Borneo

Well, this is the epilogue of the Odyssey Overland 2009 trip, the
official trip finished in Singapore, or more properly Darwin, and
Borneo is an optional extra. So far we've seen some cool things here,
and some rubbish things: I will relate accordingly.

Our first stop was Kuching for one night, just to catch our breath
before heading to Bako National Park by minibus and boat: the park is
inaccessible by road. This park is famous for being one of the few
places left in the world where Proboscis Monkeys still exist in the
wild, there are about 1000 left. I wasn't aware of this initially, as
we set off on a jungle trek to the nearest beach. Just fifteen minutes
later we saw a family of PMs in the trees above us, maybe half a dozen
jumping and swinging past, stopping to eat as they went. They are
quite gentle and reserved for monkeys, no poo throwing here. A short
while later they went on, and so did we. I found out later that it was
quite lucky for us to see them so easily and quickly, and later still
I found out how endangered they are. Very beautiful and unfortunately
very rare creatures.

We carried on walking through the jungle, and my God, it was hot!
There was no wind, and the humidity must have been close to 100%.
After no more than ten minutes my clothes were soaked in sweat and I
was being bitten alive by insects, even with mozzie repellent on. The
problem with mozzie repellent in the jungle is that you sweat so much,
most of it comes off. The only way I found to minimise the bites was
to keep moving, easier said than done when you are exhausted and
dehydrated. Our 800m walk to the beach took an hour, the terrain was
so difficult, and another hour to get back. And my water ran out just
after we started back. Not a good situation, but it was only an hour.
Despite this, it was a good walk because we saw the PMs.

The long-tailed macaques are a totally different kettle of fish
though: aggressive, sneaky thieves. They will run up and take any
unattended food or drink, try to break into your room and they
threaten you if you get too close to them. Typically, they aren't
endangered.

One thing you notice about the jungle is that there are no locals in
it. They all know it is hot and buggy and stay out of it, or chop it
down. Only weird foreigners go into the jungle for a walk. I now
understand exactly why there is a deforestation issue on Borneo: it is
horrible to live in the jungle.

After Bako, we came back to Kuching for two nights, quite nice but
oddly sleepy for a town of its size. There is an old quarter, now the
Chinese district, dating from the colonial days, and a beautiful brand
new government building which elicits resentment from the locals who,
understandably, feel that the money could have been better spent.

Whilst here we went to the Semenggoh orangutan sanctuary, along with
every tourist in the area. Even though it was busy with people, it
also turned out to be busy with orangutans as well, young ones, mums
with their babies and even the notoriously tourist-shy alpha male of
the sanctuary: Ritchie. It was amazing to see so many orangutans in
one place, and they are even more endearing in real life than on TV.
Ritchie was something else though: 140kg, suspicious and in full
control of the situation. He knew that he was the king of all he
surveyed, including all us tourists.

Our next port of call was Bintulu, via Sibu. This involved a very long
day's travel by minibus, boat, local bus, and taxi, and we stayed
there for two nights. Our hotel seemed to cater more for the per hour
clientele than the per night ones, so in retrospect it is maybe not
surprising that our room had cockroaches living in it. We were moved
in the second night to another room, which also had cockroaches, but
this time my bed also had bed bugs. Their bites are really itchy, so
much so that you wake up, and obviously don't want to go back to
sleep. Rubbish.

We did go to Similajau National Park whilst there, and went trekking
through the jungle for 14km. This was actually easier than the 1.6km
we did in Bako NP, as it wasn't so stifling or as buggy in that
jungle. Of course all my clothes were still soaked through, and I
still got bitten a few times. The trek was to Turtle Beach 1, which as
the name suggests, was definitely meant to be full of turtles! We,
however, saw none. A picnic partially made up for the distinct lack of
turtle action.

One of the nights we spent in Bintulu was a Saturday, and it would
have been rude not to partake of the parties. So after watching
Notting Hill on the TV, Denis and I went to some bars. We weren't the
only Westerners in the village but I only saw one other the whole
time. Some of the bars were a bit poor, notably the Paradise Cafe, but
Casablanca Bar and Lounge more than made up for it. This was obviously
the place to be on a Saturday in Bintulu, with an excellent local band
and a happy crowd. Denis had a dance-off with a local dude and showed
the appreciative audience how they roll in Irishland.

Following the highs and lows of Bintulu it was onwards to Niah
National Park. This park has a huge cave system which is home to
millions of bats and swiftlets, and of course, tons of bat and
swiftlet poo. Very cool to walk through the caves and we even came
across some locals harvesting the swiftlet's nests for birds nest
soup. To do this they climb poles to the cave roof, these poles can be
up to maybe 50m high, and they hold 3m long poles with baskets on the
end which they use to poke the nests off the cave walls. Naturally, no
safety equipment of any kind was in evidence. For those who don't
know, swiftlet nests are made entirely from the birds' saliva,
allowed to dry. Whoever first thought about eating them must have been
very hungry and very agile.

We are now going to Brunei, home of the famous sultan, via the town of
Miri. One more stamp in the passport!

Pics are the cave entrance at Niah, Denis appreciating Alex's moves,
Turtle Beach 1 sans turtles but with Debbie, Kuching skyline with town
hall, and as close to an orangutan as my phone's camera can get.

KL, Melaka and Singapore

Because of my extended stay on Koh Samui, I ended up in Kuala Lumpur a few days before the truck. This suited me fine because I was able to spend a week with an old friend who lives there. The thing with visiting people you know is that touristy stuff gets put on the back burner: I saw the Petronas Towers only from the outside and Batu Caves. The caves were impressive, and hot, and I got mugged by a psychotic monkey who took my bag of food. I could tell it was a psycho because the back of its head was missing: it was not a monkey to be messed with. That was pretty much my tourism in KL. I did find some cool bars though, and some nice shops, so my time was obviously not frittered away on trivialities.

After rejoining the truck, minus Abby and Elaine who both went home from KL, we drove the two hours or so to Melaka where we said goodbye to Calypso. I wasn't pleased to see her go, but it did seem like the right time. 29000km or so is probably about right for a journey in a truck.

Melaka was quite pleasant, in a quaint colonial kind of way. It must have been very important in the past judging by how many nations had conquered it at one time or another: it was British, Dutch and Portuguese before Malaysia was formed. There was a rotating circular viewing deck in the city which gave a great view, there was also a big ferris wheel, which seemed to be a small copy of the London Eye, and didn't interest me enough to warrant a visit.

Since Calypso was going home from Melaka, we took the bus to Singapore. Along with half the country, it seemed. The border posts were massive and very busy, especially on the Singapore side, which had this construction more suited to a Terminator movie than a friendly welcome. I'll say it now, I didn't like Singapore. It is clean, pleasant, has plenty of parks and greenery but it is too clinical for my tastes. The trees all seemed to be planted exactly eight metres apart, the grass was cut to the same height, everything needed a rule, regulation or right-angle to exist there. It felt very much like Central London but with more rules: $500 fine for this, $1000 fine for that. And for all these rules it was no cleaner or more agreeable to be there, and many rules were flagrantly and continuously broken by locals anyway. Not my cup of tea.

Because Singapore was so expensive (just as bad as the UK!) we decided to move and spend one night across the border in Johor Bahru. What a difference a bridge makes. JB was grimier, needed a good clean, and had the odd rat visible at night but it had life! Maybe this was due to the impending Deepawali festival, but the whole town was in party mode, with music and markets and fireworks. It was a great change from Singapore, where the whole country seemed to have a broom handle shoved up it's behind.

Well, there are eight of us going to Borneo now, not including Tim and Cheryl, everyone else has gone home or to Oz. Or both.

No pics this time, my sincerest apologies and I consider my knuckles rapped as punishment. Will do better next time.

Koh Samui

After Bangkok we traveled to a small town called Prachuap Khiri Khan, which was pleasant enough but not a big thing. A barbecue was held there by our lovely crew though, very nice overlooking the sea.

The big thing came after PKK, when all of us went off to some island or other for six nights of well earned rest. I went to Koh Samui with four others, mainly because I couldn't think of anything better to do. I wasn't holding up high hopes for Samui, I expected it to be little more than sitting on the beach for five days. But I can now understand why some people come here and never leave, it is a wonderful place to spend time.

Staying on Samui, everything seems to slow down, and blend into everything else, the whole experience of being there is more important than any individual event. If you are thinking that this is a cop out which really means that I did very little on Samui, you would be partly right. Frankly, after five months on a truck being constantly under the feet of twenty-odd people it was great to get some personal space and freedom back. To further my drive for freedom I hired a car on Samui, a large pickup truck with mirrored windows and chrome wheels which was perfect for the island. The woman in the hire place said that it was four wheel drive so I could take it anywhere.

So I took it up a mountain in the middle of the island. There was a sign saying something like, "Restaurant, best view", so I went to see the view. It was about seven km up a dirt track through the forest and anything less than a 4x4 wouldn't have made it. The view was amazing, but I got the impression that it was unusual for someone to actually make the journey up there by themselves. The restaurant lady said that they got 80 or so people there every day because another company took "jungle tours" up there, this must be the normal way to reach this place. On the way back down I took a different track assuming it would be of similar quality to the one on the ascent. Never make assumptions! The route down the other side was of similar quality to those used by off-road experience companies to terrify corporate team builders: it was unbelievable. What was even more unbelievable was just how good my pickup was off-road, it didn't ground or get stuck once. At times the track oscillated between being so steep I was worried the car would tip over, and so variable that you couldn't see where the road went and just had to guess and hope. All the above probably implies that there was a single clear track descending the mountain: this is not true. There were in fact several tracks forming a maze-like network leading who knows where, from which I had to guess which track led off the mountain. This sounds easy, but when you arrive at the third crossroads surrounded by forest where all the roads lead uphill, you begin to worry a bit. Anyway, I got the car back down, with only a scratch to remember its adventure. Well, a long scratch. Which cost me 4000 baht when the hire place saw it. Hmmm.

I liked Koh Samui so much I stayed for an extra week whilst the rest of the group carried on to Malaysia, this proved to be a good choice based upon the stories I heard from others. Good for me, anyway, as I had a chance to relax. Also I met up with three of our group who had left previously: I picked them up from the ferry port and drove them around a bit.

One week later I flew to Kuala Lumpur to stay with my friend V, who I hadn't seen in years. In the process I broke the overland tradition, so my overland trip is now officially from Aberdeen to Koh Samui. Still not a bad journey, right?

Pics are view from my balcony on Samui, view from the top of the mountain and Robin enjoying a foot reflexology massage.

Bangkok

We had four nights in Bangkok, which is not enough to do this city justice. The city itself is huge, with sprawling spaghetti overpasses, skyscrapers, shopping malls, street hawkers and the Skytrain, which is excellent. The first day I just went shopping, mainly for other people's computers, as three people bought new ones in Pantip Plaza, five floors of tech heaven. I remain computer-less, as my choice of machine is apparently unavailable here.

Being a tourist in Bangkok seems to result in weird experiences happening quite regularly. Tim, one of our crew, was contacted by a producer from TAN, an English language Thai TV channel, who had seen the truck and was interested in interviewing him for a segment on one of their shows. Tim, being the fine, stand-up bloke that he is, immediately volunteered four of us to do it instead, including me. So the stage was set, the camera crew and interviewer arrived the next day and started filming us and the truck. It turned out quite well as it happens, the questions were well thought out and allowed for decent answers and the volunteers performed well imho.

One question they asked of all of us was, "Where is your favourite place on the truck?" My favourite is the roof seats, and they were quite impressed when we showed them how they worked. It is rather surreal sitting on the roof of the truck in the middle of Bangkok with a cameraman standing at the far end whilst explaining what my definition of the truck is. This is my second TV appearance on this trip, the first was in a rooftop restaurant in Lhasa, but the difference here is that we will get DVDs of the finished show, which should be good for a laugh.

Weird TV show out of the way, experiencing Thai culture was next on the agenda. I visited the Grand Palace, which is the main residence of the Royal family here, making it the equivalent of Buckingham Palace in the UK. Here though, it is more of a complex of buildings than just one. It is, as you would expect, magnificent, with ornate buildings, a museum housing coins and Royal clothes and jewellery, and dress guards on either side of the entrance. What I did not expect were the squads of real, heavily armed guards dotted around the place: clearly here they err on the side of caution. I did want to see the reclining Buddha statue near the Palace, but it was so hot that I gave up and went back to the hotel.

There are a few men on the trip who are, like me, single, and so no trip to Bangkok would be complete without a visit to the red light district to see a ping pong show. Well, I did say that experiencing Thai culture was next!

We tried to find our own ping pong show but ended up in an establishment which was probably the worst strip club in the world. It was indescribably bad, suffice it to say that I did not think it was possible to be so turned off in a room full of naked women. Bangkok has no shortage of strip clubs, however, and it was easy to find a better one. It is not easy to find ping pong though, and we eventually had to admit defeat and ask a tuk-tuk driver to take us to one.

So here we were, watching unusually talented ladies do unusual things with no clothes on. What made it even more odd was the rest of the small crowd watching: all tourists, mainly women, some Japanese businessmen, all clapping politely when the performer did her thing. It must be odd to be talented in this department, there are not many career options open to one with such skills. Perhaps this is for the best.

Pics are Bangkok from one of the many motorway overpasses, a part of the Palace and a detail from a mural inside the Palace. No ping pong pics unfortunately.

Cambodia

We only have six nights in Cambodia, and now, on the last night, I can say that this is nowhere near enough. I will definitely come back here at some point, there is so much of the country we simply haven't had time to see.

However, what we have seen has been great. Our first stop, the capital Phnom Penh, was a surprisingly pleasant city which I really enjoyed. Wat Phnom, the legendary location of the founding of the city is a pretty temple on a small hill populated mainly by beggars and monkeys, and is almost the only touristy bit of the city I saw. This is partly due to the rain, which is torrential when it decides to appear.

We took a tour the next day which visited the decidedly miserable Tuol Sleng genocide museum, and the infamous Killing Fields. The museum is housed in a complex which was a prison during the days of the Khmer Rouge for important prisoners like political enemies and intellectuals. Before this it was a secondary school. It is a strangely sterile place to visit, with no feeling left of the acts which took place there, but this doesn't mean it leaves you unaffected.

The Killing Fields are actually only one of dozens of similar sites dotted across Cambodia, where mass executions took place, this site just happens to be the one nearest Phnom Penh, and the one used for the prisoners in Tuol Sleng. It is now a memorial to the people who died there, with a monument containing the skulls and clothes of the people exhumed from one of the mass graves there. Again, it is grim, and again, it feels unexpectedly inert, as if time has washed the slate clean of the horrors of the past. The tour walks you through the now beautiful and peaceful paths meandering past the unexcavated mass graves, where it is common to see pieces of clothing and bone coming to the surface of the ground. The guide waits until you are standing on them before he points this out.

In comparison to the war related sights I saw in Vietnam, Cambodia seems to have been able to leave the past behind and move on, I feel that Vietnam still hurts from their recent conflict.

From Phnom Penh it was off to Battambang, the second city of Cambodia, although you would be hard-pressed to believe it. It looks and feels like a Wild West town, but perhaps fortunately we only stayed one night here to be able to get the boat to Siem Reap the next day.

The boat was optional, and cost us foreigners $18. I think the locals paid closer to $5. This was to be the way of things in Cambodia. Regardless, the boat trip was pretty cool, the fields were all flooded and it was impossible to see where the river was at times, the pilot had, however, obviously done this many times before. We passed through several floating villages which were amazing to see, some buildings were on stilts to get above the water, whilst others simply floated on the top. The local schools had flights of steps leading to the water's edge, there were floating pigstys and chicken coops and a mobile phone mast on stilts. Some floating houses even had pool tables inside, don't ask me how they got them in there, or how they play pool on a wobbly boat.

Siem Reap is a town which is booming thanks to its proximity to Angkor Wat, and the hordes of tourists that it attracts. The town itself is tourist central, with loads of hotels, restaurants, bars, and high prices. To be fair, if you had just flown in from the UK, you would think that it was all quite cheap, but compared to what it should cost here, Siem Reap is a rip-off.

The complex of temples around Angkor Wat however, is worth every penny, and then some. We only had time to see the small circle, which includes just the most famous temples, but even this was amazing. The highlight was of course the Tomb Raider temple, which I think is called Ta Prohm. Walking through this temple is just like being in a computer game: it is so different to anything else that it is difficult to suspend your disbelief even though it is all real. Also, you can pretty much wander wherever you want, through collapsing doorways, over rubble, up on top of roofs, and no one says anything, just like a computer game.

We have one more night in Siem Reap, and then off to Bangkok for four nights of hedonistic mayhem.

Pics are the Tomb Raider temple, our luxury boat to Siem Reap, some floating houses and the skyline of Phnom Penh.

Beach to Saigon's bustle

After a rather epic minibus journey we arrived at Jungle Beach resort near Nha Trang, where it was dark already so we couldn't see much of the place although I could see that my accommodation was another bamboo hut. The following morning showed us the fantastically beautiful location we were in with a gorgeous beach and warm sea to swim in. It turned out to be a resort for relaxing, and not much else, as we were quite far from anything touristy. This was a nice change for a while, but I get bored of doing nothing and three nights of this was enough for me.

We took the day train to Saigon after the R&R on the beach, this was an experience. Soft class seats, the best on the train, were reminiscent of British Rail in the early Eighties, with torn seat covers, seats that reclined only when they wanted to, and very little luggage space. One good thing was the food on the train: very tasty and quite cheap, a bit of a surprise really.

Saigon was like the chalk to Jungle Beach's cheese, a massively busy metropolis which seemingly never sleeps. I visited the War Remnants museum, which was undeniably one-sided but this could be forgiven since it is the side we never see in the West. It is not a pleasant experience to see this museum, the images inside are brutal and graphic, but it does show vividly the futility of war. The area of the museum which I found most difficult to deal with was the part showing the children born since the end of the war with massively deformed bodies or strange syndromes due to Agent Orange. I found myself edging farther and farther from the displays: I did not want to see this. Only later did I realise that this was the reason for the high number of people I saw in Vietnam with deformities, it just didn't click before.

The next day we visited the Cu Chi tunnels, another remnant from the war. This was quite regimented and touristy but still gave some of the atmosphere of really being there. The guide leads you through paths cleared in the jungle, past bamboo booby traps laid for American soldiers to fall into, B52 bomb craters and finally to the tunnel entrances, where we could visit only the first of three tunnel levels, the lower two being too small for Westerners. The atmosphere was heightened by the presence of the nearby gunnery range: the sound of machine gun fire echoed constantly through the jungle and gave some idea of what it must have been like to fight there.

We got a boat back to Saigon, which went past some of the most expensive housing I have seen in Vietnam, and some of the slums as well, which reminded me a bit of Sao Paulo: the divide between rich and poor is just as great here.

I am writing this on the bus to Cambodia, which is slowly filling up with other people's huge quantities of luggage. Pics are Tim contemplating the train in Nha Trang station, and some slums next to the river in Saigon. Next stop Phnom Penh.

End of Laos, beginning of Vietnam

We got a chance to spend two nights in an eco-lodge deep in Phu Hin Bun National Park: we were supposed to be camping but this proved to be impossible for various reasons. I was not particularly looking forward to this, but how wrong I was.

The place we stayed in was two hours drive from the main road, so it was rural enough already, but then we had to take boats for 40 minutes as well! The boats were small wooden things which seated three plus the pilot, who also had to periodically bail out the water which flooded the bottom of the boat. This adventure out of the way, we arrived, and found our accommodation. This varied in standard somewhat, mine was a bamboo hut containing two hard beds with mosquito nets, a light, and nothing else. Even by the standards of this journey this was very basic accommodation!

The national Park was apparently most known for its huge cave system which the river flowed through, so we all booked on a trip through the caves for the following day. This made the whole journey worthwhile: this cave was vast. It is accessible by boat, and is 7.5km long! It is big enough for a cathedral to fit inside in maybe half a dozen different places, and a church almost everywhere else. It really is astonishing, the sheer size of it is barely believable, the rock formations inside are fantastic and we even met fishermen inside in the dark. If this cave was in Europe it would be a national treasure, famous around the world, but because it is in a remote part of a remote country, it is virtually unknown.

The house speciality of the eco-lodge restaurant where we were staying was whole roast pig, so we had to order it for the last night, it would be rude not to. It was in fact roast piglet rather than pig, and the two piglets needed for our meal made a lot of noise in the morning, which was slightly unnerving to us Westerners used to pre-dead food. In any event, the food was excellent once cooked over an open fire for the whole day.

To get to Hue in Vietnam we went via Savannakhet in Laos, which is a fairly uninteresting town. We had to leave the truck here, because Vietnam wouldn't let it over the border. So we bussed it to Hue, which is a great place to spend a few days. Nothing ever goes completely smoothly though, our bus had a blown tyre on route.

Unfortunately we only had one full day in Hue, which I used to visit the beautiful Imperial palace. It was bombed heavily in the Vietnam war, and so is in the process of being restored, but until all the work is finished it is possible to see the bullet holes and shell damage.

One more bus took us to Hoi An, where I am writing this. I really enjoyed Hoi An, the old town was mostly pleasant to wander around: the two downsides being annoying street sellers and the fierce heat. The highlight however was definitely the nearby beach, where the sea breeze made the heat much more bearable. There were jetskis available for hire there too, they were so good I hired one twice, fell in once and got sunburnt into the bargain!

We're off to a beach resort near Nha Trang now, 11 hours on a minibus. Pics of Denis helping out with the blown tyre on our bus, and the beach at Hoi An.

Elephants and Borneo

We've been in Laos now for about a week, it is a welcome change from China. Don't get me wrong, I loved China, even with the stupid bureaucracy, but the cities all felt very similar: the same massive selection of shops trying to sell the same massive selection of products to almost no-one.

Laos is hugely different, in almost every way. The infrastructure is basic to non-existent, the population is sparse, prices are even lower than China and it rains. A lot. Actually the rain can be a relief because the humidity has so far been hard to cope with, for me, anyway. Laos is also the first country I have visited in which you can occasionally see World Vision and other charitable organization's offices around the place. It must be a sufficiently "poor" country to warrant the intervention of these agencies, although, to my eyes, it does seem slightly patronizing for the well-meaning West to rush to help all these people who appear quite content thank you very much.

Anyway, back to the trip, and Laos is a very laid back country, not a lot happens quickly here. This is changing fast though, the more I see of the country, the more touristy it is getting. I can well understand why, with tourist prices being maybe three to five times local prices, but still half of European prices. As far as I can see, if you wanted to see the "real" Laos, it has already virtually disappeared, at least from the easily accessible places.

I went kayaking for a day in Luang Prabang, which was excellent, and included lunch at a waterfall where you could go swimming, and ride an elephant! I did both. The elephants here are much smaller than the African ones, but they are still not exactly small, and they were just as eager to be fed as the African ones I met years ago. Riding an elephant involves sitting on a seat a bit like a park bench on its back, but with a fairground ride safety bar on the front. The elephant then does its thing under the command of a mahout, the handler, who sits on its neck. All you have to do is hang on, as you get flung around when the elephant goes up and down hills: the reason for the safety bar is blindingly obvious.

The elephant ride takes place directly in the waterfall, which is more like dozens of small falls in the middle of the forest. The trees all grow directly out of the rock, which seems impossible until you try to break the rock on a tree trunk: it is about an inch thick but fairly soft and cracks easily. The water in the stream must be very high in minerals to deposit so much onto the trees. This water is just the right temperature to cool you down in the heat of the day, and is great to swim in too, which is what most of us did before lunch.

After lunch was just lazy kayaking back down the river, but I personally would have been happier with just the half day, as I got sunburn and sore knees from the unnatural exertion: I'm just not fit enough for this! Or tanned enough, yet.

I would love to tell you about Vang Vieng, but I was rubbish ill there and never left the hotel, so I can't. In fact, I'm still not 100% so my experience of Vientiane is also limited, unfortunately.

Vientiane is clearly where all the money in Laos is, it is still a little sleepy by the standards of a city but it is a city. Lots of bars, restaurants, and not a few old fat foreign men with tiny young local women. Seediness aside, it is quite a pleasant city, with impressive wats and the mighty Mekong never far away.

We have been given the details for the optional trip extension to Borneo now, and we have until we leave Laos to finalize our booking. I have decided that it is too good an opportunity to miss, and so will be travelling to Borneo after Singapore for three weeks! Jungles, beasties, orangutans and Brunei, all await on the island of Borneo! It's going to be great.

The pics are all around Vientiane, one showing the storm clouds but hiding the three mobile phone masts behind That Dam, the pointy stone thing. It can be a pretty city, in the right place.

Into Laos and away

Even two days before we arrived in Laos, it was obvious that we were in Southeast Asia. The climate and surroundings had changed so much from what I had seen up until then: paddy fields, rubber and banana plantations and just plain jungle became the norm. Laos and China just feel different too, Laos is much more relaxed and laid back than frenetic China.

On the way to the border we were supposed to camp for three nights, but we hadn't counted on every available flat space being a field of some sort. The first night we ended up camping at the side of the road next to a virtual cliff in the jungle, an unusual campsite made even more interesting by the torrential rain and the ant invasion of our tent. The second night we spent in a hotel in Jinghong due to the continuing downpour which turned out to be quite enjoyable: it is a cool little town to wander around. I also got my hair cut here, those who know me will know what an era-defining moment this was! We missed out the last camp, thankfully, as it was still raining and there was still nowhere to camp, and we crossed into Laos a day early.

Our first stop in Laos was the sleepy little town of Luang Nam Tha, cute, prone to power outages and very humid, this so far seems to be the pattern in Laos. We spent two nights there, then moved to Muang Ngoy for one night where we had a great guesthouse room overlooking the river. This river was our transport the next day to Luang Prabang on a noisy long wooden boat. It doesn't sound very pleasant, but it was really great to travel on the river. We even stopped at the Pakou Caves which were quite impressive Buddhist cave temples next to the Mekong river. Almost as impressive was the number of small children trying to get us to buy the freedom of the tiny birds they had captured in little cages, you had to run the gauntlet to get to the upper cave.

The pictures are our wet roadside camp, the view from the terrace of our guesthouse in Muang Ngoy and views from the boat including Rich doing what he does best.

Last days of China

On this trip we don't really get to see the "proper" China, the one with millions of people crammed into every available space, but these last few days gave us just a glimpse of what China is really like for most of its inhabitants, and what it is like for the nouveau riche to go on holiday.

We have been visiting towns, and one city: Shangrila, Lijiang, Dali and Kunming. The first three are all tourist towns, but almost exclusively for Chinese nationals. They are all relatively similar, in that they have pretty old town centres which tourists love to walk around whilst buying expensive authentic local products which only seem to be the same as in every other shop in the area. Of the three towns Shangrila is the least authentic because the old town was specially built to attract tourists, and the name of the town was changed to Shangrila from Zhongdian, again to attract tourists. Lijiang has the largest and most original old town, and is also the most popular destination, meaning that the crowds were enormous. It is totally geared up for extracting money from non-locals, and does it very well. Dali is probably the most honest of the three towns, if a town can be called that. It is a tourist town, but not to the exclusion of local life, which to my mind gives it more character than either of the others.

Kunming is a totally different kettle of fish. It is the closest I have seen to a true, massive Chinese city. It reminds me of Glasgow, but with sunshine. It sprawls over the area, with heavy industry surrounding it, and shops, traffic and tower blocks in the centre. Kunming does have an old town, but from what I could see, it is less than a block in size, and what is left is being demolished to make way for a mix of skyscrapers and a new old town, with more expensive shops. You can't stop progress, especially not in China.

Pics are views from the hotel in Dali, and in Kunming. We have three days left in China, then onto Laos, and no mobile data anymore. So updates will be less frequent again, unfortunately.

The long road out of Tibet

Tibet has two official tourist roads: the road from Nepal in the south, and the road we used to enter it from the north. We had to travel east, to Yunnan, using an unofficial road: the main road linking the two provinces. In another country, this would mean driving along a main road, but not in China.

The road varied from poor to terrible, with a smattering of non-existent thrown in for good measure. A relatively short distance took us five days of hard driving to complete, due to the state of the road and the extremely mountainous terrain. The upside of the journey was some of the most spectacular and different scenery in Tibet, with vast forests covering the mountains. It was more reminiscent of places like Scotland and northwest America than Tibet, albeit with steeper and higher terrain.

We were supposed to camp for the whole five days, but the weather turned very wet and we were put up in two hotels for the final two days: one in Markham, and one in Deqen. One of the photos is the traffic outside the hotel in Markham, it was a very rural town. So rural that the otherwise good hotel had only three rooms with showers, and the remaining rooms didn't even have access to one. However, it was much better than camping in the pouring rain.

Deqen was slightly more civilized, but still felt quite Wild West. We ate dinner in a little local restaurant: basically one room with half of it being the kitchen and half of it with chairs and tables. Whilst eating our meals, a scrabbling sound came from the kitchen area. A plastic bag rolled into view, and a chicken poked its head out! Its legs must have been tied up because it spent the rest of the time trying vainly to escape the bag. We didn't order chicken that night.

As you will see from one of the pictures, we had a rather large tyre failure. Thankfully the truck was stopped at the roadside at the time. I put a mug on the tyre to show how large the hole is, and yes, all the steel belts are broken.

The rest of the pictures are of the varying scenery on this road to Yunnan which, incidentally, we were the first overland truck to travel. It is very unusual for foreigners to see this area!

Eclipse

On the way back from Everest, we were able to see the solar eclipse just in passing. It was maybe 90% coverage, which meant that instead of complete darkness the light just went dim and strange. The birds nearby were very confused though! I tried to photograph it but it didn't turn out too well, even 10% sunlight is too bright for a camera.

Everest

After two nights of bushcamping we reached the road leading to Mount Everest, or Qomolangma. The first pass on the 90km road gave some of the best views of the Himalayas, with five 8000m+ peaks visible, truly stunning scenery. After a wonderful drive through some picturesque hamlets we arrived at a weird tent conglomeration, a bit like a shanty town but entirely consisting of tent "hotels" for tourists like us. The hotel names are great: Metal Yak Grand Hotel; Alex English Tea House; Hotel De California; Mt. Everest Happiness Tea House and Steel Firm Guesthouse to name just a few. All of these establishments are about 5x5m tents made of brown yak hair, which makes the names even more amusing.

From here we could go up to the proper base camp, either walking or by taking the bus conveniently available for lazy people like me. So one furious bus ride up a gravel road later, we were at Everest North Base Camp. Or to be more precise, we were at the army checkpoint guarding the camp. After some time queueing to show the guards our passports, we were informed that we were not allowed into the camp, as there was some technicality wrong with our permit. I have been knocked back from clubs before, but never from a mountain! As it turns out, we didn't really miss much as to go further than the camp required a second, extremely expensive permit. Anyway, the view from tent town was better since the clouds had lifted by the evening. The following morning was better still, with not one cloud obscuring the peak at dawn, truly amazing.

Qomolangma is a real wonder of the world. Even if you didn't know that it is the highest mountain in the world, you cannot fail to be awed by it. I had a great day here, especially since I have finally acclimatised to the altitude: 5100m in tent town!

The best view in the world? Probably.

Everest at dawn, Tuesday 21st July, 2009.

Altitude and Lhasa

I can tell you now that altitude sickness is truly awful. Imagine being so exhausted that all you want to do is collapse into bed, but you cannot sleep because of the headache pounding away. Then add to this constant dry retching because you have already emptied the contents of your stomach hours ago. You then become desperately thirsty and hungry, but anything you consume reappears almost immediately. This happened to me on the night we had to drive past the roadworks, as this was the part of the journey in which we ascended to high altitude, unfortunately I suffered badly. The "road" had degenerated into a muddy track filled with holes and our truck shook from side to side constantly, this put paid to any faint notion of sleep. A further night's camp at 4700m altitude, at Namtso Lake, was better, but still not wonderful. This was a pity, because it was a stunningly beautiful place which I was not able to appreciate. Thankfully we finally descended into Lhasa, which is only at 3600m, and I have been able to acclimatise better.

Lhasa is a bittersweet experience. Again, most of the town could be anywhere in China, with wide avenues flanked by innumerable shops, cars with their horns seemingly stuck in the on position and Mandarin the language of choice. But go behind the Chinese frontage and find the old town and you see what Lhasa must have been like before it was "improved".

The people speak a totally different language, the buildings are markedly different and crowd in on the narrow lanes which are all paved in granite. The whole feel of the place is different, and definitely not Chinese. Prayer wheels are the accessory of choice, and monks are still a relatively common sight. Of course most of the important sites have been taken over by the Chinese, with mixed results.

We went to the Jokhang Temple and the Sera Monastery yesterday, and despite the heavy security presence, both visible and hidden, both these sites were fantastic to visit. The temple was still very much in use, and fascinating to see the devotees practice their faith. At the monastery we were fortunate enough to be there when the monks were debating, this is quite energetic and takes place outside under a grove of trees. It was strangely calming to sit and watch them make their arguments and responses, they are obviously used to being photographed by tourists. Apparently there used to be 6600 monks in Lhasa, now there are only 660: I can only imagine how it must have looked in its heyday.

Today we visited the Potala Palace, the main landmark in Lhasa, and probably Tibet: it towers over the city and is astonishingly beautiful to see. I was hugely disappointed by it. Why? Because of massively over bureaucratic nonsense to get in, incompetent overseers whilst inside, a train track tour of a infinitesimally small part of it whilst there and little in the way of "feel". In a very real sense, to me the Palace is a microcosm of Tibet: ruled from afar by those who could care less.

Something odd did happen to me here though, I was interviewed by Tibet TV along with one of my fellow travellers, Robin. We were sitting in a rather nice rooftop restaurant which had only just opened that day, and a TV crew arrived to film something for, I assume, the local news. They must have decided that we were too good an opportunity to pass up. I was handed a mobile phone by one of the waitresses and the man on the other end told me some random facts about the restaurant, upon which he hung up! With nothing but this cryptic message to guide me a camera and microphone were thrust into my face, and so I fumbled my way through some positive comments about the place and the town. Thankfully they seemed happy with that and moved onto Robin, who was, if anything, more bewildered than I as he had not spoken to the mystery man on the phone. We did get some free beer as a thankyou from the restaurant though, so it wasn't all bad.

Pics are the Tibetan plateau at dawn with part of the "road" visible at the bottom, and the square outside the Jokhang Temple with Potala Palace in the distance.

Travel in China

After two long days of desert driving we arrived in Turpan, the second lowest place on the planet not underwater. And it was seriously hot. 43C in the shade is almost unbelievable for an Aberdonian, and makes it difficult to leave the comfort of air conditioning. We only spent one night here because of the heat, but we still visited the most important tourist spot: the Jiaohe ruins.

This is basically the remains of a whole town on an island in the middle of a river, and it is remarkably well preserved. You really get the feel of the place walking the streets and seeing the buildings, the Buddhist monastery is the best one imho. But it is easy to see why the town was abandoned, the heat even at 7pm is stifling, and combined with the various people trying to invade it at regular intervals it must have seemed like a poor choice of home.

From Turpan we headed for the relative cool of Dunhuang, a small tourist town with big tourist prices. Here as well China has been developing the town, much of the centre is brand new, with lots of shops aimed at well-heeled tourists.

Dunhuang is one of these towns which manages to be located near lots of interesting sites: top billing goes to the Mogao caves. This is one of those historic places which it is impossible not to visit as it houses some of the most impressive Buddhist art in the world. Even those of us not normally taken by "old stuff" really enjoyed it, I personally found it astonishing, particularly since it survived the Cultural Revolution unscathed. The tour guide shows you perhaps ten of the caves, with interesting stories about each one, this takes about one to one and a half hours. There are over 700 caves, this should give you an idea of the size of the place.

Those who were interested also visited the singing sand dunes. Now you would expect to just drive to the dunes, get out and have a look around, yes? Not in tourist China you don't. You drive to the roadblock 200m away, then walk to the ticket office and pay 120 yuan just to get in. Then once inside, you pay for anything and everything else: regimented camel rides, quad biking, even sand boarding costs you money. I decided to save my money for other things and started to walk back to get a taxi to the town with two others. The cheeky taxi drivers tried to charge us 50% more to get back than to take us there, so we decided to walk the 40 minutes back.

Good thing too, as soon after a local bus drove past us and tooted for us to get on, so we did. For one measly yuan per person we had a great leisurely city tour of the places tourists don't get to see, and we were dropped off right in the centre of town. I highly recommend just getting on a bus in a strange Chinese town, as you start to see just a little behind the facade of "New China" plastered over the main streets.

We have now pretty much left the Silk Road, as we are heading south towards Lhasa. We just spent a night in Golmud, a town rather unfairly described by the Lonely Planet guidebook as only fit for road engineers and escaped convicts. Ok, so it isn't the most beautiful of towns, and the view from our nice hotel window at night was of five brothels plying their trade, but it had a certain gutter charm to it.

Next stop of consequence is Lhasa, but to get there we have to drive overnight tonight, due to weird Chinese roadworks which close the road completely during the day. No fun for us, but even less fun for Tim and Cheryl who have to drive us.

Pics are flag at bushcamp at lake Bosten, view of Turpan depression from truck, and the Great Wall of China, non-tourist end.

China likes me, I like China

Well, we made it into China, with no problems to speak of. The border was time consuming but I was pleasantly surprised to find the staff polite and efficient, a welcome change from some previous borders. Another welcome change is the roads: so far almost all are excellent, even skirting the Taklamakan the road is superb.

But I am getting ahead of myself here. First stop in China was Kashgar, which was pretty much totally not what I was expecting. Having visited much of Central Asia, I was thinking that Kashgar would be a repeat of the Silk Road market towns we have already visited, with a token nod to Chinese rule. How wrong I was. It is a bit like going to a mini version of Shanghai with a small Silk Road town in the middle: Beijing definitely rules here. Except for the old town, which appears to have been kept as a tourist attraction, the streets are all wide avenues, the buildings are all tall, modern and concrete, the signs are neon and the shops are endless. The main street has underpasses for pedestrians, nothing special in itself, but under the length of the road is a huge shopping centre. The new town has obviously been carefully planned to be a city fit for the modern age, the car is given equality with people.

But most people here have electric scooters to get around, which I think are great. They are cheap, around £400 new, don't need licensing and you just need a wall socket to charge it. They do all seem to come with the most annoying alarms in the world, though.

I didn't do a great deal in Kashgar, just wandering around and shopping. It is a lovely city for relaxing in, which is exactly what I wanted. Just to prove how chinese it is, here is a picture of a Hot'N'Spicy Chicken Rice burger I had at a fast food place called Dico's, it tasted much better than it looks. Also the Chinese border post, where we all had our temperature taken to see if we were too ill to be let in to the country.

China here we come

As I write this, we have two more nights before the Chinese border crossing, over the Torugart Pass. This is uncharted territory for us, and for Odyssey, since last year's trip was unable to enter China for various reasons. However, at our last bushcamp at Djety Oguz we met another overland group who had just come from China, which shows that it can be done, and done recently.

The other group were a Dragoman group travelling from India to Istanbul. Their crew traded advice with our crew, and we got a chance to meet some other overlanders in the setting of the first Odyssey Pub Quiz.

We learned quite a bit about overlanding with the "other lot", for example that they were on their second truck because the first one broke down five times. The second truck was also apparently the worse of the two, and had broken a suspension spring near Bishkek for which they were having trouble sourcing a replacement. They were also paying substantially more for six months with Dragoman than we have for six months with Odyssey.

There are some benefits to Dragoman of course, they seemed to stay in more and better hotels than us, their group size is smaller, and they have the option to travel in shorter legs if the client desires. It was clear to me, however, that a not inconsiderable number of them seemed to prefer our truck and our way of doing things. And they were really jealous of our chairs! I think that Odyssey will have some more customers next year.

Just over the hills in the background of the picture is China.

New tent!

For reasons I won't bore you with I have invested in a tent. Bishkek may be a capital city, but it doesn't appear to have a huge selection of tents: I found this one in a sports clothing store. I know little about tents, and so I enlisted the help of Tim, one of our crew, to assist in the decision making process. We ended up pitching the tent in the middle of the shop floor whilst the two lady assistants anxiously looked on at the strange foreigners wrecking their store. They were good sports though, and eventually joined in the assembly of the tent. When finished, it seemed to be a good 'un, so I bought it.

The box and instructions were all in Russian, so hopefully it didn't say anything like "not to be used outdoors" or "will melt on contact with water". Time will tell!

Kyrgyzstan and its eccentricities

As soon as we crossed the border, the feel of the country changed. We spent two nights in a homestay/guesthouse in Osh, in converted ex-Soviet apartments, and we met our local guide for Kyrgyzstan: Asel, who is accompanying us for the time we are spending here.

Some of the most interesting stories about Kyrgyzstan have come from Asel, she is talkative and well informed about most subjects that we tourists ask about, and many that we don't. One "custom" which she tells us about is the high rate of kidnap of women here, the purpose of which is to force the woman into marriage. She says that one of her friends was kidnapped whilst walking along the street with her, and when she called the girl's mother, she was really happy about it! Happy because kidnap means marriage and this is a good thing here. In fact, Asel's mother was herself kidnapped by Asel's father, and has a remarkably philosophical attitude to it.

Another unusual custom is the Kyrgyz national sport: goat polo. This is a game which plays pretty much how it sounds: two teams of players on horseback try to get the carcass of a goat onto a goal to score a point. The goat is specially killed for the game, and after the game is finished the goat is given to a poor family for food.

We "sponsored" a game (i.e. we paid for a goat and some prizes) and two teams of eager locals assembled the following day to play. The locals don't get to play often because a goat is too valuable to kill regularly, so they were really pleased to get another chance. The various inhabitants of the yurts near where we were camped all appeared nearby with eight or so arriving on beautiful horses to play the game. One was carrying the head and footless goat, we had been spared the actual killing but it apparently involves blessing the goat first. A pad about a yard in diameter is placed on the ground to act as goal, and the players divide into teams. And that is pretty much it for the rules. There are no boundaries, linesmen or referee, and it seemed that anything was permissible in the course of the game including whipping the opponent's horses or even the opponents themselves. The spectators frequently have to run away from the rampaging teams and play often veered through our camp. Only one tent got trampled during the game, and it survived remarkably well.

It sounds really brutal when viewed from a Western perspective, but when you are watching the game without the bias afforded by a television screen it just seems to be a logical extension of their culture. And it is surprisingly good fun to watch: audience participation is high in goat polo.

I was able to visit the yurt belonging to the local bigwig after the game, and since it was his goat which was used, he had the head cooking in the pot. Unfortunately, I chose to visit just as the head finished cooking, and was invited to eat with him and his extended family. Now don't get me wrong, boiled goat head soup, bits of aforementioned head, and noodles mixed with the remains of said head are reasonably tasty, but not as a three course meal with nothing else. All the food was very greasy, and quite difficult for my soft Western stomach to handle, so thankfully Asel managed to excuse me from eating it all. Apparently it is considered rude to offer anything but meat dishes to guests, hence the lack of other foodstuffs. As an aside, here the male dominated hierarchy was blindingly obvious with bigwig sat at the head of the table, other guests, and male relatives nearby, and women towards the far end, with the youngest furthest away.

Kyrgyzstan officially has a population of around five million, but two million of those live overseas. Even our local guide, who is from Bishkek, lives in Almaty in Kazakhstan. This can only be due to the economic conditions, as the country itself is beautiful.

Pics are Kyrgyz scenery and an imported can of Sprite. Try to read where it was manufactured!