Leaving Thailand

Leaving Thailand? Well, to be honest our passports are plastered with Thai stamps because this is the third time we’ve left Thailand on this trip – visiting Laos and the UK in between. But as we’re now moving on south through Malaysia to Singapore before flying to Australia, this will be the last time we leave Thailand this year!

It’s been fun – fragmented, but fun! Great massages, beautiful islands, tropical fish, golden Wats… Thailand is a surprisingly varied country, with more to it than just the idyllic islands seen on the tourist brochures, or the backpacker havens you’d read about as the haunts of teenagers and aging hippies. But anyway, now we’ll hop over the southernmost states (as there’s a reasonable chance of getting blown up or kidnapped by local terrorists there) to land in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malysia.

Anyway, the now obligatory good versus scary list for Thailand follows:

Some things we’ve found great…

1. Massages. No dodgy ‘massagee?? Soooo beautiful!’ middle of the night calls as in China. This is the real thing. Thais are seriously into massages, and seem to have them for any excuse from a bad back to a cold to a sore fingernail! Saying that, they do make you feel better more effectively than the average doctor. Very relaxing, very cheap… what more could you ask for? You even get to like your feet being viciously attacked by a stick during a foot massage after a few goes – although the first time it feels more like the masseur is trying to skewer your sole or at the very least dislocate a toe or two!

2. Islands. Or should I say the coral reefs around the islands? Either way, they are beautiful, and teem with life (be it monkeys or little fishes – or big fat sting rays). Oh, and the beaches are pretty too if you like that sort of thing 

3. Wats. These spiky temples usually have enough gold paint splashed around to cover the Eiffel tower. Or they coat everything with mirror glass (again, mostly gold) for a particularly shiny look. These were good in Laos too.

4. Italian food. Strange as it may seem, we’ve had some truly excellent Italian food in Thailand. Pizzas from stone ovens with crisp, thin bases, al-dente pasta – great stuff. Even the red wine to go along with it is nice! Not what you’d expect in Asia.

And some scary things…

1. Food. This is a one-off entry. Grossly unfair to the majority of Thai eateries with their very lovely noodely things. But I still going to stick it in on the basis that it left me traumatised! When we were in Patong beach, we made the mistake of having lunch in our hotel one day. We’d passed it over for food before – I don’t know why, somehow I had bad vibes about the restaurant even though the hotel was perfectly OK. We made simple sandwich orders – Gary wanted a BLT, I thought I’d try ham and cheese – and when Gary’s turned up it was fresh and tasty. Mine took a bit longer to come, but when it did it also looked great. So I took a nice big bite – tasty! Until I looked down to see a green caterpillar emerging from the other half of the sarney and legging it away across my plate! Eeeeugh! I handed it swiftly back, and an apologetic Thai bloke took the offending plate away before giving us a refund. A few seconds later we heard a loud female scream coming from the kitchen – I think the bug traumatised the chef too! I mean, I don’t mind caterpillars, but the thought of the bite I’d taken and the thing wriggling… lets just day it put me off food for the rest of the day. And in some parts of Thailand of course insects are a delicacy! But then they do deep fry them first to stop the wriggling…

2. Tuk tuks. And Taxis. Now these drivers are as bad as the auto-rickshaw guys in Delhi – they seem to try anything to rip you off as much as possible. They have an impressive range of scams in their repertoire, or even if you get an honest one it’s hard to get quoted less than twice a reasonable price for your journey. Worst of all you can hardly move 5m without being hassled by them… very tiring and boring. But actually riding them can be fun if it’s not raining!

3. Sugar Daddies. And their prey I suppose. Although with these weird couples of a young pretty Thai girl and an old, invariably fat, bald and sun-burned man you never can really tell who is the predator and who is the prey. We’ve seen them for a few weeks now though, and still can’t get used to them – or the sleazy pick-up bars where they seem to meet.

4. Ping pong!

London

Tropical, exotic, mystical London. Heart of the Orient. Just down the road form Bangkok, eh? And one of the first destinations that would cross anyone’s lips when planning a great journey across Asia…

Or maybe not. So much for taking a year out of the UK travelling – giving ourselves space to recover from the traumas of the NHS by exploring vibrant and exotic countries. No, the one destination written firmly on our list for August (on pain of disembowelment if we didn’t turn up) was Essex. Cheers Amit and Karyn! Couldn’t you two wait until next year to get married?

Oh well, so we nipped onto a delightfully quaint series of Gulf Air Planes along with what felt like half of the population of Thailand – they really pack-em-in to make sure you can NOT move even your little toe during the flight (a new fuel economy idea maybe?). And wizzed back across the globe to the lovely sunny UK. And actually while we were home it WAS lovely and sunny for a change. Weird!

Actually we wouldn’t have missed Amit’s wedding for the world. It was a fantastic day – a really relaxed and touching civil ceremony followed by a great reception with one of the best desert courses I’ve ever seen. I was far more nervous than Amit beforehand as he’d asked me to give a short reading – but even that seemed to go OK! Although I don’t think I was as nervous as the newly-weds just before their first dance, but they pulled that off brilliantly. Oh, and it was fantastic to see loads of people from College that I hadn’t met for years. Amit, Karyn – if you read this – thank you again for inviting us, have a wonderful honeymoon, and we hope you enjoy your wedding presents fully!

As for the rest of the time we had in the UK, well, we thought we’d relax, have a break, a holiday from our year-long holiday… Yeah right. It was a bit, erm, busy. In a nice way. We did lots of things, caught up with lots of people, and even did a spot of paid work believe it or not. An entire of year of dosing is proving more difficult to achieve than you’d think. But suffice to say that by the end of our ‘break’ we were absolutely shattered, physically drained, and needed desperately to get back to Thailand to get some rest and a good massaggee!

Traveling Laos

Laos has been an interesting stop on our world tour. Although we only had time for a brief stay, it really has been a complete contrast to everywhere else we’ve visited so far for two main reasons. Firstly, the pace of life is so slow here – the country feels so laid back as to be horizontal. It’s a very dreamy, beautiful place, suitable for sipping a cocktail while gazing at the stunning scenery. Secondly, travelling around here is far from laid back! This has been the most exciting / terrifying / stunning / insect ridden – varied set of journeys we’ve had so far.

You’ve probably read my post about the joys / terrors of flying with Laos airlines (even though their safety record and plane fleet has apparently vastly improved in recent years). If you haven’t and want to laugh at my cowardice have a look below. But to summarise, don’t fly with these people if you’ve an aversion for small propeller driven planes, or turbulence caused by monsoon clouds and mountainous terrain. Or if the combination of the above bothers you. At all!

After our entry to Laos in this spectacular fashion we decided to move from Louang Phabang to Vientiane by bus. This would be better, no? After all, the days of war-stricken Laos are over – there hasn’t been a bandit attack on a bus on this route since, oh, 2004? This must be better than flying again! Well, actually it was. The journey lasted 10 (long) hours, but at least was through absolutely stunning mountainous scenery. I’ve sat on many coaches driving through the Alps but I’ve never had a trip half this beautiful before. Hopefully you can get an idea from the best blurred-sideways-taken-out-of-the-bus-window- photo I’ve ever taken!

The mountains themselves (though very pretty) were however a bit of a pain. The road could find no way around them, so had to go up and down and over… you get the idea? Lots of hairpin bends, cliffs, ravines – and a boy racer bus driver to complete the picture. Not a trip for those prone to car-sickness. And as it’s the rainy season we kept on coming across disconcerting landslides too – every few miles part of the mountain above would have slipped down to partially block the road, making our driver swerve out towards yet another a 100m drop. But hey, we got through, no problem!

No, all this was fine. And no bandits appeared. The only really traumatic part of the trip was the music. Our lovely driver’s favourite pastime seemed to be blasting Laos-style-easy-listening-rock-music at full volume while he made his nauseating manoeuvres. Most of you probably know that we’re really not into easy listening at the best of times, but imagine wailing East Asian singing (with obligatory guitar and flute solos for each song) pulverising your brain for hours on end. We couldn’t even listen to our mp3 players – this was so loud it cut through the headphones and ruined whatever music you put on. And the songs all sounded the same! They had exactly the same pace, beat, instruments, production - even the same tune (more or less) – enough to make you scream! And just to make sure you got the monotony, after each song finished an excerpt of it was repeated with people screaming over it (in the way that people only ever scream in soap operas). In summary, travelling in Laos is, erm, interesting.

Leaving Laos was easier. Thailand and Laos are divided by the course of the Mekong river for much of their border. Vientiane is only 22km from the border crossing the ‘Friendship Bridge’, and so we simply took a (very boring) bus across to the sleepy Thai town of Nong Khai. Here we wandered on the other side of the Mekong and experienced another day of manic rainfall / violently sunny weather before catching an overnight train back to Bangkok. Unfortunately here the boring transport ran out again.

We’ve been on plenty of ancient, dusty night trains on this trip. But this was the first one where none of the windows in the carriage would close and the staff left the lights on all night. OK, Thailand is not exactly cold – what’s the problem? Bugs. As we swept slowly through the paddy fields of Northeast Thailand we accumulated a nice little insectoid ecosystem in our carriage. You could see them clustering manically around the lights. And of course one of the little devils would land on you every few seconds looking for a tasty drink of fresh blood.

The bug avoidance tactics of various passengers differed quite a bit. The cluster of US college boys at the back tried to ignore them (and ended up with fetching clusters of mosquito bites over their arms the next morning). We decided to attack the things with the DEET repellent spray my lovely vet students gave us as a parting gift when we stopped teaching. It kind of worked – insects still landed on us, but they usually gave up swiftly enough. On the downside we were also a bit repelled by the stink of the stuff, but couldn’t fly off to escape! But my favourite anti-mosquito tactic was from a French girl sitting behind us. She armed herself with a fly-swat the size of a tennis racket and brandished it menacingly back and forth. This backfired a tad when a bug actually landed on her or her boyfriend – they may have had an impressive selection of bruises to show for the trip! And of course it wouldn’t have worked so well after they dropped off to sleep…

Anyway, our next mode of transport should hopefully be a lot more boring. We’re flying to London for Amit’s wedding – leaving here on the 29th of July, and then returning to Thailand to resume our travels on the 7th August. We’re travelling with the very well known ‘Gulf Air’. What could go wrong?

Scared again...

If you’ve read this blog over the last few months, you might remember that when we were in India I posted about the terrors of flying in planes with propellers – we didn’t like turbulence that felt like the plane had just hit a brick wall… you know what I mean? Anyway that wonderful experience was courtesy of Jet Airlines, who actually were excellent and have a very good international reputation.

Moving on a few months – meet ‘Lao Airlines’. Or rather don’t if you can avoid it! The only way you can easily get from Chiang Mai into neighbouring Laos is by flying, especially if you have a tight schedule to keep to (and thanks to my best friend Amit and his wedding in London in a few weeks time we do). Of course the only airline that flies from Chiang Mai to Laos is ‘Lao Airlines’ – a small government-owned company with an appalling safety record. At least, the safety record is really bad for their domestic flights. We did an extensive internet search before booking our tickets, and were reassured that the international flights used nice big planes – Airbuses or Boeings. Only the internal flights between Louang Phabang and Vientiane (the capital) used the dodgy old converted Chinese military craft. So flying in from Thailand should be fine. Absolutely fine.

As a result, when we walked out of the airport bus to see our plane was a small, propeller driven thing where the luggage was stowed just by the cockpit we were a little taken aback. Stepping cautiously on board we thrilled to see the chairs seemed to be tacked onto the floor with little more than drawing pins. But reassuringly the tiny seats were upholstered in a flower pattern coloured with violently florescent shades. Very soothing. Oh, and the final calming touch was that the seat belts attached to our chairs were completely different from everyone else’s on the plane – mine was absolutely huge, twisted, and completely unadjustable. Really useful if things did go wrong!

Anyway, as you can tell from this post we survived the flight in our lovely little ATR 72. There was a heck of a lot of turbulence in places – well it is the rainy season so we expected that. The engines made a huge amount of noise so that the whole plane seemed to resonate. And every now and then the tone on the engines would suddenly change pitch, making you feel as if they’d stalled or something. Nice!

But the pilot was perfectly good, and touched down in Louang Phabang very smoothly despite the poring rain. Actually it was probably the most beautifully scenic landing we’ve ever had due to fantastic views of the Mekong river and surrounding mountains capped with lush forests and golden temples. It took our minds off the scary flight which is saying something! As did the cute little airport which, to be honest, looked more like a petrol station. Now we’re sitting in our very atmospheric hotel room, waiting for the rain to ease up slightly as we can’t wait to explore the town. The glimpses we had from the plane and our taxi window were tantalisingly lovely to say the least. This is a smidge more remote and untouched than Thailand!

Leaving China

Travelling through China has been a lot of fun, but it’s not exactly the easiest place to get around – mainly due to linguistic difficulties. As we’ve said before, the collection of languages called ‘Chinese’ are impossible! Even trying to make yourself understood for basic phrases is a nightmare, and the locals do not allow for this. If they speak no English they do not even try to help your understanding of what they are saying by pronouncing carefully or slowly – if anything they speed up and yap at you as if you’re being difficult! Not helpful! Oh well, at least we got around it most of the time. I was quite proud of my Chinese character writing by the end of the trip!

One thing that is very obvious out here at the moment is that China is mad about the Olympic games. OK, you might expect Beijing to be excited, but the rest of the country is almost as caught up. Beijing itself is in the final throes of a substantial makeover – it has a lovely new airport completed in the nick of time, and many of the down-town buildings we saw last year have been rebuilt. Er, and some have been pulled down for reconstruction… but looking at the rate of putting them back up they are never going to get it all done in time! But the temples have been given facelifts, the parks look fantastically well tended, and the Forbidden City has had more than just a lick of paint. Just as you’d probably expect.

The strange thing is that the rest of China seems to be trying to follow suit. Every town or city we visited had major squares given over to celebration of the Games – complete with huge silken models of the ‘Friendlies’ (the Olympic cartoon mascots that get EVERYWHERE). Every town seems to have its own array of ‘Official’ Olympic shops, there are banners across streets, posters on lampposts and in shop windows… you get the picture. We’re really curious to see if the UK will be this strongly infected with Olympic fever in a few years time!

We actually left mainland China in a lot of style. When getting to Pudong airport in Shanghai you can catch the world’s only Magnetically propelled train – the Maglev. It’s very, very, VERY fast! Each train carriage has a digital speedometer, so we watched the world wiz by at a top speed of 431 km / hour. That’s about 267 miles / hour! Not bad for an airport shuttle. Then when we checked in we were seriously jammy, and managed to get a free upgrade to business class for our flight to Hong Kong. This is the first time it’s ever happened to me (although Gary’s been lucky once before) and it was great! We had huge, comfy reclining seats, we were served edible airline food, NICE wine – and best of all, Haagen Das ice-cream for dessert! Perfect! I hope this happens again some time.

Leaving the SARs Hong Kong and Macau was a bit of a comedown. We found Asia’s answer to EasyJet and Ryan Air: Air Asia. A nice little low-cost airline with fares to Bangkok for only £50 each. Not bad for a 3 hour flight, but unfortunately no free upgrades to Business Class. Actually, no Business Class at all come to think of it!

Anyway, to end our experiences in China, we’ll give you the inevitable scary versus fun listings:

Some things we’ve found great…

1. The Great Wall. Predictable entry, eh? Well, it’s brilliant. Huge, long, and very impressively snake-like as it winds over hills and mountains. More than anything we’ve seen on this trip so far (including the Taj Mahal, Jaisalmer, Terracotta Warriors etc) we would really recommend you see this. Go to Simatai if you can as it is particularly impressive there, and you can have a ride on the rope way (what we’d call a zipline or flying fox) back down over the lake after your climb!

2. Musical fountains and light displays. This is something they do surprisingly well in China. There are lots of places where they have silly huge fountains with choreographed jets of water rising and falling to music – we saw them in Xi’an, Hangzhou, and of course, Macau. Some of the effects are really impressive such as simulations of tsunamis or opening flowers, especially when combined with tacky under water lighting, or better still, occasional jets of fire! Really silly. Hong Kong’s answer to this is the ‘Symphony of Lights’ – a nightly display where many of the major buildings flash their lights and green lasers in synch with music across the harbour. Apparently it’s in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest permanent light display. The music is incredibly cheesy, but the whole thing is so ridiculous and over the top it’s brilliant!

3. Trains. Once you’ve found a way to book tickets the rail network in China is cheap, efficient, and actually usually runs to time. Scarily the trains often leave slightly early – which is a shock to the system after living in the UK. The best are the Bullet trains – just like the Japanese ones, but a fraction of the price. There is a drawback however. When waiting for a train you are not allowed onto the platform, but held in large waiting areas instead. People are only let through the barriers a few minutes before the train arrives, so you get a stampede in busy stations as hundreds of people try to catch their train. It’s a shame, and spoils what would otherwise be a great network.

4. JJ Inns. Formally known as JinJiang Inns, this fantastic chain of business hotels has loads of branches across China. They are clean, spacious, give you nice complementary internet connections and tea, and best of all: REALLY cheap. Usually about £15 a night! We loved them, and will miss them in Thailand. Apparently there are other similar chains of hotels in China, but we stuck with JJ Inns as they were so good – and as they have a website which allows you to reserve rooms reliably without needing to enter your credit-card details. Brilliant!

5. Chinese Food. Dim Sum – lovely little Chinese Dumplings - are great. They come in all shapes and sizes, steamed, fried, boiled… lots of variety. And they are especially nice to eat when you choose them from trolleys in Hong Kong. And that’s just one example! Beijing duck is very delicious, incredibly rich – and has enough calories to last you out a few weeks without food! China is a very large place with loads of regional foods, many of which are absolutely delicious. But (see below) order with care or you might get a scorpion or a bullfrog…

6. Non-Chinese Foods. What we found surprising is that some western foods are incredibly well produced in China. We’ve had the best popcorn and candy floss we’ve ever tasted out here. And they have some great sushi, especially in Shanghai. Go to number 666 Fuzhou Street and eat at the fantastic Japanese restaurant on the ground floor.


And some scary things…

1. Scorpions on Sticks. OK, we’ll deal with food in general in a moment, but this delicacy deserves a special mention. Even the Chinese seemed to find it strangely fascinating – loads of them were taking photos of the wriggling kebabs at the same time as us! We still haven’t worked out whether you are meant to eat the little devils alive and wriggling or if they get fried first. Anyone know? Please reply to this post as we’re very curious!

2. Other scary foods. Erm, well, if you’re board of scorpions you could try a variety of insects, or how about chicken feet? Freshly steamed of course. Or other options include braised pig’s intestines, spicy duck’s neck or stewed bull-frog. And many, many more. Yum. Tempted?

3. Bridal Parlours. These things weren’t so popular in Beijing, Hong Kong or Shanghai, but you could find them on virtually every street in the other cities. The parlours seem to specialise in dressing the bridal couple up in as hideous and elaborate (and garishly coloured) wedding clothes as possible, before taking pictures of them. Many of them seem to advertise these pictures with computer generated backgrounds, so the couple look as if they are on an athletics track, or in a field or something. Very odd. Is this an essential part of getting married in China? Do these places even outfit the couple for their big day? Or are they just photo shops? We didn’t have a clue, but we were fascinated by how popular they were. And by the spectacularly hideous bride’s dresses in the windows! Some were truly impressive - my favourite was a marshmallow shaped monstrosity made of mass of bright yellow fills!

4. The language(s). Tonal. Millions of incompatible dialects. People that speak REALLY fast. And a written language that manages to be more complicated and less intuitive than Japanese. Impressive and ultimately impossible.

5. Whistle Blowing Traffic People. Now China actually has a very well ordered traffic system, with reasonable roads, lane discipline, traffic lights etc. It works well. Unfortunately it is supplemented by whistle-blowing people at some major junctions who wave at traffic, pedestrians, and blow the incredibly shrill whistles continually. On and on… nightmare. And completely unnecessary too, as all they do is look at the traffic lights and then tell the traffic to what the lights are already telling them! Why? The sad thing is that after a few days in Thailand we’ve seen them here too. Grr, more earache.

6. Hotel calls in the middle of the night. OK, this isn’t limited to China. ‘Massagee? You want massagee? Soooo Beautiful. Massagee OK?!’. Gary was impressed!

Success! Well…

… sort of. We have been in China for nearly three weeks now, and for the first time today we have managed to get a bill in a restaurant after asking for it in Chinese! I know this does not sound like much of an achievement, but so let me explain.

First of all, our previous attempts at asking for the bill (apparently ‘maiden’ in Mandarin Chinese) have resulted in many things being offered to us by bewildered waitresses – soy sauce, the menu, beer… we’ve only managed to get the message across with detailed charades, pointing to someone else’s cheque, or the restaurant finding someone with a few words of English to help out! So it’s quite a step forward to be understood for once – well, sort of understood. Gary’s linguistic attempts to pay did give the staff the giggles…

So why is this a problem? Normally when we go to any country the first thing we do is to learn a few words and phrases – please, thank you, hello, good bye, yes, no – simple things like this. It’s not much effort, and it’s usually appreciated as a politeness even if the people you speak to can understand English. But things are a little difficult in China, and to be honest we’ve struggled. Really struggled.

I suppose the main problem is there is no such thing as Chinese. There are about a billion different ‘Chinese languages’ – every region has an individual dialect, which may be completely incomprehensible to anyone from another region. And within the regions themselves apparently there is huge variation from place to place. So even a Chinese person will struggle to communicate verbally with the majority of people in China unless they know more than just their local dialect. Now we’re travelling around of course, so we can’t get the feel for words in even one place…

Actually I’m not even sure if the number of dialects is our main problem. Perhaps it is that all of the Chinese dialects are tonal. In other words, they have relatively few words compared to most languages, but the meaning of each is changed by the tone in which it is said. So say the same word in a flat way and it will have a completely different and unrelated meaning to that word said with a rising tone. Or a falling tone. Or a tone that goes high-low-high… This is completely unintuitive to us, as of course in English we use tones for expression – for instance we would usually say a statement flatly, or a question with a rising tone at the end. So whenever we ask a question out here we naturally use the wrong tone (even if we’re trying not to) and no-one has a clue what we’re going on about! Worse – Gary managed to reduce a poor girl in an ice-cream parlour to a severe fit of giggles today by trying to ask where the toilet was. She had to run away to recover. I don’t know what he said, but it probably had nothing to do with finding the gents!

And finally, to top it off, the written word in Chinese is a mass of complicated symbols. So trying to check that you’re on the right train, street, etc is a nightmare, and reading signs that tell you about changes, where to go etc downright impossible. So you could say we’re struggling.

However, we have found amusing ways around our problems. We have managed to work out the numbers one to ten, so at least can give the correct money at a newsagent when buying a drink (usually). Gary is persevering with speaking to people – he’s got a better memory for vocabulary than me! But I have got very good at miming what we want (which usually works better than the linguistics). And, when buying tickets at railways stations I’ve worked out that we actually sort of get what we want if I copy down the symbols for the place names and carriage class along with dates, times and train numbers onto a piece of paper to hand the attendant. I’ve got quite artistic about it! Trust me, we’d have no chance at just speaking to them. We tried once, and failed dismally to get beyond ‘hello’.

Anyway, if any of you have any suggestions as to how to speak at least Mandarin Chinese (the most widely spoken dialect) we’d be really grateful. A few weeks ago I’d have never thought I’d say that I miss being able to understand people as much as I did in Japan! Now Japanese seems easy peasy. And that’s saying something!

Scary Chinese Food

Now I know we typically give a list of all the weird and wonderful things at the end of travelling through a country rather than the beginning. This system usually works well – some things you might meet with horror initially you get used to, and even make sense after a few weeks or so. Others remain pretty terrifying – or at least bizarre! That’s part of the beauty of travelling in strange countries after all. But we have met one thing in China already that we find so disturbing that it deserves a mention of its own.

I read somewhere a long time ago that in some regions of China the people would eat anything whose ‘back faced the sky’. That doesn’t leave much does it? I never took it literally though, but now I think it might be accurate. What crosses your mind when you read the word Scorpion? Deadly sting? Evil-looking leggy thing? Poisonous arthropoid monster? Tasty snack?

In Beijing there are stalls that sell kebabs of various meats and candied fruits. Unfortunately they also sell a local delicacy that puts you off these a bit - a scorpion on a stick! Yes, they have scorpion kebabs. And what’s more, when you purchase them the scorpions are still alive and wriggling. I haven’t actually seen anyone buy one, let alone eat one, so I don’t know whether or not they deep-fry the little devils before presenting them to you, or whether you have to bite the creature while it’s still wriggling - carefully avoiding the sting!

Ah well, on the plus side at least the skewered scorpions make the sea-horse kebabs look tame. But I think I’ll be sticking to a nice bowl of noodles and some Dim Sum myself.

Leaving Japan

I know we’ve only spent 2 weeks in Japan, but we’ve packed so much into them it feels a lot more. We’ve travelled over 2000 miles here, seen some truly weird things, and eaten very odd food. And Gary’s run away from the odd monster crab or two.

As for the highlights, well, we love Tokyo for its liveliness, but it was a great contrast to see Toyako Onsen for its remote, very Japanese serenity, and of course it’s welcoming film crew! I loved the volcanoes, lakes and monster crabs of Hokkaido, but then again it was really good to see the elaborate shrines and temples of Nikko. I don’t know, but even though I can’t wait to explore China I’m really sad to be leaving Japan. We will definitely come back here in the future.

Anyway, after India we thought we would construct a good versus scary list for each country, so:

Some things we’ve found great…

1. The Japan Rail Pass. This wonderful little card with a nice picture of a Tsunami on the front gives you unlimited travel on all Japan Railway trains (except Nozomis). This means you can wiz up and down the country on the Shinkansen seeing loads of different places for a reasonable price. Try the Shinkansen without it only if you’ve recently inherited a fortune or two from a long lost Aunt.

2. Food. OK, I know a lot of you aren’t fans of raw fish (even though we think Sushi and sashimi are delicious), but even so I’d recommend trying some Japanese dishes. The variety is startlingly good. For instance, noodle dishes with Udon or Soba are great served in hot soups or cold with dipping sauces – I know this sounds vile (the first time we had it was by mistake from a menu with no English!) but its actually really nice. These are great with tempura, lightly battered and deep-fried vegetables, fish, prawns etc. Or another type of noodle soup would be ramen, a clear broth with a host of vegetables, meats, seaweed and even the occasional egg floating on top! And if you don’t like noodles there are rice based dishes, or yakitori (meats or vegetables barbequed on skewers), or even simple things like Teriyaki chicken which you’ve probably all tried. OK, there is one serious deficit in Japanese food, varied though it might be – sweets. See below.

3. Lively cities. Really clean, bustling, easy to navigate – a pleasure to explore. With really helpful, friendly, courteous inhabitants.

4. Temples. Japanese temples and shrines are generally beautiful and serene. OK, the magnificent complex in Nikko was anything but serene due to golden garnishing and the hordes of school kids, but generally temples are remarkably peaceful places. They often have very beautiful gardens attached too.

5. Gardens. Simple, in a very high maintenance (and elaborate) way! Japanese gardens are very distinctive with their tranquil ponds, giant carp, beautifully manicured miniature trees and painstakingly weeded shrubberies. Bizarre.

6. Mountains. Particularly volcanoes – especially if they are actively steaming, and preferably situated around lakes. Toyako Onsen was the very good for this, and had the added benefit of hot-springs too.


And some scary things…

1. Crabs. Especially the ones in Hakodate with legs over a meter long. These things did not originate from this planet, and should not be seen on it. Especially not hanging out of your bowl of miso soup!

2. Octagonal things. Glutinous, grey or green. And we think you are meant to eat them. Don’t try it! Japan may have some of the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted, but it also has the most stringy, gloopy, slimy stuff too. And loads of innocent things such as ice-cream and iced coffee are contaminated with green tea. Why? It makes them vile!

3. Japanese sweets. Who came up with the idea of red bean paste as a replacement for chocolate? Not the best move. Especially as they are roughly the same colour, so on pictures when ordering you can easily make a mistake!

4. Japanese writing. It’s very beautiful. Artistic even. However, given a menu with no English and no pictures makes for an interesting meal! Getting off at the right train station can be similarly challenging, especially if you are off the beaten track.

5. Pachinko. We vowed to try this, but chickened out! We can’t understand the attraction of sitting in a smoke filed hall, deafened by noise, watching a series of little steel ball bearings fall down something that looks a bit like a slot machine.

6. Japanese TV. It all seems to be game shows! Lots of canned laughter. But they lack the appeal of the truly awful camera work you see in Indian soaps.

7. Toilets. Warm seats, flushing noises played automatically as you sit down to spare embarrassment, bidet jets, shower jets, and some mysterious vacuum suction called the ‘powerful deodoriser’! And much, much more! With control panel instructions only in Japanese of course. Use at your peril!


Anyway, we would love to see you out here if you get some time free. Let us know! Oh, and please keep in touch. We’re just sorting out Skype out here, so should be able to make free phone calls to anyone else who has it installed on their computer (and a suitable handset – ours cost £3). Install it, let us know your account name and we can catch up properly!

Japanese Bathrooms

Japan is great. Strange, totally incomprehensible in some ways, but great. It has some of the best food on the planet - and on the other hand, it has some of the most terrifying food on Earth too! It has beautiful scenary, spectacular cities, and as people are usually very friendly it’s a brilliant place to wander around it. However, some things about Japan really really scare me from time to time.

For instance, toilets. Now it can be a little difficult to believe when you walk into a plush department store or hotel that the traditional Japanese toilet is a squatter. The loos installed in these places look as if they`ll launch you into orbit!

We went to a department store in Sapporo today and used their toilets after lunch. In the ladies they had a whole selection of goodies for children: little urinals for little boys visiting with their Mummy, mini toilets in the cubicals next to the real sized toilet for little girls, a baby holder seat in each cubical to keep little devils from wandering around while Mum is otherwise engaged… And the toilets came accompanied by some fun things too – toilet seat disinfectants (which are a bit boring now we’ve seen them in the UK) and an ‘auto steriliser’ – some mysterious device you seem to activate by putting your hand over the back of the toilet to give it a mini-flush!

As for the toilets themselves, well, as you might expect they are the highlight of any Japanese bathroom. They vary a bit in complexity, but the ones we just met in this department store were some of the best I’ve seen. First, the toilet seat is warmed for optimal comfort. And as you sit down it flushes a little water to make sure everything is clean (a bit disconcerting before you get used to it – I jumped up the first time wondering what was happening!). Then you have a whole control panel of different options at your fingertips. As you can see from the photos, the ones in this store were scarily all in Japanese characters, so you wouldn’t have a clue what you were pressing. Very dangerous! I know for past from more helpful control panels with English text or pictures some of the things these loos can do. They can play relaxing bird song or the sound of the sea washing against the shore to cover embarrassing noises. You can control the temperature of the seat in case it gets a little chilly. And most terrifying of all, you can use them as a bidet! At the touch of the wrong button these evil things will launch vindictive jets of water up out of the toilet bowl at you! The diagrams I’ve seen imply that you can of course choose the ‘aim’ of the jet and the ‘water pressure’ as you desire. And people use these things to feel cleaner afterwards? Euagh!

Anyway, I hope this is a useful warning for anyone coming to Japan. On the plus side, going to the toilet in the UK is never this interesting, whereas here the sheer weirdness of it can make it the most memorable thing of the day!

Moving on

Hello! Just a quick update – we’ve changed our flight plans slightly. The main reason is actually that we were stuck in Delhi for the remainder of our time in India as the trains north to Shimla were full. So, we move on from India to China – Hong Kong. Yay! We’ve enjoyed travelling in North India, but with the temperature here in Delhi hitting over 40 degrees each day now we think its time to move on to somewhere a little cooler…

We found India a weird place to visit. We’d highly recommend seeing Jaipur, Udaipur and Jaisalmer, but to be honest there’s not much to Agra excepting the Taj Mahal, or Jodhpur except the Fort. And Delhi is a bit smelly.

Some things we’ve found great…

1. Tandoors. Great kebabs – chicken, and paneer especially. And I love proper naan bread. I think tandoor food is definitely my favourite type of Indian cuisine. And it’s so much better out here than in the UK.

2. Colour. Everything is so colourful out here – particularly the women during festival times. And you can get lovely hangings and scarves and things (I hope our purchases survive the post back to the UK…)

3. Forts. Really big and impressive ones! We have nothing on this scale in the UK – our castles are really pathetic by comparison. The lived in one in Jaisalmer is vibrant, the huge one in Jodhpur impressive, Agra’s is more like a palace… Wonderful.

4. Palaces. They have some really silly, completely over the top palaces – sometimes in the forts, other times in the town, on mountains, lakes, wherever. It seems that each Emperor / King / Maharajah could not possibly be happy until he had built a bigger palace than his Dad / predecessor / whoever he conquered. And there seem to have been loads of Emperors, Kings and Maharajahs…

5. Mountains. Particularly around lakes. Udaipur does this particularly well.


And some scary things…

1. Facial hair. OK, I know this is a matter of personal taste, but the moustaches out here are impressive. Particularly the ones which get really long and bushy, so their owners twist the ends to make them stand up!

2. Big turbans. Really really big, colourful, and in lots of different styles of course depending on religion, region etc. The colourful thing isn’t always a good move however – particularly shades of pale pink…

3. Water. And food for that matter. It often tastes great (except when they try to westernise food), but you may regret it the next day! They have some serious bugs to challenge the GI tract around here. And on top of this, why is the Indian version of Fanta a particularly violent shade of radioactive orange?

4. Roads. Lane discipline? Nah, that’s for wooses! Plus it’s much more manly to drive the wrong way up roads, especially duel carriageways. Everyone wants to get you to give them huge sums of money for a 10 meter trip in their rickshaw / tuk-tuk / taxi / whatever Oh, and don’t forget the cows wandering down every street, or the carts drawn by ponys, cows, or camels!

5. TV and Film. And adverts. OK, now I know that we don’t understand Hindi, however, staying in a lot of hotels we’ve seen some TV over the last few weeks. And flicking between the few English language channels, we’ve seen a fair sample of Indian TV and films. You could say there are a few things we don’t get. For instance, in Indian soaps, why does every scene seem to be a hugely over melodramatic collage of the characters facial expressions, mixed in with a few epilepsy or nausea – inducing camera effects? I’ve never seen anything like it! And I’d also like to know why there seem to be so many men dressed in really bad jumpers with big patterns on them in films? Usually jumping around with paint-brushes or chairs or something to some song or other. Weird!

6. Sport. There is lots of sport coverage out here. Loads. But we could see interest in only one sport. Tell me, is cricket the only sport they play in India?

Anyway, here is a list of our new flight dates if you need them for any reason, or are tempted to come out here! Hope you are all having a good time at home.

26.4.08 : Delhi - Hong Kong

9.5.08 : Hong Kong - Tokyo

24.5.08 : Tokyo - Beijing

30.6.08 : Shanghai - Hong Kong

11.9.08 : Singapore - Perth

25.9.08 : Perth - Brisbane

31.10.08 : Sydney - Aukland

5.12.08 : Aukland - Tahiti

11.12.08 : Tahiti - Easter Island

20.12.08 : Easter Island - Santiago

12.2.09 : Lima - Mexico City

Scared

OK. Let me start this entry by saying I’m scared. The past few days have held a number of terrifying experiences for us. Well, one or two anyway.

Point One. Flying. Planes should be nice and big and have nice big jet engines. And there should be no such thing as turbulence. And there should definitely be no such thing as small propeller driven planes WITH turbulence. That is a very very bad idea. It feels like your itsy bitsy teeny weeny plane is falling from the sky after hitting a brick wall. Or is about to flip over sideways because of a random gust of air. Not nice.

Erm to explain, we flew in to Amritsar via Delhi from Udiapur in two very small aircraft. With propellers. A bit traumatic! Oh well, we got here I suppose. And actually the airline people (Jet Airways) were some of the best we’ve flown with – really helpful, nice and courteous.

Point Two. Indian food. I’m really really fed up of having stomach upsets. There is something seriously wrong with this country’s micro-organisms. Don’t ask me what, but they really don’t agree with me. Or Gary. Or anyone else from the west that we’ve spoken to for that matter. Saying that, the food can taste great. And I don’t think it’s the style of food, as very similar Indian food in the UK is fine. Also, we’ve never had any trouble with food in the Far East – China, Thailand, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam… There is definitely something about India!

Also, although the food we’ve had here has usually tasted good (and occasionally brilliant), it can go very badly wrong. As far as I can see, there are four basic categories of food available in restaurants or cafes in India: Non-Indian food for Non-Indians, Indian food for Indians, Indian food for Non-Indians and Non-Indian food for Indians. The first three are usually delicious. The last is vile. And unfortunately not always easy to recognise when you walk into a restaurant or look at a menu. We’ve just had a very bad experience in a very popular restaurant – food which we thought would be Indian-style was horribly mutated by bad interpretations of western cuisine (basically putting large quantities of evil, thick, smelly, gelatinous sauces on everything and boiling all vegetables, rice, and anything else to oblivion). Yuk! Yet loads of locals seemed to love it…

Ah well, at least most of the time we have fun! But I must admit, I’m looking forward to having dim sum in two weeks time, and sushi a week after that! Anyway, hope you all are having a good time, and will post some pictures of colourful Amritsar at Vaisakhi soon.

A room with a view - and changes to plans

We arrived in Udaipur yesterday. After one of the most bumpy bus rides of my life (7 hours of winding over mountain roads)! And when we got here, the hotel’s pick-up service from the bus-stop was completely destroyed by the fact whoever was on duty at reception when we called spoke no English. So we then had to struggle 4km with our bags through town, harried by some particularly persistent rickshaw touts determined to rip us off!

But it was worth the trip. This place is truly beautiful. The town is on a lake surrounded by mountains, containing an island or two of palaces. The view from our room is breathtaking – see the photos. We’ll stay here for a few days and relax, do some work, and wander around the area before retuning to the hustle and bustle of Delhi.


On another note, we’ve decided not to go to Nepal – due to the present situation in Tibet riots have been sparked in Katmandu, complete with terrorist bombings. This is apparently typical during times of unrest in the area, although Nepal itself is normally safe to visit. Another time maybe. Instead we will go north of Delhi to Punjab and Himal Pradesh, and plan to see Shimla (a hill town) and Chandigar (the most modern city in India apparently). I’ll let you know how we get on!

Itinerary

As we’ve said many times, you’re welcome to join us on this trip if you wish. To make coordination of this a little easier I’ve included our itinerary of flights below:

17.4.08 : London - Delhi
30.4.08 : Delhi - Hong Kong
07.5.08 : Hong Kong - Tokyo
21.5.08 : Tokyo - Beijing
30.6.08 : Shanghai - Hong Kong
11.9.08 : Singapore - Perth
25.9.08 : Perth - Brisbane
31.10.08 : Sydney - Aukland
5.12.08 : Aukland - Tahiti
11.12.08 : Tahiti - Easter Island
20.12.08 : Easter Island - Santiago
12.2.09 : Lima - Mexico City

Let me know if you need further details, and I’ll email then to you (times, flight numbers etc).
At the moment we’re in Jaipur, and have found a lovely hotel, but since our train broke down here on route last night we haven’t had much chance to look around the town yet. We’ll post something about it when we have!

Delhi

So it begins - I can’t actually believe it. Somehow, even though I’m sitting in an internet café in Delhi with cows wandering the streets outside, and drumbeats making the windows shake, I STILL can’t believe I’m doing this trip! I keep on thinking I’ll have to come home next week. I think I’ve planned it too long – should have gone years ago! Oh well, I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it J

One warning – our mobile phones do work out here, but it costs £1.40 a minute to call or receive calls. And the voicemail facility doesn’t seem to work – so if you do want to get through by phone try texting as that does work.

I’ve made my first really entry on the trip and posted a few piccys on the Asia page – see on the left of this screen or follow this link. Most of the info on the relevant bits of the trip will be on the Asia/Oceania/South America pages, and I’ll just post general things here. Please keep in touch too, and let me know how you all are!

Love, Vicki

Egypt

As we weren't able to go to Africa as originally planned on the trip, we decided to go on holiday to Egypt instead. And we've just come back from Cairo and Luxor. Ancient Egypt is amazing, but the main impression I have of modern Egypt is of touting, lots of locals trying to sell you something you don't want... 'You want felucca ride?', 'No thanks', 'It's very nice evening for boat ride', 'No thanks', 'Very cheap price', 'No', 'You know how much?', 'GO AWAY!!!'. 'Yes? Yes? Very cheap price', 'Grrrrrrr!'. Only they pester for far longer than that! (a felucca is the kind of boat in the photo).

Anyway, I've put some more pictures on the 'Africa page' - see the link on the right hand side of this page.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to try to make this site usable as a means of communication for when we're away, so please give me any suggestions, ideas, criticisms etc. And I'd be greatful if someone would post a reply - I don't even know if the setup works for that yet!

More trip details

The rough time scale is this - we'll be leaving mid March, will be in India and Nepal until the end of April before spending the next 2 months in China and Japan. We have to make it back to Bangkok by the end of July, and then we'll spend August traveling through Malysia and Singapore to Australia (and maybe learning to scuba dive). We should stay in Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands until the end of November. Then its approximately 1 month each in Chile, Peru and Mexico. What do you think?!

My only regret is that we couldn't fit Africa into the trip. Its a real shame, but we were already pushing the upper limit of mileage allowed on this trip (and had to tinker with out route until we were just under the 39,000 maximum) - and to be honest, I don't think we'd have had the time to do everything. To compensate we've decided to go on holiday to Egypt this December/January so at least we can see the Pyramids!

The tickets are booked!

Well, its done. The tickets were booked, and (hopefully) paid for yesterday! The route is finalised - at least the places we're flying to and from - all dates for flights can be changed as we wish. Which is just as well as we'll probably get stuck somewhere remote at some point... I'm so excited about this! We leave on the 17th of march 2008.

The rough route should be shown on the map (click to enlarge, blue = flight, red = overland route): London --- Delhi (see the Golden triangle, travel to Nepal and then fly back to Delhi). Delhi --- Hong Kong (short stay to sort out Chinese visas). Hong Kong --- Tokyo (catch the shinkansen north to Sapporo and back). Tokyo --- Beijing (travel overland by train: first north to the wall, and then south via Xi'an and the Yellow river gorges to Shanghai). Shanghai --- Hong Kong (hmm, couldn't get to Hanoi on this ticket, so we'll have to make it there some how from here... will probably fly direct or via Bangkok. Then travel overland from Hanoi through Laos to north Thailand - Chang Mai - and then down to Bangkok. Then onwards overland through south Thailand to Malaysia, seeing Kuala Lumpa and Singapore). Singapore --- Perth (I don't know whats in Perth! Must be something to do there though). Perth --- Brisbane (then travel overland to Sidney). Sidney --- Auckland (travel round New Zealand's islands probably by road). Auckland --- Tahiti (laze about on South Pacific beaches). Tahiti --- Easter Island (more paradise in the middle of the ocean). Easter Island --- Santiago (then travel overland - don't ask me how - to Lima in Peru, seeing the Inca trail of course). Lima --- Mexico City (have fun in Mexico for a few weeks - including my 30th birthday party). Mexico City --- London (damn).

As you might have guessed, I can't wait. Hope you can join me for bits of the trip. Look forward to hearing from you - let me know if you have any ideas about the places.

Unemployed... Free!

You know, I never realised when I was a student just how fantastic it is to be able to lie in bed until 9am. I took it for granted that weekends would be free. Then I started work as a Doctor. Enough said really.

But now I've finally decided to leave - no, as you know I decided to take a break to go traveling a long time ago - now I've finally gone and left work its amazing how much more life I seem to have. It was the most liberating (and scary) feeling in the world to turn down those jobs I didn't really want! And now its so nice just to go for a walk into town on a sunny day. I can see friends, go home to Wales, go on holiday when I want to rather than scrabbling to get leave with medical staffing. And best of all, no bleeps!

Now I've got other projects of course:

• Arranging the world trip
• Seeing people I haven't seen in ages
• Playing guitar (trying to finally get a few songs down definitively)
• Submitting papers
• Teaching undergrads
• Looking after Gary (the poor dab's on nights at the moment)
• Trying to decide what the hell I'm going to do when I get back

which are all great - I can choose what I want to do when I want to do it. But to be honest, in some ways I feel as if I'm living on borrowed time while I haven't got a job. Do you think this feeling of freedom will last? Answers on a post-card please!

I'm going to start trying to fit the trip around the world together in a bit more detail over the next few weeks now that I've got the time. I'd really like to know if any of you would like to join me - or do specific things. If you would, comment on this post. I might also start a random pictures gallery for entertainment value...

With any luck this project will start to make a little more sense soon: I now have four other sites which can be reached by the links on the right (but only when I let people see them). They now have geographic maps of the areas (or bits of the areas) we hope to travel through. And soon I'll try to draw on the maps and write about our planned routes below. When we have plans that is - at the moment I want to go everywhere!

In the meantime here's a place I will return to on this trip: Hong Kong. Fantastic place, especially vibrant at night...

Warm-up trips

The plan is to depart on a trip around the world in March 2008: spending 2-4 months in Africa, Asia, Oceania and South America. Each of these areas will have its own mini-site for planning / maps /etc - see the left of this page. Some of these are more developed than others at pressent, but hopefully they'll improve.

In the meantime we've visited othe nice places because March is a long time away. Hawaii for instance...