Tuesday 31 May 2011

Oz-tastic

It was another early morning when I left to go to Australia, but fortunately everything ran smoothly. I flew from Singapore to Perth on Saturday morning and finally made it through Australian Customs at around 3pm. I was going to be meeting up with Daisy in Perth but she was staying with a friend who was studying there so I had booked myself a bed in a hostel. It proved surprisingly easy to get there, I just got on a shuttle bus which dropped my off right outside the hostel. I had been to Perth once before, but we didn't spend long in the city and it was something like 15 years ago so I don't really remember any of it.

After arriving at the hostel and having a bit of a relax I met up with Daisy and her friend Margry (actually her surname, but that's what Daisy knows her as...) in Northbridge (where I was staying, and apparently where there are often fights... great...) for a couple of drinks (although it took a while 'til we actually got to the drinking part as my driving licence wasn't accepted as ID and I had cleverly left my passport at the hostel) which was a great way to end a day of travelling.

Being my usual very organised self I hadn't really done much in the way of planning for Oz and as such I had even less of a plan for Perth, so on Sunday Daisy and I met up to do some serious planning (once Daisy had finally got up and caught a bus... =P ). I also got my first proper experience of how expensive Australia is now, £7 pints and £15 salads... Nevertheless we managed to find somewhere that did relatively reasonably priced food and had a nice long lunch looking through the Lonely Planet guide and figuring out roughly what we were going to do and when. After eating our fill we wandered down to the river and walked along the waterfront. The weather was lovely and we had a great view out across the river (which Daisy had managed to mistake for the sea). That evening we had been invited to a 'barbie' at someone's house where we had a true Aussie experience of sitting outside drinking 'stubbies' and eating a colossal amount of meat (although there were a number of complaints that it was under 20 degrees and therefore far too cold to be outside) which was really good fun.

Most of Monday was spent sorting out admin things in the city like Daisy's flights and a student card before a nice lazy evening at Margry's flat. On Tuesday we got the train over to Freemantle on the coast. We went and visited the Maritime Museum which had a great photography exhibition of water-dwelling creatures like mangrove tree snails where the photographer had named and given personalities and characters to each of the creatures he photographed. We even found a snail called Daisy who had a 'happy countenance'. It was quite an interesting museum although we both agreed that it wasn't quite as well organised as other museums we had visited, there was no real clear order to the various exhibits so it seemed a little chaotic. Afterwards we headed up to the Roundhouse overlooking the water which is the oldest public building in Western Australia and saw the firing of the time gun and lowering of the time ball (which turns out to be quite a recent tradition mimicing a similar event that used to happen a long time ago). Since we were on the coast, seafood was the order of the day for lunch and we managed to find some nice fish & chips down by the water. We then headed further along the waterfront and found a brewery/pub/bar/restaurant place called Little Creatures which had an amazing atmosphere and seemed to be a great place to go for a meal or just a drink or even to buy a load to take home. Even the merchandise was impressive. After sampling what turned out to be very good beer we headed up the high street back to the train station which has some interesting colonial architecture although it did seem remarkably dead considering it was about 4:30 in the afternoon. Daisy and I popped into the supermarket on the way back and headed to the hostel where I was staying to cook some dinner and have a drink before retiring for the night.

One of the things that Daisy was very keen to do in Australia was WWOOFing (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) and she managed to convince me that this would be quite a fun thing to do for a week or so. Basically the idea is you go and live on a farm somewhere and get free food and board in exchange for doing something like 4-6 hours of work on the farm each day. It does vary a lot from place to place but it sounded like it would be a great way to see a different side of Australia. As such, on Wednesday we went and signed up for the scheme which basically consists of buying a book of all the current available placements and getting a membership number that entitles you to partake in it for a year. After doing this we grabbed a bit of a picnic lunch from a supermarket and walked up to King's Park (which is the largest urban park in the world). We were a little disappointed to discover that much of it seemed to be undergoing some kind of construction work but nonetheless we managed to find a spot on the grass with great views overlooking the river and the city to eat. While eating we had a look through the WWOOF book to see if there were any particular ones that caught our eye. As it happened, there were quite a lot that caught our eye, but not all for the right reasons. They seemed to vary from people who wanted a spot of gardening and housework done on there 1 acre 'farm' right up to people with 40,000 acre cattle farms who wanted experienced riders to help out. Some other highlights included a nudist farm, numerous 'communities' interested in meditation and sprituality and absurdly strict people with a huge list of rules you would be expected to follow. We did, however, manage to find a number of very promising looking ones that we thought were worth following up.

On Thursday we went over to the WA University campus to meet up with Margry. It seemed really nice, not quite as pretty as Cambridge, but it looked like a lot of fun, to the point that if I was ever to consider going back into academia I would definitely think about going somewhere like that. After only making about 1 wrong turn (which seemed to be becoming quite a regular occurence) and Daisy again confusing the river with the sea (quite surprising for a geographer) we found our way to Margry's department where she had lots of machines hooked up to a mostly naked guy in an inflatable bath. Once she had finished that particular test we headed back through the university and up to King's Park again. It actually turned out that the construction work was only happening in a small part of the park, but that it just happened to be the part of the park we arrived at last time. It was really quite beautiful with parts of it looking like wilderness and other parts full of lush trees and flowers. We walked along a nice elevated walkway which gave some stunning views accross the city before catching a couple of buses back to Margry's via the supermarket for dinner.

The plan for the next day was to get up bright and early and catch the train down the coast to Rockingham and from there get the ferry across to Penguin Island. Unsurprisingly our start wasn't quite as bright and early as it might have been (mainly my fault) but it wasn't too long before we were on the train. The plan we had was actually quite vague in that we didn't really know how we were going to get to the jetty for the boat across to the island. Fortunately I still had a brochure in my bag which at the very least indicated which bus we should catch. So we hopped on the bus (quickly feeling glad we hadn't attempted to walk it) and kept our eyes glued to the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of anything that looked promising. Daisy was quite paranoid about missing the stop so we eventually got off when we were down on the waterfront, although after asking a couple of locals we discovered it was a fair walk to the jetty as we had disembarked several stops too early. It wasn't all bad though as we had a lovely walk in the sunshine down along the seafront until we located our destination. Conveniently we had arrived just 10 minutes before the next ferry departed so we bought tickets and hopped onto the boat almost immediately. Unfortunately this did mean we didn't have lunch as there was nowhere to buy food on the island and we didn't have time to buy anything before we left. We managed to cope though, and had a lovely time on the island. The weather was almost perfect as we walked around the island and although we didn't see any of the penguins out and about (we could hear them in the bushes) we were there for feeding time inside the Discovery Centre for those penguins who had been injured or orphaned. They were really cute, although they did smell pretty bad...

Saturday was to be our last full day in Perth before catching the Indian Pacific train all the way over to Adelaide (the distance is roughly the same as Spain to Turkey). Daisy wanted to go and watch Margry play hockey so I opted to stay at the hostel and try and send a few emails and do a little bit of work in the morning. Later I popped into town to grab a bite to eat and have one last wander around. It just so happened that it was also the last weekend of some kind of contemporary music festival in Perth so I had a bit of a listen to some of that before visiting the Western Australian Museum which had some interesting displays on various kinds of flora and fauna, the aboriginal people and an exhibition on AC/DC which had a very impressive range of memorabilia as well as a recording of one of their live concerts. On the way back I stopped to listen to some more music before popping into an art gallery. Most of the pieces in the gallery were very modern and a little bit strange but still interesting. One of my favourites was a series of photos capturing the instant when various fairly everyday objects landed in pools of coloured water, there was something fascinating about seeing all the ripples and droplets caught on film like that. Slightly more unusual were things like a load of blank white cartridge paper lain out along the floor and some strange video pieces. I spent the evening packing up my bag in preparation for the next day and finishing off a spot of work with a beer while watching telly. Not a bad evening.

It was yet another early start on Sunday with Margry's mum very kindly offering to give us lifts to East Perth station where we were going to be catching the train from. We weren't entirely sure what to expect apart from it would take about 2 days to cross the country, but we were definitely excited.

Saturday 28 May 2011

10 years on...

We ended up having a great night, although we were so tired afterwards that we didn't really do anything on our last day together, instead spending most of it at the hostel. It was sad to have to say goodbye to Sophie and Smithy after 3 weeks or so together, but the next morning I had an early start to catch my flight down to KL and then on to Singapore for my first visit in almost 10 years. Sophie and Smithy were catching the bus later to Bangkok, from where Soph was flying to Melbourne and Smithy was heading up into the north of Thailand to teach English.

It was a long day of travelling made even longer by a delay to my flight from KL to Singapore but I eventually made it. Some family friends, the Wilsons had very kindly offered to put me up for the week I was in Singapore which was a lovely change from slumming it in various hostels and dorms. I arrived fairly late that evening, so after a delicious dinner I headed to bed for an early night.

The thing about Singapore is it is constantly changing. There is a constant cycle of knocking down, rebuilding and redeveloping buildings. As such there was a lot of the country that had changed beyond recognition, although it was great to head back to some places I could remember from when I was growing up there and see them again, sometimes in a different light.

I spent the weekend mainly just catching up on sleep and relaxing at the house, but on Sunday I went along to church, which actually seemed to have barely changed (at least in my mind), although it did feel a lot smaller than it had done when I was younger. On Monday I headed out to the Botanic Gardens, another place I had fairly vivid memories of. It's still a lovely place to go for a walk but parts of it have been substantially changed in the last 10 years. Having said that, there were still parts of it which seemed to be very similar to how I remember them such as the Swiss Granite Fountain (or the 'big rock ball fountain thing' as I remembered it), the Swan Lake and the outdoor concert stage. After wandering through the gardens I reached the other end and headed over to the house where I used to live. I was a bit surprised at how little it had changed, apart from a bit of a paint job and some new windows it was almost exactly as I remembered it. Next I headed over past the Serene Center (which looks the same from the outside but the only shop I saw that is the same is McDonald's) across the massive storm drain to a hawker center for lunch. One of my favourite things about Singapore has always been the food, you can get so many different cuisines all in one place. The highlight of it is definitely the Hawker Centre, I didn't really visit them much when I was younger but you can get tasty local food for as little as $3 (£1.50) a meal. They are basically big indoor markets with different stalls selling different styles of great food. After having my fill I headed over to the house I first lived in. I was even more surprised that this one was still there and apparently pretty much untouched, especially since many of the houses on the other side of the road are now all big and modern with glass-railinged balconies. It was a bit odd to retrace the routes I had travelled so long ago but great fun to discover how much of what I remember is accurate.

Next day I decided to walk along Orchard Road into the city centre. Orchard Road is mostly as I remember if a bit more upmarket and bigger than I can recall. I wasn't really in the mood for doing any shopping (and didn't really have the money to spend) so I basically just walked the length of it, but it was still fun to do. When I reached the other end I headed over to Raffles Hotel and indulged in an expensive cliché that I had never had the opportunity to experience when I was younger, a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar while throwing peanut shells on the floor. It was quite pricey but I loved the whole old-fashioned colonial atmosphere of it. After a single drink I left and walked over to the Singapore National Museum (which is free in the evenings) where they had some interesting exhibitions on the history of things like food and fashion in Singapore. Afterwards I headed out of the back of the museum and into Fort Canning park where I had a nice walk as the sun set. The only really vivid memory I have of Fort Canning is seeing in the new millenium there and watching the fireworks over the city as the clock struck midnight. From the park I headed down to Clarke Quay which used to be just a load of warehouses but is now a real vibrant hub of Singapore nightlife. From there I boarded a 'Hippo' boat and took a trip down the river to Marina Bay which has been MASSIVELY developed with the Esplanade theatres and the Marina Bay Sands casino and hotel. Some parts of the riverbanks haven't changed, but it definitely seemed to me to be a more lively and upmarket place than I remember. It was quite impressive to see the number of lights and the new buildings towering over the river. After the boat trip I treated myself to dinner on the river and then lazily caught a taxi back.

After a reasonably relaxed Wednesday morning I decided to do something a little more energetic and so after a stroll through the Botanic Garden I caught a taxi for the short ride up to MacRitchie Reservoir where I had a nice evening 12km-ish hike around the reservoir. Unfortunately I didn't realise that the last admission to the treetop walkway was quite as early as 4:45pm so I missed out on that but I still enjoyed the exercise and the views across the reservoir. I love the way you can be in a 100% developed country like Singapore and yet be walking through some serious rainforest. Apart from a bit of a shower it was a lovely walk, although I was a little on the tired side by the time I got back.

Before I went to Australia I wanted to send a few things back to the UK rather than take them with me (especially because of how ridiculous the Australian Customs can be), so because of this and the fact I still had some postcards I hadn't been able to send I decided to spend a day doing a bit of admin, sending some emails, doing some work and visiting the Post Office. This also gave me a day to rest before my last day in Singapore.

I decided that on Friday I'd like to be a little less lazy and actually spend most of the day out, so at 10am (shockingly early I know) I headed down to the main road to catch a taxi over to Kent Ridge Park which now lies on a walking trail called the Southern Ridges which goes all the way from West Coast Park up to Mt Faber and down to the Harbour Front. I decided not to do the whole trail but instead went through Kent Ridge Park, along the Canopy Walk, down to the new HortPark up into Telok Blangah along the walkway and then across the Henderson Waves to the top of Mt Faber. It was a lovely walk and it's great that you can now walk all the way across by just following trails (I heard somewhere it is the longest urban walking trail in the world or something). Once at the top of Mt Faber I had a nice lunch overlooking the harbour before splurging out on the cable car over to Sentosa. I can remember that when I was younger getting the cable car across to Sentosa was just about the most exciting day trip ever. It was great to relive it and to be able to see the harbour and the utterly ridiculous amount of development that is going on on Sentosa itself. When we used to live there it was relatively naff but great fun as a kid, now the government is pumping loads of money into it and almost all of it is completely unrecognisable. Where there used to be fairly quiet beaches and playing fields there are now huge resorts and swanky bars. There's now a casino resort and a Universal Studios park and they aren't stopping there; there's a huge section of the island that is just a massive building site. Having said that, it's still a fun place to go and there is a huge range of things to do (even if you do have to pay for pretty much everything). One part that I discovered has remained pretty much the same as 10 years ago is Fort Siloso, being a boy this was always one of my favourite places to go to (and my parents probably appreciated the fact that it is significantly cheaper than any other attraction) even through I didn't really appreciate all the history of the site. It was cool to go back and actually pay attention to the exhibitions and find the sights that I used to love are very much the same. Even though the beach is now quite a bit busier and built-up I still had a nice walk along the seafront and visited the 'Southernmost Point of Continental Asia' as well as a rather tasty cocktail. In the evening I also went to Underwater World to see the incredible range of sea-life and also to see the pink dolphins which was pretty fun. After a walk along the beach as the sun set I headed up towards the Merlion to see it in all it's lit-up glory before getting the cable car back to the mainland over the night skyline.

It may have only been a brief trip back to Singapore and I may not have done all the things I would ideally have liked to but it was a lovely relaxing trip and I loved being able to have a bit of a remenisce and see some of the places of my childhood.

Wednesday 11 May 2011

Drifting down rivers and the suchlike

I've never really done much in the way of riding on motorbikes, but touring around Dalat on one was definitely a great experience. If nothing else it is simply a great way to appreciate the Vietnamese countryside and travel from place to place. Our guides were extremely friendly and spoke surprisingly good English. We travelled around visiting places such as a waterfall, a coffee plantation, a silk factory and the 'Crazy House'. The 'Crazy House' was utterly bizarre, a building with the most ridiculous architecture I've ever seen. You could even spend a night there, although I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be to wake up face to face with a giant ant in your room. I can't really do it justice without photos, so you'll just have to wait until I get around to putting them up. We had a great local lunch with our guides which involved a fair amount of rice wine, and the experience was completed with a tropical downpour. Overall Dalat was quite a surprising place, especially in that it was a bit like a European mountain resort town with pine trees, fancy hotels and a lake. It was lovely and cool though, and we managed to stay in quite a nice place with probably the best breakfast spread included.

After our time in the mountains we headed down to the coast to Mui Ne for a couple of days for some relaxing by the beach. We didn't really do anything of note here apart from a couple of good nights out (involving one guy we met waking up at the bar at 5am and a nice swim in the sea) and lazing in the pool, but it was a nice change of pace. It seemed quite quiet while we were there but apparently weekends can get quite mental.

I wasn't particularly looking forward to Saigon, especially because of what other people had said about it being really hot and busy, but it turned out to be quite pleasant. Admittedly we didn't spend a huge amount of time there, but it seemed quite nice from what we did do and see. The main things we did were visiting the Cu Chi tunnels were the Viet Cong were based in the Vietnam War and the War Remnants museum which provided a very sobering view on the events of the war and the use of Agent Orange by the Americans. It's really strange to think that 30-odd years ago there were Vietnamese soldiers running about through the tunnels and the Americans were engaged in bombing and wiping out the jungle to try and find them, especially when places like Saigon seem so prosperous. In the end we decided that Saigon wasn't nearly as bad as some people had made out, but unfortunately time was again our enemy and we left the next day for the Mekong Delta.

It was lovely to spend time on boats heading down the river past floating villages and some beautiful countryside, although the company wasn't quite as serene. In our tour group there were a group of young Canadians who were arrogant and boring, but with their loud voices they were hard to ignore. Our 2 day trip through the Mekong didn't go entirely to plan though. As we were heading down the river towards the Cambodian border we heard a couple of loud *thunks* before we just began drifting. After a quick inspection by the driver we were informed that the whole propeller had in fact come off... This led to an hour floating around by the bank of the river which, in the heat with the Canadians daring each other to eat chillies found on the bank and then proceeding to moan loudly about how hot they were, was not the most enjoyable experience. Fortunately it wasn't long before we were rescued and proceeded on to the border. After a couple of long but uneventful stops at the border we were in Cambodia.

Since we've been doing quite a lot of long journeys (and a fair amount of lazing about), we've also ended up doing a fair amount of reading and our author of choice is Stieg Larsson. We must have looked pretty silly when we were all sat there each reading one of the Millenium trilogy, but the truth is that they are SO GRIPPING! This meant that I didn't really notice what the rest of the trip up the Mekong to Phnom Penh was like because I was so utterly engrossed.

I found Phnom Penh to actually be a lovely city. It isn't as busy as places like Hanoi and Saigon and is really quite pretty in places. Couple that with some nice bars and restaurants to give a great place to stay, which is even more impressive when you consider that it was deserted 30 years or so ago when the Khmer Rouge came to power. We only had one full day there and it was quite a sobering one. We started off by visiting the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum which was originally a school before Pol Pot turned it into a detention and torture center for political prisoners and intellectuals. It was quite a harrowing experience, especially because of how the Khmer Rouge had documented it by photographing everyone who was interred there. Seeing displays of some of the thousands of people who suffered there only 30 years ago was really something to think about, especially when reading about how the trials of the leaders are still going on today. We followed this up by heading out to the Choeung Ek killing fields where thousands of people (many brought from Tuol Sleng) were brutally murdered and buried. There is a monument there containing the skulls of about 8000 people who died there and walking around the mass graves was a very much shocking and disturbing experience. I did find it odd to think that these atrocities had happened so recently and yet I really wasn't sure of the details as it doesn't seem to be mentioned in schools or the media.

The next afternoon we caught a bus to Siem Reap where we are currently staying in one of the best hostels I have ever been to. It has everything from nice rooms to a swimming pool to a cheap bar. On the first night we just went out and ate too much (as usual) and then today we headed over to see the Angkor temples. They are truly spectacular and it's amazing how they were built back in the 12th Century. It was a good day out (apart from being harassed by everyone from children selling postcards to old ladies in the temples trying to give us incense etc. in return for a 'donation') and apart from the scaffolding for conservation work Angkor Wat is truly as impressive as it is supposed to be. We considered hanging around for the sunset, but it was pretty cloudy and it had been a long, hot and sweaty day so we headed back.

As I write this the other two are napping but we are planning to have a good night out as this is our penultimate night together...













Sunday 1 May 2011

When is a sleeper bus not a sleeper bus?...

When it's too hot, the music is too noisy and you don't even fit in the bed...

Most tourists tend to follow the coast down from Hoi An to Nha Trang, but we decided instead to head into the highlands for a change. We booked a 'sleeper' bus to get us there but what we weren't aware of was that it was a local sleeper bus. This meant that when we got on the bus at around 9:30pm there was much hilarity at the fact that Smithy was a good foot too tall for the beds since Vietnamese people are considerably shorter. I was 'fortunate' enough to be almost exactly as tall as the length of the bed which meant I actually managed some sleep, but once we got over the humour of the situation it was actually a pretty horrific journey. Smithy spent most of it dangling over the edge of the bed...

Eventually it came to an end as we arrived in Pleiku at 5am before taking a minibus on to Kon Tum which was our destination. Surprisingly we weren't in the best moods when we arrived, but we took motorbike taxis and found a remarkably good (and cheap) hotel before heading out to try and find lunch and a way to travel onwards to Dalat. Both proved harder than we initially expected, there aren't a huge number of restaurants in Kon Tum and there wasn't much street food at 10:30am and even though we spend a few hours waiting outside, the tourist office didn't seem to ever be open. Suitably miserable, we headed back to the hotel in the heat for a snooze before dinner.

Having asked the woman at reception where we were staying about getting to Dalat, we discovered there was a normal local bus at 5:30am every day, however since we had had no sleep the night before we decided to extend our stay in Kon Tum for an extra night and get the bus the next morning. Fortunately from this point on our stay improved considerably. After a bit of sleep we all felt a bit better so we headed out and had a great dinner of pancakes on the street followed by food in a nice restaurant.

One thing we had definitely noticed is that there were almost no other westerners, so we got quite a few stares as we walked along the street. The locals were also incredibly friendly and we didn't even seem to be paying a 'tourist tax'. Kon Tum itself wasn't quite what we expected; it was a bigger town than we thought, but it was surrounded by countryside and was actually remarkably quiet (especially once you left the centre of town). We got a good night's sleep that night and resolved to try and get out and about the next day.

Next day we had a bit of an explore and visited the Catholic Seminary which has a hilltribe museum upstairs which talks about how the tribes used to live and how the French missionaries came and converted them. We also walked out to the edge of town to a traditional village where we met some very friendly people. This include a group of children who kept trying to have a conversation with us but unfortunately we shared very little common language. It was entertaining nonetheless. We grabbed some street food on the way back and ended up having a relaxing afternoon (which included watching the Royal Wedding, which is quite a surreal experience when you're in a place like Kon Tum) before grabbing dinner in a restaurant across the road and turning in early.

4am is always an early time to be waking up, but especially so when you know you have a long bus journey ahead of you. The journey actually turned out to be relatively painless and simple, just LONG. We were up at 4am but didn't reach our hotel in Dalat until around 5pm. We have again been really lucky with hotels, this one is a bargain, with lovely rooms and a steamroom and jacuzzi! Breakfast is included and what a spread it was! There was even Marmite, Peanut Butter and Cornflakes!

We had a great long sleep last night and a lazy day today exploring the market and sitting by the lake. We may visit the jacuzzi tonight before dinner and then tomorrow we are off on a motorbike tour of the surrounding area which should be a blast!

Then the day after we will be off down to Mui Ne and the beach. Loving it.

The 'sleeper' bus aftermath...