Please Note: The delayed publication of this post is brought to you by the Nepal Power Company Ltd (“Power To The People – But Only When We Say So!”) in association with Hotel Internet Services Inc (“The Email Must Get Through….E-ven-tu-al-ly”).

There is so much to write about regarding Nepal, but we need to tell you all about Wednesday 2 May….which, to date on our trip, would probably have to be the best day yet. (And in the context of ALL the great days we have enjoyed, this is high praise indeed). Before launching into that though, we just need to say that Nepal is a fantastic country, and a destination we are so glad we included on our travels. It’s a risk to say that any one country is “our favourite” but Nepal has been brilliant, and we are already looking forward to the next time! We have done a lot in the very short space of time we’ve been here – we were only ever going to be here for 6 days, but with Pauline not being well in New Delhi, we shortened the visit to just 5 – and there is so much more to do than we can fit in. We are coming back!

Anyway – our big day on Wednesday….it started very early with the alarm at 4.30am, ready for a pickup by our driver Raju at 5.00am. While we waited for him to arrive, and whilst we took the 15 minute trip from our Thamel district hotel to the airport, we found out what contributes to a lot of the very unfortunate haze that is ever-present over most of the Kathmandu Valley all day long, certainly at this time of year anyway. It’s not just the exhaust fumes of the thousands of cars, taxis, buses, vans, tractors, rotary hoes etc that are on the roads, but the fact that at that early hour, the street cleaners (a job restricted mostly to bent-over old men and women it seems) are out and about with their birch type brushes, collecting a lot of yesterday’s rubbish into carts, but more often, sweeping it into piles at every corner and setting them alight! There were probably hundreds of little fires burning all over the city as we drove…..ironic that the efforts to reasonably successfully keep the streets clean by reducing one type of pollution seems to make another type worse.

There were some not unexpected inefficiencies at the domestic terminal of the airport – they x-ray your bags and frisk you upon entry to the building, and then do so again after you’ve checked in and climbed over any bags on the scales on your way through to the departure area i.e. about 30m from the previous security check. By then you have a boarding pass – for our mountain flight we had allocated specific seats so that everyone got a window, but the next day for our flight to Pokhara it was just first in first served for the best seats! Incidentally, we had been issued paper tickets for the first time in years – when was the last time you had one of those? – and our Pokhara flight was ticketed as leaving at 9.00am, was showing on the screen at the airport as 8.30am, and finally took off at 9.15am!

For our mountain flight we left 15 minutes behind schedule at 6.15am and I suspect that this shortened our flight a little as it was supposed to be an hour long, but we still touched down back at Kathmandu on time at 7.00am. There is just a constant stream of flights by Buddha Air, Yeti Airlines and our company Agni Air mostly flying 29 seater Gulfstream 41 planes, or slightly smaller Dorniers, and I suppose in the busy airspace near the Himalayas at that time of the morning, the last thing that Air Traffic Control needs is a plane getting out of its allocated time slot once in the mountains. So, once we took off, it was a very rapid climb to the north east to I think about 25000 feet and as we rose above the haze, the mountains began to come into focus in the distance…..and they are certainly impressive. For me, I got the best views from my left hand seat on the way out then we turned and Pauline got the clearest look from the right as we headed back to Kathmandu, plus one by one each passenger got to go forward to the cockpit for about 30-60 all-too quick seconds which was by far the best view of all. With dozens of peaks over 7000m, Nepal has a lot of mountains on display but on our day, the best sight, especially from the cockpit where it was straight in front of us, was that of Mount Everest itself. Standing majestically above the lesser mountains in the foreground and to either side, with a very noticeable plume of snow blowing off the top of Everest at 8848m and over nearby Lhotse which is ‘only’ 8516m – it was just magnificent. I’m not sure how close we got – the advertising would have you think you fly close enough to spot the tents of the climbers on the mountain itself but that’s not the case at all as we were still some miles away that’s for sure – but who cares? It’s hard to put into words when you fulfil a wish that at least I’ve always had to see the highest peak in the world, to see Sir Ed’s mountain, and under the circumstances I’m certainly not complaining that we didn’t get to just a mile or so away. It was an absolutely fantastic experience! (Maybe next time we’ll see it from Base Camp and take pictures from the ground?)

I hope the photos from the air do our flight justice, but regardless, this will be one memory of our Adventure that we don’t forget in a hurry. And speaking of photos, on Friday morning I was up again before 5am, to go up to the village of Sarangkot above Pokhara to watch the sunrise over the Himalayas, and to take pictures of the almost perfect views of 6997m Machhapuchhre (Fishtail) and the various peaks of Annapurna, ranging up to Annapurna I at 8091m (26550 ft). The Himalayas are a very special part of the world, and we’ve had some great views….and from what we understand, our timing was spot on for both the Mountain Flight on Wednesday and the sunrise trip this morning, with cloud blanketing the scenery on the two previous days in both cases!

So, we were back in Kathmandu and having breakfast back at our hotel by 7.30am, then a quick freshen up (as best you can in a place that has constant programmed power cuts and therefore very little chance of a hot shower) before being picked up again by Raju and our guide Prakash for what we’ll call our Nepali trekking experience. This was a trip to a village called Nagarkot which is perched high on a ridge which falls away steeply on both sides, only about 30-40km from Kathmandu, but nearly 6000 feet above sea level, so around 1500 feet higher than Kathmandu. Nagarkot is surrounded by terraced farmlands where the incredibly hard working Nepali farmers make the most of every square inch of ground, and it consists mainly of small hotels and shops primarily dealing to tourists. The air was clear and the sun was hot – so we enjoyed the shade inside as we had lunch. After that, we set out down the mountain where our car was waiting about 2 hours walk away. OK, so it wasn’t a true trek, but it was a great walk in the early afternoon sunshine – over little streams, through terraced fields growing wheat, corn, vegetables, past brick and mud plaster homes and stopping to chat occasionally with the locals, just a wonderful jaunt in the hills. Meeting the locals has been a key part of our visit here – they are all so friendly and hospitable, and so very proud of their country. We have truly enjoyed their company.

Oh, and another ‘first’ that day….because we wore our walking boots we had to wear socks, and that’s the first time we’ve had to do that since March 26. Thirty seven “jandals and sandals only” days!

And then back to Kathmandu after what had already been a very full day, but with a bit of second wind and because it was still only around 4.30pm we plunged into ‘our’ Thamel district of narrow lanes, incredibly small shops, open market squares, food stalls, hawkers and so on (even shop owners who actually take “no thanks” for an answer first time!) and had a wonderful couple of hours wandering around, sampling local food, visiting a tailor to get some tops Pauline had bought in India altered, and just generally soaking in what is an amazing atmosphere. Then back to our street (if you can call it that – it’s a narrow lane at best) where we ate at our favourite little restaurant, the White Horse Cafe (which will be getting a very high rating on TripAdvisor in due course) and then over the lane to our hotel for, not surprisingly, an early night!

As noted earlier, Internet connectivity is not great here, so I’ll put a few photos in an album here for you to see, and hopefully add more in due course…..

Final thought – if hoicking and spitting is an Olympic sport this year in London, I would suggest that Nepal will easily win the men’s gold medal and probably the women’s as well.

It’s Friday today (it was when I started this post) – or as I feel like calling it, IPLday as I head off to the cricket at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in Delhi – and we have been in India since late Sunday evening. That’s only 5 days, but it feels like 5 weeks as we have packed in so much. But we’ve thoroughly enjoyed every minute….even the frustrations have been amusing to say the least. Things like 10km long traffic jams at 10pm (on the motorway no less!); being taken to three carpet shops in as many days; supposedly speaking the same language as staff in hotels, restaurants etc. and neither party understanding a word the other one says. An example of the latter: we tried to ask the tour company’s local rep in Jaipur whether the optional dinner outing was available that night or not, and after several fruitless attempts, even when I said “we’ll be here all night going round in circles won’t we?” he just nodded, continued to grin inanely and repeat what time breakfast would be. And he was wrong about that too, as it happens!
I realise I’ve said this about places we’ve already been on this trip, but India well and truly is a land of contrasts. How can it be that a nation that has developed a  nuclear capability, has a space programme (they launched another satellite just this week), and has some of the sharpest minds on the planet at its disposal, can’t provide running water let alone a toilet in every home nor collect the rubbish off the streets more than about once a decade? In Jaipur, which we are told is one of the poorest cities in India and, among other shortcomings, has the most dreadful roads with potholes the size of a swimming pools, get this: the local government has decided that what Jaipur needs, is a Metro underground railway system! Granted, if it makes the remarkable difference to traffic and pollution that the Delhi Metro has made, then that will be a good thing, but what is the point of a state of the art transport system under the ground, when conditions above the ground are so atrocious??
And while I’m on that bandwagon, we were astonished in Jaipur by the incredibly advanced discoveries they had in the 1600s (like really clever air conditioning systems, and sundials accurate to 1 minute intervals) when compared with the way life is there for so many now…..I suspect those roads for example haven’t really got any better in the 400 or so years since the city was in its heyday. But enough of that – India is India, and there’s no way having a rant is going to make much difference to the lot of 1.2billion Indians, is it?
Time for a bit of a travelogue: let’s tell you where we’ve been in the last week…..but just a few brief details as to try and tell you everything would become an incredibly long history of the Mughal Emperors and subsequent Indian history. So place by place, here’s a few details of where we went, and what we saw. I’ll try not to bore you! By the way, we travelled in our private car which was a very acceptable Tata Indigo (kind of like a Toyota Corolla sedan) which thankfully had back seat air conditioning, with our driver called Gaj who was our constant companion for the 4 days….he had an interesting command of English, a tendency to point out every temple in India, and a bull-at-a-gate method of driving. We had fun, and if we return to India, we MUST stay with Gaj and his family in their home town of Gwalior. “For two nights sir, you come!”….
Monday – Delhi to Agra. Distance approx 200km, time about 5 hours, road conditions pretty bad. On the way, we visited Gaj’s favourite Hindu temple which was a very extravagant brand new marble edifice, opened just last year by a wealthy man who, judging by the fact he appears in some of the 3-D frescoes inside leading his flock, sees himself as some sort of 21st century Hindu God. In the afternoon we visited Agra’s two greatest monuments – the Agra Fort, and of course the Taj Mahal. The former is a 94 acre complex which is only partially open to the public as the Indian Army still uses the bulk of it as an operational base. It was here that the nasty 4th Mughal Emperor (Aurangzeb) became #1 by killing his 3 older brothers and placing his father (Shah Jahan) under house arrest for the last 8 years of his life, in rooms which were quite flash but in a cruel little twist, the only view was across the river towards the Taj Mahal which the father had built as a tomb for his wife. The Taj itself had the potential to be disappointing after all the hype it gets, but it wasn’t. It truly is a magnificent building in an amazing setting, and it was built as such a romantic gesture for a dearly beloved wife. The story, again too long to tell here, is a really nice one. Google it!
Tuesday – Agra to Jaipur. Distance about 230km, time about 6 hours, road better but still not great. The extra time today was because of two stops – firstly in a small village where we enjoyed tea with a couple of families and met the children, the cows, the local priest and others. This was a little odd at first, but as they warmed to us and vice versa, the conversations became more interesting and animated with most of the talking being done by the 15 year old son at the second house who was desperate to improve his English. The second stop was at Fatehpur Sikri, another enormous fort/walled city built by the Mughals in the late 1500s…again just too much detail but suffice to say the architecture and the building skills for the time are just so amazing!
Wednesday – Jaipur to Delhi. Distance 242km, time nearly 7 hours, road great in places but the Government is 4-laning it and trying to do the whole lot in one go which means some contractors have finished their one or two kilometres and traffic flows are excellent, but then there will be 10km of partially formed new road mixed with the old road, or a diversion along the verge etc. We had a fun trip though watching the antics of the traffic, especially when we finally reached the outskirts of Delhi around 7.45pm and Gaj confidently assured us we would be at the hotel within 30 minutes….but instead we got snarled in all the trucks (hundreds and hundreds of them) all trying to get as close to Delhi as possible to be best positioned for their final run into the city after the truck curfew is lifted at midnight or 2am, we’re not too sure on that from Gaj’s sometimes confused information. They have to be in and out by 7.30am that’s for sure though so they are everywhere on the road – we finally reached the hotel at 10.45 or so!!
Before leaving Jaipur though we visited several sites, all of which deserve a mention but I’ll stick to just two: Jantar Mantar which was the observatory built between 1727 and 1734 by Maharajah Jai Singh II. It is a large outdoor complex which includes a dozen or so big geometric instruments which he designed and calculated so accurately, in order to tell the time of day and the current astrological sign, to predict when the next eclipse would be, to track the stars and so on. It includes the world’s largest sundial at 27m tall, angled at 27 degrees which also happens to be the latitude of Jaipur, and which (when an allowance is made for the fact that official Indian time today is based on Delhi not Jaipur) is accurate to the minute! How did they know such stuff in the 1700s – it’s not like he had a computer is it? It really was mind blowing – probably the highlight of the tour for me! And then we went to the Amber Fort which is a huge complex on top of a ridge near Jaipur – full of all the usual rooms, courtyards, mosques etc but it also had one other really neat feature in its day….air conditioning! Back in 1599, the builders devised a system whereby water was lifted by a waterwheel structure some 200 feet or so from the lake below, is then channeled into a copper piping system, then allowed to fall at just the right rate onto carpets and silks hung over the otherwise open entrances to the various parts of the palace – this would wet the material and when the westerly wind came up in the afternoon, it blew the water from the carpet as a gentle mist across the room thus cooling the occupants nicely! Clever stuff!

And so back to Delhi where Pauline has been laid up for two days now with a gastro thing which has been quite cruel and will hopefully go away over the next 24 hours before we fly, now a day later than planned, to Nepal. Before that happened though, Gaj took us with our last local guide on a tour of Delhi to places like India Gate built by the British just to show off, and which is now the National War Memorial etched with all 70000 names of Indians who died in conflicts like the World Wars; the Qutub Minar which is a 72m high minaret built in 1192; the largest Hindu Temple in Asia; the Baha’i Lotus Temple; the largest Mosque in India….do you get the picture? But the most interesting I thought was small and simple – the Raj Ghat which is where Mahatma Gandhi’s body was cremated in 1948 the day after his assassination, and before his ashes were scattered on the Ganges. It is just a granite slab, with an eternal flame – a simple but fitting memorial to a simple but great man.

So that’s it – a very quick summary of 4 days of intense tourism in a chaotic and bustling country that has to be experienced to even half begin to understand it. So despite the stomach problems, the bites, the dirt, the squalor, the traffic, the beggars etc etc – if you haven’t been here already, you should try to come one day. The effort won’t be wasted nor regretted!

I know I’ve only scratched the surface of giving you all the details, but the blog would never end if I gave you too much. It was full on, in a way only India can be, and I hope you now have a rough idea of our week here! There are hundreds of photos of course, but the Internet is very slow so I have only uploaded a handful so far…more will follow as and when the technology gets better. Have a look at those that are there by clicking on India 

And that’s अलविदा from me!

I’m halfway through a blog entry all about India so far but I’m interrupting that process to briefly tell you about my night at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in New Delhi – the ground where, as you all know, Bert Sutcliffe scored 230* against India in the drawn third test of the 1955 tour (which remains the highest test score on the ground to this day incidentally). Tonight, it was a very different kind of cricket….different to a 1950s test match, and different in a few ways to some of the T20 cricket we have at home.

For a start, there wasn’t a spare seat in the stadium – 48000 people were there and I’m pretty sure 47999 of them were Indians. That many people can make a lot of noise, and they certainly did so constantly throughout the match. The only time they were quiet was when they were eating – popcorn, vege burgers, trays of naan bread and curry being the main things. Drinks were Coke or water only, served in paper cups….no bottles are sold as they can get thrown onto the ground. And not a single beer in the stadium – the rules strictly forbid alcohol, so the crowd just gets high on their favourite sport and watches the cricket instead. The lack of beer does affect their performance though – the ground announcer tried several times to get a Mexican Wave started, and not one made it right round the ground…..hopeless!

Security was extremely tight (apparently there was a terrorism threat before the game) and all spectators went through metal detectors while bags were X-rayed. I had a small number of coins in my bag and had to hand them over – because the crowd might throw money at players who aren’t performing up to standard. It was pointless telling the security guards that the chances of me voluntarily throwing any cash away were less than zero – but I only managed to “find” 2 x 10 rupee coins, rather than give them all up!

Everyone in the crowd seems to be an expert on cricket and I was very popular with those around me once they found out I was more or less Brendon McCallum’s neighbour (well, they think in a country of only 4 million people, let alone a city of just 120,000 we must all know each other!). So, in addition to all the usual questions (what job do you have?, are you married?, how many children do you have?) this time I also got things like “what team do you support in New Zealand’s IPL?”, “who is your favourite player?”, “do you know Chris Cairns?” and so on. My friend Ross Taylor hit a massive six in his brief innings of 15, and I was high-fived by about 20 people close by!

It was a huge, noisy, exuberant, happy crowd in a really amazing atmosphere – an atmosphere incidentally which was impacted before each innings by the ground staff spraying huge quantities of mosquito repellent which drifted all over the crowd (necessary because the game didn’t start until after dark, at 8pm). All in all, an experience not to be missed…..

Oh, one thing that was just like home…there was an intruder on the pitch. Halfway through the first innings, a dog ran onto the field from behind the keeper, circled around the square leg umpire, shot between the stumps and the bowler at the top of his mark, and exited the pitch down by long on. Got a great cheer from the crowd.

And the result? As if you care! After 377 runs were scored in 40 overs with 39 fours and 15 sixes, MY team the Delhi Daredevils scored a very impressive 207/5 (V Sehwag 73, M Jayawardene 55, K Pietersen 50) and beat the Mumbai Indians 170/9 (A Rayudu 62, S Tendulkar 7) by 37 runs. I only mention Sachin Tendulkar’s score because he is very much in the news here, having been offered a seat in the Indian Parliament yesterday – the front page headline in “The Times of India” today was GOD HAS A NEW HOUSE.

Full scoreboard can be found at Cricinfo

We need to go back about 10 days…..one of the things we did in Cambodia which we wanted to share with you was that we went back to school for a short visit.

It was truly a day of polar opposites. In the morning we visited sites like Angkor Thom which, 1000 or more years ago, had been a rich and civilised city of 100,000 people at a time when London was only a small town (and New Zealand was still 600 or so years away from even being sighted by a white man); and in the afternoon we went to a school so poor that they need daily donations just to keep the children fed. It makes you wonder a little about the ebb and flow of so-called great empires.

The school we went to was in the floating village of Chong Kneas which we visited from Siem Reap by tuk tuk and dirty old diesel boat (complete with a snake on board as an unwanted passenger on the way back!). Tonle Sap is the largest lake in SE Asia with an area of 2700km2 in the dry season which grows to a staggering 16000km2 in the wet, and it has over 170 floating villages dotted around its shores. (When the rainy season comes, the villages literally up anchor and move, as they stay approximately the same distance from shore, even although that shore may move several kilometres “inland”.) Perhaps Chong Kneas is the best known village because it is not only the largest of them all but it is also a tourist trap being so near to Siem Reap. Take it from us though, the tourists haven’t brought any great prosperity to the locals, that’s for sure. The mothers still hang snakes around their toddlers’ necks in the hope you’ll take a photo, for which they expect US$1.

And by the way, it’s not really a village in size either – we were told that the permanent population of Chong Kneas is around 6000 people, all living on the water. A number of them work in Siem Reap and at the temples but the majority subsist solely on fishing from the lake. Their homes are basically houseboats in varying degrees of (dis)repair, bunched together in small groups attached to a bamboo structure in the centre which is essentially their anchor. In addition to the hundreds of “houses” there are other structures, most larger in size, which house things like shops, a gymnasium (all four sides are deck to roof netting so the ball doesn’t go overboard – there were some boys playing basketball as we cruised by), a drinking water plant, a battery charging station (drop off your low battery in the morning because power isn’t needed during the day, and pick it up fully charged at night), a Catholic Church, a fish farm, a market garden and so on….and a school.

We think there are actually two schools possibly one of them being alongside the gym, but the one we visited is run by a Vietnamese charity and consists of two boats tied together because it outgrew the original ‘one boat’ affair. It is used to teach younger children from the village, especially the many orphans who not only are educated there, but live there as well. This is where the greatest need arises – this is a very basic school indeed, as you’ll see from the photo of the classroom, and it is in a country where great poverty is sadly just a way of life. All the kids desperately want to learn, but for some, even just a mattress to sleep on and a bowl of rice for dinner are things for which they are truly grateful.

So, in a practised move which was slick but when all is said and done was such a simple and relatively inexpensive thing to do, we were taken first to a floating market shop (also part of the village) where the four of us (us two, plus Jeannie and Jonathan) purchased a 50kg bag of rice for US$80, and then we were taken to the school to donate it. It was just so sad to think that such manoeuvres are necessary, but if that’s what it takes, then we were happy to do our bit. Yes, the Cambodian government should be taking care of such things but from our admittedly casual observation over just a few days in the country they clearly have a huge number of things to deal with; and yes every dollar of foreign aid should be reaching those who actually need it but all too often this doesn’t happen does it?

And we don’t want to sound overly cynical about the fact we did the school via the shop route…that was a decision we had some control over. Our tuk tuk driver had suggested that we would see a bit more behind the scenes by not taking the ‘normal’ tourist boat option which involves a much more modern vessel (in fact, it’s basically a floating restaurant and bar). That might sound good, but it pretty much just gives you the chance to look at the village from a safe distance and presumably make sympathetic noises about the conditions the villagers live in.

Our choice to go the back door route not only enabled us to share the boat with a snake, but also with the boat owner’s young son who scored a can of Coke from us and more importantly with our young unpaid guide. His name was a mystery to us, but he was a really neat guy aged in his early 20s who goes out on the boats to tell tourists about the village where he grew up, and learns more English in the process. He wants to study more, having got his start in education at the floating village school, but in the meantime, he’s prepared to guide tourists solely for the tips. Good on him, and what a pleasure to meet a young man with all the ambition in the world despite the odds being stacked against him.

So by helping him out a little and by buying a bag of rice which will last the school about a month we believe we helped in a very small way and we hope that others back home might feel inclined to do their bit as well. A lot of people following this blog are involved with Lions, so who knows, maybe something might happen where a donation through LCIF might be directed to the children at Truong Hoc School, Chong Kneas, Cambodia?? If anyone else would like suggestions on how they might help, just let us know. Incidentally, if the children have money they can pay 200-300 Cambodian Riel per day for their schooling, otherwise it is free. 300 Riel is 9 NZ cents!

Footnote: while we’re talking about aspects of life near poverty level, we should also tell you about the children we met on our last night in Siem Reap. We’d just enjoyed another extremely tasty and embarrassingly cheap meal (not totally perfect though – Andrew’s snake was excellent, but one of the pieces of crocodile was just way too tough and couldn’t be chewed no matter what!) and were heading for the tuk tuk rank when a couple of young girls aged probably about 10, both with a young sibling on their hip, approached us each saying “I don’t want money but can you buy us baby formula for our little sister/brother?”

Next thing we knew, we were in a nearby shop buying a couple of tins of formula – they knew exactly what they wanted and it’s hard to see what else it could have been used for except the intended purpose – and we sent them away apparently happy. Again, it’s just very sad that such things happen, but they do, and maybe we made a difference that night as well…who knows?

Hello everyone – it’s been a few days now so an update is in order, not that we’ve been doing much lately to tell you about. We have had a quiet week in Penang, mostly in and around the main city Georgetown – having a sort of holiday from our holiday! Penang is an interesting place – a real change from Cambodia (apart from anything else, MOST of the litter is put in the right place rather than the whole lot just going onto the footpath…household rubbish included) and a ‘comfortable’ place to be. We’ve been here since Saturday evening, and reasonably quickly learned the way around our neighbourhood (Love Lane just off Jalan Chulia which is right in the Little India and Chinatown areas, for those who have been here before); fathomed out the bus system; tracked down a great place to eat at night; and located the nearest shopping places.

I know I talk a lot about eating but it is important, and we are in a part of the world where food is just everywhere and with such an overwhelming array of smells and tastes and sights to assail your senses. Temptation is literally at every corner, especially in this part of town, and all the guidebooks point to Penang (and Penang hawker food in particular) as being amongst the best in the world. Anyway, the great place we found is called Red Garden and it consists of probably 100 plastic tables with plastic chairs in the middle courtyard surrounded on all sides by goodness knows how many stalls selling every kind of Asian food imaginable. And most of the meals are only around RM5 (NZ$2) for a main course each….my favourites so far are a noodle dish Char Kuoy Teow! and Grilled Stingray! Yum! Back there tonight for a last time and I think the Curry Laksa might be the order of the day. One other thing about the Red Garden – if you’re (un)lucky enough to be there at 9pm, they have live entertainment with some of the evictees from the early rounds of Malaysian Idol performing to the very best of their ability!

Enough food talk! What have we done during our quiet week? In Penang at this time of year at least, there is a daily thunderstorm, usually coinciding with us arriving at our destination and getting off the bus into an extremely heavy tropical downpour! So some of our planned activities have changed a little, but it’s been OK as this week was always intended as a quieter one than a lot of the others. Yesterday was great example: we walked in the sunshine to the Feri, got a free ferry across the channel to Butterworth which is mainland Penang’s major city, got a bus to the Bird Park just as it started to pour, and got off the bus 30 minutes later as water levels on the road we immediately had to cross reached mid-shin height! Despite umbrellas we were seriously wet (although the temperature was still around 25 degrees), so another Malaysian bird park plan bit the dust and we had coffee, and wandered around yet another shopping mall instead.

But, even with the rain, we’ve been to the beach at Batu Ferringghi where I had a swim despite the signs warning to look out for jellyfish….the water is that murky that I doubt any jellyfish would have seen me let alone me see it! We’ve visited the 60 foot clock tower (1 foot for each year) erected by the loyal citizens of Penang in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee…we’ve seen no signs yet of anything similar being done this year for QE2. Nearby we strolled (until it started raining again!) around Fort Cornwallis which was first built in 1780 when Captain Francis Light claimed Penang for Britain….a couple of interesting things about old Frank: firstly, they decided to honour him with a statue after he died but couldn’t find any pictures to model it from, so now there’s a fine bronze statue supposedly of him, but it’s actually modelled on his son! And the other thing – back in the very early days of settlement here, the Captain wanted the jungle cleared as quickly as possible so he filled up some cannons with silver dollars and fired them into the bush, and the natives hacked down all the undergrowth looking for them

We’ve gone to the top of Penang Hill in the cable car and whilst up there we looked through the haze at the view over Georgetown and the water to the mainland in the distance, we visited SE Asia’s (and probably the world’s) first Owl Museum and we saw some enormous spiders in the trees. But something else we’ve done almost every day is just wander the local streets near our quaint old Guesthouse….soaking it all in! Every door, and every building seems to have a story and there is such a variety of people to be met as well – hawkers, backpackers, rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers. It’s all just so interesting, fascinating, intriguing….

But it’s nearly time to move on – back to KL for one night tomorrow, then a flight to New Delhi on Sunday. Another chapter about to be written!

[and it’s been a quiet week photo wise too – only about 150 photos here so far compared with around 1000 in the first 3 weeks. If you want to have a look at the very small number that are there so far, click on Malaysia Penang photos]

Looking back, the last updates were from Hanoi. Since then we have done a lot of things in and around Hanoi, then Ho Chi Minh City (let’s just keep it simple and call it Saigon, shall we?), before crossing the border into Cambodia on 9 April to visit Phnom Penh then Siem Reap. Now, we are on board an Air Asia Airbus320 bound for Kuala Lumpur, having just flown out of Siem Reap 15 minutes early….again, Air Asia proves to be a perfectly good airline to fly with. Today’s trip takes us to KL for a stopover of about 4 hours, before we take a short flight to Penang for a week, hopefully to be spent on the beach.

There is so much to tell you about – but I’ll try to keep the summary as brief as possible.

Along with our friends Jeannie and Jonathan Clough with whom we’ve spent 12 wonderful days (and also Anna Hamill who joined us for 48 hours in Saigon) we have seen some great places and done some great things…starting with an overnight trip on Halong Bay which was exactly as everyone who’d been previously told us it would be – spectacular scenery, fantastic hospitality on board our “junk” which was more like a 5 star hotel as far as the cabin and the service went, excellent karaoke (well, from the incredibly talented singers amongst the crew that is!), very good (and very substantial) meals etc. It’s difficult to describe the slightly eerie sensation of slipping through the early morning mist and between just some of the thousands of islands jutting up into the bay, but hopefully the photos help tell the story. All we can say is this: everyone was right – if you go to Vietnam, you MUST take a cruise on Halong Bay. By the way, Deanna, yes most of the junks have been painted white apparently after some local govenment decree to do so. No one knows why!

Among other things in Hanoi, we experienced a visit to Hoa Lo Prison….experienced being a much better word than enjoyed in this case. It was very interesting, but quite sobering as we considered the Vietnam War from a new perspective (as well gaining a better understanding of the previous Viet Minh-French conflict, not to mention the impact on the people of Vietnam over many years as various factions fought for internal control). Hoa Lo (the Hanoi Hilton) wasn’t just where captured US airman were imprisoned though….over the years it has housed many many more Vietnamese people who in one way or another had dared to defy the authorities, and they were housed in incredibly inhumane conditions for the most part as well. And Hoa Lo was just a sample – since then we have been to places like Cu Chi near Saigon where the Viet Minh went underground to live and fight against the French, the Americans, the South Vietnamese, us I suppose, for many years from a 250km long network of tunnels up to 8m deep that stretched from the city almost to the Cambodian border….they lived down there for years whilst I spent just a few minutes in a short 120m stretch of a tunnel they’ve actually enlarged a bit for tourists to experience and THAT was more than enough thank you; we’ve been to the War Remnants Museum in Saigon which literally brings people to tears as they view the photographs of atrocities carried out in the name of war, and not just by the so-called enemy either I might add….”our” side didn’t fight a blame-free war by any stretch of the imagination that’s for sure; and most recently we’ve been to the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh. That one was really sobering – we’ve been to places like Auschwitz and recoiled in horror at what happened there, yet in Pol Pot’s day the most dreadful things were done to their own people – men, women and children – for no better reason than the Khmer Rouge wanted things their way. To commit genocide is obviously bad enough, but to almost exclusively direct your hatred against your own people is just unbelievable. Killing fields existed all over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 – the authorities ousted 1million people (i.e. almost everyone) from Phnom Penh for example so they could populate it with around 50,000 ‘Party people’, and far too many of the 1 million were never heard from again. Today, of course, all the killing fields have been erased from the landscape, but to ensure the memories and the lessons are never forgotten, the one at Choeung Ek that we visited has been retained and a Buddhist memorial has been erected (somewhat ghoulishly containing over 8000 exhumed skulls on display). It was a “tourist attraction” that we almost didn’t go to, but in the end we did and we are glad that we did so….it’s a visit that everyone with an inappropriate agenda for power in this world needs to make.

As you can probably tell, I’m struggling a bit to put our feelings into words as we try to understand these things…so maybe I should finish now with a much happier subject….FOOD! (there’s much more to tell you, especially about the Angkor area around Siem Reap and our visit to a floating village and its school, but I’ll save that for the next update).

We have eaten our way through SE Asia for 3 weeks now – we’ve eaten frogs, snakes, crocodiles as well as all the ‘normal’ stuff and we’ve tried Khmer, Malaysian, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Western, Vietnamese (and yes, McDonalds just once because it was the only recognisable food available at 5am at KL Airport). Food is so incredibly cheap and most of it tastes so good! And even food has its highlights – for us it was the Back of the Bike tour of Saigon last Sunday morning which was organised by Anna on our behalf. BOTB is a new company founded just last year by Chad from Pennsylvania and his wife Thuy from Saigon, and justifiably it’s already rated #2 on TripAdvisor. They picked us up at 9 on 5 motorbikes, and dropped us back at our hotel 3 hours later after a really fun, informative and stomach satisfying pillion ride around the city visiting a variety of small local restaurants, probably none of which we would have entered had we been making the decisions. The food and drinks were 99% delicious (there were a couple of things I wouldn’t try again), the insights into local Vietnamese life were very interesting, and the ride in Saigon traffic (even on a ‘quiet’ Sunday morning) was a heap of fun. Top marks to Chad and the team – we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and like Halong Bay, we would recommend a tour with them to anyone out there heading for Vietnam.

I think that will do for now – have you had enough? Have a look at the photos….more added to the Vietnam album, and now there’s a new album for Cambodia. Here they are:

Vietnam

Cambodia

Cheers

A&P

Author’s note: despite extensive on the road research, it appears that no one in authority has ever bothered to publish any road rules for the people of Vietnam. Or if in fact rules have been published, no one using the road has ever bothered to read them. However, as a way of thanking Hanoi and Saigon’s citizens for their hospitality, the following notes have been assembled as a guide to anyone unused to traffic conditions in these cities.

1. Traffic may use whichever side of the road the driver deems to be the most convenient
2. Tooting the horn is compulsory – at all times. The louder the horn, the better
3. The right hand rule applies in all situations. So does the left hand rule, the ‘on the other hand’ rule, and the 80/20 rule
4. Roundabouts are irrelevancies and should be ignored. However, in the unlikely event a vehicle is attempting to negotiate a roundabout in a semi-normal manner, the traffic entering the roundabout shall always have precedence over traffic already circling
5. Buses and trucks may reverse across busy roads at any time, and without warning
6. The space which a passing vehicle appears to have when overtaking is inversely proportional to the number of motorbikes which will also squeeze through the gap in the same manoeuvre
6a. Overtaking manouevres must only be attempted when there is no clear distance ahead in which it is humanly possible to complete the task
6b. Overtaking is only truly overtaking when your car is passing a minibus which is also passing a truck, which has moved out to the right to avoid a motorcycle. To totally qualify for the definition of overtaking, an equal number of vehicles should be approaching in the same configuration from the opposite direction, at the same speed
6c. Overtaking is permissible on either side of the vehicle being passed. Preferably, two overtaking vehicles will pass at the same time, one on each side
7. Stop signs and Give Way signs shall not be erected. If one is in place, it is a obvious error, and must be ignored
8. Traffic lights are red, orange and green – all shall be read as green therefore proceed if you feel like it
8a. If traffic does temporarily come to a halt at a red light, it shall usually proceed again as soon as the number of seconds left on the green light countdown reaches single figures, and definitely will be moving by the time the count reaches 3 seconds to go.
8b. Traffic still proceeding on its opposing green light at this point shall be avoided
9. Pedestrians shall cross the road at any point, at any time, and at any pace. Hesitant pedestrians should remain in their home country
10. Motorbikes shall, by necessity, have at least one occupant. However, two is considered a normal minimum, and three, four or five is acceptable as long as all riders are over the age of 2 weeks
10a. Helmets may be worn, or not, depending on the wearer’s mood
10b. Ridiculously heavy loads can be carried on one bike, and it is not compulsory to secure the load in any way. This is especially applicable to refrigerators and large carved wooden dining tables.
11. Vehicles may turn onto a busy road at any time without looking and can enter any lane other than the nearest one
12. The size of the vehicle (or vehicles) shall determine precedence at intersections. For example one bus beats one car, one car beats one bike, however multiples are permitted: 5 motorbikes riding in a pack will trump a single car.
13. Any or all of the above rules may or may not apply at any given times

Hanoi! What a city….it will be almost impossible to put our impressions of this place into words or even pictures. There are so many contrasts: fast and loud and bustling (frenetic would describe it better) one minute; the next minute you can be in a mid-city park where people are doing Tai Chi, or playing badminton on the many courts painted everywhere all over town, and everything is relatively peaceful. Then back into the maelstrom of traffic again as you set forth to cross the street.

Traffic is an entire blog entry on its own – watch this space! – but suffice to say we very quickly adjusted to the techniques, and not only have we mastered crossing the road despite the never ending stream of motorbikes, taxis, rickshaws, buses, cars coming at you from both directions (and on any side of the street!), I’d almost venture to suggest that in a perverse sort of way, you are actually LESS likely to get run over here, than you would be at home!

We have really enjoyed our stay here in the north of Vietnam – we’re off the Ho Chi Minh City today to sample the southern version. Hanoi is truly interesting, right from the moment we arrived at the airport on Monday morning and I realised as we went through the seemingly inefficient process of collecting our “Visa on Arrival” which we’d pre-purchased, that Soviet-style bureaucracy is still alive and well in this country. Contrast that, however, with the absolutely outstanding and friendly service from the staff at our hotel, on our Halong Bay overnight cruise, at restaurants etc., and there’s another enigma about Vietnam. They are so willing to please it becomes a little bit embarrassing when you consider the pittance (by our standards) that they must get paid. For example: when we booked our cruise at the front desk of the first hotel, they let us know that whilst it was no problem to leave our main luggage with them whilst we were away overnight, unfortunately they were full when we got back. However, they booked us in at a sister hotel not far away, took our bags there while we were away, got us the best rooms in the new hotel at the same price as theirs would have been, walked us around to the new hotel when we got back, and then ordered us a taxi to go to the airport today….free of charge! The kindnesses just didn’t stop – so needless to say, there will be 5-star ratings going on TripAdvisor.com and a decent tip heading the way of those staff members. And that’s another thing: tipping is not expected, yet the level of service is exemplary regardless…..yet when I think of some of the surly assistance we’ve been grudgingly given by people in other countries all the while with their hands out until you tip them what THEY consider they’re worth, I shake my head in wonder!

The next thing that makes us shake our heads in disbelief are the prices….it’s a bit hard to get used to at first as local prices are in Vietnamese Dong and there’s around 16750 of those to the NZ Dollar. Initially we were a bit taken aback with what seem to be high prices, but that’s just because we are so unused to working in thousands. A good early example was using a toilet near Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum (which eventually we didn’t see because they shut the line of visitors off at 10.30am instead of 11.00am as advertised…why?? Because they can) and seeing a sign in Vietnamese which indicated the cost to spend a penny was VND2000 – but the lady on the door who couldn’t speak English demanded VND5000. That could have been an argument anywhere else, but a quick bit of mental arithmetic revealed that we were talking the difference between around NZ$0.12 and NZ$0.30! She got her VD5000!

And we have to tell you about our meal the other night at Geckos Restaurant (which will also be getting a top rating on TripAdvisor) – we’re in Vietnam with our friends Jeannie and Jonathan Clough from the UK (the ones we met with the Hamills and the Fahys during the World Cup last year) so there were four of us for a meal. They had a special on cocktails so we had 3 of those each to accompany our main and our dessert: for 12 drinks, 4 really excellent Vietnamese mains, and 4 lots of crepes, the total cost was VND843000, or NZ$50.32 (a bit over $12 each!). And that’s probably expensive by Hanoi standards! I paid with a US$100 note so I could get some local cash….and I became an instant millionaire with the change which totalled around 1.17million Dong!

There are so many examples but I won’t go on forever. I will take a break now though and have a drink from my 500ml bottle of water (cost 30 cents) and publish this post then make sure our bags are packed for the leg south. Next up on the blog – what we’ve been doing here including a trip to Halong Bay and a tour through the Hoa Lo Prison (more commonly known to us who were on the side of the “American Imperialists” as the Hanoi Hilton), and perhaps a blog entitled Hanoi Road Rules. Arguably, that blog post could be a blank page!

By the way, there’s a few of our Vietnam photos on the web already although I haven’t finished putting captions on them yet – go to the link below to have a look:
https://picasaweb.google.com/117578732661704733104/Vietnam?authkey=Gv1sRgCOLC8J6HuoWVgQE

Cheers

Andrew

I have a bit of spare time so on go the new reading glasses (new because some thieving git is now wearing my old ones) as I add another quick update, about what we’ve been up to this last week.
When we first arrived, our room wasn’t ready so off to the Central Market and Chinatown it was….lots of bargains to be had but on day one of a year of travelling, we had to be very restrained. Apart from a coffee, and then a very cheap meal in Jalan Petaling in Chinatown, I think we only bought a fridge magnet! Total outlay on shopping: RM3. Oh, and we did spend RM10 each for 15 minutes with our feet in a pool of Doctor Fish who nibbled all the dead skin away. I had most of the fish in the pool around me – word obviously got around the pool that “this guy is good, get over here fishy friends!!”, and all the other punters suddenly only had a few fish each! I guess you have to be popular in some way or another!

Tuesday as you know started OK on the KL Hop On/Hop Off bus tour but ended rather badly with the missing bag. Still, we did get an insight into Malaysian policing – lots of women in uniform, and all packing pistols. Mind you, that firepower wasn’t as impressive as the security guard on duty at a gold buying jewellers in the Mid Valley Mall the other day….I really wonder if he’s ever used his SHOTGUN in a live (or dead) situation before?? Back to the bus though….we had managed to get to a few places on the route before the day went pear shaped, including Little India, the National Museum (which was very interesting with just 4 galleries – ancient Malay history, the Malay kingdoms, colonial days and modern Malaysia), and the new National Palace which we could only look at through the gates but appeared to be a monument to ostentatiousness to me.

The next day was a shopping trip and a visit to KL’s towers – the twin Petronas Towers which we viewed from the ground up, and KL Tower which we went up to look over the city. Just as well we did, otherwise we might not have spied the Hard Rock Cafe from above, so might not have gone there for dinner. The shopping part of the day was about replacing stolen things mainly, but gave us a chance to visit Burkit Bintang and therefore gave us the chance to see that not all KL is broken footpaths, rough roads, foul drains, and hundreds of very earnest sales people trying to sell you nothing but the best: “only genuine copies here, mister!”. Having said that, the shop assistants in the ‘real’ shops have an equally annoying technique: they latch onto you as soon as you walk in, but don’t do the NZ thing of “can I help you”/”no, I’m just looking thanks”, instead they stalk you like you’re a potential shoplifter and the instant you show anything more than a passing interest in an item, they’re on to you faster than you can escape into another aisle. Very annoying!

Thursday was a great day – a bit of wandering around Merdeka Square where independence from Britain was declared in 1957, and looking at all the colonial buildings nearby. One of particular interest was the former Federated Malay States Survey Office which was built in 1910 and therefore presumably was the workplace of our great uncle Jack Dewar (Grandma Moffat’s brother) who was Surveyor General of the FMS in the 1930s. Sadly, the building is looking somewhat abandoned. Another amazing thing we saw as we were near that building – well, amazing to us anyway, but apparently quite commonplace to locals, was a VERY large Monitor Lizard which seemed to be about 3m long which suddenly darted across the road right in front of us! It was HUGE! He could move too…a local guy chased him and the lizard shot down a drain before I could get my camera out, but boy, what a monster! (The lizard, not the local man).
After that excitement it was onto the local train system to go to the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory where we had a personal guided tour and watched the craftsmen plying their trade – everything is handmade, even down to all those little ‘dimples’ hammered one by one into beer tankards. It was very interesting – and was topped off with our graduation from the School of Hard Knocks where we each made our own pewter bowl. In years to come, when you visit us, don’t be surprised if your hors d’ouevres are served in pewter bowls, they are that good!!

Yesterday, despite the slightly wet weather (still hot though, around 30 degrees) we had a day at the Sunway Lagoon theme park. It was OK, but to be honest we’ve been spoiled over the years by visits to places like Disneyland so it was a little underwhelming. They claim it to be “Asia’s best attraction” which is good to know now, because now we don’t have to waste any money visiting anything else to see if it’s better. The water slides weren’t too bad though, just the queues were very long to get onto any of them. It was dark by the time we got out after a meal, so the “mini bas” back to the “kommuter tren” was an interesting ride – complete with full air conditioning (door open, non-existent windows) and a total disregard for the road rules, especially the one about “don’t drive on the wrong side of the road”. (By the way, I’m making an assumption that there actually are road rules here because some of our teksi rides in heavy traffic have been interesting!)

Today is just a quiet day – might go to the bird park which was to be our next stop on Tuesday on the Hop On-Hop Off Bus, and then it’s just a quick repack before we have to get a taxi at 4am tomorrow to go to the airport. Who booked us on a 6.20am flight to Hanoi??? Oh, yes, that’s right…me!

As the title says, “greetings from Malaysia!” This first offshore entry on the blog has been a little bit delayed, because as some of you know, it hasn’t all been plain sailing in week 1. But let’s start at the start: for those who think Air Asia is some sort of third rate airline, forget it! We had an excellent 11 hour flight from Christchurch to Kuala Lumpur and with the aid of just NZ$39 (total) spent on extra seats, had a row of 3 seats each so managed some very worthwhile sleep (the flight left CHC at 1.10am). The seats were good, there was plenty of legroom (even without the extra seats), meals were OK if a little bit odd menu wise, and the flight was smooth despite there being some fantastic lightning displays in clouds not that far away at time!

Arrival into KL was as expected – hot, smelly and humid. But we’ve since discovered that not all of the city is like that…the areas around Burkit Bintang, the Convention Centre, the Petronas Towers etc., are ultra modern, very tidy, populated with all the name shops in huge malls…..a complete contrast to the area our hotel is in, on the fringes of Chinatown. KL is a city of polar opposites – in one direction there is great wealth, and extremely modern facilities whilst just a few hundred metres away, there are beggars on the footpath (if in fact there even is a footpath) selling tissues from at least 9am until 9pm in the case of the supposedly blind man outside our hotel, for 20 Malaysian cents a packet – that’s NZ8 cents.

That’s another thing – it’s pretty cheap here for most things although oddly, home appliances like TVs are twice the price we are used to! We went into, guess where, Harvey Norman last night at the Mid Valley Megamall (largest mall in SE Asia so we are told) and TVs that would be well under $1000 at home were the equivalent of $2000+ here. On the other hand you can travel miles in a “teksi” for less than 10 ringgit, a cup of coffee is around 3 RM, a bottle of water under 1 RM, the movies (“The Hunger Games”) cost just 14 RM each, a decent feed with a Tiger beer each in Chinatown is around 60 RM…..that’s $4, $1.20, 36c, $5.60 and $24 respectively. There are many examples – but just one more: our 7 night stay at the Citin Pudu hotel cost us RM738….that’s $42 a night including breakfast and we are in a ‘deluxe’ room. To be fair, we haven’t seen any other rooms so what constitutes ‘standard’ remains a mystery at this stage – but how they pay the cleaners, the reception team, the manager, the cafe staff, the security man on the door and so on and so forth, all for the equivalent of all the combined lots of $42 is beyond us! The minimum wage here must be less than a packet of tissues perhaps? By the way, “deluxe” seems to mean “adequate but with a fantastic view of the KL Tower and the Petronas Towers out our window”.

Now, so as not to bore you senseless in episode one, just a quick note to say that I had my bag (man purse but that’s acceptable when you’re a tourist) flogged on Tuesday – day 2 – so spent much of that day being alternately upset and then patient ( as patient as I can be that is) with the Tourist Police as they painstakingly took a statement. A lot of time was also spent on phone calls and emails to banks, phone company, insurance company etc etc. Such fun!! To cut a long story short, the bag is well and truly gone, as are about 8 debit and credit cards, my iPhone and a bit of cash, plus a few personal items that are just a pain to not have! But within 48 hours the phone was replaced and restored to where the old one had been (good old Apple), we had BNZ cards couriered from Singapore overnight, and we pick up NBNZ cards at an ANZ branch in Cambodia in about 10 days!

That’s enough for tonight – I will fill in all the details of what we’ve been doing this week in the next day or so before we leave for Vietnam (small teaser – we are both qualified pewter bowl makers now). If you want to jump ahead though and view a sample of the photos to date, go to the link below to see the start of Album 1

All the best – catch you again soon

Andrew

https://picasaweb.google.com/117578732661704733104/Malaysia?authkey=Gv1sRgCLq5iqT4uKiCfw