to mention available entertainment - I think boredom is a factor which is much ignored a lot of the time. One anomaly in the picture was the clothing - aside from the boots and trousers you'd expect, multicolour knitted cardigans featured heavily. In the context of the time and people, it would have been de rigueur and dead sharp ... wear them today and you'd be booted out of a Belle & Sebastian gig for being too twee. Funny how certain items of clothing become hot retro items, and others from the same time get ridiculed.

I had a conversation with one of my friends recently, who asked if I was going to come from 12 months of travel "a bit of a hippy". I'm not quite sure what that means ... I'd guess she means more relaxed and less of a grumpy git. We're at the halfway mark, and to some degree that's the case ... physical discomforts bother me slightly less, however I'm finding it more and more difficult to ignore the attitudes that I disagree with. The standard cliches of backpacking seem to be lazing around on beaches, hiking mountains, riding around on buses and "talking to loads of cool people". We've done some of that, but a good amount of the people I've met I would not describe in any way as "cool". Depends on the definition of course - if you count random aggression in the street, or a misogynistic, homophobic or casually racist attitude then yes. They were pretty cool.

Probably not so surprising, this sort of shit is often pushed through mainstream entertainment, sometimes subtly, sometimes not. I particularly get annoyed with Hollywood action films that seem to be getting dumber, more sexist and more full of product placement by the minute. It's not so much the fact that they exist that depresses me (freedom of speech and expression, after all) - it's the fact that so many people choose to sell themselves out to this sort of attitude. This was one of a number of factors which prompted me to get out of England in the first place in the attempt to go and broaden my mind a bit, and hopefully talk to some nice and interesting people. That's not really happened as much as I'd liked, and Q.F.S. I feel as bored, irritated, hacked off and alienated as I did in England. For all you Red Dwarf fans out there, and remember the Timeslides episode, I feel like Dave Lister does at the beginning. Perhaps I should get some bubble wrap, paint it red and write Tension Sheet on it.

Maybe I've been in St. Kilda too long. It's a bit like a whistlestop tour of social contrasts and problems - in a five minute walk you can see happy families on the beach, destitution, prostitution, the screaming insane, discarded syringes, 20-somethings getting smashed in the meat markets, trendy 30-somethings in the cafes and a great many people just trying to mind their own business. Good for people watching, but I'm beginning to ask just what it is I'm doing there, and I'm scratching my head trying to think of anything genuinely groundbreaking or constructive that I've done in the last two months. I don't think there really is anything - perhaps it's all been a big waste of time. Or maybe it's good to add a bit of perspective, and to remember just what a fortunate position I'm in. It would be a bit one dimensional if there was nothing to get annoyed about, and I went on this trip to find out a bit more about how the world is ("full of arseholes" perhaps).

Anyway, the best thing about life is being able to laugh, so here's some stuff that at least made me grin :

"FOOTBAAAALL !"

I'm not usually one for sporting events, as I find most sport utterly boring. However ... I do like drinking and shouting in public, and AFL (Aussie rules football) seems to be a game that is sufficiently fast paced and frenetic to hold my attention. We went off to the Melbourne / St. Kilda game at the MCG, part of the four week finals series. That's Graydon and Leanne on the left, two of our housemates.

The pitch is roughly the shape and size of a cricket pitch (AFL being a game that came about as a way for cricket players to stay in shape over the winter). It's very different to British football, in fact being totally unrelated. The game takes place over four quarters, ostensibly twenty minutes a piece but with stoppages usually closer to thirty. It's a long game alright, but very popular - attendance was around 60,000 for this game (venue capacity being 100,000).

Watch out, son ! A nifty catch by a St. K player could end in trouble very soon ...

I like this game because it's very fast paced, there doesn't seem to be a lot of unnecessary and complex rules, and there's a lot of, well, scuffles. Naively, Graydon asked me to provide a rolling commentary on the video he shot. The game is now played by five teams simultaneously, on ponies, with 39 players a side.

Party on, dude ! Inter-quarter entertainment came in the form of a load of beers and meat pies. And some kids going bonkers two rows in front, making crude banners and driving their parents up the wall.

Shit ! That was a goal ! St. K belt one in. As the ball has gone through the middle two posts, that counts for six points - get it between one of the middle posts and outermost ones and that counts as a 'side' - one point. The Saints put up a sterling effort for the greater part of the game, but let it slip in the final quarter when The Demons barged their way to victory. Final score was St. Kilda 72 (10 goals, 12 sides), with Melbourne winning at 90 (13, 12).

A flock of birds flew over the stadium at half time. It was so beautiful etc. etc.

The only gig I've been to since The Minority was at Hi Fi in the CBD. We were there primarily to see The Midnight Juggernauts, on the advice of Dave and Jodie. First on was Talk Show Boy, one of the most original and entertaining acts we've seen so far. It was a simple enough setup - Adrian plugs in his iPod, starts the backing tracks of his own creation and then runs around all over the venue screaming into his mic. He also cracked the following joke : "People who are able to make music that don't" - that certainly hit home :(

Unfortunately, the rest of the gig wasn't so interesting - in fact we left in the middle of the Valentinos set. It was the usual sort of stylised 'indie'-rock, very Strokes / BRMC influenced. They should have been called something like "Thatcher's Crotch", their music was that conservative.

Actually, there was some other live music to be had. I heard the sound of a drumkit as I walked up Swanston St. last week. With nothing better to do I followed the sound up to the State Library. And saw this ... Melbourne's finest law enforcers playing at being rock stars. I sidled up to one of their colleagues and demanded to know just what in Blue Blazes was going on. It turns out it was some of sort of PR event to show the public the friendlier side of the force. So I stuck around to see them go through a covers set including Forever Young by Alphaville (enjoying another go as part of the soundtrack to Napoleon Dynamite), and AC/DC's It's A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock n Roll. They got some random members of the public to help out on that one - never one to resist making a berk of myself in public, I obviously helped them out.

Hands up ! It looked like everyone in town turned up and started dancing - much like an end scene from several shit 80s movies (Caddyshack, I'm looking at you). The kids in the audience obviously thought all of this was great.

I don't care what anyone says, this is a good look. Cops in kilts and aviator shades with bagpipes. They even went so far as to have a riff-off with the guitarist on an AC/DC song.

The cynical view to take would be "Why are they mucking around with guitars instead of going prowling for villains ?". Charitably, I gave 'em the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that the officers involved would have been on their days off anyway. As a PR stunt, it seemed to work very well - the whole of the area around Latrobe and Swanston Sts. seemed abuzz with people relaxing and enjoying themselves.

Romance is not dead in St. Kilda ! You can't go anywhere without seeing someone declaring their undying passion for someone else in a patch of semi-dry concrete. Or even consummating a chance encounter with a short-term beau, no rare sight on Inkerman. They went one further the other day - by writing it in the sky. Oddly enough our mate Chris in Edinburgh had sent us a load of CDs through the post, and I noticed this not long after picking them up. Splendid !

Yahh ! Your computer's rubbish - it don't run Doom or nuffink ! Actually this is CSIRAC, the only first generation computer still in existence. Currently parked up at Melbourne Museum, this photo really does not do justice to the scale of the machinery on display. A system that takes up almost an entire room, back when people had to properly think about the programs they entered (on punch cards, natch). Trying to find a fault on one of these bastards must have absoloutely sucked. However, some things have always been the same - I was not in the least fooled by pictures of saucy 50s women winking and pointing at the valves. In almost exactly the same way you get some token model (usually wearing thick rimmed glasses for "authentic geekiness") on every advert from small scale web hosting to mainframe vendors. No doubt designed to appeal to the Beavis And Butthead element of every delusional nerd. Listen, I've been in IT long enough to know that this is just not the case. I have never, ever been interrupted in my inspections of the rows of "blinken lichten" by some strumpet with a penchant for discussing superconductivity. Pity.

Cockroach Kitchen ! Part of the natural science part of Melbourne Museum. Yes, these are live cockroaches - they were scurrying about and clicking angrily at each other to wash the frying pan. It has become abundantly clear that I need my own museum to fill up with rad stuff, oddities and curios.

Complete with three flying ducks. This particular detail had me crying with laughter, though it never did become clear why the canteen carnival existed in the first place.

I'd have liked to have a photo of a possum somewhere, but those things are batshit insane and I'm basically scared of them. I tried to take a photo, the sound that came out of it's mouth was not of this world :(

Gig photos - Glovebox / The Minority

2006-09-02T21:41:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday we went along to see local Melbournians The Minority again, as they were playing at Revolver in Prahran - I've stuck some photos up here in case those that were there want to see them ... Concert photography is something I've had an interest in for a while, but never really got round to doing it properly. Seeing as I'm trying to work out the ins and outs of my new SLR, I thought this would be an ideal opportunity to practice a bit more. I managed to get hold of a second hand 50mm prime lens, which opens up to a marvelous aperture of f/1.4 - thus letting ridiculous amounts of light in. Handy, because (in my opinion) using flash at a gig is an annoyance, both to the bands and to the rest of the audience (especially in a smaller, crowded venue). This really came home watching some of the gigs in Sydney - there were a couple of guys wandering around with huge zooms and powerful external flashes, all very impressive equipment wise but was it strictly necessary I wondered ? And were they really taking in the music at the same time ? No doubt the images looked quite nice, but if it's at the expense of some basic manners then no thank you. Anyway, it's quite a challenging environment sometimes, but I'm learning a lot from my mistakes. Experimenting with different metering modes and how to focus rapidly (auto focus modes seem to be a bit useless here, because everyone moves so quickly) - will hopefully get some other gigs in before we leave.

Support was from a band called Glovebox - a sort of funk, disco quartet (f/1.4, 1/250, converted to grayscale because of dodgy colour from the lights).

Glovebox again (f/1.4, 1/320)

As mentioned before, one of my favourite things about live music is watching the expression of whoever's drumming. A reasonably quick shutter speed helped capture the expression of Animelly from The Minority, who it has to be said moves around a fair bit. Perhaps a slightly slower one would have blurred the sticks more (I like that sometimes).

(f/2, 1/125)

Wish I'd had a drumkit when I was younger :(

(f/2.8, 1/200)

The mysterious Keg, guitarist of The Minority. The photos don't always turn out right - this one demonstrates quite neatly the problem with smaller venues. For some reason the lighting nearly always is skewed towards the magenta end of things. If you're not careful a lot of the images just come out far too red - I learnt to watch the light sequences carefully in the end. Perhaps using a narrower metering mode would probably have helped here too as his shirt is way overexposed compared to the hair etc.

Eliza with Animelly in background

(f/5.6, 1/125)

I always say you can tell how good a band is by how much they roll around on the floor. This is Ross, singer and keyboardist - a damn nice bloke offstage as well.

(f/1.4, 1/250)

(f/1.8, 1/250)

(f/1.8, 1/250)

He just eats cake ! End of the gig, you can hear the associated song here.

(f/2.5, 1/1250)

On the way home - I've included this because Dave just looks so happy to be on the tram. He loves 'em !

(f/2.5, 1/60)

Congratulations !!

2006-09-01T19:54:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to my sister Kate, and her boyfriend Tim, who have just told me they are engaged !! These two splendid urchins rang me up at ridiculous o'clock in the morning to give me the news - I am of course very very pleased for them both. I was probably quite incoherent on the phone, as I was in the middle of a dream in which I was talking to Kate ... and being woken up by her and having to talk on the phone was a pretty surreal experience. So sorry if I was a bit non-plussed at first ! Tim has also asked for me to be his best man (sharing joint responsibilities with Hugh) - a role which I'm honoured and thrilled to accept. I shouldn't think there'll be a lack of annecdotes for the speech as Tim and I have got drunk together about a thousand times. I am pleased that my sister has had the good sense to marry someone who is reckless enough to kiss a whole prawn on the eye.

Work And Music

2006-08-18T17:44:00.000-07:00

"I was looking for a job and then I found a job ... and heaven knows I'm miserable now" - thus spake the Prophet Morrissey. Never a truer word crooned - Sponge Bob on the left there can laugh his stupid poriferan arse off, having a regular slot on Cartoon Network, but the options for us two are more limited. Being back in a relatively expensive country inevitably means living like stigs or finding gainful employment. As it turns out we've had to resort to both. After a few unsuccesful attempts to find bar or shop work, I had to fall back on a much more daunting prospect ... office temp work. Ohhhhhhhh no. It's true, I'm back to the situation is was in when I was 18 ... doing the sort of monotonous, pointless tasks that nobody who usually works there wants to do, with a 6-month backlog to boot. If you ever have to get temps in to your office, please try to talk to them. They are human too, and probably as miserable as sin. The only thing that got me through the week was suddenly remembering how Yakety Sax, the incidental music in the Benny Hill Show went - so I hummed that to myself all day long. Dan had it worse though - instead of call centre noncommunication, he had to put up with people banging on about how they were too mad for Big Brother. Get the hell out !

However, radness was just around the corner. Two friends of ours, Dave and Jodie, from home turned up last Sunday - this cheered us right up ! They are also on a round the world trip at the moment and getting inspirations for their design business, Peskimo. We are all currently living in St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne and one of the main backpacker areas. Today we went to the Maurice Sendak exhibition at the Jewish Museum. Then, because it was Art Day (sunday), it was on to Short Sighted at The Metro to veg out and watch some particularly confusing / disturbing stop frame animations. Enjoyed it immensely.

There is an upside to working of course, aside from paying the rent. It means we can go completely nuts outside of work (not as nuts as I'd like, but still a bit nuts). And that means MUSIC ! Indeed, the first thing I did on learning that I had a job was to procure a six pack of Stella and a new Leonard Cohen CD. Here's Dan checking out the listings and planning our assault on the town. We've spent the last couple of Friday nights at a club called Panic, over in Fitzroy. We found our way into a free gig completely by accident, and saw a set by top disco-rockers The Minority. The front man, Ross, was a total lunatic on stage with a good line in stage-mannerism, and an unexpectadly down to earth and nice chap off. Coincidentaly he also used to live in Reading. Here's some of their music. Then it was off to Panic to spend a good few hours drinking the troublingly cheap wine and lurching around to the strains of "I Wanna Be Sedated" by The Ramones, The Smiths and Belle And Sebastian. There I got yelling to a bloke called Kenny from the band Goodnight Combat Fighter, a local indie-rock outfit. And quickly learnt that the done thing was to scream "RIIIIGHT AWWWN !" at whoever was near. This being the Myspace generation, and self promotion of course being a big thing these days, he told me that they were playing a gig at our favourite venue, The Espy - naturally we obliged. This was exactly the sort of rawk that makes you want to kick in the door, turn over the table, smash the overhead projector on the floor and then straight out the back again. A bit like GCSE French, but for different reasons.

First on were an incendiary post - hardcore - elements - of - math - rock outfit named Chester's Black And White. They completely blew me away, and were thoroughly nice blokes to talk to as well. I like the pullover and trucker hat combination.

One of the best drummers I've ever heard. Even Dan was agape at his perpetual fills.

"Dr. Kenneth Noisewater", our contact in Goodnight Combat Fighter. Note the gleeful expression of their drummer, Pat in the background. Studying 'drumming faces' is an integral part of gig going.

Kenny and Joe, the two blokes I met at Panic.

The rest of Goodnight Combat Fighter.

I'm a sucker for slide guitar. Which is the only reason I stuck around to see the rest of this band, I can't remember their name, they were mostly terrible.

Anyone for Clash-inspired-Mandolin-punk ? I think this band were called The Live Room. Strange thing, mandolins seem to crop up all over the place in contemporary Aussie music.

Dear Oh Dear

2006-08-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

I may as well stick these up now, as I know Kate and Soph are probably itching to see them. Last night Dan and I went to a Neighbours theme night, courtesy of Thom's mate Laura. Let me repeat that ... A Neighbours Theme Night. Was it the most tacky thing I have ever witnessed ? Yes. Did we have a brilliant, stupid time ? Oh yes. This is the carnage that ensued ...

Jarrod 'Toadfish' Rebecchi and I. I think it's safe to say that meeting Toady was the most significant thing that has happened on this trip.

I don't actually know who this bloke is - apparantly he's called Stingray.

Likewise I have no idea who this woman is. She was thrilled to meet me, however.

This is Dan and I punching each other in the face. Any further attempt at explanation is probably futile.

Gordon Bennett.

Sydney

2006-08-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

We have arrived in Australia. After being invited in for a 'Pint Of Piss' by the Home Secretary, we made our way over to King's Cross, Sydney - a pole for skint backpackers and some of the seedier sides of society. After a few nights in the Central YHA (described by Lonely Planet as 'The Cadillac Of Hostels' - complete with swimming pool and sauna on the roof), we got set up with a room in a share house. Which turned out to be strikingly similar to the place I festered in as a student (Donnington Gardens to those who remember it). Slightly grotty, but entirely livable - at least the ceiling stayed intact in the kitchen, unlike the aforementioned hovel. Though going down to the 7-11 meant running the gauntlet of winking masseurs - as I trundled back from the pub a few nights ago, a low moaning saxophone raised it's eyes to heaven and wondered why it had been born under a bad sign. If that's not straight off the cover of a Tom Wait's LP, I'll eat one of the pastried bowel-worriers from Pie Face. Again.

Excellently there was no shortage of gig venues and indie clubs in the area. Left is a shot of some of the Jess Randall group - as seen at Love Jam, an all day festival over at Bondi. This group were one of my favourites, I'm a sucker for pretty much any music with good strings. It's amazing how quickly I've reverted to type now that I'm back in a Western country with a temperate climate for a while. Out with the sandals and shorts, hello to ill fitting jeans, Converse shoes, stripy shirts and hooded tops. All the better for watching live music and drinking bad beer. And we did plenty of that - although when I say "drinking bad beer" perhaps I should also mention that Australia is a prominent producer of some very fine wine, a fact I have taken full advantage of. Though I do not remember much of The Dolly Rocker Movement's set, The Astral Kaleidescope were Ace - it's been a while since I've heard some good drone-core.

In addition to some very pleasant beaches and music all-dayers, a favourite Sunday activity in Bondi seems to be the garage sale - the success of Ebay clearly demonstrates the universal desire to buy other people's old rubbish. I got hold of a copy of High/Low by Nada Surf for AU$2, an album I've had no end of difficulty tracking down at home. Aside from rocking out, we went to see a film called Ten Canoes, which explains a little bit about Aboriginal stories and pre-colonial culture. It was particularly interesting watching this after reading Guns, Germs And Steel, as it gave me a better idea of how hunter-gatherer societies may have functioned, at least in this context. Specific points of interest for myself were the structure of a polygamous society, and how warfare erupted and was handled. The changing attitudes towards the 'Sorcerer' of the piece - initially treated with fear and suspicion and how he eventually integrated himself with the rest of the villagers.

It hasn't all been drinking and unemployment, however. I made the mistake of thinking that once we got back to somewhere relatively familiar that there would be a lack of mental chewing gum for a while. That was before the disgraceful events around Lebanon kicked off - and it resonates particularly because of the large Lebanese population here. We've been to a couple of talks and marches, and it is heartening to see that there is a lot of sympathy for the plight of those displaced and killed in the time since these attrocities started. Especially seeing as memories of the Cronulla race riots are still very, very fresh. Something else to grumble over locally is the latent sexism that seems to pervade. To be fair, there's probably a large amount of this at home (mostly in moronic lads' mags and shite chart toppers), I just notice it here more because I'm in an unfamiliar area and trying to make observations on things. In any case, during a wander around the Royal Botanical Gardens, I noticed a sign explaining the difficulties in grass cutting for such a large area and how technology had improved things - fair enough. Whoever designed the sign is a master of irony however, because there was a picture of a buxom lady leaning over a dodgy old mower, showing the goods and winking - the caption was "We've come a long way from the 1970s". Well bravo. Or the car rental poster trumpeting "No Birds" - yeah, none of my business either.

In attempt to find something worthwhile to think about, we went to a talk entitled "The People's History of Empire", courtesy of Socialist Alternative. There were some interesting ideas, but we didn't realise it was actually their weekly meeting as well - so there was precious little discussion of the actual themes afterwards and too much on how great the new cover of this week's magazine is. Obviously any talk given in this context is going to have a heavy political bias towards the views of the group that's giving it, but it gave me another perspective to look at things from when reading about events in history. Although I'm not fully convinced that that an end to Capitalism will spell an end to war - in my (uninformed and unresearched) opinion, that seems slightly naive. War existed (admittedly on a smaller scale) long before Capitalism found it's feet, and all things point to it being around for a very, very long time. At the moment I feel like getting hold of a big textbook on something easier to understand than the inhumanity of the world ... like hyperdimensional trigonometry or astrophysics. At least it's nice and ordered and there's a set answer that you can come to through applied logic, totally divorced from reality. Not statistics though - that was always boring as shit.

Alice Cooper knew what he was rattling on about in Lost In America - moaning about not being able to get a job or a car because one depends on the other. The best solution he comes up with is to get a girlfriend and sponge off of her - unfortunately we decided to do things the hard way. This meant doing a Responsible Service Of Alcohol course that (in theory) would kick in the door of opportunity for employment. The course itself was basically familiarising ourselves with the booze laws of New South Wales (which seem to be slightly stricter than the rest of the country), and getting an idea of where one stands on dealing with tired and emotional customers. One thing that struck both of us is how confrontational some of it (at least on paper) seemed to be. If someone's had too much, that's it - they have to be asked to leave. No suggestions of soft drinks or slowing down, that's it. It is different in Victoria, however, and that's where I will be looking for bar jobs anyway. After the formalities, I opted to go out for further practical investigation in the field with a couple of people from the course - which was soon paired down to two blokes from Dublin and myself having Guinness races in Scruffy Murphy's. All good stuff, right up until the point where I was treated to a tirade against the English (fair enough, I can see why some of our actions through history would get some people's goat, especially our nearest neighbours). It went on for entirely too long to feel comfortable, however - and eventually led on to some racist meanderings about South Africa with Islamophobia for pudding. Righto, see you later then.

Other things that kept us out of trouble :

The Sun and Planet gear, part of the Boulton and Watt Engine on display at the Powerhouse Museum. Built around 1785, the third in production and currently the world's oldest surviving example - described as "the most significant technological artifact to reach Australia". Seeing it in motion was extraordinary.

The locals are fairly deprecating about their landmarks - no "Big" Ben or "Grand" Palace here. Indeed, the Sydney Harbour Bridge is known as "The Old Coat Hanger" - in the spirit of things, I've re-named the Opera House "The Fab Kebab".

Having a Captain Cook over Manly bay

What do we want ? PINTS ! Morton shows his disdain for pitiful "Standard Drinks". Solidarity !

A surfer at Bondi beach, wading out to join his mates.

I cannot wait to get in the sea ...

Ha ! Who would have thought it ?

Some scenes from the Royal Botanic Gardens - the Succulent Garden was particularly interesting. A great number of cactii and aloe, striking in the winter light.

Last Images Of Asia

2006-07-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

Watching the pottery work on a day trip to Ko Kret

A favourite pastime in South East Asia is the traditional game of "Stuff Livestock With Precious Metals". Dan and I got into this in a big way. So far 30 cows have kicked the bucket with silver, 79 geese had their fill of bronze and we managed a staggering 288 Cadmium Yaks. YUSS !

Edible flowers at the market in Ko Kret - the blue ones had a very odd, sweet and greasy taste.

Dan gave them a bit more of a chance than I did. That's right Son, get 'em down yer throat !

I hate melodicas, more so than any other instrument. Who made these bastard things popular again ? I have a strong suspicion it was Damon Albarn. Anyway, this is Bangkok's Melodica Army - behind bars. Where they belong.

Detail of the Golden Temple

Our mate Kung, who kindly allowed me to take a picture while she was praying at Wat Su That.

Rambutan - a sort of lychee, often hospitably served up to us, often very unsubtley left uneaten (after making a big show of eating one each).

What a photogenic chap, how thoughtful looking ... oh no ! Look who's blundered into frame - get out, get out !

A view over Bangkok, from the Golden Mount

The flag over the Golden Mount.

Mekong Misadventures

2006-07-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Hello again, blog-vultures ! Dan and I skidded into Sydney last Saturday, marking the end of Chapter One of our travels. Asia has certainly left a lasting impression on us both, at once vibrant and ambiguous, in parts bustling and exploited, in others enigmatic and serene. It's difficult to articulate the sheer variety of the continent, and the many apparant contradictions in the cultures we encountered - cutting edge technology and infrastructure in one area, juxtaposed with agonizing poverty and dilapidation in the next. The rural psyche of Cambodia and the noise of Mumbai versus the sterile (and in my opinion, characterless) polish of Singapore.

Here's the first of a couple of small posts, just to stick up some photos while I think about it :

The Mekong River - over 4,000 km long, running through Tibet, China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - acting both as divider and provider for the lands that it splits. The scene for most of the aforementioned Apocalypse Now, and a continual source of irrigation for "Asia's Rice Bowl". I went to have a look, and ended up having a cycle around Tan Thach Village in the Chan Thanh district.

Bees ! Our intrepid tour guide wasted no time in thrusting my hand towards this boiling nest of stingers, insisting it was safe. I wasted no time in squawking my firm reservations ... I should have told him the story about this bloke I know. He got stung by a bee once, and one of his testicles began to swell up to a colossal size! Why the hell did that happen? I don't know, but it's one of my favourite anecdotes; it's got a bit of everything - mystery, drama, comedy ... still, the pecan and ginger honey sweets were delicious.

The village string group go through a quick set - and rope in what seemed like most of the rest of the village for the vocals.

Monsoon season over the Mekong Delta ...

... doesn't stop the locals navigating during the often torrential cloudbursts.

This is one of my favourite images from Vietnam, the village was so peaceful and idyllic - pretty far away from the madness and murder of the past of the country.

Despite the abundance of food produced in the surrounding lands, this is still one of the region's poorest areas.

On the Cambodia-Vietnam border : It's easy to see why there's a concern about Avian Influenza around these parts ...

The Vietnam War

2006-07-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

The Cold War is a period of history that absoloutely fascinates and appals me. The complete madness and paranoia of two nuclear armed superpowers eyeballing each other, drumming impatient fingers next to "The Button" over the space of Forty years. The course of U.S. foreign policy, shaped extensively by the perceived threat of the spread of Communism steered a good deal of the more jaw-dropping military and political events of the 20th century - such as The Bay Of Pigs, The Cuban Missile Crisis and The Vietnam War. Aside from military activities there were some other pretty mindblowing stories running paralell to it all - e.g. Project Orion, the launch of Sputnik thus kick starting the space race, and the Kennedy assassination. Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight and a handful of decades since, but the opening of files on both sides proves just how close at times we came to near complete destruction of the civilized world (web searching using various combinations of 'cold war' 'accidental' and 'missile launches' is a brilliant way of preventing excess sleep). 'Conventional' warfare was in no short supply either, with The Vietnam War sitting right in the middle of it all - a war which has been described variously as senseless, horrific and immoral. There is of course more to Vietnam than the war, though this is possibly the most immediate thing that most people think of when Vietnam is mentioned. I was keen to find out more about the background to it all, and to see first hand some of the conditions and environments that those involved had to cope with.

Much has been written about the Vietnam War, and I think trying to give a massively detailed account of it here is both outside the scope of this blog, and probably unfeasible given some of the uncertainty and subjectivity of certain events (e.g. The Gulf Of Tonkin Incident). I had only a rudimentary understanding of what lead to half a million combat troops being deployed in a country thousands of miles away from the U.S. that, to all intents, provided no direct threat. Dimly aware of the belief at the time in the "Domino Effect" i.e. if one country in S.E. Asia converted to a Communist system (e.g. Laos, Vietnam), others in the region were likely to follow and so the perceived threat would multiply. In an attempt to find out, I got hold of a copy of In Retrospect, by Bob McNamara (Secretary of Defence for the Kennedy and Johnson administrations) - perhaps not the most unbiased of viewpoints (the war sometimes being referred to as 'McNamara's War') - but it doesn't shy from self-criticism of the complete misunderstanding of the exact situation they were heading into. A continuing theme is one of seeing the changes in S.E. Asia as part of a global Communist movement, rather than a series of separate, national occurences that were closer to what was actually happening. One aspect that surprised me is that there were allegedly no expert advisors on S.E. Asia in the employ of the Pentagon - ironically some of the most useful people in this field had been purged during the McCarthy inquiries. And that the Kennedy administration had some serious doubts at the time about Diem's policies and abilities.

For those of us who were not around to witness accounts of the war at the time, opinions are inevitably shaped by interpretations in popular culture and media - leading sometimes to some wildly wrong assumptions about who was 'right' or 'wrong' - a pretty bogus concept in a lot of places. Apocalypse Now is one of a number of films made since that pull no punches, graphically portray the madness and horror of it all. It also probably wins some sort of prize for the quickest use of an expletive in the history of cinema, with it's opening line of "Saigon ... Shit". While most don't glorify the war, there can sometimes be a distinct lack of sympathy for the perspective of the Vietnamese people (indeed in some depictions, not limited to a couple of pretty dumb computer games, the VC are portrayed as basically savages).

Vietnam is also a very well photo-documented conflict, and I think most people would recognize the look of terror on Kim Phuc's face after an ARVN napalm strike, or the image of Thich Quang Duc committing self-immolation in protest at Ngo Dinh Diem's oppression of Buddhism. The photographs on display at the War Remnants museum especially stuck in my mind - each monochrome still shows a single moment in time, where the expressions of fear and panic on the people involved are frozen, starkly relating their reality and leaving the viewer anxious as to what happened immediately afterwards. It occurred to me that this is probably one of the most dangerous jobs possible - effectively the same situation as the GIs, but without the benefit of a firearm for defence. Indeed there were a number of photographs that were captioned as taken a week or so before the journalist died, or even as the last photo they had taken. This was in a time before the conveniences of automatic cameras with aperture or shutter priorities, the photographers involved would have had to know their craft intimately - no time to mess around and experiment, and certainly no opportunity for re-shooting. It was also in a time long before the advent of digital photography - 'The Camera Never Lies' still having a certain ring of truth to it. Unlike today, where any sixteen year old stoner can get a bent copy of Photoshop off the internet, search for random images on Google and construct any situation imaginable with results that are indistinguishable from reality (in my day we had 30 day trials of Paint Shop Pro and were happy for it). Notable images from the museum include one of an American soldier, roughly stubbled and wide eyed from sleep deprivation desperately clinging to a hand rolled cigarette and looking close to collapse. Or the depiction of an officer facing the camera, the line between anger and fear completely blurred while pointing and shouting - a warning, order or threat ? Another is the shot of a USAF plane being shot down - captured perfectly, yet it was near impossible to tell which direction it's momentum would take it.

The other thing which affected me was the accounts and footage of victims of Agent Orange - one of a number of dioxins and defoliants deployed by the USAF. I knew previously that it had been deployed extensively during the war, and had an idea that it had an effect on the people in the region, but no idea of the extent of it. A short film showed the limb and facial disfigurements suffered by those born in areas exposed to the dioxins - and the unimaginable physical and emotional pain that results. I was particularly disturbed by the display of two foetuses, preserved in formaldehyde bell jars, whose heads were brutally disfigured by the defoliant. You run out of adjectives in trying to describe things like this, suffice to say there is no excuse in my mind for deploying chemicals like this (I understand the tactical importance of mass vegetation clearance, I also understand that effects at the time may not have been fully understood - though it is still a herbicide, deployed over large populated areas and as such inexcusable).

A key part to Viet Cong activity in the South was the Cu Chi Tunnels, an elaborate and far reaching network of tunnels, trap doors and bunkers. These were constructed at first in an ad hoc fashion, to provide the means of moving around and communicating unseen - they eventually expanded to the point where they covered much of the area around Saigon and were a key part of the Tet Offensive. There were many other similar tunnel systems throughout the country, but the ones at Cu Chi were the ones we chose to visit. In this district alone there were around 250km of underground tunnels, including living areas, munitions storage, underground hospitals and kitchens. Air vents were installed so to exit several metres away from where they originated.

Innumerable surprise attacks were lauched, often right under the noses of South Vietnamese / U.S. forces - concealed trapdoors making the entrances and exits completely invisible, and laden with booby traps for the unwitting. The sheer level of invention is mind boggling, and fighting this kind of guerrilla war gave U.S. forces a major headache. Indeed, the only 'effective' response seemed to be large scale aerial bombardment - turning the area into one of the most bombed, shelled and defoliated area of the war, if not ever. The area around Cu Chi became known as the Iron Triangle, thousands of troops were sent in to try to flush out VC combatants, but none had any degree of success. Those sent in to the tunnels to try to engage directly were known as Tunnel Rats, and were involved in underground hand to hand and firefights - often with terrible casualty rates. Tactics changed to include sending dogs into the tunnels, but the VC adapted but washing with American soap, so the dogs identified them as friendly - U.S. uniforms left out confused things further. Handlers eventually refused any more activity of this kind as so many were maimed or lost to the tunnels by booby traps. Carpet bombing seemed the only option, but by this time it was a next to worthless gesture given that the tunnels had served their purpose. The VC had no easier time in the tunnels either, despite their apparant tenacity. Of 16,000 cadres serving in the tunnels only 6,000 survived.

A map of the tunnel network.

Inhumane and brutal tactics were not exclusive to either side - this is one of the many horrific inventions deployed by the VC to trap intruders. The victim stands on the suspended platform, which pulls on cables, forcing some vicious looking spikes into the leg.

A swing door trap - when this is closed you would have no idea that it's there ...

One of the guides emerging from the ridiculously small hole - again, once the cover is on you would have absoloutely no clue that there was anything there.

Heart Of Dorkness

2006-07-07T03:07:00.000-07:00

Saigon - from the mosquitos in the air, to the swarms of motorbikes on the roads or the neon lights that short out in the rain, this place buzzes. Time for a quick introduction before I get onto some of the more recent stuff - Vietnam is a country that has nearly always been in a state of repelling foreign invasions or occupiers, twelve centuries of Chinese rule, followed by repeated and unsuccesful attempts by Mongol forces, eventually leading to French colonialism and then war with the US. Interest in Vietnam by French forces commenced around 1847 and for four decades commenced in a fairly disorganized manner. It turned a corner in 1872 when merchant Jean Dupuis seized Hanoi in the north - another, Captain Francis Garnier was sent out to curb his activities but instead began his own conquests in the region. In 1883, Hue was attacked and the Treaty Of Protectorate initiated following the death of Emporer Tu Duc, thus beginning the colonial period properly. Vietnam has a fiercely independant streak, and sustained resistance followed - intensified by disproportionate taxes, appalling working conditions and wages of Vietnamese workers. This layed the foundations for the support of the Vietnam Revolutionary Youth League, formed in 1925 by Nguyen Tat Thanh, or Ho Chi Minh ("Bringer Of Light"). The story of Ho Chi Minh's own life and political course is intextricably linked with the story of Vietnam itself. In 1930 the Revolutionary Youth League was superceded by the Vietnamese Communist Party, and in turn The League For The Indedpendance Of Vietnam (better known as the Viet Minh) was formed in 1941.

France came under German control in 1940, and the Vichy France administration agreed to Japanese military occupation (a useful base for launching other offensives in the region), giving the Viet Minh a new focus for resistance. 1945 brought famine in Tonkin, killing 2 million people - the Viet Minh won many supporters during this time with relief efforts, further increasing their influence in the North. The August Revolution was called by Ho Chi Minh on August 19th and Emporer Bao Dai abdicated on the 25th (though he was made 'Supreme Advisor' to the Viet Minh by Ho). Independence was declared on September 2nd, and North Vietnam declared the Democratic Republic Of Vietnam. Meanwhile, during the Potsdam Conference (July 17 - Aug 2, 1945) one of the items discussed was the dismantling of Japanese occupation in Vietnam - the consensus being that China would accept surrender north of the 16th paralell. British forces took responsibility for the south, and on entering Saigon found it in a state of chaos. Japanese and French troops were released from prisons to assist in bringing order but promptly engaged in hideously violent activity, beating and clubbing men and women and breaking into properties. By this time the Viet Minh had large amounts of influence throughout the country, particularly in the North and a general strike was called and a guerilla war against the French launched. French forces returned to Vietnam and within a few months the Viet Minh were forced to flee Hanoi for the mountains.

Then began the First Indochina War, a resistance led by the Viet Minh against French colonial forces and lasting from 1946 to 1954. This proved to be yet another bloody chapter in Vietnam's history - around 400,000 people were killed and 600,000 wounded. It reached a head in May 1954 at Dien Bien Phu where French forces suffered a crushing defeated by the Viet Minh under Vo Nguyen Giap. The Geneva Conference of 1954 declared an end to hostilities and the re-partioning of the country at the 17th paralell and leading to mass migration (mostly Catholic from North to South). Ngo Dinh Diem was installed by the US in the South (the fact that he was vehemently anti-communist probably helped matters), with Bao Dai as constitutional monarch ... Diem's rule proved to be a controversial and often criticized one. This sets the background for the runup to the American War in Vietnam, which I'll save for the next blog entry.

Our own journey to Vietnam necessitated a gruelling peregrination through Cambodia once more - I am collecting Kampuchean visas like the beads of sweat on my forehead. Our steed this time was a "VIP Taxi" as there was some sort of cock-up on the part of the people that sold us the bus ticket - translating to a dusty Toyota Camry with a non-working fuel guage. Our soundtrack was the Cambodian equivalent of R.E.O. Speedwagon - maybe some middle of the road rock was appropriate as that's where we happened to drive most of the time. Companions were a top Aussie chap called Simon and an amiably kinetic French bloke who's name I didn't catch. When I asked what he thought about French Pop (for which I have a certain grinning fondness), he attempted to strangle himself and rolled his eyes wildly. I say again, I have never met a French person that I didn't take an immediate liking to (though the number this is based on is small enough to make a statistics professor draw the Normal Distribution on a board, then put their fist through it in anger).

Saigon itself is very much a city that could be described as 'alive' - or perhaps 'raw' might be a better description. I'm not really sure what I was expecting - while technically a communist state, there were still a number of posho bars and five star hotels - though 2 minutes walk down the road there seems to be things like power and telephone lines just thrown up in improvised places, hanging crazily or stretched nearly to breaking around corners where a car hit the pole and it was never repaired. I was having a drink with a new found friend outside a cafe when she suddenly started screaming and freaking out (I could make some unnecessary self-deprecating joke here, but I'll leave it to you). Concerned, I asked what was up - boredom ? Disagreement on musical tastes or politics ? Freeform interpretive dance ? No, mild electrocution apparantly, from one of the broken fairy lights adorning the entrance - shrugged off by the waiters as "wet hair, eh ?". Fortunately she seemed unharmed, but I'm none too sure about the health and safety rules around here.

In any case, there seemed to be a thriving street market going - no shortage of people trying to make a quick buck out of copied books or chewing gum (USD is the currency of preference - the Dong is certainly the most devalued money we've encountered so far at 29,000 to the quid). You've got to feel a bit sorry for them, even if it is an annoyance at times - though there is no shortage of potential customers even if no more than 1% are completely indifferent. Vietnam has established itself as a near-essential stop on the backpacker trail - quite impressive given that it only re-established diplomatic communications to the US in 1995. It's only when you visit places like this that you realise the effect tourism and the huge influx of dough has on them (Ko Phi Phi was another obvious example). I only hope that much of it doesn't get ruined in the same way that some of the Thai islands have (in a place where there's not a lot of spare cash going around of course people are going to set up shop and take the readies). I got talking to a bloke who works in the Vietnamese tourist industry and he said that it's definately gearing itself up for it, China and Thailand apparantly being the role models. It's strange though, everyone I talked to who was visiting Vietnam seemed to be in a rush to get through it - I don't mean like the awful sort of 'Checkbox Tourism' of just being able to say you've been somewhere - more like just running out of time and not being able to take it in at leisure. I was no exception - I too mismanaged my time in South East Asia and only really got to see a small part of what it has to offer, and I think it's a great shame that so many people choose burn through the country like this. I certainly intend to return sometime in the next few years, places such as Hoi An or Hue fire the imagination just by reading about them.

Here are some of the scenes from around Saigon :

We made a visit to the Reunification Palace, preserved as it was in April 1975 as the Republic Of Vietnam (South Vietnam) crumbled and came under the influence of the North - in a moment relayed around the world, tanks came crashing through the front gates on 30th April. The Norodom Palace originally sat at the site, completed in 1868 for the French governer of Cochinchina - later to become Diem's place of operation. So hated was he that his own air force bombed the palace in 1962, though it failed to kill him. A new place was built on the site, but Diem was murdered in 1963 and did not see it's completion in '66. It was named the Independance Palace, and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resided here until 1975.

Architect Ngo Viet Thu incorporated a number of characters into the facade to represent different hopes and aspirations for the nation. For example, the character Trung relates to consistancy, Tam for "knowing others, oneself, the art of fighting", Chu for power and Hung for prosperity. See the diagram, left - presented to you in glorious Crap-O-Vision, dodgy drawing by me and blurry JPEG artifacts courtesy of MS Paint. Don't blame me in any way shape or form if this is even slightly wrong - I know even less about Chinese script than I do about Vietnamese architecture (i.e. enough to be completely wrong).

The insides were just as grand - huge open hallways, clearly showing a very strong Chinese influence in the decorations, chandaliered meeting and dining rooms and, er, a movie theatre. I was more interested in what was in the basement, however - a warren of tunnels and bunkers still stocked with a very retro line of typewriters and radio equipment. Old maps still adorned the walls - quite a spooky air to it, I tried imagining what it would have been like down there when everything was kicking off.

I bet it was a barrel of laughs down here.

"Uncle Ho" - founder of the Viet Minh, Prime Minister from 1946-55 and President from 1955-69 of North Vietnam.

Notre Dame cathedral - built between 1877 and 1883.

Inside the Jade Emporer Pagoda, Cholon district - built in 1909, one of the most striking and atmospheric temples I've been in, full of Buddhist and Tao figures.

Intricate woodcarvings depict scenes of torment in the afterlife in the Hall Of The Ten Hells. A judge of the Ten Regions reads from a book detailing the accused's life of crimes.

Incense smoke fills the air

A driver asleep in his cyclo - despite the slight annoyance of these guys persistantly asking if you want a lift, I think they work pretty hard. Many of them were apparantly doctors or teachers before the war, but those who sided with American forces were stripped of citizenship and as such cannot return to their former jobs and lives.

The traffic in the city is complete madness, rivalling Mumbai in terms of density - though motorbike seems to be the standard way of getting around. It's not particularly quick, but it's quick and dense enough to make crossing the road a real test of nerves ...

... and at night you've got no chance.

Bloody Computers

2006-06-30T02:52:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the length of time it's taken to write this up, you can blame it on perpetually unreliable computers. In addition to not being able to upload photos for a while, I wrote a lot of text earlier and lost the lot when the connection went down. If I'm not careful this blog will just turn into a picture of me sitting in front of a computer screen and swearing loudly - I needn't have left home to do that. To stop this turning into a never ending chore I've just decided to whack up a few photos while I've got the chance somewhere else - here they are :

Back to the throng of Bangkok for a rest and a chance to decompress after being in Pa Do Tha and teaching the kids. We've spent so much time here now that it sort of feels like a second home when coming back to it now. We arrived to scenes of two significant events - the build up to the World Cup (mercifully downplayed here - I'm certainly glad I was out of the country for the inevitable blanket coverage at home), but more importantly in the eyes of your average Thai, the King's 60th anniversary of being on the throne. Anyone who has been to Thailand will have an idea of the reverance with which the King is held, the scenes locally were utter madness in any direction.

The streets bulged with hundreds of people everywhere wearing yellow shirts bearing slogans such as "We Love The King" - I can't see this happening at home with our own royal family. The celebrations lasted for around four days, and the coverage on television even had the power to displace the World Cup, much to the chagrin of the assembled England fans, ho ho ho.

My sister Kate and her boyfriend Tim arrived on the tail end of this, and we spent an idyllic couple of weeks lounging around on beaches with them and stuffing ourselves stupid with grub. It was an absoloute joy to see them both as they arrived in Bangkok airport, and their faces were a total hoot when they saw that we'd come out to meet them !

The first stop on the tourist trail was the floating market, where hundreds of rickety looking canoes barge their way around the waterways and tenacious merchants literally grab potential customers alongside with hooked rods.

The best thing I can say about it was that it was quite photogenic (rivalling Angkor Wat in terms of digital cameras per square metre), very very geared towards selling tat to tourists. I don't know what I was really expecting, I had this naive notion that there might be lots of locals buying their daily essentials, not the deluge of trinkets and crap that was actually on sale.

Continuing a vaguely nautical theme we decided to head off to some of Thailand's oft acclaimed islands. The first stop was Ko Phi Phi, near the top of the Andaman coast (on the left hand side of Thailand's 'tail) in the Krabi province, not that far from Phuket. Phi Phi is in fact a pair of islands, the developed Phi Phi Don and Phi Phi Lee - which has no permanant guesthouses but plenty of visitors by boat (and also the place where the film The Beach was filmed, obviously tourism rocketed in the area after this came out, leading to mass and unmanaged guesthouse developments).

Phi Phi was one of the worst hit areas in the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 - the village of Ton Sai sits in the middle of the sand isthmus between the two main areas of the island. Buildings and lives were devastated as two huge waves from both sides of the isthmus met in the middle at around 10am on 26th December 2004. Evidence of the rebuilding effort is everywhere, and it's a tribute to the efforts of the people here that the place is almost completely back up and running.

A longtail boat (so called because a spindly prop dips straight into the water from a large four stroke petrol engine) - a familiar site around the islands, acting as taxis and small fishing crafts.

They are pretty quick as there is nothing to them, but they're very affected by weight distribution - we four landlubbers were frequently told to stay in the middle as the boat was tipping precariously to one side. He needn't have worried - all Asker siblings have a well developed sense of balance due to the "Repel Boarders" technique of displacing others from sofas in the living room. Avast !

Phi Phi Lee, at the beach where er, The Beach was filmed. I hope you enjoy the view, it cost us 200 baht a throw to step foot on the sand. Paying to go on a beach, eh ? Ppphhp.

I leapt at the chance to go snorkelling - my only previous experience being a few half arsed attempts in Kavos (where there really wasn't that much to see apart from discarded fag-ends). Kate and Tim were kind enough to pay for a day's snorkelling as a present for my birthday, with a handy DVD thrown in as a souvenir. On this you can observe not only the beauty of the near-depths but also Dan acting like some sort of barbarian nincompoop by trying to crack open a coconut husk on a rock - repeatedly and without success.

I had originally intended to go on an extended SCUBA diving trip whilst on the islands, as Thailand's many islands have some of the best dive sites in the world, and it's damn cheap to get PADI certification to boot. It has long been an ambition of mine to get into this properly - I had tried it before on an introductory lesson and loved the feeling of being able to move in three dimensions and investigate things at my leisure. My plans for this were scuppered a few years back when I had a bit of bother with one of my lungs, which meant an immediate end to my SCUBA designs. Alas I was to be told on Phi Phi that I would probably never be able to go diving with SCUBA equipment, as a previous problem of this sort would mean that nobody in their right mind would sign me off, much less take responsibility for it whilst under the water. A huge disappointment, but we had already gone snorkelling by this point, which was immensely enjoyable and satisfied some of my desire to see what was lying below the waves.

On our way to the second day's subaquatic antics - the sights this time were truly stunning, and by this time we'd got the hang of diving down towards the coral (taking care not to disturb it with hands or the fins). The visibility was particularly good, and the blues and crimsons of the fish were vivid - looking at the coral below was like something from another planet. One advantage of snorkelling of SCUBAing is that you are much more maneuverable, and more able to get alongside the fish as they swarm and idle around. A good trick is to get up close, then stop completely still - they seem to forget you're there - the sunlight glints and sparkles from hundreds of silver bodies centimetres from the face mask, and an eel flitted between my fingers.

Before Kate and Tim arrived, Dan and I had been dining intermittently at a superb vegetarian restaurant hidden away in the backstreets of Banglamphu, and we noted with interest that they offered classes to learn how to cook up to ten of their dishes. Kate and Tim also expressed an interest, so it was courtesy of Mai Kaidee (left, at the market) that we found ourselves learning how to cook up a variety of top quality nosh. Staying in Pa Do Tha had really brought home how easy it is to eat well with fresh ingredients and a minimum amount of fuss, against the backdrop of seeing how those ingredients are grown and harvested. I have also just finished reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - a brief history of the last 13,000 years which argues that advanced civilisation, invention and resistance to disease became possible through the rise of sedentary farming - groups of people with a stable and rich source of food are able to support a more diverse type of society when the majority of people do not have to directly hunt or gather their own food supply (and as a side effect are able to develop arms and go and impose their will on weaker societies - oh well). All of this got me thinking about my own diet and eating habits - my cullinery cock-ups at home are famously bad, though the floor has often been well fed. When living away from home as I have done for the past couple of years, it's no secret that left to my own devices I tend towards convenience (and thus processed crap, pretty far removed from the wholesome stuff on the hills). It turns out that this does not have to be the case ! Eating well apparantly can be quite easy (and more importantly, quick). Mai certainly seems to think so - she has been cooking vegetarian food around Bangkok since 1988, and through sheer hard work now has three remarkably busy restaurants open in the area around Banglamphu. She has plans to open another internationally, perhaps in London, and her guest book is chock full of praise from people all over the world. She is notable also for popularizing the use of brown rice - unprocessed rice which apart from being extremely nutritious is also (in my opinion) nicer than bland old white rice. Traditionally it was seen as low grade rice, used to feed prisoners or dogs, but they may have been getting the better deal all those years.

Spring Roll skins being made - just water, flour and salt.

Obviously being a purely vegetarian course this was of most practical use to Dan, but the recipes themselves looked easy enough to modify to cater for a carniverous diet too. I'm fairly indifferent as to whether a meal includes meat or not - much of the time when I'm cooking at home I can't be bothered using fish or chicken as it's too much hassle (and when you're talking about my cooking skills, leaving it out altogether is a lot safer). During the course of the morning, we alternated grub-spoiling responsibilities for the following :

Tom Yan Soup
Isaan
Fried Veg with Ginger / Cashew Nuts
Pad Thai, a favourite of street vendors on the Kao San road
Peanut Sauce
Spring Rolls - unfried and all the nicer for it
Massaman Curry
Green Thai Curry
Pumpkin Hummus
Green Papaya Salad

All of the food takes literally a few minutes to cook, in a single wok directly over a gas cannister. The important part is obviously the preparation - I had a go at cooking the peanut sauce and pumpkin hummus, they didn't turn out that badly even if I do say so myself. Which I do.

Mai frequently burst into song during the proceedings, warbling on with a ditty called the "Sap Cooking Song". I think the lyrics translate as something like "Yum yum yum yum yuuuuumm !". Not inappropriate at all - every one of the leguminous feasts were tasty, but we were given a bit of a treat with the dessert - brown rice and mango sticky pudding. It were grand.

Other Photos

2006-06-12T06:07:00.000-07:00

Some of the other photos ...

Hilariously, this is me going for a hike with a hangover and looking happy about it. Happy in the same way that when you're so uncomfortable all you can do is laugh. Tee hee hee ! Gopp made me a bamboo walking stick because I was lagging behind so much.

The Art Of War says "Know The Enemy" ... I think I got to know ours quite well. Note the cheeky expressions ... listen lads, I know that that you'd prefer to muck around and talk to your mates than pay attention in class because, well, having fun is a lot better than not having fun. I also know that you think you won't get caught ... I know this because I was wearing the same expression twenty years ago, and I can safely say that Not Getting Caught is a skill and an artform (not one I ever perfected either). Frequently when teaching, the phrase "herding cats" leapt to mind.

And if you think using allusions to warfare is a bit steep, chew on this : on the last day, the kids had somehow procured projectile weaponry (made of bamboo of course). I am very glad that we left before an arms race could develop. Still, they were good enough to let me have a go, and with the patronizing hubris displayed by so many adults towards the young, I thought I'd show them how it's done ... and cocked it up, naturally.

Our guides at the home stay (l-r) : Gopp, So La, Su Pat, Oh

Bamboo is used for everything - Su Pat grabbed a small shoot as he wasn't carrying anything else at the time

Our co-workers on the hills

Break time on the hills

Karen girl holding a recently shed python skin

Two Ndong Por (The Old Man) - a bit of a dude all round.

The posh new kitchen

One of the many hounds that prowled the village. This one was our favourite - he had a face not unlike the bear in Gentle Ben. Here he is lazing around under the solar panels.

Before the shower got installed at the new house, this was where we took our baths and washed our clothes. Very refreshing ! Though we had to share it with ...

... the water buffalo. Dan allayed my concerns after seeing one of them take a dump in the river upstream from us. "If one's done it, a thousand have !" - dunno how this makes it better, but strangely it did.

Sunset in the village

Mystery Fruit

Teaching

2006-06-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

The first session of teaching got off to an admittedly ropey start - I had no idea what sort of standard of English the kids (seven in total, age 7-10) were at - my attempts to go over numbers and colours were met with blank stares - and the concept of 'classes' seemed to be at best academic (ho ho). There was regular migration between rooms in spates of bored osmosis. After a bit of re-planning on the hop, the after lunch session got slowly better as I spent the rest of the day going over the alphabet, determining just how much they knew and the range of abilities within the classroom. Dan had it a bit easier with the older kids, but it was always going to be a learning process for myself as well as the students. The weekend provided some needed space to think things through and come up with a proper plan. And also to think about how I would present myself when teaching - a fair amount of armchair psychology comes into play here, and my natural approach to teaching would to basically be as nice and friendly as possible (though maintaining an essential distance between myself and the students). They are young children after all, and I personally always enjoyed learning more (and as a result made more of an effort) when I genuinely liked the person who was teaching. I don't think there's anything wrong with being a bit jokey on occasion - I believe this has the side benefit that it's easier to let them know when they're properly misbehaving as a change in expression or a slightly raised voice has much more of an effect than if you're constantly blowing off steam and shouting. I remember certain teachers being like this, and when they got properly angry, the reprimands were nothing out of the ordinary. Any teaching professionals reading this will probably be rolling their eyes or thumping the desk in incredulity, but it's what worked for me.

Next week things improved gradually. I'd had time to reflect and plan out a rough sort of lesson plan, and more importantly, make some guesses on the abilities of the students. The numbers in the class varied from hour to hour, but there were five kids who turned up every time and a few who turned up sometimes and just arsed about. I think the school is also used almost as a sort of creche so the children have somewhere to go while the rest of the family works in the field, so you can't get too disheartened if some of them don't seem bothered about being there. Over the course of the week I would teach various concepts and nouns, try different approaches and see what held their attention - it helps to have a sort of objective or goal as to what needs to be achieved. I decided it would be best to concentrate on the basics, revisiting things until they stuck as it was obviously impossible to teach everything in a couple of weeks. The problem is that kids (obviously) get bored with doing the same thing all the time, and concentration spans tend to go in phases. The morning and afternoon sessions were two hours long with a short toilet break in the middle (I must stress this was not our choice, and we asked whether it would be better to have shorter lessons - though it's not really up to us to start restructuring things in the school). To their credit the kids concentrated on things for a lot longer than I'm sometimes able to.

There were certain situations, integral to the day of any teacher, that I was not looking forward to. For example, I wasn't sure what I would do if one of my class started seriously misbehaving, or if they were upset about something. There was an incident concerning the second with a young girl named Sugaiya one day seemed very withdrawn and not really concerned about what was going on around her. I initially tried to involve her with the class activity of matching different cases in the alphabet, but I could tell she didn't want any part of it. I decided that involving her any more in the group work would be unkind, as she seemed on the verge of tears and making her stand in front of her classmates umming and erring about some incomprehensible alphabet would push her over the edge. I also didn't think that involving the main teacher would be a great idea as I had a feeling the answer would come as a tap on the head and an order to pay attention (sure enough that's exactly what did happen later). There's a limit to how much you can comfort someone if you can't speak their language, let alone someone so young (and also there's the question of what sort of physical contact is acceptable here - is even putting an arm around someone considered inappropriate ? I suspect it would be less of a deal than in England, but you never know). So the best I could do was let Dan lead the teaching while I sat with her and offered a tissue, probably just another adult talking some nonsense language.

There were good days and bad of course - it was hard sometimes when the children really didn't want to be taught, but I think overall it was a very positive experience, especially towards the end when Dan and I took the classes together. It took a few days to really work out that the trick was to get the students to do most of the work, not to just stand there talking (which really didn't achieve much) - explain a bit, get them to write it down and practice hand writing while the sun streams in through the window. You also have to maintain a sense of humour and give them a bit of cheek back occasionally, if only to let them know that you're a human being as well. Towards the end Dan and I were working on perfecting the art of doing boring essentials when they were in the mood to learn, judging when the kids were flagging and then changing to something fun to bring them back round. Anything that involves drawing seems to be a very good way of getting them to work (which, frustratingly, seems to translate as "repeat what I say" or "write this down" - very hard to get them to do anything different to this if you can't speak their language). It also constantly threw me the way you could teach something one day, with no discernible results, only to have the kids repeat it flawlessly the next day (it constantly made me smile hearing things repeated back in an exaggerated form of my own accent, especially the vowels of certain words - they could have easily passed for East Berkshirians).

I tried to remember what it was like when I was at school at that age (6-10). I seem to remember not really being all that into it and mostly being a cheeky sod to my teachers - well the sandal's on the other foot now alright. The kids did occasionally play up, and shamefully I didn't always find it easy to discipline them ... a case in point : one child got up from his seat, marched up to the window and spat out of it - I was on the verge of reprimanding him for his 'outrageous' behaviour (inverted commas because it's quite common behaviour for adults in the street in certain parts of the world). He then spun round, cracked me the biggest grin I've ever seen, saluted, and marched military-fashion back to the bench. I gave him a very stern look whilst biting my bottom lip to stop the huge laugh that was about to come out. I also found it funny the way kids are basically the same wherever you go - there's little influence from the outside world, yet classrooms are instinctively filled with paper planes, chinese burns, piss-takings on the drawing abilities of one's peers and the old trick of balancing a pencil on the upper lip to look like a moustache. I was disproportionally amused to see one of the girls copying down a picture of the sun and automatically adding a big smily face to it. And the word 'Apple' seems to be very popular (a staple of learning English it seems), the kids seem fond of shouting it as we walked around outside of school. I drew 'Two Red Apples' on the board and there was almost a riot, as was the case when I gave out some coloured pens (which some of the girls then used to colour their nails instead of working). I spent the rest of the day whistling the 70s funk theme tune to the old series of Grange Hill - the one where it shows a comic strip with someone swimming and a sausage on the end of a fork. Winner.

Ah yes, this is a school photograph all right. All the elements are there : bored expressions, one kid looking the wrong way, the joker of the piece pulling a silly face. Right, that's it ! I'm not taking another !

The Songthaew Remains The Same

2006-06-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

First off, congratulations to Chris and Beckie who have just got engaged - very pleased for you both !!

So it was on a Wednesday evening a couple of weeks ago that we set off for Pa Do Tha, a village in Thailand's Tak Province, on the Myanmar border inhabited by members of the Karen hill tribe. A leapfrog journey over 24 hours from Bangkok to Mae Sot, Mae Sot to Umphang and Umphang to Po Da Tha. Across rolling hills of thick green jungle in the back of a Song Thaew (literally "Two Benches" - a converted pick up truck, fast becoming my favourite mode of transport), gazing at the breathtaking scenery while the wind buffered my face. Along the 1200-odd billious twists of the Mae Sot-Umphang road and into the sort of terrain SUV adverts use for location (and most drivers of said vehicles never see). Loaded up with items such as aluminium sheeting, vast amounts of water and vegetables and a huge gas tank, ready for whatever greeted us at the other end. I shall recount the experiences we had with teaching in a later post, as this will simply get too long to read otherwise, here's all the other tomfoolery we got up to :

On arrival at the village, it was clear that they weren't exaggerating on the Go Differently website - this was very much a working, rural area - people, dogs and livestock mingle easily with each other, in and around the houses and the air is constantly abuzz with the sounds of insects in the undergrowth and in the air. 'Check your boots before putting them on' time. I knew from the time of sending the email confirming our times that this was going to be a test of my expectations of comfort, and an exercise in pushing the boundaries of them, but it's a world apart from sitting in an air-conditioned internet cafe when you have to put your money where your mouth is. I had concerns about several things when I arrived, the product of preparatory imagination, and it's interesting now to look back and see how quickly those were dissipated and then replaced by others in the first few days of the stay. For example, the availability of fresh drinking water, quality of food, being around livestock (particularly chickens) and the political situation so close to the Myanmar border (I believe some of the hilltribes had in the past been displaced by the neighbouring military).

The first evening we broke the ice with some of our guides and people in the villages by sharing some of the local moonshine and passing around photos of my own village (of sorts) and family. I think the booze is fermented using rice, and it does indeed taste a bit like Sake - with the difference that you never know just how strong it's going to be (I initially thought it was quite weak - an opinion I quickly revised). And yes, I do know that it's usually Bloody Stupid drinking homebrewed spirits, but all the others were doing it, and they called it "Happy Water", so I knew it was alright. The food was nothing to worry about either, and I'd even go so far as describing it as the best we've had on the trip so far. All done by hand (well, machete) over a wood fire over a few hours, and in the main vegetarian using 95% lcoal produce grown on the hills. Delicious. Then off to bed, which turned out to be a mat on the wood floor of the hut, which despite technically being under a roof was more or less outside. Directly above the chickens rattling about and the bellowed gruntings of the pig sty next door, fireflies dancing and flickering their arpeggiated constellations in the pitch darkness.

Life in the village was for the most part quite simple, the whole society being built around getting up at daybreak for breakfast, going out to work on the hills (or going to school) until evening, then coming home and sleeping. There are about 40 houses, one for each family. The houses are made almost entirely from locally sourced materials, mostly using bamboo (which is also used for such things such as fences, dog bowls, nail trays for carpentry and coffee cups). The families are on the whole quite large by Western standards - I asked some of the children how many siblings they had, and the average was about five or six (though my parents both come from families not much smaller than this). The society is very much a collaborative one, but it occurred to me that you would get far less specialization, and more emphasis on everyone knowing how to do things for themselves (e.g. ability to repair a motorbike, cultivate crops and cook properly with no concept that you do one or the other). Though the level of technology is at a very basic level, there are a few concessions to the march of technology in the wider world - some government provided solar panels supply each house with small amounts of electricity, stored up in car batteries and used with a single flourescent light in the evenings. The hut we stayed in for the first few days even had a handy inverter fixed on the wall which meant you could charge your mobile phone up from the wall socket - followed by a brisk 20 minute hike up the hill for network reception. We asked our guide, Su Pat, how long this had been in place. He said about a year and the effects, not all of them positive, were felt almost straight away. For example, the flourescent lights attract a much higher number of bugs and biting insects in the evening, and the opportunity for people to watch films and listen to music late into the night mean that getting up for farming gets harder and so the quality of work decreases. Transport between villages and around the hills is either by foot or motorbike - the odd 4x4 makes an appearance, but these are by no means ubiquitous. I think if there was a sudden lack of oil and fuel it would have a noitceable effect, but life could continue without that much difficulty.

From my crude observations I would guess that all the agricultural work in the area is, unsurprisingly, done by hand - I saw only a few tractors, which seemed to be used for transporting people rather than used on the land itself. Sowing the corn (which we later 'helped' with) consisted of groups of Karen villagers moving in lines up the hill, clutching parasols for shelter from the sun. Each group appoints someone to hoe out the lines of holes whilst the others threw in seeds and food, stamping it in by foot. As manual labour goes, this perhaps isn't the most strenous, but keeping it up in the fierce mid day sun and into the evening takes a lot of stamina. And water (which we drank by the litre, yet strangely the locals didn't seem all that bothered about). We joined in with this for a couple of days over the weekends, and they got to practice speaking English with us (the secret to making the day pass quickly is to natter away to your neighbour a lot). Umphang Kee seemed like a nice enough place - prettier than Po Da Tha, perhaps a bit more developed (bigger school, next to a huge grid of solar panels on the outskirts).

The atmosphere in general was very informal, in the village, school and the wider area, and it took a few days for us to adjust to this. Initially it could sometimes be frustrating to arrange something and have it not happen, but after a few days we worked that that's just the way things work around here, and everyone knows what the deal is. I think this a very pleasant way of doing things, unrushed and uncomplicated - people get up when it's light, go to bed when it's dark, eat when they're hungry. Everyone knows each other, and is comfortable with each other's company, so no offence is taken when someone doesn't turn up for whatever reason, or they just turn up on the doorstep for an impromptu English lesson. Decision making for the village as a whole is performed by a meeting with a representative (I would guess the eldest man) from each house having a say. The atmosphere in small groups of people is very, very easy going - though I obviously couldn't pick up on everything that was going on, it seemed there was none of the competitiveness or points scoring that you get in conversations at home sometimes. I don't know how often people seriously fall out with each other, or how they work things out afterwards (you can't just disappear or avoid them after all) - I would suppose that you just make sure that you don't make trouble for yourself in the first place. I appreciated the outlook that comes with people that are so comfortable around each other that there are often long periods of unawkward silence, with no need to speak for the sake of it, or just pointing and something and smiling. People say hello and smile just as a matter of course as you walk around the village - I don't know if this is the same in rural areas at home, but it made a welcome change from a population refusing to acknowledge each other. A world away from surly restaurant owners of Bangkok, or the reserved insularity of the Tube at home.

There was no shortage of insects in the area - despite preparing for this, covering myself in DEET and sleeping in trousers and long sleeved shirts under a net, I think I must have been bitten close to a hundred times during the stay. My arms looked like a pair of gherkins, dyed pink. When the work had finished on the house near the school, we moved over there to give the Old Man his house back, and discovered that we shared our residence with an army of frogs. The amphibious swines croaked and bellowed through the nights at a ridiculous volume (comparable, say, to a car alarm going off in the next street). It sounded very much like an orchestra of guiros (the fish shaped percussion instrument that, coincidentally, features heavily on the Grange Hill theme), and not completely unlike the belching competition the kids had in the morning. The frogs kept this up for a few nights, then fell strangely silent when three dogs moved in under the house ...

If you happen to get up in the middle of the night, and the sky is free of clouds, you can see the night stars more clearly than anywhere I've ever been before. The lack of any sort of light pollution or smog means you can view the refracted histories of the galaxy's raging gas giants unspoiled. Strings of photons, bending around the gravity of huge unseen masses, millions of years out of date. Spanning the sort of distances expressed by numbers so ridiculously large that, when printed or written down, cease to have any real meaning. Numbers so gigantic that when comprehension comes it brings with it a special sort of vertigo, bruising the mind and menacing the soul. Marathons of nuclear fusion, forging the heavier elements and releasing the light required for Life, yet only by the merest fraction of chance actually reaching the only known place that Life does exist. So they might be ascribed some meaning by being observed ... by a 27 year old bloke who's other senses have just told him that he's standing in a load of cow shit. How humbling astronomy is !

Early to bed, Early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. After two weeks extensive research of this theory, I reluctantly came to the conclusion that it is wholly untrue. However, I do think there may have been some subtle health benefits to all this - the food was definitely the best quality we've had on the whole trip (and delicious because of it's simplicity), and the clean air was a relief from the pollution of the cities. Er, apart from the wood fire lit under the hut to drive away insects. Towards the end of the stay I started to wonder how well I would fare if I had to live in an environment like this for an extended period, and how unfounded some of my initial concerns had been. There were still a few things that irritated me e.g. insect bites, no real amounts of privacy, no independance of meal times, but I realised that I had adapted to other things surprisingly quickly e.g. washing in the river, living in close contact with animals etc. My copy of National Geographic had a couple of appropriate articles which got me thinking as well. One of them was an assessment on the burgeoning problem of allergies in the increasing sterility of the developed world, and how severe allergic reactions are almost unheard of in rural communities such as this - the proximity to livestock giving young immune systems a vital kickstart, and perhaps develops them more overall.

The first weekend we were given the opportunity to bump our way along the Umphang river with the aim of eventually ending up at the Te Lor Su waterfall.The mud from the farms runs off into the river after the monsoon rains, merging slowly with the river and leading to a 70s two-tone effect for a time. The rich brown water glistened in the sun and churned in the eddies and vortices - it looked just the bit in Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (the one made in 1971) where they visit the chocolate river and Augustus Gloop goes up the pipe. Augustus ! Save some for later !

Over rocks and under waterfalls in an inflatable dinghy, drinking cold lager at ten in the morning - this is my sort of outdoor activity. We stopped halfway at the hot springs so Dan could disgrace himself by getting covered in mud.

On to a trek through the jungle to the Te La Su waterfall, Asia's largest and 6th in the world. An incredible sight.

300m of brilliant white cascading water over limestone crags, and the best shower in the area.

On the way back through the next day, we stopped to pick up some supplies and a load of guitars - playing some badly rendered one-handed blues in the back of a pick up and holding on to the roof with the other is the new way to travel. On arrival it was discovered that the third fret of one of the guitars was missing - back home most people would either pay for a shop repair or discard it as rubbish - here they just get out the machetes and carve a new one from the firewood - same applies for making plectrums from water bottles. After lunch we went up into the jungle on the hills to cut bamboo for the repairs on the house near the school. Um looked distinctly nervous and offered a redundant "Be Careful !" as he set us loose with a load of machetes. I enjoyed myself immensely, stalking through the trees looking for suitable shoots to hack down, while the insects took chunks out of me, glasses sliding off the nose, clambering up and down the preposterous gradient. In the end the humidity and insects proved too much and we decided to bundle up the spoils and make our way down the hill, hurling the 6-10 foot shoots down as we went. I drank a litre of water straight off as Su Pat and the others cut them to size.

They did significantly better than us ...

Friday the 2nd was my birthday, marking 27 years of confused bumbling about and talking rubbish. Dan and Su Pat made sure I had a very memorable day, made all the more enjoyable by the fact that I was somewhere that was genuinely interesting (rather that the usual plan of going to dingy pubs in Reading or London). This did not negate the need for booze, however (and given that in coincided with the end of the first week of teaching, I think it was utterly deserved). The only problem was that in order to get hold of some hooligan juice we'd have to hike 7km back to Umphang (foolishly we declined the offer of lifts on the back of motorbikes). It was a nice day for it, and the school had finished an hour early so off we went with grins that stretched from ear to ear. It took rather longer than the hour or so we'd been quoted - and I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever get there, and when we finally arrived the heavens opened and we had to hole up in the internet cafe for a bit (with beer, natch). By the time we'd got round to buying a load of cans for later (plus a few Road Beers, safe in the knowledge that the bags would get lighter as the journey progressed), it was threatening to get dark. It dimly occurred to me that our hosts might be wondering where we'd got to. Sure enough, five minutes into the return our rescue party turned up with concerned looks and motorbikes. So we got a free lift back and a motorbike race to boot, rad. In the evening a lot of people came round for a feast in the hut, and to witness a good luck ceremony for my benefit (conducted by Two Ndong Por, the Old Man that we stayed with on the first few nights) - this involved tying lots of bits of string around my wrists and smearing bits of chicken on my T-Shirt.

I was initially a bit perturbed about all this, thinking it was some sort of voodoo thing, but I noticed later on that a lot of the kids (and some of the adults) had these bands on as well, so I think it was a nice way of making me feel properly part of village life. And it's not every day you get to witness something like this (let alone be the centre of it). The only problem is that they didn't clean the chicken off my jacket and it was covered in red ants in the morning - at least they made a go of it).

The next morning I was greeted by the Mother Of All Hangovers (quelle surprise) and a proposal to hike 10km over to Umphang Kee (the next village). It was hard. Very hard. My cranium moaned the whole way. And our reward when we got there was to go and work on the hills sowing corn for the weekend. Over rickety bamboo bridges. In the blazing sun. With pythons and tarantulas to keep us company. Spleeeeendid !

Gopp found a tarantula in the fields. Fantastic. He kept hold of it all day.

A sample of the corn used for planting - the pink dye is a sort of insecticide.

The scene from our front door. Nice. Also the setting that saw the lads saddle up in another beaten up old pick up that wouldn't start properly. Their mission was to go and woo the girl of Su Pat's amorous designs by turning up with a load of Happy Water and guitars. So they bumped their way down the hill, to lots of cheering, expecting it to start so they could zoom off to romantic success. Unfortunately, it broke down immediately, and they all had to get out and push. Gopp and I would have helped them, but it was more enjoyable to just stand there and take the piss, and besides which we were too busy laughing our arses off to move. They did manage to get over to Umphang Kee eventually, but ended up getting far too drunk and the poor girl went off in a huff. Ahhh, people are the same the world over, eh ?

You rotten bastard ! This feathery thug and his ilk woke me up every morning at four. They sound like the Rude Boys of Slough high street, offering bellowed speculations on whether "Matty's just done one". Shut up !

Get a load of people round a fire with some guitars, and it's the best thing in the world. Funny that these lads spent most of their efforts in pursuit of booze, playing guitars and getting all moony over women. Stone The Crows ! That's the same as me ! Who knew ?!

Cheong Ek / S21

2006-06-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

A word of warning : some of the text and pictures below are quite distressing, it might be wise for some of my younger relatives to skip this bit.

From the ancient splendor around Siem Reap we headed down to Phnom Penh. A much more bleak and distressing period of human history revealed itself as we took a visit to two significant sites of the attrocities committed during the period that the Khmer Rouge held power. Between 1974 and 1979, the Cambodian population of seven million was decimated (around half died, mostly through starvation - 1kg of rice was used to feed 400 people - but also in the detention camps and killing fields scattered through the country).

The Communist Party Of Kampuchea (later named the Khmer Rouge) launched a series of insurgencies across Cambodia from 1968 onwards (against the backdrop of the Vietnam war in neighbouring areas and helped by sympathetic North Vietnamese forces, so reducing the ability of the Cambodian army to oppose it). During the 1970 Cambodian Coup Prince Norodom Sihanouk was deposed by General Lon Nol, who assumed emergency powers and founded the Khmer Republic. In the intervening years, the Khmer Rouge organized themselves winning support from people throughout the country, who thought they were for the restoration of Sihanouk (then in exile in Beijing). Backed by Chinese and North Vietnamese power, they made significant gains in territory and support. By 1973, American assistance ended and by 1975 the Lon Nol government was sufficiently weakened for the Khmer Rouge to seize power. On 17th April 1975, under the guidance of Saloth Sar (or 'Pol Pot' - Political Potential) they did exactly this, marching into Phnom Penh. Initially welcomed, within hours people were being ordered to leave their homes, being told that it would take a few days to find 'enemy combatants'. In reality what happened is that a systematic process of relocation was started, to enable restructuring towards a wholly agricultural based communist society. Classification of people was undertaken, dividing those as either suitable for agricultural work, or an 'intellectual' (including students, engineers, doctors, anyone wearing glasses or having 'smooth hands'). The latter were asked to identify themselves so they could be sent back to the cities - in reality all were shipped off for interrogation in places such as Tuol Sleng (commonly known as S21, a prison converted from the Tuol Svay Prey high school in May 1976 and one of 167 prisons).

Roughly translated Tuol Sleng means a poisonous hill, with additional overtones of bearing guilt - a quite sinister combination of words, and something that would give a terrible foreboding to the place before the context is even known. The classrooms of the former school were converted to prison cells, measuring 0.8m x 2m for single prisoners on the ground floor and 8m x 6m on the upper floors for mass detention. The number of staff at S-21 numbered aroun 1,700 of which 54 worked as "Interrogation Units" - some shockingly young, between the ages of 10 and 15. Detainees were subjected to awful and degrading daily routines and punishments, kept fixed in positions in lines by ankle shackles, stripped of clothes and dignity and having to ask permision to urinate or defecate into small iron buckets (receiving a beating if they failed to ask). Bathing happened as infrequently as twice a month, consisting of the prisoners being rounded up and squirted through a window for a short time with water. Needless to say disease and skin rashes were rife, with no chance of medicines for any sort of treatment. Mealtimes were at 8am and 8pm and consisted of a bowl of rice, prisoners were deliberately kept weak to prevent any sort of defiance or suicide attempts (this was clearly a concern for those who ran the place as there were reams of barbed wire around the windows, and prisoners were constantly observed). Their physical deterioration was further compounded by the routine and sickening application of various tortures, not limited to systematic rape, beatings and the use of insects applied directly to the body.

A typical room, still pretty much how it was found on the ground floor. Box used as a toilet, with bar and fastening used to hold prisoner's limbs during interrogation.

View from a window at Tuol Sleng.

20,000 people came through Tuol Sleng, the prison holding around 1,200 - 1,500 at any one time. Imprisonment generally lasted from 2 - 4 months, though significant political prisoners had their misery and terror extended up to seven months. Nearly all ended up in killing fields such as Cheong Ek after interrogation. On their arrival at Tuol Sleng they were photographed, interrogated about the details of their lives so far, stripped of clothes and any possessions before being manacled and placed in cells. The photographs of the prisoners stand side by side with their interrogators (most aged 14-18) in the museum part of the site - the feelings of abject terror shown so clearly their faces as they await the horror of their unknown, immediate future are palpable. Only seven people managed to survive, one of them an artist who's paintings elsewhere in the museum show all too graphically the abhorrent treatment inflicted on himself and others.

Regulations at Tuol Sleng that prisoners had to abide by.

Walking around a place such as this, which has only been changed slightly in it's conversion to a museum, is a deeply unsettling experience - inevitable comparisons are raised with respect to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and the accounts of the guards questioned since trot out the same 'excuses' of following orders, not having a choice with a few expressing no guilt whatsoever, being thoroughly dehumanised by their training. However, our guides over the course of the day were quick to point out that the Khmer Rouge concentrated wholly inward on the genocide of their own countrymen, there were very few outsiders to suffer the same fate. Recounting the history of the place was clearly very emotionally hard for our guide, who was one of only 10,000 to escape to Vietnam during these four years. She was seven at the time and lost her father, sister and brother to the Khmer Rouge. How she manages to take people around the museum every day, recounting the attrocities against and murders of people who died, possibly in the same circumstances as her own family, is incomprehensible - she confided that she still cries every day about the past. On the walls of the museum, photos of key members of the Khmer Rouge have been violently vandalised - the photo of Pol Pot has been ripped clean off the wall.

When prisoners had outlived the necessity for questioning, they were inevitably led off to the killing fields, of which Cheong Ek is one of the largest. In the photo on the left, each dip in the ground is an excavated mass grave. Around 20,000 people arrived here, none ever escaped (which makes piecing together the history all the more difficult - there are still many uncertainties over what actually happened during this time). One thing is clear, however - that this was the site of one of the worst examples of inhumanity in recent history (and still something which many people at home still do not know the details of - I only had a very rough idea of what went on before coming here). 9,000 human skulls were discovered by farmers in 1980, alerted by an appalling stench whilst working the land, in mass graves just outside of Phnom Penh. 86 mass graves were found in all, yet more bodies remain unexhumed with 11,000 under a lake. This was one of 340 'Killing Fields', scenes of 'production line' murder where people were lined up, their skulls smashed with bamboo (the use of bullets being too expensive to waste, and bamboo is light and easy to wield - so the beatings could continue without the inconvenience of getting tired). They were then kicked into waiting pits - some may have still been just alive when buried.

Part of the Buddhist Stupa memorial - the chilling sight of thousands of human skulls, piled floor to ceiling and classified by approximate age and gender.

Our guide, Sosul was about our age, and gave us some vital insights into the effects felt by people immediately after the Khmer Rouge were deposed and the attrocities discovered. Most people in Cambodia lost at least one family member during this time, and he himself lost his uncle. He said that education has been decimated because of the repression of any form of free thought or learning during the four years - there is still a desperate need for native doctors, teachers, scientists, which is making progress in the city bit in rural areas (most of the country), the emphasis is on farming, driving etc. The need for good schools in the country in turn proliferates ignorance in terms of learning from the past and nurturing the desire to think about progress - incredibly the teaching of history for some children was stopped altogether. He said it also breeds a culture in which parents exploit their own children for short term monetary gain (begging from tourists otherwise they are given no food).

The Cheong Ek memorial, like S-21 where blood still stains the floor, is a very 'raw' reminder of the past. By this I mean that amongst the birdsong and butterflies of the neighbouring fields, pieces of bone and clothing poke up through the ground as you walk about - it took a few seconds to register that we were literally walking through human remains in our sandals. I don't know how long it would have taken us to notice this had Sosul not pointed it out, but they were everywhere - some lying in piles near the trees. Everywhere you look there are huge dips in the floor where the graves had been excavated - some bringing their own macabre evidence as to the circumstances of the dead e.g. headless corpses denoting traitors or nakedness indicating women who had been raped first. Babies were thrown against trees, music was played from speakers to drown out the screams of the victims and the cracking of bones.

The sharp leaves of these trees were used to cut throats, using the produce of the land against those who tended it.

On January 7th 1979, Vietnamese forces entered Phnom Penh and deposed Pol Pot, causing mass defections of Khmer Rouge officers to form the new government. Pol Pot was driven into the countryside, but conflict between the old Khmer Rouge and the new government continued until Pol Pot's trial and imprisonment in 1997. He died in 1998, trials for the remaining perpetrators have been maddeningly slow in coming (though there has been progress recently with international backing), and there are apparantly still elements of the Khmer Rouge in government today. You have only to drive through the countryside to see the effects of the restructuring that took place, Cambodia is still very much an agrarian based area, and there is little development of infrastructure outside the two main cities.

The streets outside Cheoung Ek.

Wahey The Angkor

2006-05-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

During our stay in Chiang Mai we had some more time to do some thinking about other volunteer work - we found a very interesting opportunity here. This seemed a better way of meeting and interacting with the people of the hill villages (and to be honest I was put off some of the organized tours by the glib descriptions that yelp "See Longnecks !" and the like). However, there were practicalities to consider, namely the impending expiration of our Thai visas during the projected stay. So, another backpacker favourite presented itself in the form of a visa-run to a neighbouring country, taking in the 'standard itinerary' of Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.

Kampuchea is a place where interior travel takes time. It's not somewhere you can rush about if you need to be somewhere quickly (or comfortably) - for reasons that might become clear later, it's a country that is very based in agriculture - most of the land is used for farming and there are very few roads that have any sort of constructed surface. Many buildings are of the shack variety, held up on stilts over rice fields with occasional brick buildings painted in the red and blue of the national flag. Most people adopt a 'Jazz' style of driving - swerving around potholes and dips, suggestions of a side of the road to keep largely being academic / impossible. The bus journey itself to the border town of Poipet and on to Siem Reap was a travel experience in itself - changing buses 5 or 6 times (about 15 hours in total), running the gamut from modern air-con cruisers to ex-army surplus. We hopped and rocked as on a cross-chanel ferry along undulating mud tracks and rusty bridges, pausing at the border to take on some essential cement bags (though if the weight helped us stick to the road, I was all for it). Packed along any spare floor space, this tended to draw alarmed glances from some of the girls - obviously they've never experienced the joys of riding around in the cab of a truck loaded with such materials (a staple of both my childhood and early twenties). I did wonder at one point if they were going to load a mixer and a couple of tons of ballast in as well - meal stops involved jumping out of the window.

The next morning we set off at five for a trip out to Anghor Wat on the back of some 'motos' (somewhere between a moped and a motorbike - they standard mode of travel in Cambodia) to see the sun rise over the temples. It's a fantastic way of getting around - you feel much more 'in the environment', though that environment inevitably includes lurking dips and wending around other motos. The silhouetted peaks of Angkor Wat clawed the sky as we slid to a halt - the air cool and tense with a shimmering potential, washing away the bleary indolence of very early morning.

The sunrise itself lasted only a few seconds, with a fractional burst blazing through the overcast sky. We had a look inside while some horses moseyed round on their morning trudge. Accounts of Cambodian history usually start around the 9th century as the Chenla kingdoms united under the rule of King Jayavarman II, starting the Khmer Empire and introducing the concept of Devaraja god-king for himself and his 39 successors. The temples of Ankhor are the remains of the cities formed during the period up until it's decline in the 15th century under raids from Siam forces. Most of the temples were lost to the jungle until re-discovery in the 1860s under French colonialism. Angkor Wat was built in the 12th century during the reign of King Suryavarman II and dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, later being converted to a Theravada Buddhist temple (around the 14/15th century). It's likeness can be seen on the current flag of Cambodia (and every since 1863 - the only building to appear on a national flag). Unlike other Khmer temples it is oriented to the west, rather than the east, leading to speculation that it is a funerary temple. Others say that this is more to do with it's association with Vishnu. The temple itself consists of three storeys, the uppermost being of a very steep gradient. I waited at the bottom for Dan to climb it, kept company by some numbnut who insisted on using his spanking new phone to play his own compilation of "Tha Shittest Choons In Da Wurld". Thanks for that, it really added to the mystery and awe of the place.

Over the course of the day, the motos took us to a number of different temples - I am told Ta Prohm provided the setting for the film Tomb Raider. It seems to grow down from the sky, the roots flowing onto the rocks and cradling them in it's grip.

Bayon temple at the centre of Angkor Thom ("Great City"), showing an example of the imposing four sided Deva faces in the Bayon style. It has been described in places as having "poor workmanship and haphazard sculpting" or alternatively an example of the change to "quantity over quality". I found it to be one of the most interesting temples - it's strange and complex pyramid structure inviting you in and providing a wealth of Hindu and Buddhist influenced detail. Construction was still continuing up to the late 13th century, though the majority was under Jayavarman VII - it was the last of the great Khmer temples. Jayavarman VII's reign is regarded as the zenith of the empire's cultural and political power - thereafter it went quickly into decline.

It was not (as I had originally assumed) built in 1997 as a tribute to the Cypress Hill album "Temples Of Boom".

Detail of Bayon relief.

We sped along over sloshing mud tracks and smooth main roads, having learned that the trick to riding on the back is to relax and just hold on with the tip of the fingers - instead of tensing up and not letting your weight shift naturally. We went for miles only occasionally seeing another vehicle (a number of which were trucks piled with about 20-odd people on the roof), occasional bouts of rain stinging the face. At Banteay Srei the palette of the stones shuffled to include earthy reds and browns among the usual mossy greens and greys.

The ruins of Preah Khan - partially reclaimed from the jungle.

Chiang Mai

2006-05-19T01:37:00.000-07:00

Post Bangkok madness, we dithered a bit as to what we should do. We'd decided to pass up the teaching work (and after giving it some time, I'm still convinced that was the right thing to do), so it was decided to catch the next bus to Chiang Mai, a very pleasant and popular launching point in the north of the country. Most visitors come for hilltribe trekking, Thai cooking lessons and the like - it's also host to a fine selection of vegetarian restaurants and 2nd hand bookshops. We also decided to take some time off the sauce, as Dan rightly pointed out this trip was turning into one long Saturday night.

It seems our timing was uncharacteristicly good, as we arrived just as the Visakha Bucha period was beginning - a national holiday traditionally on the first full moon of May (the 12th in this case). This is a Buddhist holiday celebrating the birth (around the 5th century BC), enlightenment (at 35) and passing (80) of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Chiang Mai has a host of temples (Wats), so this is an excellent place to observe the celebrations and customs of this time - many Buddhists believe that this is an ideal time to engage in good deads and raise their karma, increasing the chance of a favourable rebirth. No meat is eaten on this day, in fact there is a strong vegetarian theme overall, with captive animals being set free and donations for strays.

We visited the Wat Chedi Luang in the evening, one of the larger temples in the area - unforunately I'd missed a lot of the proceedings during the day because I was sleep deprived and couldn't drag my carcass out of bed - Dan managed to go and investigate it properly though, and has a very good writeup on his blog. I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the close company of the aggressive, gold digging, bone-headed disease bags that make up the local dog population - so I declined to donate to the Spongerels at the temple (though later relented at the market). However, it was a very pleasant atmosphere and a new perspective on a country that continues to intrigue. Later on in the week a good proportion of the old, walled section of the city turned into a huge market, with local musicians treating us to some sounds of Old Siam.

The inside of the THC rooftop bar - the same decor as a thousand Head Shops from here to Brighton - groovy !

Baht Rock

2006-05-06T03:07:00.000-07:00

Thailand has been quite a mixed bag so far. I feel I should explain what happened with the teaching work before blathering on about the other stuff first. Early on we decided that, if possible, we would like to do some sort of volunteer work during our year abroad - our first lead having fallen through with the NGO in Sri Lanka, we were eager to follow up a potential teaching job in Thailand at the same place Jaz had taught. I don't really want to offer an in-depth dissection of what I now feel, but I think it sufficient to say that I (we) decided to turn the offer down on the grounds that some of the things we saw and heard were extremely troubling, and I was not fully confident of the situation that we would be placing ourselves in. There were too many unanswered questions, too much vagueness and the story kept changing with respect to what we would actually be doing. It could be that this is overly anxious paranoia on my part and that we may have passed up what could have been the most rewarding part of the trip - or we may also have dodged being in a very tricky and ethically suspect situation (not to mention the legalities of it all ...) On one side I feel hugely disappointed that I can't directly contribute something to the area that we are currently visiting, on another I think that working under a system that supports bribery and physical punishment of children is not something I could ever support. This has made me think more closely about the nature of volunteer work arranged on the road, and the conflicts of morality associated with it - you have to ask who directly benefits from it, and I don't think I could confidently say that it was the children being taught more than the balance books. So things haven't worked out exactly as we'd planned, but other options are being pursued albeit with more scrutiny.

Anyway, here's more stuff on drinking and music :

Back into the sweat. Bangkok ! It's like Mumbai, only slightly less populated and more relaxed (in both atmosphere and morals). We're on the infamous Khoa San road, where merchmen jostle with each other to flog knock off CDs or deep fried insects, people of debatable gender strut up and down, and the whole thing throbs to the mixed rhythms of either sub-standard Trance or tiresome repititions of The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Seriously, they don't play anything else. One nice thing is that shifty looking blokes keep asking 'Ping-Pong ??' at me - a kind if unexpected offer, however I've not played in years and have no wish to embarass myself. It's hot alright. Lakes of sweat (not perspiration) form on the brow and combine with acrid insect repellant, stinging the eyes. White shirts are dirty in 20 minutes, Friesian patterns form on coloured ones and my glasses keep skiing down my sodden nose with irritating regularity. Bars have water sprays on, doing a half-arsed job of cooling the air, which when it gets particularly bad makes you feel as if you're cooking or drowning when you breathe in. At times one feels like a big walking dollar sign, Tuk tuk drivers in particular always have an eye on the prize - almost resembling Scrooge McDuck with his monocle popping out when a potential earner strolls by. Breakfast is a delicious spread of beef noodles and Doxycycline.

Still, we've made some friends, chancing upon this band playing a gig in the road. This could have been any one of a thousand of nights at Windsor Arts Centre, a local band playing radiohead covers on semi-tuned Washburn guitars and Peavey amps. In the photo on the left they're playing the wailing bit from the end of Paranoid Android - something which is inextricably linked in my mind to watching Radiohead at Glastonbury, in the rain, covered in mud, after all my stuff had been nicked and one of my best friends was getting off with a girl I fancied. Still the yardstick for measuring teenage angst - on this occasion Dan and I warbled along whilst swigging from cans of Heineken. The second band on were an abominable nu-metal band, all digital effects and baseball caps. We stopped watching them to go and talk to the first band, and after blethering on for a bit they asked if we wanted to go and see their other gig at a bar in some backstreet (funnily, they also asked if we were drunk - good thing I'm not easily offended). We managed to find the Lullabar after a fashion and spent a charming few hours watching them plough through their set - this included a cover of When You Sleep by abrasive art-rockers My Bloody Valentine, and most of The Stone Roses back catalogue - providing the catalyst for some truly shambolic dancing. Making friends with a local band is an excellent way to get to know people and experience what Thai people get up to usually. Even if it is exactly the same as home. Oh, and Torquay stayed up this season - or at least that's what I could tell from Dan's Gallagher-esque bellowing in the internet cafe. Most of Bangkok is aware of the result as well - hooray !

The Grand Palace - built in 1782 after the ascension of King Rama I and currently home to the Emerald Buddha. The previous royal palace was on the west side of the Chao Phraya River, the king decided to establish a new base of administration and residence on the more defendable opposite bank. The Emerald Buddha is in fact carved from jade, and was discovered in Chiang Rai around 1434, covered in plaster. It was noticed some of it had flaked off in places, revealing a green stone underneath - hence it was named the Emerald Buddha. Here you can see the golden chedi and a giant mythological yak. I think.

Memoirs Of A Gaijin

2006-04-28T03:03:00.000-07:00

Back in Tokyo we decided to go out for the night - this necessetated staying out *all* night as the hotel's curfew was set at twelve. Cue rapid and repeated slapping of forehead. Oh well, we amused ourselves by wandering around Roppongi, getting steadily blootered in rubbish hip hop clubs and failing to pull. Further larks were had on the 5:00am train back to Minami-Sendju by talking to an 80's Heavy Metal promoter, whose racist remarks on the country kept us in slack-jawed incredulity all the way home.

A big thank you to Iain (centre), Fiona and Darius (left) for putting us up in Inuyama - it was much appreciated and very generous. They are all currently working for Nova, a company that provides jobs for teaching English in Japan. Listening to their day to day experiences, and the setup that Nova provide you makes me think this would be something I'd be interested in pursuing in the future. Sunday evening was spent in La Cavalera, a fantastic bar owned by Kei (right), which also doubles as a tatoo parlour. They serve burritos and snake whiskey, oddly there's Belle & Sebastian on the stereo - good times. We were introduced to Ray, a friend of Iain's who also works as an English teacher, and an absoloute gent. He's lived an extremely interesting life so far, and has a wealth of knowledge about the local area - he showed us around Inuyama castle (built in 1537, the oldest standing in Japan) in the morning, and explained the customs of a recent yearly festival. Huge multi storey contraptions are pushed around by the men of each neighbourhood, whilst drinking lots of beer and smoking. The top storey of the cart usually houses a puppet show giving a rendition of traditional folk tales, and the whole thing has hundreds of candle-lit lanterns hanging off of it that could go up at any time. Precarious is one of several words that leap to mind.

Banzai ! Overexposed Sake ! We drank our fill of this and then went to the karaoke bar ...

GOLDEN SLUMBERS !! The serenity of Kyoto forever shattered. Yep, that's right they had every single track on Abbey Road. It occurs to me that this sums up the last ten years very well - two idiots, off their chumps on hooligan juice and bellowing their heads off with no regard for time signature, dynamics or melodic consonance. Dan kept banging a tambourine so hard that he had a massive bruise covering most of his leg for the following few days.

Only one of these people wanted to be in this photograph ... Morton-San plots his escape.

Nara was the capital of Japan from 710AD to 784 - this is one of the numerous cultivated gardens that are dotted about the town.

I chanced upon this quintet of loons whilst wandering around central Tokyo, in parts they sounded uncannily like the Cantina band in Star Wars.

Mount Fuji from the air.

Hiroshima

2006-04-28T03:02:00.000-07:00

In the years following the Meiji restoration of 1868, Japan underwent an economic and military expansion, and driven by a combination of nationalistic members of the military and government and a need for resources, embarked on a number of aggressive actions in neighbouring areas - including China and Russia, seizing the whole of the Korean peninsula in 1910. This put it in conflict with the west, eventually leading to a total oil embargo (oil being crucial both for interior demands and continuing military action - 80% being imported from the US). Japan was to either back down and comply with demands to halt action in China or go to war with the allies. This eventually led to the attack on Pearl Harbour in Hawaii, initiating the Pacific War and bringing the US fully into the global war. Meanwhile, the discovery and development of nuclear fission in Germany in the years preceding the Second World War led to the instigation of the Manhattan Project - a US led programme that involved the UK and Canada to create a functioning nuclear weapon, out of fear that Nazi Germany would do the same.

The Pacific War saw Japanese forces sweep through the Philippenes, Burma and Indonesia. However, by 1944 defeat was in sight and the 1945 Potsdam Declaration called for their complete surrender (with no mention of the possible continuation of the Emporer). After their failure to respond, the US and allies had several options for ending the war - the deployment of atomic bombs was chosen possibly also as a way to curb Russian influence after the war (instead of using Russian forces in a land invasion). Several cities were chosen as potential targets, originally including Kyoto, but the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the final targets. Hiroshima was a city of note for both academic and military importance.

At 8:15 on August 6th 1945, the Little Boy uranium based atomic bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber that had set of from Tinian (a large island in the Mariana chain). At 600m above the ground the uranium 'bullet' was shot into the main mass of the 60kg payload, causing it to go supercritical and 0.7kg undergoing nuclear fission. This was enough to generate an explosion equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT and measured 3-4000 degrees celsius on the ground. A devastating amount of radiation and heat was released on the populace of 255,000, immediately killing 80,000 and destroying 80-90% of the city buildings. Those who did not die instantly from the heat and pressure were exposed to massive doses of radiation that, even though they had subsided a week later, caused leukaemia, cancers, cataracts, organ failure and birth defects for years afterwards. It is estimated that in total 140,000 people died from the effects of the bomb. The heat effects from the explosion caused burns on people within a 3.5lm radius, and organ damage within 1.2km. The dark patterns on clothing were burnt directly onto the skin beneath, and the writing on paper and cloth burned instantly even far from the source, stone steps turned white with a shadow of the person sitting there. The effects of the pressure waves and 440m/s wind collapsed the mostly wooden buildings instantly, shooting shards of glass and brick into bodies. A fire conflagration raged for three days, and a black rain began to fall, even up to 29km away.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still a subject of fierce debate, though undoubtedly they contributed to the surrender by Japan soon afterwards, and thus the commencement of US occupation until 1952. In the years following, Japan underwent an astonishing recovery, the economy given a boost during the Korean war as a result of manufacturing most of the supplies and food for the US forces. In the sixties the country had on the surface turned around completely - exports growing twice as fast as the rest of the world.

Immediately after stepping off the train, I was hit by an extremely strange and sad feeling ... I hadn't really had time to meditate on what had actually happened at Hiroshima as we had been rushing around everywhere before, but even though the situation itself was utterly normal (an upmarket commuter station with marble walls and huge advertising screens) it still felt incredibly strange to be visiting an area of such sadness and historical significance. Hiroshima today looks like any other highly developed city, with a population of over a million and nicely sculpted walkways and buildings. It was difficult to reconcile this with the horrific images of human destruction and tragedy, there are still thousands of people who survived living in the completely rebuilt city.

Walking around the associated museum, I was shocked by the personal accounts of the survivors - graphic details of the injuries sustained by those not immediately killed, the confusion they felt of not knowing the nature of what had happened. Information concerning the workings and effects of nuclear weaponry were suppressed by occupying US forces for several years immediately afterwards. 150,000 people left the city in the years following, those that stayed suffered a lowered resistance to disease, scarce medical supplies, clothing and shelter (most of the infrastructure having been destroyed) - many of the shelters built were washed away by a typhoon later. The spoken personal accounts were too much to listen to in parts, and I had to wait for a bit to go and read the written accounts (the museum had an extensive database of recorded and written accounts). Many of them were from the 6300 students mobilized to demolish buildings and create firebreaks - they told of the appalling sights that lay throughout the city, and the anguish felt by finding loved ones dead or unrecognizably burnt.

The museum now works to promote abolishment of nuclear weapons testing and development throughout the world - every time a test occurs, the city government of Hiroshima sends a letter of protest. Without wanting to politicize this too much, I was reminded that Britain is currently trying to replenish it's Trident missile stockpile. It is also worth noting that the Hydrogen bombs used today are 1,000 times as powerful as the Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In the centre of the city, 160m south east of the bomb's hypocentre stands the Atomic Bomb Dome, which was originally the Prefectural Industrial Promotions Hall. The bomb detonated 600m above, this is one of the only buildings not completely destroyed - it is thought that this is because the blast was almost completely above, so did not blow the walls apart. It now forms part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

The Memorial Cenotaph, framing the Atomic Bomb Dome.

Wrist watch stopped at 8:15.

Kyoto

2006-04-25T01:09:00.000-07:00

Life in the eighties was good. Perhaps I should qualify that, it was good for me, a kid in the South East of England - no doubt for the rest of the world it was as terrible as it ever was. But for me it was a time of bold primary colours on bowed cathode screens - the Amstrad CPC with it's formidable 26 colour palette vying with the Transformers animated series for my sense of awestruck wonder. Not for me the worries of the world stage, not a care for dwindling resources and the subtleties of power struggles between nations - just a mild obsession with what life would be like in the year 2000+. This was an unimaginable amount of time into the future - I'd be 26 ! Pushing a zimmer frame, but with millions in the bank ... if people wore calculator watches that even stored phone numbers in the mid 80s, it was inconceivable that there would not be flying cars and robots doing all the work.

You can guess the sense of disappointment I feel now. Quite frankly I feel cheated. True we have ready access to the Internet - the sum total of human knowledge, culture and unprecedented ease of communication - but lets be honest, 99% of the time it's used by people for free music and dirty pictures. But ! It turns out that at 26 I've had a small glimpse of what the future in England might have been like if everything had just been a bit cooler. Here taxis open their doors as they approach their fares, high speed trains that resemble the inside of the space shuttle rotate their chairs for cleaning, and the whole thing is set against a Bladerunner-esque backdrop of light drizzle and neon signs that turn the night sky light grey.

So ... it was a shock to find that in such a high tech place none of our bank cards worked. Oho ! What fun ! Our hubris in assuming we could roll up and snatch some readies from anywhere backfired mightily. It turns out that none of the local banks hook up with anything outside the country ... even if it does say VISA on the ATM. Ha ha ha ! Look at these two idiots, bumbling around on a Sunday night, with literally no cash at all, hungry and unable to understand anything anywhere. Given the shenanigans a couple of nights previously, that were only sorted out with the aid of a lot of ready cash, it's safe to say we weren't happy. To cut a long story short, we had our accomodation sorted out in the form of two rooms in the Hotel New Azuma (room dimensions 2.5 paces by 4, enough to lie down in but otherwise fine) and we managed to get ourselves sorted out the next morning. We then got on a high speed Shinkansen train to Kyoto and booked ourselves into the awesome K's House (voted #1 backpacker hostel in Asia, and a veritable budget paradise).

I think it's safe to say that Kyoto is the most beautiful place I have ever been, the blossom from the trees floating delicately in millimetres thin streams, evoking the exquisite haiku of 17th century poet Basho. The default religion of Japan is Shinto, which places a lot of emphasis on the beauty of nature - and it shows in just about everything around you. Interestingly, Shinto does not preclude other religions, and indeed has led to certain integrations with other faiths (most notably different sects of Buddhism - which was apparant in the temples of Nara and East Kyoto).

Back on the bikes for a morning cycle around the town, the babblings of lysergic troubadour Syd Barrett on Pink Floyd's Bike seeming appropriate. The first stop was the Kyoto National Museum, which while not as large or grand as some of London's offerings has a wealth of interest and beauty within it. While my overall knowledge of sculpture is best described as "piss poor", it is still an artform which I find hugely interesting - a cast of Rodin's Le Penseur broods over the entrance to the museum. Inside, huge wooden Buddhist figures stood with such defined contours and lines that after a while the shadows seemed almost to suggest breathing. I had my own cliched expectations of what Zen and Shinto artworks would be like, my knowledge beforehand being limited to images such as The Great Wave by Hokusai. I was instead struck by the vivacity and energy of the screen prints, even in greyscale. On to the Sanjusangen-do temple, where 1001 gilded statues of Kannon, a Buddhist goddess stand watch, side by side, and each uniquely different. Visitors can write hopes and wishes on candles, which when burnt make the impassive faces shimmer as the laminar flow of heated air rises from the wicks.

In the grounds we were approached by a group of schoolchildren who asked if they could practice their English with us. We of course said yes, being very familiar with the process of being goaded by a teacher to approach people at random and embarass yourself. About 12 years ago in Mainz, Germany in our case. Anyway, they did very well and much bowing and shaking of hands followed - Dan's crafty use of domo origato dozaimasu causing a standing ovation from the kids.

Before leaving England, I had talked to my uncle Mick about going to Japan - his advice was to seek out some jazz because he had heard it was very popular over here. He should know because he has an impressive knowledge of music with a collection to match, and strangely, cookbooks as well. In any case, he wasn't wrong - our first proper night out in Japan was spent at the splendid Blue Note bar. I've been to some awful "Jazz Clubs" in England, which are basically the same as overpriced high street bars but with a stricter dress code - which is so conducive to the spontaneity and expression that I love about music.

Anyway, this was a world away from all that - the bar was lined with a fantastic collection of jazz records, the barman flipping LPs between serving up generous measures of bourbons and single malts. I drank Four Roses on the rocks whilst a very accomplished local quartet played and I drunkenly tried to explain intervals, modes and chord structures to Dan on the piano motif that lined the bar. I only hope nobody else heard any of it, because they would have probably laughed their heads off. It's always interested me the different ways you can view music - on the one hand it's something that is a product of wave mechanics and set theory, rigid physical laws, yet it produces such an emotive effect on people and sometimes sparks abstract imagery in the mind. The quartet started with some of the filthiest trumpet ever committed to the air, which quickly collapsed to a silky flowing line, and I was reminded of water and rain frequently as they played their set - large warm drops falling in suspended fourths and dominant sevenths, reflected in the polished black mirror of the lid of the piano - light rivulets forming and racing along the ride and snare - breaking applause following accomplished trumpet solos performed without show. When it was done we went on to some other bars, and failed miserably to find out about some other local music (to be fair, our attempts at communication were limited to writing "Yellow Magic Orchestra" and "Melt Banana" on napkins and thrusting them at people).

Hong Kong

2006-04-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

And so our freight train of discovery blunders on, expanding our consciousness and irritating others. I am currently reading an account of the rise and fall of the British Empire as we seem to be on a tour of former colonies - from India to Hong Kong and later Australia. What better way to season our adventures than to wind up the locals with some well placed historical banter (segue to the scene of a speeding ambulance a fraction of a second later).

In anycase, our arrival in Hong Kong preceeded any attempt to plan what we would do whilst there, though we had booked ourselves a place at the brilliantly named Wang Fat hostel. Oh what a goldmine of mirth it proved to be, a spate of Musical Rooms providing an evening's accomodation in the caretaker's backroom - we found that the TV in fact was tuned to the CCTV loop; can confirm a universal truth that when a person enters a lift, they will spend the whole time checking themselves out in the mirror (particularly if that person is male). The other form of amusement came in eliciting gleeful screeches from the old hags in the corridor while stepping out of the shower.

Rambling drivel aside, Hong Kong was always going to be a polar change to Mumbai in terms of culture, though I think there are a few similarities. The balance between tradition and high technology is much shifted, whereas Mumbai still seems to be developing with a sometimes precarious infrastructure but rapid in growth, Hong Kong is obviously extremely westernised (though there are still reminders of traditional methods - building scaffolding consists of thick bamboo shoots held with cable ties). Getting about is disarmingly easy with an Octopus card - our glowering eight legged fiends of the deep allowing us unlimited use of the mass transit system (shared with Kowloon hipsters with combs in their pockets and children with wheels on their shoes). I have confirmation that it is physically impossible to get lost there - I tried stepping onto the wrong train and a boxing glove on a spring repeatedly punched me in the groin until I got on the right one. Dan spotted a woman scraping chewing gum from the floor with a scalpel (a rubbish job to be doing on a Friday night for anyone, but it explains the sterility of the general environment) - I wonder if there are plans for this in London or Slough ?

We met a guy called Craig in our hostel, who asked if we wanted to go out with some girls that he met. Dan initially seemed indifferent, but after my asking if he was dropped on his head as a baby we made good with our promise to help rid the city of booze. Now my usual experience of drinking is sitting in a pub flushing pints of tea with my mates, gobbing off about subjects I know nothing about and doing robot dances until the landlord shooes us ouｔ with a broom an hour after everyone else. The scenesters of Hong Kong do it differently - drinking games are integral to bar culture, and the staff supply whatever paraphenalia you might need. Some examples of this are are a bizarro version of Bruce Forsythe's Play Your Cards Right, a version of Rock Paper Scissors on LSD which involves pointing and twisting your head around a lot and some other dice games which have such byzantine rules that they require the concentration of a stoned man playing chess. We ended up drinking like rascals, obviously. There was a minor emergency later in the evening involving a miffed taxi driver accusing us of smashing a window and threatening us with some kung fu moves - luckily the police were reasonable about it. We unfortunately had to pay for the damage even though it was not in any way our fault (it smashed when the door opened), it could have happened at any time to anyone.

My sentiments exactly ...

The Beach Of A Thousand Dogs

2006-04-14T01:03:00.000-07:00

First off, congratulations to Ben and Mandy on the birth of their daughter Rose - she was born on the 9th of April, and Dan and I wish them all the best for the future.

And so we arrived in Goa - a part of India I had pegged as somewhere to laze around on sun drenched beaches, clear my mind and not do very much. I am very pleased to report that it lives up to my expectations totally - even if Palolem is clearly not the secluded paradise it once might have been (it's very much geared towards tourists now, I get the feeling it would have been very different ten years ago). We stayed in a hut on the beach - basic, but perfectly alright for our needs. When I say basic, I don't mean the sweaty concrete walls of a Kochi hellhole, but a wooden platform on stilts with a bamboo roof. The entrance is right on the Arabian sea, and it backs onto a pig farm. Perfect.

The journey there was notable only for the bus ride (which was something like being on the back of a teenage kangaroo at it's first Green Day concert - several times I was suspended in mid air for a few seconds before coming down suddenly and sitting on my testicles). Poor old Jaz was looking a bit green, as we'd gone nuts for booze the night before after meeting some other English people. Brendon and James were two blokes from Devon, Brendon being a professional Rugby player with a fine array of drinking yarns. We now have some speakers to listen to music with, and the age difference between us and Jaz was momentarily highlighted with our choice of music. Dan and I crashed about like lunatics listening to jangly early-90s indie, Jaz looked unimpressed.

Note the audiophile positioning of the speakers. Nothing's too good for us.

The beach was lovely, despite the fact that it seemed to be a gathering point for all the stray dogs in the area, and we were kept company on a morning run along the beach by a load of snapping canine interlopers. A few days exercise and decent food made all the difference, the rest of the time being spent careening around the Goan countryside on bikes and playing drums. The last two days have been spent hanging around Mumbai again, and we bid farewell to Jaz this morning. It was awesome travelling around with her, and she will certainly be missed - if you're reading this Jaz, hope to see you in Thailand ! I hope all our stupid jokes and improvised skits of Sylester Stallone naming his daughter Zucchini didn't drive you too nuts.

Happily we managed to find a music shop that would send on some instruments and books to the Emmanuel Orphanage - I only hope that they get there in one piece (nagging feeling that they might not - there was a bit of a language barrier in getting the point across that we didn't want to take them with us). My parents will probably pleased to know that the language barrier precluded an attempt to ship international. My advice is to laugh it up while they can, because buying a sitar and drone box is priority Numero Uno on my return.

The drive in the Kool Cab (meaning 'leopard skin seat covers') provided a reminder of the sobering poverty that greeted us on our entry to Mumbai. Miles upon miles of thrown together shelters, most stacked two high spilling onto nerve-jarring roads of speeding taxis under the gaze of grinning models on billboards, hawking the latest designer shirts and life insurance. Children run around in the stagnant water and slide gleefully on their bellies on the ubiquitous piles of dirt dug from unfinished road works. I can only imagine what happens around the time of the monsoon, most of the shelters being constructed out of odd planks of wood and torn plastic sheeting - I've no idea how many people live in these areas, and without wanting to sound naive or patronising, how they cope on a day to day basis with the disease and misery that comes of living in such an environment.

Now here's some more inane photos of us that didn't fit elsewhere :

I put this up under duress from Jaz. It's one of her favourite photos - my opinion is that we look like a pair of tools.

... divorced the same day.

Coast Potatos

2006-04-12T01:37:00.000-07:00

I can't dress this up - the last few days have been terrible. After being ill for several days, all I wanted to do was sleep. But that was not to be - Kochi did it's level best to stop me from achieving this, with the result that I have not slept more than 2 hours per night in over a week. Friday was spent tooling around trying to find someway out of the festering pustule of Kochi, without much success. All buses and trains were fully booked, and I was beginning to get seriously wound up with the whole thing. Saturday we spent a pleasant day fooling around on Cherai beach and swimming in the Arabian Sea. The Keralan sun was pretty unforgiving - cue some admiring hoots from the lobsters on the way back. We got talking to some local oddballs in a restaurant, who took a shine to Jasmine and sat at our table for most of the meal - one of them bashfully told her she was "bit nice". How lovely it is to see romance blossom ! The bus ride back was broken up nicely with the bus making some diabolical noises and then giving up on life.

The real fun came in the evening though - we had booked ourselves into Hotel Hakoba (described by The Rough Guide To Being Wrong as "dowdy but with cable TV"). I had forked out extra to have a room to myself with air conditioning, as I was desperate to get a decent night's sleep. This didn't happen - by 2am the air was so close and suffocating that I realised I was going to have to stay awake until dawn. The experience that followed knocked the Mumbai train ride off the top spot for most traumatic event so far. The 'con didn't work at all, having an outlet vent that faced a brick wall, and a load of ants and lice waged a war of attrition in my bed while I slowly marinated in my own sweat. The ceiling fans looked like they would come off the ceiling at any moment and my plan to go for a walk was scuppered by there not being any light in the corridors, and no way of telling where the treacherous flight of stairs was. The only good thing that happened is that a huge lizard came in and eat some of the mosquitos. So I waited it out for 8 hours until the sun came up and booked myself into the posh hotel up the road (giving Hokaba the V sign on the way out). I don't think I've ever been so happy.

Now we're in Gokarna, an idyllic hangout for ageing hippies - first impressions were not good, but during the day it's extremely relaxed and has got a reasonably nice market place (which was overrun by the Full Moon festival on our first night). Om beach is awesome.

Of Sitars And Vomit

2006-04-02T04:26:00.000-07:00

Friday we arrived at a motel type place in Mamallapuram, and then out to sea front restaurant (which had been nearly destroyed by the 2004 tsunami, a wave 40ft in height crashing through the upper floors). A cycle tour amongst the rock carvings and sunbathing goats took care of the morning, and a visit to another orphanage on the outskirts of town provided a chance to embarass myself in a game of cricket (painful memories of numerous school sports days filled my head as I glared enviously at Dan's volleyball game). Still, it made the kids laugh.

Mysore seemed to be a pleasant enough place, and I got the chance to see someone playing the sitar in a restaurant - something I've been wanting to see and hear from the moment we chose to go to India. Have resolved to get hold of one and play it extremely badly on my return.

After Mysore we took a bumpy ride up to the Jungle Retreat, lurching along with all the grace of a giant squid riding a tandem. The shared dormitory very closely resembled the set from the first part of the film Full Metal Jacket, and we had the pleasure if sharing the room with some charmingly social cockroaches. The food at the Jungle Retreat was excellent, but I think there may have been something up with the water. I came to this sudden realization after 24 delightful hours of diarrhea and vomiting, during which my stomach felt like a set of septic bagpipes. A summer home for Indian military officers in Ootacamund, 2000m above sea level was the charming place of my recovery. Am feeling a lot better now, but disappointed that I missed the ride on the toy train (which to be fair was the deciding point in booking the trip).

Now back in Kochi and looking forward to getting on towards Goa with Dan and Jasmine.

Madurai

2006-04-02T03:37:00.000-07:00

The last few days have passed in a bit of a blur, we've crammed in a lot of stuff without much pause. The visit to the orphanage gave me a lot to think about and I haven't really had time to put it into words yet.

We left for Madurai on the bus in the morning - not something I was looking forward to as the ascent had been nightmarish in terms of triggering my vertigo. I am told that the descent was equally gut-wrenching, but I was totally unaware of it as I was distracted by a local film that was being shown, and an interesting chap called Rhoji who told me about his life and family. They have an interesting way of loading and unloading the luggage here - balancing huge washing baskets on one's head and climbing ladders with no other support.

In Madurai we visited the Sri Menaksh temple (where some quite abrasive freeform jazz was being played - very unexpected, it sounded like something Ornette Coleman would come out with). Dan and I were a bit put off by the pitiful sight of a trained elephant being made to pat people's heads in return for money. I don't know what sort of quality of life the animal has (it could be very happy for all I know), but it certainly looked quite bored and frustrated, a contrast to the animals I had seen roaming around a couple of days before. Dan also took the opportunity to have some clothes tailored, a long sleeved shirt and some fetching green trousers (I have no idea if he actually intends to wear them, he didn't seem overly thrilled ...)

There was high drama as we made our way to Villapuram and caught a bus - apparantly Intrepid has some history with the taxi driver's union, the details of which escape me. In any case, they weren't pleased that we were catching a public bus instead of going with them, and much banging on the side of the bus (against the background of screeching bats) ensued as we bludgeoned our way through the traffic and crowds. Our driver was certainly agitated about something, the driving style best described as 'homicidal'. The bus leapt and snarled along with the ferocity of a wounded Bengal tiger, announcing it's approach with the delicate call of an ocean liner - I am amazed no one was injured (inside or out). I could tell this was a bit more than the usual progressive style of the continent because the locals were getting increasingly upset and jumping ship before their stops.

After all that excitement, Pondicherry made a welcome change. It's still very influened from it's days as a French colony. We went out for Sue's birthday (with a glacial rickshaw ride back), and in the morning walked along the beach front where the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami had deposited tons of rock, and that people now perform their morning meditations on). Prya explained some of the aspects of Indian politics under the gazes of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru (looking in to India and outwards respectively). The afternoon was taken up with an interesting visit to Sri Aurobinde Ashram.

In the morning we passed through Auroville, an experiment in communal living started in 1972. It is a sort of spiritual retreat / commune with a current population of 2000, the idea being that people renounce all religions and give up personal possessions and live in a collaborative, egalitarian society. There are apparantly no leaders, and everyone has a set role that they perform (practical, artistic etc.) and are expected to be students, researchers and teachers of their roles. 5,000 people are empoyed in the area, with a plan to expand the community to 15,000. It was an interesting place, but I left feeling unclear how things such as personal disputes etc. would be handled and if it was truly as idealistic as it claimed to be.

Emmanuel Orphanage

2006-04-01T00:51:00.000-08:00

In the afternoon we made a visit to the Emmanuel Children's Orphanage, and I feel that this was easily the most rewarding thing we have experienced so far. There are 22 children of a range of ages living under one roof in two rooms with a surrogate family. Though the conditions are basic, the children seem happy and it is clear that there is a large amount of love for all the children from the parents. The twenty girls that live there share one room over four beds - incredibly small space for so many people, the boys have it better with two sharing a similar sized room. They seemed excited and happy to see us - the ice was broken with a nervous but tuneful round of hymn singing from them, which we attempted to return with a lot less competence.

We played for a while, kicking balls about and throwing frisbees - the children have so many different personalities, some are quite shy but respond so well to the attention given to them, others are disarmingly confident - it was so heartwarming to see young people who in most cases have not had happy starts to their lives enjoying themselves. The most significant thing that happened for me was meeting Robin, a young man who teaches the children music. I had already seen a disused guitar in the house and attempted to fix it (it was unfortunately beyond repair), and I asked if there were instrument shops in the area. He said yes, and we went for a walk amongst the dusty village tracks and rusting bus yards - unfortunately when we got to the shop, the quality of the instruments was atrocious, only negligibly better than the guitar in the house. We purchased a tambourine (which was played with some skill by a few of the girls), and resolved to send a package of instruments to them in the near future. Dan and I were both moved by the hopefulness and energy of the children, and the seeds of a longer term project are beginning to take form.

Thekkady & Kumily

2006-03-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

The boat ride from Allapuzha was stunning - green and violet lillies turned the river into a vast, undulating carpet, closing up behind us as we cut a swathe through. We transferred to an SUV and began a four hour jaunt up the mountains to Thekkady. We managed to avoid half a dozen head on collisions with increasingly larger vehicles, the Christ figurine and Crucifix on the dashboard perhaps explaining our drivers faith in his fellow road users to stop. Thekkady is about 1000m above sea level, around thin winding roads framed by vast precipices. Needless to say my sense of vertigo made an unwelcome appearance, but the views of the tea and spice plantations were amazing.

In the evening we visited a spice garden (jungle is perhaps more accurate), owned and run by a chap called Abraham. It's funny how when you're a kid you're told not to eat with your hands, or eat stuff off of trees - not so on this trip. We eat cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, grapefruit and pineapple right off the tree. Abraham also grows coffee, bamboo (which grows at a foot a day !) and rubber trees here. Sue, one of our travelling companions, was in her element sampling the different varieties of chili. The evening meal consisted of a variety of curry and vegetable dishes, needless to say there was a wide variety of flavours and spices - served on a banana leaf and eaten with the right hand. I shall be importing this style of dining to the UK soon ...

In the morning we set of for Periyar national park (sadly Dan couldn't come with us - a dodgy stomach still wreaking havoc). The park is about 77km square, and we barely scratched the surface with a three hour trek. Taking a bamboo raft across the lake we soon came across a family of elephants ... who took an exception to our presence and chased us off. It is incredibly rare to see a tiger in the park (though there are a great many of them there), but there was evidence enough in the form of some giant scratches on the trees' bark.

Green Palms

2006-03-29T01:06:00.000-08:00

We arrived at Green Palms in the Allapuzha district to begin our homestay with the Zaccariah family - run by two brothers, Thomas and Matthew. The area is made of reclaimed mud from the waters - 650 sq. miles over 33 islands, all built by hand. Chickens, goats and children run around the island in harmony, and everyone seems to know each other.

We shared our room with some huge spiders, lizards, frogs and mosquitos. Next door were two German girls, on a break from University - Esther and Sabina. Esther it seems has gone travelling with a teapot on the demands of her parents, this caused no end of amusement. The evening meal was a new dining experience - the usual way of eating is using the right hand and no cutlery (the left hand is never used at all - more on this later). In the evening we went for a walk, observing the local trees and vegetations - a stunning array of bananas, pineapples and coconuts. The sky was beginning to take on a menacing air as we climbed aboard the canoes, it was getting slightly late and it was obvious a storm was brewing (the rain and distant lightning was a bit of giveaway). The light was mesmerising as we pulled away, and the rain drops whilst heavy were quite warm. However, it soon turned very dark and cold, and somewhat like the introduction to an episode of '999' (I half expected Michael Buerk to jump out of a bush and start a commentary over the top). The lightning was constant, quite intimidating and I think most people in the canoes were starting to get very nervous. In the darkness we pulled over to a drinking hole where we had a look at the local drinks that are made here. It was incredibly basic with plastic barrels and fuel cans for seats, and walls of bare brick and spiders. However, the locals were perfectly friendly and I felt safer there than in some British pubs.

I think it was safe to say that most people were not looking forward to the boat ride back - it was pitch black by this point and thunder and lightning still raged all about. The announement that it would take about 40 minutes was greeted with silent groans.

It's funny how wrong you can be about something - it turned out to be the most enjoyable part of the trip up to that point. The rain had eased up and the boats joined together - Matthew and the boat drivers started a series of traditional chants and folk songs. These are apparantly dying out in the area as the young people of the area are more interested in moving away to the cities than learning the traditional ways and culture. I'm glad I'd seen the construction process earlier, as there was a lot of belting the boat with the oars going on. It was incredibly atmospheric in the darkness - enhanced by a power cut, meaning that the previously despised lightning became the only source of illumination.

Roosters kept me awake for most of the night (I had naively thought they only crowed in the morning), and the mosquito nets only had the effect of making us look like two bits of old cake lying in state. Seeing that I was not likely to sleep anyway, I got up at half five for another walk around the island and some morning chai - the muscle catchers and mud diggers were already hard at work.

Flying The Flag

2006-03-25T03:30:00.000-08:00

Talk about a travellin' - she's the fastest train on the line. Nope, not the Orange Blossom Special so fondly described by Johnny Cash but the Netravati Express to Kochi. It made a welcome change to the horrors of the morning - we took the opportunity to dry some of the clothes by hanging them out the window - greeted by a tsunami of indifference from the locals. The scenery was pretty spectacular, the train clattered through the night and the 28 hour journey passed without incident (apart from an intense and emotional game of travel chess). I feel as if we're actually travelling now. We booked into the Hotel Grand in Kochi, and met with the other people on the Intrepid South India tour - there are four other people on the tour (two others having dropped out). Isaac is a 56 year old civil engineer from California (originally from Hong Kong), Jasmine is a gap year student, Sue is a veteran traveller to all continents and Pria is our Swedish tour guide. Given the trauma of the day before, the most sensible thing to do was to get an early night and get up the following day with a clear head. We didn't do that, we got roaring drunk instead.

The first day of the tour proper started with a mosey around Fort Kochi, amongst the spice bazaars and art museums and then to the banks where the fishermen make their catch. They use a traditional style of fishing using a construction that looks somewhat like a huge catapult - a good place to eat as the fish is as fresh as is possible. In the evening we went to a performance of Keralan theatre - a sight I will not soon forget. The preparation by the actors is as much a part of the proceedings as the actual performance. A narrator explained how the actors have 'alphabets' of hand shapes and facial expressions. Two main performers were assisted by a percussionist and narrator.

Afterwards we went for a meal, punctuated by extended power cuts between the courses. I think it may have been here that Dan picked up his stomach bug, as he has been quite ill for the last few days. In the morning we dumped a lot of our stuff at the hotel and caught the bus to Alleppey (hitting a dog on the way) and then a boat to the backwaters.

Chloroquine Dreams

2006-03-25T02:57:00.000-08:00

Dan and I have found many ways to amuse ourselves over the past few days, mostly by talking nonsense and making rubbish puns. However, a new adventure presented itself on Wednesday - doing the laundry. Rather than spend a whole quid on getting it done properly, we thought we'd get some done before catching the train to Kochi. So, in the sink it all went with some washing powder followed by a quick rinse in the shower. Disaster struck when we discovered there wasn't enough space to hang everything on the piece of elasticated rope we'd strung up. Desperate situations call for desperate measures, but inspiration came and four pairs of pants were hung ceremoniously from the ceiling fan. Comedy ensued when this was accidentally switched on whilst looking for the light switch - cue the strains of Khachaturian's The Sabre Dance ...

We woke up to find them still dripping wet, a great disappointment that our engineering skills had failed. This was to set the tone for a day I will not soon forget (we had smugly thought that we'd avoided any sort of culture shock, and that actually travelling was pretty easy - that was about to be squeezed out of us ...)

We checked out of the hotel, dumping the shoes we wore over (hence the title), scoffing at the offer to call us a taxi to Talik Nagar station for 750 Rupees (ten quid). Why, we'd just get the train - we've been doing this all week and it's easy ! True, we'd have the bags with us but we'll splash out and go first class. Easy peasy !

The first problem is that there is no discernable difference between first and second class. I really mean that - none. The second is that by the time we'd got the packs on and down to Santa Cruz, it was rush hour. Doing anything with the bag on takes four times as long, but jumping onto crowded trains is right out. Somehow we forced our way on, to discover that it wasnt quite the right one, so we dived out at the next stop. The 'right' train arrived, but too far down the platform. We attempted to get in the second class carriage, but it was no easy feat, I mean real clawing your way in. In the scrum, Dan got pushed far into the carriage while I was still holding on to the outside as it pulled away (no doors on the carriage while it's this hot). My bag was already wedged in, so I had the awesome experience of holding on with one hand on the edge of an accelarating train. I thought I was going to fall out and under the train, but worse was to come when we pulled up at the next station and whole new stampede set in - this time there was no ambiguity, I was crushed right into the centre of the carriage and unable to move or do anything, having a hard time even breathing and at this point I really did not care if I got separated from my pack. I was trying to shout to Dan to see if he was on the train (I hadn't actually seen him), and thankfully he still was - much to the amusement of the locals who decided to take the piss and answer for him. I suppose it is quite risible - two English blokes freaking out over being on a train, but the sense of claustrophobia and panic was quite real. After a few aborted attempts we fell out at an unknown station (getting off is harder than getting on). Then we got a taxi.

We can look back on this now and laugh (seasoned with expletives).

Phileas Blog

2006-03-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

India !

I can't quite believe we're here. After countless months planning we've started our year abroad - it is my fond hope that we will end up wearing bindis, playing the sitar and growing dreadlocks.

We left England on Sunday evening, after a slightly tearful farewell at Heathrow. The trip started well enough with me slicing the top of my finger - hence the first aid kit came out before even leaving the house. Dressing up 'smart' seemed to do the trick at Heathrow, as we got a small upgrade on our seats - this still prompted Dan to adopt a wide array of strange positions whilst trying to sleep - the only person I know who sleeps in the shape of a question mark with his head on the tray.

The drive from the airport to our hotel was a good introduction to Mumbai proper - straight into the boiling but languid chaos that is the city. The first thing that hits you is how hot it is - going from ice winds in England to a 35 degree heat. The second thing is the poverty - there are so many people here, it's almost pointless trying to describe it (population is officially 16 million - the same as the whole of Chile, our tour guide yesterday thinks it's closer to 30).

Our hotel is in a part of Mumbai called the Prabhat Colony, by western standards it's probably a bit basic, but by local standards it looks like luxury. The first night we were there we went for a walk during the day, and found a huge market place (which looks like a cross between Tottenham Court Road, Reading Festival and an Indiana Jones film). The area is pretty much residential, so this seems to be where everyone comes to buy their food etc. - beautiful looking fruits and veg sold right on the street. There are a few things that I would really like to see and hear whilst in India, and right away I saw one of them lumbering along the street - a huge elephant amongst the throngs of bicycles and auto-rikshaws (fearsome hornets of the road). It seemed totally indifferent to the seething madness around it.

Tuesday we got up early after a sleepless night (for some reason 2 o clock in the morning is the perfect time to re-arrange the furniture for an hour) and got the train from Santa Cruz station to downtown Mumbai. This was something else I was (naively) eager to experience - the train pulled up at the station, and immediately a huge crowd of people started pushing and shoving to get on even as the train left the platform. We looked a each other and dived in. The train was undoubtedly crowded, but not nearly as uncomfortable as it could have been. However, this was just before rush hour and given another hour I'm sure it would have been a different story.

If the traffic was hectic in Prabhat Colony, it was peanuts compared to the downtown area. Bicycles, people, cars and tuk-tuks all seem to go for the same spot at once, the lilting sounds of the Mumbai Car Horn Orchestra providing the soundtrack and egged on by the ubiquitous "Horn OK Please" written on the back of each vehicle. We were approached by a few different people offering tours of the city - we'd already decided this was something we wanted to do, so went with a bloke called Ramesh. It turned out to be the right choice as he was extremely knowledgeable and friendly, with a keen mind for remembering pertinant historical dates. He originally comes from the Colaba part of Mumbai, but owing to the cost of living and educating 3 children lives outside and commutes in at half five every morning - he's been at it about 10 years.
Starting off at Marine Drive, we went over to the Chalpatty Beach and on to some hanging gardens. Highlights of the tour were visiting the house where Gandhi lived (detailed the history of his life and showed the letters he wrote to various people including Hitler and Roosevelt) and the Jainist temple. Jainism is a religion and philosophy that espouses vegetarianism and non-violence, and has had a huge effect on Indian culture (though they comprise about 0.4% of the population). We also saw the site where the dhobi-wallahs beat clean the clothes of Mumbai's citizens, incredible the number of people working there.