rtw

Alpine Raid

2012-02-10T18:54:00.008+11:00

A while back, Jean signed me up to complete the 250k Alpine Raid as a present.

I thought, given that we get two days to do it, and folks do do it in one, how hard could it be?

The answer, hard. Very hard.

About 4500 meters climbing over 250k is pretty tough, but the raid feels harder cause a lot of the "flat" sections are actually mini little killer climbs or rollers that don't quite let you roll.

This is especially true of the stretch between Hotham and Omeo, which is the second part of day two. It seemed to defy the profile completely (which made it look downhill) and go on forever. Or maybe we were just more tired than we thought after the climb up mount Hotham.

This was my first serious climb in yonks, and I actually found it really nice and not too tough.

The weather was loverly, the traffic not too bad, and the relaxed start to the day that Audax gives you in this event was all very pleasant. The climb itself is long - 30k+, but only really steep in a couple of bits. I had been warned that the finish seems to take forever, but knowing the distance on my GPS, I knew not to get too excited.

For those interested, this site goes into the climb in a lot.

Day two started off easily enough, and had some of the quietest and most peaceful cycling imaginable along the Omeo highway towards falls creek turn off. It was another beautiful day, and I was feeling none the worst after yesterdays exertions, including several beers to aid recovery. Eventually we came to a stop at the turnoff to the well named WTF corner - the start to the climb up the back of falls. It might not look it in the pic, but there are several 15% pitches in the first few kays to really make you suffer. It was one of the tougher climbs I've done - only the Thailand climbs and maybe Hautacam had sustained pitches this steep. Though after half way, the going gets a lot easier, and I was still waiting for the final tough bit when I realised I was coming into falls creek, our lunch stop, and the start of some serious downhill.

Michael and I met up with Sally and Simon, who were doing a 130k 1 day ride to Hotham and back, so we descended more or less together, and up our final climb, Tawonga gap - not the hardest climb but after what went before, and in 37 degrees, it felt a lot like Alpe D'huez last summer, all over again!

Around the bay

2011-10-19T11:06:00.003+11:00

Sunday for the first time I took part in Melbourne's biggest annual cycling event - Around the bay in a day.
It was definitely something I wanted to experience, but I think now that I've done it, I won't be rushing back.
The main thing that puts me off is the lack of road closures. It's pretty much as normal, other than the fact that we get one lane on the west gate bridge. So a lot of the ride is stop start, which really breaks your rhythm.
That, and the messy ferry setup (too few boats, too many passengers), a handful of idiot motorists (and a few cyclists) and far too many punctures (I didn't get any, but Coops and Steve got several - not helped by locals laying thumb tacks and nails) took the edge off what could be a great day.
I still enjoyed it (a lot in parts) but I think for the money (and effort) there are better ways to spend a day.
Ride wise, it's pretty flat - the nicest part of the ride I normally do - along the coast to Dromana - is skipped, presumably cause of Vic Roads reluctance to offer to close this section. The stretch along the motorway from Geelong is definitely forgettable, though at least we had a nice tail wind (and no lights, so we could bet a bit of speed up). It was nice to roll into the finish, knowing you had completed a large geographical circle on your own steam (well, with the ferry's help). And the ride over the bridge was cool, though it's just a shame this is about the only time cyclists can experience it. I think of San Francisco, when you can walk or cycle across the Golden Gate almost all the time. Oh well, maybe one day?

Garmin details:

The Highlands by bike

2011-06-18T20:16:00.014+10:00

Day 1: Chiang Mai to Pai.

Apparently this is one of the easy days, but it's still really tough.
Partly from the hot humid weather (bit of a shock after Melbourne winter)
the distances and elevation gains, but mostly from the pretty savage gradient changes that the roads here throw up constantly. There are very few flat sections, and more than a few 10-15% climbs in the first, easy, day.
What's the rest of it going to be like?! Though having driven this way on a moped before, I really don’t have any excuses.
Marcus took a couple of detours from the main road to avoid some of the traffic, and to throw in a little more rural scenery, which really made the trip.
Apart from one steep climb when the sun was beating down, I felt pretty good and arrived in PAI just nicely tired, and ready for a cold beer, some food and a massage.

Day 2 - Pai to Mae Hong Son.

Not long out of Pai began a long, long climb with several more savage sections.
Yesterday the rain held off mostly till the last 30 mins, but today we got a little soaking in the first 30.
When we made it to the top of the climb all we could see were clouds, and the rain was getting pretty heavy, so we considered putting the bikes in the van for the descent. Luckily the weather changed and we got a lovely view from the top, followed by a long and challenging technical descent with more than a few hairpins. Definitely not somewhere to let the brakes off.
Apart from the main climb, there were many, many smaller ones, mostly with the usual steep gradients to test the legs and lungs. My neck was pretty stiff from all the concentration on the descents, so I got the Masseur to concentrate on it, but she was a little over eager and I think it's far more sore now from the bruising than before.

Day 3 - Mae Hong Son - Mae Sariang.

Today is the 'flat' day, if you can call it that - still over 2000 meters climbing, and 165k to boot. I guess undulating might be a better word, but it's certainly full of lovely, varied scenery, and the relative flatness allowed us to let off the brakes a fair bit on the descents, with some pretty fun sections. We also passed some more cute local villages, and at one place where we stopped to refill water, were invited in to share some Tea and cooked banana breakfast, which was cool.
After 6 and a half hours in the saddle, I was pretty much spent that evening, and only had enough energy to wash the bike and eat, before hitting the sack.

Day 4 - Mae Sariang - Chom Thong

Clothes cleaned and dry-ish, we headed out of town and began climbing for almost 20k. It wasnt actually that steep, and normally I reckon it would have been an easy enough day, but I was absolutely knackered. Three long tough days had taken their toll, and my body was starting to rebel. I think Marcus was only slighly better off, and I didn't argue when he suggested going really slowly. About 2/3 of the way up, we hit a section of mud covered road,
reminiscent of the scenes in the Giro thought the Strada Biancha. We had to stop several times as the mud was caking up under the forks and stopping the wheels turning. After the climb, we had another 50k of undulating road - though thankfully not as steep as previous days.

Still, I really struggled to get going, my heart rate refusing to go much above 150. At this point we stopped at a little village for lunch, and we met up with two guys that were joining for part of the trip. thankfully from there we enjoyed a fantastic long fun descent which seemed to energise me a bit, and help me make it to Chom Thong.

Day 5 - Chom Thong to Doi Inthanon

After four hard days, today is the really hard one! A tough climb up to Thailand’s highest mountain, at 2565 meters. Not only is it long, but it’s really steep. Marcus has us forewarned that the last 10k are particularly brutal, 5k at 15% gradient and the last 5k only easing in parts. We rolled out of town at a leisurely pace, and the first part of the climb wasn’t too bad – though I was struggling to keep up with the others a bit. After a short break with 16k to go to refill water and take on a little fuel, the really painful stuff started. I think having done the other days prepared me somewhat, so I wasn’t shocked by the steepness. On the other hand, I was also pretty tired. At one stage I turned a corner into the wind and the gradient ramped up even more – I think maybe 20%, and I was very close to getting off the bike. But I managed to trundle on (at one stage at 4kph – walking speed, just!) and somehow made it to the top, which was shrouded in mist. Probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done!

Definitely earned a beer or three tonight to celebrate.
Despite the pain, the tour was great - Marcus and co are super friendly and run a very professional operation. I might check out one of the easier itineraries next time though. I reckon after this, myself, Ben and Jarrod (who are also doing the Etape) will find the alps easy!

On the road again

2011-06-13T12:41:00.007+10:00

After almost two years of no overseas travel - something of a record - I've left Australias's shores for a few weeks of cycling and catchup with the family. Normally when I travel, I travel as light as possible. So it's something of a shock to be laboured with the Elephant (Jean's name for my Evoc bike bag, with my Cervelo inside).

It's actually pretty good, and fairly manouverable, but it does definitely change my travel style just a bit. I arrived in Bangkok on time, and was pleased to see the Elephant arrive safetly to the oversize baggage section.

After only a minor amount of confusion and waiting I found my Hotel guy and was whisked away to my pad for the night, The Kriss residence.
It's ok, basic, slightly souleless but clean, 10 mins drive from the airport and they have internet.
They also seem a bit obsessed with guests stealing/breaking the room contents.

I was met off the mornings short flight to Chiang Mai by Marcus from
Crouching Tiger cycling tours, my guides for the Thai highland tour.
It's a pretty challenging looking tour looping anti clockwise from Chiang Mai

through Pai, Mae Hong Son and several smaller Thai towns, before finishing with a climb up Thailand's highest mountain.

My diggs in Chiang Mai are really nice, and I was relieved to open up the Elephant and find all my bike parts intact. A few minutes later, and with the help of a local guy, who spotted me trying to put the pedals on the wrong way, the Cervelo was ready to roll. Nothing left but to sample some of the traditional local cuisine.

Serendipity

2009-10-21T00:45:00.015+11:00

I'm back in KL again, after a wonderful week on the serendipitous island of Sri Lanka. I really had no idea what to expect - I was going simply on the basis that it was one of Air Asia's cheapest flights from KL, and I hadn't been before.
Arriving in the airport I had one of my regular blond moments on the start of these trips, walking out of the airport with a large wheelie suitcase, that a) wasnt mine and b) couldn't have been as the one I had was safely back in storage in KL. Anyway, a bit of sweet talking and I was let back in to swap bags by the helpful airline security.

The first thing you notice on leaving the airport is the number of well armed cops and soldiers everywhere, a reminder that the war has only just finished. My first stop was Negombo, a beach-side town that, although fine, would probably not be on many itineraries were it not for its proximity to the airport. There didn't seem a lot of tourists around at all, but it was fun wandering about, getting a feel for the country and watching the kids playing cricket in the fading beach light.

Next up was Kandy, Sri Lanka's second city a few hours inland by bumpy bus. While the bus station was a bit of a mess, the journey was good fun and finding suitable digs in Kandy pretty hassle free. I set myself up in the Olde Empire hotel to sample some of the faded colonial ambiance at rock bottom prices. It's amazing how quickly you adjust to hard beds and cold showers again!

Kandy was a nice manageable city built around a pretty artificial lake frequented by loads of birds including egrets, pelicans, ducks, cormorants and loads of small waders, as well as numerous locals strolling around and the odd tourist, only really noticeable in evidence at the Kandy Dance performances. It's also home of Temple of the Tooth, purported to hold a tooth from the Buddha himself. The temple itself is a pleasure to wander around in the dawn light, but gets thronged with worshipers pretty quickly.

Having sated any cultural urges, I made a beeline south for Hikaduwa, an erstwhile hippie beach resort that sounded a bit overdeveloped by now. However in reality, it was almost empty - it is low season - and still quite pretty, IMHO. I spent a couple of blissful days swimming, surfing and playing with turtles. And it was nice tasting the various Sri Lankan specialties, deviled fish curry being my favorite.

I also met my first real tourists, Tim and Sarah, an Aussie couple who had been sweethearts since sixteen (awww!) and had even been in the same playschool together! We also encountered Christopher, an American on a quest to avoid repaying his substantial student loan by endlessly studying all manner of nonsense in places like Finland and Romania, in between traveling on 5 euro a day (think lots of hitching and couch surfing).

Enough beaching, time for a bit of colonial culture and Galle, whose European influence is obvious in it's Fort and crumbling colonial Dutch buildings, many of which are well preserved. We ended up staying at the Fort Inn, a pretty nice place and run by the brother of a tuk tuk driver (seriously, he was his brother -what are the chances of that! - Sri Lanka is definitely a bit less scammy than India, or even Thailand, for that matter). It was a pleasure just wandering the streets, or the Fort walls, shared with hundreds of jolly local kids, courting couples and the Jumpers who dive precariously off the ramparts into a narrow shallow target below for a few dollars.

Regretting not giving myself longer, I was left with only enough time for a quick day trip to the very beautiful Unawatuna beach town just south of Galle, before I border the train north back to Negombo and one final sunset. The train was great fun - though a bit of a scrum to get a seat - and the combination of the clickety old carriages and friendly locals made the journey pass in no time at all.

Australian Update

2009-05-07T06:26:00.005+10:00

Been busy with work and stuff, so havent updated in a while -
Have done some work on my wedding photography Melbourne site.
Also check out my melbourne photography blog. I'll keep this blogspot one for travel.
Not sure what to with my other wedding photographer site.

Out through Asia. Again.

2009-02-02T19:37:00.002+11:00

After very brief stops in Dublin, Frankfurt, Munich and Singapore, I arrived in Malaysia to meet up with some friends. I hadn't been to Kuala Lumpur before, and it's a surprisingly modern city. Not cheap, but good nightlife, food and some fairly interesting old meets new, east meets west architecture.

After a couple of days the lure of Thailand was too great and I found myself in Krabi, via an overnight bus to Surat Thani (eveyone's least favourite Thai town) and a minibus. On said bus I bumped into Nick, the manager of the Nunnery in Melbourne where I'd stayed a few months back. Small world. I was on my way to meet Pat and Sarah, who are nearing the end of 2 years traveling. We stayed in Ao Nang, the ritzier side of Krabi. Personally, I prefer the more down at heal places, but the sunsets are still pretty nice.

After a couple of days we decided to head to Phi Phi, as both Pat and I fancied some scuba. It was even busier than Krabi and tough finding any sort of reasonably priced digs, but after a few days we had devised a schedule to offset the high rent by timing our wanderings to coincide with all the free food and drink going in different bars. And we found a nice quiet area of beach for daytime relaxation far from the madding and often maddening crowd. Passing on a trip to the Similian islands for cost and weather reasons, we settled for a local day's diving, which was pretty good and worth waiting for the improved conditions.

Enough beach pampering. Next up was Mae Sot, a Burmese refugee camp north west of Bangkok, and the place where Mike Cariaso from my Genelogic days was calling home for a few months. He's on his 3rd stint there helping with the kids computer education. Its a really nice setup, a lot more organised and less impoverished than I expected.

And I must admit the kids are adorable. We also did get to see some of the darker sides of the area, including a ward where amputees craft their replacement limbs, as well as the local "sport" of cockfighting. Although not near as gory as I imagined (about on a par to a boxing ring), I still think anything involving needless cruelty to animals isn't really kosher. We also got to see some of the local expat characters, who are always interesting (and usually a little odd) in these kind of locations.

All too soon my Thai visa was up (again) and it was time to move on. Tickets to Melbourne through Vietnam were cheap and allowed me to catch up with Tim and his Vietnamese girlfriend, who I had traveled with last year, as well as Sean (and his - do I sense a theme here...) who I met in Japan. Mostly we just drank lots of bia hoi in Saigon, but we did get away for a couple of days to the busy beach resort of Vung Tao. With hardly a western in site, it's certainly a different beach vibe than Ko Phi Phi!

home unexpectantly

2009-01-07T18:28:00.002+11:00

Although he hadnt been well for a while, I was still a shock when I realised my Dad was going to die in December. Being on the other side of the world doesnt help in these situations, but I managed to rearange my flights in time and leave work for the moment, without a return date. I only just made the funeral as my flight was delayed 8 hours in Melbourne. Everything went as well as possible in these circumstances, and it was really nice seeing the family again.
When I made it back home I thought Joey was going to have a heart attack, he was so excited, but after a while he quickly returned to his favorite entity in the world.

He did accompany me on a lot of early morning walks, and the weather was surprisingly nice and sunny. If was cold but not exceptionally so, all quite pleasant, and a lot better than many Irish summers! Mulling things over, I decided to jack in the job in Melbourne, and decided to pursue a new career in photography of some sort. Somewhere. Some time. Life's definitely too short to stay doing something you really don't like.

Well there seemed little point in doing anything too quickly, what with Christmas just around the corner, so I decided to take it easy for a few days and contemplate my future. Christmas was a nice affair, nothing too high key, as you can see by the look of boredom on out two youngest participants.

Apart from several Galway trips to meet Martin, I made one trip to Dublin to meet up with Anna who I knew from Estonia. It was fun being a tourist in your own country for a change. Having decided to head back down under, and with no cheap flights to oz, I booked a one way ticket to Asia, where I planned to meet up with a couple of friends en route.

Down Under

2008-11-21T15:54:00.000+11:00

I figured it was about time to update this blog. Well, seeing as I'm probably going to start real work for the first time in ages, if I don't do it now I probably never will. At the moment, I'm recovering from my exertions yesterday in the Melbourne mile, as well as my extractions a couple of days ago in the dental surgery. Ah yes, my gallant tooth that's been worked on now in 3 continents finally gave up the ghost, and all I've left to show from 8 dental visits is a large hole in my mouth and a larger hole in my bank balance. Still, it was fun while it lasted. Kinda.

So what have I being doing with myself for 2 months you might ask? Well, a fair bit really. Last week was spring racing, and the Melbourne cup, a good excuse to put that suit to use, now that the interviews have (hopefully!) stopped. It was a smashing day out, helped by the mid 20s sunshine. Certainly a far cry from the Galway races, even if half the crowd (and horses) seemed to be Irish.

I've also been spending time just wandering about and becoming properly acquainted with my new home and its inhabitants. While not possessing the stunning scenery of the likes of Sydney, there's still some really pretty sights, especially along the Yarra river. Some of the best fun is exploring the smaller lanes and alleyways to find hidden gems, even in the CBD, and of course the surrounding neighbourhoods, such as Carlton and Fitzroy, are great for lazy wanderings at any time of the day or night.

Speaking of Sydney, I took a break from all the job hunting and spent a few days up there. It has to be said, the beaches are truly world class, and a nice day on Coogee is hard to beat. It was great to catch up with friends and recover from all this job searching induced stress.

I finally found a home recently, after staying a bit longer than planned with Mike and Steph. I'm sure there relieved to see the back of me, but I think little Herbie misses me, even if he's too shy to say it. It was a great few weeks though, and really helped the settling in process (esp. considering my employment status).

My new location does make it easier to take advantage of Melbourne's great bar scene, though I'm not sure that's such a good thing...
Other than boozing, I've spent a fair bit of time visiting the MCG, what with Sean and the Finnish lads over to play in an international development series, as well as the Ireland-Australia compromise rules, and witnessing Buddy's 100 goals in a season (hence the crowd invasion, pictured), I hardly every seem to be out of the place.

Talking Japanese

2008-08-31T16:54:00.001+10:00

In some ways, Japan was just like I expected it to be. Tokyo is definitely a visual assault. The city is massive, and the 1.5 hour train trip from the airport seems to go on forever. Getting around isn't too tricky, but conversing with the locals can be, especially if your knowledge of Japanese doesn’t go past 5 words. The place seems kinda familiar, in the way that New York does to a first time visitor. The amount of people, advertising and neon everywhere can't really be captured in single shots.
It's pretty incredible

After a couple of days of jetlagged wanderings around Tokyo, it was time for the bullet train to Kyoto. In contrast, Kyoto is a relatively relaxing place, with countless peaceful Buddhist temples and Zen gardens in the areas close to town. Many of which are Unesco world heritage sites. And tonnes more that probably could be. Indeed the less visited ones are actually some of the nicest.

Apart from temples, Kyoto is also famous for it's Geisha's, though most of the Kimono clad girls you see around are just apprentices learning their trade. It's surprising to see the practise still alive and kicking in the 21st century. I did manage to see a couple of real Geishas on their way to appointments. Memories of Memoirs of a Geisha.
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Then it was back to Tokyo for a couple of days before departing for Melbourne. This time I based mysjavascript:void(0)elf in the relative tranquility of Asakusa, away from Roppongi, the main areas where foreigners go, and a bit of a nightmare IMHO. A couple of almost relaxing days and it was time to validate that Ozzie visa. With all of 2 days to spare.

Home and Sweden

2008-08-16T16:48:00.000+10:00

Well, home at last and a well deserved break from travel and all it's associated stresses. It's always great to get home after travelling, but generally speaking the initial excitement of seeing everyone starts to pale soon enough, and the latest edition of the Irish "Summer" certainly doesn’t help.

There is the odd ray of sunshine though, and a drive through Connemara in the evening light is a good way to appreciate it. Even if it looks like some of the locals don't welcome the intrusion.

After some r+r at home, its was time for another mini trip to Sweden, which almost didn’t happen for Martin who couldn’t remember the safe place he had carefully left his passport, the day of the flight. Unfortunately, the weather in Stockholm was only marginally better than that we left behind, though we did have one afternoon without rain, and despite Martin's expression, the city was an interesting place to spend a few days.

Even if we didn't do much more than eat, drink and be merry. The old town area was especially pretty. And the locals were generally pretty friendly, especially when accosted and plied with food at 5am, and their English was quite amazing, some even having completely Irish accents to boot. Still, I can't help feeling on the whole that the Baltics offer a better deal for an extended break than Scandinavia. So after a brief stopover to catch up with Mr Dave and friends in Glasgow, it was back home and preparing to board the coffin ship. Sorry, Qantas plane.

A bit Baltic

2008-07-02T13:45:00.001+10:00

Apologies for the tardiness of these posts...
Anyway, several months back I had planned to visit the Baltics on a trip with Martin. I expected to be back from Central America in loads of time, but as it was I ended up being in Ireland less than a day before jumping on a plane to Vilnius.
Lithuania’s capital was a lot prettier than I would have imagined.

Some of the architecture was pretty stunning, and the weather nice and balmy. Although not on my original itinerary (I'm meeting Martin in Latvia) I was glad I came. The bars and restaurants evoke a feeling closer to Mediterranean Europe than old soviet block states, and despite basic English, the locals are pretty friendly. The town is a delight to wander, and is also delightfully missing the riff raff that have descended into some of eastern Europe's nicer cities due to the likes of urine air and sleazy jet offering too cheap flights.

After Vilnius I hoped on the bus north to Riga, famed stag party capital of Latvia.
After meeting up with Martin, we hit the town, only to find that we had arrived at the one time of the year (midsummer) where it's dead quiet. Still, Riga is another beautiful Baltic capital.

And there are a few folk around, probably mostly tourists unaware of the nature of the festival. Martin was pretty adapt at herding them out. He knows every inch of Riga's lanes and alleyways at this stage.
We did happen to be here for the Russian football match, which, given that Latvia is almost 50% Russian, was a pretty big occasion.

Next stop , was Tallin, Estonia, but only for a brief stopover as we were on our way to Helsinki for a couple of days. The weather was still mostly behaving itslef, and the shortish crossing over the gulf of Finland was very pleasant.
We met up with Sean and as usual he was a great host, its great to have the local knowledge of where to go.

So after a couple of nights it was back over in force to Tallinn. Again, it's a lovely city, with cute squares and alleys and lanes winding through the old part of town. Possibly the prettiest of all the Baltic cities. Though, it has to be said, pretty chocca with tourists.

It's also got very lively nightlife, with a variety of bars and clubs keeping things going well past dawn. After 10 days in the Baltics, I think I need a serious detox.

Jouisey

2008-06-17T03:26:00.000+10:00

Well, after 3 1/2 months in Latin America, I'm back in the garden state with Mandy, Eddie and Ally. Its weird to be back, in some ways, it almost feels like I never left.

The weather here is a tad warmer than the snow and ice that I left a while back. I insisted on breaking out the pool, and used Ally as an excuse. She seemed to like it almost as much as me. I've also been gorging myself on all things American, to fatten myself up for my time in the Baltics. And I've been replacing my well worn clothes and footwear, its actually quite nice not to have to wear the same stuff for a change. And have a pair of sunglasses that don't break in 2 days.

Apart from eating and shopping, I managed to get in a bit of drinking. Including a night out in New York, which was fun. Even if my lack of a collared shirt meant we ended up in some of the more divey bars, instead of hob knobbing it with the celebs. Like I'm used to.

Before leaving Nicaragua, I spent a day at the beautiful Laguna apoyo. Its a crater lake formed from a volcano caldera, close to Granada. It's a very relaxing place, nice water for swimming and a little kayaking in the warm sunshine. A lovely way to spend my last day in Nicaragua.

Ticas, Nicas and Matthew McConaughey

2008-06-10T09:59:00.001+10:00

My original plan (well, as of a few weeks ago) was to fly back to the states via Costa Rica, but I decided instead to see a little of Nicaragua and fly from Managua. It meant a longish trip from Boquete. After feeding the new baby parrot, Neimis kindly drove me to the border, where I made by way by taxi and local bus as far as San Insidro, only to find out that the road to San Jose was blocked by mudslides. Plan B saw me head via the coast, and the backside breaking road from Dominical to Quepos, to sleep for the night, then up to catch the 4am bus north to Punta Arenas, another bus to Liberia, and a final bus to the border of Peñas blancas, leaving the Ticas behind.

The queues at the border were possibly the worst I´ve seen anywhere, but luckily most of the people were Nicas trying to go the other way. I met an English couple and after the heat and dust of the border, decided to share a taxi to San Juan del sur, getting there in time for sunset.

San Juan is mainly a surf town, with good beaches close by. I spent a couple of days mostly trying to get out the back, as the waves were pretty strong. I definitely need to move to a small board. Sharing the waves was Matthew McConaughey, on a boys break from his pregnant brazilian girlfriend. We met him in the pub later, and while I admit to having had a few, he was way more pissed. Quite amusing.

Enough gringofication, time to head north to Granada, the pride of Nicaragua. I have to say I'm a tad disappointed with it. It's a pretty town, for sure, but it doesn't have the wow factor I expected. Perhaps Colombia has spoiled me. Still, it has some nice restuarants and pretty churches scattered around, and the main square is very pleasant.

Theres plenty of natural beauty nearby, several lakes and volcanoes, including Nicaragua's most active, so I decided to visit it at night to see the glowing lava. It wasnt quite as dramatic as the brochures would lead you to believe, indeed the local fire dancers probably made a more impressive display.

Towards Panama

2008-06-02T03:09:00.001+10:00

Leaving San Gil behind, eventually, I headed south towards the big bad capital of Bogota. To break up the journey a bit, I stopped off at another cute colonial town called Villa de Leyva. Up till now Id had great weather, but rain greeted me on my late arrival, so I didn't get to see the town at its best initially. Luckily next day was a good deal brighter. Its a pretty town of cobbled streets and lots of nice restaurants. A bit more touristy though than Barichara, but quaint nonetheless.

Bogota was similarly drizzly when I got there, and I also arrived at the end of a long weekend, so the place was a veritable ghost town, not the most pleasant for strolling around. Next day was a different story, the streets around the Candelaria area in the old town were full of people, and the place had an altogether much more pleasant vibe. Feeling like I needed to be more of a tourist, I made my way to the police museum, where the guide was amazingly helpful and pleasant. A lot of the stuff on display related to Pablo Escobar and his entourage, and made for a very pleasant couple of hours. I met up with Randy again, and he had enlisted the help of some locals to cook us some good Colombian food.

Well after almost a month it was time to leave Colombia, definitely a major highlight. A short plane ride and a longer bus ride and I was back in Boquete, Panama, to spend a bit more time there. A seriously heavy tropical storm was passing through the area, so Neimis and I headed east towards Santa Fe for a bit, and then south to the surf village of San Cristobal, where we had blue skies. Its a tiny place, hard to imagine it holds international surf contests. But the surf was about the best I've seen in Central America, clean, nice forgiving sets for a change. And the cerveza Panama was the perfect aperitif.

Me gusta Colombia

2008-05-25T11:17:00.000+10:00

Its so nice to be back in Colombia! Crossing the border, I felt an immediate sense of relief. I was back with nice, friendly people, in a pretty safe environment. Well, apart from the odd earthquake, and Farc leaders dying...but nowhere is perfect.
I dont want to keep going on about it, but the hotel guy the last night in Venezuela was hilariously rude and nasty, Basil Fawlty would have nothing on him.
After a longish 2 days travelling, Randy and I arrived in the pretty little town of Barichara, a lovely example of Colombian colonial architecture.

Next we headed to San Gil, a bit of a Colombian adventure center, and a pretty nice smallish town. I´d half been thinking of doing a para gliding course, but decided instead on a tandem flight, which was really nice and relaxing, rather than any way scary. The farmland around made for pretty vistas and the weather was just about perfect too.

There's some serious rafting around San Gil, but the biggest river is actually unraftable right now, but we some fun on the little grade 3 running through town. We got to swim through some of the smaller rapids to spice it up a bit, and all and all it was a great way to spend 8 euro.
.

Feeling a bit spatially challenged on the Latin American dance floors, a few of us in the Macondo hostal in San Gil decide on a bit of Salsa dancing. I have to admit I wasn't expecting a full aerobic workout, but that is what we got, plus some pretty good moves, if I can only remember them. I think I might have to go back a few more times though before I'm on strictly come dancing. I also brushed up a bit on my Spanish for a bit, it's definitely easier to understand Colombian Spanish than Panamanian.

Slight detour

2008-05-19T03:37:00.000+10:00

Venezuela was definitely not on my travel plans, so it's a bit of a surprise to find myself in the university city of Merida. It certainly comes as a pleasant change after by brief but too long stay in Maracaibo. Seldom have I taken such an instant dislike to a city (and i guess, by association, a country) as I did when reaching there from Colombia. I dunno if it was the endless litter trail on the way there, the rip off antics of the taxi drivers, or the rudeness of the food servers at the bus station, who looked like they would much rather sever your throat than serve you the sandwich you wanted, but I was very pleased to get out of there ASAP. Merida, thankfully, is a lot different. Nice people, cool weather, good nightlife and the longest and highest cable car in the world.

Before crossing over the border, I spent a few days more on the Colombian coast. First up was Tayrona, a pretty national park where you can sleep in hammocks ( again :( ) and enjoy the beaches in relative solitude. Apart from the mossies. It was a bit overpriced and the over-zealous inspection by the corrupt Army dude on the entrance took the shine off a bit, but it was still well worth seing.

I also went to the fishing village of Taganga, know for its good and (relatively) cheap diving. The diving wasn't half bad - loads of sea horses, lobsters and morays. But the highlight was the gigantic schools of sardines being hearded into bunches by attacking tuna. Amazing.
I almost loved Taganga, but its been ¨discovered¨ by a spring break and pseudo hippie combination that tries your patience after a while. Shame really, cause it has a lovely village feel in parts, and the locals are typically welcoming. A fact thats highlighted after spending a few hours in Maracaibo. Did I mention I didn't like it there?

Lost City

2008-05-12T11:40:00.000+10:00

I hadn't really planed on any trekking on this trip, what with my dislocated knee and lack of hiking boots, but when I arrived in Santa Marta I decided to sign up for the 6 day round trip to the Ciudad Perdida. The trek isn't especially difficult, but the rain on the first day made parts really slippy, and I was glad of my investment in a pair of wellies.

We passed through various types of forest, inhabited by indifferent indigenous peoples and very friendly soldiers. Evenings were mostly spent sculpting wax models from burning candles (there wanst much in the way of entertainment provided!). I have to admit that the idea of sleeping in a hammock is much nicer than the reality. It is fun, bu the the relative lack of sleep and the resulting back pain makes it something to try sparingly.

Although the ruins themselves aren't overly dramatic, the sheer scale of the place, coupled with the jungle setting, makes for a very memorable trip. Walking up the 2000 odd steps into the lost city was especially moving, particularly for my calves. The guides were really good, and provided us with great food and typical Colombian hospitality. Although I hate backtracking, the return trip was actually pretty nice, as we had great weather, which made the views beautiful and the swimming holes particularly inviting.

Santa Marta itself was nothing special, though now a bad place. It certainly didnt give the impression that its the oldest settlement in Colombia. Cartagena (pictured) is a few years newer, but a world apart when it comes to the the preservation and renovation of its colonial part. Next up is some beach time and maybe a little diving.

Shakira Shakira

2008-05-03T10:04:00.000+10:00

Well, after 7 weeks I finally managed to leave Panama. An overnight bus from David and a short prop plane flight later I´m in Cartagena, Colombia. I'm pretty excited to be on the move again.

Cartagena is a beautiful city. It's possibly the best preserved Spanish city in Latin America, with lovely old buildings both restored and slightly crumbling, complete with abundant colourful plants and equally colourful locals. The streets were pretty quiet when I arrived as it was a holiday, but today there packed with people, as they were last night. Dining out al fresco in the lovely Spanish square of Santa Domingo with great food and a background of local performers was a great experience.

Before leaving Panama, I made a couple of visits. I felt bad having been in the center of Panama´s coffee production and never having seen a plantation, so Neimis took me along to one of the local fincas to see the scenery and sample the produce, which is very good. Its nice to get into the hills around boquete, it still feels like it must have before it became a Mecca for gringo retirees.

We also visited Boca brava, as yet a relatively un-touristed spot on the pacific coast. There´s only one hotel on the island, and you wake up to the sound of waves and wild howler monkeys in the forest. On the way back we called into some friends of Paradise Garden to check out their place, the views are almost reminiscent of Africa, especially as sun sets and the howlers start.

Still in Panama

2008-04-27T07:24:00.000+10:00

I'm still in Panama. So I've pretty much deviated off any plan I had with respect to where I'm going and how long I´ll spend everywhere. Currently I'm looking at going to Colombia in a few days and spending a few weeks there before heading home via the states. The rest of Central America can wait for another time.

I´m back in Boquete, having returned from San Blas via the lovely little town of Santa Fe. There's not much to it, but its got a great location in the mountains, which lots of friendly locals on horseback and little or no tourists.
The plan was to head via Costa Rica to Nicaragua, but I got wrapped up in the daily events of Boquete and Paradise Garden, so that never quite materialised. And anyway, I hate rushing around too much. It all blurs into one after a while.

Since returning, Macie has been moved close to the wild howler monkeys, and has already met some of them, and will be fully released soon. We also got rid of Heney, the biting Capuchin, who seems to have attached himself to the wild howlers rather than his own species. He was always a bit odd. We've got a new Caracara with a broken leg, and briefly had a wounded Anteater which we took to the vet, but who died later, probably from smoke inhalation rather than his machete wound. And it looks like were going to have an injured female ocelot joining in a few days. And the puppies now have electric dog collars, after their repeated escapes. It´s all go.

For a bit of R&R, I headed with Greg (and his recently broken arm) to Bocas del Toro, the main party islands in Panama. It seems like everyone I ever met in Panama was there, and it's definitely a great place for a pissup. Though there are just too many gringos there for my liking. Despite the hordes it can still be a really nice place to visit. But a couple of nights there were enough for my liver. Off soon for a delicious red snapper dinner courtesy of Michael and Donna, who we know from Paradise Garden. Its going to be hard to leave all behind here, but Shakira´s birthplace beckons...

Metropolis, Canal and attempted robbery

2008-04-10T07:17:00.001+10:00

My first day in Panama city had it all, a skyline to match many great cities, a canal which is one of the worlds recent architectural marvels and an encounter with a local who fancied a new camera for himself.
The city itself is unlike any other Central American capital, with high rises towering over the beaches making it reminiscent of Miami, but with more English spoken (according to the book) . It's also got some really brightly painted public buses (mostly old US school buses) that whiz around at pretty breakneck speed.

Apart from the growing number of glitzy modern buildings (there are more cranes around than anywhere else I've been) there is also Casco Viejo, the older part of the city, left in a state of disrepair, but now the focus of a big urban renewal program. It's a nice place to wander around, with pretty colonial buildings and some good restaurants and bars. But not too far away the city deteriorates, as we found out while trying to shoot some of the more colourful buses in a less salubrious spot. A local kid tried to help himself to one of the guys cameras, but couldn't quite manage to get it out of his pocket.
Maybe best stick to the tourist spots.

The canal itself was actually pretty interesting. We timed it so as to see a couple of fairly big ships pass through (otherwise I guess it would have been a little dull). There was a lot of info and displays on the canal, both historical and on the current expansion plans, and you even got to pretend to navigate a ship through. I hadn't realised that 20000 French had died in an earlier attempt to build the canal, before the US showed them how. The ship shown paid $120,000 to go through, so it just shows the effect the canal has on the economy, and how big a deal the handover back from the US at the end of 1999 was.

But all this western culture was taking its toll, so I headed via an extremely bumpy and fun 4WD track and a short boat trip to the islands of San Blas. These are administered autonomously by the Kuna, and they certainly have got some beautiful islands to call home. The first couple of nights I spent with the locals, which was a real highlight, playing football and learning Spanish with the kids. Although they live in pretty confined areas, the camaraderie between the families is evident and everyone seems really happy.

And it's a lot less touristy than one might imagine. Most of the 400 plus islands are uninhabited, and it's on these we spent most of our days, swimming snorkelling and eating on paradise beaches. I think if this were any other country, San Blas would be famous the world over, but Panama doesn't really do tourism. Which is all the better, IMHO.

leaving boquete

2008-04-06T04:28:00.000+10:00

Well, after over three weeks it was finally time to move on from Boquete. Even though I´m probably going to stop there on my way back for a bit, it was pretty hard leaving, as I´d made a lot of friends there, both animal and human. Working in Paradise Garden was a fantastic experience and something I wont forget. Tom, my indian looking english sounding norwegian mate headed towards Cuba, so we left P.G. in the hands of Neimis, my Dora the explorer lookalike guide to all things boquete. Hopefully Macie and friends wont miss us too much.

Apart from working in P.G. I also took a few much needed spanish lessons, though I´m still strugling to understand the locals. ¨Dora¨also very kindly took me along the Quetzal trail, where we spotted 5 of the elusive beasts, along with loads of other birds including hawks and woodpeckers, sloths, lizzards and a very recent Jaguar footprint.
We also went horseback riding, which included the chance to get up on some less convential modes of transport, and camped at the local hotsprings which is a great way to consume copious amounts of cerveza balboa.

As well as all the tea we could drink, we were also treated to some of Boquete´s finest dining by owners Paul and Jenny, and Paul took us on an excurison to Lost and Found, an eco resort where you stay in the cloud forest and get to see Kinkajous, Olingos, Cacomistles and all kinds of other animals you never heard of before, as well as some pretty nice sunsets.

Before leaving, we took part in a days documentary about P.G., which was good fun even if at times some of the stars were a bit of a handful. The Geoffroy's Tamarins, in particular, were very hard to direct. How do I get that monkey off my back?
So now its on to Panama city, where I think theres some sort of canal that people have heard of...

Volunteering

2008-03-23T06:51:00.000+11:00

I arrived in the small western Panamaian town of Boquete a few weeks ago and Ive been pretty much "stuck" here since then. I had met Tom from Norway in San Jose on my first day there, and he had told me about some volunteering he was doing in Panama. It sounded good, and, unlike in Costa Rica where volunteers pay to work, this was free, so I ended up in Paradise Garden and have been there most days since.

Its a really nice place, and as well as loads of monkeys and birds, it has the odd more exotic animal like Lotti here, a Margay, similar to an Ocelot (or a small Jaguar I guess), who is a great attraction. Like a lot of the animals, she had been rescued from owners who tired of their "pets", in her case she arrived with atrophied muscles and a kinked tail from living in such a confined space...shes in pretty good health now though, as any of the many small birds that make the mistake of entering her enclosure know.

Most days I spend showing people around as a sort of tour guide, which is more fun than i thought it would be, even if sometimes Bengy here likes to play a little too much with his hands... always seems to do it in front of the prettier girls, for some reason...
Tom and I also walk the dogs, feed the animals, build cages and enclosures and make the tea, so it can be pretty busy, but never too stressful to be honest.

My favourite animal though has to be Macie, a 10 month old nappy wearing howler monkey, who sits on my shoulder while i work, or sleeps under my T shirt. Shes currently being prepped for rehab back to the wild (she was an orphan) and will be sadly missed, though it is the goal of Paradise Garden to release as many of the animals as possible. Apart from working, Im doing a bit of spanish and have had to do a couple of the tours in spanish, which is pretty difficult given my level, but educational.
Better go change that nappy...

Towards Panama

2008-03-15T01:22:00.001+11:00

Although Dominical is reputated to have monster waves, it actually had the best conditions we had seen yet - not as angry and dangerous as before, and on my last day it was really really good. It´s also a nice town to relax in while not riding waves. But enough surfing for a while, and onto Bahia drake, the main wilderness area on the Pacific coast. The trip here was great, ending with a boat taking us from Sierpe through pretty mangrove forests and pods of dolphins after passing through some pretty scary waves.

Bahia Drake itself is really pretty, and the place im staying in, el Mirador, is really nice, located high above with a great view, with nothing but the sound of crashing waves and candlelight to lull you to sleep. Apart from Saturday night that is, with the local disco beats vibrarting to ruin the ambience.
I did a couple of dives as its touted as the best diving in costa rica, and though I did see loads of white tipped reef sharks, as well as several large schools of pelagic fish, poor enough visibility coupled with pretty ordinary coral meant an ok rather than great dive experience. And it aint cheap around here... I passed on a day hike costing 95 dollars...they do take the piss sometimes in Costa Rica.

Still theres a fair bit to see for free here, with loads of pretty birds like hummingbirds, macquaws, parrots, warblers, frigate birds tanagiers and loads more, as well as lots of iguanas and other lizzards, and the plant life is really beautuful and vibrant. But Panama calls, and a boat - bus - border crossing - minibus - chicken bus ride later, via a brief stop in David, Im in Boquete, where Im going to stay put for a bit...

South Pacific

2008-03-07T09:47:00.000+11:00

Leaving Montezuma with heavy hearts, we boarded the boat back to Jaco and onto Mauel Antonio, a national park and beach towards the southern pacific coast. We shared the bus with numerous pick pockets, as well as a couple of girls from Calafornia and Holland. After a few bumpy hours standing, and a short taxi ride, we arrived to another stunning beach location. Next morning we were up early to beat the heat and hoards to the park. Although the animals wernt as plentiful as advertised, we did managed to see loads of monkeys, sloths, birds and lizards.

The town itself seems to have gone downhill, with all the bars closing up early, so we visited el avion, a plane themed resturant with really great food, the tuna steak was as good a meal as any ive ever had. Ever.

Next day we did a bit of canopying through the trees, which is always a laugh so long as the cables hold, and played a strange drinking card name with a bunch of americans from the canopy tour. Next day was some more quality beach time. Well, all these sunsets might never happen if there not observed, right? Were now in Dominical, another beach town with a slightly ugly beach but a nice enough vibe. You cant have everything.

Surfing

2008-03-01T14:18:00.001+11:00

Pelicans swooping over cresting waves, spray in your face, eyes squinting to see another perfect sunset. Now this is more like it.
Over breakfast in San Jose I met Ian, an Ozzie surfer who was heading to Jaco, so decided to make that my first destination. The waves there were pretty good, though the town dissapointed a bit - where were all the hookers and cocaine it's famous for?
Finding none, we headed off to Montezuma by boat, a beautiful little town with nice beaches and restaurants, but little surf. On the crossing we saw loads of playful dolphins, some turtles and a whale in the distance. Costa Rica has a lot of wildlife.

We shared a taxi with a couple of Canadians girls who were heading to MalPais, a major surfing destination. To be honest, the conditions weren't the best - the swell was a bit big for the beach to hold so lots of serious tsunami like walls of white, but every now and then we managed to get a decent wave. And the sunsets weren't half bad.

After a few days we decided that the conditions dictated a bit of a respite and headed back to Montezuma for a bit of waterfall watching, which, given the precarious path up to the top, was probably more dodgy than the surfing. Still the dip at the end was beautifully refresing. Not having really gone out late in the surfer spots due to the sausage fest nature of such places, we hit the bars in Montezuma and ended up at some fire party on the beach which was all very pleasant. I really will miss this place.

State side

2008-02-25T09:11:00.001+11:00

Well I've arrived in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, and as first impressions go, its not great really. Not too pretty and a bit dodgy in places, but now relly bad. The hostel I stayed in is pretty good, with a pool and secure doors, but when u head out and the door closes and u look at the razor wire and metal sliding shutter protecting the doors it doesnt make u feel like wandering out too much past dusk...

Its a change of weather from the snow in New Jersey, though to be honest its a lot cooler than I expected. I think the beaches becon.
I had a great week in Jersey with Mandy Eddie and Ally, who seems to have grown exponentially in the 6 weeks since I saw her. It was cool to see some decent snow for the first time in a while, and Eddie and I built a trully amazing snowman.

I managed to catch up with Aaron and Pete from JPMC for a night on the big apple as well, should be spending a bit more time in the states on my way back. I did managed to get in to see the WTC memorabolia, which was pretty moving to be honest.
Right now I'm trying to decide which surf spot to head for first... lifes a beech.

R & R

2008-02-13T05:11:00.002+11:00

Well, after a few weeks R&R back home I'm getting ready to hit the road again.
Originally I intended staying put for a bit and actually working, but decided that this was a bad idea:)
I seemed to run into a series of unfortunate events since getting home - first were tooth problems that started in China and ended with root canal treatment, which seemed to go on for ever. Then on new years eve, while kicking a football around, I managed to dislocate my knee...ouch, relocated it myself but still pretty sore for a while.
Then some strange flu like virus only lasting 2 days.

Then a cold, after which I found myself passing through Eason's bookshop when out of the corner of my eye I spotted the lonely planet to Central America. I didn't decide consciously there and then to go, but I reckon the writing was on the wall. So on Sunday I'm off to Costa Rica, via a few days at my sister Mandy's place in New Jersey. After that will probably go to most of the central American countries, depending on what catches my fancy.
Before heading off I managed a brief trip across to Sean in Helsinki, and despite the cold it was really nice.

So off accross the water tomorrow.
Poor Joey looks kinda upset im going :(

HongKong

2007-12-23T15:58:00.001+11:00

And so the end is near and I've reached my final destination. It's been an incredible 11 months but more than anything I can't believe how fast it's gone. As I sit in a cafe waiting for breakfast under the fan with mid 20s outside it's hard to think I'll be back in european winter in a matter of hours.
Hong Kong has been great. My accomodation is without a doubt the smallest room I've ever seen, but at least it's not exorborant and it's clean. Kowloon is a bit manic though, but fun in a strange kind of way. The pervasive smell of curry is hard to shake, but the excellent park here makes a nice retreat.

Hong Kong island itself is generally a much more pleasant location. I spent most of a day up on Victoria peak, accessed by a cool funicular ride. It's a great day out and even with some haze/fog has amesome views, as well as some nice trails to stretch your legs.
I also made it out to lamma island, a car free spot only 30 minutes by ferry. It seemed to have a large proportion of expats engaging in all kinds of new-agey and healthy pursuits. Indeed Hong Kong has been a bit of a revelation in China with the number of white faces about - and theres tons of people from all over asia and africa as well, making for an interesting mix. If a very expensive one.
Well, it should at least help me get to grips with the prices back home.

Other than that I've just been eating and drinking and admiring the views from the star ferry, particu1alarly memorable at night. Just a few more hours and I'll be on the BA jet for Heathrow. Joy. Though to be honest, it is kinda nice making it home for Christmas and catching up with everyone.

Honey, I'm home! Well after the MTR to the train, train to HK airport, plane to heathrow, hour on runway, tube to Tottenham Hale, train to Stranstead, plane to Dublin, bus to Hueston, train to Athlone and car home I finally made it just in time for sunset on Christmas eve.

Um pouco portuguese

2007-12-20T12:41:00.001+11:00

Macau is a slightly strange entity. Despite never leaving China, I still had to invalidate my Chinese visa and clear customs and immigration to get there. Like Hong Kong, it's retained a special status for 50 years after it's handover (in 1999) It definitely feels different than the rest of China so far, especially in your pocket, with prices closer to it's former ruler than it's current one. But it's got a good vibe to the place, with European like streets and people crowding around shopping, hitting the delicious bakeries for breakfast and the Macanese eateries serving a mixture of specials from places like Goa and the old and new homeland are very good.

After struggling with Mandarin I now have to try to understand Cantonese, but at least the signs are in English or at least Portuguese. For a small place there are plenty of interesting cultural sites around to pass a couple of days. Wandering around the backstreets especially in the hillier parts almost makes you think your in Lisbon. Well, with a heck of a lot of Chinese tourists.

Macau is also becoming something of an Asian Las Vegas. It's had legalised gambling for a long time, but only recently is it taking on Vegas style theme hotels and casinos. You can now wander around mini amsterdams, miami beachs and Colosseum type buildings. All quite tacky but somehow impressive nonetheless.
One final strange thing about the place - despite being a former Portuguese colony and currently Chinese, they drive on the left. Weird. And I didnt even notice until I was leaving.

Expectations

2007-12-14T20:44:00.000+11:00

Up until now everywhere in China has pretty much exceeded expectations. A cynic might sat that that's partly cause I didn't have such great expectations to begin with. But nevertheless, I've been very impressed with almost everywhere. But I arrived in Yangshou and felt pretty underwhelmed. I don't know if it was the cloudy weather hiding the scenery, the constant sound of jackhammers and angle grinders or the thumping Chinese discos, but I felt a bit let down. It was the one place in China I was going to make a real effort to get to. Perhaps its cause I expected a lot that I was inevitably disappointed.

A few days here and the place is starting to grow on me a bit though. I've found a couple of good bars serving reasonably priced beer and a decent bunch of people frequenting them. Staying out till the discos close is a good way of getting a good nights sleep too.
And the locals are very friendly and really keen to practice their (pretty good) English, offering some Chinese lessons and even plying us with free beer in return. This English teaching is easy! Apparently I'm welcome back on a longer, more formal stint at any stage.
Although the cloud cover is pretty constant, I did have a decent day visiting Moon hill on a bike. The views were decent but lacking the beauty that a really clear day would give, but it was nice just to get out of town for a while. Yangshou also has some pretty decent climbing so I spent a great day with the guys at Blacrockclimbing on the local karsts. Consequently I'm pretty wrecked today and have spent a pleasant day doing absolutely nothing.

Back tracking

2007-12-09T16:29:00.000+11:00

When I got back to Lijiang from Shangri-la, I decided to pay a visit to the nearby village of Baisha to the somewhat (in)famous Dr Ho. He rose to acclaim after Michael Palin's visit to him during "Himilaya" as well as a couple of other international organisations. At 84 with a face full of character and a long white goatee he definitely looks the part, but I kinda felt like he liked to blow his own trumpet a bit. Still, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, so we will see what effect his mixture of herbs has on my blood pressure.

Getting there was half the fun, as the scenery was quite nice and I managed to wander off the main road on my bike and find cute little back roads through the local countryside. Despite getting well lost, I always seemed to end up close enough to a main road to meander back. The part of the village away from the Doctor was actually much prettier (no souvenier stalls or jewellery sellers in sight).

Leaving Lijiang with it's lovely streets and super friendly guesthouse was hard, but eventually I managed to hop on the bus back to Kunming. It's kinda weird being back in a big city again, but the weather is balmy and it really is quiet a nice place. The area near the university is especially athmospheric and a bit different than the pervasive shopping malls elsewhere. I bumped into Phil from TLG/Mama Naxi's at the hostel here so hanging out with him until I head off on the long train trip to Guilin.

Leaping tigers and Shangri-la

2007-12-05T01:02:00.000+11:00

Until recently, it existed only in a fictional novel and as part of a myriad of resorts and hotel names, but now there is an actual town of Shangri-la, and I'm in it. A few years ago, the Chinese decided that Zhongdian wasn't really pulling in the tourist dollars, so a little nomenclature wizzardway and all of a sudden James Hilton's mythical place has been born in north western Yunnan, close to the tibbetan border. It's more than a little tibettan complete with roving yaks, which isn't surprising as it was once part of Tibet prior to the Chinese "liberation". It's actually a pretty cute place, with a nice old town and a cool athmosphere. Actually it's pretty baltic just now, I arrived to snow flurries at noon and the mercury is well below freezing as I pen this entry. Given that it's two miles above sea level and it's December, I guess it's hardly surprising. But at least the resturants and bars are well equiped with toasty fireplaces. So far I've just wandered about, and visited the local monastry, an impressive and pretty place.

I arrived here after completing the Tiger Leaging Gorge trek, an incredibly beautiful hike through one of the worlds deepest gorges, and just physical enough to give that added sense of achievement. The first day was a bit overcast, and the scenenry nice but slightly underwhelming, but the next morning waking up under the gigantic spires of the mountain and the resulting hike through gorgeous scenery was simply stunning.

I was also with a really nice bunch of people so that made it more fun, though every now and then it was nice to drop back and just enjoy the birdsongs, the sound of the roaring water cascading through the rocks and chasms of the gorge and appreciate the remoteness of such a location in a country of so many people. I'd higly recommend it to anyone with an adventerous bent, especially as the Chinese have damming plans for the gorge.

Prior to the hike, I stayed in the beautifully picturesque town of Lijiang, a couple of hours north of Dali. It's another heavily touristed (by chinese) town but the lovely setting under snow capped mountains and the beautiful winding ancient streets (or at least ancient looking) more than make up for it, and the stay at Mana Naxi's guesthouse is an experience in itself.

Before leaving Dali, I managed to tear myself away from the delicious Bai cooking for long enough to cycle to a couple of local villages and to the nearby lake, and to take the cable cars up the local mountain, which allows you to complete a 10k walk along a path cut into the side of the meandering mountain valleys, which was pretty stunning in itself. Leaving Dali I was quiet sad but I imagine it's somewhere I'll make it back to sometime. Yes, although I'm heading home in a couple of weeks I'm far from finished with China.

Dali

2007-11-28T22:27:00.000+11:00

I'm in the town of Dali, a really pretty if very touristy town in northern Yunnan.
It a bit of a change - menues are in English, guesthouse owners speak English, what's going on? It's pretty high so pretty cold at night, but the sun warms the place up lovely during the day. It's a good place to just stroll about, drink some local tea and sample the delicious food (local Bai, Tibetan and Chinese). And I've been sampling a lot of it. Must be the colder air making me hungry. I must say I wasnt expecting the food here to be so good - outside Thailand it's the best I've had on the trip. The black peppers are especially zingy, they would make a good novacane substitute.

At night the town is especially pretty, with the chill in the air and the lights on the buildings and temples it gives an almost Christmas like feeling to the place. It's really nice just to wander about and hit a few of the cute bars in town. I'm still surprised by the dearth of western tourists - I guess it's low season.

The town is certainly a lot different than modern Kunming, from where I jumped the train to here. Although significantly longer than the bus trip, it was worth it for the relative comfort and the chance to try to chat (up/to) the locals. Luckily the ones opposite me spoke a bit of English, and were a good laugh. I must say I'm finding the Chinese a lot friendlier than I expected. In Kunming I got invited out with some locals for Hotpot, and then onto a club where I didnt have to pay for any of the (large quantities of) booze. Magic. Tonight I'm actually going to try to learn some Mandarin, Mr Li next door has offered me pretty cheap lessons so will give it a try, beats trying to guess what pronunciation the Collins phrasebook writers actually were try to convey.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore

2007-11-24T13:45:00.000+11:00

Yes I've left SE Asia behind and entered the uncharted teritory that is China. Hekou, the Chinese border town, is famous for the border guards enthuasism for collecting LP Chinas, so I ripped mine to bits and just took the loose pages I needed - just as well, they leafed through all of my books - all very pleasantly done mind, and satisfied that I wasnt in posession of the demon book I passed through unscathed. Travelling in China is definitely different - almost noone speaks more than 1 word (hello) of English, so my phrasebook has become invaluable, along with the LPs Chinese script names for the cities/guesthouses which I can just point to.

My first destination was Yuanyang, famous (in China at least) for the beautifully sculpted rice terraces that are often shrouded in mist. The trip there was really beautiful and really long and bumpy, the road being at times asphalt, dust and mud. Seems like even the Chinese havent managed to build motorways in this part of their country.

Yunnan province is home to a higher percentage of ethnic minorities than anywhere else in China, and in this respect it is a little like Sapa in Vietnam, without the (western) tourists - there were a handful in Yuanyang, and after a day we all knew each other, its a pretty small place. The various groups are beautifully dressed in really colourful garb, and although they tend to employ similar hard arm selling tacticts as their cousins over the border, there pretty good natured about it. So far I'm really enjoying this part of China, though it does come with some less savoury sites, such as dogs being skinned and some truly awful public toilets, and theres a definite increase in volume of both spitting and shouting which takes a bit of getting used to, but for me the ubiquitous smoking is the toughest, especially on the buses. But it's all part of the experience! And the food is good so far, which is a bonus. The vegetarian stuff is especially tasty and cheap, so long as you dont mind the odd bit of pork or chicken thrown in.
I'm now in Kunming, a bright, modern, cosmopolitian city, and a nicer spot than I would have imagined. Theres even a little english spoken. I'm off to see if I can score some warmer threads .. its cold up here!

Towards China

2007-11-19T21:19:00.000+11:00

Having a bit of time to spare while waiting on my China visa, I headed south of Hanoi for a day to Tam Coc, an area geographically similiar to Halong bay, minus the bay. Its all part of a chain stretching up from Krabi in Thailand, Tha Kiet and Vang Vieng in Laos, through Halong bay and continuing up to the Guillin area in China. It's certainly very beautiful, even if the experience is even more of a tourist trap than Halong. The best part of the trip was getting away on the mountain bikes and peddling through some local villages, which let you appreciate the scenery away from the crowds, and also meet some of the locals who were super friendly, and, as yet, not looking for money!

The main part of the trip involved heading through some caves, being rowed by charasmatic old locals. Despite the crowds it was a really pleasant experience.

In Hanoi, I said goodbye to Elliott who was on his way to Sapa via motorbike - my recently weakened constitution prefered the train. I met up with Tuyen and Hanh, two sweet Vietnamese students we had met before by the lake, and I had a nice day wondering about, eating ice-cream and drinking coffee. On my last day I even braved the traffic chaos of Hanoi and rented a mophead for some touring, which was a bit of a challenge and not a little adreneline fueled.

Eventually I had to head north on the night train to Sapa. I was really quiet sad to leave Hanoi, having met loads of great people and stayed in the friendliest guesthouse so far on this trip. Had a good nights kip on the train, and arrived in Sapa to beautiful blue skies. After wandering about town for 5 minutes I bumped into Elliott, who had made good time on his meandering mountain route despite coming off his bike at 60kmp - other than some serious oil stains on his jeans he came away totally unscathed. Pretty lucky.

We headed off to the local H'mong village of Cat Cat, which was a lovely walk in the sunshine, and we managed to get lost the other side of the village, in or efforts to escape the tourist hordes. On the way back I realised I was coming down with something, and spent much of the next 2 days recovering from a particularly nasty cold. It seems like the weather on our first day was a bit of an anomoly - its been totally fog bound since, though this morning the sun is trying to break through. So, much of the time was spent drinking hot liquids around roaring fires and being entertained by interesting locals like chess champion Mr Tim, the bunches of local lads kicking around what feels something like a badmington shuttlecock and a nice bunch of pool playing black H'mong girls. It was nice to be able to talk with some of the minorities without them trying to flog you everything from necklaces to opium. And their street learned english was amazingly good.
Today I'm heading off to the China border...sounds like one of the less pleasant crossings, but, sure, it's all part of the experience.

Tour of duty II

2007-11-16T02:52:00.000+11:00

So I'm back in Vietnam for my second tour here. I wasnt 100% sure about coming back up to the north, but I'm so glad I did. It's been amazing. Halong bay alone has been one of the highlights of the trip so far. It's incredibly beautiful, and even the flotilla of tourist boats didn't detract from the experience. Sleeping on the milk-pond like bay and waking in such amazing surroundings was pretty unforgettable. Even if, as is the nature of these tours, at times you felt a bit like a sheep in a pack, with enforced stops at craft centers en route, along with the 100s of other minibuses.

Apart from enjoying the stunning views, we had time to get suitably lost kayacking, and repeatedly dive into the inviting water from the top of the boat.

Back in Hanoi to the chaos of literally millions of motorbikes choking the narrow French like streets. But I love the place for some reason. Maybe it's the way most of the streets in the old town are still dedicated to a profession, like silk makers, tin smiths, bamboo or even headstones. Or the wafting of fresh coffee from the multitude of coffee shops, the numerous Bia Hoi places selling glasses of the local liquor for pennies, or the beautiful girls that seem to fill the streets.

Whetever, I'm finding it really hard to leave the place. Just strolling around without much of a purpose is a great way to pass the day, and theres always the lake or some of the old houses or cool bars to escape the crowds. In one of which I encountered an ex-pat looking for some English speakers to teach. Feeling like I needed to be useful I gave it a go for a few sessions, and it was fun, definitely something I could do more of.

Back in Bangkok

2007-11-08T00:24:00.000+11:00

So after the Docs at Bangkok Hospital, Phuket gave me the alr clear I found myself on a plane for the first time since early June, and back in Bangkok. Well, I didnt think a 12 hour bus would be the best thing for me just now.
Bangkok always surprises me, one minute your marveling at the construction of the new sky train and the amazing shopping centers (and that's coming from a shopping hater) and the next your route is cut off by a passing elephant. It has a reputation for truly awful traffic, but its easy enough to avoid the worst by using the river ferries, canal boats, Metro and Skytrain, which are all fun and pretty stress free ways of getting around.

I based myself in backpacker based banglampu, mainly as I reckoned it would be the handiest place to get my Nam visa. I'm staying in a nice little family house off of soi Rambutri, which is just far enough away from the neon lights of Kao San. I had to wait around for a few days, which, given my delicate nature at present, wasn't a bad thing.
Apart from gorging on thai food, I managed to get out a bit and do some cultural things, like checking out the house of Jim Thompson, which was pretty cool and colonial, as well as the super modern siam square area. I also paid a visit to one of the more visited "cultural" attractions, the infamous patpong - something I'd not done before, and, quite frankly, probably won't bother again. I guess it's the sort of thing you need to see once, but there's only so many times, despite the obvious skill involved, that popping baloons with a dart gets you excited. To complete this part of my tourism extravaganza, I visited the soi Cowboy strip in Sukhumvit, which was a little lower key but more of the same really.

On another note, I just found out that a pic I took of a bridge in Verona was used on the cover of a magazine, so that was pretty cool.
My passport with Visa finally arrived back today, so I'm all set for the Nam flight tomorrow.

Pain in the ass

2007-10-30T23:34:00.000+11:00

Leaving Phi Phi I arrived on Phuket and met up with Clare from previous travels, as well as Antoinette, a lovely Leitrim girl, and their mates, who were all really nice. I managed to be around for Clare's birthday bash, which was a good laugh. Unfortunately I wasn't in too great a state to really enjoy it, having spent much of that day in Bangkok Phuket hospital undergoing (minor) surgery on a particularly painful area. Let's just say it was a real pain in the ass.

Poor Clare herself was in plaster after a very nasty knee dislocation 3 weeks ago, so it was down to Antoinette to play nurse.
The operation made me feel like I'd been abducted by aliens, but the hospital itself was amazing - more like a posh hotel, with nicely dressed staff, good coffee and DVDs, and more Doctors and Nurses attending than you could shake a stick at. They even had a machine that goes "bing" and everything...
The day afterwards I decided to check into a fancyish hotel for my r&r to avail of a nice big bathtub, so I'm holed up in Phuket town till my checkup on Friday.

I had been in a bit of pain already in Phi Phi, so I didn't do much apart from lie on the beach, though I did make one trip up to the nice viewpoint. It's amazing how little evidence is left of the Tsunami that so devastated the island. Theres no shortage of (rebuilt) hotels and restaurants, I'd heard that the building was being tightly constrained to be more environmentally friendly but I didn't really see any signs of that. Still the beaches are lovely (at high tide anyway).
Right, I'm off for a cocktail of painkillers, unfortunately I've used up all Clare's morphine - don't really rate the stuff anyway to be honest.

Islands and beaches

2007-10-22T02:10:00.001+10:00

I've spent more than my fair share of time in this wonderful country, but in all my time here I have never seen rain like I did these last few days. It's been unbelievable. Constant, hard, pelting, torrential floods of the stuff. Interspersed with long periods of Irish style drissle. Unbelievable.
So I've high tailed it to the Andeman coast (the other side of Thailand)to Krabi in the hope of a reprieve, and my plan's worked pretty well so far.

I'm in Railay beach, a few k from Krabi town, and the main draw for rock climbers in this area. I just spent a great half day on the limestone cliffs here and I'm pleasantly shattered after it. The climbing was a bit tough as many of the hand holds were too smooth from overuse, but I only fell on one climb so not a bad days work. It seems like a pretty nice spot too, most of the people around seem to be decent.

My last night on hat rin saw me dropping my bike in another torrential downpower (front wheel caught in a rut I didnt see under the 6 inches of water) and I landed on my camera, and in the road-river. Of course the camera was dead, but lo and behold if it didnt rise lazarus like after a few days rest. Yippee.
From there I moved on my (relatively) trusty sonic up the coast via some pretty rutted dirt trackes to the toungue twisting beach at Ao Tong Nai Pan Yai. It was really nice, quiet and laidback. Maybe too quiet. I also made an expedition to Bottle Beach, proclaimed as the second busiest beach but only 3 souls were brave enough to stay there. The road there was totally crazy, I ended up in five dead ends before finially making it there, the last couple of k by foot, as I didnt want a repeat of hat rin spillages.

After a few peaceful, wet days I headed towards Ko Samui and Lamai beach, one of my favourite spots 12 years ago, but now unfortunately developed beyond belief. Most of the time there I took the "if you can't beat them, join them" attitude and watched the football and Rugby World cup while drinking pints and talking to other Irish people sheltering from the rain. It's like I never left home. Oh, apart from all the ladyboys. So it was kinda nice to spend a bit of time in Krabi, still a real Thai town with friendly people and nice night markets with all kinds of cheap delicious offerings.

One night in Burma

2007-10-13T14:47:00.000+10:00

With my lackadasical approach to the last few weeks I found myself out of time on my Thai visa. So even though I had ended up in this situation cause I wasnt going to go to Burma, I had to go to Burma in order to get another 30 days in Thailand. Most people just pop over the border and back again to get their stamp, but I decided if I was going that far I might as well spend a night in Kaw Thuang, or Victoria point as the British christened it. It was a nice enough place with good views of the harbour from the hills, and an interesting little market area with numerous tea shops, though the hotel was pretty crap to be honest.

I was literaly the only tourist in town for the night, so that was kinda fun. The people seemed really nice and friendly, and the monks and kids seemed eager to practise their english. Most of the girls were going around with a little of the traditional face paint, something I'd seen a bit with the Burmese in Thailand. And there was no feeling of tension from the recent events. Eating in the resturants felt a bit weird with all the staff hanging around (I counted 11 girls with nothing to do in one small place) - as soon as I spilt a grain of rice or the water dripped off the beer glass someone was running over to clear it up. But I got used to it eventually. All an all a very enjoyable 24 hours.

Next day I headed back with the new days visa runners, eschewing the boat owners numerous attempts to peddle cheap viagra, and found myself back in Chumpon again, to catch the ferry to Ko Pha Ngan.
Tim from NY met me off the boat and I rented another sonic motorbike and drove off to Hat Rin. I'd been there many moons ago, but I couldnt believe the amount of growth since then. First impressions were not good. Though the beach is still pretty nice. As my arrival coincided with the "black moon" party (gone are the days when one full moon party a month was enough) we hit the beach for the night, and though I was in a bit of a crap mood to start I had a pretty good night in the end.
Yesterday we toured most of the Islands decent roads (and a few of the dirt ones) and found a few nice beaches and fishing villages. I'm thinking of moving out of hat rin to somewhere less manic once the rugby semis are out of the way.

Life of Thai

2007-10-07T17:52:00.000+10:00

Well once again I find myself "stuck" on a Thai Island for longer than planned. It's a hard life really. I had been planning to go to Burma for a while, but things look a bit iffy there at the minute so will have to hold off on extended travel there for a while. Ko Tao has been good fun, if a fair bit more developed and expensive than I expected. I did another couple of dives, and what a difference a couple of days make. This time I had awful visibility - only 1-3 meters on the second dive, a bit of a joke really. Since that I've been holding off on more diving waiting for conditions to improve, but so far its still not great. I've been hanging around with Tim from New York, whose conspiracy theories make for good entertainment, and Ebony who I had met in Kanchanaburi.

Of course last night was spent trying to believe the results in the two RWC games. I had a small inkling that France could repeat their shock 1999 result, despite New Zeland's performances to date, but I didn't see the Aussies losing to the English.
It's hard to believe that Ireland beat them by a record score this year, and though the Irish did make a game of it against Argentina, they were never going to do it.

Apart from the rugby we've amused ourselves by a bit of snorkeling, swimming, fire dancing and motocross - some of the roads here are really pretty awful but make for fun driving in the little 125 dirt bikes. Weve been over pretty much all the island at this stage, so time to move on maybe. Next up is probably Ko Phan Ngan.

Turtle Island

2007-09-29T17:14:00.000+10:00

I must say Kanchanaburi was a very nice place. The Bridge over the Kwae river (Kwai is actually a misspelling - it means water buffalo in Thai) isn't all that amazing to look at (though the setting is nice). But the history behind it is pretty cool. The museum beside the bridge is in fact a melange of all kinds of nonsense (almost worth the entrance for it's comic value), none of which is much about the bridge, the real museum is back in town and is actually one of the best laid out museums I've been in - and not too much in it to be overwhelming. Once you become aware of the huge loss of life involved in it's construction, a trip on the "death railway" itself is a must.

I hopped on a local bus out to hellfire pass, site of some of the hardest digging and something of an Aussie pilgrimage site (it was mostly Aussie POWs that worked/died on this bit). I managed to blag a lift with an intrepid tour back to Nam Tok, the (current) starting point of the Railway back, and was able to avail of some free guiding. There was only one bloke on the tour - a nice English guy, who seemed very relieved to have some male company for a change - by all accounts the girls were moaning all the time and doing his nut in. He was only on the trip cause he and his girlfriend split up just before there Phuket holiday, and she was taking the room for the two weeks! I told him he should have no problem finding a "shoulder" to cry on in Phi Phi, his next stop (he's leaving the tour).

The previous day I'd rented a bike and gone to Erawan falls with Dillon. The falls were in a really beautiful setting, without too many tourists, and some of the various levels (there are 7) made fantastic refreshing jungle swimming pools.
The trip back on the other hand was more of an endurance test - character building if you like, as we (I) drove almost the whole 2.5 hours back in the dark through torrential rain and lightning - our lights were barely able to distinguish the road from the trees. Cool. The rest of the time we spent hanging round/playing pool with English and Scottish Paul, Jayne from Canada and Ebony, an ivory Aussie girl.

So on to Ko Tao.
From Nam Tok and the Death Railway, I passed back through Kanchanaburi and onto Natham Phaton, quick stop to take a pic of the big Pagoda there, then onto a train for Chumpon. All 3rd class, and the better for it - I was the only Farang in the carriage. I had to move a little girl who had crashed out on my seat, and for the next 5 hours we had a great conversation despite her speaking no English and me having only a few dozen Thai words. Much of it went along the lines of "Nee a-rai" (what's this) and her pointing to something - I didn't think she could be taking anything in so fast, so I was pretty amazed 30 mins later when she pointed to her eyes, nose, ear, etc and said the English word. Kids just sponge up language when their young I guess.

After 4 hours kip in Chumpon it was up for the 7am ferry to Kao Tao, a long trip all and all, but worth it. So far I'm really liking the place, though it's really pretty expensive by Thai standards (the Diving is actually quite reasonable).
This morning I went to Chumpon pinacle, and it was a really excellent dive - best in a long time, with great visibility, cool rock formations, huge schools of fish and by far the most sharks I've ever seen on one dive - I lost count after 10. Top class. The second dive on white rock was pretty good but not in the same league.
So off now for some lunch and a siesta before torturing myself one last time in Choppers Aussie bar to watch the Irish try the impossible against the Argies.

P.S. Finally found a cheap internet place that doesn't electrocute you when you plug in your camera's USB cable.

Bridge over the river Kwai

2007-09-24T21:19:00.000+10:00

For some reason a week passed before I managed to get out of Chiang Mai. It's not like I did an awful lot there - apart from an evening on a bouldering wall I can't really remember doing much of anything after my last blog post. Whatever. Anyway, I decided that it was about time I saw something of cultural or historical significance. A quick glance at the train line south showed Sukhothai and Ayutthaya, which both seemed to fit the bill.

I hopped the morning train out of Chiang Mai and after a brief change to the bus in Phitsanulok, home of the flying vegetables, I was in the ancient Thai capital.
Sukhothai definitely lived up to the hype. It's not even hyped up that much, so much of Thailand's tourism revolves around far baser needs that beautiful historical sites like this often get overlooked. For much of the morning touring the old site I had the place more or less to myself. Apart from the odd cow here and there. The ruins are spread out over a fair area but its all easy enough to visit yourself on a bike.

I met up with a French guy back in the new town in the evening, and between us we managed to convince a local Belgian bar owner to give us a shut in at his bar so we could watch the world cup game. Another heroic defeat by Ireland, but I suppose at least they tried this time. While in the area, I also popped up north via a very pink rented motorbike to Si Satchanalai, another lovely 13th century site, maybe not quite as manicured but even less visited and perhaps more atmospheric. Plus the locals there are very, er, friendly.

Not content with this cultural smörgåsbord, I headed further south to Ayutthaya, a 14th century city thats only a stones throw north of Bangkok, and therefore does get a few more coaches. Still the ruins there are also lovely, and approaching nightfall most of the buses are gone, though theres still a fair few elephants knocking about to add some colour to the occasion. I had met Elliot from California off the Train so we compared ruins and movie sequels over Leos and Singhas.

One more historical stop needed before Bangkok, this one a little less ancient. A few hours detour east by a couple of public buses brought me to Kanchanburi, and the location for the movie about the famous world war II building of the Burma railway, which included the famous bridge spanning the Kwai river. So far it seems like a really beautiful setting in the river, very nice and relaxing. My room is actually a floating pontoon on the river! Tomorrow I might actually go to see the bridge.

New Town

2007-09-16T15:37:00.001+10:00

Joining up with the two Isralei guys from the Gibbon Experience, we managed to blag a minivan all to ourselves and left the border town of Chiang Kong - a nice enough place - and arrived into pretty cosmopolitan Chiang Mai, the norths major city. The towns definitely changed a bit since I was here before - right in the heart at Tha Pae gate is a big Starbucks and theres another branch of Seattle's evil empire in the middle of the night market, flanked by a Burger King, McDonalds and Subway. Shocking. I still really like the place though.
The guys were keen to visit the temple on the mountain at Doi Suthep so we rented a jeep for the day which was good fun - my first time driving a four wheeled vehicle in Asia. Having missed a close encounter with the Gibbons we took the chance to see some up close at a local "monkey school", one of a number of similar "attractions" sprouting up around town. It was nice to see the Gibbons (not sure why they were in a "monkey" school though..., but the rest of the show was all a bit sad really - monkeys peddling rickshaws around, etc.
I spent an hour on one of the new additions around the night market - a rock climbing wall called the peak, which was good fun though a bit overpriced. In Laos I had met Clare from Falkirk and agreed, after a few too many BeerLaos, to meet in Chiang Mai to do some rock climbing trips out to a local site called crazy horse. After my unimpressive attempts on the wall, I'm not so sure I want to embarrass myself further now.

After a couple of days replacing various lost items with new ones from the night market, and tasting Chiang Mais fine cooking, I rented a motorbike and headed off to Pai, The place in northern Thailand that everyone seems to be raving about.
The trip there was really cool - almost a constant series of (hairpin) bends which required Valentino Rossi like skill to negotiate. At one stage I stopped to put on a raincoat but was a bit careless in parking and the bike slipped off the road and down the side a few meters. Oops. As invariable seems to happen in South East Asia, within a minute a group of Army guys passed and, seeing my predicament, pulled in and hauled the bike up with me. It was fine apart from a bit of a funny rattling noise I chose to ignore (and to not mention after I returned it).

Pai itself is a nice little town, with a few cute restaurants and bars. Though to be honest, I think people seem to be over hyping it a bit - its not an amazing setting or anything, and there are far too many of a certain type of traveler there to make me want to stay too long. Still I had a good couple of days and nights - the first spent mostly with a nice bunch of Thais from Chiang Mai/Bangkok who showed me all the spots to go, including a couple of places which were pretty Farang free, and the second with some Belgian girls I met in Na's Kitchen, a really good local resturant.
One of the late night pool bars - Fubar served up a Tom Yum Gai at 3am that was quite possibly the tastiest food I have ever eaten. Definitely beats a spice burger and chips.

Other than eating and drinking Pai has all kinds of new age nonsense that I stayed mostly well away from, and some cute villages that make a diverting afternoon drive. On my way back to Chiang Mai it started chucking it down so I stopped off at one of the little spa pools, and very nice indeed it was too.
Last night I decided to torture myself and watch another of Ireland's dismal performances at the Rugby world cup. The only place I could find open at 2am with a Tv screen was a pretty dodgy spot called Spicys, where I was the only one in the place passing up viewing nubile young Thai girls in favor of overpaid overrated Irish men. You have to get your priorities right. OK then, I'm off for a Frappacino and a 6 inch spicy Italian.

Gibbon Endurance

2007-09-10T15:14:00.000+10:00

I arrived in the little Laos town of Huay Xai after a really pleasant 2 days on the slow boat from Luang Prabang. The views were really nice and the boat pretty comfortable (well the first days one anyway - complete with padded reclining seats and even life jackets - whats that all about?) We stopped the first night in Pak Beng, a nice little village about halfway along the Mekong. I've really grown to like the chocolate coloured artery, though after seeing and smelling the dead cow on the way I'm glad that I resisted the urge to slurp Augustus Gloop like from the river.

For the last 3 days I've been deep in the Bokeo forest in north west Laos to undertake the Gibbon Experience. The experience starts with a bit of a marathon walk in taking anything from 5 to 9 hours - we managed to slog our way through in 5 pretty sweaty and tiring hours, at times almost knee deep in mud and always on the lookout for the dreaded leeches (I only got one but the little fcuker drank some amount of blood) Our group consisted of me, Gus and Dan from Israel and Luz from Holland, all really nice. Apart from me obviously. Arriving finally at the tree house and zipping into our new home via a flying fox was pretty cool, as was the cold water shower with views to die for.
With a bit of time to kill I decided to do some exploring on my own, having half listened to the guides fairly vague explanation of the route needed to get back on the zip lines. Almost 2 hours later and unable to find that magic route back anywhere, and in the growing darkness I managed to pull myself back up the 300 meter zip line in the wrong direction, as it was the only way I could get home. I thought after the walk I was exhausted, but after that session I found the real meaning of the word. But the euphoria of making it back and the decent dinner made up for the pain.

The next morning we awoke to the sounds of the gibbons calling and a few minutes later the somewhat tardy guides saying come quick now. So without time for camera or shoes we zipped off in pursuit of our prey. They sounded only meters away but as we tried to track them one of the lads fell flat on his backside and made a right racket to we didn't manage to see any. Still the views later from the platforms looking down at the partially mist cloaked forest were beautiful. Much of the rest of the day was spent resting and zipping around (I found that I had been only a 3 minute walk to an easy zip home the night before - doh!)

On our last day we awoke to more cool views and gibbon songs, but they were too distant to chase, so we began the long slog back to the road, finally arriving at a cute village with tons of kids making nice portrait subjects. A can of coke never tasted so good. Nor did the cold BeerLao that evening, and it was oh so nice to not eat rice for the first time in days. This morning I hopped on a little boat and 10 minutes later I had exited Laos and entered Thailand - must be the easiest fastest Asian border crossing ever. So off to Chang Mai later today and then figure out what I'm up to next.

Here comes the rain again

2007-09-04T18:20:00.000+10:00

Having had a pretty dry wet season so far in Laos, the last few days have started to make up for it a bit. Right now Im hoping all the clothes that got soaked on the roof of the Sawngthaew (a sort of truck with two rows of seats, though I sat in an additional 3rd row of plastic chairs with my feet dangling out the back - best views that way) back from Nong Khiaw will be dry before I head off on the boat towards the Thai border. Apparently the previous day a woman had given birth on the same Sawngthaew run, so at least I missed getting my clothes covered in that:)

Nong Khiaw is as far as the road goes en route to the little town of Muang Ngoi Neua, where I've spent the last couple of days. The last hour is completed by boat, and the isolation means there are no cars or motorbikes of any kind, so its a really nice place to relax and watch the village life unfold. Again the scenery was excellent, both on the way and around the area.

Theres only sporadic electricity and the food kinda sucks, but still its all part of the experience. The girl running our guesthouse was a bit of a character, and took us to her local orchard to graze on all manner of tropical fruit, which required some climbing and waving of large bamboos. The nicest part was a day spent trecking to the little village of Ban Bo, which occupies a beautiful setting in paddy fields surrounded by karst mountains. And the odd satellite dish. Its occupied by a mix of Lao and hilltribe folk.

I went with Issy and Violene who I met on the boat, and we met a few other falang who were overnighting there, including one Basque guy who was going to spend a month there teaching english to the local kids. The walking was a bit tricky with all the mud and river crossings, but very enjoyable, though we had to keep the odd eye out for the local kid hunting for their dinner. On the way back I took a dip in a lovely pool beside a cave. Fabulous.
Back in Luang Prabang now for a days r&r before braving the two day boat trip up to Huay Xai and a date with the Gibbons of Bokeo reserve. They mentioned 5-9 hours walking in leeche infested forest to get to the treehouse where we stay. Should be interesting...

Costa Del Kao San

2007-08-31T21:16:00.000+10:00

I had a great time in Vang Vieng, but after a few days there it was starting to get a bit like Spanish beach meets Bangkok traveller gheto, with a fair bit of Ballyfermot and Tel Aviv thrown in. Not all bad, but when the bar started playing "oh ah up the ra" I reckoned it was time to move on. I had intended to do another days tubing but it was chucking it down so I gave it a miss. So I hoped on the "VIP" bus up to Luang Prabang. The road trip was lovely, and although the thought of a bandit attach did cross my mind (this is the road where there has been some activity recently), its was far more likely the bus would come a cropper on all the torturous mountain hairpin bends. But the views were excellent most of the way and the trip passed really quickly.

The town itself is World Heritage listed and is full of lovely old buildings, some fine wats and nice surrounding countryside. And being at the confluence of two rivers, it gets some nice breezes to temper the heat of the day.
Mostly I've been just wandering about town, climbing the hill for nice views and visiting the odd temple.
I also spent a bit of time helping out a couple of kids at the guesthouse who were getting private tuition from a tutor there, which was really nice. The first day they really struggled to understand me, but by yesterday they had improved a lot - I guess a falang accent takes a bit of getting used to.

I met up again with Christian and the girls, and also with Mike and Emelia who I had played pool with a lot in Vang Viene.
The girls headed on the slow boat to Thailand today, so the rest of us spent the day at a really nice waterfall with a lovely swimming area. I even managed to hike to the top and peer over the torrent of water, which involved lots of carefully placed footsteps on slippery rocks. Laos safety isn't exactly first world:)

Its like your always stuck in second gear

2007-08-25T20:25:00.000+10:00

I'm not sure how the whole thing started, but here in Vang Vieng its like some sort of Friends groundhog day. Almost all the resturants on the main street are constantly showing reruns of the fairly annoying (esp in the latter years) show and everyone seems to be watching them. Its all very strange. Especially when there are much better things to do. The scenery here is simply stunning, among the best I've seen in SE Asia, loads of limestone karsts, caves and pretty little villages. It looks a bit like what I expect Gullin to be like in China. Its a great place to zip around on motorbikes, the traffic is light so you can just cruise slowly checking out the scenery.

And then theres the fabled tubing, a bit of a Laos institution. Your taken upriver a few Ks and launch onto a fairly fast flowing river in a big rubber tube. But within seconds you arrive at the first "bar" where if your not inclined to approach, a kid swims out and helps you in. A beer Lao later and a few tricks performed on the trapeze wire (you get better with each bar) and your on to the next stop. I went with Karin and Caroline from Austria, Corrina from Switzerland and Christian, another Austrian, and we met a bunch of people on the way, expecially during the marathon volleyball session during which I sustained a badly bruised toe and a nice lump after a clash of heads. It was all tremondous fun. Finishing the trip floating down on the river under an almost full moon while being pleasantly sozzled was specially memorable, we had no idea where the end was until we heard splashing in the water and an army of kids descended on us to haul us out for tips.

I arrived here a few days ago having eventually completed all my Oz visa stuff in Vientiene. I had been there so long I recognised most people - the Ozzie girl researching the next edition of the footprints guide, the (very cute) Italian photographer doing an article on Mekong village life, the crazy Laos woman who sits at peoples table and grabs their beer when there not looking, the german guy who seemed to be doing an impersionation of the minisry of silly walks. And I'm sure people noticed the Irish guy running around with a stack of papers in a plastic compression bag going to medical clinics, hospitals, all kinds of ministerial offices, post offices, stationary shops, internet cafes and various embassies. It was an interesting 9 days or so.

Change of pace

2007-08-19T19:12:00.000+10:00

I knew Laos would be a pretty easy going place, but after crossing the border from Vietnam it almost feels like another world. If they were any more laid back, they would be horizontal. I guess the old saying about Indochina might sum it up well - the Vietnamese plant the rice, the Khymers watch it grow and the Lao listen to it grow. It's taken a while to get used to walking around without being offered all kinds of things by everyone, especially tuk tuks.

Though now that I'm in the bustling metropolis of Vientiane, they are a little more commercial minded .. want tuk tuk? want ganja? want girl? want boy? But even here, the pace is really relaxed and it certainly doesn't feel like a capital city. Its a nice town to just wander around, with a number of nice Wats and buildings, and a pleasant riverfront area along the Mekong with more views of Thailand.
Since I've arrived in Laos, each town I've stayed has had views across to Thai towns, tempting me with the delicious food just out of reach as I dont have a multiple entry visa. Still, the Laos food is pretty good, not too dissimilar to Thai really. The other night I had a Papaya salad which was quite possibly the spiciest thing I have ever eaten.

After a fairly easy border crossing last week (just a minor bribe required, made smaller with a little good natured haggling) I arrived in the town of Savannakhet.
It's a really nice little place, with some nice colonial buildings and has the nicest of the riverside settings with a string of cool little eateries one after another where beer Lao and ice goes well with the little cook yourself seafood soups. It even had a nightclub, though it stuck to the government enforced 11:30 closing time, and a cute little dinosaur museum. But mostly it was walking around, talking to the locals and watching the kids play that passed the time. A nice intro to Laos.

Travel in Laos requires a bit more effort than the other south east Asian countries, overloaded public buses with all kinds of freight are the norm, and some of the food offered by the vendors is less then tempting - roast cricket anyone?
It actually doesn't taste as bad as it looks. Still, its a good idea to stock up on some nice rambutans for the journeys. And those little plastic seats in the aisles aren't too good on your bum after 5 hours or so. But its all part of the fun.

Next stop was Tha Khaek, nowhere near as charming in itself, but with lovely limestone karst scenery and pretty villages in the surrounding countryside. I hired a Motorbike with Andrea, an Italian guy who was on the bus down, and it was a challenge trying to find the various points of interest with a sketchy map and no English signs.

We eventually found 2 out of the 3 caves we were searching for, and they were both pretty cool, but the best fun was when we ran out of petrol and had to enlist the service of the village kids to rescue us.
Next day Andrea and I headed off to Vientiane, both nursing severe hangovers, and Andrea was non too plussed when he saw we would be on the tiny kids plastic chairs that are employed as extra seats on the local buses. Having taken our seats, we were then subjected to people clambering over us constantly which I found very amusing, but I could here Andrea cursing constantly in Italian. Lucky it was only a 6 hour trip.

Before leaving Vietnam I spent a day in the DMZ close to Dong Ha town visiting the Vinh Moc tunnels and a couple of the US fire sites from the war. It was pretty amazing to see the tunnels where people had lived for years (17 kids were born in them) often for days without seing daylight. Even the big B-52 shells didnt have much of an impact on the network of tunnels.

So still in Vientiane, will need to stay here a bit more in order to get my stuff together for the Oz visa as they are asking for medicals and police checks and all sorts of nonsense. Today all government stuff is closed, so checked out Vientiane's answer to the Arc De Triumph .
The weather has heated up a notch, but its still pretty pleasant so I cant complain too much. And theres always Beer Lao to cool off.

Turn left for Laos

2007-08-10T17:48:00.000+10:00

Circumstances (heavy rain disrupting the train line, and limited time left on my Nam Visa) have convinced me to postpone my northern migratrion and instead I'm going to head east to Laos. So tomorrow it's off to the town of Dong Ha, which I'm intrigued to see after the review in The Book "Today, there is no conceivable reason to visit".
My last night in Hoi An was spent playing pool and trying not to drink whiskey shots with Charlie (quite an appropriate name for this locale) from Glasgow, who had been on my tour to My Son. We also had some fantastic Vietnamese food at Bale Well - theres no menu, they just keep bringing you loads of stuff which they make into something like spring rolls till you cant eat any more. Fantastic. Next day, I managed to make the afternoon bus up to Hue. It's another colonial city with much of the older parts preserved, but unlike Hoi An, where most of the buildings are occupied by functioning vendors, its more divided into the "real" town and the museum bit that you just visit. The two are seperated by the river, the Citadel and a moat. Much of the old Citadel walls remain, and although a lot of the town was flattened during the Tet offensive, Hue's designation as a world heritage site has meant the restoration of many of the buildings. It's nice to stroll around, but even better explored on a claped out bike, as this way you are pretty much pleasantly immune to the constant attention of Cyclo/Moto drivers, postcard sellers and tour vendors.

On the bus to Hue I met up with Simon and Frederic, two German guys who I had met before on the way to Dalat (we had met while observing an unfortunate Swiss guy's repeated fainting through severe diarahoe induced dehydration) and Jill from Canadia, and we hung around for much of the time in Hue, unified in our defense against the ubiquitous cyclo drivers. To escape the streets, we hired a local boat for a short trip on the somewhat inappropriately named perfume river - judging from the "crew" I'd say there pretty bored by the whole experience.

Reunification Express

2007-08-06T19:46:00.000+10:00

Having had more than my fill of buses for a bit, I've arrived in Hoi An by the sweetly named Reunification Express train from Nha Trang. It was all very pleasant and comfortable, and although the scenery was pretty I slept much of the 9 hours. Probably cause I had ended up out too late once again in Nha Trang. While awake, I made my best attempts to commuicate with the Vietnamese family sharing my cabin, their english being only marginally better than what i could manage to utter using the back of the guidebook's phrases. From what I could make out, the conversation was mostly about if I was married or not, and if their daughter was pretty...
I actually had to backtrack a wee bit as the train arrived in Danang, so it was a motorbike taxi back the 30k or so, during which the driver spent most of the time trying to sell me a multi day tour. As consolation for not taking it, I allowed him to take me to his chosen hotel, which is actually really nice with a pool and lovely rooms.

Nha Trang hadnt been a bad spot, it's the main beach resort in Vietnam but it's not quite (yet anyway) the costa del sol, and in fact theres far more locals on the beach than westerners. Crossing the road here was also a bit more relaxed then Saigon, but still good fun. It's also Vietnam's main diving spot, and I spent a couple of days exploring the underwater scenery, which included one really spectacular swin through cave complete with scores of lovely fish. The dives were notable for the absence of any really big fish, the consequence of pretty heavy fishing by the locals, which still continues despite the areas status as a protected marine park.
Nha Trang also had a fair share of lively bars which keep going till dawn. Though the moto drivers are particularly funny with the prices they try to charge drunken tourists at this time of night/morning. Even the little old baguette ladies quadruple their daytime prices.

Before Nha Trang I visited the hill station of Dalat. It's a funny sort of place, with over the top kitsch statues and the like at every turn, and seems to attract far more Vietnamese than foreigners. Still the town and the area around is a nice enough place to spend a couple of days, not least because of the cool weather. I employed one of the local "easy riders" to show me around, and it was good enough fun, though a bit overpriced compared to others I've used - the curse of getting a really good write up in The Book.
I ended up renting my own motorbike to see some of the other sites.
One of the more weird attractions was a Gaudi like guesthouse called crazy house locally, which would make a cool spot to stay when it's properly open.

The old town of Hoi An is a really pretty spot, the one Asian town that really has retained it's colonial buildings, which are mostly beautifully resored. An amazing number are tailors, it seems that this is The spot in Asia to get your new suits. The much touted temples of My Son were a bit of a let down, but then again I guess after Angkor I'm a bit spoiled.

The river and beach area made for nice cruising on a rented bike.
Hoi An also boasts a number of nice little local bars, where you can drink the local draught beer for the pricely sum of 10p. Shame that I was almost the only one in there - I could see that everyone was milling into the bigger place next door - where you could get crappy draught fosters for 12 times the price. Oh but wait, that place is in The Book.

Good night Saigon

2007-07-28T20:30:00.001+10:00

It's my last day in Saigon, and the rains have finally come. Unfortunately I decided to leave in my laundry this morning, so theres a good chance I'll be heading to Dalat in the morning with a bag full of damp clothes. Oops.
Saigon's been a lot of fun actually, nicer than expected. Last night was a late one (6am) spent in the Go2 bar with Dillon, a Californian who worked as assistant editor on the Pirates movies and is taking time off after the mad schedule, and John, from Meath, who was taking time out recovering from the repeated traumatic experiences of Irish girls.

The couple of days before, I decided to take a more in depth look at trhe Mekong delta, as I'd pretty much breezed through it before. The main draw is the floating market near Can Tho, which was pretty impressive, and although there were a fair amount of tourists, at least the market itself seemed pretty genuine, with loads of colorful fruit and veg, and nothing in the way of tourist tat other than a few kids selling coke and such.

But for me the best bit of the trip was the afternoon spent cruising through the narrow canals near My Tho on a mixture of power and rowing boats. We did also have to indulge in some touristy gimmicks like posing with pythons and trips to various factories involved in the different elements of rice production, which were reasonably interesting, but the local people, markets and waterways were far more evocative.

A visit to Vietnam wouldn't be complete without playing as a Vier Cong in one of the tunnel systems. The nearest to Saigon is Cu Chi, where you get to run through reconstructed and slightly larger western size versions of the originals (the old ones are mostly falling in there, and too small anyway). It still felt really hot, humid and claustrophobic (and I'm not really claustrophobic) but I managed to get to the other end intact, less a few kilos of sweat.

In Cambodia I had passed up on the chance to vaporise a cow with a bazooka, but I did take the more bovine friendly chance here to pop off a few rounds on an ak47, which packed a bit of a punch. A .22 it sure ain't. Our guide definitely added to the experience, having worked as a translator for the US 101 airborne he had a lot of inciteful commentary, and was actually a bit of a philosopher on many subjects, so the day passed really quickly.
SO thats it for Saigon - I'm off to the cool mountain air of Delat next, a bit of a respite from the never changing mid 30s and high humidity.

'Nam

2007-07-24T21:07:00.000+10:00

After a longer than expected stay in Phnom Penh, I've finally made it to Vietnam.
Apart from ubiquitous comical conical hats, theres not such a huge change from Cambodia - a little more chaotic traffic (in Saigon at least), slightly more persistent peddlers of goods (and bikes) and a slightly sillier currency (16000 Dong instead of 4000 real to the us dollar). In general, the people are probably a tad less friendly than the Cambodians, but having said that, many are really nice and helpful.

I'm staying in the backpacker ghetto of Pham Ngu Lao, though even here it's still easy to access real Vietnam, with tons of cheap authentic Vietnamese food stalls around a street or 2 away - a bit reminiscent of Kao San Rd in Bangkok.
Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City to give it it's correct commie name) is a bit of a mad place, pretty chaotic (mental traffic), but charming enough in it's own way. So far I've been sampling the food, the local beers and one or 2 museums - the war remnants one was pretty cool - it used to be called the museum of Chinese and American war crimes - which didn't endear it to well to all the tourists:) I've also been playing a lot of pool, as every bar seems to have a table. I've even become a bit of a shark at 9 ball.

To take a break from the city I also visited the beach of Mui Ne - a really lovely laid back place to spend a couple of days, with nice almost empty beaches, palm trees and cute restaurants. It also boasts fairly impressive sand dunes where the local kids pretty much force you to slide down on their homemade sleds for small tips. And its a good place to cruise around on a rented motorbike without taking your life in your hands, with some nice fishing villages to stop off in.

Exiting Cambodia I decided to plump for the fast boat along the Mekong, which made a nice way to enter Vietnam - with almost no border delays or hassles. Instead of going straight to HCMC, I stayed in the town of Chau Doc, a nice little place with good views from the little Sam mountain outside of town, and some great little food stalls, even if the street lamps attracted insects in unimaginable numbers outside of a swarm of locusts. Ordering food was a bit of a challenge as the vendors hadn't a word of English, but its amazing what some sign language and animal sounds can convey.

The onward bus trip through the Mekong delta towards HCMC was memorable for the number of bridges crossed en route spanning the various tributaries of the great river, and for the repeated pucking of several of the passengers, despite the road not being all that winding at all. I think my flip flops are still sticky from the results of their expulsions, I might have to relent to one of the ever present shoe shine kids calls.

Later,
Sean.

Heart or darkness

2007-07-15T16:39:00.000+10:00

No I'm not in deepest Africa with Pat or anything, rather a fairly notorious nightclub in Phnom Pehn. The Book is particularly wary of the place but it turned out to be a pretty good laugh - and I was there with a bunch of Cambodians so I was safe enough. I'm liking the Cambodian capital - it's a bit more hectic than the rest of the country, and the sellers and beggars are more persistent (and the moto drivers more rip-off-ish) but I imagine it's pretty mellow compared with Saigon, my next destination. And some of the architecture is lovely - the royal palace and a couple of the wats are visually stunning, and the riverfront area is more Paris than SE Asia.

It also helps that I've met a couple of locals including Pich who are really nice and helpful in showing me around. She even took me to some Khmer dancing, which is vaguely reminiscent of Irish ballroom dancing - lots of silly moves that I don't know and don't look too cool, and lots of camp hand flapping, but a good laugh nonetheless.

As well as showing me around, she was able to keep me safe from the hordes to beer girls/taxi girls that frequent the bars here. Most of them are fairly impoverished girls trying to earn a semi decent living to help out their families. Wages in Cambodia are ridiculously low with many people earning $100 a month or (a lot) less.

We also dined at the Foreign Correspondence Club, the height of poshness in Phnom Pehn. To be honest though, the food was only OK, though nicely presented, and the setting was suitable grand and colonial.

Less fun but a must do was the Tuol Sleng (s21) museum where Pol Pot's regime tortured some 20,000 of their own people before sending them to the Killing Fields - which seems pretty peaceful now and not as harrowing as the prison.

Well, apart from the 80,000 skulls on display. And the clothes and bones peeping out from the odd spot. But walking around the cells of S21 and looking at the documented photos of the doomed victims was certainly enough to drive me to drink, and the bars along the riverfront for the evening.

En route from Battambang, I stopped off in the town of Kompong Chhnang, a pretty place with beautiful countryside.

Its a fair sized town - about 40,000, but I was pretty much the only tourist in the place, apart from a couple of Americans travelling with their dad and his new Cambodian wife.

There were some lovely small villages around, and also a pretty large community of Vietnamese boast dwellers, not to well liked by the locals by all accounts. All very pretty to see though. And a nice pause before hitting the capital.

Badabing

2007-07-10T14:03:00.000+10:00

I'm in the sleepy provincial town of Battambang. Much of the reason I came was the modes of transport involved in getting here, away and around. From Siem Reap you can get here by road in a few hours, but it's much more fun to take the very scenic boat trip which passes through numerous cute villages (some if which are basically a collection of floating pontoons) and small narrow waterways with tons of birdlife.

Seated on the roof, watching the world go by (slowly), the hot sun was just tempered enough by the breezes, though one girl sporting an "everyone loves an Irish girl" T-shirt didn't look in too great a shape by the end of the 9 1/2 hours. A tad longer than the 3-8 estimate mentioned in The Book.

I had been hoping to catch one of the worlds slowest trains out of here towards Phnom Penh, but unfortunately it's only running now once a week and I've just missed it, so will have to settle for a bus on the newly tarmacked road. How dull.

I did get a chance to go on the Norry train, a weird contraption made up of wheels from old army tanks, a petrol engine and some bamboo (giving it it's western moniker of bamboo train). It was a great laugh, especially when meeting one coming the other way, when whoever is deemed to be the lighter load has to disassemble their "train" and remove it - they can be back on the track again in a couple of minutes. Impressive. Especially when the other train is actually the real train...

The countryside around Battambang was very rural and pretty - workers in the rice paddies framed by wats, making for picturesque touring on the back of a moto. The drivers, like most Cambodians, are exceptionally nice and friendly and it's cute the way the kids run after you shouting hello/goodbye, tourism here is still pretty sparse. There were also some more grisly reminders of the recent past, with the "killing caves" complete with a collection of human skulls and bones.

Before leaving Siem Reap, I spent some time sampling the nightlife and ended up out till dawn playing pool (with a prowess I didn't realise I had) with some Canadians, Americans and a bunch of Dubs. A great night out, especially when we hit the seedier bars later and got chatting to some of the long term residents.

Having "mastered" the cuisine of Thailand, I gave the Khmer cooking a try also. It was a good laugh getting the ingredients in the market, the dishes themselves were pretty involved - I'm not sure how well I could recreate my fish Amok and spring noodles if I had to. Still, they certainly tasted pretty good at the time.

Angkor

2007-07-05T16:48:00.000+10:00

Having moved countries, I've had to switch to Angkor the local brew, which isnt bad.
Coincedentally, it's also the name for a fairly famous group of temples close to Siem Reap, and the main reason people come to Cambodia.

For the last 3 days I've been whizzing round on the back of a Moto from one to the other, and though there are too many to mention, Angkor Wat itself for the sheer scale, Banteay Srei for the intricate details and Ta Phrom for the enclosing jungle (and getting to see where Angelina Jolie stood) were all pretty amazing. The banter with the local kids, in equal parts endearing and annoying, was as much a part of the experience as the high speed chases and the temples.

Hello. Where u from?
Ireland.
Capital Dublin. Conas ata tu.
Very good.
I have T-shirts.
It's ok, I don't want one.
If you don't want one, maybe you want two?!
Cute.
U want bracelet?
Have already.
U buy one for your girlfriend?
I don't have one.
You don't have? I can get u one.

And they probably can too.

The other thing Cambodia is associated with is Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killing spree in the 70's and 80's. I've just finished reading this book from a survivor, and although I couldnt put it down, at times I wish I had as it's pretty harrowing. Most people here I talk to lost parents or siblings to the war, so it's still pretty fresh. But the people here are very spirited and they are very definitely looking to the future.

Crossing the Thai border the first thing I noticed was the number of expectant Moto drivers looking for fares - they were everywhere. The border town could almost have passed for an Indian crossing, with the dust, noise, dodgy money changers, cows chomping on the litter and a few hindu statues in sight. Many of the houses were pretty basic thatched affairs, build on stilts to cope with the worst of the flodding during the wet season. The road to Siem Reap lived up to The Book's label as boulevard of broken backsides, with a fair portion of the journey spent in mid air. Still I was a bit dissapointed to be on a reasonably comfortable (by 3rd world standards) bus instead of the pick up truck i was expecting.

Siem Reap has some fairly trendy parts to it though, with bar street a fairly obvious target for a session tonight, now that I've moved from the burbs to downtown. Foods pretty good so far - being kind of less tasty thai/chinese ish, but unlike in Thailand I've actually resorted to the odd western dish here for dinner.
Speaking of which, I feel the urgent need for a nice cheese baguette and coffee - Vive La France.

What travelers do all day

2007-06-28T16:58:00.000+10:00

This is the title for the second part of are you experienced which I'm re-reading at the moment. Its a great satirical account of the type of catatonic, glazed over, too cool hippie travelers that are extremely prevalent in India, but can also be found in large numbers throughout south east asia, and unfortunately there are a fair number hanging out here in Lonely beach. Not that I'm against lounging languidly on a hammock listening to the likes of Morecheba and Frente, but at least I feel I'm doing it in a relatively unaffected manner. Tossers.

Anyway, I also came across another book by the same author which started well (had me in stitches for bits) but tailed off towards the end. After all that heavy reading I'm now looking for some light relief with Noam Chomsky's latest.
After that I might read something from this fairly appropriate list. Should make for a better read anyway than Thai girl, definitely one of the worst written books I've ever come across.

So a week on Ko Chang has turned into three. Dunno where the time has gone. Rainy season has also turned up with a bang, turning the front of our Bungalows/restaurant into a tributary of the local river. I feel like we know everyone in the village here now, if not in person then by an assigned nickname, or by the gossip circulating among the locals. We've eaten pretty much everywhere, and now have identified the optimum spots for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Speaking of food, we also went back to the Chili garden to supplement our knowledge with Pad Thai, Penang Curry and some stir fries - all delicious.
We also hit Paddy's Palms, the new (and thankfully only) Irish pub, located in White Sands area, for some top notch Sunday roast.

Nights out here in Lonely Beach are also getting quieter as the rain gets heavier. I've moved onto drinking Leo beer rather than Singha when possibly, hopefully this radical change will coax my brain into firing some new neurons to counteract the braincells I'm killing.
Right now were planning to leave tomorrow - me for Cambodia, Clare for North Thailand and Laos. Mind you, thats been the plan for quite a few days now, and were still here...something about Ko Chang just seems to hold you.

Birthday parties, Gods and Lady Boys

2007-06-16T16:06:00.000+10:00

Ok, so I'm supposed to be in Cambodia now cooing over some really old buildings in a jungle, but instead I'm still in Ko Chang over indulging in all manner of vices. Still, it passes the days.

For a change of pace we rented a Moped for a bit and traveled around the island - the roads can be a bit of a challenge at times, but we managed to remain largely unscathed.

You have to love the randomness of Thailand sometimes - its not often you try to eat at what looks like a restaurant but is actually a kids birthday party, to which you are subsequently invited and fed for free (great food too), while later playing Jenga with lady boys, and then discussing matter of factly with another restaurant owner how she travels at will to Bangkok without her body actually leaving the room, all quite strange to say the least....maybe Hanno knows her??

And considering its the rainy season, the weather has been superb - the odd heavy shower for a few minutes apart, we've only had 1 day of persistent rain, when we decided against driving back to our huts, instead staying in the partyish area of White Sands.

We also completed a few hours at the Chilli Garden, a Thai cookery course ran by a lovely woman, and even if I say so myself, the Green curry I cooked was one of the best I've eaten and the Tom Yum, Chicken with cashew nuts and Glass noodle salads were equally delicious.

In fact all four dishes we cooked were so tasty we couldn't leave anything uneaten, so I'm starting to burst out of my Sarong. Best get back for some swimming to tone up.

Did also spend an awesome day at a waterfall (in the national park) with a gorgeous swimming hole below - sensuous ice cool clear water amidst beautiful verdant rain forest - what more could you ask for?

Daily grind

2007-06-15T16:09:00.000+10:00

Many people think that travel is easy, kind of like a long holiday - but its actually quite hard work at times. To prove my point, here is a typical day on Ko Chang.

Wake up to the sounds of waves lapping at the base of the bungalow, and the cries of monkeys from the rain forest behind.
Get in some aerobic stretching exercises before breakfast.
Amble down the lush garden path to the treehouse restaurant for an omelet or maybe fresh muesli with homemade yogurt.

Recover from the exertion of eating by lounging in the hammock with a mango shake.
Cool off slightly with a dip in the warm turquoise water before snoozing on the fine sand under the shade of the palm trees.

Back for lunch of intensely tasty Pad Thai before stretching out on the deck with a good book, or back to the hut for a siesta. Stroll down to the picturesque village for a spot of Ting Tong spotting while sipping on an ice cold Singha,
or watch the sun set behind the islands from the deck of the Hut.

Time for dinner, probably a green or massaman curry, along with a chicken chilli and basil stir fry, and more Singha. Follow with deliciously sweet banana pancake, if still not stuffed.
Chill out to some excellent music at the bar before falling in to a languid deep relaxing sleep under the mosquito net cooled by the fan and soothed by those lapping waves.

Repeat as often as required.

Pad Thais and Singapore Slings

2007-06-11T16:14:00.000+10:00

Ahh Thailand! It's good to be back.
With all the really delicious curries, noodles and banana pancakes for silly prices from the street vendors, you almost forget the stifling heat, humidity and hustle and bustle of Bangkok. Its all part of the experience but I must admit I'm quite pleased to now be on the island of Ko Chang, watching the waves roll on the white sand outside of this little internet cafe. Its still pretty hot, I'm only wearing shorts but I'm dripping sweat onto the seat, but there is a cool breeze outside and its got to be one of the most chilled out spots I've been to.

Before leaving Australia I got to do a great wreck dive in Albany - we got to really go right inside the ship even checking out the old computers and toilets:)
Though I most admit the 17 degree water left me shivering by the end of the dives.
For m,y last night in Perth I headed to Cottesloe beach as I didn't fancy another night out in the city - it was a lovely place, though I did end up bitten by bed bugs, which is never pleasant.

Singapore only got a stopover cause there was no direct flights to Bangkok, but I must admit I really liked the place this time - there is some great street food and lively bars where you can have fun trying to tell the working girls from the legitamate targets, listen to some truly awful Karaoke or sink a Singapore Sling while de-shelling peanuts in the long bar of Raffles hotel. Fantastic.

Even if the beer is pricier than a poncy Dublin nightclub. I had met Fran and Declan, a couple of Irish blokes on the train from the airport and Gemma and Alison, a couple of English girls at the hostel so it was fun hanging out with them. Also let the students at Toni and Guy practice on my hair for a bit.

In Bangkok I met up with Clare again and we spent a couple of days catching up before heading for Ko Chang.
Later,
Sean.

Almost in Asia

2007-05-31T15:21:00.001+10:00

I'm actually in Denmark, a wee village in the south west of western australia.
Its a cute little spot, and I've come here mostly for a days surfing, and it was an awesome experience. Not for the waves - though they wernt bad at all, but instead for the sight of a large humpback whale slapping his flippers and partial breaching the water about 50 meters from where I sat on my surfboard. I've seen a lot of spectacular animal scenery on this trip, but I think this has to top it. Especially as it wasnt part of the agenda (surfing) and there was no one about apart from a couple of surfer girls and me. Later I spotted a couple of baby whales just to top it off. Awesome.
The south west has been really cool - though mostly the weather has left a bit to be desired - cloudy and raining, but the last couple of days its been beautiful again.
After leaving Coral bay I headed north again on the wonderfully times 3:00 am greyhound to Exmouth, to dive on the muirion islands which was really good - including several pretty large white tipped reef sharks, huge schools of fish and the largest moray eel I've ever seen.

After all those buses it was a relief to fly down to perth, and I picked up a hire car and headed south to Bunbury, a teaming metropolis compared to what went before. It was weird getting used to traffic, towns and people again. After a couple of days hanging around with the locals, including UK standup Ross Nobel whos traveling round on the same BMW bike more famously used by Ewan McGregor on his big trip,

it was off to the cheese, chocolate and, most importantly, wine of Margaret River, where as well as quaffing the local excellent produce in copious amounts, I got to sample the delightful taste of a witchetty grub (made famous by class shows like survivour and I'm a Celebrity) - albeit in this case an already dead one.

I also passed glorious coastal scenery with lighthouses aplenty - though mostly shrouded in mist and rain, and some beautiful forrests, where I completed 3 fairly high adrenelin tree climbs - trust me, there a lot scarier than they look, as well as the pretty but fairly tame tree top walk.

Next stop is Albany to complete a dive on the HMAS Perth and then its back briefly to Perth to catch my flight to Singapore.
See you in not such a long time...

Coral bay revisited

2007-05-21T12:43:00.000+10:00

Much to my surprise I'm back in Coral Bay. By now I was expecting to be heading back from Darwin, but as often happens plans go awry and you need to execute plan b.
Basicially the tour company fucked up the booking so we were left without a seat on the trip to Darwin. It was almost a blessing in disguise for me, as my back was pretty fcuked from the bus to Broome anyway. So we decided to chill in Broome for a couple of days. For not the first time, I bumped into Gerri and Steph (from my tango days) and almost went with them on a 4wd trip but decided against it after advise from my Chiropractor! Instead we spent much of the time lazing on the beach watching sunsets with the odd bit of drinking, planet spotting and wet T-shirt contest watching.

Clare headed off to Darwin and I hooked up with Priska and some mates on the bus for a couple of more lazy days.
After all this r&r and with no real plan I decided to have another shot at seing the worlds largest fish and headed back down to Coral bay.

The trip started well as we encountered a turtle and a white tipped reef shark on our warm up snorkel, then after an hour or so the spotter plane located one of the beasts and we chased off only for the fcuker to dive down before we got in. Another hour and they found another one, this time group 1 (not my group) got in to swim but again the b@stard dove down and we missed him. I was starting to think maybe someone didnt want me to see one when the boat took off to another spot, nearly losing us from our precarious position standing at the back decked out with fins and snorkels. This time I wasnt going to miss it and although were suppose to wait in a group I followed the dive master straight over to the shark and nearly into his mouth - I definitely couldnt have gotten much closer without touching it, but it didnt seem to mind and swam along happy as larry. It was a really stunning thing to see, really rally beautiful and worth all the long bus journeys and money - the fact that it took so much time and effort to see it made it all the more rewarding in the end.
So now its back to some chill time in Coral bay - I spent about 30 mins snorkeling beside with a turtle yesterday which was pretty cool just watching him go about his daily business.

Broome

2007-05-10T15:15:00.001+10:00

Finally arrived in Broome last night after several thousand bumpy dusty kilometers. Theres no mistaking your in the tropics up here, at a latitude of 18 degrees its pretty dam hot.

Nice though, with lovely cool breezes to temper the ever present sun.
And some pretty nice beaches, complete with camel trains at sunset.

The last couple of days on the bus were pretty long, the highlight being camping in Karijini national park with its beautiful gorges and swimming holes - croc free as well, which may not be the case further on.

Our last night was in Pardoo catle station - a pretty enough place but with ferocious mossies that ignored repeleant and smoke.
The days on the bus were long - often with fairly repetitive scenerary, but it was quite pleasant watching the red dust and eucalyptus pass, snoozing, listening to music and chatting with the passengers - which were a good laugh. Due to the nature of the hop- on-off trip, we lost a few people along the way, but also added a few - with Gina and Michael from Melbourne the bus is actually becoming quiet Aussie.

All the bumping around seems to have done something to my back, and its a bit fcuked at the minute, so might search out the services of a local Chiropractor, expecially if I continue as planned with Clare onto Darwin - another bit of a marathon journey.
Hasta,
Sean.

Elusive sharks

2007-05-04T20:36:00.000+10:00

Well the whale sharks failed to show - theve only been spotted once this week aparently, but its still been good fun in the Ningaloo reef. We did manage to snorkel with Manta rays, Carpet sharks and reef sharks so it wasnt all bad, and we spotted some dolphins, Minke whales and turtles from the boat. I also managed to get in a couple of dives which were nice enough, but not overly colourful.
The trip up here has been a bit of a laugh too, even if at times I'm the only bloke in a bus of ten. This traveling business is tough.

On the way we checked out the Pinnacles and later stoped in a lovely town called Denham, which acts as a jump off point for the Dolphins at Monkey Mia - a fun enough experience, even if its a bit of a circus at times.

Not sure what it was about Denham - its just a wee village really, and the beach isnt all that, it was just a really chilled out place where you can stroll along the beach in the evening and chat with the super friendly and genuine locals. There was also some awesome canyons to see on the way, and shell beach was totally beautiful. Coral bay is a bit more of a scene but still really lovely, and there is coral 100 meters from shore to snokel in so its a great place to spend a bit of time in the water. Also met some really nice people here - Warren an Aussie, Lenonard a scot and Emma (English) and Priska from Switzerland, one of the few on my bus over 20.

Off now to the BBQ party and then an early night I reckon, too many nights of excess in recent times, I must be getting old.
Ciao,
Sean.

Knackers

2007-04-28T20:52:00.000+10:00

I'm not an especially tidy person (perhaps thats an understatement) and I certainly am not adverse to roughing it, but I can't believe the state of the hostels in Perth (ive tried a few) and the state of the people in them. Most of this trip I've found places to be fine, and people to be generally reasonably considerate, but after one too many nights in a bed bug infected damp dark smelly noisy dorm room with snorers, piss heads and bed weters, I've splashed out and gone for a nice b&b complete with all maner of pamper-phenalia like dressing gowns and run by a twee old english couple. Its wonderful.

Perth itself is a nice enough place - though certainly more than a bit edgy in places, but the weather is lovely and the Indian ocean warm and refreshing.
I did manage to meet a few decent folk, including an Isralei guy who showed me how to cook pretty tasty Isralei scoff, and a few good Irish and English people who knew the best pubs, naturally. I also met an Italian guy and an Irish girl at the beach that recomended a hostel so am giving that a shot tomorrow.

I've just managed to sort out my travel plans so am heading up north in a couple of days for my rendevous with the whale sharks, and eventually Broome and Darwin.

Leaving Tasmania

2007-04-25T18:55:00.000+10:00

This morning I bade farewell to Tassie and the Tasweigans.
I almost didnt make my 7am flight. Met up with a German girl Jule who is doing her thesis on forrestry in Tassie and we ended up at some student party in Hobart explaining to a 16 year old self proclaimed neo nazi why hitler wasnt really that cool. Made for an interesting night, and had to go straight from there to the airport for my Sydney flight, and then the 5 hour flight to Perth, so all in all a pretty long Anzac day. At least I caught a few Zss on the plane.

The days rock climbing in Launceston was superb, I managed to get up a couple of the easier climbs without falling and it was a real buzz, definitley something I'll do again. The guide Gerry was really good - hes written the main guide book to the climbs here.
I decided to rent a car for the last few days as the Tassie bus system is pretty basic and slow. I paid a quick visit to the Tamar valley wine region which was lovely, and then headed on via the bay of fires area to Bicheno. Stayed in a nice place there, and met a few interesting folk including Ross, a canadian guy who had lived in Dublin in the 60s and was backpacking around aged 77, Miriam a contact improvisation dancer and Murielle, a swiss girl that works in a coffee shop but manages to free climb and base jump in her spare time.
Made mw feel like a bit of a wuss using ropes and reserve parachutes.
Both nights we watched the little fairy penguins struggle ashore and march right past us which was very cute.
The last morning we visited the wildlife park to see the Tasmian Devils (and pet the Kangaroos!) which was pretty naff but fun.
I also visited the lovely Frecinet national park beaches, and then headed on to Hobart and port arthur, the preserved penal colony which was pretty interesting.
Shame the weather had turned pretty cold and wet, but I guess thats the norm for this time of the year, but back now on the (fairly) sunny west coast.

Overland

2007-04-20T10:03:00.000+10:00

I'm back in Launceston having had a fantastic trek along the overland track. My preperation wasnt the best - I got on the 6:30 bus with a bad hangover and far too little sleep after a night out with some of the brewery tour people. Luckily the bus to the start took a while and let me sleep off the worst of it.

The clouds parted almost as soon as I started and by the time I had climbed Cradle Mountain, the first sidetrip en route, the weather was perfect and views were lovely. It was a surprisingly tough scramble up bolders, given the amount of people who attempt it.
Day 2 had some beautiful walking through almost african like savanah, and you really felt like you were in the middle of Tasmania, far removed from the outside world. It was at times quite blissful.

The next day contained the climb to the top of Tasmania, mount Ossa, which was absoutely stunning. The whole day was a gem. I walked much of the remainder with Alex and Annette - an english couple living in Sydney close to home and away territory. The final day was mostly cloudy and through rainforest - not expecially exciting but we did see a lot of Wallabies - to go with the Wombats, gliding possums, brush possums and Tiger snakes - one big one got away before I had the chance to get a good shot. It was only later I read they are they most dangerous snake in Australia:)

The track had a lot of interesting characters, including too older ex navy guys that Annette reckoned were having a brokeback mountain like reunion. On the last night I slept out under the stars as there was too much noise in the hut. It was lovely till the mossies came and forced me inside - probably just as well as the heavens opened later - nice timing as we were getting the ferry back the next morning. I think I'm suffering a bit of walkers withdrawl at the moment - so today I'm off to do some rock climbing to pick me up a bit.
Take care,
Sean.

Tigers and Devils

2007-04-13T11:26:00.000+10:00

I arrived to more glorious sunshine in Tasmania, long may it last as this place has a reputation for pretty miserable conditions. I'm in Launceston, though the mainland Aussies like to refer to the place as Inceston. It is pretty sleepy place but quite charming nonetheless. I had hoped to do a bit of rock climbing here as there are loads of climbs in the area, but all the guides are away in the Blue Mountains. So I'm going to start my Overland Track walk tomorrow, which means I'll be out of contact for the best part of a week.
Before leaving Melbourne I went along to Ed Byrne's show at the comedy festival which was a pretty good laugh, though I'm not sure even the Aussies were comfortable with the typical Irish use of profanities:) I also got up at an unearthly hour to watch Man U's 7-1 humiliation of Roma which was quite entertaining. Pity about Mourinho's bunch scraping through.

Today I'm off to the Boag brewery here in town to sample Launcenston's best creation.
Hopefully back online in a week if not eaten by a Tassie devil or the (possibly not extinct) Tassie Tiger.

Melbourne

2007-04-10T14:08:00.000+10:00

I arrived in Melbourne on Schedule and met up with Mike who has just moved here from Portharlington, he is suffering greathly from homesickness but somehow is holding himself together. Not.

He and his "landlady" Stephanie are kindly putting me up while in Melbourne. Our first night was spent boozing and eating with some Aussies which was really good, its nice to meet some locals for a change!

Next day we headed to the local climbing wall as both of us were keen to give it a shot. It was a real blast and I think I may just have found my new hobby. I was shattered though after 1 1/2 hours of it.
Next night we went on a tour of Brunswick street in the Fitzroy area of town. Its a really cool spot with more than a little of a bohemian feel to it and some friendly and interesting locals. Mikey spotted one earlier he particularly liked, who was on crutches - aparently he has a thing for crutches, must be the vulnerability thing. Think he was pleasantly surprised I had managed to coax her to his seat while he was at the bar. We accompanied crutch girl and friend to a salsa bar which had a really excellent band. Too bad I cant salsa. Another one for the list.

Yesterday we headed to the MCG for some Aussie rules footie - its a cool stadium. Today I'm in St Kilda the beachfront part of town, which is thronged with nice cafes and pubs, might hit the climbing walls later if Mikey isnt too wrecked after his first day of work here. Oh and happy easter to everyone.
Footnote - updating this from the coolest internet cafe in Melbourne.

Christchurch - Sydney

2007-04-01T18:09:00.000+10:00

Well I finally made it to sydney and I have a new phone number, so if anyone needs to text/call my number is

+61 420827337

I met up with Clare and dad a couple of nice days in Christchurch to finish up, not doing a whole lot really, just walking about enjoying the englishy feel of the place, walking by the river, watching some chess.

I did manage to see some Kiwis, but they were in the Kiwi house so it wasnt all that exciting really. On the flight to Sydney there were amazing views of the bridge and the city on the way in, I'd forgoton how spectacular a setting it all was.
I met up with John (of ex Curam fame) and took over the living room much to the delight of his flatmates Greg, Amber and Claire. John's other claim to fame is that his brother is part of Dervish who sing for Ireland in Helsinki soon.

On the first night we went to see amber perform in the play she is in which was a really good laugh, and afterwards John showed me some of his local hangout spots which were pretty cool.
Next morning I headed to Manly and got some surfing in - conditions were ok but a bit windy, but water was so nice and toasty and it really felt mad that you could surf so close to a major city.

I spent much of the next day wandering around Sydney checking out old haunts and workplaces, I must admit the JPM office does have a lovely location. For a break from the city I headed off to the Blue mountains early in the morning and a days Canyoning which was pretty cool, including abseiling down a 30 meter warerfall which was quite tricky and slippy, and some long water jumps into fairly narrow gorges. Afterwards I got a lift back with some girls from the tour and headed out to meet up with Frank and Paul from colleg, so we had a nice little reunion. Paul seems to like his new career as a schoolteacher a lot better than that IT nonsense. Frank seems to have adopted to his father of 3 role pretty well also.

I also managed to get a couple of walks in.
The Manly scenic way which really felt like you were out of the city even though you were never far away. Overheard an interesting conversation on a mobile - the gist of it was "what I'd do, mate, if I were you,is walk right up to the fucker and punch em in the face, knock some fucking teeth out, but make sure there are no witnesses, or if there are, they will say he started it".
And the Cooge - Bondi shore walk which has lovely views and nice pit stops. It was strange seeing Bondi after living there previously and I'd say it has changed a lot. It was a bit tricky finding somewhere open later cause it was good Friday but eventually we found a spot by the bridge. We met up with Martin and his better half who has moved from JPM Glasgow and seems to like the Sydney lifestyle, apart from the 7am starts:)

Kepler

2007-03-29T14:40:00.000+10:00

I've just got back from my final NZ tramp, the 60k Kepler track. The dawn view of the valley from above the clouds was breathtaking. The second part over the ridgeline offered some absoutely stunning views along a long exposed ridge walk, probably the best views of the tramps I've done here.

At the end of a long 9 hours walking on my second day I was able to enjoy a really refreshing swim in the beautiful lake Manapouri. It was also really nice to start and finish the walk from Te Anau under my own steam. Next time I'll have to make it a bit more challenging.

Right now I'm back in Queenstown (black sheep, room 3) and am flying up to Christchurch today as I didnt particularly fancy 9 hours on the bus. Then its off to Oz on Sunday - will definitely be a little sad leaving NZ but sure I can always come back again in another 12 years.

Steward Island

2007-03-27T08:34:00.000+10:00

Steward Island was amazing. For somewhere I only went to as an afterthought, I'd say its probably one of the highlights of my trip so far. The ferry over was something else, a real roller coaster of a ride, with the boat lurching everywhere and the 2 girls attending running up and down the isles changing peoples sick bags. It was brilliant. As soon as you land you can here the bird life that is everywhere, and feel the pace of life slow down - the locals know how to take things easy.

I booked into the Rakiura
track soon after arriving and picked up my rented stove and accessories from a lovely "office" in the middle of the forest. The walk was really beautiful, through forests of tree ferns and moss, with occasional beach views - a bit like the Abel Tasman trek on the mainland at times. I was on the lookout for the elusive Kiwi at all times, but only had clear sightings of deer, possum and various small birds, until the 3rd day when I got a glimpse of something disappearing into the bushes that might just have been one. Most of the fellow trampers were German/Dutch/Swiss/Kiwi and the huts were nice and cosy places to stay. Walking through the forests here you really do get the feeling that we have royally fcuked up the planet and that this is the way it should look and sound. Another 3 days of beautiful weather to boot. Ferry back was pretty calm - almost disappointingly so.

I jumped on the bottom bus back in Invercargill and regained my seat up front with Paul the driver, who seeme3d to love to quiz me about everything and anything, especially how I came to know Clare. He was a bit of a character. Arrived in Te Anau and decided to wait a day before starting the Kepler track so that the weather would be cleared, so we enjoyed a nice relaxing day doing nothing in particular.

Invercargill

2007-03-21T19:35:00.000+11:00

OK, by now I'm supposed to be in Sydney, but instead I'm penning this from, of all places, Invercargill (eat your heart out Damian et all!) I've gotten quite attached to the place now, and am heading into the Frog and Firkin momentarily. I arrived here via a fairly circuitous route. In Queenstown I hung out with Clare who took over Damian's spot in my dorm at the black sheep, and decided to accompany her to Dunedin as I had pretty much done everything I wanted to in Queenstown - including finishing off the Thrilogy with easily the scariest bungy of the lot, the Nevis high wire, and doing the Rungway,

a Via Ferreta system normally used to move troops around the alps, but used here to give a good feel for rock climbing without having to get superman fingers and lose 10 kilos (it was really excellent) and also fly by wire, which involved flying a mini Aeroplane around while tethered to a length of cable - a bit gimmicky to be honest.

In Dunedin we went on a wildlife safari to see Penguins, Albatross, Seals and Sea-lions, which was really good even though this was my second time doing it, and I decided at this point I wanted to extend my time in NZ and see some of the Catlins and Steward Island, so I bought a ticket on the bottom bus and we headed off to the deep south.

The Catlins is one of the less touristy spots in the country, and also one of the least populated - the main town has 350 people - which can be a bit of a problem when you need to hitch to the nearest town which is 30k away (took 6 hours return, including meeting a crazy American, Tom, who had been hitching recently for 3 years, and was definitely on the run from something). Certainly an interesting day, and topped off with spotting more Penguins. Today I went surfing some really nice waves just outside our hostel, excellent until the wind picked up, at one stage it blew by board into the air and over my head, which I've never had happen before.
Tomorrow I'm off to Steward Island hopefully to see a Kiwi (bird) in the wild, and then I'm hoping to complete another of the NZ great walks from Te Anu, the Kepler track.
Hasta,
Sean

A nice little walk

2007-03-13T15:51:00.000+11:00

I've just gotten back to Queenstown after hiking (tramping) the Routeburn track, one of the great walks in New Zealand, and one of the most popular. This one and the more popular Milford track tend to get booked up months in advance, but I was able to get a cancellation so started out on Sunday with a very long bus trip and a failly long walk in pretty nice weather through nice varied scenery. Day two started off bright and sunny, despite weather predictions of rain and snow,

but after a couple of hours the rain did come, and continued to spill down as I was crossing the Harris Saddle, the highest (and most exposed) part of the trek. It wasnt all that bad though, and I managed to make it to the hut by 1pm so spent much of the day snoozing by the fire looking out at the rain. I even managed to finally finish "a long way down" - it only took 7 weeks, and made good stove fuel later.
At dinner I bumped into Cian and Kevin from Dublin and Galway, who insisted I helped them consume their whickey bottles as they were becoming heavy to carry. They had recently been to Tibet, and got me thinking I have to include that in my itinerary later, even though the whiole chinese thing there will be pretty annoying, its still supposed to be amazing. I'm starting to think that 6/7 months might not be long enough. Today was a beautiful walking day, I'm now back in Queenstown and its quite chilled and raining, a change from the normal 25 degrees and sun we have had pretty much throughout up to now.

Sunday I also bid farerwell to Sue and Damian, who are now in Thailand for some r&r, Damian's arm is now pinned and plastered and hopefully on the way to recovery, so should have a happy ending...

Dolphins, bungy jumps and broken bones

2007-03-09T15:57:00.000+11:00

So Damian has a pretty badly banged up elbow. After much delays he was operated on in Invercargill this morning, not sure exactly what the latest is, but he was in good form afterwards. The problem is that the elbow was chipped, rather than a simple break, but fingers crossed all will be ok and he can get his flight with Sue on the 12th.

After Milford we dropped him in Invercargil and headed up to Queenstown for a quick visit and some Jetboating on the shotover river, which I found quite good but the others didnt think much of it - to be hoinest, it was the most commercial and impersonal activity so far, but I found speeding through the narrow canyons at high speed and narrowly avoiding the rocks on boat sides pretty cool.

I've now completed 2 of the 3 parts of the AJ Hackett bungy thrilogy, having done the "ledge" yesterday - reportably its the one most people chicken out of, but to be honest I thought it was pretty easy. Maybe I'm becoming immune:) On the long drive out of Queenstown (to Kaikora) a few days ago, we hadnt planned on any bungy related activities, but made a quick stop at the Kawarua bridge site just for a look. As tends to be the way of these things, Carl and I decided to do it, but had to wait for 30 mins for some "safety tests" which helped greatly in building the anticipation. It was a blast again to do, and we got nice dunkings in the river.

We made it to Kaikora around 1am and parked outside the Dolphin encounter center for our 8:30 swim. The experience was amazing, we were in a pod of 4 or 5 hundred dolphins, so we were all constantly surrounded by numerous curious playful (and 100% wild) dolphins, I really hadnt expected such close interaction. Definitely a highlight of the trip so far. For the afternoon we rented some surfboards but the rocky beach conditions meant I was the only one silly enough to go in for any length of time, and I only managed to catch a couple of waves on my 6' 10" board before giving up, but it was still a good laugh.

Next day we headed to Christchurch, and parted company with Betsy, a very sad affair, we had all become quite attached after the 2 weeks. We stopped off at Gore beach for a (pretty cold) swim en route. Damian's op had been postponed so he got sick of waiting in Invercargill and took a flight to Christchurch to meet us, and we all had a great Thai meal, I must admit the food here has improved greatly since 12 years ago.

Next morning we said goodbye to Coley Julie and Carl (who are now back home) and headed to the airport for our flights back to Queenstown - which promptly got cancelled due to fog, so we were on the road again in a rented ford - the 6 hour trip down felt like a breeze after driving the truck, what with cruise control and decent acceleration. We had a great night out in Queenstown, and spent yesterday up the mountain for the ledge and also some go-karting/lugeing.

Take care,
Sean.

Champagne backpackers

2007-03-02T12:42:00.001+11:00

Ray has given us this title after seeing the amount of gadgets and paraphenalia we were carrying leaving Aukland - iPods of all types, mobile phones, pdas, game boys, Garmin GPS, backup GPS, rugby balls and shirts, flags, dolls, barbeques, hair products and numerous other unnecessary luxuries like soap were all crammed into the van. And for the first while we always checked into nice places with electric hookups and nice hot showers. But for the last 3 nights, weve camped on the side of the road, sneaking into places for illegal showers and toliet usages, and the van is a total tip. Much better.

We are on our way back from Milford sounds, having spent a lovely day kayacking in absoutely beautiful scenery and being entertained by the local seal polulation.
All the scenery in NZ has been pretty amazing, but the fjords really are stunning, the only annoying thing being the rampant sandflies which are devouring us.

On our way here we stopped off in Greymouth to do some caving, which was pretty cool, including crawling through holes half submerged in water. We then headed for the Glaciers. The champagne 5 went for the heli hike on Franz Joseph, I spent a day on Fox Glacier ice climbing, which was brilliant but pretty tough.

Last night we had a pretty late night, spent in the local (only) pub in Milford with the guide, one of the guides from the ice climbing who happened to be here too, and some very drunken Kiwis. At the end of the night, Damian landed akwardly from a height on his elbow, so he is currently in Te Amau medical center awaiting the result of an x-ray. (Just heard its broken so were off to Invercargill to have it seen to - an unexpected side trip!)

Later,
Sean.

Road Trip

2007-02-26T20:30:00.000+11:00

We picked up Betsy on the 22nd, and after stopping to clear out most of the contents of the local supermarket, we made our way to our first destination, Raglan, a world renowned surf spot on the west coast of the North Island. Betsy wasnt the fastest on the road, and despite Carl's best efforts we arrived at Raglan at dusk, just in time to see some lovely rollers and the last few surfers catching them. That night we headed out and found the one bar in town still open, but it was a cool if slighlly strange place with a good Ragae band playing. We debated staying longer in Raglan but decided to push on as we wanted to concentrate more on the south island. En Route though we had one or two little challenges awaiting.

First up was Zorbing, which involves climbing into a large ball containing some water and trying to stand up as it rolls down the hill. We did it in 2 groups of three and I loved it. Poor Julie didnt so much as Colie and I apparently stood and sat on her the whole way down. I went up for seconds on my own, but it was definitely better first time round, maybe the novelty was wearing off.

The next challenge was in Rotorua, and was a chance for me to take on the 7 meter waterfall that had capsised our raft 12 years ago. I was successfull in instilling the fear of god in everyone before we started, especially Sue who kept her eyes closed most of the trip. The scenery was really beautiful, not something I remembered from the first time. The first couple of small waterfalls were surprisingly tough. When the moment came for the big one I felt quietly confident, but still made sure I had a vice like grip on the holds as we went over the drop. As soon as we went over though I knew we were fine, there was no sickly tilting of the boat which flew straight and true and landed beautifully, though the guide at the back gpt sucked out much to his annoyance.

Later we met Ray and Amanda for some drinks, and in the morning headed to Taupo for out next task, a 15000 foot tandem skydive.
It was a bit cloudy so the jump time kept getting pushed back, so we passed the time sailing a pair of small catemarans on Lake Taupo, which was great fun if a little cold (i kept getting soaked).

The skydive was awesome, a full minute freefall (but still too short). There was a little cloud which we dived through and the scenery was really stunning (surprisingly enough I was looking around quite a lot).
Afterwards we headed south to Wellington, we parked outside Dee's, a friend of Coleys, who had gotten us tickets to the pub for the Ireland England match at 6:30am the next morning. Needless to say we were in good form after that game, but as we were catching the ferry to the south Island we couldnt celebrate too much.
I still had some stomach problems so became the designated driver. Betsy was a bit of a challenge but quite good fun to drive. The ferry crossing was lovely, smooth and sunny, with some nice scenery especially through the sounds on the south island.
First stop after the ferry was the wine region and some wine tasting, which I only partially sampled, and then we headed on towards Able Tasman area.

Today was a lovely relaxing day sailing around the Able Tasman park, which I had seen previously while hiking, but the sailing offered a really different perspective on it. The weather again was fantastic, since hitting New Zealand its been really excellent, warm and sunny every day ... long may if last.

Hei konā rā,
Sean.

Wedding

2007-02-26T20:02:00.000+11:00

When planning this trip initially the one important date I had to plan around was this one, Feb 21st, the day Raymund (with a u) was giving up his life of drunken debauchery in exchange for wedded bliss with Amanda. The venue for the big day was a small village on the edge of a lovely vineyard outside Aukland. I arrived very early on the 19th, having left South America on the 17th. As for the 18th, well it kind of got wiped off the records by the international date line. Jet lag wasnt too bad going this way (even though it was 8 hours difference), so spent a lovely day with Ray and Amanda and some of the wedding party which included climbing a little volcano (i got to climb one!). To add a little challenge I agreed to push up the buggy containing Frank's daughter Ciara which was harder then it sounds on that gradient. All Frank's kids were great posers and I spent some time practising my portrait skills.
Nerves were definitely starting for the happy couple to be, but they were both keeping them under wraps well enough. Next day saw most of the others arrive, and we spent the day getting suits and stuff together, and later having a few final drinks in the aptly named O'Hagens bar.
The day itself was lovely, and the setting ideal. There were just enough clouds to keep the sun from burning too much, and both Ray and Amanda looked chuffed and pretty relaxed, and Iain's performance for best man speech was top notch - thanks for all who contributed ideas, I'm only sorry we couldnt use all of them...

Later on we even managed to get Ray on the floor (he's famous for his lack of dancing, but the sounds of Disband's hey baby got him out). All in all it was a really great night, and one of the most laid back weddings I've been too.
Ray even stayed pretty sober, until the shots tempted him...

Next day we were bussed back to Auckland. I hadnt really got any concrete plans for New Zealand travelling, and as Damien, Coley, Julie, Sue and Carl were hiring a 6 berth camper van for the next few weeks I was able to invite myself along for the trip, much to their dismay. It should be top notch.

No Volcano

2007-02-16T04:45:00.000+11:00

I arrived in Pucon, a smallish touristy town in the lake district of Chile, with the main goal of climbing Villarica, but it appears the gods are not in favour of it just now. I booked to do the trip yesterday, and we awoke to pretty nice clear skies, but by the time we had made the 30 minute trip to the starting point, the clouds had rolled in and the wind was picking up, so we didnt even attempt to start it, dissapointing but at least we didnt have the same fate as the people 2 days before who got to within 100 meters of the summit before they had to turn back.
Pucon is pretty well set up for all kinds of adventure activities, so instead I passed the morning doing "Canopy" which is basicially sliding through trees on a flying fox, which was a good laugh, and then in the afternoon I did Hidrospeed which is basicially running white water rapids in something resembling a tobaggon, and was pretty scary (reminded me a bit of Kayacking, but with less control) but also great fun.
Today I was booked into the volcano climb again, but it was chucking it down at 6 30 so I didnt even bother going to the office. Oh well, at least my phone arrived safetly by bus, and theres lots of nice enough resturants and bars to while away the day. I tried to sign up to do some canyoning but it seems that no one wants to do much in this rain. Had to content myself with visiting the thermas (hot springs) which were a good antidote to the weather.

I´m now in Santiago having arrived this morning on the bus cama. It seems the weather has followed me from Pucon, as just as I reached the top of the statue of the virgin mary (a good lookout point for the city) the heavens opened again.
So instead I made a different pilgramage, to the vineyards of Concha y Toro and the pictured Casillero del Diablo cellar where much of the wine that I drink is made. It was certainly a spiritual experience. I just had trully excellent Thai food and plan on hitting Santiago's nightspots for my last night in South America.
Tomorrow night I´ll be heading off to the land of Jafas for Rays big day.
See ya,
Sean.

Navimag

2007-02-13T13:42:00.000+11:00

I arrived in Pucon to grey skies and light rain, so not the best conditions for the Volcano climbing tomorrow, but its brightning a bit so it might be on. Will be good to get some exercise after lazing for so long on the boat.

I wasnt sure what to expect from the Navimag ferry, I had heard some great reports and some so so ones, but it sounded like a bit of a laugh and it certainly turned out to be. The start wasnt great, we were delayed boarding for 7 hours as the ferry couldnt dock due to high winds, so passed the time having dinner with the Danes from TDP.

When I eventually got on board I recognised I had the first symptoms of travellers diarohea so was glad I plumped for a room with a view and a loo. As you can see from the pics, things in cattle class were a bit more crowded.

Much of the first day the clouds hung to the shoreline, and the dramatic scenery didnt realy materilaise. I spent a lot of it in my bunk anyway. By evening it had cleared a bit, and as we reached the main glacier in the evening light it really was magical, with chunks of ice floating by, you could almost be on the titanic. Next morning was beautiful weather and the scenery really was excellent under blue skies.

The ferry docked at the tiny village of Puerto Eden, the only stop in the 3 days, which was a cute little place. I spent most of the trip out on deck enjoying the sun and shelterning from the wind, and spotting Whales (including Blue) Dolphins, Seals and countless birds. I had missed out on the big brother style bonding on day one due to my illness, so endeded up talking with some of the more quirky people, including Phil from Nottingham who had gotten here via a really long meandering motorcyle ride from Canada, and Gasper from Paris who had sailed from Senegal to Brasil and hitched mostly from there. After too much Concho Y Toro I accomponied Anita from Holland in a wonderful rendition of Radioheads creep and climbed onto the bow of the ship to do the "im the king of the world" titanic bit. The excellent weather also meant that the notorious Golfo de Penas (the open ocean part) was as smooth as a milkpond.

I left the boat in Puerto Montt with the intention of going straight to Pucon, but all buses for the day were full, so stayed the night and visited Frutillar, a cute little German looking village on the lake, where you could swim, walk in the forest and enjoy Kaffee und Kuchen.

Back in the Hospedaje I bumped into John from Mayo, who it turns out was on the boat but I hadnt met him. He is very kindly sending on my phone which i left behind this morning. One of theses days Ill get my act together.

A little Chile

2007-02-09T08:05:00.000+11:00

OK, initially I was kinda chuffed to feel cool weather again after high 20s - mid 30s, but i´m pretty much ready to head north to warmer climes, so its good that I´m jumping on a ferry heading to Puerto Montt (lake district) in a couple of hours. En route I´ve been promised panoramic vistas of fjords and icebergs, and a lot of heavy drinking. Its a good way to spend 4 days after stumbling through Torres Del Paine for the last 5. But the experience was definitely worth it, even if the occasionally howling winds, rain, hail, sleet and snow made it a fair challenge. But we also got lovely sunny spells and sometimes the wind even stopped. Its a beautiful park, and feels like its almost in Antartica (its not all that far) but to really do it justice you need clear blue skies, and they were fairly rare.

Still I had a ball and met some great people along the way, at various times trekking with English, Irish, Brazilian, Danes, Italians, Americans and even a couple of Chilleans. Got chatting to Nicole from Seattle about the Camino De Santiago de Compostella in Spain, and it sounds Awesome so considering tacking that on to the end of my trip.
Heading off to dinner with some of the folks from the trek here in Puerto Natales, and then its all aboard the Navimag.
Later,
Sean.

Patagonia

2007-02-03T07:50:00.000+11:00

The word has always given me goosebumps, evoking images of huge wilderness, beautiful lakes and towering mountains. And wind. Lots of wind.
I arrived in El Calafate via Barialoche and some delays yesterday, and was instantly mesmorised by the place. Not Calafate itself, which is just a ramshackle town thrown together to populate an area near Chile, and in more recent times has taken on the mantle of gateway to the Moreno glacier, according to the guide the only growing glacier in the world. I though that the Kiwi ones were also expanding, but maybe I´m wrong. In any case, is a pretty spectacular sight, with large chunks of ice calving (love that term) frequently into the torquise blue milky Lago Argentino.

Was heading to bus station yesterday to sort out tickets for the bus to Puerto Natales. Chile when I heard a rendition of "dirty old town" and spotted Gerry and Steph from the BA tango, so will likely accompany them on the Torres Del Paine trek in a couple of days.

In BA I managed to get to a musem at last, though it was the Boca Juniors museum, so thats sort of cheating really. Quite a few players known to us on our side of the pond have played there, including Requelme, Nolberto Solano, Sebo Veron, Caniggia, Batistuta and of course Maradona.

Last day in BA I met up with Jan the dutch pianiast and Kiana and Anna from Norway. There pretty much doing nothing for 3 weeks in BA, which seems to suit them.

Tonight I´m planning on having Fondue with some Swiss I met on the trip to the Glacier, so should be a change from Steak (which aparently isnt as good down here anyway - climate makes them tougher aparently)
Hasta Luego,
Sean.

To Brasil .. and back

2007-01-30T11:14:00.000+11:00

OK, so I was only in Brasil for 5 hours or so, but I´m counting it as I had to get a stamp on my passport:)
The reason of course is Igazou falls, the largest waterfalls in the world (I said largest, not highest)
And its a sh1t load of water alright, pretty impressive.
You can view from Argentina or Brasil, I tried both and agree with the general consensus that the Argie side is better, even if the Brazilian one gives views of more water at the same time.
Before leaving BA I managed to get to a tango with Gerry from Dublin, Lee from Texas and Steph from England. Gerry is a bit of a character and can talk for Ireland! None of us had much of a clue but it was a bit of a laugh nonetheless. The owners were obviously impressed and gave us free passes for the next night - i like to think it was for our dancing skills but suspect it may be more to do with the copious amounts of wine that was consumed (and the wine is great by the way, and really cheap). Spent the next day wandering round taking a few photos and ended up in a bar and got chatting to Jan the piano player, whos over here from Holland for 3 months writing music. Sounds idilic.

Flew up to Igazuo without incident, and spent a day exploring the local town (which is tiny) and procured a fairly radical haircut to combat the heat.
Next 2 days were the falls, and playing volleyball with some isralies, Mat from Canada, Kristina and Camilla from Denmark and Amelie from Germany. Amelie had just spent 3 months working with street kids, very commendable, it sounded quite tough. All in all a very pleasant time up there. Back in BA today for a couple of days before flying off south to see some of Patagonia. Bus cama down here was super comfy, though i was a bit worried when a sniffer dog took a fancy to my pockets!
Chau,
Sean

Beunos Aries (just)

2007-01-24T09:29:00.001+11:00

Ok, I´ve finally made it to my first destination .. and what a karfuffle it was!

On Saturday I realised I still had too much stuff to carry home, so decided to make a last drop at the post office .. unfortunately it looks like in my haste i managed to slow post home my travel tickets .. doh!!
I didnt notice till late Sunday night but thanks to the folk at STA who got them reissued and Caoimhe who very kindly picked them up and brought them out to me at the airport (i didnt have time to go in), I managed to make the flight by the skin of my teeth.
Plane was great, BA, good food and films, though I didnt see much of them as I was so knackered I slept most of the way. The bloke beside me was heading to Antartica, which made Patagonia sound positively tropical.
Forecast today was for sunny weather but on the bus into town the heavens opened and my PacLite Gore-tex stuff got an earlier than anticipated test on the way to the hostel (passed).

First impressions are hard when its chucking it down but as the sun is starting to peep out I think I´m liking the place. It still feels and smells pretty South American, mostly due to lax pollution laws, but theres a definite charm and class to the place. Food so far has been good, as is the local brew.
Spent much of the day wandering around San telmo near the hostel, a cute area that feels more like a town. Am currently on Ave Florida which is a pedistrian street in the center and is mentally busy with folks shopping and strollingç. Its not a bad spot, though your reminded of the fact that this is still Latin America by the fairly numerous street kids here.

All in all a good first day. Thanks again to everyone in work that gave me a great send off, and to all the folks at home for putting up with my incompetence in getting started :)

Tickets bought!

2006-12-07T20:37:00.000+11:00

Saturday passed the point of no return, cause I've gone into STA travel and parted with a wad of cash. So here is the itinerary.

London->Buenos Aires (arrive Jan 23rd)
Iguazu Falls
Patagonia
Pucon/Lake District
Santiago->Aukland (arrive Feb 19th)
Christchurch->Sydney
Syndey->Perth
Ningaloo Reef
Perth->Singapore
Singapore->Bangkok
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia
Hong Kong
Overland tour to Beijing
Trans Siberian to St Petersburg
St Petersburg->London

Looking at about 6 months just now, but that may change.