Filling in the gaps

The journey home

2009-07-23T06:35:00.000-07:00

We'd booked the shuttle bus from Ubud directly to the airport, and since out flight was leaving at 21:35 we had a lovely easy last day in Indonesia. The shuttle bus arrived spot-on time, and there was no traffic to the airport, but once through check-in and security we found our flight was delayed by a couple of hours. Amazingly, this was one of the longest delays we've had on the entire trip, and given our next flight wasn't until late afternoon the next day, we didn't have anything to worry about.

Arriving in Kuala Lumpur late at night meant no public transport, not even an express bus service (the last one had left 30 minutes earlier). Again we were lucky to meet another couple in the same situation, and so we all shared a taxi into the city centre. We got dropped off at the door of Wheelers hostel, which I'd rung from the airport to ensure they were still open. So we went straight to bed and got up late the next morning, hoping to grab a nice lunch in the Old China Shop restaurant (and after grabbing a couple of gorgeous cakes from the bakery around the corner from Wheelers).

So after another fantastic lunch, I felt just a tiny bit rushed having to get a metro to the main city terminal to connect with the airport bus, but in fact it literally only took a few minutes before we were seated in the comfy airport bus and on our way directly to the airport.

Check-in was smooth as ever, and our flight left for Stansted, London spot-on time again. The flight was 13 hours, and although we didn't bother paying for the entertainment system (on which you could watch movies and stuff), I managed to get a good bit of sleep.

After a strange delay getting our baggage in London, we strolled about Stansted and once we found the Ryanair check-in desks we just plonked our bags down on the floor and went to sleep, along with the couple of hundred other passengers doing exactly the same thing (this was at about 23:00, and our final flight to Dublin was at 06:30).

So after a great sleep (the airport was really quiet, and everyone seemed to be considerate of everyone else sleeping), we were the first ones in the queue for the bag-drop. Again security and customs was all easy-peasy, and our flight to Dublin left on time.

So after 25.5 months on the road we finally arrived back in Dublin at 07:30, picked up our bags straight away and headed out to Sarah's awaiting parents in arrivals. After a quick teary reunion, I was dropped back to me Ma in Malahide, where the smell of a freshly cooked Irish fry greeted me as I walked in the door.

Pottering about Ubud

2009-07-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

For the next few days we both just pottered about Ubud really. I was going to rent a bike and explore the environs, but in the end I just couldn't be bothered, as it's quite hilly around Ubud and I was just feeling a tad lazy.

The first day we walked the couple of kilometers to a famous restaurant, Mozaic. Apparently it's rated by some as the best restaurant in Indonesia. It was nicely decorated, but nothing special really, but after looking at the prices we decided it was too steep at this late stage in the trip (US$65-US$120 per person without drinks). So instead, I had a quick look at the nearby Neka Museum (I just strolled through the shop into the museum, thereby bypassing the ticket-desk, while Sarah waiting outside too afraid of getting 'caught'). Then we just crossed the road to check out another well know place, Naughty Nuri's. We had to try their famous martini, but it seemed to me to be pure gin and therefore disgusting. But the spare ribs we tried where probably the best I've ever tasted (not that I try ribs often).

Next day I used the internet for a good bit and then checked out a few more of the town's cool cafes. We booked a local specialty of smoked duck in the cool local restaurant beside our hotel (Dewa Warung), which we had late afternoon the following day before getting the shuttle bus to the airport for our 9:30pm flight back to Kuala Lumpur.

So all-in-all it was just a nice few days relaxing, reading and strolling about Ubud before the long 2-day, 3-flight journey home.

Back to Bali - this time Ubud

2009-07-07T06:29:00.001-07:00

I had to haggle hard with the bemo driver to take us to Mataram so we could get a connection to the ferry departure point at Lembar, but at least he agreed to drive there directly without the usual stopping to pick up other passengers. At Mataram it was fairly easy to get another taxi to Lembar, although in general it seems that short-distance public transport in Bali and Lombok is rare if not non-existent. The bemos seem to have disappeared or are not too common, with agency-sold shuttle buses and taxis being the only way to get around - which of course leaves you wide open to being ripped off all over the place.

Anyway, we got to the harbour at Lembar very easily and quickly, and without getting ripped-off much. The ferry ticket was straightforward as we'd gotten the ferry to Lombok in the first place, so I knew the correct price (although I actually got the tickets from a very suspicious-looking tout right in front of the official-looking ticket collector dude).

The ferry was another easy, relaxing crossing. But at Padang Bai I couldn't see any sign of a local bus, or a bemo or even an official taxi to take us to Ubud. Luckily an English couple approached us and asked if we were heading to Ubud, and so together we managed to negotiate a decent price with an unofficial taxi guy (of course he tried to mess us around on the price, but thankfully the English couple knew the ropes and played the 'walking away' game very well). So again we were in a comfy taxi heading directly to our intended destination, and an hour later we were in central Ubud.

The nice English couple headed straight off to a place they knew while we grabbed a fantastic lunch in the guidebook-mentioned local place of Dewa Warung. It turned out to be a fantastic Nasi Campur - even better than Fatima's on Gili Air, and cheap-as-chips too at 10,000 rupiah. After lunch, and while I watched the bags, Sarah strolled about looking for somewhere to stay. The best place happened to be just a few doors up the road (not in the guidebook of course), and was a lovely quiet place (Sudana, only 70K a night with huge breakfast included).

That night I tried to find the place that had posters advertising the movie 'Home', but I started off walking the wrong way, and so only found the place well after the movie had started. So as compensation we had a nice lamb biryani in a nice Indian place before an early night.

Senggigi

2009-07-07T06:00:00.001-07:00

Arriving at Bangsal with Richard and Claire gave us extra bargaining power with the taxi drivers, and in no time at all all 4 of us were relaxing in a comfy taxi on our way directly to Senggigi on the Lombok coast.

The first few cheapy places we tried were all full, but luckily we got decent rooms at the lovely beachside hotel of Lina's (125K, no brekkie - the president was making an appearance in the town the following day, so rooms were scarce I think). It was still just late morning when we'd all settled in, so after showers and resting for a bit I went for a refreshing swim. As I was heading back to the room, Richard arrived at the beach with his Waboda ball (a present from a mate back home apparently). This high technology 'invention' is basically just a bean-ball that bounces along on the water when you throw it to someone, and Richard had been keen to try it out for ages apparently. So needless to say I was keen to try it out too (Richard had dragged Claire down to the beach to 'play', but she didn't seem too keen really!). It was quite a workout firing the ball back and forth, and it was good fun - it would have been great to have little goal posts!

Later that afternoon all 4 of us strolled along the beach to explore a bit, and to try out snorkeling (well, just me and Richard snorkeling while the girls lay on the beach). Richard (who is a very experience scuba-diver and general water-baby), found a cool white spotted moray eel under a rock and quite a few shrimp, but I'm pretty sure we weren't in the best snorkeling location.

After a great dinner that night in central Senggigi it was a fairly early night and the following morning after a very tasty breakfast at the local bakery we said goodbye to Richard and Claire as they set off for a tour of Lombok and Flores. It was weird saying goodbye to them as they continued on their travels - they still had over 3 weeks of traveling, while we were heading home in less than a week. Even though I've been on the road now for over 2 years, I actually felt a tad jealous of the fact they were heading off adventuring to Flores and Kimodo, while all we had left was a few relaxing days in Ubud before going home.

But I planned on heading to Ubud the next day, and so for the rest of that day I rented a bicycle and explored the coastline north and south of Senggigi, while Sarah just relaxed on the beach and used the Internet to investigate jobs back home. Using the bike I checked out a cheaper hotel that had been full the day before, and getting a lovely room I cycled back to Sarah and we relocated (only 60K a night and a good deal quieter as it was well off the main road, although the nearby Mosque woke us both at 5am!).

The coastline was lovely, with lots of sandy coves and headlands rising gentley to provide commanding views. I had lunch in a cozy little bakery/cafe in Ampengan about 14km from Senggigi, I stopped off a very large and ornate Chinese cemetery, and I took a detour through a very local fishing village (lots of the locals starring at the Westerner, with kids laughing and pointing and saying 'Hello Mister!' all the time - I don't think many tourists cycle through normally). It was a lovely slow pace to explore the beaches, a couple of which were almost totally deserted, while a couple more were packed with locals (it was a weekend). I was literally the only Westerner I saw on the packed local beaches.

We could have stayed another day in Senggigi, but after exploring with the bike I thought I'd seen pretty much all of it. There were a few interesting looking restaurants (and I was tempted by the Sheraton hotel, around which I had ambled about of course), but in the end I decided Ubud would probably offer more culinary options, and so the next morning we headed off - this time without a pre-booked ticket, we'd just wing it.

Diving and relaxing on the Gili Islands

2009-07-07T05:17:00.001-07:00

The Gili islands are all so small, and so close together that diving from any of them allows you easily dive all the sites in the general region. So in retrospect I reckon we definitely picked the best island to base ourselves, as Gili Air has a bit more life that Gili Meno, but isn't as crowded or touristy as Gili Trawangan.

The Irish owner of Blue Marlin had explained to us that the PADI diving rules had changed in recent years. Before you had to complete a full, and expensive, Advanced PADI diver course to be allowed dive deeper than 18 meters, but the term 'Advanced' was thought to be putting people off, and so now PADI have split up the advanced course and they allow divers to be certified for each of the individual dives that previously had made up the complete Advanced course (i.e. deep dive, navigation dive, search and recovery dive, etc.). So Sarah now had the option to simply get certified for deep diving without any of the other (basically in my experience) unless dives that make up the full Advanced certification. The certified deep dive cost more of course ($60 instead of the usual $35 fun dive cost), but once completed she would be free to dive any site I would be able to dive, and basically frees her up to dive anywhere.

I thought this was a great initiative from PADI, and so Sarah's first dive was a deep dive with her very own personal instructor. After successfully completing that dive she was now free to dive practically any fun dive site in the world.

So our first dive was at Shark Point, and it turned out to be probably the best dive of all 5 that we did (you also get a further discount for doing a 5-dive package). Although myself and Sarah weren't together (she had specific stuff to do with her instructor), we were both in the same area. It was a fantastic dive with great visibility and no currents or swell. I got to see two big white-tipped reef sharks, both really close, a few turtles and lots or other life (Sarah got to see sharks and turtles too, and 3 octopuses, 2 of them free swimming).

After our dive we got dropped off on Gili Trawangan to explore it for the day, and although it had some great looking bars, cafes and a couple of very tempting restaurants, we never bothered to relocate there. Basically the main stretch of beach was quite crowded (although the snorkeling from there was great), and I suppose in the end we just felt really relaxed and comfortable on Gili Air.

Since we had lots of time to spend on the Gili's we spread out our 5 dives over the next good few days. It gave us plenty of time to check out the various restaurants and to discover the cool little shack of Warung Fatima that had the best Nasi Campur I'd had so far tasted in Indonesia, and by far the cheapest at 5,000 a pop (although she put her price up to a cheeky 8,000 while we were there - still well below the usual 15,000 - 40,000 of everywhere else!)). Fatima herself was a mad 'auld dear, with a crazy toothy smile and a cackling laugh, and although her shack had no sea views like all the 'proper' eateries, her personality, seriously tasty Campur and honest prices certainly made hers my favorite place on the island (a young Aussie traveler who sat beside me there one day said he loved the place too but he couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was that he specifically liked - when I said it was simply it's 'honesty' I really don't think he had a clue what I was talking about!).

Anyway, on our third scuba-dive we met a lovely English couple who happened to be on their honeymoon, Richard and Claire. They weren't your typically stereotyped honeymooners pretending to be all loved-up though, in fact they were totally relaxed and laid-back about everything. Their wedding had cost the princely sum of 1500 pounds and their honeymoon was a very respectable 5 weeks long - both were in their early 30's and had traveled extensively before, so they were pretty savvy compared to your usual Epsilons.

We ended up diving with them for our last 3 dives, and then traveling back to Senggigi in Lombok with them for a couple more days. Our remaining dives were all very good I must say, although I think most of my previous dives on this trip have been in pretty poor conditions by comparison.

Our last dive was on a 'wreck', which was just a pontoon, but it turned out to be a huge pontoon and I was well impressed (I got to see a couple of really cool free-swimming cuttle fish, changing colour in real-time and everything, and a huge octopus, although he was mostly hidden inside his rock).

In fact we left Gili Air a day early because Richard and Claire were heading back, and it just made things a bit easier to travel independently as a group. So after 11 days of wonderfully relaxed lazing about, chatting with Richard and Claire over Bingtang's and sunsets, and good scuba-diving, it was time to head back to Lombok.

Early in the morning we grabbed the same brekkie we'd had every single morning at Lucky's (banana pancake and tomato/egg jaffle), and strolled to the public ferry departure point. After waiting about an hour (and finishing our hastily grabbed breakfast), we were back on the local boat to the mainland of Lombok, and on our way to the local Indonesian tourist town of Senggigi.

Gili Air

2009-07-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

It was fantastic to just relax in our lovely wee hut at Lucky's on Gili Air for the first couple of days - basically we were in no great hurry to do anything much. Those first couple of days were spent just walking around the tiny island itself (about 90 minutes to circumnavigate the whole island on foot), and popping into each of the 3 scuba-diving operators on the island.

All the operators on all 3 of the Gili islands have a price fixing thing going on, but on arriving at the 3rd of the operators on our island it turned out the owner was an Irish woman. After chatting to her for a bit, she offered us a 10% discount if we went with them (they do offer a 10% internet booking discount, but she gave it to us 'cos we were Irish!). Since the other 2 places didn't offer any discount, and all 3 were pretty much identical otherwise, we went with the Blue Marlin operation (and anyway, they had a lovely pool and a cool general hang-out area with hammocks and free coffee, and we could use their snorkeling gear whenever we wanted). They also offered to drop us off at either of the other two islands after a dive, which we used to check out the main Gili island of Trawangan, although I assume the other operators would have done the same.

Anyway, after picked a scuba operator, but not yet booking any dives, the next day we just got the island hopper boat across to Gili Meno to check it out. Again it's a very small island, and we walked right around it in a few hours, stopping off at various spots to swim or for Sarah to sunbath for a bit. It's labeled as the quietest of the 3 islands, and it certainly seemed to live up to that when we were there, but it did have some great stretches of beach. At 4pm we hopped back on the island hopper boat back to Gili Air, and booked our first scuba dive for 8:30am the following morning.

Getting to the Gili's

2009-07-07T04:25:00.000-07:00

The next day we had at our leisure as I used the internet (in vain trying to find the best way to get to the Gili Islands off Lombok - the Internet can be a real pain sometimes when looking for very specific information!), and then instead just walking around Kuta shopping for the best ticket price through an agent. The best price I could find was 140,000 rupiah ($14US) each, which included all transport to the island of Gili Air and a pick-up from our hotel (most places advertised 185,000). I found this at a fairly non-descript place on Poppies Lane, a pretty cool laid-back backpacker laneway that I hadn't noticed in Kuta before (although it is in the Lonely Planet of course).

So the next morning our taxi arrived at 6:10am and our driver ran into another hostel looking for a third passenger who it turned out had canceled - leaving just the two of us in the lovely comfy, modern air-conditioned taxi all the way to Padang Bai, about an hour's drive away. It's from here that the public ferry leaves for Lombok (you can get a fast boat direct to the Gili's, but it costs 690,000). At Padang Bai we had to wait nearly 2 hours before boarding the ferry (basically the agency leaves you waiting around until enough tourists arrive to fill one of their shuttle buses on the far side).

The ferry trip was an easy, relaxed 4 hours, and we got picked up on Lombok and taxied (via Mataram) directly to Bangsal. From here we were deposited at a restaurant about 200 metres from the harbour and told to wait. After about another 2 hours we were told to move down to the harbour itself, and after a further 30 minutes waiting around (basically for more tourists to arrive to fill a boat), we left for the 30 minute boat ride to Gili Air.

Once on the island I traipsed around and found fairly cheap accommodation (85,000 a night with a great breakfast included), at Lucky's Hostel, which turned out to be a great place, although a bit far from the scuba places and the main stretch of restaurants (but a much better location for watching the sunsets). Our rustic hut was right on the beach and even had an extra double bed on our veranda, which was a great spot in which to read.

Basically it had taken us a full 12 hours to get door-to-door from Kuta to Gili Air, and that was after paying for a single ticket to cover all the various hops in taxi, shuttle bus, ferry and local boat. But along the way I was noting the cost of each hop, and although it turned out we had paid a very fair price, the delays along the way were unnecessary really. If you make you're own way you can just hop in the next taxi, ferry or shuttle that's leaving, whereas if you travel the whole way with a single operator you have to wait until they have a full load before moving on. Anyway, on the way back to Bali I now knew we should be able to do it quicker and even cheaper, which was exactly how it turned out.

But for now we had safely arrived on the very pretty Gili Air. After just about catching the sun setting into the horizon as we arrived, we had a lovely dinner at Lucky's and I was really looking forward to a relaxing couple of weeks on the islands and hopefully getting in some good scuba diving.

Final days in Bali

2009-06-21T23:00:00.001-07:00

So we got up early in the morning to rent a moped from our hostel (Senem Beach Inn), and after a nice Gado-Gado breakfast at Made Warung's I started driving towards Sanur Beach (rather than try and drive directly to Ubud through the chaotic city of Denpasar).

Although the road signs at first were promising, it didn't take long before I was completely lost. Every street looked identical, with no identifiable landmarks to get your bearings and very little signposting or street name signs, so trying to get to the beach was a nightmare. After literally an hour of driving around in circles, and down laneways and side streets I eventually found a place that I could identify on our crappy tourist map (thank god for KFC!). So once parked at the beachside, I had a very long and relaxing walk along the beachfront to try and relieve some of the stress of the drive.

It's a nice beachfront area, although very quite and mainly made up of expensive looking resorts, so I'd reckon any time spent there would be pretty boring really. The sea was very calm too, with the ocean breakers crashing well off-shore, so in fact this resulted in the sea being a bit dirty in places.

So after about 2 hours walking up and back along Sanur beach it was back on the bike and off to Ubud. Luckily this time I didn't get lost at all, and so we arrived in mid-afternoon. I found a highly recommended restaurant (Warung Ibu Oka) very easily, and although it was really packed, we managed to grab 2 seats at a table for 5. The place is famous for serving a single dish - suckling pig, and so the tiny menu only offered a few variations. Myself and Sarah both had the 'special', and it was really fantastic. The place is a real local institution, so the food was really cheap too, so we got completely stuffed there!

Then I drove round to check out the local Blanco Museum, but they had a cheeky admission charge, so instead we checked out the famous Ubud Sacred Monkey Forest. I'd been here before, and it's still a great little spot for a stroll, although not as big as I remember. There were millions of monkeys around of course, and they were entertaining as always. After the forest we drove through the town a bit more, and stopped off for coffee and milkshakes at the very stylish Three Monkeys cafe, which backs onto a gorgeously lush paddy field.

I wanted to give myself plenty of time to drive back to Kuta before dark, so we set off around 5pm. But not too long into the drive I was totally lost again. Asking various clueless locals for directions was fruitless as always, but eventually I found my way onto a familiar major road. But once we hit Kuta I got totally lost again (and by now it was just getting dark). Myself and Enda had walked around Kuta a fair bit, but I couldn't recognise anything I drove past. Again, just after driving around and around I eventually spotted some familiar landmarks, and I made my way to a road along which I knew how to get home. But of course, the traffic was now totally clogged up, and I was getting worried about running out of fuel.

But eventually, about 7:30pm, we made it back to our hostel, with the bike running on fumes I reckon. I think it was probably the single most frustrating day of driving I have ever had anywhere, and I was mighty relieved to get home. We just grabbed a beer and a bite to eat at our hostel and went to bed, meaning we'd have to spend the following day sorting out where to go next, and how to get there.

Bali and the Kavanaghs

2009-06-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

Our flight arrived in Bali pretty much on time, and so after advice from Enda about visa processing taking ages, we ran past all the other passengers leaving the plane, and arrived at the immigration desk before everyone else. It meant we went straight through without any problems (the immigration guy not even noticing Sarah's brand new passport), and outside the terminal we got a taxi straight to Legian, near Enda and Tracy's hotel.

The first hotel place we tried turned out to be lovely, so we dumped our bags, had a shower and strolled to Enda and Tracy's very fancy hotel (our place was lovely, although on our very first night there I was rudely awakened at 3am by a cat falling through the roof and crashing directly into my head! Obviously at first I had no idea what had happened, and felt the 'creature' run across my chest. Sarah leapt up and turned on the light, and then we saw the poor terrified cat trying to escape. Sarah opened the door of the room, and out the poor thing scurried, as I was left bewildered staring at the gaping hole in the roof (it was made up of quite flimsy panels)).

Anyway, arriving at Enda and Tracy's hotel, it turned out that they were on their first holiday 'date-night' in a very fancy restaurant about 25 minutes taxi-ride away (Ku De Ta). So after waiting for them in their apartment-style room with their babysitter, they arrived back and we all went out for dinner (well, just me and Sarah eating of course).

Over the next 5 days myself and Sarah would stroll over to their hotel and spend the day swimming in their pools, sometimes using their spare breakfast vouchers (all 3 of them had been sick for a day, and hadn't eaten much at all), and generally just lounging around in blissful luxury. We had kinda planned on heading to Ubud for a day, or going to the WaterPark nearby, but in the end none of us could be bothered to leave the hotel. Myself and Enda had Flyn a couple of times (while the girls shopped, or Tracy had a facial), just taking him for long walks along the beachfront, or shopping for sunglasses in the markets.

Generally we just a fantastic time relaxing, chatting, and eating and drinking in the evenings in lovely fancy restaurants and bars. It seemed like a long time since we'd spent days of pure luxury, but as with meeting up with other mates around the world, the splashing out was all very much worth it. Enda and Tracy took us out to dinner in Jimbaron, which is famous for it's seafood, and we got a great table right on the beach in front of the crashing waves. Another night we took them out to the justifiably famous stylish beach bar of Ku De Ta for a couple of drinks (the bar/restaurant could easily be from the most fashionable districts of New York or London), before a brilliant Italian meal in nearby Trattoria and more drinks in Hu'u, before heading back to relieve Flyn's babysitter.

Saying 'Goodbye' to Enda , Tracy and Flyn brought on a wee wave of depression at the thought of us having to head home soon too, but naturally that passed after a bit! We headed back to our nice wee hostel needing to look into what we were going to do with the 3 weeks we have left, but first I'd decided to drive to Ubud for the day.

KL

2009-06-19T20:49:00.000-07:00

Although the weather was misty and cloudy (largely due to huge forest fires in Sumatra apparently), we decided to check out the city's massive observation tower. This involved a quick metro journey and then a walk through a densely lush jungle park. But due to the poor weather conditions the girl at the ticket counter suggested we try another day. So after watching a 'building of the tower' video we headed across to a nearby 5-star hotel (the Shangri-La) to check it out.

I had read that this hotel has one of the best restaurants in the city, and after checking out the impressive buffet at the Japanese restaurant we tried to make a booking in the famous French restaurant, Lafite, for that evening. But Lafite was fully booked that night, it was closed on Sundays, and we were flying out the following evening, so instead we decided to give the buffet in the hotel's third restaurant a go.

It was still quite early, just midday, so I read the paper in the hotel's very impressive lobby area and then before the crowds got too big, we heading into the buffet. It was absolutely huge, with various cuisines - we had plates full of huge prawns and crab, Malaysian curries, sushi, Western roast meats, salads, an Italian section and of course loads of amazing deserts (after a long breather reading the paper again at our table).

So after that very long, drawn out lunch-dinner we strolled to the Petronas towers, once the tallest buildings in the world. We knew you needed to get there early in the morning to nab one of the free tickets to ride up to the cool sky bridge that links the 2 towers on their 41st floors, but it was only a short stroll from the Shangri-La, so we headed over there to see what we needed to do the next morning.

As it turned out, as we were about to leave the ticket area, an Indian guy approached us and asked if we wanted a couple of tickets for later that evening. It turned out that he had gotten a bunch of tickets earlier that morning, but now a couple of his mates couldn't make it. So after killing about 45 minutes in the attached shopping centre, and 10 minutes watching the Petronas promotional video (basically a TV advert with rubbishy 3-D technology), we were taken up in the lift to the SkyBridge. The weather was still hazy, but the views were still impressive, and just the fact that you're standing on a mad bridge 41 floors above the ground that links these 2 really cool-looking towers was mighty impressive I reckon.

The tower complex also houses a concert hall, but after checking for tickets at the desk for that evening (which they had), it turned out they had a dress code that Sarah couldn't fulfill, as she didn't have any dress shoes, just flip-flops, runners or hiking boots.

So we strolled down the road a wee bit so I could check out a fancy hotel I'd stayed in 10-years ago when Spence, Annie and Mikey came to Malaysia for their holidays and met myself and Hanno. The hotel has changed a bit, but it was still cool to stroll about and remember my few days staying there. We also helped ourselves to free Internet there for a few hours too!

The next day we checked out central sights, mostly around one of the city's main mosques. The mosque itself was a nice building, but in keeping with Muslim tradition everything is quite simple. A cleric guy there approached us and asked if we had any questions, so we got chatting to him for about 30 minutes. He had perfect English, and was fantastic at explaining some of the basic ideas of Islam and their traditions. He even gave us a free Koran and a bunch of leaflets explaining Islamic ideas in simple English.

After that we strolled to a monument to one of Malaysia's founding fathers, and then on to the worlds largest aviary, but that was a tad pricey. Instead we strolled about the nearby orchid and hibiscus gardens before heading back to the centre. We had a great meal in the atmospherically cool Old China Shop restaurant before heading back to the hostel.

The day before I had heard from Enda that the Indonesian visa takes up a full passport page. This caused a fair degree of panic, as Sarah's passport doesn't have any blank pages left. After checking as much as we could on the Internet about ways around the situation we had decided that probably the best option would be to just chance our arms and try and persuade the immigration guys to place the visa sticker over existing stamps (and probably needing to bribe the guy). We found this out on Saturday, so we couldn't ring the Irish embassy (to ask if they could just add extra pages to her passport, which I very much doubted), or the Indonesian embassy until the morning of our late-afternoon Monday flight.

So anyway, on Monday morning Sarah gets up and rings the Irish embassy. As feared, the girl told Sarah they can't add extra passport pages. The girl then told Sarah she'd ring the Indonesian embassy for us to ask if there was anything they could do. An hour later and myself and Sarah are packed, checked-out and back in the internet place to ring the Irish embassy again to see what the Indonesian guys had said. It turned out that the embassy said there was nothing Sarah could do - she would be refused entry to Indonesia (of course, the embassy has to take the official line, they certainly couldn't have suggested bribing an immigration official!).

Anyway, the girl then suggests that Sarah come to the Irish embassy and apply for a temporary Irish passport that would allow her travel, but the chances of getting the new passport for our afternoon flight that day were slim to zero (as the girl's boss wasn't in the embassy for some reason). So we headed straight to the embassy in a taxi, and Sarah pleads with the lovely girl to try and get the passport processed quickly. The girl keeps saying it would be impossible, but I could tell from her general body language that it should be possible, it just meant hassle for them, and working through their lunch hour. It also meant Sarah had run out and get fresh passport photos, fill in an application form, get that form signed by a commissioner of oaths (another taxi ride away) and pay 80Euro!

Amazingly we managed to get all that done and Sarah was handed her new temporary passport after about 2 hours. Totally relieved and with a fair bit of time to spare, we bundled ourselves into a taxi and headed straight to the airport (it wasn't that much more expensive than the express train anyway, even though it's 73km away). So even though we'd had a very stressful weekend worrying about the passport situation, the extremely helpful Malaysian staff at the Irish embassy really were fantastic and saved the day, and at 4pm that afternoon we were on our Air Asia flight to Bali.

Getting to Malaysia

2009-06-13T03:51:00.000-07:00

We arrived at the bus terminal nice and early (as we had to leave lots of time in case traffic was bad, but in fact we flew in), so we had time to use the Internet for an hour and then got a fantastic Thai buffet lunch in a fast-food kind of place.

The bus was another comfy air-con deal, with seats that reclined really far, and so I had a great nights sleep (and this was the cheapest bus option, so I don't know what you're paying for when you get a more expensive bus). We stopped at about 11pm at a food emporium place, as is usual on long distance bus trips, but as I was just strolling about I noticed that people from our bus were all sitting at communal tables sharing buffet meals of food - like a family in a Chinese restaurant (the same big circular rotating plate in the middle of the table that you see in Chinese restaurants). The people certainly didn't all know each other (nobody was talking to each other), so I asked the hostess from our bus was the food free, and she says 'Yes!' and points me to a seat at one of the tables. So I run back to grab Sarah and we both sit down to our free dinner, which turned out to be fantastic too! We had gorgeous big juicy prawns, and fiery chicken curry with rambutans for dessert - it was great.

It was weird that probably the two best Thai meals we've had on this trip (and this was our 3rd time in Thailand), were in a fast-food place in a bus terminal (58 baht each), and a free dinner included in a bus ticket in a food place in the middle of nowhere. Both meals were catering to Thais as very few tourists take the Government buses (especially from Bangkok to Hat Yai, mostly they take Koh Shan Road buses direct to tourist destinations like Phuket or Koh Samui (which generally involve some kind of a rip-off along the way, as I know from repeated experience)). But also, our guidebook is the 'Shoestring' one for South-East Asia, so it doesn't list any fancy restaurants for Thailand, so that's probably the main reason I haven't been blown away by the Thai food on this trip.

So anyway, our bus arrived on time in Hat Yai, which was early in the morning. Many of the operators for buses to Malaysia weren't open yet, so I just strolled about and eventually got money out from an ATM that didn't charge a fee. After checking with a number of places I took the cheapest option for a bus to Kuala Lumpur (450 baht each, after offers of 590, 550 and 500). By simply changing bus myself in Hat Yai I had saved nearly 1500 baht over getting a bus all the way from Bangkok to KL (and that would have requiring waiting around and changing bus in Hat Yai anyway, so the operators in Bangkok were really ripping people off, and luckily I didn't fall for it - I almost did though).

So at 8:30am, we had a free tuk-tuk to the actual bus departure place, we grabbed some brekkie nearby and then our bus arrived and left for KL spot-on time at 9am. This was a super-comfy bus with just 3 seats across, and big fat cushiony seats, so we both had more sleep on the 8 hour journey to KL.

As we got off the bus in KL it started to rain heavily, but of course in the tropics, the rain generally doesn't last long, so after sheltering for 10 minutes we headed off and got a lovely hostel nearby. Once settled in there and showered we were told they had a free buffet dinner that night in the rooftop bar. Now, I generally don't expect much from a buffet, especially a free one, and especially a free one in a cheap hostel - so in fact I asked could we change to a free breakfast instead, but they said no. So up we went to check out the free buffet, and my god, it was fantastic! I'm not sure what had been going on for the past couple of days, but somehow we seemed to be blessed with the best food in months that was cheap-as-chips, or completely free. Needless to say we both got completely stuffed (the mashed potato was heaven-sent!).

So after that I needed to walk off some of the excess food I'd gobbled, and so we strolled up to nearby Merderka Square (the famous centre of the city), and just popped into a famous restaurant I remembered from my last time in KL (the Coliseum), and then checked out the Little India food market before going back to bed.

It had been super-easy to get all the way from Bangkok to KL, and not so expensive either (once you do it in stages), and now we had a couple of days to relax in KL before flying to Bali to meet up with Enda, Tracy and the FCK (their son, Flyn Conor Kavanagh!).

Back in Bangkok

2009-06-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

So leaving Koh Chang we got up early enough, and strolled up to the village to get a songthaw to the ferry. After all the usual connections to and from the ferry and Trat (much quicker and coordinated this time though), we arrived in Bangkok Eastern Bus terminal around 5pm. A quick ride on the SkyTrain, a wee wait for a number 15 bus, and then getting seriously stuck in traffic (one set of traffic lights held the bus up for nearly an hour, so it was lucky I had resisted Sarah's demands to get a taxi from the bus station). After taking so long we were both pretty hungry, so we popped into a recommended vegetarian place for dinner (Arawy). I thought the food was fantastic, although Sarah didn't like it much, which has been unusual for us.

Anyway, then it was a stroll back to the Merry V Guesthouse near Koh Shan Road (Sarah getting worried it might be full - but of course it was practically empty!), and then we used the Internet for a bit before bed.

Next day I got up and got a bus out to the Southern Bus Terminal to check out buses to Malaysia (and getting a bit of a shock at the high prices - so I only booked as far as Hat Yai, as you have to change bus there for KL anyway), and then after heading back to Sarah I headed out to Siam Square for the day while Sarah used the Internet.

I was very impressed with the Siam Paragon centre. Although being the Buddhist I am(!), I wasn't impressed with all the consumerism, flash lambourghinis and designer clothes shops, I was more impressed with all the free taster's they were offering in the Gourmet market on the ground floor (and the cool orchid exhibition they had). The Gourmet market is a seriously huge supermarket of very upmarket (i.e. heavily pre-packaged) food goods, and the nearby food stalls and counters were just irresistable. So I just spent the whole afternoon just pottering around and exploring, and for the first time in my life I think I might have gotten a small insight into why Americans seem to be so entralled by the idea of a shopping mall.

Anyway, by late afternoon I had to head back to Sarah at the hotel, where we ordered a bite to eat and then I used the Internet some more to try and catch up on this blog. We had a leisurely day the next day, as the bus to Hat Yai is an overnight bus leaving Bangkok at 5pm. So after a nice lie-in and a Western breakfast in a cafe we checked-out, and used up all our remaining internet credit before getting a local bus to the bus terminal (it feels a bit weird as I come towards the end of this trip after being on the road now for over 2 years, but getting another overnight long-distance bus seems like a new beginning for some reason...).

Koh Chang, 10 years later

2009-06-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

The bus journey to the Thai/Cambodia border was effortless as always, and with no queues at all with either immigration it was all a breeze (although a very sudden, and short-lived, downpour got me soaked walking the 200m between the border posts).

On the Thai side I had to wait around for the minibus to depart towards the travel hub town of Trat. Once at Trat I had to wait around again for over an hour for the songthaw to fill up before heading to the ferry departure point. Once there it was just a short wait for the ferry to arrive, and after a quick turn-around I was off on the 1-hour ferry crossing. Then it was a 45-minute songthaw to Lonely Beach, getting dropped off at Siam Hut, where Sarah was sitting in the doorway of hut 24D waiting.

Due to all the waiting around for transport connections, it was nearly 8pm at this stage, and poor Sarah had been getting worried about me. After a very quick shower it was out for a tasty dinner in the nearby local restaurant, and then a well-deserved early night for me, exhausted as I was by the long day of travel.

The next day we just relaxed on the lovely stretch of beach beside our hotel, swimming in the sea to cool down from the fierce heat. That night we had a good laugh at that night's party place - it was very much low season, and so the various bars alternate their party nights, offering free finger food and cheap booze, of which we freely partook of course.

The following day was again just chilling out on the beach, and although I was very careful of the fierce sun, I still managed to get sunburnt again! Both myself and Sarah thought we were sitting in the shade, but somehow I still managed to get burnt whilst reading the newspaper. So after that I really needed to avoid the sun completely, as so the next day we rented a moped to explore the island properly.

First stop was the small village of Bang Boa, which is weirdly built on a pier extending out into the sea. The tide was out when we got there, so the pier extended out over muddy flats, although the lighthouse at the very end was nicely over pristine water and gave nice views back along the 'town'. We had a tasty curry breakfast here before heading back on the road.

We stopped off at Thor's Palace for a few more nibbles, as it was a fairly hyped place, but we both thought the food there was just average. Then we trekked all the way out to Long Beach, as Sarah thought the blurb about it being 'amazing' sounded good. It turned out that after quite a rough ride when the road turned to bad rough track (and the moped suffered a few nasty-sounding cracks), that the beach was nice, but certainly nothing special. All the hype is based on the fact that the area is undeveloped with just 2 places to stay, but being low-season, our beach at Lonely Beach had much the same number of people hanging around (and had a lot more options for food, drink, etc.).

So then I really wanted to revisit the main stretch of beach on the island, White Sands beach. This was where I had stayed 10 years ago, and which was definitely one of the highlights of my last big trip. I knew that the whole area had been seriously developed in the intervening years, but when I got down to White Sand Beach Resort, which was, and still is, the last resort at one end of the long stretch of still pristine beach, it really hadn't changed that much at all.

It was still a long walk along the beach (the resort had no road access at all 10 years ago), and with me wearing my rain jacket, socks and long trousers to keep the sun off, I must have looked a right sight in the searing sun. Anyway, the resort has certainly moved up-market (the bungalows on the beachfront were 1200 baht in low-season, when 10 years ago I think they were 150 baht in high-season!), and the huts are far more sturdy now (and therefore far less romantic of course), but the location is still fantastic and the rustic feel of the development, and the individual-ness of the isolated beach-front huts has been well maintained.

So after that nice wee trip down memory lane (and a yellow curry in the restaurant, which was nothing like the amazing curries I remembered from 10 years ago), it was back to Siam Hut for a sundowner before bed.

We could have stayed another day on Koh Chang, but with me having to avoid the sun completely, and Sarah getting a bit bored with it all after being there over a week, we decided to head back to Bangkok and start organising getting down to Malaysia.

Phnom Penh

2009-06-04T01:15:00.000-07:00

My pickup arrived spot-on time at 06:30, and dropped me to my bus a few kilometers away through the city, and then off I went to Phnom Penh, a journey of about 5 hours. The bus was again really comfy, and the roads were great and the countryside lush, so I arrived feeling pretty fresh.

First thing was to get money from a nearby ATM, then lunch at a nice-looking local diner place I'd passed (more lovely local food), and then a bit of a stroll to check out hotels. I settled on the last one, Tat Guesthouse, a nice cheap place that also just happened to rent bikes - a real bonus. So that evening I just strolled about the local area, and was again struck by just how clean, neat and tidy everything seems to be. The roads are in perfect condition, the streets are wide, the traffic seems relatively light and the whole region seems to be totally flat. So after another tasty curry dinner near the riverfront it was a nice leisurely stroll back to bed.

But one thing that did really annoy me was the constant approaches of the tuk-tuk drivers asking where I was going, and did I want a ride. It was the same in Siem Reap, and I had noticed in Phnom Penh particularly that nobody walks anywhere. Even though the pavements are wide and in good condition, they are just used as car parks with cars parked perpendicular to the road, and thereby making it awkward to walk along. Anyway, like in Siem Reap, an MP3 player was invaluable and Marilyn Manson at full volume was just the ticket for easily ignoring their constant pleas - and afterwards having the bicycle meant no hassle at all.

Next morning I got my bike and off I went to the famous Khmer Rouge prison, S-21. This prison was notorious during the reign of Pol Pot as it was used to interrogate and torture many thousands of Cambodians before they were moved out to the nearby Killing Fields and executed. I spent the whole morning here, as it was really quite other-worldly. There are obvious comparisons with Auschwitz, but here they have no qualms about showing lots of gruesome photos of dead bodies, which I found the most disturbing thing about the whole place.

It's incredible that the place used to be a school, and is right in the middle of a busy city, but the way they've presented everything there was very impressive, and it was really informative (although the English documentary movie they showed was a bit rubbish).

So I had lunch across the road from the 'school' in a lovely modern restaurant and sat out the usual hourly daily thunderstorm in great comfort. Then it was back on my bike and off to the national museum after riding down along the riverfront (although they are currently building something along much of the front). The museum was quite small, and was mostly just statues, bronzes and the like so I didn't linger that long. Instead I headed to the nearby Raffles Hotel to check out the restaurant and bar there.

The Elephant Bar is famous, and justly so I reckon. It has a lovely colonial feel to it, and the happy hour beer (a cool half-yard of ale) was great value, given that I got a big bowl of tasty nachos to go with it. The restaurant menu was very expensive of course, but it had lobster and so I reckoned I might give that a go the next evening when I was properly attired (I had arrived in the posh bar, ordered a beer and popped into the toilet to freshen up a bit after cycling around the city all day. It was only when I saw myself in the mirror that I realised what a total and utter knacker I looked in my ripped shorts, and totally bedraggled looking T-shirt that is full of holes. I had a right cheek swanning into such a swish hotel looking like I did - so after a wee chuckle and a shrug I felt quite proud of myself really!).

I only stayed in the Elephant Bar for one beer and then hopped back on the bike and explored the city a bit more (having the bike in Phnom Penh was really the perfect way to get about, even more so than Siem Reap).

Next day I took the bike again, and this time headed out to the Killing Fields themselves. These are about 12km from the city centre, and the guidebook said they were clearly signposted. Well, the book was wrong again, and I ended up going the wrong way and added about 20km to the ride out there (at least I got to see a lot more of the city outskirts, not that there was much to see).

But after all that extra cycling, the Killing Fields site doesn't have that much to see either. The on-site museum was small, empty and closed, and the site is really just a number of marked graves and a nice poignant pagoda that displays a large number of human skulls reclaimed from some of the graves. It was a nice peaceful place to stroll around for a bit though, and I relaxed there for a while after my overly long cycle. On the way back to the city I stopped off to use the Internet to avoid the daily rains and then after heading back to my hotel for a quick refreshing shower, I got back on the bike and explored yet more of the city's cool cafes and bars.

I didn't bother eating at the restaurant at the Raffles Hotel in the end, as the place was completely deserted and so had no atmosphere (and the last time I ate lobster in a deserted fancy restaurant it hadn't turn out so well). So instead I just went to the cool FCC bar for a couple of happy hour beers sitting on the terrace looking out over the river, and then got dinner at a cool outdoor local restaurant. Again the food was really tasty, and I really loved the nighttime atmosphere there, being the only Westerner in the place, and the whole outdoorsy-ness of sitting on a plastic stool and being right on the corner of a busy road intersection.

As with Siem Reap I was very tempted to spend another day just relaxing in Phnom Penh, but I decided to head off the next day back to Thailand and catch up with Sarah again on Koh Chang. So it was a not-so early morning stroll to the bus depot and hopping on the bus to the border, which yet again was really comfy and left spot on time.

Siem Reap

2009-06-04T00:11:00.001-07:00

First impressions of Siem Reap, and the journey from the Thai border, where all very good indeed. Everything looked so clean, neat and tidy, the road was in perfect condition and had very little traffic, so we zipped along. Nobody seemed to be beeping much either, which was a great relief after four and a half months of it in India and Nepal, so everything was so easy and just a real pleasure.

The first thing I noticed about the town of Siem Reap was the number of fancy hotels all along the main approach road. They all looking the same though, with none of them having anything distinctively characteristic about them (at least from the outside). So after getting settled in the lovely Jasmine Lodge and watching a rerun of the Champions League final I strolled into the town centre. Again here everything seemed really well kept, with the bars, cafe and restaurants all looking very swish. I settled into a nice looking place for a beer (US$0.50) and stayed when I say how good looking the food was that other people were getting. It was a delicious Cambodian soupy dish call Amok, and so my positive first impressions just kept on coming.

Although tourism numbers are well down in Cambodia (probably like everywhere at the moment), the town had a good buzz about it, so I hung around until quite late. Next morning after a big US$1 breakfast I hired a bike and set off to explore the town properly. The idea was just to potter about really, but it turned out the map in my guidebook was pretty crap, and so I soon lost any idea of where I was and ended up surrounded by lovely forest. But having a bike of course, means you're never too far away from anywhere, and I still had a vague idea of where the city was, so I just kept going.

Eventually I come across this mad arched gateway in the middle of the forest. I stop to take a wee video, and then continue on and next thing I know I'm looking at one of the most famous structures of Ankgor Wat - Bayon! It was obvious I'd stumbling onto the Ankgor site via a side entrance, and not having a ticket I was a bit nervous of getting nabbed and fined. But after riding about for a bit it was clear that the ticket inspectors only check for tickets if you actually enter a temple - just riding around the site seemed safe enough (in fact, the whole complex is so large that many locals pass through various sections of it as they go about their daily business).

So I spent the next couple of hours riding around the complex just getting my bearings. It was great, as this meant I could now just get a single day pass (I had planned on getting the 3-day pass, as there is no 2-day pass) the following day, and I'd already know my way around. I did get the worst sunburn of the whole trip though. I had applied suncream of course, but it was just so hot and humid all day, that I should have re-applied it a lot more than I did.

So very early the next morning (5am), I get up and set off for Angkor Wat again, hoping to get there for sunrise. I had to cover up as much as possible after getting burnt the day before, so I looked a bit stupid wearing a rain jacket on such a hot day (to cover my arms), and with my T-shirt pulled up over my mouth and tucked in behind my ears (to protect my burnt neck). But luckily since SARS a few years ago, the swine flu now, and general traffic pollution, a lot of people cycle and ride their motorbikes with face masks, so I actually looked pretty normal really!

Unfortunately, on the way to the site I took a wrong road (again my guidebook map was wrong), and it meant I had to backtrack about 10kms to find the one and only ticket office. Having gotten my ticket I arrived at a recommended temple a little after sunrise. There was just one other couple there, so it was nice and relaxed, but the view of distant Angkor Wat itself wasn't as impressive as I was expecting.

Next I strolled about the main temple of Angkor Wat itself. Again the whole site was relatively quiet, something I've now noticed all over Cambodia - I even read yesterday in the paper that the tourism board of Cambodia is asking operators to reduce prices to get more tourists. Anyway, the murals were impressive (although most of the most famous one is being renovated at the moment), but all-in-all I wasn't completely blown-away like all the hype seems to imply.

So I spent another few hours riding about and checking out various temples before riding all the way to the town (about 8km) for a shower and another really tasty lunch. While I was eating the daily thunderstorm struck, so I just relaxed and sat it out - within an hour it was hot and sunny again. So I rode back to the site to ride around the major sightseeing route and see more of the famous temples, including my favorite one with huge trees growing up, over and through the ancient stone buildings.

It started to get dark while I still a good bit away from the entrance (the site really is huge, which is one of the most impressive things about it all I suppose), so I had to race back towards the town, not wanting to crash into a big pothole in the dark. As darkness set in the cicadas started, and at first I got quite a fright - I thought it was some weird kind of air-raid siren (they are one of the loudest insects in the world). Then millions of them started their piercing calls, and it was quite amazing really. As it got really dark the whole surrounding jungle seemed to completely come alive with loads of mad-sounding insect calls, it really was amazingly atmospheric.

So back in the town, it was yet another delicious dinner that night (it seems you just can't go wrong with Cambodian food), and a well deserved early night after the serious number of kilometers on the bike over the past 2 days. I was seriously tempted to stay on another day, as I really liked Siem Reap, and I could have just ridden through the Angkor site again at my leisure, but instead I decided to move on down to the capital Phnom Penh.

Cambodia, at last.

2009-06-02T05:03:00.000-07:00

So at the Thai border town of Aranya Prathet I was immediately accosted by the usual moto-taxi guys, and bargained a price to the border, about 15 minutes drive away.

The guidebook had warned me of plenty of scams at this border, so I wasn't surprised when the driver turns off the main road, with the border clearly visible straight in front of us. He pulls up outside a travel agent guy, who of course comes running out and starts pushing forms in my face telling me I have to apply for the Cambodian visa with him. I knew this was the first of the scams, and so told the driver to take me the border immediately. He's a bit hesitant, looking at the agency guy, but I'm insistent. At this point, I see a Westerner guy walking back from the border (he was clearly going the other direction), so I called him over and asked him what the story was with visas etc. He explains that the agency guy is trying to scam me, and that you can get the visa at the border itself. He tells me that the border guards try and scam more money out of you though, and if you refuse, they'll leave you waiting for hours, but eventually you'll get through.

So anyway, I again insist that the driver take me to the border, and he agrees (obviously I haven't paid him a cent yet), so off we head again. Just before the border he pulls over again, to another agency place! This time I can see the border is just 100m in front of me, so I pay the driver, ignore the touts pushing the same visa forms in my face, telling me that I HAVE to fill them in (I just tell them politely 'Oh well, in that case I'll be back so'), and walk straight over to the border. I saw a group of 4 Westerners filling in the forms there, and was tempted to go over and tell them they were all being scammed (the agency charges 200 Baht to fill in the forms, which are free really), but I just couldn't be bothered - they'll learn eventually I suppose, maybe.

At the Thai border the large queues moved quickly and I got through easily. I knew the problem would be the Cambodian side. Luckily, there wasn't any queue at all at the visa-on-arrival counter, and a nice big helpful sign over the booth stated the visa charge was US$20. A 'helpful' border guard gives me the form, lends me his pen, and smilingly states the charge is 1000Baht (US$30). I, of course, say 'No!', and I point at the sign over his head. He then sheepishly tells me to talk to the guy behind the counter, who also suggests 1000Baht.

I had been expecting all this of course, and had deliberately emptied my wallet of all cash except a single US$20 note. I made a very deliberate show of opening my wallet and giving the guy the 'only money I had', telling him, and showing him, I had no more, and pointing again at the sign. He then sheepishly asks for an extra 100Baht, which was a bit pathetic of him really, but I just repeat that I have no more money, and that the visa is US$20. He backs down pretty quick, smiles, and just takes my passport and money, and tells me to take a seat and wait.

Now I'm kinda worried that I'll be left sitting there for the whole day, but just 2 minutes later I'm called over, and handed my passport with the visa in place and the guards are all smiles and 'Thank you's, and off I go.

So with the border stuff sorted out with no problems, the next issue was getting transport to Siem Reap. As soon as I get through the Cambodian immigration the touts are on top of me trying to push their bus services, but I can see immediately that their prices are outrageous. They offer a free shuttle bus to the 'station', so I hop in that (I'm the only passenger), and the bus drives about 400 meters to a tour agency office. So ignoring their pleas and their very helpful information that they had the only bus going towards Siem Reap, I walk on and start asking shared-taxi drivers for prices to the town of Sisyphon (half-way to Siem Reap).

Naturally the prices start crazy high, so I walk on and ask the next guy, and then the next. You always need to let the next guy know you've just refused the price of the previous guy, and so after a few of these guys I eventually get a fair price (according to the guidebook anyway, you can never be completely sure what a 'fair' price is with local fluctuations). With shared-taxis the driver will generally wait until he has a full taxi, but generally they'll leave within the hour if not full, hoping to pick up extra passengers on the way. It was a very slow day when I was there though, and so with just 3 passengers (instead of the usual 6), and after waiting about 45 minutes, we headed off.

The road from the Thai border to Siem Reap used to be the most notoriously bad road in all of South-East Asia for backpackers (apparently a local airline bribed the Government into not improving the road for many years, so that people would pay the extra to fly). Anyway, the road has finally been upgraded - even my guidebook from late 2008 talks about the road being a nightmare, and I just read that they only finished it less than a month before I got there. So it was a total breeze flying along brand new tarmac to Sisyphon. Once there I transferred to another shared-taxi, waiting about another 30 minutes, and headed off to Siem Reap with just 2 passengers (so I had the whole back seat to myself).

Along the way the taxi driver stopped to grab a bite to eat, which turned out to be a small plastic bag of fried crickets. He kindly offered one, and of course I took it - and I swear it was actually very tasty. I've tried fried maggots before, which only really tasted of the oil they were cooked in, and had a big of crispyness to them, but this cricket was genuinely lovely and had a good bit of 'bite' to it. At another stop later in Cambodia I saw stalls of fried crickets, but also huge fried cockroaches and a massive pile of big, black fried tarantulas. I'm afraid I didn't have the nerve to try either of them, which I kinda regret now - if I had someone with me who was game (certainly not Sarah I'm sure), I'm sure I would have. I didn't take any photos even, which was really stupid - for some reason I assumed I'd see lots of these types of stalls, but in fact I only saw it once more and they didn't have any of the spiders.

Anyway, once at Siem Reap it was the same story with the taxi driver - he left me off a little outside the town, with more moto-taxis pouncing on me when I got out. But I wanted to head to a guesthouse a bit outside town anyway, so I just walked there in about 10 minutes. I got a great big room there for just US$3 a night, with attached bathroom, fan and cable TV (Jasmine Lodge). Then I headed out for a top-notch Cambodian curry in the lovely centre of town, and then a few US$0.50 beers to celebrate finally getting to Siem Reap, on this my 3rd attempt (the 1st attempt was when I was with Hanno 10 years ago, but I got 'stuck' on Koh Chang - the 2nd attempt was from Vietnam with Sarah, but I'd screwed up on the Vietnamese visas and lost a few days sorting them out in Hong Kong, and so skipped Cambodia again).

Back in Bangkok

2009-06-02T01:12:00.000-07:00

Our first day back in Bangkok we just relaxed in the Khao San Road area, not doing very much. The following day Sarah just relaxed there again, but I fancied getting out and exploring a bit. I also wanted to check out the Government buses to the Cambodian border (the tourist buses from Khao San Road are all notorious rip-off merchants).

So I hopped on a local bus to the SkyTrain, got a train to Mo Chit and started walking towards the bus station. It all looked very straightforward on the map, but turned out to be a major hike - I really shouldn't have even tried it. But of course, once I started I wasn't going to quit, and after wandering around for ages, I eventually arrived at the bus station (and one big consolation was that I spotted a huge, fat 6-foot long snake right in front of me as I strolled though the park - and this was right beside people's family homes). So I got the information about buses to the border, and then strolled back to the SkyTrain, but this time took the metro to Sukhumvit (the subway is new, and very like the one in Hong Kong, all extremely modern, clean, slick and air-conditioned).

So I strolled about Sukhumvit, checking out Cheap Charlies, the historic Atlanta Hotel, and the famous Cabbages and Condoms restaurant. Had to wait nearly 30 minutes for a bus back to Sarah, so when I got back we just popped outside to the street stalls for a quick dinner (eaten under tarps as torential rain came down, but only briefly of course). Next morning we got up early and both got taxi's to different bus stations - I was heading to Cambodia while Sarah headed to Koh Chang.

The Cambodian visa takes up a full passport page, and Sarah's passport is almost completely full, with no blank pages at all. I had tried 5 or 6 times to get an online visa for her, but every time the website was down, or would report an error during the application process. This is the third time I've tried to get to Cambodia, so we decided that I'd just head there on my own (my passport has plenty of space), while Sarah would head to Koh Chang and wait for me to catch up with her there.

So I got to my bus station at 6:29am, and as I get to the counter the girl asks if I want a seat on the 6:30am bus. I ask her if I have time, and she says 'Sure!', and so I get the ticket, run around the corner and hop on the bus. Literally 2 minutes later it's pulling out and off I go towards the Cambodian border in cheap, air-conditioned and rip-off-free comfort.

Back in Kolkata

2009-05-29T03:36:00.000-07:00

The overnight bus from Siliguri left spot on time, and turned out to be a very comfy bus, with loads of legroom and a seat that reclined way back. It meant I slept really well for most of the journey, and in fact it meant I slept all the way through a major cyclone!

The cyclone (Alia) swept up through Bengal, right along the route of our bus, and actually initiated a very early monsoon (12 days earlier that expected). The monsoon resulted in major landslides and flooding, and at least 60 people were killed, many of them in the region of Darjeeling. We saw on the TV, and read in the local papers, over the following couple of days that hundreds of tourists had been stranded in Darjeeling, as the access roads had been cut-off. It turned out we got out just in time - literally.

Although we didn't escape completely unscathed. At about 6am, when we were due to arrive in Kolkata, our bus suddenly stopped in blocked traffic. After about half-an-hour our driver realised that traffic wasn't going to get moving any time soon, and so turned the bus around, and dropped us all off at a very nearby train station (Krishnanagar). We'd gotten a cheaper bus, less than half the price of the luxury bus, and as we turned around, we passed that 'luxury' bus stranded in traffic.

Very luckily for us, Krishnanagar turned out to be a major train hub, and within 5 minutes of getting tickets (after queuing up in the huge, but quickly moving line), our train pulled out of the station and heading off toward Kolkata. We got seats straight away (as Krishnanagar was the starting point for the train), but of course it was completely packed well before the nearly 3 hour journey to Kolkata. Along the way we saw hundreds of uprooted palm trees and lots of general damage caused by the cyclone - it was just so weird that I'd slept all the way thought it (a French guy beside me on the train couldn't believe I hadn't noticed the bus being buffeted about!).

So it meant we arrived about 4 hours late, but I didn't mind that in the slightest - I realised we had been blessed to get out of Siliguri at all, and to be arriving at Kolkata at all. Kolkata had also been hit badly by the cyclone - I saw lots of uprooted trees, and apparently people were protesting about power cuts and stuff (I read that loads of ATM's where out of action too, but the first one I went to worked fine - luckily, as I really needed to get money to pay for our accommodation).

At Kolkata's Sealdah train station I decided to try and walk to the tourist area of Sutter Street, where we'd stayed before, and although I thought I'd screwed it up a couple of times, we eventually arrived at our destination of one of the best little local restaurants in all of 3 months in India (can't remember the name, but just down from Sutter Street towards Park Street).

That evening we went back to the restaurant Peter Cat for dinner. I'd seen Fried Chicken Liver on menus a few times, and had been keen to try it (Sarah hates liver, and as we always share it's awkward for me to order it). Anyway, seeing as how we were early to the restaurant and this was one of our last meals in India, I ordered the liver as a starter, and my god it was amazing! I reckon it was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. It came with a really tasty sauce, and was perfect with the slightly pickled red onions you always get in Bengali restaurants. It was a big serving though, so I asked if I could just eat half and take the rest away, but I just couldn't stop nibbling away at it, and so finished the lot. It had an amazing texture, like the best foie gras I've ever had, and was just so melty. Sarah tasted a tiny piece, but I swear she went 'Yuk!' before it even went into her mouth.

So given all the cyclone problems in Kolkata, I decided to play it safe the next day and make sure we could get to the airport in plenty of time for our 9:25am flight to Bangkok the following day. So it was back to our usual Kolkata breakfast spot for more of the delicious local fish dish (white fish fillet coated in tangy sauce and cooked in a banana leaf), before using the internet for a bit. Then it was on the metro to a famous restaurant called Kewpies for lunch.

Kewpies is a lovely fancy restaurant, and the food was great (Sarah getting a thali and me picking-and-mixing), although quite overpriced really (Peter Cat was a fancier place and much cheaper). Then after a relaxing coffee it was back to collect our rucksacks and head out towards the airport. This involved the metro, and then a local bus, which got well and truly snarled up in rush-hour traffic. We were in no rush though, and once out by the airport Sarah found a decent place to spend the night. After a light dinner I strolled over to the airport, just to see how far it was (it was only a 10 minute walk), and to see if I could re-confirm our flight. After a bit of mad running around I couldn't get any confirmation at all, and so rushed back to the hotel area to find an internet place to print off my online flight confirmation (online bookings usually just need a reference number, but Air India Express didn't give me one, so I was a bit worried).

Anyway, all was well the next morning, and we checked in no problem. The flight left Kolkata early, arrived in Bangkok early and we even got feed onboard. So we were back in Bangkok for a couple of days and needed to work out where to go next...

Darjeeling

2009-05-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

Oh boys, is Darjeeling a confusing wee town to arrive in, especially in the dark! Although we had two guidebooks, both with maps of the town, the fact that it's built sprawling over the ridge of a steep-sided mountain, and is made up of winding narrow streets and laneways made it a very tough job to find your bearings. It was poor Sarah's turn to do the route-finding to the guesthouses, and it took about an hour to find the first of those places.

But once we had our bearings, and Sarah raced around checking out the options we settled on a nice quiet place. It's high-season here at the moment, mainly due I think to the fierce heat down on the Indian plains - so there are far more Indian tourists than Western. It turned out that quite a few of the guesthouses were full, so I think we were kinda lucky to get the place we did (it isn't mentioned in the guidebooks). But it turned out to be quite damp, so we moved down the road to a much cheaper and drier place after just 2 nights.

One of the highlights of the Darjeeling area is trekking in the mountains, but after checking it out it turns out that guides are mandatory. I really hate the idea of having a guide for 5 or 6 days, and so decided to leave the trekking this time - also the weather forecast (such as you can forecast in the mountains), didn't bode well, and in fact it's turned out to be raining every day we were there, sometimes just briefly, at other times in prolonged bursts. So I reckon hiking with our lack of proper rain gear would have been pretty miserable.

Our first full day we spent getting the lie of the land, and checked out all the Top-End hotels. Obviously in such a famous tea place, all the top hotels do fancy High Teas, so I was hunting around to see which place looked the best. By far the best of the hotels, I thought, was the Elgin. It was modern and spotless and had a nice relaxed atmosphere, and so it won the day (the Windamere was nice, but just too old-fashioned, and not in a nice olde-world way either, more in a damp, musty, 1940's kind of way). Of course, the High Tea itself was quite a disappointment in the Elgin - it was just very plain sandwiches, a load of tinned biscuits and some tasty pakoras, and it cost a relative arm and a leg (we should have just ordered one between us - d'oh!), but at least the surroundings were lovely and relaxing and it was a nice place to read the local papers (so I came back a few days later to do just that again, but without the high tea).

The next day I went strolling about the town while Sarah lingered on the Internet. I visited the fairly impressive zoo, where they are successfully breeding snow leopards, red pandas and Tibetan wolves - all of which I saw close up and running about, and all of which were fabulous looking critters. Attached to the zoo is the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, which was worth a look, but at this stage I've read and seen so much about Everest it's getting a bit jaded.

Another of the 'things-to-do', is to ride the famous Toy Train that was the original means of getting to Darjeeling. This is a narrow gauge railway (the tracks are just 2 feet wide), and they still run steam powered locomotives along the route for tourists. We waited a few days before trying to book the train, in the vain hope that the cloudy and rainy weather might clear up a bit. But after 4 days we needed to try and book a train from Darjeeling to Kolkata to catch our flight to Bangkok on the 28th, so I planned on doing all the train bookings in one go. But when we arrived at the train station, the booking office was closed for the day, and so we had to come back the following morning.

Next morning at 8am there were large queues at the 3 ticket desks. As I said this is high-season, and so the Indian trains are always mad crowded. It turned out that there were no seats on any trains to Kolkata for the following 4 days, leaving us with the bus as the only option. We have to get back to Siliguri to sort that out, so fingers crossed we won't have any problems there. But at least we managed to book seats on the Toy Train for the following morning.

The next morning we woke to the best weather we'd yet had in Darjeeling, and so we were both looking forward to the train ride. We got to the station at 10:40 and took a few photos of the tiny (hence Toy) Train plodding along and connecting with the 3 small passenger carriages. So after the engineers spent about 5 minutes filling the water tank, and pouring oil all over the pistons and main workings, we set off. The going was pretty slow I have to say, but it really was quite a novelty to riding along been pulled by a steam engine. It really had to labour up the slopes, and the chugging was quite cute. But the poor old engine (literally 109 years old apparently), just wasn't cut out for it that day. About half-way to Ghoom we stopped for about half-an-hour for some repairs, then continued for a bit before attempting a steep section of track 3 times before the engineers called it a day and sent us back to Darjeeling in a passing jeep. At least we got a full refund back at the station with no fuss at all, so we ended up having 1.5 hours of steam-train travel for free - nice!

Darjeeling is also blessed with some mighty fine restaurants, although I think you can say that about just about any town in India. But I was particularly delighted to find that the nicest and most atmospheric of these places was also really, really cheap (it's rightly mentioned as the 'Best Pick' in the Lonely Planet). Obviously, given the history of this trip so far, I have no problem paying out a lot of money for good food in a nice restaurant with great views, but when you get all that and for pennies, it really is a joy to just sit back and relax. So needless to say, given the weather and everything, I've been pretty much camped in Glenary's since we arrived! In fairness though, the town has another cheap top spot, The Park, but I think I still prefer the atmosphere at Glenary's.

All-in-all we spent a full week in Darjeeling. It rained every day I think, although mostly intermittently, and I only got fleeting views of the distant mountains, usually in the later afternoons. But it was a lovely spot all the same, and the weather, apart from the rain, was very pleasant and cool. The morning we left it was raining hard though, as apparently the monsoon rains have arrived in India 10 days early, and so after a nice pongol breakfast at the Frank Ross cafe, we hopped in a jeep to take us to Siliguri to connect with a bus for Kolkata. Due to the trains being chock-a-block I was a bit worried about getting a bus on spec, but of course the first bus company I tried had seats for that evening.

So we left our rucksacks in the bus office and headed across the road for a fantastic lunch in the well-known local restaurant Khana Khazana. After our huge lunch there we just killed time on the Internet avoiding the rain and waiting for the 5:30 overnight bus back to where it all started in India nearly 4 months ago, Kolkata.

Getting to Darjeeling

2009-05-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

So our bus from Janakpur arrived at the border on time, and we completed the effortless formalities very quickly (no queues at all). The next problem became how to move on to our next destination - Darjeeling. I had thought we could get a shared jeep from the border direct to Darjeeling, but everyone was telling me we had to go to Siliguri first.

Of course, you can never, ever trust the information taxi or bus-drivers give you, but after checking around a bit (and changing the last of my Nepali money into Indian), I decided to hop into a nearly full jeep that was clearly leaving for Siliguri immediately. I think you do have to get to Siliguri first, and our jeep, although crowded, was quick and not too uncomfortable.

At Siliguri I started asking around for another shared jeep to take us to Darjeeling, and initially it seemed that it was too late in the day (being about 4pm). I checked across the road at the local bus terminal, but it was definitely was too late for a bus, so I checked around a bit more, and I found a couple of jeeps advertising Darjeeling. So after the usual nonsense over the price, I went back to get Sarah (who was looking after the bags), and we hopped into another jeep for the trip up to Darjeeling.

Again this jeep was quick and fairly comfy, although unfortunately the weather quickly turned very cloudy as we climbed the mountain roads, and so any views were obscured. It was just before dark when we arrived at the famous hill station town of Darjeeling.

Janakpur

2009-05-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

The bus to Janakpur was scheduled to leave at 6pm, so after strolling round Kathmandu for the day we decided to head to the local bus station early, as having been there a few days before we knew there was a good internet place nearby. After the usual haggling with the taxi driver we got dropped off near the station, but the internet place had no power.

Throughout our 6 weeks in Nepal power cuts have been extremely frequent. In fact, in Kathmandu load-shedding was in operation for 16 hours every day! Apparently this was due to a lack of rain water over the previous months, and since so much of Nepal's power comes from hydro stations, they have been severely affected. It's interesting that life and business seem to continue fairly normally though - many places have generators, and those that don't just use candles, and the restaurants all use gas of course.

So we had a couple of hours to wait around, but at least the bus left on time. It was quite a comfy bus too, and I would have had a decent enough sleep if it hadn't been for the kid behind me. She was on her mother's lap, and so every time the kid turned over or moved about she'd kick the back of my seat. I guess this is perfectly acceptable behaviour for Nepali's though, as no amount of complaining on my part made any difference.

The bus also arrived in Janakpur pretty much on time, so after a very confusing walk into the town Sarah sorted out the accommodation. The guidebooks had alluded to the fact that this town caters mainly to Indian pilgrims, and not Western travellers. This became very quickly apparent when Sarah checked out the recommended guesthouses, as all of them were pretty grim and all of them expensive. Anyway, the place we stayed was actually pretty nice (and the owner guy claimed he was giving us a room upgrade at no extra charge, which I think was true).

So, as usual after an overnight bus journey, we slept for a couple of hours before checking out the town. The main temple complex was pretty cool alright, and very busy later that evening, with loads of Indian pilgrims milling about and the ladies all wearing mad colourful saris. We also strolled up to the Big Monkey Temple, which houses (imprisons really) a poor overfed monkey, and checked out a couple of the towns many water tanks (sacred washing places).

We ate in the excellent air-conditioned Family Restaurant for lunch and later, while Sarah rested back in the room, I returned for tasty snacks, a couple of beers, and one of my favorite things to do on the whole trip - poring over the guidebook deciding where and how to get to our next destination.

I decided to head towards India early the next morning, and so after haggling with a cycle-rickshaw guy he drops us off on the main road (I had asked for the bus park, but it turned out that the buses did stop at this point too - I was just worried about getting a seat, but it was fine). And so we headed to the border, and again after zero border queues or troubles, we were back in fabulous India.

Kathmandu

2009-05-15T02:04:00.000-07:00

The plan for this, my second visit to Kathmandu was to explore the town a bit more than I did 10 years ago (last time we didn't have a Nepal guidebook, just one focused on trekking).

I also really liked the idea of cycling to Daman, which is supposed to have one of the very best viewpoints in all of Nepal. But it's also supposed to be one of the toughest, most gruelling bike rides in the country, and obviously being Nepal, that's saying something. I really fancied the challenge, although of course Sarah was nervous about it. I thought we could just give it a go, and if it turned out to be too much we could just turn back or stay in the nearest guesthouse. I really thought Sarah'd be able for it, as she's been really strong on the hikes, and we've cycled some tough roads on this trip already (riding up mountains is far more mental than physical anyway - it's really all about finding a steady rhythm, and simple self-belief of course).

Anyway, I finally decided against it, as Sarah was too worried and it would have been pretty hard on an unfamiliar bike. Still, if she had done it she would have been really impressed by what she's capable of, but it'll just have to wait until next time (I reckon when I come here again I'll hire a decent bike for a week, get used to it by riding around the Kathmandu valley first, and then tackle Daman once I've 'broken-in' the bike).

So instead we walked the 3 walking tours in our guidebook, which was a lovely way to spend the day. We also popped into the Snowman Cafe, a place famous for it's cakes. I went here 10 years ago too, but don't remember being overly impressed with it. It's just a simply little cafe, but I thought I'd give it another go. This time I was completely blown away by their chocolate cake - definitely the best cake since Brazil, and we went back there 3 more times for more of the same.

We only hired a bike for 1 day to ride to Patan, which is just a few kilometres from Thamel, where we were staying. It was a great day, and having the bikes gave us the freedom to check out buses to our next destination, and head back to a cheap internet place we'd found a couple of days before. Patan was very impressive I must say, and the museum there was interesting (although I certainly wouldn't class it as one of the best on the entire sub-continent like the Lonely Planet claims).

Another place I really wanted to go back to was a fantastic Indian restaurant attached to one of Kathmandu's fancy hotels - Ghar-e-kabab (which sounds like a really bad name for a Bollywood actor), which is in the L'Annapurna Hotel. I'd gone here loads of times with Hanno and Ray last time, and was keen to try it again. When I checked it out, it turned out the whole hotel has been remodelled, and the restaurant has moved buildings. But it was a really fantastic meal, one of the highlights of the trip, even better than I remember from years ago. I think we were lucky to have a good number of other people in the restaurant, which gave the place a nice ambiance, and they had really great unintrusive live music from a 4-piece traditional Indian band.

After such a great meal at Ghar-e-kabab, I decided to really treat ourselves with dinner at Nepal's best restaurant, the Chimney in the famous Yak and Yeti Hotel. The menu here was continental, with lobster and Chateaubriand steak being the obvious choices for me. This time however, it turned out to be probably the biggest disappointment of the whole trip. The restaurant was almost completely empty, and the food was terribly bland - the lobster was tough, and the steak quite tasteless (we ordered a bottle of French Merlot though, and that was the best part of the whole meal). It all cost literally 3 times what the fabulous Ghar-e-kabab cost (6000 rupee as opposed to 2000), but what made the whole thing really disappointing was that I woke up at 3am that morning feeling decidedly ill. 10 minutes later I was throwing the whole lot up into the toilet. Incredible to think that the only 2 times on this trip that I've had any kind of illness at all have both been caused by fancy-dancy restaurants.

Anyway, again I was really lucky, as after throwing up I felt much better, and the next day I felt OK, but just a little 'stomachey'. We decided to stay an extra day in Kathmandu so I could rest and recover (we had booked a bus to Janakpur for 6pm that evening), and by the next morning I was feeling 100% again.

So with another full day in Kathmandu, we got up early, strolled down to Durbar Square (and the Snowman again for one last chocolate cake), used the internet and then just strolled around the lovely old town.

It's been nice to re-visit Kathmandu again. It actually seems less polluted than last time, and the traffic seems less chaotic (although maybe I'm just more de-sensitised to crazy traffic these days). The shop sellers also seems less 'hassley' than I remember, something I noticed in Pokara too. And thankfully the Ghar-e-kabab restaurant is still a knock-out.

So now we head back towards India, breaking up the journey by stopping off in the pilgrimage town of Janakpur, an 11-hour overnight bus journey.

Last days in Pokara

2009-05-08T03:05:00.000-07:00

So the following 3 days where spent in Pokara literally just sat in front of a computer using the Internet. Basically I was telling all the folks back home, and mates around the world, about the engagement, and to look into what the hell we're going to do with the remaining few weeks or months of this trip (i.e. what flights/trains/buses to get to where, for how much, and when). Luckily we'd found a really cheap Internet place when we were cycling around town sorting out permits and visas before we went off hiking (30 rupees an hour as opposed to 100 rupees in the tourist Lakeside area - they have a price-fixing thing going on there too, and they are obviously ripping off all the clueless tourists).

On our last full day in Pokara I wanted to get away from the Internet so we decided to hike out to see a local waterfall (but I took a wrong turn and so we missed it), and also to hike up to the World Peace Pagoda that is situated on a hillside overlooking the town. This was quite a hike really as we went around the long way, but the views of the town were great. By the time we reached the top the distant Annapurna mountains were well and truly hazed-over, but over the past few days we'd gotten various glimpses of them, and obviously we'd been well and truly in amongst them while hiking the big treks.

We'd also found a great local restaurant while cycling around the town - it was up a small side street and served up fantastic Tibetean food like momos and thenthuk. It was also the cheapest beer in town by far, so I did the budget many favors by dining there regularly. The owners were really friendly too of course and always greeted us with big smiles - it's uncanny just how often these tiny little no-name hole-in-the-wall places turn out to be real gems.

So the next morning we strolled to the nearby tourist bus park (the local bus park was too far away), and haggled a price for the bus to Kathmandu. Thankfully the tourist bus really was direct and didn't stop every 100 meters to pick up locals, so it was a really quick, easy and sight-filled 6 hours to Kathmandu.

Being a tourist bus it drops everyone off near the tourist enclave of Thamel, and although I didn't recognise were I was, after asking the bus guy for general directions and then just following a loose sense of direction we strolled into the very familiar surrounds of downtown Thamel. Outside the landmark Kathmandu Guesthouse we bumped into a Dutch girl we'd met trekking and she recommended a nearby place to stay. It turned out the Holy Lodge was a lovely wee place, very central and quite, and so we settled in there straight away.

Impressions of hiking in Nepal again

2009-05-08T00:02:00.000-07:00

Hopefully Sarah will get around to updating her blog from the daily notes she took as we bopped around the Himalaya, so I just thought I'd give general impressions of the 23 days we just spent in the mountains.

As I already mentioned, the main difference on the Circuit trek is the new road, which is a big pity from a hikers point of view. I certainly wouldn't hike the whole route again (why would you hike along a busy road?), although currently the route from Khula and up over the pass is still worth it for the Upper Pisang road and the physical challenge of the 5410m pass itself - but then I hear the plan is to continue building that road right over the pass itself, so in the future it will be bus loads of fat American tourists having hot lemon tea in the tiny hut at the pass.

Another big change was the constant price fixing amongst the various guesthouses in all the villages along the treks. As was the case 10 years ago, the price of everything increases the further you move away from the access roads, but as I remember those increases were gradual and started at reasonable local prices. Nowadays though, the increases are rapid and start at inflated tourist prices. The prices have apparently being agreed by village committees, and all the lodges in a village have identical menus and room prices. This all came as a bit of a shock and a disappointment, and as another trekker pointed out, it made you feel a bit 'managed' all along the trek (like we were part of an organised tour group or something).

But it's kinda low-season at the moment, or towards the end of the season anyway, so in fact many of the lodges were prepared to offer big discounts, or even free rooms, so long as we ate in their restaurants (the first time we got a room discount the landlady didn't explain we needed to eat there too, and she got quite angry with Sarah when we came back from another restaurant - Sarah got a wee bit upset about it, but I just told her to ignore it - the whole system seems cheeky to me anyway, as clearly not all the lodges are the same although they all charge the same prices).

Anyway, over the 3 weeks we managed to haggle down the prices nearly everywhere, which resulted in about a 20% reduction on costs in general. Although the price-fixing is annoying, the prices were still cheap-as-chips in relative terms, and so I reckon the month we spent in Nepal is probably the cheapest month of the whole trip so far (but then so it should be I suppose, as we were trekking without porters or guides, and walking is free!).

In terms of the weather, the first 2 days or so were quite cloudy, but we found that the cloud built up gradually during the morning, so we just started getting up really early in the morning when the skies were at their clearest. Also, as we gained altitude the skies seemed to get clearer and clearer (this time of year is famous for hazy, dusty skies), and from day 3 onwards the weather was just perfect.

The day we arrived at Pisang we had skies as blue as the bluest skies in Bolivia, which really surprised and delighted me. It meant perfect skies for proposing to Sarah the next day, and the weather stayed clear right up until we reached the Thorang La pass.

I remember the day of climbing the pass 10 years ago as being a really tough day. But that time, myself and Hanno were a bit clueless and got out of bed to leave the camp at about 10:00am. Many people, especially those with hired guides, start to tackle the climb over the pass from 3am! This is crazy of course, but last time I felt I had to race over the pass to make sure I got accommodation on the far side (that time was high-season), and so I spent the whole day passing out other people. I did manage to find accommodation, although not in the first town of Muktinath, which was full.

Anyway, this time I knew the score, so myself and Sarah headed off leisurely at about 8:30am, and we were still the last people to leave the camp (we overheard lots of other people worrying about the conditions and the altitude and just general paranoia, which is why they all started off so early). The weather approaching the pass was very cloudy and it had been snowing the night before, but that just made for gorgeous snowy surroundings, which was nice, and the trail was still fine without any ice or dangerous sections.

When I reached the pass (about 20 minutes before Sarah, as I was getting cold waiting for her to catch up at various points as we climbed up), the weather was clearing nicely and after a nice (and expensive!), cup of hot lemon tea we headed down the far side of the pass in beautiful sunshine.

The weather stayed fine and clear all the way down to Ghorapani, where the really hazy conditions re-appeared. This was a pity as the valleys here are high and narrow, and although we could see the far valley walls, they were really just outlines. It also meant the view from the famous Poon Hill was completely washed out, without a single distant mountain visible through the haze.

From here we had a very long, hard day's hike to Chamrong to join up with the Annapurna Sanctuary hike. Once we started gaining altitude again the weather cleared day by day, and as we approached the Sanctuary it was perfectly clear blue skies again. With such great weather I decided to stop at the Machapuchare Base Camp, since it had fantastic views of the impressive pyramidal peak of Machapuchare mountain, and anyway the sanctuary up-ahead had started to cloud over.

It was a great decision, as early the next morning the skies were perfectly clear again, and the final 1-hour hike up to the end of the trek at Annapurna Base Camp was in clear blue skies. We sorted out a room for that night and then spent the morning exploring around the incredible location, just gawping at the glaciers, lakes and surrounding mountains. The whole area is basically a huge mountainous bowl, with the camp positioned right in the very middle of the bowl.

In the late morning, and still with clear skies I decided to climb up a huge glacial moraine right beside the camp. Our guidebook had made a passing reference to better views from the top, and our lodge owner also recommended it, so off I went. There is no clear trail up the moraine though, and so you have to scramble up through some hairy sections and along a very narrow ridge (which was why Sarah didn't come with me), but the views from the top of that moraine were simply stunning. I really thought I'd found the most beautiful place in the world 10 years ago, but honestly the views from here were even better (well, at least I'll have somewhere new to propose to my next wife I suppose!).

I just sat on a narrow ridge near the top of the moraine for over an hour just soaking up the panorama. The views here are better simply because you're viewing from high up on one of the sides of the 'bowl', as opposed to looking up from the base. The snow capped mountains and glaciers literally encompass you in a full 360-degree vista that really is spell-binding. I would have stayed there longer, but the clouds began coming in and I was a tad worried about the steep descent if the visibility suddenly deteriorated. But in fact I was down in about 15 minutes with no problems at all - it just seemed mad steep on the way up.

Earlier that morning we'd heard that a Ukrainian trekker had been badly injured (he'd broken his leg), and that they were trying to organise a helicopter to evacuate him. Apparently he was part of a delegation from the organisation behind the European Soccer Championships due to be held in Ukraine in 2012, and the group had left the camp early that morning to climb up to a glacier to play a game of soccer for the cameras. Apparently this guy had taken a tumble and broken his leg. Anyway, while I was sitting on the moraine I had a clear view of the group of Ukrainians and Nepalese porters carrying this guy back on an improvised stretcher towards the camp from the glacier.

When I got back to the camp I sat watching the group tending to the injured guy (there's nothing much to do at the camp), but after a while I got the distinct impression that the guy had died. It turned out he had also badly injured his head in the fall, and he had actually died about 30 minutes previously. The helicopter arrived about an hour later and his mates bundled him into it quickly and off it flew. It all sounded like a rather silly accident - playing soccer on a glacier at over 4000m - but it was still very sad to see the poor guy being bundled away.

Strangely, that was the 3rd dead body we've seen on this trip - we saw an armed robber who'd been very recently shot dead in Panama City, and a tourist being given CPR in Durban.

After all that the camp was a bit subdued, although of course, newly arriving trekkers were oblivious to the recent tragedy and would shout and congratulate each other on arriving at the camp.

Early the next morning I had planned on climbing the moraine again to catch the sunrise, but when I got up at 5:15am it had just started snowing heavily. Obviously there was no visibility in the snow, so I just went back to bed. When Sarah got up it was snowing even more heavily. People were getting worried that they might be stranded in the camp for days (it can happen apparently, although very rarely in May), but at first I just reckoned we could easily spend another day just sitting out the bad weather. But after another hour or so, and with no let up in the snow, a group of porters and guides decided to make a run for it, and this got me kinda worried - if the locals were making a dash for lower ground, then maybe we should too.

So we both packed up in about 2 minutes, paid our dues and left. It turned out the snow wasn't as heavy as it looked, and visibility was actually quite good. I had been afraid of losing sight of the trail through the snow and becoming lost, but in fact enough people had left before us to mark out the trail quite clearly. In fact we left at a good time, as the snow still gave good purchase and hadn't been compacted into ice yet by other trekkers.

So after about an hour, when we got back to Machapuchare Base Camp, we could see down the valley that the weather was clearing nicely. So we relaxed there and had our usual porridge breakfast, after which the trail down was clear and easy.

On the way back down I was looking forward to a fairly scary river crossing that we'd made on the way up. The river was strong and the stepping stones across it looked quite precarious, but Sarah bravely led the way and just strolled straight across (if any of the rocks she'd stood on had been slippery or loose she would have been in real trouble). Anyways, on the way back I was just a little disappointed to see that officials had created a sturdy bridge across the river from lashed together tree trunks.

As we descended the valley back towards Pokara the snow and rains had cleared the hazy air quite a bit, and so we were rewarded with great views of the lush terraced valley walls. The last few days we hiked through fabulous forest too, some of it the famous rhododendron forests, although unfortunately they weren't blooming when we passed.

Last time hiking in Nepal I can't remember seeing any wildlife of note, but this time it seemed to be a veritable menagerie! I saw a mad playful and inquisitive pair of civets (at least I think they were civets, big as otters with black head and shoulders and hind quarters and fawn brown middle), quite a few gorgeous woodpeckers, a 2-foot snake that I nearly stepped no (it seems I always nearly step on snakes), and later a big 6 footer right across the path in front of me on the way to the World Peace Pagoda in Pokara, but it had recently died (I don't know how, but it looked perfectly fresh).

One day we hiked through dense forest with loads of small leeches - you know they're leeches as opposed to wee worms since when you simply touch them they go into a mad frenzy of twisting and turning for about 2 seconds, desperately trying to latch on to the animal that just touched them. When we got into the second hot spots of the hike (both called Tatopani, which literally mans 'hot water'), Sarah noticed one on her ankle. The pool attendant guy quickly picked it off and squished it with a rock before it had managed to start 'feeding'. All I got leech-wise was one lost critter on my sock, soon dispatched back to the forest, and not even killed.

Another major difference between this time and 10 years ago was the number of other trekkers. Last time was during high season, and so I was constantly passing out, or being passed by, other western trekkers. It gets pretty annoying saying 'Hi!', 10 times a day to the same people every day as you leapfrog each other (you overtake someone, but then take a short break during which they pass you out, and an hour later you pass them again while they have a short break, etc., etc.). But at this time of year there are far fewer tourists (due to the season of course, but also maybe due to the recession and maybe lingering paranoia about the Maoists), and so we had many days where I really felt we had the entire trail all to ourselves - some days we literally only saw 1 other trekker in 6 or 7 hours of walking.

All-in-all the hike took us 23 days, and that was with 2 full rest days and a couple of half-days. I had originally thought it might take us a leisurely 30 days or so. It turned out we both felt really good all along the hike, and so we really powered along. In fact I felt probably better than I ever have in my life. The whole trek just seemed so easy, much more so than I remember it being 10 years ago - I must be getting stronger in my old age as opposed to weaker.

When we reached the road again I decided to try and walk back all the way back to Pokara (as our guidebook said it was only a 15 minute drive), but it turned out Pokara was 17km away. So after a local bus, and then a taxi we were back in the cozy Karma Guesthouse again, and it was only early afternoon. We dropped off our rather stinky laundry, had lovely hot showers and went out to celebrate an amazing 3 weeks of hiking. Oh, and an engagement.

Upper Pisang route

2009-05-06T23:40:00.000-07:00

One of the main highlights of the Annapurna Circuit hike for me 10 years ago was taking the Upper Pisang route (in fact, it was one of the main highlights of that entire year-long trip). At the village of Pisang hikers have a choice of taking a low trail along the valley floor by the river, or taking a tougher high trail that climbs steeply up to the village of Gharyu and travels high along the valley wall giving incredible views of the Annapurna mountain range.

Not many people take the high route, which is a real pity. In fact, I've heard that many of the guides hired by tourists actively discourage taking the high route, or never even mention it as an option. This is simply to make their lives easier, since the low route is physically much easier. The sad irony here is that those tourists, who probably paid a relative fortune for their guide, are missing probably the best section of the entire trail, and anyway, hiring a guide in the first place is a ridiculous thing to do on the Annapurna hikes, as the trail is blatantly obvious and you'd have to be severely retarded to get lost.

Anyway, 10 years ago I was feeling great when myself and Hanno arrived at Pisang. Hanno wasn't feeling the best though, and so we decided to split up for the day, with Hanno taking the low road and me taking the high road, the plan being to meet up again in the town of Manang. It was along this high road that I came across what I considered to be simply the most stunning view I've ever seen anywhere in the world. From a high vantage point about 25 minutes walk beyond the village of Gharyu, and only about 10 metres off the trail itself, is a tiny little lookout point with just a small rock to sit on. There are no signs, no information boards, no fence, no nothing really, just the most beautiful panoramic views of the vast valley with snow capped mountains in front of you running down through lush forests to the raging river below.

When I met up with Hanno later I told him I reckoned I'd found the perfect place to propose to my future wife - all I had to do was meet her first! So 10 years on, and here I am again on the Upper Pisang road, and after spending the night at the village of Gharyu we started walking to the 'spot'. Sarah was anxious to get moving early, so I'd had to delay our departure for about an hour to allow the sun rise high enough to illuminate the whole valley properly. And then when we did leave, a couple of Russian trekkers were just ahead of us. I was worried that they would stop at my 'spot' and start taking photos, but luckily they didn't even notice the tiny little lookout point, and so when we got there there wasn't sight nor sound of another soul.

Obviously a photo or a video can never do justice to a place like this (especially the sense of height above the valley floor, which is about 600m I think), but I've uploaded a wee video taken just after I proposed, with Sarah understandably delighted (of course!). It gives a bit of a taste of the place anyway (the first short pause in the video is of the town of Gharyu where we stayed the night before - the sun is rising behind the town, which is why it's in shadow and not very clear).

The actual proposal itself went along the lines of:

Well Sarah, I reckon this has got to be the most beautiful place in all the world,
And I'm here with the most beautiful girl in all the world,
And you'd make me the most beautifully happy guy in all the world,
If you'd agree to be my wife?

Yeah, pretty corny alright, but at least the location was a knock-out. Well, it was supposed to go something along those lines, but I got halfway through the third line of my little speech-let when Sarah cottoned on and kinda broke down in emotional tears, which got me going, and I can't actually remember exactly how the last part came out, but I'm pretty sure I bungled it a wee bit. Still, Sarah can't remember exactly what I said either, so that's alright.

Being 4000 meters up in the Himalaya meant I didn't have much opportunity to shop around for a ring (or phone Sarah's Dad to ask for his daughter's hand!), so I thoughtfully hand-crafted a marvelous engagement ring myself that morning - from a brochure on Gharyu town. All very romantic I'm sure you'll agree - but sure it's the thought that counts of course...

Annapurna Circuit and Sanctuary

2009-05-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

The plan was to do the Annapurna Circuit hike, and link up the end of it with the Sanctuary hike. This is a simple and common thing for people that have the time, and although I had hiked the Circuit 10 years ago with Hanno, I was looking forward to doing it again, and also of stitching on the Sanctuary hike which I had never done.

At the trailhead at Besishar though, another major difference between now and 10 years ago became disappointingly apparent. The government here has been steadily building a road further and further along the trail, from both ends of the hike, and now there is a bus from Besishar as far as Khudi.

I was thinking of getting that bus, as nobody wants to hike along a road, but the cheeky beggars were charging tourists a hefty fare. I decided to walk on a bit and flag the bus down as it passed, as I reckoned I could haggle a fair price then, but once we started walking Sarah decided she wanted to walk the entire trek, and so we didn't bother with the bus at all (and of course I greatly supported Sarah's determination, being of like mind myself, although I had hiked the circuit before so I hadn't been too bothered about getting the bus).

So although the roads the government are building are great news for the local people, who can now travel in a few hours what used to take days, it means the Annapurna Circuit will never be the same again. 10 years ago when I hiked the trail with Hanno we didn't see a single car, motorbike, or any form of a wheel for the whole 3 weeks. And that, apart from the stunning mountain vistas of course, was really one of the main highlights of the whole thing - just the feeling of getting totally away from everything, and especially from the noise and fumes of cars. The road is far more extensive on the other side of the Thorang La pass, and even if they do cut a new trail just for hikers away from the road, every time you stop for the night in a village you'll be surrounded by beeping jeeps and motorbikes. Ah well, such is progress...

Anyway, at the start of the trek, the road only runs for a few kilometers, so once we'd hiked that section I was looking forward to not seeing a car again for weeks (I didn't know at the time that the road from the other direction of the trail has reached all the way to Muktinath already!).

So all-in-all we spent 23 days hiking in the mountains, and it really was fantastic. The weather throughout was great, at times just stunningly clear, although we did have a couple of cloudy days at the start, and a couple of very hazy days in the middle and towards the end. But rather than try and recount the 23 days myself, Sarah will probably resurrect her long-dead blog and update it with the daily notes she took as we went along, which suits me nicely.

Although I suppose I should mention one of the days hiking, day 6, April the 19th in fact...

Pokara

2009-05-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

As soon as the bus arrived at the bus station in Pokara all of us tourists were hounded by the guesthouse touts. Having little idea where we were and how much a taxi would be to the main accommodation centres we decided to go with one of the less boisterous touts. It turned out great, as we got a free ride to the Lakeside area and the guesthouse was lovely, cheap, clean and central (Karma Guesthouse, beside the Royal Palace).

So the whole point of coming to Pokara is that it's the main centre from where people set off on big multi-day hikes. I'd been here 10 years before on the last trip with Hanno, and the place all seemed fairly familiar. The main road is now paved, and the shops and restaurants all look a bit more dapper, and there are more of them, but otherwise the place seemed much the same.

But quite a few other things have changed, like the location of the hiking permit office, the location of the immigration office (to extend our visas - at the border we could only get a 30-day visa for $40US, it used to be $30US for a 60-day visa, the cheeky beggars!), the introduction of a new tracking system called TIMS (which I luckily found out about after passing an agency that was advertising it - it's free to get a TIMS permit, but if you arrive at the trailhead without it you're fined).

So to get everything organised we hired bicycles and rode around the various offices getting passport photos, permits, renting sleeping bags (only 20 rupees a day, as opposed to the 'official' price of 50), and cash for the trek itself (everything was quite spread out and far from the main tourist Lakeside area, so having the bikes was a godsend).

The money issue was fustrating though, as I didn't know how much money I'd need. I planned on hiking the Annapurna Circuit trek, which can take 3 weeks, and then linking it with the Annapurna Sanctary trek, which can take another 12 days. During all that time you're in the mountains and have little chance of finding an ATM (it turned out there are ATM's in Jomsom, but you can't relie on them working when you get there). Anyway, after checking online and asking people I picked a figure and hoped it would be enough. In the end we managed to keep the costs down with regular haggling and we finished the entire trek almost a week early, so it turned out I had loads more money than I needed.

I also had a fairly traumatic time dealing with my apartment management company back home, as the tenants had given notice to quit the apartment, and so I needed to get new tenants in quick. As I've said before on this blog, the only major anxiety I've had on this entire trip has been due to my apartment back home - and this situation was happening at the worst possible time, towards the end of the trip when the cash reserves are dwindling rapidly toward zero!

Thankfully though my mate Peadar from back home stepped into the breach and literally saved this trip from a premature finale. He took over the management of the apartment from the inept KPM, advertised and got new tenants as well as re-painting numerous damp patches, sorting out the decrepit sofa, organising new swipe cards for the gates, getting a new lock fitted on the patio door, etc. Without Peadar doing all that for me back home I would have lost an absolute fortune paying KPM to get all these things taken care of (and it took them 6 weeks to find tenants last time!), so needless to say I'm very deeply indebited to him.

So anyway, after 2 days of organising all the above we left everything we didn't need for the hike at our guesthouse, and early in the morning got a taxi to the main local bus station to get a bus to the trailhead at Besishar (paying half the tourist-bus rate). The morning hadn't started too well though, as the first thing I did that morning was put my foot through a small hole in my hiking trousers, thereby making it a huge hole! These were the only trousers I was bringing, and they had been fairly threadbare to begin with, but I just decided to head off anyway, and hoped to get them repaired in Besishar. Within 5 minutes of arriving at the town of Besishar I had the pants expertly repaired for 0.50cent and so we were all set for weeks and weeks of hiking along some of the best trails in the world.

Elephant safari in Chitwan

2009-04-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

It was early afternoon when we arrived at Sauraha, gateway to Chitwan National Park, so after a shower we strolled about the small village to check things out. It was nice and quite really, being low season, so the whole place had a nice peaceful feel to it. We checked out the various options for doing safaris in the park and strolled along the river (across from which lies the national park itself), but basically we just spent the day relaxing.

Next morning Sarah got up really very early and strolled down to the official park entrance to try and book a Government elephant safari (our hotel owner and some agency guy had told us that it was very difficult to get a Government safari), but it turned out she was lucky and we got ourselves a booking for later that morning (apparently the advice we'd gotten was legitimate as recently the Government elephants have been on patrol and have not been taking tourists into the park).

So later that morning we strolled down to the park entrance, which was all very quite, and within minutes we were walking up the large platform that allows you to simply step onto the riding platform on the back of your elephant (called a howdah). Given that most other tourists had listened to the advice given to them by the locals, we were the only people on our elephant (they can squeeze 4 or even 5 people into a howdah), and so we were quite comfortable. It also meant we met very few other tourist-laden elephants during our 1.5 hour safari, and those we did meet, which all had Indian or Nepalese tourists, we only encountered very briefly.

So basically it was a really peaceful amble through the beautiful dense forest (our mahout basically didn't say a word the whole time). We got to see 2 gharials (which certainly rank amongst the weirdest looking critters I've ever seen), by the river, and a few fearless deer scattered around. It was beautifully dense forest at times, with our powerful elephant barging his way along effortlessly, and causing us and our mahout to brush tree limbs aside (at times I was quiet worried that my falling-apart sandals would be ripped off).

At one point I stupidly dropped my water bottle, and I think the elephant stood on it, or burst it when he tried to pick it up. Either way the mahout got really mad with it and really smashed the poor guy on the head a couple of times with his rigid stick. I felt like an idiot for dropping the bottle in the first place (which just got left behind as litter), but I felt a lot worse after seeing our poor elephant getting clattered for my fumble!

Later that afternoon we took a jeep safari back through the park, this time travelling much further into the park itself. We were with a Swiss family with 2 young kids and a young Dutch guy. We got really lucky and saw a rare sloth bear quite close, and then crocodiles on the lake, a rhino mother and cub from a watchtower, and then a group of 5 rhino running past in the distance. Throughout we saw kingfishers and lots of other birds, and at the gharial breeding centre a tiger in a cage (it's mother was killed as she'd become a man-eater, and apparently this poor cub will now be incarcerated for the rest of it's life, as it too tasted human blood).

It had been a great day exploring the park, and after 1.5 hours on the elephant, and 5.5 hours in the jeep I felt we'd gotten a great feel for the park, so I decided against doing another private elephant safari (which is what nearly all the other tourists did). The private elephant safaris seemed to involve groups of elephants (whereas we were just 1 elephant), each with many passengers and all roaming around the buffer zone of the park, not within the park itself - although we heard they still got to see plenty of rhino.

So the next day we rented bicycles and rode the few kilometers to the 20 Thousand Lakes area. This was an easy, flat ride and the scenery once we passed through the entrance was fantastic. We had the bluest skies I've seen in ages, and the trail we rode on passed along a nice canal. The lakes themselves we nice too, although not that extensive, and there were quite a few local Nepali college kids knocking about who'd just finished exams, and so were quite boisterous (one guy throwing an empty whiskey bottle into the lake, to which Sarah sternly reprimanded him and his mates, after which they ambled off sheepishly!).

So after 3 days in Sauraha, and eating most times in the same cool little local place in the centre, it was time to leave. We could have booked a bus ticket to Pokara from the agents all over town, but of course they'd just take their cut so we decided to do it ourselves. This involved getting up early, having breakfast, failing to get transport to the main road (6km away), and just walking to the bus stand at which we'd arrived 3 days earlier. Once there we had to wait a while for the Pokara bus, but once on our way we fairly motored it all the way to Pokara.

Getting to Chitwan

2009-04-09T09:08:00.000-07:00

It was a bit of an ordeal getting to Chitwan in Nepal, but it all worked out in the end. Our train to Gorakhpur arrived an hour late, but that still gave us plenty of time to catch an onward bus to the border. When we asked about buses Sarah was told it would leave in 40 minutes, so I used the internet (trying to sort out yet more apartment headache stuff at home), and we grabbed a thali lunch. When we got back to the bus they said, no, it was leaving in another hour! So Sarah waited on the bus while I used the internet for another hour (my apartment troubles are fairly major!).

Back on the bus, we were waiting a further 45 minutes, with no explanation or any visible reason for the delay. Anyway, eventually we left and got left at the border at a typical dusty, ugly border town.

At the border, where the Nepali visa had gone up by $10 each (to $40, but luckily I had withdrawn enough extra Indian rupees (as I plan on going back to India for a flight back to South East Asia), to cover the difference). We stayed the night in a nice comfy hotel right on the border as it was quite late in the day, and early the next morning we were woken by the hotel owner telling us we'd better get up (at 5:45am), and get a bus quick, as there were due to be strikes later that day that could seriously affect public transport (strikes being quite common in Nepal).

As it happened we had no trouble getting a bus to the town of Narayanghat, a major junction town, although I had to pay for the bus with a fair bit of my Indian rupee reserve, as there was no ATM in sight when we arrived. After strolling about for a bit to find an ATM to get Nepali money, we grabbed a very tasty lunch (at the Open House restaurant overlooking the main street), and then got a local bus for ther 15km ride to the town of Tadi Bazaar. As it happened this bus broke down after about 5km, with everyone just getting off and standing by the side of the road trying to flag down another passing bus. We only had to wait a couple of minutes until another bus came along, although of course it was full, and so we had to clamber up onto the roof.

Luckily it was only a short journey, and so it was actually quite good fun (the only other time I've ridden on the roof of a bus was in Nepal too, 10 years ago with Hanno). So getting dropped off at Tadi bazaar we had then to get the last 6km to the town of Sauhara. Given the strieks that day, there was only one guy with a horse carriage, and he was looking for a hefty fee. Not having any of that nonsense of course we resigned ourselves to a good hour-long hike, but after walking for about 1 minute down the road a big bus stops right n front of us, with a gang of Western backpackers sitting on the roof. We clamber on top and off we go to Sauhara.

We weren't long along the way when boh myslef and Sarah get well clattered on the head by overhanging cables (power, TV or whatever). I was OK, but Sarah seemed to get hit a gogod bit harder, and her hat was knocked off her head (and lost to the road). We got chatting to an English girl beside who told us their bus had broken down enroute frmo Katmandu, and they'd had to pick up this bus, which had been full, which was why they were on the roof. We were lucky to only have to ride this bus for 6km, and within about 15 minutes we arrived at the bus stand, which was just a patch of ground in the middle of nowhere really (although nobody asked us for any fare).

But there were a hoard of touts awaiting us, and as soon as we stepped off the bus they started hounding us. The problem with the touts is that you simply can't trust them - they say they bring you for free to their place to just have a look, and then you can look elsewhere. But they can apply a lot of pressure, charge a huge taxi fare if you choose not to stay in their place, and importantly you have no idea where their place is - it could be in the middle of nowhere.

So ignoring the tuots, and because we were going to walk the whole 6km anyway, we just strolled to the village ourselves. It turned out to be just a 10 minute walk, and I very quickly found a great comfortable place near the village centre, Park View Lodge.

Exploring Agra and Amarvilas

2009-04-07T03:17:00.000-07:00

So the next morning after breakfast at our hotel I strolled down to rent a bicycle for the day to explore more of Agra's attractions. Sarah didn't fancy the exertion in the heat so I headed off on my own.

My first stop was a place known as the Baby Taj, which is a far smaller mausoleum than the Taj Mahal, but is also built of white marble and with similar beautiful inlay designs, and set in a similar muslim garden. From here I rode on along the river to another, more decrepit mausoleum after a quick detour to a nicely maintained garden (Ram Bagh).

Next stop was to ride around to a viewing point directly across the river from the Taj Mahal. There is a garden here too, but the views are better by just riding down the side of the gardens and walking out onto the beach. It was fantastic here (and completely free), as not only was I the only tourist, apart from 2 local kids messing about in the river, I was only person on the entire side of the river (there was a goat and a few cows too). So I hung around here for a bit, just soaking up the views,watching the tourists milling all over the Taj and just relaxing.

Back on the bike I rode back to Sarah for lunch, but she'd just ordered something at the hotel, so I stopped off at a much nicer place on the way back to the bike rental place and had a lovely thali there (Dasaprakesh Restaurant).

While I was cycling around the town (having the bike was fantastic, as even when the traffic is mental, it only crawls along, so you never feel in any danger, and I felt great freedom in being able to explore the smallish town at my leisure), Sarah had made a reservation for that evening at the Amarvilas Hotel, so at 6pm that evening we hopped in a rickshaw to Taj Ganj.

First we dropped into a few of the backpacker hostels in the area hoping to exchange some books for Nepal guidebooks, but to no avail (we did get 'The White Tiger' though, which seems to be the book everyone is reading here in India at the moment). At the gate of Amarvilas, the security guy didn't have our names on his list, but after a quick phone call we were let in.

The hotel sure is pretty impressive alright, but not amazingly. It's all marble and polished stone, with extravagant fountains in front, and an impressive pool area (that doesn't have any views though, and isonly 100 meters or so from the main road with all the beeping tuk-tuks and tinny Indian music blaring!). The small bar did have a great view of the Taj through it's large windows, so we had a couple of drinks here before heading down to the restaurant for dinner.

The menu was surprisingly inexpensive, although of course it was by far the most expensive meal we've had in India (about 4500 rupees including drinks). The restaurant itself didn't have any views, and anyway it was dark outside and the Taj isn't illuminated at night. The meal of shish kebab starter, Kerala Prawn curry and some lamb thing was very good although certainly not mind-blowing - we've certainly had tastier meals for a tiny fraction of the cost, but this place is all about location (and the kebabs were amazing I suppose).

So a cycle rickshaw back to our hotel after getting very stuffed and straight to bed. The next day we just hung around our hotel before getting a great lunch at the Park restaurant again. I wanted to get US dollars to pay for our Nepali visa, but this turned out to be a mayor headache. I tried 4 banks, but none of them could give me dollars (even the main branch of the State Bank of India's computer system was down, so they couldn't do anything - and this country has nuclear weapons!). A forex place told me to try again laterand he might have dollars, so I had to traipse all the way back there later, where thankfully he finally produced the dollars.

Other than that adventure, we were hanging aorund, using the internet and reading, basically waiting for our train toward the Nepal border that departed Agra at 10pm. We actually ended up walking all the way to the train station, as at 9:30pm the auto-rickshaws were thin on the ground, but it wasn't that far, and it was a cool evening.

Our train was only 20 minutes late (which is impressive, as it had come a very long way), and after waking up and kicking off the Indians that were on our berths I settled down to sleep straight away and had a good nights sleep (earplugs and eye-mask essential in this regard of course). 16 hours later we arrived at Gorakpur (only 1 hour late, which is again impressive), and after using the Internet for a bit and getting a quick lunch thali, we hopped on the bus to the Nepalese border.

I find it very hard to believe I've been in India now for weeks now, and hard to believe I'm leaving it. But it certainly is a major consolation to know I'm headed to Nepal, to-date my favorite place in all the world, so I just hope it isn't a case of 'never go back to relive your past'...

The Taj Mahal

2009-04-06T06:31:00.000-07:00

We did manage to get up early to head out to the Taj Mahal before the hoards of tourists, but not quite early enough for sunrise when the Taj is apparently at it's best. When we got to the gate there was no queue to speak of (although, of course, our rickshaw driver ripped us off by dropping us a good bit away from where we asked, and paid, to be dropped, but at least the walk was through nice gardens and it was a very pleasant morning).

Security at the entrance gate was very tight though (everywhere in India seems mad paranoid now after the terrorist attacks, as many of the hotels and even internet cafes ask for our passports so they can photocopy them, and many places have metal detectors (that never seem to be switched on!)). The guards meticulously checked through our small daypacks, and I was told I couldn't bring in my MP3 player, as no electronic devices where allowed. I was telling the guard to just throw the MP3 player away, as I thought it was broken anyway (turned out it wasn't broken at all, just the display is broken). But just then Sarah told me she was told she couldn't bring in her MP3 player either, or her book (the 'books not allowed' thing is weird - you are allowed to bring in guidebooks, but not other reading material. I can only assume it's because they don't want tourists lounging around the grounds all day reading - which was what we had planned). So Sarah had to go back out and deposit all our 'dangerous' materials in a locker.

So while Sarah did that I strolled on into the main complex. At first you approach a massive arched gateway, and as you pass through it the Taj Mahal itself materialises right smack-bang in the middle of the central arch. I know it's all mad cliche and everything, but the building simply is stunning. It immediately reminded me of the book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance', which investigates the nature of 'quality' - this building struck me immediately as the very embodiment of architectural beauty. It really is the most beautiful building I've ever seen, and in that regard it's akin to Iguazu Falls being the most spectacular natural wonder I've ever seen (as those who know me well know, 'best evers' are one of my favorite things!).

But after 10 minutes there was still no sign of Sarah. I went back to the gate, thinking she must have gotten held up again for some other reason, but there was no sign of her. I thought maybe she'd passed me as I was reading an information panel, so I went back to gaze at the Taj. Still no sign of her, so after a bit longer I went back to the gate again for the last time. If I didn't see her here I was just going to have to go ahead and explore the complex on my own.

But then she re-appeared and it turned out that the lockers were miles away, and that they had tried to charge Sarah a small fee. Our book expressly states that the lockers are free, and after paying so much to get into the Taj itself Sarah was, on principle, refusing to pay a rupee more.

I was quite frustrated at this point, after not knowing what Sarah had been up to for so long, and so I told her to just pay the fee and let's go, but she was adamant about sticking to her guns. Fair play to her I suppose (normally I'd agree with her 100%, but in this case I just wanted to get in to see the Taj properly - there's a time and place for sticking to your principles I reckon, but at least Sarah was expressing a principle, something I nag her about not doing the odd time!).

Anyway, Sarah's perseverance actually paid-off, much to my amazement. The head security guy actually came around to Sarah's point-of-view and allowed us give him our MP3 players in a plastic bag. He also allowed us take in our reading books with us, and told us that he would be going off duty at 2pm, so we'd better be back to collect our stuff before then.

So off we skipped into the Taj Mahal having shook up the system a little bit, although it took Sarah a wee bit longer to calm down completely. So we spent the entire morning just pottering about the grounds and just soaking up the majesty of the gardens, the small museum and of course the Taj Mahal itself.

One other thing really stuck me about the whole place though, and it wasn't a pleasant thought at all. Basically the overwhelming opulence of the whole complex, and the massive marble structure of the Taj itself, made me feel a tad uncomfortable. It was the same feeling I get when visiting huge christian cathedrals, and has to do with the moral conundrum I have justifying the very existence of these awe-inspiring edifices. In the case of the churches, I find it hard to reconcile the ideas of piety and being humble with a massive, imposing structure like a cathedral - the upkeep of which would surely feed a small army of poverty-stricken local urchins.

In the case of the Taj, the much-repeated story of it being built for love has recently come under great suspicion though. According to the Rough Guide it's now thought that the Taj Mahal is more a monument to the the builder's self-regarded Greatness as it is to his love of his dead wife. One strong theory suggests one of the reasons the builder (Emperor Shah Jahan), was ousted and imprisoned by his own son was because he was bankrupting the entire state with his megolamanical building projects. And it was this thought that occurred to me as I strolled about, that the building of this beautiful structure must have led to untold suffering in it's day, and is really just a monument to a megalomanic - although naturally all such thoughts were dampened by the shear damn beauty of the thing!

Anyway, as we finally left the Taj we collected our stuff, with the friendly guards having a bit of a laugh about it all, and we strolled into the adjacent Taj Ganj area to have lunch. First stop was a hotel that the books say has great views of the Taj, but I wasn't that impressed really, and they didn't serve beer, so I just had a honey lemon tea and we left.

My plan was to try and get into the Amarvilas hotel for lunch, as this is apparently one of the best hotels in India. But it was the usual gated hotel experience, where you can't get in without a prior reservation. So we gave up on that and strolled back to the lovely garden of the nearby Sheela Hotel.

After lunch we headed back to the hotel, and later had a lovely dinner in the Park Restaurant that was just a 15 minute stroll away, and where we finally found a bike rental place nearby, which decided my plan for the next day.

Agra and the Red Fort

2009-04-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

Our guidebooks warned us about rickshaw drivers taking tourists to 'similar sounding' hotels, and so I was pretty wary when we arrived at the Tourist Rest House in Agra. It turned out to be the right place though, and we got a nice room, although very small, for a great price (200 rupees a night).

I'd chosen this hotel as one of the guidebooks (the Rough Guide), indicated bicycle rental nearby, but yet again, the book was wrong (or in fairness, maybe just out-of-date, as places close down or move all the time of course). So after another futile search for bikes we had to get a rickshaw to the train station to book onward train tickets. Sarah had gotten talking to a German girl, Anna, who had booked a train ticket with an agent the day before, but hadn't received any ticket or confirmation, but of course she had paid in full. She was now a bit worried about it, as she couldn't remember where the agency place was, and she was due to return that day to pick up her ticket. I was sensing that this girl was a bit clueless, to say the least, but Sarah took pity on her and so we decided we'd try and help her sort out her ticket.

So the 3 of us shared the rickshaw to the train station. Firstly I got tickets for myself and Sarah towards the Nepalise border, and then I tried to see if Anna had a reservation. Of course she had no ticket number or anything, thinking her name might be enough to check the reservation system, which of course it wasn't (although you have to give your name when booking train tickets, the operators rarely input that information, instead just noting your age and sex - which is used by the ticket inspectors onboard the trains to ensure you are the right person). Obviously there was nothing the operators could do for Anna, and so her only option was to try and find the agency where she'd made her booking (the agency had been recommended by the girl's rickshaw driver, I mean they're TAXI DRIVERS for god's sake - you can probably see why I thought she was just a bit 'clueless' now!).

All Anna could remember about the agency was that it was 'near' the Red Fort, which is also where the train station is, so all 3 of us start walking around the perimeter of the huge fort hoping this girl can remember where the booking agency is. We circumnavigate the entire huge fort, but of course she never finds it. With nothing left to do she goes back to the train station to try and book a ticket directly (with Sarah helping her), while I have to traipse around the nearby bazaar looking for an ATM (and needing to cross a bridge over the train tracks that was inhabited by a huge troop of monkeys!).

My original plan had been to visit the fort after we got our train tickets, so I headed there while Sarah tried to help Anna (after all the walking we'd done around the fort perimeter Sarah didn't fancy more hours walking around inside the fort).

When I met Sarah later that evening it turned out that Anna couldn't book a ticket at the station as the train was now full, and so she had returned to the hotel with Sarah to try and get them to help. I don't know what happened to her in the end as we didn't see at the hotel again, so hopefully she got everything sorted out, and hopefully she learnt her lesson too. What was surprising was that she'd been in India 2.5 weeks already, but had ever gotten a train before.

Anyway, the fort was fairly impressive and certainly made for a very pleasant few hours strolling about. There were great views of the Taj Mahal in the distance too, which just whetted my appetite for getting up close and personal with this Indian icon that we planned to visit early the next morning.

Fatehpur Sikri

2009-04-05T23:38:00.001-07:00

We arrived nice and early (having risen so early to literally catch the 'early birds' in Bharatpur), and I checked out a couple of places, staying in the nice Goverdhan. Pretty much straight away we walked up towards the city complex of Fatehpur Sikri, stopping first at the very impressive mosque.

Inside the mosque was a beautiful pure-white marble mausoleum, accessed via a massively impressive front gateway. So we strolled about here for a bit, passing a group of schoolkids all learning the Koran off by heart. I've always felt sorry for muslim kids having to learn the whole thing by heart, as it reminds of messing in school and pretending to make Jim McMahon and Bobby White learn the Bible off by heart and recite it backwards. Anyways, these kids seemed to be enjoying themselves, waving and laughing at us as we passed.

It's only a short stroll to the main city complex, and in this case the entrance fee was well justified. I was very impressed with the whole city, and it's amazing to think the place was deserted for lack of water after only a few years. I was particularly struck by the Diwan-i-khas, which I thought was well-cool (pictures on that Wikipedia site above).

So we spent a few hours strolling around the grounds of the city, and then headed back to the hotel. We could have, and probably should have, just gotten another bus straight to Agra, as it was still only early afternoon, but I'd agreed to stay a night and the place was pleasant enough and the restaurant recommended.

We strolled back through the new town in the late afternoon (it's a very typical Indian town, although regarded by many as somewhat dirtier and smellier than most), and made our way to the Sunset View Hotel, which we had been told had good views for sunset. We had to negogiate our way through a rubbish tip to get there (as the guy who recommended the place had told us), but unfortunately the sun was obsured by cloud, so we didn't get much of a sunset. The views over the extensive plains was nice for a beer or two though.

Next morning was a leisurely stroll to the bus stand to get a local bus the 40km to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal.

Bharatpur

2009-04-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

The only reason for stopping at Bharatpur on the way to Agra was to check out a famous bird santuary there. The guidebooks spoke of renting bicycles to explore the park at your leisure, so obviously I jumped at the chance of that.

The train left Jaisalmer about half-an-hour late, although it was waiting on the platform on time, so we settled down on our upper berths immediately. This was after I'd checked out the Rajasthani Palace on Wheels train, which is a super-expensive train that tours the Rajasthan highlights in a week. It didn't look all that impressive to me really, and the cabin looked even smaller than the tiny cabin we had on our boat in the Galapagos. I got the impression it was all show with little substance really, particularly the 'costumes' the staff had to wear.

Anyway, we arrived at night in Bharatpur, after being held up for an hour just one stop from our destination. We got a rickshaw to the hotel and after checking a couple of places we settled in and had a nice quick Thali (the posh English dude next to us saying it was the best thali he'd had in months, but I thought it was distinctly average).

So up early the next morning to get a quick breakfast and try to rent bicycles when the owner of our hotel tells us there is a big problem at the moment with bike rentals. It turns out that the Government, or park officials, have stopped people bringing private bicycles into the park. Instead they have to use Government bicycles (I could understand if it was cars or motorbikes, and that pollution standards had to be enforced or something, but why would officials need to regulate bicycles?!?). The Government has tendered for companies to provide these bicycles, but nobody has taken up the tender because they all say the Government is not offering enough money. The upshot of all this nonsense is that there are no bicycles for rent at all, which leaves the only options as hiring a cycle-rickshaw or walking.

Hiring a rickshaw was not an option for me really, as the rickshaws can only travel along the one tarred road in the park, whereas most of the park is accessible from little side tracks off that road (plus of course, you'd have to put up with the driver, and try to haggle a fair price, etc., etc.). I was seriously considering the walking option, but the park seems to be quite large and spread out, and walking all day just didn't have the appeal of having the freedom to cycle around.

So reluctantly, and rather frustrated, we headed back to our hotel, checked out and caught a local bus 18km to the town of Fatehpur Sikri. This is another site on the road to Agra, famous for it's huge mosque and fort.

Jaisalmer

2009-04-03T00:22:00.000-07:00

Exiting the train station at Jaisalmer we were both immediately accosted by hoards of guesthouse touts - by far and away the most touts we've seen anywhere in India, or anywhere else on this trip for that matter. It was quite frustrating to be honest, and Sarah, who was taking charge of finding the accommodation, had to move back into the train station to try and get her bearings before venturing out into the touts again.

As usual we just wanted to get a tuk-tuk to the general accommodation area, in this case Ghandi Chowk. After pushing away a few touts (I literally had to stop, glare and clearly say 'Don't TOUCH me!', to the more aggressive of the touts), we got into a jeep with 2 local lads. They start the usual rigmarole of trying to take us somewhere else (where they would get a commission), but Sarah is adamant that they just take us where we wanted to go. They stop after a bit and tell us we have arrived, but Sarah had been following our progress on the map and knew we weren't anywhere near our destination. So she firmly told them to keep going, which they did for a bit more. Again we knew it wasn't right, but by now we were at a major landmark, and so could make our own way. We hopped out of the jeep, grabbed our bags and told the lads we weren't paying them a cent, which they seemed to just accept (I thought Sarah had originally offered them too much money anyway, but in the end it cost us nothing!).

So we strolled the remaining 5 minutes to a guesthouse recommended in the book. Sarah was a bit flustered after the whole tout experience, and just wanted to take this place straight away, but I ran into a place literally across the road. It turned out to be 60% cheaper, so ignoring Sarah's protests we went there. It (the Peacock Hotel), turned out to be a fine place - Sarah was just worried that they would hassle us to do a camel safari with them, but they didn't.

So settled in and showered, we had a great lunch at the fancy Saffron restaurant just down the road, and then checked out a few places for camel safaris. They're all pretty much the same of course, so we went with the people Sarah had originally wanted to stay with, thereby spreading our custom around a bit.

Next day we hired bikes in the morning, and the first stop was breakfast at a nice Tibetan restaurant within the grounds of the town's famous fort. The views from here were fantastic, and after our momo snack it was back on the bikes and using the Internet to check out onward train options. With the train information (www.cleartrip.com is a really great site!), Sarah rode out to the station to book the tickets (there are no direct trains from Jaisalmer to Bharatpur so we had to change at Jaipur). After the internet, I rode out to meet Sarah at the station, where she had the tickets all sorted and was chatting to a strange English traveller.

Then it was a leisurely ride out to a couple of local dusty museums and a very picturesque lake, before heading back to the fort and checking it out properly. We didn't bother with the steep entrance price for the museum itself, as we've seen loads of them now, so instead we parked the bikes and just strolled around the fort and explored the little alleyways, laneways and viewpoints along the ramparts. We stopped off for a lovely refreshing beer at one of the rooftop restaurants overlooking some Jain temples before heading back to the bikes. Sarah was tired at this stage and just headed back, while I rode out to a viewpoint up a hill.

The viewpoint was completely deserted when I arrive, and was lovely and peaceful. But as sunset approached small groups of tourists arrived (having been ferried up in air-conditioned vans of course), for their alloted viewing opportunity before being herded off again. Meanwhile I chatted with a group of local kids who had been playing cricket nearby. They never asked for a rupee or a school pen, and it was great just messing about with them before they all headed off for their dinners.

After leaving back the bike, we had dinner that night in the fancy Trio restaurant, again just down the road from our hotel, before an early night.

Next morning was an early start for our desert camel safari. We walked up the road to leave our rucksacks in storage, met the other 2 couples (1 French, 1 English), loaded ourselves into the jeep and drove off for about an hour to meet our camels (nobody was interested in stopping off at cenotaphs on the way).

The camels just happened to be waiting for us on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, and about 5 minutes after stopping we were all aboard our camels and on our way. You don't need much by way of instruction for camel riding, and I really found it much more comfortable than horse-riding, although that impression is probably helped by the heavily padded saddles they use.

Basically that day and the next were pretty identical. We'd ride for 1.5 hours, then stop for a rest, having lunch after the second stop. Lunch would be followed by a long rest period during the hottest part of the day, and then we'd ride again for another 2 jaunts of 1.5 hours.

Mostly we just ambled along at a walking pace, occasionally going into a cantor, which again was much more comfortable and stable-feeling that horse-riding. I just happened to be on the lead camel, Mr. Buddha (an appropriate name for my camel I thought), most of the time, with Sarah leading twice. This gave me the great advantage of having unobstructed vistas in front of me the whole time, and I really enjoyed the peace and tranquilty of the desert landscapes (apart from the guide's occasional 'singing', which was actually quite cool). We only encountered pure sand dunes a few times, and had lots of changing conditions from scrub, to rocks and stones, to gravel and sparse trees, but most importantly we very rarely saw any humans, or signs of humans, and never saw any other tourist groups at all.

The first evening we camped literally on the side of some sand dunes not long before dark, sipping a couple of beers from a guy who just appeared out of nowhere on his camel. That night started with clear skies, and the stars were out in abundance, although we had a quarter moon which was quite bright. By the time the moon set, the sky had clouded over, so we never got a really dazzling display of stars. We all got to see a number of satellites though, and a few shooting stars (the last of which was the brightest and longest-living shooting star I've ever seen!).

The next day everyone was pretty saddle-sore (the English guy, Rhys, had to walk for large stretches), but I didn't find it too bad - it reminded me of the aches and pains I always associate with skiing. Overall I really enjoyed the 2-days, and although 2 days was enough, it wouldn't have taken much to push into another few days.

So right on time at 6pm our pickup jeep arrived and dropped us back to our hotel. We had a lovely dinner chatting with the English couple at Saffron again (they plan on starting their own business when they get back to England, so the chat was getting all 'meaning of lifey', which I love). Then it was back to the hotel for a free transfer to the train station for our overnight trip back to Jaipur and onward to Bharatpur.

Jodhpur

2009-03-29T06:39:00.001-07:00

The plan was to only spend a couple of days in Jodhpur, as apparently the only major sight is it's fort. So my plan was to get accommodation near the train station to make it convenient for booking our onward journey, and for getting the train when the time came.

It turned out that the guidebook gave the wrong location for a guesthouse (that's happened a few times now, and is extremely frustrating, as finding a place in 3rd-world countries with no street name signs is difficult at the best of times), so I spent a very frustrating hour walking up and down the road near the train station looking for a place to stay (the other nearby place that the books recommended was full, the first time we've encountered a full hotel in India). Sarah eventually haggled another hotel down to a good price and we just settled in there (Hotel Sheeva, right across from the train station).

The rest of that afternoon we just checked out the town a bit, getting a lovely tasty local Makhania Lassi from Mishri Lal beside the clock tower. But the city all seemed much more run-down than other Indian towns we've been through, and so I was happy with my decision to leave on a train once we'd checked out the local fort.

Next morning we got a lovely breakfast around the corner from our hotel at Midtown, and then strolled all the way through the bazaars and up the hill to the fort. The entrance fee for the fort includes an audio guide, and this turned out (as both books rightly mentioned), to be a really fantastic guide. Normally I'll avoid guides (human or audio), like the plague, as usually you have to really concentrate to understand their bad English, or else they move along really slowly (waiting for some Epsilon to catch up), or else their commentary is just really boring (seeing as how they have to iterate it 5 times a day, every day). But this audio guide was a revelation - the writing was superbly eloquent, it was interwoven with quotes from current princes and the current Maharaja and the narrator's voice was prefectly clear and a genuine joy to listen to (it ranked up there with Richard Burton on the 'War of the Worlds' album as the most beautiful spoken voice I've ever heard, or as captivating as the posh voice on the Orb's 'Land of Green Ginger'!).

So after our few relaxing hours strolling around the mightily impressive fort we walked to the nearby Jaswant Thanda site. This is a beautiful pillared marble memorial that gives probably the best views of the fort itself (the incredible scale of the walls of the fort are hard to appreciate when your right up against them). From here I took a shortcut back to the clocktower centre (while I had to listen to the Negator trying to dissuade me from any deviation from the map - we were fine!), for another saffron lassi at the cool, buzzy Mishri Lal.

Next it was a stroll to the Umaid Gardens, popping into the small, rather decrepit museum before making our way to one of the local fancy hotels, the Ajit Bhawan. It wasn't a great looking place, but the restaurant looked nice, and the menu was surprisingly cheap. But from here it was a quick rickshaw ride to the really famous local hotel, the Umaid Bhawan Palace.

Here we first visited the small museum, and then tried to get into the hotel itself. Again this is a gated complex, and really you need a reservation. This is because the place is a major tourist attraction in it's own right, but being such a high-class hotel, they don't want scummy backpackers walking around. But I think because it's low-season, and the hotel was very quite we managed to wrangle our way in by simply following behind 2 other tourists.

It really is a very impressive place, although I think the Lonely Planet is right when it suggests that many guests have found it overbearing. It's all dark corridors and huge marble entrances, but the staff were few and far between, which meant we could stroll about at our leisure without getting hassled or asked for our room number!

The restaurant had a 3000 rupee minimum order per person, which was a real pity, as I would have stayed and eaten there otherwise (even from the expensive al-a-carte menu what I wanted to order only amounted to 2000 rupee max). The restaurant was completely empty anyway, and didn't look all that special, so I wasn't too disappointed. Instead we walked back to the Ajit Bhawan and had a great dinner there. I was tempted to get the buffet, but I managed to stick to my no-buffet rule, and I wasn't disappointed!

So after that it was back to our hotel (and some unwelcome guests of the rodent variety!), but up early to catch the train at 5:15am. At the station it turned out that our train was 2 hours late, by far our largest delay so far. Not only that, but when the train arrived it was mayhem in our carriage and people were sitting in our reserved seats.

The occupants of our seats didn't speak any English (or at least acted like they didn't), but another passenger did, and he seemed to be trying to get the people out of our seats, but to no avail - just blank stares and nodding heads. A bit later though everyone just squished up together and made room for us to squeeze in, so it was a fairly comfortable few hours before more passengers disembarked and we eventually had plenty of room on our seats for the rest of the journey to the desert town of Jaisalmer.

Udaipur

2009-03-24T08:10:00.000-07:00

We arrived early in Udaipur, about 6:30am, too early it seemed for the pre-paid rickshaw office, which was closed. So we had to haggle with the rickshaw drivers as usual, but it was easy enough. 15 minutes later we had checked out the Panorama Hotel, and we got a lovely room for a great price.

After settling in and having a couple of hours sleep (neither of us slept very well on the overnight train) I went out to explore the town while Sarah relaxed in the fantastically located roof-top restaurant and read her book. That evening we caught the cultural show in the ''. Normally I'd avoid should a 'show' at all costs, but the books recommended it, it was less than an hour long (a major boon!), and it was in a lovely building so I thought I'd give it a go.

It turned out to be a really good show. Each act was short and very professionally done. I think it's important to keep the acts of these shows short, since obviously foreign tourists can't understand the lyrics of the songs, or the meaning of many of the intricate dance moves. So these acts were great in that they were short and of course all the dancers and musicans were mad colourful. The last act was a bit circus-y, an 'auld wan balancing big dishes on her head, but even that dance had a ring of authenticity to it.

Udaipur is a famous tourist destination, and much more understandably so than Jaipur in my opinion. It's centrepiece is a large lake with a couple of small islands, one having a world-famous hotel (The Lake Palace) and the other a temple and old palace. The town is built up on hillsides around the lake, with all the hotels and restaurants trying to build higher and higher to provide views of the lake. It gives the town a kinda crazy, haphazard appearance, but it all works and is very impressive, especially at sunset, and from the great viewpoint of our hotel's restaurant.

The town is also 'famous' for being the setting for the first half of the James Bond movie Octopussy, and therefore many of the restaurants show the movie every night. We watched it our first night, but of the course the DVD was desperately poor quality, and juddered to a halt about 45-minutes before the end (just as you're well and truly into the story).

I was keen to try the restaurant in the famous Lake Palace hotel on the island but our hotel owner told us they no longer accept non-residents at the restaurant. But the town has plenty of other fine restaurants, and that first night we ate really well at the Whistling Teal, where I'd had a great coffee earlier that day.

The next day we rented bicycles (no problem finding the bike hire place here!), and our first stop was the City Palace. This is a very impressive museum set inside the old Royal Palace, and it took a very pleasant couple of hours to stroll around checking out the murals, mosaics, courtyards and artworks. Then back on the bikes we checked out the bus station to see about getting a bus to Jodhpur (there is no train service between the towns).

After riding around a good bit looking for a famous local restaurant (and failing, and then later reading the other guidebook which gave proper directions to the 'fiendishly difficult to find' Natraj), I had a great lunch in Parkview. Poor Sarah was feeling a bit dicky (first time in nearly 2 months in India), so she just picked at my curry after ordering soup.

Then it was back on the bikes and exploring around the surrounding lakes for a couple of hours, as it was lovely day. Then we rode out to try and find another famous hotel to check it out, like I always do with the mad fancy places, but it was a gated resort place that wouldn't let us in without a reservation.

The plan had been to leave the following morning on the bus, but after I'd booked it Sarah reckoned she'd really rather wait another day in Udiapur to allow her tummy recover a bit more. It was a trivial phone call to change the bus booking, and so we had the whole next day to relax. This was spent by Sarah reading her book in bed, while I read in the restaurant, then rented a bike to head out for lunch at Natraj, the place I couldn't find a couple of days earlier.

Again the guidebooks were spot-on in describing a fantastically characterful local eatery. This place had no menu at all, and as soon as I sat at a table (the only one available during the lunch-hour rush), the waiters approached from all sides with trays of thali dishes, chappatis, curd, rice, pakoras, etc. It was certainly one of the best thali's I've had in India I reckon (although the number of times I've said 'this is the best place yet!' to myself just keeps on increasing...). So stuffed after my enormous delicious lunch I explored the town a bit more on the bike, sorted out more money, and headed back to the hotel. I just spent the rest of the afternoon reading and chilling on the roof-top again, and then went for a big stroll that evening to catch the sunset at a hilltop facing the lake (and on the way back I tried to get into the Sunset Terrace bar in another very fancy hotel, but they had a silly cover-charge thing, so I didn't bother).

Next morning Sarah was feeling tip-top again (in fact, she'd been fine the whole previous day too, but it was better to be on the safe side, and it was nice to relax in our lovely hotel for another day anyway). We got a rickshaw to the bus stand and boarded our super-comfy bus (which was the first proper sleeper-class bus I've ever been on, although we didn't have berths we just had normal big seats (3-abreast)). The bus left spot on time and we arrived in Jodhpur an effortless 7 hours later.

Jaipur, the Pink City

2009-03-22T05:10:00.000-07:00

It was a quick and easy 2-hour train journey to Jaipur, spent chatting to a friendly sari shop owner. Sarah initially thought we could walk to the accommodation area, but after a few minutes she realised the scale on the map and we got a rickshaw to a recommended hotel (the driver was a really genuinely nice guy, with good English and no scamming!). As usual we ended up staying at a cheaper place just down the road (not in the guidebooks of course), and it was another lovely spot (Meena Hotel, just down from the Evergreen).

I really wanted to hire bicycles to explore the city, as it's a bit too spread out to explore easily on foot. But in 3 days we never managed to find a place that hired bikes out, and that was after asking numerous hotels and 2 tourist offices - it seems all tourists are lazy bums who must get rickshaws everywhere.

Our first day we did the walking tour mentioned in the Lonely Planet, which took in some of the main sights, although we didn't 'do' any of the museums as it was getting a bit late in the afternoon.

The following day was a late start, but after a delicious lassi (a cool yogurt drink) at the famous local Lassiwalla, we didn't really get up to much really. We checked out the Hawa Mahal and looked at the observatory while avoiding the rain (we didn't bother paying the entrance fee as you could see all of the instruments from the gift shop!), and just using the Internet and having a few drinks that night in 'Bouncers' after a great dinner of Lal Maas in the fancy Niro's.

Our last day in Jaipur was the most frustrating (we had the whole day as our train to Udaipur was at 10:35pm). After a great start of lunch at Handi (sister restaurant to the next-door, and more expensive, Copper Chimney, and even better I thought), I spent hours walking around trying to find a bike-hire place, but again to no avail (the Rough Guide mentioned a place, giving the address, but the street wasn't marked on their map. I later found the street marked on the Lonely Planet map, and we had been really close - d'oh!). After I eventually gave up in frustration we got a local bus a couple of kilometers to the base of the monkey temple, and climbed up there. It had great views of the city, and lots of cheeky monkeys of course, and at least we felt we'd achieved something with the day.

All-in-all, I wasn't that impressed with Jaipur really. I don't know what I was expecting exactly, but it's always listed as a highlight of Rajasthan, and Rajasthan is always listed as a highlight of India. But for me it was too spread out to explore easily (a bike would have helped enormously of course), and the architectural sights weren't that impressive. As for it being 'The Pink City', I didn't get much impression of that either - mostly it just seemed the usual grubby Indian city to me. But for all that, the restaurants were great!

Anyway, after the Monkey Temple, it was another local bus to the centre, back to the internet place where Sarah had left her MP3 player (they still had it luckily), and then a coffee place to read the papers and relax for a bit. Having so much time to spare we walked to the train station, but on arriving discovered the train was 45 minutes delayed. But it pulled out after only10 minutes and made up time on the way and we arrived in Udaipur pretty much on time.

The train was frustrating for me though, as I couldn't get to sleep for ages. Firstly there was confusion over the sleeping berths for some reason, with the seats numbers being overridden with chalk, but the ticket inspector guy sorted all that out.

Although it was a sleeper carriage, and everyone went straight to bed, I had a young kid and his dad next to me and they continued talking until 2am. They seemed to take no notice of the fact that everyone else was trying to sleep, as they talked loudly, normally and continuously. If I had been anywhere in the West I would have quickly told them to shut the hell up, but the fact was I was in India. Here, as in many 3rd-world countries, local people seem to be completely surrounded by noise their entire lives, and so seem to be able to sleep under any noise conditions. So I reckoned these 2 had no concept of respecting other people's desire to peace and quiet as they slept, as nobody but me in that carriage actually needed peace and quiet to sleep.

So instead of getting really mad and shouting at them to shut up, I tried to meditate on the cultural differences of India and tell myself that my increasing anger was just being self-created - but alas, to no avail - I still couldn't sleep and was slowly been driven demented! They eventually shut up and went to sleep at 2am, and after a bit longer I drifted off. I suppose I could have tried asking them nicely to be quiet, but I doubted that they'd understand, and I would have just frustrated myself even more trying to explain why I had a problem.

So at 7am or so the train pulled into Udaipur. It was the last stop for the train, so I stayed 'in bed' (sleeper class is just a comfy bunk really) right until the train stopped, and then we just hopped off and started the usual rigmarole to sort out somewhere to stay.

Sawai Madhopur - gateway to Ranthambore

2009-03-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

Sawai Madhopur is a very basic Indian town really, and the vast majority of tourists seem to stay a bit outside the town, on the road to the national park in expensive resort hotels. Obviously that didn't much appeal to me, so on walking out of the train station I popped into the first decent looking hotel I saw and managed to negotiate a great price for a lovely room.

This was a stroke of luck as our guidebooks gave no map of the town and strolling around a strange town looking for a hotel with no map is no fun. This way we didn't have to lug our rucksacks around town, we didn't have to haggle with a rickshaw driver and we were right in the centre of town and beside the train station for when we moved on.

So settled in there the next priority was to check out getting on a tour of the park. I checked in our hotel and then at the tourist office in the train station, and both told me it would be no problem getting a tour the next morning by just arriving at the official booking office. So 5:30am the next morning we get a rickshaw to the booking office, and after queuing up with the local touts who buy tickets for the guests at the resorts, I manage to book a jeep safari leaving in an hour. The guidebooks both said that 6-seater jeep safaris are much more expensive and much more difficult to get than the 20-seater canter trucks, but things must have changed recently as I had no problem at all getting a jeep, and it was only marginally more expensive than a truck (or again, it was just our timing in coming towards the end of the season).

So after a bite of breakfast we headed off in our very comfy, open and modern jeep (which was incredibly quiet too, unlike the huge canters that are really buses!). We stopped off at one of the luxury resorts to pick up the other 4 tourists, a Canadian family of 4. This was their 3rd safari trip in Ranthambore, and they were very keen to see a tiger, which the park is famous for. I think they said everyone else at their hotel had spotted tigers the day before, but they hadn't.

The safari was 3-hours long, and was through beautiful scenery, but although our driver certainly seemed very keen to find a tiger (waiting for long stretches at specific locations, and circumnavigating the same route 3 times, much to the annoyance of the Canadian wife!), we never spotted a tiger. I didn't mind in the slightest really, as I never thought you'd have much chance of spotting one, and anyway I really enjoyed the park and the other wildlife we saw, such as small crocodiles, lots of deer and antelope, lots of birds and a huge stripey hyena that ran right across the road in front of us before we'd even picked up the Canadians.

On the way back from the safari myself and Sarah hopped out of the jeep to explore the huge fortress that overlooks the entrance to the park. I had planned on exploring the fort for a couple of hours before heading back to the booking office to try and book another safari for the afternoon (the park has 8 zones, so I wanted to try a different zone to see a bit more of the park).

The fortress is pretty impressive in itself, but really it's location is just fantastic, as it's built on the edge of high cliffs. At the top we found a lovely secluded spot to sit, have a bite to eat and just soak up the view of the lakes in the park. The fort also has a famous Hindu temple, and it happened to be a holy day for that temple, so lots of local pilgrims were visiting (as well as hundreds of monkeys, more than I've ever seen in one place before).

To get back to the booking office we had to hop into an extremely crowded jeep with all the pilgrims (I counted 20 people in the 8-seater jeep, all very 'African'), and they dropped us off at the office on their way back to the town. Again I had no trouble booking a jeep, and in fact we ended up sharing with the same Canadian family again.

So after a lovely lunch across the road from the booking office, we hopped into another jeep, picked up the Canadians again at their hotel and went off looking for tigers again. This time, amazingly, we got lucky and actually managed to spot 2 wild tigers.

It wasn't a great sighting though I have to say, as the tigers (they were 2 young adults) were quite a distance away. Our guide reckoned they were waiting in a cave for their mother who was out hunting. He pointed out the tigers to me at first, but all I could make out was a very faint orangey smudge. Eventually I managed to borrow a pair of binoculars from the jeep beside us (they were very reluctant to give them away), and with them I could just about make out unmistakable tiger-ness markings, but no discernible body parts!

I was standing up on the back seat of the jeep, and the other people in our jeep kept moving, so I couldn't keep the powerful binoculars steady, but I was sure I was looking at a tiger. We all stayed staring at the distance smudges for what seemed like ages, but our guide kept telling us to wait until the tigers moved. And the amazing thing was that once a tiger did move, just by turning it's head, lying down or sitting up, or even just shaking it's head, what had been a smudge suddenly became discernible as a real live tiger, as clear as day. It was really weird how your vision seemed to adjust, but by the time we left we had all gotten what we considered a good view of at least one of the tigers - and by that stage there were about 10 jeeps and trucks all crowding around trying to see (we were lucky to have been the third vehicle at the scene).

So after that we spent some more time looking for tigers, but to no avail, although again the landscapes were beautiful. We then dropped off the lovely Canadian family (who incidentally had discovered after their 3rd safari that their hotel was charging them literally double the real safari price, and so the father, who needless to say was a tad peeved, booked their 4th and successful safari directly himself. How many other tourists never get to find out just how much they are being ripped off though...?).

We had to walk back to the town from the booking office, as there were no rickshaws or taxis. Literally everyone else on the safaris was staying at the resorts and got dropped off on the way back to the booking office. It was a nice walk though and after booking train tickets for the next day to Jaipur we got another really tasty dinner at the Asha Hotel.

Detour to Sawai Madhopur

2009-03-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

Although I've loved all our Indian train journeys so far, they were all 2nd class air-conditioned, whereas all we could get for this trip was 'Sleeper' class which is more crowded and has no air-conditioning (this route North of Goa is one of the busiest in India). In fact I was quite looking forward to a more 'real' Indian train experience, as far more local people travel 'Sleeper' class than the a/c classes.

And it turned out to be a great trip. One advantage of sleeper-class is that there is no glass in the windows - the a/c classes, of course, must have windows, but they are heavily tinted, which reduces the visibility of the passing landscapes. At this time of year the weather is still very pleasant and so a/c isn't really necessary, and so the whole trip during the day was fine. I didn't really notice the extra people in the carriage either, so all-in-all I reckon sleeper-class was a great choice (and about a third of the price).

After a pretty good sleep (you don't get bedding including and I didn't really wrap up properly), we had the whole morning to travel up to Jaipur. On the way I was reading the guidebook when I realised that the train was most probably going to pass by a town next to Ranthambore National Park. This was a place I wanted to visit, but hadn't realised the train would pass through here on the way to Jaipur. I quickly made up my mind to hop off the train at Sawai Mahopur and check out the nearby park.

Panjim

2009-03-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

The local buses depart Palolem just up a short road from the beach, and when we got there the local boys tell us the bus will leave in about 20 minutes - which as usual was just enough time to pop across the road to a miniscule local hole-in-wall that served up a really tasty dal and bread breakfast for 10 Rupees.

The bus pottered up to Canaconda where we waited for 5 minutes before continuing up the road to Margao, where we had to change to another bus for Panjim. All-in-all it took about 2.5 hours to get Panjim, but only because the buses kept picking up and dropping off people.

At the bus station in Panjim I had to use a bit of guesswork to decide which direction to walk to the accommodation, but luckily I guessed right and within 5 minutes we crossed a footbridge and were in the Fontainhas district.

The guidebooks both highly recommended a Portuguese restaurant that happened to be exactly where we were, so we had lunch there (feijoas of course, just like back in Brazil), before Sarah strolled around looking for a place to stay. The first few places were all relatively expensive, but as usual if you just use the places mentioned in the guidebook as a 'guide' and check out the places beside them, you inevitably find a cheaper, better option. Such was how Sarah found the Relax hotel, a great little spot that was just around the corner. It turned out we were the only guests there for our two nights, and the owners didn't even live there, so we had the whole house to ourselves both days.

That afternoon we strolled about (the LP had a walking tour in it, so we did that), and it really is a lovely little town with a lot of character. That evening we strolled down tothe main square to check out a local parade, which although similar to many we've seen in South America was a lot more colourful and the dancing much more coordinated. The parade was quite slow moving though, so after a bit we headed off for dinner at another recommended place, Viva Panjim, which was a real gem. It's a really homely place with a friendly lady owner, and in fact we went back the next night too.

The following day I rented another scooter, and after checking out the promenade and the Media centre on the waterfront of the town I drove the 10km to Old Goa.

This is a very impressive collection of old Portuguese and older ruins, churches and cathedrals, and having the scooter to scoot about the spread-out site was fantastic.

Then it was back to Panjim, for lunch at the fancy Pan-e-shari hotel before heading off North to check out some more of Goa's famous beaches.

First stop was Calangute, and what a shock that was! I thought the beaches of Kerala weren't that great really, but they were idyllic paradises compared to the mayhem on Calagute. Basically it's just the worst example of a Benidorm I could ever imagine - I've never been to Benidorm, and I never want to go, but this was how I imagine it to be. Basically it was hordes of people, about half-and-half Indians and foreign tourists, all lounging out on row after row of sun loungers in front of fairly grotty looking bars. All the foreign tourists seemed very pasty (or burnt), overweight, tattooed and drinking lager.

The beach itself was pretty clean, although driving around would reveal rubbish tips not very far away. The beach was also just dead-straight for miles and miles, so it didn't have any sense of being contained. Access to the beach was via a series of perpendicular streets that were lined with bars, restaurants and shops selling all the usual junk.

All-in-all I thought it was all a bit of a nightmare, and I couldn't help but feel sorry for all the idiot tourists who were presumably paying through the nose for resort accommodation that must have been a good distance from the beach (I didn't see any beach shacks on the beach at all, just bars and resturants), and then have to share a boring beach with millions of other tourists on a beach covered with sun loungers. If those same people had investigated Goa just a little bit (by reading any guidebook maybe), they could have seen that just an hour in a taxi would have taken them to a truly idyllic beach where everything was a fraction of the cost. Of course, it's just the fear and paranoia of the unknown and pure laziness I suppose, so I guess they get what they ask for.

Anyway, the rest of the afternoon was spent just cruising up the coast from beach to beach, and in fairness the further north I went the better the beaches seemed to become. Apparently one of the best unspoilt beaches in Goa is Arambol, but unfortunately I didn't have time to head all the way up there, only getting as far as Vagator. But I must say I was really delighteed to have stayed as long as I did on Palolem beach, as from what I could see in passing through, it was by far the best beach that I saw in Goa.

So after watching the paragliders over Vagator for a bit it was a straight run back to Panjim, after one more beach stop at Candolim to check out the huge shipwreck literally only a couple of hundred metres off the coast. Again the timing was just about right, getting back just as it got dark, and after a quick shower back at the hotel it was dinner at Viva Panjim again.

Next morning was an early local bus back to Margao, then a rickshaw to the station to catch the train for our 27 hour journey up to Jaipur in Rajasthan.

Exploring South Goa a bit

2009-03-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

The long day exploring with the scooter turned out to be a really fantastic day. The bike I got was in great condition, so I was easily able to overtake most other traffic, not that there was much, and the bike had no problem with the few hills since the roads were in great condition (they're were even plenty of helpful signposts along the way).

It was a frustrating search for the petrol station at the start of the day (they never give you petrol when you rent a bike, and the guy who gave me the bike gave me crappy directions), but once fuelled up it was easy to find Agonda beach. Agonda is another stunning stretch of beach, much less developed than Palolem, with the same restrictions on concrete development, but with the shacks and huts far more spaced out. I actually thought Palolem was a tad nicer though, due to it's beautiful line of tall palm trees, but during the real high season I'm sure Agonda is a hell of a lot more peaceful.

So after a quick swim and a lovely curry breakfast it was back on the scooter to move on up the coast. The road from Agonda was just stunning, and I had to stop and take a couple of videos before we arrived just up the coast at Kola beach. Kola is only very briefly mentioned in one of our guidebooks, although it lists it as a top-five hidden beach. It turned out to be simply THE most idyllic beach I've ever seen! It's at the end of a pretty bad stretch of road and it's actually two small crescent beaches, connected with the usual little rocky outcrop.

One of those beaches (the more stunningly scenic one), is actually private with just one accommodation option that is owned and run by a package company (so we couldn't even buy a drink there). The first tiny beach also has very little development, mainly the Blue Lagoon Resort, and the prices for luxury tents (R900) and huts (Rs700) where very reasonable really (our ensuite hut with mozzy net on Palolem was just Rs200 a night though). When I come to Goa again (not 'if' of course), I like the idea of spending a few days here first, and then maybe moving on to Palolem or Agonda which have a lot more life, and choice of restaurants.

So after that quick pit stop it back on the bike and up to Cabo da Rama, which is an old fort build on a headland. There wasn't a lot to see here, just the remains of the fort's ramparts, although it did give good views out to sea and distant beaches. There was a lovely looking walk to a smaller headland further out, but Sarah had gone back to the bike due to the heat and she'd taken the water, so I didn't bother to hike out to check it out.

Back on the bike and up to the big town of Margao to try and book train tickets up to Rajastan. I knew this was going to be difficult, as the stretch from Goa up North is one of the most oversubscribed routes in India, and from checking online I could see that all the comfy class seats were already long gone. Anyway, after the usual stressful waiting in line, and then checking at the enquiry counter it turns out that we can waitlisted for 'sleeper' class seats. These are not air-conditioned and you aren't provided with bedding and is more cramped than what we've had before, but it was all that was available, so of course I took it. Luckily it means we can bypass Mumbai completely and get a single train all the way up to Jaipur. I didn't fancy spending time and effort getting accommodation in Mumbai, as the guidebooks say it's a messy and expensive city, and anyway I want to get up to Nepal fairly quickly to catch the Spring season there.

So much relieved to have our train tickets sorted (being 'waitlisted' doesn't guarantee a seat, and I'm still a bit confused by the Tatkal system, but both the ticket lady and a friendly guy in the queue both told us we had excellent chances as we were numbers 1 and 2), we just about had enough time to check out a couple of more beaches and so I headed back to the coast towards Benaulim.

I got a wee bit lost on the way though, and actually ended up at Varca beach. This is almost entirely run by big concrete resorts though, so after not even seening the beach itself I set off to find Benaulim, which is just up the coast. This was a nice beach, although just dead straight for as far as the eye can see, so in that regard not as pretty as the gently curving Palolem.

By this stage is getting late and I thought I'd have to drive in the dark for a bit, but it turned out that I'd timed things just about perfectly and we arrived back in Palolem just as the sun was setting. I missed the actual sunset itself, as I did every evening until the very last night - to see it set over the sea (as opposed to over a small headland), you have to swim out a couple of hundred meters and time it properly.

With the train tickets sorted out we knew exactly how much time we had left, and so decided to spend one more day lazing around on Palolem beach just doing nothing at all but swim, read, eat and drink. That left us two full days to explore around the state capital of Panjim, and the following morning we made our way there by local bus.

Beaches of Goa - Palolem

2009-03-14T05:38:00.001-07:00

Well, the ' luxurious Rajdhani Express' actually turned out to be exactly the same as all the other trains we've gotten in India, but of course they've all been great and so this was no different.

It was a late start (about 22:30 I think), so we both just got onboard, made our beds and pretty much went straight to sleep. Because this train was an Express it meant it made far fewer stops, and resulted in us overshooting our intended destination of Palolem. So when we arrived at Margao we needed to get local transport to backtrack south a little.

At first I was making my way to the pre-paid taxi rank to get a rickshaw to the bus station, when a couple of motorbike taxi touts approached us. I haven't seen too many of these guys in India, but I've used them quite a lot in Asia before, so I decided to give them a go (and they're much more fun than a taxi or rickshaw for short trips anyway). Sure enough the boys leave us on the side a fairly non-descript road telling us that buses to Palolem stop there, and after checking with a nearby traffic cop it turns out they weren't lying.

So a few minutes later the local bus arrives, and we luckily get seats and off we go to Palolem beach (the bus wasn't direct in fact, but the transfer at Chaudi was literally instantaneous, as usual!).

I was unsure about what to expect from the Goan beaches after the experiences of Kerala (which I thought weren't great). But immediately on arriving on Palolem beach it was clear that the Goan's have a much better idea of how to manage an idyllic beach. The locals have managed (by fighting hard apparently) to prevent any large-scale developments anywhere on the beach. It has resulted in only shacks and huts being built right on the beach, the tallest of which are only two stories, and none of which reach even half-way as high as the unbroken line of palm trees that lie just behind them.

The beach itself was spotlessly clean too and curves gently along it's 2km length, terminating at both ends in rocky headlands covered in forest. It really is a fantastic beach, and certainly ranks up there among the best I've ever seen. It is quite developed though, as the restaurants and huts cover almost the entire length of beach, but due to the lack of concrete and building height it really doesn't seem that developed at all.

Also, I think we timed our arrival really well (not that any thought went into it), as there really weren't many tourists around at all (it's still high-season, but right towards the end, and the Mumbai bombings probably have 'helped' in that regard too I suppose). That meant we had no trouble getting cheap-as-chips accommodation right on the beach itself, and everyday feeling like we had large swathes of beach just to ourselves. We stayed at Janisha, which is just a collection of shacks with a lovely restaurant where we ate regularly. They provided a few sun chairs and umbrellas in front, nestling amongst the many small outrigger fishing boats that would be parked up on the sand during the day. On the two occasions I managed to get out of bed early enough, I got to see those same fishermen unloading and sorting their nightly catches as I walked past them into the sea for my morning swim.

So the original plan was to settle in Palolem and then quickly rent a scooter and check out some of the other beaches in Goa to find the best place to settle down for a bit (I was also kinda waiting to see if a mate of mine, Emmet, would be able to fly over to Goa to meet up, as he was working in Bangalore for a couple of weeks - turned out his work went a bit pear-shaped and he couldn't make it). But I just relaxed so much, and so quickly, on Palolem that it was three days before I'd even walked the full length of the beach itself (Palolem actually bleeds over a headland into Patnem beach, which bleeds over another headland into Rajbag beach, so in total it's a few kilometers long).

On the fifth day on the beach I got word that Emmet wouldn't be making it, and so the following day I finally rented that scooter to check out the region a bit.

Cochin

2009-03-04T03:34:00.000-08:00

Seeing as how this train journey was only 4 hours, and during daylight, I just booked us seats in the normal seating class (which has no air conditioning, but of course was super-cheap). After a bit of a panic trying to work out where our carriage was (the trains are generally huge and you have no idea which direction to start walking), we finally find the right one and settle in.

The journey was through some lovely landscapes of rice paddy fields, palm tree forests and backwater canals, and we arrived in Cochin pretty much on time. It was a bit of an ordeal trying to work out how to get a bus into the town centre (the bus destinations were all written in Hindi script), so we just got a rickshaw and asked him to drop us at the ferry terminal. He dropped us at the wrong terminal of course, so it was a bit of a stressful hike to get to where we wanted to go as it was seriously hot and humid. But thankfully the second place I tried turned out to be nice and the cheapest yet (about 3 Euro a night!).

So that first day was just strolling about and checking out the local part of town, the only things of note being the small but good Durbar Hall Art Gallery and finding yet another great local restaurant (upstairs in delicious air-con at Bimbi's).

That evening we finally got to see 'Slumdog Millionaire', which probably makes us the last people in the world to have seen it (I think literally every time I read an English-language newspaper here there is some mention of the 'Slumdog' movie, either slating it for painting India in a bad light, or singing the praises of the actors and producers). We made sure that it was the English version, but of course they didn't subtitle the Hindi parts of the movie, but it wasn't hard to get the jist of things really. I must say it was kinda cool to see all the images of India and recognising lots of them (like the trains, the litter everywhere, the stinking, rotten waterways and the general colour of everything). I thought the movie was good, but a bit surprised to think it won 'Best Picture'.

Our cinema was typically Indian though apparently, with about 6 mobile phones going off (and people answering them and talking!), and a fair bit of cheering and shouting from below us in the stalls (we were up in the balcony). Apparently during Bollywood movies the crowds can get very raucous, so it's just par for the course, and certainly didn't disturb the movie for me.

Next day (after brekkie at the local Indian Coffee House), we got the ferry across to Cochin's main tourist attraction, the area of Fort Cochin. The ferry stops were a bit unclear, so we ended up getting off at Jew Town and exploring from there. It's a lovely area of higgledy-piggledy spice and antique shops (one of which has a fantastically spectacular Snake boat, which really belongs in a National Museum!), and after the synagogue and the Mattancherry Palace (with it's impressive murals), we strolled to the Jain temple and then into the town centre. We popped into the Santa Cruz Cathedral that has fantastic interior decoration and then a nice modern cafe for lunch before checking out the mad Chinese fishing nets. Also strolled about the Brunton Boatyard hotel, which was all nicely fancy (and the restaurant had one of the most expensive menus I've seen in India, although the decor was decidedly plain, and there was no view to speak of).

Then we hopped on a bus back to the town to get to the train station to book our onward journey. This turned out to be the first real headache I've had to endure in India, as the trains I wanted to book (which I'd checked first online), were all full. It was stressful because the ticket queues have people crowding around you and you feel forced to make a decision immediately. But there were lots of options of various trains, various destinations and various seating options, and I couldn't understand the guy's English at the enquiry-desk, and people were constantly pushing past me, so it was just hectic.

In the end I had to book an expensive overnight train 2 days in advance. It means we don't get to see any scenery (travel only at night), but at least we arrive at a reasonable hour (10am). It gave us two more full days in Cochin, which is more than I wanted, but it's certainly not the worst place to be stuck for a day or two.

Next day I picking up my camera, which I'd left into a repair place to investigate getting fixed. It turned out there were 2 problems, the first was trivial to fix (the camera wasn't powering-up into photo-taking mode), but the second would require an expensive new shutter, so I skipped that expense hoping the camera will kinda work well enough - which it seems to be. Then we hopped on a bus to a nearby town to see a palace.

We had to walk a couple of kilometers from the town to the palace, but it was cooler today thank god. The palace was pretty good, with an interesting cage they used to kill people in (apparently picked alive by birds whilst hanging in the cage from the limb of a tree!), and nice big executioner's knives. After a nice thali lunch there and a stroll around the small deer park and dusty heritage museum we hopped on a bus back to town (that of course pulled up as we exitted the palace grounds). But we needed to get another bus to take us back to our hotel-area (after quite a bit of bewildered walking about the bus station asking people 'Excuse me, but where am I?', as as usual there were no street signs, or even a sign to name the bus station we were standing in).

So then it was catching up on the Internet for a couple of hours before dinner in Sealord's. Here again I seemed to taste 'the best curry yet!', as the prawn curry really was delicious, and the exposed roof top setting presented a very welcome cooling breeze.

Next morning was a late start as we had the whole day at our leisure. First was a rickshaw to the train station to leave our rucksacks in left-luggage. Then down the road to another branch of Bimbi's for a fantastic lunchtime thali, then a spot of Internet and then hopped on a bus back to the Fort Cochin area to wile away the afternoon in cafes and sitting on the sea front by the fishing nets.

Then a ferry back to the 'mainland', a stroll to the train station and our 4th overnight train in India, this time on the luxurious Rajdhani Express.

Trivandrum

2009-03-04T02:57:00.000-08:00

We knew the price we'd paid to get to Varkala from the train station, so we weren't going to pay any more for the return, but of course these taxi guys know they have a captive audience. After refusing 3 guys we eventually got a reasonable guy (who probably risked irking the cartel because we'd walked a fair bit from where he might get spotted!). Anyway, he only drives less than half the distance before pulling over in front of a parked bus and tells us that the bus is going our way (to Trivandrum). Of course we don't trust this guy (he's a taxi-driver for god's sake!), so Sarah asks a bus conductor guy. He confirms the bus is going our way, and than another local guy tells us it's leaving in 45 minutes, but then changes his mind and says it's going in 20 minutes.

Sarah says she feels bad about the whole thing and we should just keep going to the bus station as we'd originally agreed, but I think all will be OK. Turns out my intuition was right, and in fact the bus leaves a bit early, and so off we go to Trivandrum. Of course the rickshaw driver had tried to get the full fare we originally agreed, but he'd not even driven half the distance to the agreed destination, so I only gave him 60% of the original fare. He kicked up a bit of a cheeky fuss, which I had no problem ignoring, although Sarah still seems to find these situations confusing!

Anyway, as we arrive in Trivandrum the train station is right in front of us, and we pass my first intended hostel, only 200 metres away. It turns out to one of the nicest places in India so far, and still cheap as chips, the Greenland Lodging.

The whole episode of the journey from Varkala to Trivandrum just seemed to encapsulate just how easy and effortless travelling has been for us in India so far - everything just seems to work like clockwork. In fact, I mentioned this to Roland, and he agreed that he'd experienced much the same, and then we both mentioned it to a Canadian guy, and he reiterated exactly the same thing, so it doesn't seem to be just me and Sarah getting really lucky all the time.

Interestingly both the Canadian guy and Roland both said they were really in two minds about travelling in India independently, and both only did it thinking if things didn't work out they'd jump onto an organised package tour thing. Obviously a tour never even occured to me (the very thought kinda makes me sick in fact!), but both the guys said just how relieved they were that they hadn't gone the tour route. It always pays to fight the Epsilonic fear and paranoia that we all suffer from to some degree, and I was delighted to see these guys getting the payoff from fighting it!

So, having arrived nice and early in Trivandrum we had a shower and strolled out for some lunch. We went around the corner to probably the coolest restaurant building of the trip so far - the local Indian Coffee House. The building is circular and the tables all curve along the inner wall as the aisle slopes it's way up the building. Great food here too, and just ridiculously cheap (the Indian Coffee House is a local Indian chain and I've been to a few now, all bloody good!).

Then we caught a rickshaw to the north of the town to visit a museum and art gallery set nicely in a public park. Both where impressive, especially the Napier museum with a really cool, huge old wooden chariot used in Hindu processions, called a 'rath'.

Ignoring the zoo (been on too many safaris to bother with zoos now!), we had to walk all the way back to the town center due to a huge public demonstration. Apparently they are very common here, as Trivandrum is the state capital, but it was actually pretty cool to be walking along with thousands of demonstrators, even if we had no clue what they were demonstrating about.

That evening I booked train tickets for our next destination, the town of Cochin, and we went to a restaurant beside our hotel. It turned out to be another absolute gem of a place, Arya Niwas, busy with locals and yet more really fantastic food.

The next day I'd kinda planned as a day trip to the nearby beaches of Kovalam. The guidebooks say this town has been completely overrun by package tourists and large hotels, so I didn't want to stay there, just check it out. But first we checked out the area beside the bus station that has an old palace and a famous temple (but like most Hindu temples, non-Hindus aren't allowed in - or as I so eloquently put it to the guard, 'Oh, you don't welcome guests into your temples? Oh, I thought the Muslims were supposed to be the unfriendly ones!' - but I don't think he knew what I was on about. But for the record Muslims do allow non-Muslims guests into their mosques, so long as they're not women of course). Anyway, the Puttan Malika palace was pretty good as the obligitory guide thankfully ran through the place pretty quick (the solid crystal throne was interesting).

As usual it was easy to catch a bus to Kovalam, and it drops you at the gate of the fanciest hotel in the whole area, the Leela Hotel. So naturally I had to check it out, and it really is a very fancy gaff indeed, and one of the rare hotels where the photos on the Internet actually reflect what a place is really like. From here we strolled down to the first of the 4 beaches in the area, and after getting chased off the Leela's exclusive patch of beach (well, we weren't chased, they just asked if we were residents, at which we had to sheepishly wander off), we strolled along the beachfront.

Here again the locals seem to have deliberately uprooted all the trees, as none of the beaches provided any natural shade, so it was a tad tricky for me to have my swims, but I still managed a few during the day. But anyway the beaches weren't all that great really, I think I still rate every beach I get to now in relation to the beaches I went to 10 years ago on my first big trip. Back then all the beaches in Malaysia and Thailand seemed spotlessly clean, with nobody around, with very little concrete developments (just shacks and simple huts) and lots of shady palm trees to hide under, but maybe that's just a case of rose-tinted nostalga glasses.

We stayed the whole day checking out the beaches anyway (and watching a big group of fishermen hauling in a huge fishing net), and had a beer watching the setting sun before running back to catch a bus (for some reason I thought the last bus back was at 5:30pm), which as usual seemed to be waiting just for us, as it pulled off as soon as we boarded. I didn't think Kovalam was much worse than Varkala really, in fact both seemed pretty similar to me, and neither were particularly brilliant.

Dinner that evening was back to the great Arya Niwas before an early night and an early rise the next morning to stroll across the road to the train station for the 4 hour train journey North to Cochin.

Kerala beaches - 1st stop Varkala

2009-03-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

Well, we had to come to the beaches in Kerala as apparently they're famous, so the first stop was Varkala.

It was an easy 2 hour bus ride, yet again our bus leaving within minutes of us arriving at the station. Sarah met a German girl, Iris, on the bus who was going our way so when we arrived we haggled fiercely with a autorickshaw-wallah to take us to the beach. But in this case to no avail (seems to be a price-fixing thing going on), so eventually we got a ride to a recommended hotel near the beach, Bamboo Village. It turned out to be a lovely place, clean and cheap, and so I didn't need to scout out anywhere else.

The beach at Varkala is actually at the base of a large, long, shear, red rock cliff, at the top of which are most of the restaurants and hotels and shops and stuff. We arrived just before sunset, but the sun disappears into dense cloud (or pollution, I don't know which), well before it hits the horizon. But it's definitely a lovely setting, although along many places along the cliff the locals seem to just throw rubbish, which of course piles up into very unsightly heaps (in fact, the rubbish everywhere is probably worse in India than anywhere else I've seen in the world - and the small canals in many of the towns and cities seem practically guaranteed to be incredibly foul-smelling open sewers).

So the next day was beach day proper, for me anyway. Unfortunately there was practically no natural shade anywhere on the beach - in fact, I could only find one small spot that was up a slope a bit, and had a fair bit of rubbish strewn around. Sarah didn't fancy it much, so she just went back to a hammock at our hotel to read, while I stayed huddled under my palm-tree shade. You could rent expensive umbrellas and chairs on the beach, but they were very flimsy affairs, and after getting burnt under a similarly ineffective one in Thailand I didn't fancy risking that again! But swimming in the sea was gorgeous, although in reality the water was probably a bit too warm, so it lacked a bracing refreshment from the heat.

The temperature has been increasing as we've moved South, and it was here that we really started to feel it, although it got even hotter later. Anyway, the next day we had a free cooking lesson - one of the restaurants basically lets you into the kitchen and the chef explains everything as he cooks your order for you. He was brilliant, really friendly and patient and had good English. The curries he cooked up were great too (vegetable kadai (a Keralan dish), and a local fish curry, and also how to make a paratha). It took a good hour to prepare our order, as he was explaining everything, and I did a bit of chopping and stuff.

Sarah had also found a 2 hour cooking course, but that cost a fair few bob, and basically I thought we'd learnt a lot in the free lesson, enough to keep us going anyway without overloading.

Although it was kinda tempting to stay another day in Varkala, the beach really wasn't that great (the lack of proper shade for me being a real problem), so we decided to move on the next day to Trivandrum, further south.

Sarah did a yoga class from 8am until 9:30am - I wasn't interested really, as I've tried bikram yoga and didn't like it much. I could start another rant here about how I reckon exercise is only ever worthwhile if you actually enjoy the activity itself (which is why gyms don't work (nobody I know actually 'enjoys' the gym)), but anyway, I won't! So when Sarah got back and had a quick shower we checked-out and strolled out looking for a autorickshaw.

Kerala Backwaters

2009-02-25T00:04:00.000-08:00

So our bus left as soon as we arrived in the bus station in Kumily (as usual of course), and when we got to the ferry point we were told it was leaving in 20 minutes - which again gave us the perfect amount of time to grab a tasty thali lunch in the restaurant right on the pier.

The ferry left spot on time and set off for the 3 hour journey for Alappuzha (as it was a local ferry the cost was just 10 rupee each, about 0.16c). We set off from a narrow canal that was completely blanketed in gorgeous bright green vegetation (African moss), with lots of rather stupid egrets and other birds constantly taking off in front of our boat to just land directly in it's path 50 meters further along. The boat was a local ferry, but was almost empty when it left, so we all had great seats up the front away from the noisy engine.

So it was a really pleasant way to travel, just nice and relaxing, although for much of the journey we travelled along big rivers or lakes, which didn't have the same intimacy as the narrow sections of course.

So arriving in Alappuzha Sarah sorted out the accommodation again while myself and Roland chewed the fat over coffee, and then after a bit of a rest we all went out for a drink in the hotel bar. This was the first real 'local' bar I've been to in India, and it was pretty mad really (not unlike some of the less characterful, boxy concrete bars in rural Ireland). Sarah was the only female of course, but the locals weren't bothered, and actually 3 of them came over to us as they were leaving and chatted to us for a bit (they were all a bit drunk though - the last of them inviting us to his private club later that night, but we didn't go in the end!).

So going for dinner that night Sarah got duped by the 'price by weight' scam here (no prices for the fish, prawn or lobster dishes on the menu, and then a bit of a shock when the bill comes!). And the meal wasn't even that great - in fact so far the food down South hasn't been as good as up North, but it's still good of course.

Next morning, we all decided to hire a local boat to takes us around come of the smaller backwater canals in the area. We had the boat for 3 hours, but it didn't have a motor, so our 'captain' had to paddle us along. Roland is a kayaker though, and helped him along quite a bit. Unfortately we spent the majority of the 3 hours moving along the major water highways, along with all the big house boats that the region is famous for, but the couple of short side trips down the narrow canals were really lovely. We did stop for brekkie in a really cool little local cafe right by the water though. We had a huge breakfast there with just the locals (curry and paratha of course), and then back in the boat for the trip back to the town. It was a lovely 3 hours I must say (with our captain repeatedly telling Roland up the front to 'balance keeping' whenever he shifted position), and when we got back to the town I used to an Internet place to copy Rolands photos (as my camera is dead), before saying goodbye to him and updating this blog. Next stop is the beach at Varkala...

Kumily

2009-02-24T05:24:00.001-08:00

So we arrive in Kumily after 6 hours in the early evening. We met up with an English guy, Roland, on the bus, and so the 3 of us strolled about looking for accommodation. Our guidebook has no map, so we have to stroll about fairly aimlessly, but ended up going the right direction and the first hotel we try turns out to be nice, clean and cheap, so we take it (Roland also ended up staying there, as his original place messed him about a bit).

The 3 of us went for dinner that night, and myself and Sarah decided to join Roland early the next morning for a boat ride at 7am in the nearby Perivar National Park. So the next morning we were up at 6am, rickshaw at 6:15 and in the queue for boat tickets by 6:35.

The boat cruise was lovely, although it only lasted about 1.5 hours and didn't do a loop, just an out-and-back. We saw 2 groups of otters though, which was cool because they came out of the water and one group was feeding on the bank. Otherwise we saw lots of glorious kingfishers, wild boar, a couple of buffalo (which I initially thought were elephants), but that was about it. As usual boat trips are generally about just relaxing and taking in the surroundings, which here were lovely.

It was here too that the colours of Indian struck me as being different than anywhere else I've been. It's not a major difference, and it's not like the colours are blindingly dazzling or anything, but they are subtley different, and with the grasses, trees and soil all definitely more richly colourful.

After the cruise we wanted to check about doing some hiking in the park. Ideally I would want to just go on a self-guided walk, but it turns out you can't here, and they don't even have any maps of the park. You have to book a guided hike, so after a spot of breakfast (very nice and extremely cheap in the local cafe that was constantly raided by cheeky and aggressive monkeys), we managed to organise a 3 hour hike. The place is terribly disorganised though, and even 3 Indian gentlemen in our group where complaining about the lack of information around.

Anyway, our hike started straight away - although first we were told we'd have to wait 30 minutes, then an hour, and then suddenly we all just left! It turned out to be a really fantastic hike though, I really loved it. There were only 8 of us in the group, and although the 3 Indian guys kept talking (and one guy's mobile phone going off!), they were actually really friendly and quite funny really.

We hiked through beautifully varied landscapes and towards the end entered lovely open savannah where our guide talked to a couple of rangers, who pointed encouragingly into the distance. After another 5 minutes we came across a pair of elephants foraging in the long grass. At first they were largely concealed, and of course since we were walking we had to keep our distance. After watching for about 20 minutes our guide told us all to move on, but the German couple in our group simply asked if we could stay a bit longer, and the guide just shrugged in agreement. It was great that he did too, because after another 15 minutes or so the group began to move on. It then became clear there were more than 2 elephants, and as they gradually moved into the open we got fantastically clear views of the whole family of 5, including a 1 month-old baby.

So it was really cool to have now seen both African and Indian elephants in the wild, and it really was the highlight of the hike to come so close to the elephants. The park is also billed as a tiger reserve, but the chances of seeing a tiger, especially in daylight, are extremely slim (in fact I've read a few articles in the local papers about just how bad the tiger situation is in India, it really is shocking to read just how badly the needs, or 'wants', of humans affect the poor tigers).

After our hike we decided to head back to the town and try and get on a tea plantation and spice tour (they didn't have any other options in the park anyway). That turned out to be very easy of course, as the touts are everywhere, and every hotel organises them. So we hopped in a rickshaw and off we went.

First stop was a tea plantation, which was interesting and beautiful (although it was really hard to understand our guide's English). Then we went to the factory to see all the machines (it was actually a holiday though, so there were no workers, and in fact our guide had to convince the guard to open the factory up for us). Then we drove to a Government spice garden place, and the guide showed us all around. There were loads of different spices, chillis, flowers and trees (like the cool cinnamon tree), and it was great to see where the likes of cardamom comes from.

The tour lasted 3 hours, and after a short stop for some cardamom tea on the way home (which was really lovely), we just relaxed before getting dinner, again with Roland.

Next morning we got up at 8am and after getting copies of Roland's photos (my camera seems to have died completely now!), we all got the bus to Kottayam from where the plan was to take a local ferry boat through the famous Backwaters of Kerala to the town of Alappuzha.

Kodaikanal hill station

2009-02-23T19:06:00.000-08:00

The journey to Kodaikanal was yet again easy-peasy, just a stroll to the nearby bus station and hopping on the next bus, which happened to be leaving about 30 minutes after we arrived, which gave us the perfect amount of time to grab a lovely curry breakfast in a restaurant across the road.

It's really weird the way you instantly, and automatically, adjust to having gorgeous vegetable curries for breakfast - never with rice, just with lovely fried pancake-like breads like poori, paratha or chappati.

The journey up to Kodaikanal went easily and the mountain views were great all along the way, although the misty atmospherics continued to obscure the farthest mountains. On arrival we got a great lunch in a very popular thali place. A thali is a meal with up to 10 different little dishes of various curries, a poppadum or two , maybe a chappati and a big pile of rice in the middle. As you eat, waiters are strolling about and will refill any of the dishes or your rice on request, so in effect it's an all-you-can-eat deal.

By and large the thali's we've had have been fantastic, and this one in particular really reminded me of probably one of the most spectacular meals I've ever had. It was many years ago, on my first big independent trip cycling around Europe with Tony Dempsey. We were strolling around Amsterdam and got a bit lost (which was kinda intentional) , and decided on a mere whim to pop into a nice looking Indonesian restaurant. Neither of us had ever tried Indonesian before, but the meal we had was absolutely spectacular, and both of us still refer it as our favorite meal ever. What blew me away then was that so many of the flavors were completely new to me and that I'd never tasted anything like them before, and although the flavors in the thali's here in India aren't quite as 'new' to me, the whole experience really reminds me of that early culinary journey of exploration and discovery (I also love the whole 'eating with your hands' thing, which I also adopted quickly and easily - it now feels a little strange to use a fork or spoon!).

So after lunch Sarah got us sorted in a lovely little cottage at Yagappa. We ending up staying 3 nights in total, as the hill station was a nice relief from the heat of the previous weeks, and our little cottage was nice and comfy. It actually got quite cold at night though, and I'd wear my fleece around during the day.

The town has a lovely fancy 5-star hotel (The Carlton), and it was nice and relaxing, although I didn't bother to stay and eat, or even buy a drink. For one thing it was very expensive, but of course that's not normally a consideration when it comes to fine food, but in this case the restaurant only served a buffet in the evenings. I hate buffets now, as I invariably end up eating far too much and just make myself feel really uncomfortable, so unfortunately we never ate there.

The main activity in Kodaikanal is trekking really, and we did the 14km hike to the Pillar Rocks one of the days. When we arrived the view was completely obscured by clouds, but we were in no hurry, and so just relaxed reading our books, and sure enough after an hour or so the clouds burnt off to reveal fabulous views of the countryside and the shear rock faces of the Pillars.

We also strolled around the local lake, which was nice in parts, but in general the whole time in Kodaikanal was affected by constant noise. Firstly there was the constant car horn beeping of course (both in the town itslef, and on our little hikes and walks (with the one exception of strolling out to Bear Shola Falls), but also there was a local Christian festival in a church near our hotel. They started blasting (and I mean really BLASTING!) out the music and preaching at 7am, and continued on-an-off until about 10pm - quite fustrating really.

So it was just a nice relaxing time (most of the time), and of course we continued to eat amazingly well. When it came time to leave we ate at the thali place again and then waited for the bus out of town. The bus arrived right on time but there was a bit of a mad scramble to get onboard, as it was already pretty full. We managed to squeeze on with our rucksacks, but had to stand. Sarah almost fainted early on, but once she sat on her rucksack she was fine (quite a few of the Indian ladies threw up out the windows of the bus!), and after and hour or so I had enough room to sit on my rucksack too. After another hour or so people started leaving the bus, and we both got seats for the rest of the 5-hour journey to Kumily, gateway to the Perivar National Park.

First overnight bus in India, to Madurai

2009-02-23T05:45:00.000-08:00

I'm well used to overnight travel now, and so the idea of an overnight bus wasn't very daunting really, even given that we were in India. We arrived at the bus station in plenty of time, and our bus arrived and departed pretty much on time too.

I wasn't expecting luxury (the bus was described as 'semi-luxury', and of course any description in a 3rd world country with 'semi' in it means things are going to be pretty rough), and that's pretty much what we got. The seats didn't recline at all, and there was no air-conditioning apart from all the open windows, but in fact the whole journey was fine. I managed to get a fair bit of sleep (poor Sarah didn't get any meaningful sleep at all though), and we arrived at Madurai pretty much on time, which was nice and early in the morning.

After getting a hotel sorted (the Sri Devi, very near the main temple), we both slept for a few hours before checking out the town a bit.

Firstly I wanted to check out the local Gandhi museum, which gives a good account of recent Indian history and the part played by Gandhi in particular. A local bus from the nearby bus station brought to strolling distance from the museum, which is housed in a nice old colonial building. The museum only has a few knick-knacks of Gandhi's, including the bloodstained tunic that he was wearing when he was assassinated. The many information panels were detailed and informative though (and primarily in English, with less detailed panels in the local Tamil language).

I'd read a Gandhi biography years ago but I'd forgotten most of it, so getting a refresher was good. The poor English get a hard time throughout all the descriptions, deservedly so though by an account of one of their own, John Sullivan, with a pretty damning indictment here.

By far the most famous sight in the town is the huge temple complex, one of the biggest in India. But unfortunately for us, it was currently undergoing major renovations, which meant all the huge towers were obscured by bamboo scaffolding and palm leaf sheeting. You could still glimpse sections of the towers, and I'm sure it must really be quite a sight after it's freshly painted with all the mad garish colours used on Hindu temples. But it was still impressive to just stroll about the complex and watch the Hindu devotees doing their thing (like blessing themselves from fires, being dotted on the forehead with tikkas by priests, lying prostrate on the floor in front of statues, and all that crazy stuff).

Seeing as how their isn't much else to the town, I decided to move on the following day, and after another quick scout around the temple the following morning (just to see it in daylight really), and getting a tad lost, I ran back to our hotel to check out by 10am and then stroll to the bus station and hopped on the bus to the hill station town of Kodaikanal.

Pondicherry

2009-02-17T00:07:00.000-08:00

Pondicherry is a funny auld town really. We arrived at the bus terminal to all the usual Indian madness and mayhem. I had to haggle hard for a fair price with the rickshaw driver to bring us to the hotel district, but once settled in and strolling about it became clear that this town was different. It's famous for it's lasting French influences, probably most strongly reflected in the number and quality of the restaurants, so needless to say we stayed for 3 days.

We didn't actually do much, as there isn't that much to do, but we certainly ate well. The few sights in the town were interesting enough - the small museum, the grotty botanical gardens, the hand-made paper factory with our friendly Dutch guide, just strolling down the pleasant promenade. But the most interesting place for me was visiting the house and ashram of Sri Aurobindo, a very famous guru-type dude along with his very scary looking French assistant known as The Mother (both long dead now).

This place struck me as just weird - and not in a good way. Firstly it was the message on the notice board (next to the list of strict 'rules' for everyone visiting or staying at the ashram), talking about the author of a book that I assume was negative about the organisation. Basically this message said all copies of the book must be found and destroyed immediately and all ties with the author broken - basically it sounded very over-reactionary to a book and seemed to reflect a scary cult-like attitude to self-preservation, and not at all about acceptance of different opinions and openness. But I suppose in fairness I don't know any of the background.

But then there was the tomb in the middle of the grounds holding the 2 founders, with a number of people sitting around and others prostrating themselves on the tomb itself (every morning the tomb has fresh flowers arranged in patterns all across the top - so I assume that's related to one of the 'rules' of the place being that nobody can bring in flowers). The prostrating seemed rather strange behaviour for 'spiritialists' or whatever they are, as it looked rather idolatry to me (and as each person left they dipped their fingers in water bowls and blessed themselves). I would have thought 'worship' of anyone or anything would be against the principles of pure spiritualism, as I understand that to be simply personal development (not that that is simple of course, just look at all the Epsilons around!).

I had a wee read of some of the plentiful literature around too - all of which seemed fairly straightforward spiritualism I suppose, although always couched in those typically empty and in themselves meaningless terms, like 'energy, universal, divine, oneness', etc. Why can't someone write that literature in simple plain English, as I've always found the underlying ideas valid, simple and interesting (like for instance, a short paragraph about the importance of being an optimist as opposed to a pessimist, which naturally I had to show to the Negator!)?

Anyway, I came away from that place feeling rather similar to the way I do around any organised-religion-type places, like Christian churches or Hindu temples (Buddhist temples are OK, as Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion, and Buddhists don't worship Buddha or anyone else, they just follow (and question for themselves) his teachings - all the temples and statues and stuff are just there as aids to meditation). As I understand it, many forms of Buddhism have rituals and 'rules' and stuff, but they are all related to the original religious beliefs that existed before those branches adopted Buddhism and adapted it to their own local preferences - pure Buddhism, as I understand it, has no rituals, rites, doctrines or general 'baggage'.

Anyway, these 'organised religion' places always have people doing silly little rituals (like blessing themselves with 'holy' water, or kneeing down or bowing or robotically recanting verbatim prayers or whatever). I've long thought all of those things are just means of control and subjugation, and are simply used to prevent people from questioning anything they've been told to believe (I love that classic Catholic answer to any 'difficult' theological question, such as a simple 'Why is there so much suffering in the world?', answer: 'Ah now, God acts in mysterious ways!' - how in any god's name is that an 'answer' to anything?!?!). But I suppose the individuals themselves 'like' not having to question stuff, and therefore 'like' living in their bubbles of self-imposed ignorance, and ultimately I just feel kinda sorry for them 'cos I think they're really just selling themselves short.

Actually, we were coming out of the lovely main Catholic church here during a mass service (I've always liked checking out churches and cathedrals, as they're always so calm, cool and peaceful - it's just the opulence and obviously expensive upkeep that disturbs me somewhat). Anyway, it was during that bit in Catholic mass when the whole congregation all chant together that mad long '...we all believe in the one true church, the divine such-and-such...'. Every time I hear it it sends a shiver down my spine - I can't help thinking of the mindless robots in The Stepford Wives (the story of a small American town of men that kill their real wives and instead create perfect, docile and mindless wives for themselves - it's billed as a horror story). I always now associate that bit of mass with a congregation of mindless, docile, 'repeat after me' robots.

The same bit of Catholic mass always makes me smile though too, as it automatically brings to mind one of my favorite pieces of comedy - a scene in Monty Python's 'The Life of Brian'. It's where Brian is trying to tell all his idiot followers that they are all individuals and should find their own directions in life, and they all, in robotic unison, respond with 'Yes, we are all individuals!', whereupon one member of the crowd shouts out 'I'm not!'. Oh lordy, how that makes me laugh - it's so funny because it's so true...

Anyway, enough of that rant - the next day I had wanted to rent a scooter to check out the nearby Auroville, which is the main centre of the Sri Aurobindo crowd. Apparently a few thousand believers live out there and are quite successful, so it would have been interesting to look around. But the scooter rental guy told me that the police are regularly checking drivers for licenses, and I don't have my license with me (the one for motorbikes). Sarah can't drive a moped so we were forced to forget about a moped and just get bicycles instead. It meant not getting out to Auroville, which was a pity, but instead we could saunter about the town instead.

First we rode out to the bus terminal to book seats to our next town for later that night, then back to check out of our hotel, and then rode to an internet place. Then we rode down along the lovely promenade (it was a glorious day), to a great French restaurant for a very fine lunch of fillet steak and fish (we had lobster the night before in the fancy Promenade Hotel, Sarah saying in all seriousness on the way home, 'I think I prefer my lobster with lemon as opposed to a sauce' - methinks maybe I'm continuing her lifelong spoilt-ness just a tad!). After lunch it was another leisurely cycle through the lovely quiet French-esque streets to the internet place again, before another fine dinner and then a rickshaw to the bus terminal for our overnight bus trip to Madurai.

Mamallapuram

2009-02-16T01:19:00.000-08:00

Mamallapuram is only 2 hours South of Chennai by local bus, and it's mentioned as a highlight in a Guerba tour brochure for this part of India, so I decided to stop off there on our journey south. It turned out to be a lovely wee town really, although the beach was disappointingly dirty, and so we only ended up staying 2 nights.

Our bus from Chennai was quite straightforward (after quickly rectifying our mistake of getting on the bus going the wrong direction), and Sarah found a nice place easily enough (Hotel Lakshmi). The town is famous for it's carved temples, caves and sculptures. But the first day was just spent relaxing mostly, and checking out the beach and local environs.

The next day we hired bicycles (Sarah heading off before me), as the temples and carvings are scattered about a bit, so having the bikes made exploring the town really easy and relaxed. After seeing the mad precarious Butter Ball rock and the huge bas-relief carvings in the town I rode out to the Five Rathas. From there back to the main temple, called the Shore Temple, which was nicely set right on the sea, although it's actually fronted by a protective sea wall, and again the beach here was crowded and very badly littered. I didn't bother to pay the rather hefty admission price for the temples though, as you could see them easily from the fencing around them, and the admission price was 25 times what locals pay (the biggest difference I've seen so far is 30 times!).

Having the bikes meant we even got to check out Tiger Cave a few kilometres outside the town, where I had a lovely wee swim in the sea from the nearly deserted beach (the waves were very strong, and there are dangerous currents around, so I didn't swim far or for very long). So yet more great food in really cheap local eateries (we ate one night in a Westerner-backpacker-type place, and it was the only disappointing meal we've had in all of India so far - generally you're always better off following the locals rather than the tourists of course!).

So having seen all the temples and carvings and stuff it was time to move on again (I was kinda tempted to stay another day just to chill out, but I'm hoping to find a more relaxed, laid-back beach place further south). Next morning it was a local bus for the 2 hour trip down to Pondicherry, but poor Sarah awoke to discover that her trekking trousers had been stolen from the clothes line outside our room overnight. After the fury and disbelief of that little incident (who robs someone else's trousers?!?), we arrived in Pondicherry in the early afternoon.

Hyderabad

2009-02-16T00:58:00.000-08:00

Our guidebook spoke well of Hyderabad, and it made a convenient stopover on our journey towards the southern beaches. So we boarded our train, found our berths and settled in for the long 22-hour journey.

For some reason this train was actually fairly quiet, and our compartment that normally sleeps 6 people only had the two of us and one other Indian lady. It meant I could sit on the left-hand side of the carriage having two seats all to myself and I could even pull a curtain across to give myself complete privacy from the passing tea and coffee sellers. So basically I spent the whole day just reading my book (The Secret Lives of Bees), while occasionally looking out at the Indian landscapes drifting past. Again the train was super-smooth, comfortable and quiet, and so it made for a brilliantly relaxing day. That night was another super-comfy sleep, and the timing again meant we arrived early in the morning, this time at 8:30am.

We had actually arrived in Secunderabad, which is just an extension of Hyderabad. So a quick local bus journey to Nampally and then the usual scouting for a decent place to spend the night. Sarah scouted first, but couldn't find a recommended place, so I went looking and found it just around the corner!

We had 2 full days to explore around Hyderabad, and again it was a pretty cool city. The main sight is the Charminar, a huge and very impressive structure. We had to get a rickshaw there after my initial attempt to walk resulted in us arriving back where we started! We got to check out a couple of cool palaces too, one with a wardrobe that is 72 metres long, and also the huge private collection of one of the old-order Nizam rulers. In fact I found the collection all a bit sad really. Yes, it was all very lovely art (especially the 'Veiled Rebecca'), but just the thought that one guy could amass all this 'stuff', or even want to amass so much 'stuff', just didn't sit right with me at all - especially in a country as poor as India. So basically I just thought it all amounted to clutter and functionally useless tat - I used to think of myself as fairly minimalist before this trip, so I daren't even think what I'll be like when I get home!

After the museums on both days we ate at a real gem of a restaurant, Hotel Shadab (which was tricky to find due to our guidebook map being a bit useless, but all the locals knew where it was). It came very highly recommended, and certainly didn't disappoint - it was by far the best biriyani I've ever tasted (for which the place is justifiably famous), and also some of the most tender chicken too. It was a mad busy place (we had to wait the first time), and we were the only Westerners, but the service was quick, efficient and friendly, and gave the place a fantastic atmosphere. In fact, it was the perfect example of how a cheap, characterful local place can often beat the pants off any of the fancy-dancy five-star restaurants.

On our second day in Hyderabad we got a local bus out to the famous Golconda Fort. Again all very impressive, with an imposing setting on a hillside (although what appeared to be smog made any distant views quite hazy). That evening we caught our 3rd overnight train to Chennai (used to be called Madras), which we planned to merely skip through enroute to a fishing village a couple of hours further south.

Puri and Bhubaneswar

2009-02-16T00:15:00.001-08:00

So our first Indian train journey was actually a real treat. The train left spot on time, and after about an hour or so the other 4 people in our carriage made ready for bed, and so we did the same. Within 2 minutes of curling up on my upper berth I was sound asleep and didn't stir until Sarah shook me awake as we were pulling into our destination station at Puri. The train was super comfortable, and totally quiet and so I had a fantastically refreshing sleep.

Sarah took over the map reading duties for our stroll to the backpacker area of the town, and after checking a few places out we settled into the Lotus Hotel. Since we arrived nice and early in the morning, and we'd both had a great sleep on the train, it gave us the whole day to explore the small-ish town.

The town itself isn't very nice though, it's really famous for having a huge Hindu temple (that non-Hindus aren't allowed enter), and also for being only 33kms from the really famous site of Konark. So that first day we just took things easy and strolled along the not-so-clean beach and checked out the restaurants and stuff.

The next morning I hired a moped and we set off for Konark (after booking our onward train to Hyderabad for later that night, and failing to get more money out as the ATM's in the town were down!). After the mayhem of getting out of Puri, the road trip out to Konark was lovely, with very little traffic, great weather and lovely scenery. The Sun Temple at Konark really was worth the trip, as the structures there are very impressive indeed. The huge charriot wheels and numerous erotic carvings from the 13th century were amazingly well perserved (the whole complex was buried under massive sand dunes for hundreds of years), and the surrounding grounds immaculate.

We had lots and lots of Indian people asking us to have picture taken with them of course, which gets tiring pretty quickly, but the overall atmosphere was really cool, with all the Indian ladies wearing beautifully colourful saris and lots of kids running around (and the peacefullness was no doubt helped by there being no hawkers inside the site, nor did we have any hassle outside either - in fact after nearly 3 weeks in India we've had very little hassle of any kind from anyone really).

So after a couple of hours exploring the temple we had a great lunch in the fanciest hotel in the area (it's a tiny village area though, so 'fancy' is a relative term), checked out the local museum that had some impressively displayed sculptures before heading back to Puri town.

Seeing as how I was now an expert at driving in Indian traffic I decided to check out Puri town itself (although the traffic is totally manic, with people, bikes, trucks, taxis and cows all over the place, it all moves quite slowly, so it's not difficult at all really). I managed to find all the main sightseeing sights in the town, although the hotel from which you view the famous temple was closed on Sundays. So all-in-all, it was a really great day out, and I felt I well and truly deserved the drink or two that evening over dinner.

Next morning we needed to get a bus to the town of Bhubaneswar, from where the train would take us to Hyderabad. It was bit awkward with timings though, so I decided to head there and spend a night before getting the train the following morning (I could have tried to get there from Puri on the morning of the train, but that would have been pretty stressful in Indian traffic with a fixed train departure).

So it was an auto-rickshaw (basically a tuk-tuk) to the bus station, although of course the guy tried to earn himself a wee commission by dropping us directly to a private bus instead of the bus terminal. I was arguing with the guy and the bus driver dude as another bus driving past just stopped with the conductor guy hanging out the door shouting 'Bhubaneswar'. After asking him the price (a good bit cheaper than our private bus dude, and obviously leaving that second), we both literally hopped onboard and left our cheeky rickshaw driver behind, a tad bewildered looking and completely commission-less.

So that gave us a whole day and night to explore Bhubaneswar, which basically involved a lot of strolling about checking out temples and the like. They were all pretty impressive I must say, and I got a tiny wee tour of one temple from the high-priest guy. He showed me the kitchens were they cook every day to feed the local poor, and it was gorgeous looking food I must say, and lots of it.

That evening we checked out more fancy hotel restaurants and had yet another great Indian feast of a dinner before a drink in a pretty cool local bar. It's strange here that people don't really drink much, or at least not in the open. Quite a few places have now served us beer with the bottles and our glasses wrapped in tissues, or in metal cups. I've seen regular news reports about Hindu conservatives in vcarious parts of the country - the biggest news being about physical attacks on Indian women drinking in Western-style bars.

Next morning we got breakfast as a take-away from our hotel and strolled down to the train station for our train further South to Hyderabad.

Off to see a Tigger

2009-02-11T06:35:00.000-08:00

So after 5 nights in Kolkata we packed up and did a 2-night, 3-day trip to the Sunderbans tiger reserve. We arrived at the tourist office at 8am, and after a 3 hour bus trip we boarded our boat. It turned out there were only 15 people on the tour, and only 2 others were Westerners (Jaime a gay Portugese guy and Michael an Austrian guy). Jaime explained to me that they needed a minimum of 14 to do the trip, so clearly this was not going to be a crowded trip. In fact, it turned out that the boat will take 46 passengers, so yet again on this trip, we've been blessed with the luck of the Irish, having a grand big boat with lots of room for everyone.

Originally I'd booked the cheapest option, staying in the basic dormitory, but when we arrived at the tour office the guy suggested that we could upgrade by paying him extra. Initally he offered the upgrade at half-price, but on condition we paid just him and in cash (obviously a back-hander). Anyway, I refused, saying it was way too much and after chatting to Jaime I knew for a fact that this guy would basically take any money I offered him, seeing as how the upgrade beds would just go empty otherwise. So after a fierce, but always friendly of course, bit of haggling I got the guy to accept 300 Rupees for our upgrade (from full upgrade price of 2200, and his initial offer of half-price of 1100). So we got a lovely little curtained cubicle all to ourselves, which was great.

The trip itself was really good. The boat was in pretty good condition, and surprisingly quiet, and the food throughout was fantastic. Basically it involved just cruising along at a nice slow pace, and stopping off at small reserves to walk to a watchtower to try and spot tigers and other wildlife. We never managed to spot any tiggers though (our guide said in 163 trips he's only had 7 sightings), although we did see quite a few beautiful spotted deer, a couple of huge wild boar, a big water monitor and millions of kingfishers. Its mad, but after only ever seeing 2 kingfishers in my life before this trip (both on the same Shannon cruising trip), I've now seen hundreds and about 6 different species.

So after a lovely relaxing couple of days cruising about it was time to board the bus back to Kolkata. In fact just before we left I heard a taxi driving past screech to a very abrupt halt. Turned out it had hit a kid that ran out from in front of our bus. Michael from our trip was a paramedic and when he realised what happened he rushed out, but literally within about 15 seconds I saw the kid being picked up like a rag doll and bundled into the back of the taxi, as it turned around and shot back up the road the way it had come - presumably to a hospital or clinic. 3 minutes later our bus left - no need for eye-witness reports or anything, so I have no idea what became of the poor kid!

Anyway, we arrived back in Kolkata 2 hours early. Having lots of time before our 9:45 overnight train we dropped our rucksacks at the left-luggage at the train station and did a wee bit more sightseeing in Kolkata, which involved getting the ferry across the river and then the metro down to Kalighat, the site of a very famous Hindu temple.

After the usual trouble trying to find the temple (streets have no name plates), I eventually found it and it was mad interesting to watch all the devotees doing there thing with offerings and stuff. Then another stroll to check out a couple of restaurants, and naturally eating in the mad fancy one ('Oh! Calcutta' which was very nice indeed).

So heading back to the train station I realised from the guidebook that the last ferry was at 8pm, and it was now after 9pm. Ah well, I reckoned we still had lots of time to stroll to the station by just getting a metro and then walking across the iconic bridge (Howrah Bridge). Sarah had another bit of a Negator attack wanting to get a taxi, but of course it all worked out perfectly, and the walk across the bridge was actually really atmospheric in the deep dark with thousands of Indians all walking the same way towards the station (I thought it felt like a mass evacuation like in a nuclear holocaust movie or something). Our train even left on time...

India at last!

2009-02-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

I've always wanted to travel to India, ever since I can remember really. On my last round-the-world trip it was high on the list of destinations (probably the highest in fact), but that time myself and Hanno just fell so much in love with Nepal that we didn't have time to go to India at all. This time around, I was determined not to miss out and so it was with some relief that I finally arrived in Calcutta (now called Kolkata).

I must admit to being somewhat apprehensive about it though. Of course I've heard all the horror stories about India, but by now I've learnt to almost completely disregard the 'advice' I hear from others - let's face it, those travellers are almost certainly Epsilons after all. But this time I was hearing endless stories of delays, beggars, general hassle and sickness from probably the most travelled person I know, Mr. Sean Mullins. We'd been travelling with Mullins for 2 weeks before arriving in India, and his regular jokey slurs about the pain of travelling in India, although obviously mostly in jest, began to have the same effect as all repeated propaganda. Eventually you start to really believe it, and like I've said before, nobody is immune to fear and paranoia.

So having said all that, without about 20 minutes of walking out of the airport in Kolkata, all that fear and paranoia did it's usual disappearing act once confronted with reality. In fact I was almost immediately reminded of Nepal, which to-date has been my favorite place in the world, so obviously I relaxed immediately. There's certainly no doubt that India is a mental place (the state of the taxis in the airport were testiment enough to that), but seeing as how we weren't met immediately by horrifically multilated beggars probably did more to dispell the paranoia than anything.

We shared a taxi from the airport (after I sorted out the guy for trying to extort an extra payment for our bags - jeez, taxi drivers the world over...), with a French-Canadian couple (the metro extension to the airport is not yet ready unfortunately), and through the total mayhem that is Indian traffic (the beeping is absolutely incessant, just like Nepal in fact), we arrived at the backpacker enclave of Sudder Street after about an hour. After the routine scouting out we found a lovely place that turned out to be a real gem - it was clean, really quite and cheap. After 2 nights there of a shared bathroom we upgraded to a room with a lovely ensuite.

But still the fear persisted beyond my initial impressions by making me feel just a little nervous about the food. Kolkata has loads of top-notch, fine dining establishments though, and seeing as how food has been a major preoccupation on this entire trip, splashing out on good grub wasn't going to be a problem here.

So the first day we just strolled about the local area, and ate in the fancy Peter's Cat, having a lovely introduction to local Indian food. The next day we explored a little further afield, checking out the impressive Indian Museum at the end of Sudder Street, then the huge Maidan (basically a huge open park with thousands of locals all playing cricket with tennis balls and litter everywhere), and milling about with the hordes in the Victoria Memorial monument (it was a Sunday). It was here I had my first encounter with a tourist being annoyed at having to pay 10 times the price of the locals to get into a cultural attraction - it is a little annoying, but I don't really have a problem with it usually, although today I paid 20 times what a local pays, which I suppose is a tad ridiculous really.

Another day we organised a trip to the Sunderbans tiger reserve with the government tourist office, and then booked our onward train tickets, both of which were completely painless I must say. In neither case did we have any crazy bureaucracy to deal with, just straightforward easy booking procedures like anywhere else. So after the relief of getting all that sorted out we popped into a cool-looking bar/restaurant (the Limelight) on the main square for a bit of a rest, but ended up staying quite a while (after ordering a 'snack' of pakora and expecting to get one, but actually getting six huge pakoras and therefore destroy our appetites).

On the walk home there were millions of trucks filled with people all travelling in the same direction, with everyone singing and dancing. Each truck had a statue of a Hindi goddess (or something), and so when one of the trucks stopped and offered to take us along we promptly lept up and off we went! Everyone was really friendly (although we couldn't really talk to any of them because of the noise and general mayhem), and after about 10 minutes we arrived at a huge festival-type thing on the banks of the river where everyone was carrying their statues to the river and throwing them in. Of course they all wanted their picture taken with us, and the whole thing was completely mental and of course we didn't have a clue what was going on really. A truck then took us back to the city, dropping us off near our street, and we had a short taxi ride back to the hotel. Got some cool photos and video clips though...

So the next morning we were off to spot us a Tigger...

Back to Bangkok again

2009-01-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

The day-time journey back to Bangkok from Mae Sot was effortless again, and we passed some beautiful Thai scenery along the way (all very bright green fields, and cool limestone hills).

Another taxi ride from the bus terminal had us back in the Khao San road area. After a quick scout around I found a cheap place to stay (the area seemed a fair bit quieter than when we left, thank god), although Mullins' wee bit of impatience meant he paid a fair bit more than he needed to.

That night myself and Mr. Mullins had a bit of a late night in the Khao San area, but finished the night with a coffee and a pad thai from a street stall. The following day we saw him off to his bus for the airport for his flight to Vietnam, and myself and Sarah just spent the day relaxing and using the Internet.

Next day I wanted to do a bit of exploring, so we strolled around to the river to catch the boat to the famous Wat Pho, home of the huge reclining Budda (after trying to arrange free bicycles, but I didn't have photo ID other than my passport, which they wouldn't take).

After Wat Pho we tried to get into the Grand Palace, but I was stopped for wearing shorts (I could have swore I got in last time wearing shorts, but maybe not). Anyway I decided to check out the national museum and modern art gallery while Sarah headed back to the hostel (it was getting mighty hot in the midday sun).

So the following morning I walked back to the free bike place and this time managed to get a bike although the conditions seemed to have changed from the day before - the time limit was now 3 hours now instead of 2. So off I rode, and in fact the roads and traffic really weren't a problem at all. Probably because the traffic was heavy it was forced to move very slowly, so riding along on a bike seemed quicker at times. Although it was high season with backpackers all over the place, there didn't seem to be many takers for the bikes (I think I saw three other people on bikes my whole time in Bangkok). No doubt it's just the usual Epsilonic fear, doubt and paranoia, there's just no escaping it I suppose...

The bike route map was a little confusing though, as at one point I was directed the wrong way down a one-way street, but it was easy to circumnavigate that and in no time at all I had arrived at the Grand Palace. I was here years ago with Hanno, but it was still great to see it all again. Also, this time I took the free English tour, which although a little slow was still interesting.

I dropped the bike back after 4 hours - they never seem to mind little indiscretions like that - and after grabbing a bite to eat in a LP-recommended place across the road from the bike place (very nice), I strolled back to our hotel where Sarah was waiting. After a nice shower and a bit of a rest we headed out to sell back our South East Asia guidebook, check out buses to the airport (awkward if early in the morning), and grab our last super-tasty dinner in Thailand before the expected madness of India (after hearing all of Mullins' horror stories about India I think myself and Sarah were both a fair bit more apprehension than we would have been - I guess nobody is immune from 'the fear'...).

Mae Sot

2009-01-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

Mike is working at a school for Burmese refugees, and this is his 3rd 'tour of duty', helping to teach the kids about computers and the internet,and for the next 2 days he was our fantastic guide to the whole area of Mae Sot.

Our first port of call, after renting another scooter, was to visit the school itself. It was actually World Child Day, so the place was pretty crazy with kids from many local schools all running around and playing. The school is quite big (catering for 250 kids I think), with a few very solid structures, a nice new playground and playing fields nearby. Many of the kids live right next to the school in very simple, primitive houses, but it was great to see all the kids enjoying themselves and just being kids really.

We also go to see where Mike lives, which was another modern building, but very spartan (Mike's only here for 3 months this time around), and got to see the neighbour's impressive crossbow for fishing from the balcony!

After lunch at Canadian Daves, we drove out to the Burmese border. This is just a narrow river (at this time of year anyway), with a sprawling market selling all the usual nick-nacks (Mullins buying an electric mosquito-killing tennis bat thing), so after a few posed photos it was back on the bikes and back to town.

Later that night we did a bit of a pub crawl around the small town, and met some interesting local characters, like the ex-pat Cheap Charlie from Scotland - but really the town was kinda quite (even though it was Saturday night). Myself, Mike and Mullins did manage to pop out to the local food market late in the night for a snack and nightcap, but even there seemed to be shutting down.

The next day Mike brought us out to the local reservoir that is in a lovely setting, hiking up the hill there to check out the views from the Buddhist temple at the top. Then it was back to the school area where the local cock-fighting ring was holding it's weekly competitions. I wouldn't be a fan of any blood sport, but everything here was quite subdued really, all very friendly and welcoming. It was certainly interesting to see the whole thing, which is still very much legal in Thailand, and it wasn't as gruesome as I thought it was going to be (the birds have their heel claw taped up and they only fight until one gives up (as opposed to the death)).

Even if it is natural for cocks to fight in the wild, I'm certainly in favour of it's being banned - forcing any creature into an extremely stressful situation just so a group of men can satisfy their need for a bit of gambling doesn't cut it with me.

Anyway, we didn't stay long, but we did get to see the end of a fight (a single fight can go on for over an hour with rounds of 20 minutes each). It all ended very simply when one of the birds turned and walked away a little bit - within 2 seconds all the spectators were roaring and those that had won were celebrating immediately, it literally seemed over in the blink of an eye.

So after that we strolled to the local market (which was much like a market anywhere really), and Mike bought a selection of local foods which we ate watching a group of refugees playing volleyball, and playing with a couple of the local kids.

Our second night was a quieter affair, being joined for dinner by another American volunteer named Brandon, a few drinks in Trungs Bar where we were staying, and winning some American states for Irish sovereignty over the pool table.

The next morning Mullins got up at 7am to drive to the bus station to make sure we got tickets for the bus back to Bangkok, and then over breakfast in our usual cool local coffee house we said goodbye to Mike and got a songthaw back to the bus station for the trip back to Bangkok.

Getting to Mae Sot

2009-01-28T07:06:00.000-08:00

So the next day we all headed off to the Vietnamese embassy to get a visa sorted out for Mullins. He was familiar with the route, so we just followed him to the canal for the boat that would take us most of the way (after getting a little bit confused about which canal we needed).

I think there are only two canals still in use as transport routes in Bangkok, as the Government tends to cover them up and build roads instead, but for now getting the boat is by far the quickest option for getting where we needed to go. It was pretty cool screaming down a narrow canal too, and we arrived in no time at all.

When we got to the embassy it turned out we couldn't have timed it better, as the embassy was closing for the following 6 days due to a big Vietnamese holiday (similar but different I think to the Chinese New Year). Mullins could get an express visa that same day (extra money of course), but would have to come back at 3pm to pick it up.

So with time to kill we headed back down the road to the SkyTrain and popped over to Siam Square for the afternoon. Poor Mullins wasn't feeling very well though (he'd eaten stagnant stall food on our bus journey up from Phuket), so he used the Internet to re-arrange his flights home to pass through Ho Chi Minh City while Sarah and I had lunch nearby.

We didn't get to explore much of Siam Square, but I've been there before, and really it's just big malls with fancy shops, so not really my scene anyway. So come 3pm we hopped back on the SkyTrain, picked up the visa and headed back to Khao San road.

Mae Sot isn't on one of the typical tourist routes so we had no choice but to get a Government bus there (which suited us anyway after being ripped off by the last 2 tourist bus people). So we got a metered taxi to the bus terminal and got a bus ticket for later that night (unfortunately the cheaper, earlier buses were all full, so we had to wait around an extra couple of hours for a VIP bus).

The journey was easy though, and the bus was really comfortable (only the 2nd 3-seats-in-a-row bus we've taken on this trip), so we all slept really well. We arrived at Mae Sot at about 6am and hopped into a songthaw for the quick trip into the town.

After wandering about aimlessly looking for our hostel (which Mullins' mate had kindly pre-booked for us), we eventually found it, but couldn't wake anyone up to check us in. So we hung around for a bit and at 8am went to a lovely nearby cafe for a coffee and to use their internet. A little later we found people awake at the hostel, checked-in, had showers and then Mullin's mate, Mike, arrived on his scooter.

Getting back to Bangkok

2009-01-27T03:52:00.000-08:00

Leaving Koh Phi Phi was simply a matter of arriving at the pier at 9am and hopping on the big ferry boat. A smooth 1.5 hours later we arrived on Phuket and hop into a local songthaw for the 15 minute ride into the main bus terminal in Phuket Town itself. All 3 of us had been to Phuket before, and so we weren't particularly bothered about skipping the island (if Mullins had had a bit more time we might have tried to find a nice beach spot on Kata or Karon beach for a day or two though).

From the bus terminal we had a number of options to get up to Bangkok. We could take a cheap tourist bus leaving at a convenient time, or a more expensive government bus leaving a few hours later. We all knew the dangers of taking the tourist bus (i.e. the various scams they pull on you), but after talking to 3 different operators both myself and Mullins had a good feeling about one of them. So we decided to trust our instincts and go with the tourist bus (although we didn't take the cheapest option, opting instead for a slightly more luxurious option).

Well, you simply can't always trust your intuition I suppose! It turned out we were rightly ripped off again, or at least we would have been if we didn't kick up an almightyful fuss. Our first minibus to Surat Thani departed about 45 minutes late, but at least the 3 of us got the best seats. Mullins got the passenger seat beside the driver, and myself and Sarah got to share the first row.

After waiting for about 25 minutes at the transfer point (just a restaurant in the middle of nowhere), a guy arrives in a nice new air-conditioned car to take us to what we think is another transfer point (basically, long-distance tourist bus journeys seem to be made up by connecting various bus journeys). Anyway, it turns out he drops us at a tour office in the city and then just kind of ignores us. There are a couple of girls there too, but none of them have much English, and when we start to inquire about what is happening it turns out there are no seats available on any of the tourist buses to Bangkok that night (at least that's what we think they were trying to say). It all becomes very messy, and after we start going mad, and make a show of looking for the tourist police, and the guy and the girls start coming and going and making phone calls, eventually a songthaw (a big taxi thing) driver arrives and we're beckoned to follow him.

It ends up that he takes us to the government bus terminal a few kilometers away and he buys tickets for us on the cheapest government bus to Bangkok. At this stage we're just thankful to be getting to Bangkok at all, but we all realise we've been ripped off yet again (as we'd paid for a luxury bus, and we could have just gotten the cheaper government bus ourselves from Phuket - although a further complication was that the government buses don't go anywhere near Khao San Road, whereas the tourist ones drop you right there).

As the songthaw driver is taking his change for the bus tickets I grab it right out of his hand and explain to him that that money will now go towards the taxi we were now forced to pay for to get us to Khao San Road (which was were we had originally paid to go). The songthaw driver acts all hurt, almost beginning to cry, saying he won't get paid a penny for bringing us to the bus terminal, but strangely he doesn't put up any kind of fight to get his money. Sarah and Mullins are both telling me to give him back the money, but I've never come across a taxi driver that would give up a legitimate fare so easily. To me it was as clear as day that this was all just part of the same scam, and I was damned if I was going to let these guys get away with even more of our money.

Anyway, it was all quite funny in the end, and we were really lucky to get seats on that bus (although we had to take the seats at the very front of the bus, which have the least leg room). So we arrived at the Eastern bus terminal in Bangkok and after checking the options for continuing directly to Mae Sot, we decided to stay a night in Bangkok (as Mullins needed to get a Vietnam visa sorted out) and get a bus the following night. So we hopped into a metered taxi for the journey back to Khao San road.

Koh Phi Phi

2009-01-27T03:30:00.000-08:00

So we arrived at Koh Phi Phi in the late morning, and leaving Nick and Sarah at the port to mind our bags, myself and Mullins ignored all the touts and started strolling about the town looking for accommodation.

Mullins has been to Phi Phi twice before, and thought he knew the lay of the land, but it turned out things have changed a bit since his last visit. After a bit of backtracking we ended up checking about 15 places without finding anything with available rooms at a good price. We ended up going back to Nick and Sarah and taking a tout to a nearby large complex of concrete bungalows. The rooms were very nice though, and we stayed there for 2 nights before finding much cheaper rooms in the centre of the town.

All-in-all I don't think any of us was particularly impressed with Koh Phi Phi. Although the scenic setting is lovely (I personally preferred Raileh though), it was still very much high season (although thankfully not super-high season which is the time between Christmas and Jan 10th), and so everywhere was very, very crowded, with everything from rooms, food and drink all very overpriced. The main beach was also very crowded, and if it wasn't for Nick finding a secluded area of beach on the pier-side of the island we almost certainly would have left the island after just a day or two.

As it was, we basically just hung out on that secluded part of beach every day for 4 days. There were free umbrellas and sun loungers (although the umbrellas weren't very effective, and I got burnt after the first day sitting under one), and a great, cheap little local restaurant right beside us.

We had all wanted to try scuba diving in the area (and had been thinking of maybe heading to Phuket to do a live-aboard to the world famous Similans, but in the end my budget wouldn't really have stretched to that). But the reports from the dive shops all told us the visibility was pretty terrible, but that it might improve in a day or two. So we decided to skip Phuket and just hang around Phi Phi for another couple of days hoping the seas would clear up a bit.

It all turned out very well too, as a couple of days later all 3 of us did 2 fun dives together and the visibility was a very healthy 12-14 meters. We got to approach a very beautiful, heavily pregnant leopard shark just resting on the sea floor, a small turtle feeding on coral, lots of shoals of small, colourful fish, quite a few lion fish, barracuda and just lovely rock and coral formations.

On one of the mornings we trekked up to the viewpoint that gives great views over the isthmus to the two crescent beaches below. It also provides views of just how overly developed the island has become since the tsunami destroyed much of it in 2004. It was fascinating to see the before and after photos of the area, but not so nice to see what a mess the Thais have made of developing the 'clean-slate' they had after the tsunami.

Each evening was pretty much the same - after the beach and a shower we'd stroll to a nice restaurant for cheap Thai food and then a few beers in the places we knew had happy hours. Then maybe we'd check out the fire shows on the beach (one night there was a traditional Thai dance troupe of lady boys from Phuket, which got a bit boring after about half-an-hour).

So after 6 nights on the island it was time to leave and start heading up North. Mullins wanted to catch up with another friend of his currently volunteering with refugees on the Thai/Burmese border, and so myself and Sarah decided to join him for the long trip up to Mae Sot.

Short stop in Ao Nang

2009-01-27T03:19:00.000-08:00

We only stayed 2 nights at Ao Nang, as none of us where particularly impressed with the town. It's all quite developed, and has a major road between the bars/restaurants/touristy shops and the beach itself.

So for the full day we had there we got a local boat out to Raileh beach, a far more peaceful area that has no road access. It's still quite developed though and the main beach there was very busy, so we strolled across the narrow stretch of land to a more remote beach with beautiful limestone rock formations famous for rock climbing. After relaxing on the beach and swimming a few times in the warm seas it was back to Ao Nang on the last 6pm boat.

That night after dinner we strolled the few kilometres to Lucky Bar (we didn't realise how far a walk it would be), and had a couple of beers in the cool bar there watching a not-so-good local rock band play covers. We all took a tuk-tuk back in Ao Nang where myself and Mullins played some pool and Connect-4 with some of the 'locals'.

The plan the following day was to make our way to Koh Phi Phi, a famously beautiful island only 1.5 hours away by ferry, and so the next morning we all made our way to the end of the road and boarded the very comfortable air-conditioned ferry.

Getting to Ao Nang

2009-01-27T03:09:00.000-08:00

The bus journey from Bangkok was fine, and we got to the connection hub of Surat Thani early in the morning, waited for about an hour and then continued on towards Krabi. But it turned out that the bus stopped at a tour office about 5km before Krabi town itself, and everyone had to get out. This is a very common scam here in Thailand, where you buy a cheap bus ticket to a destination only to be hit by extra charges or left miles from where you're supposed to be going.

Myself and another traveller got quite irrate with the girls working at the tour office, trying to insist that they pay for the waiting taxis to drop us into Krabi town proper. Of course they completely refused, so in an attempt to work out exactly where I was I grabbed a local map from in front of them (all the other travellers on our bus just seemed to accept being ripped off, and quitely paid the extra 'charge' for taxis into the town).

My original plan had been to go from Krabi town directly to the beach town of Ao Nang, and it turned out that we were actually very close to the road to Ao Nang. So after a bit more gesticulating to the scam artists in the tour office (which one of them returned by sticking her tongue out at me!), we just walked the 300meters up the road to the Ao Nang turn-off. As 'luck' would have it, a songthaw heading to Ao Nang just happened to be passing as we reached the road, and of course he stopped to let us hop up on the back. So it turned out we actually saved time and money by getting 'ripped off' (although the stress of arguing with the scammers wasn't too nice), and so 20 minutes later we arrived at the beach town of Ao Nang.

In fact, I saved even more money when I got back to Bangkok 10 days later when I confronted the guy who sold us our original bus tickets. I knew he knew it was all a scam, and I told him so in no uncertain terms. Of course he immediately got all defensive and started making up crappy excuses, none of which I entertained, and he very quickly handed me back 100 baht to cover the taxi fare into Krabi town that I never got - the sucker! I think my case was strengthened by 2 girls that just happened to be sitting behind me while I was arguing with him who also just happened to have been on the same bus 10 days earlier! I don't think they bothered to argue their case though, like most Epsilons they just casually accepted being ripped off for some reason.

Anyway, myself and Sarah got settled in Ao Nang while waiting for Mullins to arrive (Sarah had to run around quite a few places to find anything reasonable, but again we seemed to get lucky and she found a great spot).

It turned out that Mullins just happened to bump into a friend of his from Melbourne on the bus, and so we got to meet up, and spend the next few days, with Nick. We all got settled and headed out to explore.

Arriving in Bangkok

2009-01-27T02:30:00.000-08:00

Due to our short delay leaving Bejing we arrived in Bangkok even later than planned. But the public buses here are excellent, and it was no problem finding the bus to the backpacker enclave of Khao San Road (as usual the bus was actually waiting for us, and pulled off within a minute!).

On arrival at Khao San Road though I was hit by probably the strongest sense of culture shock of this entire trip so far, and the reason was simply the shear number of Western backpackers milling about. Even after all this time travelling I have never experienced such a concentration of identi-kit travellers in all my life - all of them seemingly dressed in the same T-shirts and shorts, with tans, tattoos and body piercings and all trying ever so hard to look cool and different!

Anyway, the crowds of backpackers immediately had me worried about getting a room, or least getting a reasonably priced one. I immediately headed away from Khao San itself to the adjoining streets I'd stayed in before, but every hostel we tried was either full or very expensive. But after continuing to stroll away from the main strip we eventually found a lovely place for a good price, Peachy Guesthouse for 400 baht a night.

We spent the next day just strolling about the local area, and discovering that the National Museum and the Gallery are both closed on Mondays and Tuedays (not being told by a tuk-tuk driver, actually reading the plaques outside!).

The following day we again just strolled about, paid for Indian visas to be processed while waiting for a night bus that evening to Krabi in the South. The plan was to try and meet up with Sean Mullins, who was making his way up though Malaysia, and to spend some time on the famous southern beaches of Thailand. So at 6pm our bus duly arrived and off we went.

Hong Kong

2009-01-27T01:47:00.000-08:00

Our flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong had a short stop-over in Bejing, and we arrived there right on time. We were all very casual and relaxed as we made our way to the transfer area, but we were forced to pass through immigration.

I assumed Hong Kong would be an Internal Transfer, but in fact it's still regarded as an International Transfer (Hong Kong will remain a special region until 2050 I think). That confusion caused us to be delayed quite a bit, and we had to get manually written boarding cards for our connecting flight to Hong Kong, which caused further delay, by which time I was getting quite anxious about catching our flight. As it turned out the airline staff simply moved us onto a later flight, leaving us with about 1.5 hours to kill in the airport (as it turned out we could just have caught the original flight, but the staff were right to play it cautiously I suppose). The huge Bejing airport (or the section we were in anyway) was almost completely deserted, which was all a bit eery really.

This was my 3rd time in Hong Kong, and it still captivates me every time. Again our cheap flights meant we arrived very late at night, but Hong Kong's public transport system must be one of the best in the world. It was easy-peasy (and cheap) to catch a bus directly to the city, and we arrived at 2am on a normal Tuesday morning to streets flooded with crowds of people.

It was a bit of a job to find the correct entrance to our hostel (Ah Shan Hostel in Mongkok), as it was on the 14th floor of a skyscraper and had no signage on street level. But once we'd woken the owner (by simply banging loudly on the door of her tiny little room), we were checked-in and relaxing in a great little room.

So the next 5 days were spent doing all the usual Hong Kong things, and using the brilliantly helpful free walking-tour guidebook provided in the airport. So it was great just strolling around refamiliarising myself with all my favorite places, like the huge avary, the escalators, the Green Star ferry, etc. This time I also popped into my favorite building in the world (the IFC Tower 2) to pop up to the observation deck to see the city views, and also an interesting presentation on world currencys.

Of course we strolled around the Peak trail, and of course we didn't pay the pointless extra charge to climb up the new SkyTower (the views from the free trail are much better). I had a relaxing coffee reading the paper and using the free internet at the brilliantly positioned Pacific Coast Coffee house at the base of the SkyTower that looks down on the city (definitely the best value view on the Peak, as you can just pay for a coffee and have the same view as all the rip-off touristy restaurants).

We had a great meal at the Peking Restaurant, which specialises in Peking Duck. Although I thought the food was no better than a good Chinese back home, the atmosphere in this restaurant was brilliant, as we were the only non-Chinese people there, and everyone eats at shared big round tables (and Sarah got an impromptu chopsticks lesson from one of the really friendly 'auld lads beside us).

I tried to go back to one of the best restaurants in Hong Kong at the Langham Hotel (which apparently recently received 2 Michellin stars), where we'd had a fantastic dinner the last time here, but unfortunately when we arrived it was fully booked. We did get to eat twice at another of my favorite Hong Kong instituions though, the chaotic but delicious Kau Kee on Gough Street (mentioned in this interesting looking web page, which I'll need to consult for my next trip).

We also popped into the famous Felix bar in the Peninsula Hotel, but didn't stay long this time, strolled about the convention centre and the new walkway of famous Hong Kong celebrities (cool bronze statue of Bruce Lee), and saw the very underwhelming nighttime laser show across the city. I was thinking of maybe getting to Macau this time, but again we just didn't have time.

So after another hectic 5-day tour of Hong Kong it still just seemed to whet my appetite for this amazing city, and strengthened my ideal of one day living here for a bit. But all too soon we were catching the bus back to the airport and hopping on another flight, this time bound for Bangkok.

San Francisco

2009-01-27T01:24:00.000-08:00

Our per-booked shuttle bus (since we arrived too late for the BART or public buses) dropped us at our pre-booked hostel (Elements Hostel), so after checking-in and dropping our bags in the dorm we popped down to the bar for a couple of New Years drinks. The bar was really pumping out the music, so there wasn't much point in trying to sleep anyway.

The drinks however were mad expensive, so after the first one Sarah popped across the road to buy a couple of beers in the convenience store and smuggle them back into the bar. At 2am though, one of the bar staff simply swiped my drink from the counter right in front of me and poured it down the drain. When I complained she simply told me that there were no drinks after 2am, and so it was my own fault! There had been no warning or anything, so Sarah got really mad and complained to the manager (who had a drink in his hand himself!), and somehow managed to get him to fork over the $8 price of a beer, which was funny 'cos we'd just paid $2 for it in the store across the road!

So the next day we strolled about the town, spending the whole afternoon getting completely stuffed in Chinatown by popping into numerous restaurants trying all the dim-sum. That evening we explored the waterfront and Pier 39 - neither of which were very impressive in my opinion, just collections of touristy shops and restaurants.

It turned out we couldn't book tickets to Alcatraz either, as it was fully booked for the next 3 days. We've done Robben Island in Cape Town though, so I wasn't too bothered - and it leaves something to do next time I'm in San Francisco.

Another night we just happened to be passing a comedy venue and I decided on the spur of the moment to get tickets (I had no idea who the headline comedian was). The show turned out to be great, with the compere and first act both being fantastic. The headliner was actually the weakest of the comedians in my opinion (he plays a character in the American Office), but it was still a great night's entertainment.

It turned out that Sarah's friend Shane was visiting his brother in San Francsico while we were there, so we meet up with him for a day too. Shane had been in town for a while, so I thought he'd have the low-down on where to go in the city, but it turns out his brother lives miles outside the city, and so he didn't have any top-tips at all really.

We did manage to explore the crookedest street in the world though (nothing special), and had a lovely dinner in the Italian quarter of the city before Shane had to catch the last train back out to his brother's house in the suburbs.

I had wanted to hire bicycles so that we could cycle out to the Golden Gate bridge, and cycle across it, but we were both just too lazy in the end really, which was a pity.

I hadn't wanted to stay too long in San Francisco due to the high costs, which is a pity because I was really getting to like the town. We didn't even have time to check out Berkeley or Oakland, so another trip back to San Francisco is definitely on the cards.

So after just 5 days it was time to head back to the airport (just hopping on the really handy BART straight there), and we were off to my favorite city in all the world, Hong Kong.

Leaving Las Vegas

2009-01-08T00:13:00.000-08:00

Our flight out of Las Vegas left at 10pm on New Year's Eve, so we spent the morning and afternoon strolling down the full length of the now familiar strip to the Stratosphere casino. Not having the time or spare cash we didn't bother with the trip up the observation tower, or the impressive-looking thrill-rides at the top. After waiting a good bit for a bus back up the strip we kinda decided that we must have missed the last one that day (as the strip was being closed to traffic for the New Year's Eve celebrations later that night), and so we had to walk all the way back to the Wild Wild West. The streets were getting pretty crowded (there is construction along parts of the strip, and in other parts the sidewalks are very narrow), so it was a bit stressful rushing back to our hotel.

We managed to push and shove our way through the crowds and had managed to get back in time for a last pasta special in the hotel restaurant before retrieving our rucksacks and making our way towards the airport. We knew the main roads would be closed for New Year's Eve, and so had planned on walking beyond the blockades and getting a taxi from the far side. As it turned out the blockades started early, and the cops prevented us from crossing the main road (you really can't talk to American cops the way you often can with the Guards back home - they really are like robots sometimes, just following orders no matter what). Anyway, after getting a bit stressed out and hopping over barriers a couple of times, the cops changed the barrier layout and we could cross the main street. We got a taxi no problem and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare (and this time the guy didn't even try and rip us off!).

The airport is all very new and snazzy, and was practically deserted. We were flying Virgin America, which is a new airline that had the fanciest plane I've ever flown on. It was all very sleek with subdued lighting and very modern personal entertainment systems (even a charger socket for our camera, which was the first time we'd been able to charge the camera in America!). So the flight to San Francisco was effortless, and we arrived on time, picked up our bags and strolled outside to await our shuttle bus direct to our hotel.

It was actually on board this shuttle bus that we celebrated New Year's itself - not so very exciting really...

The Great Grand Canyon

2009-01-08T00:12:00.000-08:00

There are many Grand Canyon bus tours from Vegas, all costing about $100 each, but checking online I saw that we could rent a car with insurance for less than half that (HotWire was great - thanks Podge!). But the main reason for renting a car of course is the freedom to explore at your own pace.

Sarah was pretty nervous about driving a car in the States, mainly because they drive on the 'wrong' side of the road. On my last big trip I'd driven a motorbike for over 2 months up along the East coast of the States, so I knew driving in the States was a doddle, but it still took a fair bit of persuading to convince Sarah it was the best option.

So we picked up the car late on the night before we wanted to travel so that we could head off very early in the morning, as the journey is about 4 to 5 hours. It also allowed us plenty of time to return the car the following night. The drive back from the car rental place (at the airport) was pretty straightforward, but still a bit daunting for Sarah given the shear scale of the highway system here.

So at 5:30 the next morning we headed off through very light traffic and easily found our way onto the right road. We passed over the Hoover Dam, and although it was still dark we got great views of the huge construction job they're doing there to by-pass the original road (which is very windy and only has one lane in each direction). In fact, we had no traffic to speak of at all on the entire journey to the Grand Canyon, but the landscapes we passed though weren't very impressive unfortunately.

So we arrived at the Grand Canyon park in the late morning, parked the car in a spot along the road and strolled the 100 metres or so to the rim of the Canyon itself. I reckon we must have picked the perfect day to visit, as not only was the traffic in the park very light, the weather was shear perfection. There had been a snowfall the night before, which resulted in the entire rim area being layered in a few inches of beautiful snow. The canyon itself, being at a much lower altitude, didn't have any snow at all, and the clear blue skies illuminated the whole scene spectacularly. The visibility was brilliant, and we could clearly make out mountains 60 miles away.

It was immediately clear why the Grand Canyon is so famous - it really is a spectacular sight. Even though the Colca Canyon in Peru is much deeper than the Grand Canyon (twice as deep apparently), it's definitely not a patch on it scenically. The exposed layering in the Grand Canyon, and rich red hues were displayed perfectly in the clear skies we had, so it was all quite spellbinding I must say. And I wasn't even that disappointed that our camera battery was dead, as any famous picture on the Internet of the Canyon in Winter will do justice to the day we had there.

After strolling along the rim for a bit, we checked out the nearby visitor centre and the ranger there advised us that the best thing for us to do was self-drive along the distant part of the rim.

This section of the rim (to Hermit's Rest) was closed to the free shuttle buses, and so it made a fantastically scenic drive with practically no traffic at all. Along the 10 miles there are 7 lookout points, and having our own car meant we could stop at each and every one of them. Each stop had very few people (some having nobody at all at times), although a couple of half-empty tour buses would stop at the more famous lookouts.

So after a couple of hours of driving along this route, stopping at the nice village (which really felt like a ski resort with all the snow about), and looking-out from all the viewpoints, it was time to head back to Vegas.

Again traffic was really light on the way back, but for some reason we got seriously held up coming back through the Hoover Dam. In all we were stopped for about 1.5 hours, and I've no idea what the hold up was all about (probably just traffic heading to Vegas for New Year's, but also maybe due to the construction work, although I didn't see anything obvious causing such a long delay).

All-in-all poor Sarah had to drive for most of the 16 hours it took us to get to the Grand Canyon and back (we left at 5:30am and got back to the airport about 9:30pm), so it was a pretty exhausting day for her. She was fairly nervous throughout the trip, and at one point towards the end when we had to pull off the highway to refuel, the road system got really confusing. We were on a 4-lane oneway off-ramp, turning left onto a 5-lane two-way road (3 nearside lanes going right and two farside lanes going left). When the traffic light changed Sarah starts driving directly towards oncoming traffic! The road markings and signage weren't very clear at all, and it was now dark, so I was confused myself, but luckily there was no traffic behind us, and so in quite a panicky moment she could reverse back again. On the second attempt all went well, but Sarah was fairly shaken by it all.

Anyway, having the rental car not only saved a good few dollars, it also meant we got to see the Hermit's Rest section of the Canyon, stop and explore the village, see all the lookouts and we could stop for lunch when and where we wanted. It really made for a great day, and was certainly far better than being stuck on a tour bus.

Once we'd dropped the car back to the rental company we had to get a taxi back to hotel, as it was too late for the buses, and of course the guy ripped us off by going around the long way (and he even had the cheek to suggest we book him the next day to get back to the airport for our flight to San Francisco - he said all the other taxi drivers would be charging $50 for New Year's, which of course was complete nonsense!). So anyway, all-in-all it was a very long and exhausting day, but worth every second.

Las Vegas

2009-01-01T22:58:00.001-08:00

Both the bus from Indio to San Bernardino, and the connecting bus to Las Vegas left on time, but we hit seriously heavy traffic entering Las Vegas itself. So we arrived about 1.5 hours late, but I'd booked our hotel in advance and so we just hopped in a nearby taxi and zoomed there in a few minutes.

We (well, Sarah really) was a wee bit worried about the hotel, as it was the cheapest option we could find online, and some of the reviews weren't all that flattering to say the least. But in fact, the Wild Wild West Casino and Hotel was possibly one of the best 'finds' of the whole trip so far.

Originally I'd only booked 2 nights there as I had no idea how we were going to get to see the Grand Canyon (I was thinking we might spend a couple of nights in or around the canyon), and the price for the hotel was amazingly cheap ($17 for the first night, $25 the second). This was the main reason for Sarah's anxiety, as she thought that for that price the place must be a real dive. But it turned out that they had very recently remodelled the whole hotel, and our room was fantastically comfortable and spotlessly clean. The room was big, the bed was huge and really comfy, and even the outdoor swimming pool looked immaculate (but the weather was way too cold for us to use it unfortunately). The hotel isn't on the main strip, but is only 10 minutes walk away, so it made a great base from which to explore the town.

Not only all that, but the attached restaurant was also really good, and they just happened to be serving the cheapest food we saw advertised anywhere in all of Las Vegas - a big hearty breakfast was only $1.49 and their dinner special of meatballs at $6 was the tastiest dinner we had (we had it twice, and both times it was better than the $25 meals we got at the fancy casino restaurants).

After checking a few Grand Canyon options I decided the best option would be to just stay in Vegas and do a 1-day trip to the Canyon. So after checking online we booked another 2 nights at the Wild Wild West. Sarah did a great job getting a low room price on the phone, but on double checking the booking in person that night it turned out the price was wrong. Anyway, the next morning Sarah talked to the manager and managed to wrangle the original price somehow, so again we were all set and could relax knowing we had great accommodation sorted (the manager telling Sarah she was amazingly lucky to get such a low price for December 30th). Anyway, enough praise about the Wild Wild West.

Las Vegas is of course centered around the casinos, but for me the town is really about a lot more than that. I was well impressed with the whole town really - I especially loved the general atmosphere in the casinos, and the endless buzz of people 'enjoying' themselves, so I just loved sitting and people watching. But Vegas these days is also about big shows, and I would also have loved to catch a few of the shows that were on in town. The famous 'Blue Man Group' for instance, or a Cirque de Soleil show, or a Penn and Teller show, but unfortunately I reckon my budget wasn't really up to the prices being asked. I probably could have found a half-price ticket if I'd really looked, but we only had a few days and there was lots more to see besides, so haggling over show tickets just didn't seem to be worth the perceived hassle.

Instead we spent most of our time strolling up and down the 6km strip, popping into the various casinos and just taking it all in really. Some of the casinos are really eye-popping - for me the Bellagio (with it's elegant water fountain shows), Caesars (with it's outstandingly decadent constructions) and the MGM Grand (with it's pride of lions in their superbly designed enclosure right in the middle of the casino) were the highlights, although Circus Circus had the most impressive free show with the most amazing acrobatic team I've ever seen.

We also rode the roller-coaster in New York, New York (whose interior I also thought was pretty cool), which was brilliant, but as with the roller-coaster in Colombia it all seemed to be over far too quickly.

So all-in-all we spent 3 full days in Las Vegas and managed to gamble the sum total of $1 between the two of us! Sarah had a go on a $1 slot machine (she lost the whole lot!), but for some reason she didn't get sucked into the mystifying slot-machine craze. I still can't get my head around the whole gambling fascination thing, but I still loved Las Vegas and I'd certainly love to go back and, with a bit more money to spend, to catch some of those shows and just sit back and relax in the opulent atmosphere of the town. Even if a lot of it is fake imitation (like the Venetian, which didn't work for me at all), a lot of it really did work well, and the people-watching opportunities must surely be unrivaled anywhere in the world.

So our only day-trip from Vegas was to visit the Grand Canyon, for which I'd booked a rental car online from inside the Apple store in one of the big malls. The Apple stores are great, 'cos you get to use the Internet for free, whereas the casinos and the two internet places we found in the town were all charging about $20 per hour, by far and away the most outrageous price I've seen anywhere in the world!

Christmas in Indian Wells

2008-12-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

Our bus to Indio left 40 minutes late (I think that is one of the longest delayed departures we've had in the entire trip!), and so we arrived a bit late in Indio where both my Mum and aunt Una were waiting for us. It was great to see my dear 'auld Ma after so long, and so after all the hugs and kisses it was back to Una's gorgeous house in Indian Wells.

I'd been in this house on holiday when I was about 10 years old, but it was uncanny how much I remembered and in how much detail. Anyway my Ma had asked that I cook a Thai dinner for all the girls, so after relaxing for a bit I got stuck into it. It was a bit of a disaster though, as I had to use slightly unfamiliar vegetables and the curry paste was new to me (and I was way too overcautious in using it 'cos the ladies don't like overly spicy food) - ah well, it was all eaten anyway.

After dinner and catching up a bit Una dropped us back to the fabulous Indian Wells Resort Hotel, as there wasn't really room for us in Una's house. The hotel is literally only around the corner (amazing really, given the spread-out nature of American developments), and it was all very plush, comfortable and 5-starry.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we popped around to Una's for lunch and dinner with my Ma (Una and Eithne were out for a traditional Christmas Eve dinner with an old friend). We had a great big Irish fry for dinner, which was great for me and Sarah after so long.

So on Christmas Day, again after our daily hotel breakfast followed by a swim in the huge hotel pool and roasting hot jacuzzi, we again strolled around to Una's. After all the opening of Christmas presents (where both myself and Sarah were spoilt rotten), we relaxed as the girls prepared the dinner. About 5pm Una's great friend Virginia arrived to join us all for the meal.

Virginia is a fantastic character, with another fantastic accent to rival Jimmy's neighbour Hank in Rosarito, this time from Georgia. She used to be Una's next-door neighbour, but recently moved into a nearby care home, but is totally independent and very vivacious - a great example to us all at a sprightly 85 years old. So we had a great time chatting over a huge, perfectly prepared Christmas dinner, and somehow I even had space for some trifle and Eithne's specialty chrimbo-pud!

The next day myself and Sarah just relaxed in the hotel for the morning and afternoon, and headed around to Una's again for dinner, this time having my Ma's gorgeous traditional (for me anyway) turkey soup for starters. After dinner I had a bit of an ordeal getting our photos transferred to DVD's for my Ma to take home (the battery on the camera is dead and I couldn't find a power adapter to recharge it anywhere - nor would any of the hotels in Las Vegas give us one, until eventually I found one on the very new and snazzy Virgin America Airbus flight to San Francisco!).

Next morning, again after the usual leisurely breakfast, swim and jacuzzi, we strolled around to Una's for the last time for a spot of lunch before Una dropped us back to the Greyhound station for our bus to Las Vegas. We both had a fantastic time in Indian Wells - the luxury of the hotel was a really huge treat, the genuinely cosy homeliness of Una's house wonderfully decked out with decorations, and having my Ma and aunts prepare such fantastic meals from home really made this Christmas very memorable.

It was a bit strange to be packing up our rucksacks and hitting the road again after being taken care of for so long, firstly by Jimmy and his family, and then my Mother and aunts. All the usual little niggly fears and anxieties about heading out into the big unknown reappeared but the big consolation this time (along with the ever-present consolation of 'adventure' of course), was that we were headed for Vegas baby!

In the USA at last

2008-12-26T14:22:00.000-08:00

The drive to the US border was very quick and easy, and in fact Jimmy, being a long-term US resident, managed to get through in about 15 minutes, since he has a Sentri pass that allows pretty much automatic passage. We, on the other hand, had to queue up with the Mexicans to go through proper immigration. This turned out to involve waiting in line for about 2.5 hours. Luckily the weather was great (there had been a lot of heavy rain recently), and eventually we managed to get through, where poor Jimmy was patiently waiting for us on the other side.

Once through the border we flew up the American highways back to Jimmy's home in Huntington beach, where his family very kindly put up with us for the next 3 days. Jimmy works in construction, specialising in remodelling, the new buzzword in Southern California at the moment it seems, and he'd finished adding a whole new story to their house about a year ago. He did an amazing job, and the house really is a great example of the 'American Dream'. So it was here we met the whole family, Jimmy's wife Pat, and the three kids, Colin, Sean and Brenna.

Jimmy and Pat seem to be something of a focal point for much of the local community, and on our very first evening we were taken along to two Christmas parties at the neighbours. The following evening we were taken to a third, and all three houses had been recently remodeled and all were fabulous (including one house with an amazing 'data room' that controlled all the CAT-5 wiring). Of course we got to meet lots and lots of people, and naturally we had we relate our 19-month travel odyssey repeatedly, but it was all great fun and gave me a great insight into local American culture (interestingly America has been the only place where people asked if I was 'independently wealthy' to be able to travel so long - answer, 'No, it just a lot cheaper than everyone imagines').

One of the days Jimmy took us up to Newport Beach, a district famous for it's concentration of celebrities over the years, and we did a 45-minute harbour cruise seeing all the amazing houses and moored yachts, many decked out in extravagant Christmas lighting. Another day we accompanied Jimmy and Pat for a bit of Christmas shopping - all of which seemed ridiculously easy and hassle-free, with no crowds or queues of people, not even any traffic to talk about - literally an entire world away from Grafton Street in Dublin!

We even got to go to Church with the whole Parker family, which was interesting. Although it was a Catholic mass, it differed from home in a few small ways, with both myself and Sarah just a tad uncomfortable with all the hand-holding and clapping along to the songs...

On our last night Jimmy and Pat took us out to one of their favorite restaurants, Thai Dishes. Brenna, Sean and a friend of Sean's came out with us, so we got to order and share lots of different dishes. I reckoned this was probably the best Thai meal I've had outside Thailand, and luckily it gave me a chance to repay some of Pat and Jimmy's great kindness to us over our stay in Mexico and California (although of course given Jimmy's nature and generosity I had to be a tad sneaky about it!).

Next morning Jimmy drove us up to the Greyhound station in Long Beach, and next thing we know we're on a bus up to Indio to catch up with my Mum who is over with her sister Eithne to visit my other Aunt, Una, who lives in Indian Wells.

Last days in Mexico

2008-12-26T12:20:00.001-08:00

Our flight to Tijuana arrived at about 10:30pm, but thankfully Sarah's cousin Jimmy had driven down from California to pick us up. Sarah was a tad nervous she might not recognise him, since they haven't seen each other for about 25 years or so. But seeing as how we were the only even vaguely Gringo-looking backpackers, and Jimmy looks like an uncanny mix of Sarah's brother and father, we didn't have any problems finding each other.

So Jimmy took us out for a quick bite to eat in a local Mexican place (just about everywhere was closed at this time of night), before dropping us back to his holiday home in Rosarito, a town about 30 minutes South from Tijuana airport. We spent two nights there with Jimmy, meeting his resident neighbours Hank and Nancy (both retired and fabulously friendly and welcoming, especially with Hank's infectious Boston accent). We also had the honour of meeting the crazy, zany Brandy.

Our only full day in Rosarito Jimmy drove us into the small town where he had a small bit of business to attend to while I got my hair cut, and then after a quick stroll through the depressingly quite local market (Mexican drug-wars are generating a lot of very bad press in the States at the moment, so tourists are few and far between), we drove down along the dramatic coastline and into Mexican wine country. We had two wine tastings, both in vineyards that were every bit as plush and modern as the vineyards we've visited in South Africa, Argentina, Australia and New Zealand. Later that night was our last authentic Mexican dinner with all Jimmy's Rosarito mates before Hank drove us all home.

The following day was a lazy start, and after a very quick dip in the freezing cold Pacific Ocean just outside Jimmy's beach house we headed up towards the US border (after Jimmy had to pay a wee bribe to a Mexican motorcycle cop who'd caught him driving up a closed-off road to try and skip the huge queue of cars heading for the border post - d'oh!).

Mexico City

2008-12-18T14:41:00.001-08:00

I remember studying Mexico City in geography class in school, and my memories of it from then are all pretty negative - a massive, sprawling city choked by thick pollution, with maddening crowds and dangerous muggers everywhere. By now of course, with all my traveling, I know to pay little or no heed to such generalisations, and I'm delighted I did.

Our one day sojourn to Mexico City was probably one of my favorite 'days out' of the whole trip so far. We did have to walk a far bit in the morning to catch a bus to the main terminal (because buses aren't allowed in the city centre), but once there we caught a bus direct to Mexico City straight away. It arrived on time too, passing very impressive volcanoes on the way.

At the Mexico City bus terminal it was really easy to hop on the metro and go straight to the main plaza, one of the biggest in the world apparently. From there we strolled about the centre, checking out various free or cheap museums (seeing as how we only had one day there was no point paying for the big, expensive museums). We also checked out some really great cafes, restaurants and bars of course, the best certainly being Sanborns headquarters (the tile house), La Opera Bar, and where we had a great dinner Cafe Tacuba (although the waitress got quite snotty with Sarah 'cos she felt her tip wasn't enough, but she'd been snooty all along, so good luck to her...!).

Towards the end of the day we got another metro up to the most famous religious shrine in Mexico, the Basilica of Guadalupe. This is famous for a shroud that apparently had an image of the virgin Mary (or a local version) just miraculously appear one day. It was all pretty miraculous alright, although the most miraculous thing is that literally millions of Catholics come here every year to see, and take photos, of this shroud.

I was expected something vaguely authentic looking, something a bit like the Shroud of Turin (which most people with a working brain now accept as a fake), but in fact the image is a nice colourful affair looking exactly as if some local artist had painted in on a cloak.

But the new basilica itself (the old one is being restored), is mighty impressive architecturally - especially the Star Trek teleporter system hanging from the ceiling!

So hopping back on the metro and back to the centre, we relaxed in a couple of the cool bars again (including the 4th story terrace of the Gran Hotel, which has a really fantastic foyer and nice views of the plaza). Then it was back to the bus terminal, and after a bit of a frenzy finding our way around we hopped on a bus back to Puebla (waiting time about 1 minute).

We got back to Puebla just after 23:00, so there were no local buses. Luckily though they have the fixed-price taxi system here, so we just got our taxi ticket in the terminal and hopped in a taxi straight back to the hostel.

Next day was a leisurely start with a quick delicious taco from Taco Tony's down the road, before using the free internet service in the tourist office for a few hours sorting out various California travel issues. Then yet another gorgeous dinner in the small, cosy La Gardenia restaurant (trying the local speciality of Chile en Noganda) before more internet (writing this), and then busing it to the airport for our flight to Tijuana.

Puebla

2008-12-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

Long distance bus prices in Mexico are high, so I was expecting a top-notch bus for our overnight trip from Palenque to Puebla. It turned out to be just a fairly ordinary affair without the service of Argentinian buses (dinner, sparkling wine and bingo!), or the only-three-seats-across-each-row buses of Brazil, but I'm well used to long bus journeys now, so it was a grand journey in the end and I managed a fair bit of sleep.

We arrived at Puebla in the early morning, at the huge, very clean and modern bus terminal. We hopped on a local bus towards the centre, and luckily had a couple of friendly locals telling us where to get off. Apparently the city has major traffic problems, so buses don't go into the very centre of the city, meaning I had to stroll a bit to get my bearings. Then it was a bit more strolling to the recommended hostels, with Sarah doing her usual door-to-door price checking.

The Hotel Cathedral was the best option, again not mentioned in the guidebook, but right beside places that are. We got a room with very high ceilings and fantastic cornicing but only partition walls, and after a couple of hours sleep (any more would just screw up our mental 24-hour clocks), it was time to explore a bit.

The city really is beautiful, with the usual main plaza surrounded by porticoed cafes and shops, and of course the obligatory huge cathedral. The following day was proper exploration, taking in a few of the museums and churches (one having a cool, undecomposed body of a monk that was pretty stunning really), although Sarah had a dicky tummy and went back to the hostel early.

Seeing as how we'd managed to travel all the way up through Central America so easily and quickly we had a full day spare in Puebla before flying up to Tijuana, so early the next morning we decided to hop on a bus for the 2 hour bus trip to Mexico City.

Palenque, Mayan ruins number three

2008-12-14T09:32:00.000-08:00

Our first night in Palenque we arranged to meet Sarah for dinner in a local restaurant called Las Tinajas, and spent the late afternoon sorting out money and having a drink on the main plaza (which at dusk was invaded by thousands of squawking birds).

The meal in Las Tinajas was probably the best Mexican meal I've ever tasted, and the salsa sauce was one of the tastiest and hottest I've ever tried too. We all ordered local Mexican stuff, and it was all gorgeous.

Next morning, not too early, we got a minibus from just outside our hostel to the ruins of Palenque, only 8kms away. We paid the cheap entrance fee (the cheapest by far of all the Mayan ruins we've visited), and strolled about the site. Again all extremely impressive, and quite different from both Copan and Tikal. The setting here is fantastic, set in dense jungle, and this time we got great views of the resident howler monkeys. The sound these monkeys make really is incredible - I reckon it sounds exactly like nasty zombies in a horror movie or something, all very eerie and not a little disconcerting, and all extremely loud! (In fact, according to Wikipedia '...they are considered the loudest land animal. According to Guinness Book of World Records, it can be heard clearly for 3 miles.')

The weather was back to being spectacular again, and luckily this site isn't so large or spread out. So we took long leisurely rest stops atop temples and palaces, and just took our time ambling about (and eating our packed sandwiches from the top of the Temple of the Cross, the highest structure there, looking out over the ruins and the dense jungle all around us). One small criticism I would have about Palenque though is the number of hawkers allowed to push their wares inside the site itself (at the other Mayan sites the hawkers are all kept outside the gates). They were all over the place, all selling the same stuff, and it seemed a bit of a desecration of the ancient sacred site.

Anyway, on our way out of the ruins we visited the museum. Everything here was impressive, some of it extremely so, but the highlight by far for me was the amazingly huge and intricately carved stone sarcophagus of one of the greatest Maya rulers. It was beautifully presented I must say and certainly the single most impressive artifact of all the sites we visited.

Later that night we meet up with Sarah again, and a Turkish guy who was also on our trip from Tikal, and went for dinner in another guidebook recommended restaurant, La Selva. This time though the food was disappointingly mediocre, so of course the books don't always get it right.

That night we booked our last major bus ride up to the town of Puebla, from where we fly up to Tijuana. The bus was at 7pm though, so the next day we had a nice long lie-in and I spent most of the day using the Internet trying to organise our next major leg of this trip to Asia.

Getting to Mexico

2008-12-14T09:01:00.001-08:00

So the trip into Mexico turned out to be yet another doodle. Our comfortable minibus picked us up on time, and after just a bit of messing about at the tour agency office we heading straight to the border. Booking through an agency does have it's advantages alright, in this case having a direct, non-stop bus journey and a waiting bus on the far side of the border, but I still much prefer getting the local transport in general. It's invariably much less expensive, but also has a lot more character and just feels so much more 'real' when you're the only Westerner on the whole big crowded bus, as opposed to being in a minibus surrounded by German and French backpackers.

Anyway, our bus brought us as far as a river and after about 10 minutes we all boarded a longboat for the very nice 45 minute river trip to the border post itself. It was here that we met Sarah, an Irish teacher on a six month trip around Central and South America.

At the Guatemalan immigration desk the official asked for what I thought was a sizeable fee (in fact it was only a small fee, but I still hadn't gotten used to the currency). I knew this was just them being cheeky, as a few officials at other borders had also asked for fees that other tourists had told me they just refused to pay. The other times though, the fee was very small (only a couple of US dollars each or whatever), so although I knew that they were being cheeky I just paid, as not having proper Spanish makes any discussion pretty much impossible.

This time though I thought the fee was high, and I had no local currency left anyway, and no small denomination US dollars either (and if I paid using a high denomination note they'd screw me by giving me change in local currency at a ridiculous exchange rate). But luckily the other Sarah had very good Spanish. She'd also been in and out of Mexico 3 times already, and so she knew that officially you don't need to pay any fee. Strangely though she seemed prepared to pay this fee, asking the rest of us in the group (6 of us in total) what we thought. I told her pretty clearly that I had no intention of paying a cent, and asked her to simply use her good Spanish to explain that to the official. Without any fuss at all the guy just simply nodded, stamped our passports, gave them back to us and said 'gracias'. It still seems strange to me now that these guys could so casually try to rip people off, but that's travel I guess...

Mexican immigration was quick and painless, and involved no direct fee (we do have to pay an immigration fee at a bank, but we can do that at any time before we leave Mexico). Then it was on another bus direct to the town of Palenque, only about 3 hours away. This minibus did take on local people along the route though, and so was practically the same as the usual public transport, as opposed to a dedicated tour agency bus.

So all-in-all the trip was quick and painless, and we arrived in Palenque nice and early in the afternoon. Sarah traipsed off to find a hostel and again found a great deal in a place not mentioned in the guidebooks (all the other 5 backpackers on our bus paid at least twice what we paid because all of them choose guidebook places - strange...).

Tikal, Mayan ruins number two

2008-12-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

I'd noticed tour agencies in Copan offering bus tickets direct to Tikal in Guatemala for $40US each, which would certainly have been convenient, but I reckoned just getting local public transport would work out much cheaper. Indeed it did, only costing us about $16US each, and the whole thing was yet again really easy (anyone reading this back home has to realise of course that saving $24US so easily is a fairly big deal when your daily budget is only about $25US).

6am in the morning we caught the local bus to the border, and had no queues or bother at immigration. Sarah had to change money with a moneychanger guy though as there was no bank or ATM, but it wasn't too painful and soon we were on our way up towards the town of Santa Elena, the main staging post for getting to the Maya site of Tikal.

We knew we had to change buses at Chiquimala, but luckily the minibus conductor guy was really friendly and led us through the streets and local markets to the connecting bus company (he even insisted on carrying my rucksack for me). It turned out he was really after his small commission from the other bus company, but at least he didn't try to hit us for a tip, and without his help we would have had a real problem finding the right place.

Our connecting bus was leaving in 30 minutes, so I had plenty of time to get to an ATM and get some Guatemalan money. On the way I saw the sickest looking dog I've ever seen - incredible to realise it was still alive. I've seen some sorry looking dogs before in Asia, but this poor guy really was heart-wrenching (and I'm sure I'll see a lot more, even worse cases once I get to India). Anyway, our bus left spot on time and arrived in Santa Elena on time too. The bus actually left us a wee bit outside the town, but a cheap minibus was waiting to ferry passengers (only us as it happened) into the town.

After a bit of debating as to where to go, we got the minibus to leave us at a cheap place outside the main tourist area of Flores (as it was closer to the bus terminals). The cheap place recommended in the book wasn't so cheap - it's a very common problem with the guidebooks, but you just use them as a guide, and nearly always find a much cheaper place very nearby. That's exactly what we did again here, and so settled into the Hotel Alonso.

The hotel booked our bus transfer to the ruins for the next morning. After having so few other tourists at Copan, I reckoned there was a good chance Tikal would be kinda quite too, and so I didn't book a mad early bus (they start at 4am!), booking the 6am bus instead (it's over an hour bus ride to the ruins).

Again the ruins here at Tikal are incredible - really something only personal experience can do justice. The weather this time was very overcast, but in fact it kept the temperature at a nice comfortable level, which was convenient given the large amount of walking we had to do to see the entire site, as it's all very spread out.

Again we did our usual of eating breakfast and lunch atop a mad temple, and again the ruins were amazingly quiet, although there were a few more people milling about than at Copan.

Back in Santa Elena we sorted out a bus to Mexico, and this time I did decide to get a tour agency bus. In this case the price didn't seem so exorbitant and according to our guidebooks the border crossing into Mexico is much more awkward, as it involves a river crossing. It also meant not having to worry about moneychangers and negotiating prices in an unfamiliar currency with bus drivers and boatmen. So with that bus ticket sorted out I could relax, and we strolled across the causeway from Santa Elena to the lovely island of Flores.

Here we strolled about along the waterfronts, had a drink in a nice waterfront bar at sunset before trying a Japanese restaurant for a change. It turned out to be a great choice as the food was delicious and the view over the full-moon illuminated lake was top-notch. It was then a nice leisurely stroll back to our hotel and yet another crazy early start the next morning for the bus journey across into Mexico.

Copan, our first Mayan ruins

2008-12-13T15:23:00.000-08:00

The ferry left Utila spot on time (06:20), and after another super-smooth crossing we arrived back on the mainland. Two local bus rides later and we arrived at the bus terminal literally as a bus to San Pedro was pulling out.

At San Pedro we were met by a bus company representative to escort us across and through the massive new bus terminal to where our connecting bus to Copan would be leaving. It was here that we met up with Erin, an Ozzie girl travelling the same way as us for a bit, and so we had some lunch and a chat with her while waiting for the bus to depart.

The journey to Copan was again very comfy and straightforward and we arrived just before dark. We got a fantastic price for a couple of nights in a nice posada and then headed out for dinner. The small town is really lovely I think, and we had a fantastic meal in the lovely Carnitas Nia Lola restaurant (with waitresses balancing wine bottles and food on their heads). It was so good we went back the next night too with Erin, but of course it didn't seem as great then.

So the next morning it was another early start to stroll the nice 1km walk from the town to the famous Maya ruins of Copan. It seemed we were the first tourists to arrive and I was anxious to get through the ticket desk and into the site before the hordes arrived. But in fact we only saw maybe 20 or 30 people on the entire site for the entire day we were there - and half of those were gardeners or guides!

The site really is amazing and well deserves the hype it gets. There's no point in me trying to describe it really, it's all here.

I had deliberately waited to have breakfast at the ruins themselves, and as soon as we arrived at the Grand Plaza, the focal centre of the ruins, we scaled up the really cool temple that's smack-bang in the centre (after checking first if it was OK with a guard). So there we are in the middle of the Maya Grand Plaza of Copan, sitting on the top of the cool pyramidal temple without a single other tourist in sight just casually having our breakfast, when a flock of 4 gorgeous scarlet macaws fly straight past us in close formation - a truly spectacular sight to see anywhere, but all the better for the setting we were in of course.

We spent the entire day just strolling about and climbing the various ruins, many of which are in fantastic condition. Having the place almost completely to ourselves was a real treat, and of course the weather was just perfect too. The huge museum at the site was very impressive too, especially the reconstruction of one of the ancient temples that is actually buried inside a more recent temple.

Later in the day I strolled up to a neighbouring ruin site, and literally had the entire place to myself. Back in the town it was dinner with Erin and another early night, as it was another very early start to get across the border into Guatemala and try to make it up to the even more famous Maya ruins of Tikal.

Utila and scuba diving

2008-12-07T13:33:00.000-08:00

We arrived on the island of Utila just before dark, and Sarah had her usual task of running around the place scoping out sleeping options. When she got back I then ran around scoping out scuba diving options. The whole point of coming all this way was to take advantage of the world famous diving opportunities here. I knew it was low-season, and that the conditions wouldn't be great, but the Bay Islands are also famous for being one of the cheapest places in the world to get certified as a diver.

So Sarah's christmas present this year is to get qualified as a PADI scuba diver. The tiny town (more a village really) has got 11 diving operations, so I ran about checking out as many as I could as quickly as I could. It quickly became apparent that the various operators here have a price fixing thing going on, as every single place quoted identical prices for scuba courses and for individual dives - every place except one that is. Paradise divers was the only place offering cheaper options, and for some reason they were much cheaper ($229 instead of $271 for a course and $40 for 2 fun dives instead of $59). They also throw in free accommodation and 2 fun dives for doing a training course (most operators offered those freebies too, or slight variations).

So the choice of place to stay, and which scuba operator, was pretty self-evident. Of course I checked out the gear first, and although it certainly wasn't brand new or anything, it all looked in good enough condition and I got a good feeling from chatting to the guys running the place. So Sarah started her 3-day course the very next morning, as we are pretty much restricted in time now having booked a flight to Tijuana for December 18th. I spent the day exploring the town, buying and preparing lunch, strolling to the beaches either end of the town and checking out dive options for me in a bit more detail. It turned out Paradise Divers were the best option for my dives too, and the following morning I went diving with them.

Both my dives were pretty good, although being the rainy low-season the visibility wasn't great (about 10 meters or so). But it was immediately clear that this place must be amazing in good conditions. Both my dives were through fabulously varied coral gardens, and even in the overcast and chilly conditions (they didn't have a full wetsuit in my size, so I had to use a shortie - you get what you pay for I guess!), I could easily appreciate what it must be like in clear conditions. I did add a new entry on my ever growing list of crazy critters though, a mad looking toadfish.

These islands are also famous for spotting whale sharks, but again being off-season there is practically no chance of seeing them now (and I forgot about the free lecture on whale sharks the night before we left - d'oh!). So Sarah finished her course with flying colours, and the following day it was back on the road and catching the 6:20am ferry back to the mainland to make a mad dash for the famous Mayan archaeological site of Copan.

Honduras

2008-12-07T12:28:00.000-08:00

It was an ambitious target to set, but I reckoned if all went well we could just about make it from Granada in Nicaragua to the caribbean coast of Honduras in one long day. Everything started well with an early bus from Granada to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua and then an easy connection to Ocotal near the border, and another connection on a local bus to the border itself.

Immigration was grand as there was only a tiny queue (luckily enough, as each person took ages to be processed, with more exit and entrance fees being charged ($2US and $3US respectively), and handwritten receipts being issued). But it all fell apart once we started travelling through Honduras!

Luckily enough we found a really helpful immigration official who spoke great English, and he explained that the only direct bus from the border that travelled any large distance wasn't due until 2pm that afternoon. Instead we'd have to get a series of 3 local buses to make it to the Honduran capital, from where we could get connections to the north coast.

We had to wait about 45 minutes for the first bus to depart the border (only travelling 12 kms), then we got an immediate connection on another bus the next 20 kms, before having to wait about an hour for the third connection to the capital (which gave us plenty of time for lunch). Once there though the trouble really began - fustratingly the various bus companys all have their own terminals, they tend to be scattered all over the place and they also appear to move location (as our guidebooks got their locations consistently wrong). It also means when you arrive at one company's terminal and want to get a connection with another company you have to get a taxi to the second terminal.

As always the taxi drivers are guaranteed to try and rip you off, and since the bus terminals had moved from the locations mentioned in our books, we had no idea how far the taxi ride would be and therefore no idea what a fair taxi price should be. Anyway, the first taxi brought us out to a connecting company´s terminal, but due to the earlier delays we had missed the onward bus by about 30 minutes. That would have meant another taxi to a different company to try a bus to a different place along our intended route, but they were all quoting crazy prices (probably knowing we had no idea where we were), but luckily Sarah managed to find out that a local bus would take us there more or less directly to where we wanted to go.

So getting the local bus (literally one-twentieth the cheapest price quoted by the taxi drivers!) we arranged to get a bus to San Pedro Sula, as close to the coast as we could get that night. It gave us time to order a Chinese for dinner, but we had to take it away as they took so long to prepare it. We only ordered one meal between us (portion sizes this whole trip have been huge, and so we now routinely just order one main course between us, except in the mad fancy places of course!), but this one turned out to be hugest one yet - it literally fed us that night, the next morning and we only finished it for lunch the next day.

Arriving in San Pedro Sula we discovered that the bus company terminal had moved miles outside the city. It was mad late now, and so we were forced to get yet another rip-off taxi. Luckily the hostel recommended in the guidebook turned out to be really nice and the guy there was very helpful the next morning negotiating with taxi drivers on our behalf to get us to yet another bus terminal. We had started very early again in the morning hoping to make it to the coast to catch a 9am ferry to the Bay Islands, our ultimate destination.

As it turned out, even locals and taxi drivers can get totally confused by the whole multiple-bus-company-terminal thing, as the terminal our taxi driver dropped us at was the wrong place. Luckily a guy was just leaving though to go to the correct location, and so he took us with him. Basically we had to walk about 10 minutes, catch a local minibus and get off in the middle of nowhere were in fact the correct bus was waiting for us (without that friendly local guy bringing us with him we would never have made that bus).

As it turned out we arrived in La Ceiba (which is close to the ferry point) a little before 9am but I needed to organise money and use internet banking, and the only ATM in the area didn't work. So resigned to missing the 9am ferry we just got a bus into the city centre (one less taxi thank god), and relaxed for most of the day waiting for the 4pm ferry instead (after being falsely informed by some local guy that there was an 11am ferry, and being told by the official tourist office that no ferries run on the weekend - they actually run every day!).

So we finally arrived on the Bay Island of Utila in the caribbean at 5pm, only half-a-day after our ambitious target. Even though travelling through Honduras was extremely fustrating, looking back even now just a couple of days later it wasn't so bad really.

Granada

2008-12-04T12:17:00.000-08:00

The town of Granada is another one of Nicaragua's highlights apparently, and indeed it was a lovely town. We only stayed two nights (Hostal Esfinge), but since we arrived early the first day we had time to stroll about and pretty much check out all the local attractions. These are mainly lovely old churches and impressive colonials buildings, with some nice cafes and restaurants too.

The following day we got a local bus out to the National Parque Volcano Masaya, another cluster of volcanoes. The main volcano here is the most active one in all of Central America, and constantly belches out sulphuric clouds (apparently it can emit between 300 and 3000 tonnes of toxic gases every day, making it one of the world's largest naural polluters). It was certainly in a very toxic mood when we arrived, with the entire wide crater emitting a steady stream of burning cloud. We hiked around the neighbouring crater rim too. It doesn't emit any stream and appears a lot smaller. It makes for fantasic views though, all very Jurassic Park-looking.

Back in the town we strolled about some more and splashed out on dinner in the very fancy El Zaguan, having a gorgeous steak and the local vigoron (the vigoron we'd had the night before on the central square was both cheaper and nicer though!).

Next morning another very early start to try and get through the border and into Honduras...

Nicaragua and the volcanic islands

2008-12-04T11:46:00.001-08:00

Having gotten through immigration so quickly we hopped on a local bus to the town of Rivas (again our lack of Spanish again causing some fustration, but in fact it has never resulted in anything bad happening, things always work out quite quickly). The bus station here was all a bit mad, dirty and hectic but we were on our way again within 20 minutes.

As Nicaragua is one of the cheapest countries in Central America I decided to check out a couple of the countries highlights - first up was the Isla de Ometepe. This island is formed from two conjoined volcanoes sticking straight up from the fresh lake of Lake Nicaragua (it`s the biggest fresh water island in the world). So once at Rivas we needed to get a taxi to the ferry port in San Jorge in order to get the boat across to the island. We had a bit of time to kill waiting for the ferry, so we relaxed on the shores of the lake and some lunch looked out at the incredibly perfect cone of the bigger of the two volcanoes.

The one hour boat ride gave us fantastic views of the volcanoes as there wasn't much cloud, and the main volcano really is an impressive sight, being prefectly conical. The boat brought us directly to the main town on the island, and I decided to stay here rather than move to another part of the island (the guidebooks recommend other places as being nicer, but we were only staying for a couple of nights so I didn´t fancy the hassle of moving about). I thought the little town was quite nice anyway, and our hostel was friendly and cheery, being basically just a family home with just thin curtains for some of the main walls!

The next day we rented bikes and waited for the bus to take us and our bikes to the far side of the island and just cycle back (the bus was later than we´d been told, another example of locals not having much of a clue about their own buses or boats - it´s just another fustrating trait that has emerges while travelling, but more so it seems in Central America (while I´m on the topic, another annoyance is the total lack of street signs in some places, even major cities. Apparently lots of these places have no postal service, and so no need for addresses. So locals give directions in relation to well-known local landmarks, which is useless to tourists of course, and they have often never seen a map of their own town so they can´t even tell you where you are currently standing!).

Anyway the bus brought us to the other town and after checking out the local church and it´s pretty cool ancient stone statues in the grounds we rode off back towards the main town. We took a 8km detour to check out some local petroglyphs (more ancient stone carvings, these ones mostly weird shapes and symbols), and what is supposed to be the best beach on the whole island, Playa Santo Domingo.

There was no beach, or at least nothing I'd call a beach (the guidebook calls it amazing!), just a very narrow stretch of black volcanic sand at the base of a lovely hotel (maybe the lake is tidal and the tide was in or something). We had a small lunch and a drink at the fancy hotel and then I changed into my swimming shorts for a lovely swim in the very shallow lake (Sarah wasn't tempted - the weather was overcast all day, and we had drizzly rain most of the time. It was very warm though, so the rain was actually quite nice and refreshing). The lake was perfectly flat and calm, and it was weird lying back and watching tiny fish jump from the water all around me.

Then back on our bikes for the long ride back to the town. Luckily this was on a good road, as the 16km roundtrip detour to the beach and petroglyphs had been on a rough dirt road, and so we getting tired. It was a pity the weather was so overcast, as we never really got good views of the volcanoes, but the landscapes were lovely and the little villages we passed were cool.

Next morning we got the ferry back to the mainland (again being told the wrong time by the family we stayed with), and it was a quick enough jaunt to the colonial town of Granada.

Costa Rica in a blur

2008-12-04T11:20:00.001-08:00

The plan had been to fly through Costa Rica without really stopping, as the guidebooks indicated that it is one of the most expensive Central American countries, and so it just made more sense to spend our time in the cheaper countries.

The first bus trip was easy, although we were lucky not to miss the bus completely. It arrived just as we got to the pick-up point and left immediately, even though we were about 5 minutes early. So getting to David we got an immediate connection straight to the border. Luckily there wasn't much of a queue for Panamian immigration, as the processing for each person seemed to take ages.

On the Costa Rican side there was no queue at all, and we just hopped on a bus to the capital, San Jose, pretty much straight away (after the usual bit of confusion caused by our embarrassing lack of Spanish though).

Once in San Jose it was a fairly straightforward walk to the required bus terminal. We had time for a bite to eat and I used the Internet for a bit, and then we were straight off up to Liberia. This was the first indication though of what became an extremely annoying feature of independent bus travel in this part of the world. Basically there are many different bus companies travelling to various places, and they all have their own bus terminals scattered around the place. In this first case we could easily walk between the terminals, but that certainly didn`t hold later on!

Anyway, we arrived in Liberia fairly late, but it was small enough that we could easily walk from the bus terminal into the town. After the usual checking around, we found a good, clean place to bed down for the night (not in the guidebooks). Liberia looked like a nice, clean modern little city, but the next morning it was another early start to try and get up through the border and into Nicaragua.

The first bus terminal we walked to didn`t have buses to the border (this being the first indication of how fustratingly confusing this whole multiple-bus-terminals thing really is), but the proper terminal was only a few minutes further walk. Once there is was a short enough wait for the bus to the border at Penas Blancas.

Again we were lucky with immigration as the queue moved along very quickly, and after paying our 7 dollar entry fee we were in Nicaragua, having `done` Costa Rica in just a day and a half (it did look very nice and jungley though).

Boquete

2008-12-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

It turned out to be painless again to get all the way to Boquete, simply involving a stroll back to the mad junction we'd been to the day we went to the canal, a locl bus to the main bus termainl and then another bus to the city of David. From there we just hopped on a connecting bus to Boquete, just 1 hour away.

As usual Sarah ran around checking out the hostel options, and we settled on the cheapest and nicest place of them all. In fact it was such a nice place (Hotel Marilos, only $10 a night), and such a nice town, that I was seriously tempted to stay for a third night, but in the end the weather wasn't great, time was tight and I was anxious to make a fair bit of progress up towards Mexico (as we were hoping to get to California to visit my aunt and see my Ma for Christmas).

So the next day we had the luxury of sleeping in quite late and then strolled the few km's to the animal refuge of Paradise Gardens (Mullin's had stayed in Boquete a few months back and volunteered here for a few weeks). It was a fantastic place, only started 3 or 4 years ago by an English couple who retired here, and they have done an amazing job of landscaping the grounds and erecting enclosures for the various animals. We spent a few hours just being guided around by a lovely chatty, friendly American retiree and then just strolled around on our own amongst the amazing toucans, the baby sloth, the margay, some mad rare cat thing I can't remember the name of, the crazy gang of 7 macaws, the hummingbirds, etc.

After the refuge, Sarah went back to the hostel to relax while I strolled to the other side of town to check out a coffee factory and a neighbouring private garden that's open to the public. The gardens were again really impressively maintained - lots of ponds with carp and more impressive landscaping (and not a single other soul anywhere to be seen, which was nice).

The coffee factory, though, was a bit disappointing. I had wanted to do tour of the coffee planation itself, but that was way too expensive (and much more so than the guidebooks suggested, so I suppose business must be good), but they had a factory tour option that was cheap. When I got there though, the factory was really small, and you could see into the whole operation from big windows in the walls of the adjoining cafe. So I just had a coffee (not even that great to be honest!), and just watched the couple of guys working in the factory.

Like I said, I could have stayed another day or two just relaxing in Boquete (and given the way this trip has moved along at a snails pace so far, if it wasn't for the time constraints I almost certainly would have), but the next morning was an early start to try and blitz up through as much of Costa Rica as possible.

Panama

2008-12-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

So the flight to Panama City was quick and painless (we even got a small lunch, which was handy as we'd used up all our Colombian money buying the cheapest snacks we could find from a street seller outside the airport in Cartagena).

But there were huge queues for getting through immigration once we arrived, which is always annoying (although amazingly on this trip, after 17 countries, it was the first time we had major queues). In fairness they had a lot of immigation staff, and the passport check itself was very quick, so I think it must have been a case of a lot of aircraft arriving at the same time.

But after that and getting our bags, there was another queue to get through security. When we asked at information for how to get a bus to the centre I really started to get annoyed. The girl there basically refused to tell us, instead telling us, repeatedly, that we must get a taxi as it was now dark and far too dangerous to get the bus. We asked again at another information desk, and were told the same thing, and so I got really annoyed! We had a quick look outside the terminal for the bus stop anyway, but it wasn't obvious, and so in total fustration I finally relented and just got a taxi.

Most taxis here are collectivos, where 4 or more people share a single taxi. So we agreed our price with the driver and got into the people carrier with 3 other people. They were all business men, and 2 of them were clearly confused by the 'collectivo' situation, as one of them thought he was getting a personal taxi, but he stayed put anyway. He paid significantly more than he should have too, so he really got ripped off.

Anyway, we got dropped off at a hostel recommended in the guidebooks, and it turned out to be fine (Hostel Colon). It was in the old part of town, and in it's hayday must have been a beautiful large old building with nice Spanish tiling, but now it's all quite run down really. The whole old town is undergoing extensive renovations as Panama's economy booms (the new town is chock-a-block with massive sktscrapers).

So the next day we got up early to get to the Panama Canal. We strolled to where the guidebook said we could get a bus, a major junction, but it was all mad confusing. Asking a local guy (always a dodgey thing to do), we ended up going to the main bus terminal and having to get a connecting bus. It menat we got delayed, but at least we could checkoutbusoptions for our onward destinationin Panama.

When we arrived at the canal we were just in time to see the last of the morning ships passing through the locks (they pass in the morning from 9am-11am, and then again from 3pm-5pm). So to see the ships passing properly we needed to hang around for the whole afternoon. I didn't mind as the museum and video were both quite good, explaining the history and how the whole system works, and the massive $5billion expansion plans.

When the ships started passing through again we got to see a tanker, a cruise ship (the Rotterdam) and a huge container ship - 3 of the 4 main types of ships (the 4th type being grain ships). For me the most impressive thing was the scale of the ships themselves - the cruise ship was paying $140,000US, $120US for each passenger, just to pass through the canal. But the whole setup is all very impressive too, although strangely quite and relaxed looking. It all seems to operate like any canal lock system (such as those on the Shannon), and seems equally slow but just on a much larger scale. There seemed to be very few people needed to operate the whole thing.

The next day we explored the old town properly. It was all much nicer during the day of course, not as intimidating as when we'd arriving at night. When all the renovation is complete it should be a really nice place (right now it reminded me of Havana with all the lovely old buildings crumbling to pieces). There are already quite a few nice restaurants about, and we had a lovely lunch before heading up to the new town to have a wander. The traffic was terrible though, so we didn't have much time before heading back to the hostel.

As we approached the restaurant we'd been to the night before (the Coca-Cola Cafe, a famous cafeteria place full of colourful locals and good cheap grub), we noticed the main door was closed and a group of people had gathered around looking at something. It turned out that someone had been shot about an hour earlier in a robbery. We could see the body on the ground and the police and ambulance people milling about. It turned out the cafe was open, so we went in another door and just had our dinner, occasionally looking out the window at the scene of the shooting like most of the locals, who seemed to be fairly used to this kind of thing. Then it was around the corner back to our hostel for the night - apparently our neighbourhood is quite dangerous!

Next morning it was time to move on and hopefully get to a place called Boquete towards Costa Rica.

Cartagena

2008-11-22T09:02:00.000-08:00

A not-so-early start the next day, firstly getting a local bus to the main bus terminal (a tiny little minivan from the beachfront, which was a tad awkward with our big rucksacks). Then a cheap mainline bus direct to Cartagena. Although the bus was an hour late in arriving, it was super comfy and made up a good bit of the time on the way, getting us to Cartagena in the late-afternoon nicely before dark.

Sarah did a great job of checking out a good number of central hostels. We'd been warned that Cartagena was an expensive place, so we wanted to try and get the best deal we could as we expected to be staying a few days. Luckily we found a really cheap place that was clean, had a fan, was central and was quite (Hotel Santander). OK, so it was also extremely basic, in fact our room felt at times like sleeping in a hay barn due to the really high ceiling and corrugated iron roof!

So once we'd settled in there we checked out the town a wee bit before meeting up with our Ozzie mate Glen, who we first met in Cusco and then again in Lima. Glen regularly meets some local ex-pats in a bar near our hotel, so we joined them all there.

The next couple of days we just strolled about the town. We managed to swap both our South America guidebooks for Central America ones, which was a great relief as guidebooks are mad expensive to buy. I also booked flights to Panama (I liked the idea of sailing there, but it takes too long and costs too much - there seems to be a fixed price for the trip, with no competition amongst the various boats for some reason). The flights were frighteningly expensive too (all relative of course), but there is no easy, quick overland route into Central America due to the vast wildness of the Darien Gap.

Anyway, Cartagena is a famously beautiful place alright, and I grew to like it more and more. I think that Cusco in Peru has a nicer central district though, probably as it's been exposed to tourism for a lot longer. Cartagena's old town has gorgeous streets with lots of flowering balconies, but every street will also have at least one or two houses that could use a fresh lick of paint. But I'm sure in years to come it will continue to improve, as there are lots of big cruise ships arriving there now, and their mostly elderly passengers roam about the city in big packs (leading to lots of hawkers hassling every gringo in sight, which is the inevitable consequence I suppose).

Unfortunately a few of the supposedly good museums were quite pricey, so we've skipped them (as we've seen lots of museums in South America already) - but at least the gold museum was free, and that was quite good.

Our last full day was spent meeting Glen for lunch (in the excellent Swiss restaurant, after he'd already introduced us to the lovely German-run Bistro), a good bit more strolling around with Glen as our guide, and then meeting the ex-pats again in what had become our regular evening haunt of Donde Pacho's.

The next morning was nice and relaxed, and we got a bus to the airport quite early in the afternoon. It's only a 10 minute journey as the airport seems to be right in the city. We weren't sure about exit taxes and the like, but luckily we didn't have to pay any, and after a bit of a worry when the check-in girl asked about onward flights from Panama (you can be stopped entering the country if you don't have onward tickets), we boarded without problems and were off to Central America.

So six months in South America, and definitely some great trip highlights. Iguasu Falls, morcillo sausages in Argentina, the cakes of Brazil (I'm thinking of Fellini's restaurant in particular), the incredible ruins all around Cusco (especially Machu Picchu but also Cusco town itself), the bluest skies I've ever seen in Bolivia, the mine in Potosi, the Galapagos islands...

Tayrona National Park

2008-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

We got up early to grab breakfast and a basic lunch before hopping on the local bus (yet again, the bus was pulling away as we arrived and we literally hopped onboard). As the guidebook pointed out, we got off the bus early and then started walking the entire hike from Calabazo towards the normal entry point of El Zaino (as opposed to starting at El Zaino, hiking to the beach, and then back-tracking to the start again - I hate backtracking!).

This way we managed to avoid any crowds, and in fact we only passed a handful of other people all day (mostly locals leading donkeys leaden with sacks of coconuts). The highlight of the whole hike for me was the leaf-cutting ant colonies we passed almost constantly along the whole route. These guys really are amazing, and I stopped repeatedly to try and get good photos, and to just sit and stare at them. I remember seeing documentaries back home on these critters, and so I knew a fair bit about their amazing live cycle. So it was great to be able to just stop and watch them go about their work - we passed entrances to nests, their waste disposal systems and of course millions of the wee workers themselves carrying their leaf bits.

The hike is noted for the beaches it passes along, and the first one we arrived at was the best one, La Cabo. By this stage we'd hiked up to the pre-hispanic town of La Pueblito (which didn't have much stuff to see unfortunately, or people milling about fortunately), and the day was beautifully sunny and therefore fiercely hot. Arriving at the beach I was straight into the water to try and cool off, but I think this must have been the warmest sea water I've ever swam in. Strangely it was a bit disappointing really, as what I really wanted was an icy, refreshing dip. But of course, it was still gorgeouos to swim in the Carribean sea and the setting was really cool, with two crescent beaches together and big boulders strewn along the coastline.

We got back to the main road at about 5:30, just as dusk was setting, so we'd timed it perfectly really. It had been a long hot day, but the forest, the beaches and the ants all made for a cracking day out, and of course a local bus came along to take us back to Santa Marta after one of our longest waits yet, all of about 5 minutes!