Going Out With a Bangkok

I flew yesterday to Bangkok. For some reason it took six hours between leaving one hotel and arriving at a new one, despite the fact that it's only a one hour flight.

Bangkok is a rather large city. I shared a taxi with a French woman into the city centre and, when we got out, she said she thought the Khao San Road was nearby. I ambled for a while through a very busy food market, since it was right there and smelled good, but I had all my luggage with me so hailed a taxi after a short time. When I eventually arrived at the Khao San Road, we had driven 16km. Either the driver was taking me for a ride, both literally and figuratively, or the city is simply bigger than it looks on a map.

Not that I have a map. For the first time on this journey, I am without a Lonely Planet. God I miss that book.

Since it was late, there weren't that many places with room left, and certainly none at a price I wanted to pay. Then I decided that I was coming home under-budget, so I could treat myself for my last two nights. Then I found a really cheap room, so took that instead.

I'm staying on the Khao San Road. It's noisy, but I can sleep through anything and I'm only here for two nights, so wanted to be where the action is. And it is active. The picture below is a taster. There are loads of farang getting wasted and loads of tuk-tuk drivers offering to take them to various sordid establishments. I walked up and down a few times taking it all in but went to bed early.

This morning I hired a tuk-tuk to take me around the city's sights. I then went and got a massage. Now, when he offered to take me to a massage parlour, I mentioned that I didn't want any "boom-boom". This is an accepted international term for sexual dalliance. The Indians prefer to say "hank-panky", probably due to their colonial heritage, but "boom-boom" is universally understood.

So we ended up at a brothel. I had never been in a whore-house before, but this was unmistakable.

Toby: "I said no boom-boom."

Tuk-tuk driver: "You no wan' boom-boom?"

Toby: "No. No boom-boom."

Tuk-tuk driver: "I thought you like boom-boom."

Toby: "I do. I like boom-boom. Just not now."

Tuk-tuk driver: "Ah, because you have girlfren?"

Toby: "No, because they're prostitutes." [confused look from driver] "I just wanted a massage."

Proprietor: "Yes, you get massage, 2500 baht [about 50 euro]"

Toby: "Eh, yeah, OK, it's because I have a girlfriend, if that means we can leave."

Well, that was awkward. I got my massage eventually. 300 baht for one hour and it was provided by a fat middle-aged woman. Thank God.

I next went to the city palace, got a personal guided tour around there (since I have no guide book and am feeling flush, having acidentally taken out too much from the ATM, because I failed to work out beforehand how much Baht I needed) and then walked back to my hotel to hide from the rainclouds overhead.

The plan for tonight is probably to generate enough of a hangover for tomorrow that I'm still feeling lousy by the time I board my plane to Kuala Lumpur at 17.10. I like feeling crap on planes. It gives me something to do. And if that's not true, then why do I keep doing it?

This is looking across the Mekong in Vientiane. In the foreground is Laos. The other side of the river is Thailand. It's a bit like in New Ross, where one side of the River Barrow is in Wexford, where the other side is Waterford. Yes. Exactly like that.

The Khao San Road in Bangkok. It's busy...

The statue is of an ancient Thai Hippocrates character, whom they refer to as "The Doctor". The guy in the hat is a doctor also.

Mini Angkor Wat.

The Thai Royal Palace, built by a king in the 19th century upon his return from Europe. He wanted the whole thing to look Eurpean, but they wouldn't let him so he made the roof Oriental. The rest looks French.

Me under a Thai bonsai tree. They're bigger than Japanese ones, lest you think I've shrunk.

Going Homer

I have finished Homer's Odyssey, and have decided to elevate my standard of language and frequency of classical references. I have cast off the superfluous ejaculations of youth and have become as a man, like the thoughtful Telemachus, when he fought with Zeus' favourite, the lion-hearted Odysseus and his father, the steadfast Laertes. It was with this in mind when I set off, bound for Vang Vieng.

As Dawn appeared, fresh and rosy-fingered, I acquired a chariot and departed the happy home I had enjoyed in Luang Prabang. I approached Vang Vieng from the North, helped by a strong wind raised by the mighty earth-shaker Poseidon. Thereupon, I rested for some days, enjoying the warm hospitality offered there. I feasted like a king, on the fattest calves, and the wine flowed ceaselessly. And when the libations had sufficiently addled my wits, I would return to my bed, where the aegis-bearing Athene would close my eyes in blissful sleep until golden-throned Dawn would appear once more.

Alas, I grew restless once more on my long journey home and once more set off from my kind hosts. This time, with a favourable wind, I found myself in Vientiane, the capital of the country of the Laotians. This citadel has little to recommend it to a weary traveller on his way home. Zeus, who marshals the clouds, has seen fit to conjure a dark storm on the distant horizon.

I will arise and go on the morrow and will fly to Bangkok, like Hermes, the keen-eyed Giant-slayer, flies to Hades.

Tobius.

This is me during our 20km kayak (downstream) into Vang Vieng. The scenery was spectacular.

This a picture of my near-perfect dismount from the 'Flying Fox', the biggest rope swing I have ever seen.

Lessons Left Unlearned

Laos is a great lesson in when a country should just be left to do its thing. I mean, it may look quite sizable on the map, and that's probably as far as the President of the United States of America looked when he decided that its communist movement was dangerous, but this population of four million (compare with Vietnam's 80 million) had to endure the American air force dropping bombs on them throughout the American presence in Indochina. Laos had been declared neutral by the Geneva Accords, so the USAF pilots were dressed in civilian garb and flew single prop aircraft. The mortality for these pilots was as high as 50%.

As the Americans pulled out of Vietnam, more aircraft were available for Laos. In the end, there were 50% more sorties flown in Laos than Vietnam - a total of 580,944 for this diffusely populated country. That's the equivalent of one plane-load of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day for the nine years from 1965 to 1973. B-52 bombers dropped 500kg of explosive for every man, woman and child in Laos, making it the most bombed country on a per capita basis in the history of warfare. What's more, up to 30% of the ordnance is still unexploded. Even given this (probably excessive) figure, a 350kg bomb exploding next to you is more than sufficient to kill you.

We can deduce two things from these figures. Firstly, that American bombs are badly made. Secondly, the pilots are rotten shots.

Finally, when the Americans were leaving, the area was divided up into 13 provinces whose borders were identical to those before war. Before the Americans bombed the life out of the proletariat, the communist Pathet Lao controlled two of the 13 provinces. By the end, they controlled 11. It just goes to show that fighting a population is going to drive them even further towards your enemy's ideology. This should come as no surprise. You can't convince someone of your argument by bombing them. If only that were the last time an American President were to make that mistake.

The main strip in Luang Prabang turns into this market at night. The street is named after a king called Sissavang Vong. I mention the name merely because I think he sounds like a character from Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

21 people on a tuk-tuk. New record baby! After taking this pciture the guy set off, so I had to run after him whilst putting my camera away and hop on the back.

I booked my bus to leave Luang Prabang one morning. Then I was hungover so had the date changed to the next day. Instead of sitting on a sweaty bus for the day, I went with some people to a waterfall. We swam here for an hour. Notice the rope swing in front of the waterfall. Today, my hands are covered in friction burns and my shoulders are killing me. Good time though. Something that looks like a praying mantis just flew over the keyboard and landed on the floor next to me. I swear it's looking at me. Ew.

This was my Luang Prabang gang. Maria (Danish), Dave (Irish), Tess (Swedish, Other Dave's Bird), Other Dave (Irish) and Greta (American).

I had a choice of posting this picture or a similar one where I was obviously sucking in my beer gut. I decided to stay true to myself and my alcoholically enhanced abdomen.

I was happy when I found somewhere to hang up my hammock that I bought in Siem Reap, Cambodia four weeks ago. I was happier still when I climbed in and cracked open can of (warm, cheap, Vietnamese) beer. Notice anything about the ring-pull? Remember the 80s?

In Vang Vieng there are 'cafes' like this one that do nothing but show episode after episode of the american sit-com, Friends, and serve idiot back-packers tasty treats. Once my brain had been sufficiently massaged to goo, I ordered a cheeseburger.

Laos

So Laos anyway. Really not a very stressed out place. I had two itineraries planned for this country. One was going to be a bit of a mad dash, but would mean that I could take in the mysterious Plain of Jars. More used to less mysterious but equally tempting Jars of Plain, I decided that I would take the slow route. The decision was really made for me, since I'm finding it hard to get up the motivation to do anything. In the afternoon, the people here lie down in their places of business and just point to whatever you want. It's bit like a siesta, and it is pretty warm here, though it's not as humid as Vietnam, so a fan works wonders and I don't have air conditioning for only the second time since leaving Dublin.

I flew from Hanoi to the capital Vientiane, but boarded a connecting flight from the domestic terminal, which looked more like a bus station than most bus staions, to Luang Prabang, and it's here I have been. An interesting thing happened on the way here though. Perhaps because I was in transit no one got the opportunity to tell me, but the plane first flies 200 kilometres north of here, to a place that looked like the end of the world, called Udomxai. So, upon arriving in Udomxai, I got out, wandered around and figured that I was in the wrong place. Now, I could say that my heart sank, but that would be a very mediocre sort of metaphor, so let me get something clear. I know, as a student of the human body, that the heart can not feasibly escape the chest and end up somewhere around one's kdneys, but, I swear, my heart sank at the prospect of being 200 km from my rucksack and the 12 hour bus journey I would have to take to get it back. But then a Japanese man who was in an identical situation asked someone where he was and I overheard the helpful air hostess telling him to get back on the aircraft and that it would be departing for Luang Prabang shortly. So I grabbed my passport back from the guard who was taking my details down in a large ledger and ran back to the plane.

Luang Prabang is the laziest little town I have ever had the good fortune to come across. I've been here a while, but I don't remember much of what I've done. I started off realising what it was that was amiss from my trip from the airport. The minivan, upon coming across a slow motorboke simply followed at that speed. No honking of horns or radical overtaking manoeuvres, commonly involving hairpin bends and large trucks coming the other way, that was the specialty in Vietnam. Nope. We were getting where we were going and were bound to get there eventually and in one piece - a guarantee often missing from the Vietnamese equivalents.

The second thing to realise is that there are loads of Wats (Buddhist temples) about, and so there are loads of novices around - teenagers with shaven heads dressed in garish orange. A bit like parts of Dublin really. The are two next to me right now, checking their email. It's quite a sight.

I get a bus in the morning to Vang Vieng, which has a reputation as being a backpacker stopover between Luang Prabang and Vientiane and little else, but if I'm going to stop over somewhere, it may as well be there.

And if it's anything like here, it'll be hard to leave there too.

The hill station of Sapa.

The major ethnic minority in Northwest Vietnam is the Black H'mong tribe, so called because they dye their clothes black with indigo. See how they're black? And not blue, as I thought at first? You'll get used to it. And becuase the dye isn't set, they're skin always has a vague azure hue, and they wash their clothes only once every few months. Delightful.

Same same but different.

Stairs. These hill stations are always littered with stairs.

This is an indigo field without a man in it. And if you don't know why that's important, you probably never will.

I can say, without a hint of hyperbole, that I took about a squillion pictures down hill-sides and that they just didn't capture what I saw. Above this was Mt. Fansipan (3143m) disappearing into the clouds and below was the river that had carved the valley. Across the river were, as far as the eye could see, terraced fields being tilled by locals, and, every now and then, one could see a lone house or school or village hall. And this is the best picture I could come up with because... wait for it... this one has cows in it. Wow.

Here I am stopped for a well-earned rest.

The water pours in to a little bucket at the far end. When it is too full, the arm it pivots around the middle and pours the water out. That raises the arm at this end, which then comes crashing down and crushes the grain in the bucket. That happens about once every five seconds, so by hand is quicker, but you have to admire their resourcefulness.

You were kept awake by the crickets until 04.00, woken by the rooster at 04.30 but the worst was when, at 06.00, these lads thought that the one thing this already virtually impassable road needed was a good old-fashioned noisy hole-digging. Can't beat it.

This the family we stayed with on our first night.

Black H'mong girls.

The familiar five-fingered leaf of the hemp that grows in field around Sapa. They don't ingest it, but exclusively use the plant to make clothes.

Women of the Dzao tribe.

Here we are descending into Ban Ho where we would spend the second night.

I went swimming near the waterfall, but couldn't shake from my mind the knwoledge of what I had just contributed to the river about 500m upstream...

The village of Ban Ho was a bit of a menagerie.

On the way back up the hill we met this pair. They were sheltering from the rain as Mum and Dad built a fence aound a field. The boy on the left said bye-bye as we approached. The girl, on the right, waved and said hello and burbled adorably if you reciprocated.

When we got back to the train station at Lao Cai, I realised just how close we were to the Chinese border, so I took a taxi to see it. This is me attempting to walk into China without a visa. They didn't see the funny side.

I've been sitting in the internet cafe for 6 hours and can't think of a quippy title. Answers on a postcard.

I said goodbye to Deirdre at Hanoi airport and found my way back to town. I was to leave that evening for a three-day trek in Northern Vietnam.

Upon arrival in the travel agent's that evening, the lady behind the desk informed me gleefully that I was a very lucky boy. The balance of my group of six was to be made up of five pretty girls. I was aware that this was going to go one of two ways. There was that slim possibility that the five pretty girls would be of the ilk that drinks ambitiously and plays strip poker into the night, but the more likely scenario, and the one that did indeed present itself 15 minutes later, would be that they were quiet and a bit dull.

They were three Singaporean girls, one of whom was outgoing enough to chat away to me.

There was a Manchunian woman in her thirties called Jo, who had recently given up managing the McVities factory in Manchester.

(Aside: she confirmed for me that Jaffa cakes are in fact cakes and not biscuits. Firstly, she informed me, one is made out of a dough, the other of batter. But there have also been a couple of court cases over this issue, since there is no VAT applicable to chocolate on cakes but there is to that on biscuits. McVities saves three million pounds per year on VAT on chocolate based on the fact that Jaffa Cakes are cakes. If I've had this argument with you before - you know who you are - then let us never have it again, safe in the knowledge that I was right all along.)

She was pleasant and talkative but just a bit dim, and would, at the end of a conversation, say with confidence that which was a basic precept upon which the preceding conversation was based. For example, upon discussing the virtues of different types of massage available (Thai, Chinese, Turkish etc.), she announced at the end that she thinks it's "quite nice to get a massage out here". No shit.

Maybe it was the Manchester accent. Maybe it was the hard trekking that had me tired and irritible, but for some reason this grated on me terribly.

The last member of the group was an American. She too was in her thirties and was obviously well-travelled. Her saving grace was perhaps that she was quiet, because that which spilled from her mouth was often the sort of touchy-feely crap in which Americans specialise. It's just that they speak in terms that I simply, through no lack of trying, fail completely to understand. Deirdre blames my medical training, but I'm pretty sure my mind was constructed in too straightforward a manner to understand their pinko nonsense long before I started university. I find it very hard to come up with an example of this tosh, but I think I can sum it up by saying that I meet beautiful people and have amazing experiences where these people meet amazing people and have beautiful experiences. If anyone knows what I mean and can articulate it better than I, feel free to leave it as a comment and I'll incorporate it later.

She had one more annoying trait where she would be self-aggrandising in confusing ways. When she was buying something from one of the locals, our tour-guide (a lovely and sensible Vietnamese woman called Nu) told me to tell her that she should haggle. The guide reckoned the locals might be offended if this advice came from her. The response from the American, and I'm still not entirely sure what it meant, was:

"I know how to bargain - my ex-husband was Mexican."

She also, at one stage, said the poor locals, who were trying hard to sell their wares, didn't know that they were dealing with a stubborn Swede. I knew exactly what she meant, so delivered my usual response when colonials hint at atavistic traits from their perceived homeland, and said "That's funny, you sound American". Nauseating.

So they were the people. I usually give out the URL to this blog to anyone who'll take it, but I decided not to give it to them so I could bitch about them. And it felt great. Thanks for listening.

We set off from the travel agent's in Hanoi on a bus, arrived at the train station, caught an overnight train to Lao Cai on the Chinese border, and from there got a bus up a mountain to Sapa. The town reminded me very much of Darjeeling, with its colonial architecture, steep streets and cool climate. We had a bite to eat and then set off.

The trek took us down along a road for about one kilometre, at which point we turned right and down into the river valley that we were to follow for the next three days. At times there was a well-worn path but at others we were walking along dried-up riverbeds or picking our way tight-rope style along the parapets at the edges of paddy fields. We stopped for a picnic lunch in a shed that seemed designed for such things and then continued on to the house in which we would be staying that night.

Our guide made the dinner, which was some of the best food I've had since arriving and was far too much for us to eat. It consisted of rice, a pork dish, a beef dish, tofu and a bamboo and noodle concoction, with fruit for dessert. We slept soundly in the attic of the big house that night and woke at seven for breakfast.

We were soon off again. We covered roughly the same distance on the second day, but the going was undoubtedly tougher. We made it down to a road and the most friendly of the Singaporeans was chatting to me as we strode ahead of the others. We turned back after a few minutes and realised there was no sign of them. We backtracked some way and eventually found them stopped and the English girl had a dressing on her head. Apprently, she had felt nature call, gone and squatted behind a shed that was beside the road, and, just as she was coming up, she was struck in the forehead by a rock thrown innocently by a youngster. She was very pragmatic about the whole thing and was thanking her god that it wasn't an eye or a tooth that was injured. Just her head. It could have been worse.

I thought it hilarious, but kept this to myself.

Lunch was similar to the previous day and we did the last 5km after eating. This was probably the hardest bit, since, after we left the road, it was quite a steep descent into the village. It took us about an hour to amble down. We rested, we ate, we went to the local 'bar' which even had a 'pool table' of sorts. We were overcharged for beer and got rained on on the way home.

Indeed, it hissed rain all night and the steep slope that we had desended the previous day was now muddy and slippery and we were being picked up from the road at the top. After a hearty breakfast of banana and chocolate pancakes (I had five so as not to appear rude), we set off.

It was a bit of a muddy climb up the hill, and I was the only one who hadn't brought hiking boots, but we scaled the hill in about 90 minutes, climbed aboard two 'jeeps' and I was just congratulating myself on not getting too muddy when this Ford Everest, which for some reason didn't appear to have four-wheel drive, got stuck in the mud. It's seldom that I'm the biggest or strongest in a group, but the Vietnamese are a somewhat diminutive race, so I was in the prime position to push this thing up the road and get simultaneously splattered with mud and have my leg turned black by the exhaust fumes.

I showered in Sapa. I put on the same t-shirt I had worn for the first day's trekking, using the few dry corners of my other t-shirt as a towel.

I felt much better.

I finished my book in time for the bus ride back to Lao Cai, where I took a trip to the Chinese border for a look, and persuaded a couple of friendly Germans to do likewise. We then sat and ate good food and drank good beer and generally had a splendid time until the train came to take us back to Hanoi. We bought some more beer in the station, I drank them, fell asleep and awoke with a decpetively clear head; I shared a taxi with the friendly Germans, picked up my rucksack, went back to my hotel, had a sleep, went for a walk, had some lunch, bought a book and have been on the internet for a long time now. And some people say travel is stressful.

I have really enjoyed to opportunity to read something other than medical texts on this trup. In the last three weeks, I have read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Captain Corelli's Mandolin (which is truly excellent), The Adventures of Sherlock Homes, Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, and have just bought Homer's Oddyssey (for some reason).

I am now going to go and have my last taste of Bia Hoi, which is the world's cheapest beer at 10-25 cent per glass. It's tastey, not very strong and is served to tourists and Vietnamese who sit on small plastic furniture that is just hard enough to sit on that the first time you fall off indicates when it's time to go home.

And tomorrow I fly to Laos.

Deirdre says we don't have enough pictires of Hanoi on the blog, so I took a walk around with my camera this morning.

More motos.

This is the rather pleasant lake that sits in in the Old Quarter of Hanoi.

Communist propaganda by the lake, lest the red flags that adorn the city are too subtle.

This is me, having just bought a wee tripod for my camera (for about a quid) and am trying it out having just eaten a rather good pizza.

4,000 islands? Ha Long do we have?

We have just returned from Ha Long Bay, where we explored some of the 4,000 islands that jut inexplicably from the South China Sea. It was an amazing place, the pictures below do not do it justice and, once again, I'm going to have to recommend visiting it yourself, should you want to know what it looks like.

We were picked up from the hotel, driven to Ha Long City, we boarded the boat and were fed lunch before we visited a big cave on one of the islands. We reboarded the boat, sailed away for a while and anchored in a secluded area for some swimming. However, the surroundings became less secluded as more and more boats arrived with the same idea. Predictably, the locals had little rowing boats from which they sold the usual tourist fare - beer, cigarettes, pineapple, etc., etc. The illusion of isolation dissolved rapidly.

The first night we spent on board the boat. The next morning, we visited the largest island, known as Cat Ba Island, and checked into an hotel there. He went on a wee hike up a steep hill which had some great views from a tower at the summit. Later that day, we went kayaking to a small but empty beach and then to a lagoon that was inside a donut-shaped island. The tide was high, so we had to hop out of the kayaks, swim them through a small opening and jump back in them once inside. It was worth the hassle though.

We went back to the hotel for dinner and then on to a kareoke bar. Kareoke is very popular here. Unfortunately, no one seems able to sing. What's more, eight hour bus journeys, with maniacal drivers, on barely passable roads are only just about bearable before the kareoke starts up. Also, for some reason, it's considered very cool to put bits of English into songs. There was one particularly popular song in Cambodia whose chorus began with the classic line

"I love you, loving you, like the mouse so loves the rice"

and ended with the words

"Everything, I do it for you"

which had the same tune as a certain Brian Adams song that was UK number one for 17 weeks in the early 90s. Bizarre.

After some beer and kareoke, we retired early to bed, but woke up again at 01.45 to watch the Champions' League Final.

We came back to Hanoi today. Ha Long Bay was the best thing we've done on this holiday thus far. If you want to know why, all you have to do is come and visit Vietnam. It's after midnight and I'm tired, so I'll leave it there.

Shopping will be done tomorrow and Dee is going home the day after.

Toby.

We went to Ha Long Bay for two nights. This is the marina at Ha Long City, which was buzzing with tourists ready to detract from eachother's sense of isolation. If there's one thing tourists hate, it's other tourists.

This is the roof of our boat on the way towards the 4,000 islands that jut vertically out of the water.

We got to go swimming at regular intervals. We also spent an afternoon kayaking. I spent the following day unable to move my arms.

Junk. And stuff.

The following are some pictures I took to try and capture the majesty of Ha Long Bay. To see what people who are better at this sort of thing than me did, try here.

We visited a big cave that was lit in weird colours and at one point had lights reflecting on the roof of the cave that gave the impression there was a pool below when there was none. This rock formation was by far the most interesting part.

We hiked up a hill on the biggest island. Thirsty work that required water and, seemingly, biscuits.

This picture was taken on the top of a tall tower that I'm sure would not have reached EU safety regulations. The boards that comprised the floor weren't nailed down and falling to one's death would not have been difficult.

The trip to Ha Long Bay was exhausting.

Ditto.

St. Joseph's Cathedral, Hanoi.

We hired motorbikes in Hoi An.

The beach near Hoi An. Quite a posse we had going.

Hanoi

We have traded Hoi An for Hanoi. Got the plane this morning, since it was going to be $37 for the 14 hour train ride and was $48 for the one hour flight. And we're lazy. And I don't have to justify myself to you anyway.

Hoi An was a lovely little place, though not much going on, so we rented motorbikes and rode to the beach on the second day. The major triumph of our time there were the clothes we had made. I bought two suits, two shirts and two ties, all for the princely sum of $160. There was also an interesting evening involving the FA Cup Final, a shoe shop, a xenophobic Vietnamese, more people than should fit on a motorbike and two full moon parties on two different beaches. I had a headache this morning.

We are staying in the old quarter of Hanoi, which is similar to the old town in Hoi An, though, in contrast to Hoi An, it is anything but peaceful. Hanoi is a big pile of crazy, but I really like it. We've only been here since this afternoon, but I think it's my favourite place so far (Dee's still hung up on Phnom Penh). We are going to travel to Halong Bay for a couple of days and then back here until Deirdre flies home on Saturday, leaving me all on my lonesome to travel through Laos, fly to Bankok and then home in early June.

After Nha Trang, we jumped aboard an overnight train to Hoi An, an area untouched by the war, with loads of nice houses still intact in the old quarter. We bought hats. This is my communist army train driver's hat.

Dee on the bridge in Hoi An.

After Saigon, we decided we needed a break, so we went to the beach in Nha Trang for a wee while. Here's what it looked like from Toby's head.

Sunset over the South China Sea.

Reading a book in the sunshine. Exhausting.

Chillaxin'.

So, you're eating your sweet and sour prawns in deepest, darkest Vietnam and suddenly you're left with a Pokemon staring at you. And why not?

Here Today, Sai Gon Tomorrow

The journey to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) took over two days and went like this:

• From Siem Reap, we got a bus to Phnom Penh at 12.30 (good road) and arrived at 19.00.
  We booked into a cheap (ie $3) 'lakeside' guesthouse, and decided that the piddling fan that failed to blow through our mosquito net, coupled with lack of air con, meant that we wouldn't sleep in the heat, so drank beer in hammocks until 03.00.
• At 07.00 we took a minibus to a boat on the Mekong (poor road), which arrived at 10.00.
  
• The boat arrived at the border into Vietnam at 12.30, where we alighted, had our passports stamped, hastily scoffed down to some noodle soup and were underway on a different boat (four deckchairs on a long flat hull, covered by a makeshift awning) by 13.00.
  
• We were dropped off at Chau Doc by 15.30 and were on another minibus to HCMC (crap road followed by appalling road followed by inexplicably bad dual carriageway into HCMC) by 16.00, which arrived at 22.00.
  
• We found a delightful guesthouse run by giggling Vietnamese girls and were grateful to crawl into a comfortable bed, cooled by a roaring a/c.
  

A quick explanation: Ho Chi Minh City (pop. 6,063,000) is the name for a gigantic urban sprawl, which is divided into numbered districts. The former name, Sai Gon, corresponds roughly to District 1, and is how most older Vietnamese still refer to this city.

I think perhaps Deirdre and I shared a romantic impression of what Saigon would be like. The books describe it as a bustling city where worlds collide, where old and new compete for turf in this dynamic city of ancient temples, colonial quarters and soaring skyscrapers. In fact, it is a very busy city which has the disturbing quality of have no central place of reference, no nucleus around which the city rotates. It's a little disconcerting. Also, if 90% of the traffic in Phnom Penh was motorbikes, they make up 95% here. It creeps up to 99% in Nha Trang if you exclude taxis.

We spent the first day walking about the city, seeing the sights. There are a few really good war museums and the nightlife in the backpacker area was lively, but that's about all I have to say about it. It's really just another big city.

The next day we went took a wee trip back towards Cambodian border. We visited the Cao Dai Holy See - the major temple for the Cao Dai religion. If you've never heard of them, all you need to know is that they combine Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Christianity to form the weirdest religion ever created. Also, they never decided on a way to elect a new religious leader, so when their pope and the other upper hierarchy died they left a set of empty chairs on the alter. What's more, they have saints like Shakepeare and Victor Hugo, with whom they communicate via séances. We got stay for some of their noon ceremony, which was mostly playing and singing and bowing and gongs.

Later that day we went to the Cu Chi tunnels - the Viet Cong's underground tunnels between Sai Gon and the Cambodian border. They were built in the late 1940s and were used at first to attack the French. They were extended in the 1960s when the American War (as they solipsistically refer to it) started. I was fascinated how they managed to defeat the American and Australian troops, who has new-fangled weaponry and thebenefitt of numbers, using homemade weapons and ingenuity. The conditions were nightmarish - the tunnels were typically 80cmX60cm in cross-sectional area. By the end of the war, the area over the tunnels was considered a free-fire zone, so that any remaining defoliant, napalm or unspent bombs were dropped here on the way back to base. 16,000 Viet Cong started the fighting here, 6,000 survived. But they killed more than 15,000 American troops using hand-made mines and bombs, and booby-traps whose simplicity of design could have dated back 2,000 years. Being quite the pacifist, I don't relish the idea of anyone losing their lives in war, but this was not a war where the Americans acquitted themselves honourably. It is no surprise that civilians were driven to these extremes and it was impressive to see how they routed the superior force using patience and intelligence in the face of such ruthless barbarity.

That day we hopped on a night train to Nha Trang, a beach resort, for a bit of a holiday before heading off again for more arduous travelling. We went scuba diving yesterday, and I did two half-hour dives. Twas blue in blue.

We leave tonight. We overnight on the train again and arrive in Hoi An late tomorrow morning.

Below are some pictures of the Cao Dai Holy See - the centre of what is, without doubt, the most unabashedly garish religion ever created.

This is how they lined up as the ceremony started.

The nine pillars on wither side represent the nine steps to heaven. Unfortunately, the top guys died off, so people can now only get to about seven.

Here, yellow represents Buddhism, blue is Confucianism and red Christianity.

The star-spangled ceiling.

Burning incense in the gallery.

This is Buddha, Jesus, Confucious and, you know, like Moses or something.

The eye (left) is the symbol of Cao Daism.

This is me climbing out of a trap-door at the Cu Chi tunnels. They have been excavated for tourists, but are still really small (though so were the men and women using them).

Surprise!

M-41 tank that was destroyed by a landmine in 1970.

Spider.

A tight fit, even at double the size, as you can see.

This Brady Bunch-esque building is the Reunification Palace, which used to be a grand French colonial reidence but was destroyed when unpopular President Ngo Dinh Diem's own Airforce tried to assassinate him, in 1962, by bombing it whilst he was inside.

An M-41 tank at the War Remnants Museum, formerly known as the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes.

The Hotel de Ville, which is now home to the People's Commitee. Tourists are no longer allowed inside.

We went to the Sai Gon art museum, which is in an old colonial mansion. By far the most entertaining part was this courtyard, where they could have put a fountain, some nice flower pots, but decided instead that what it really needed was a badminton court.

From our trip down the Mekong, passing other boats and little villages and kids playing naked in the water that would wave furiously as we passed. It was a window into lives that are so very different from mine. A real eye opener.

This was our tour guide from Angkor Wat. He was a nice guy, but tried to double the price a the end of the tour, which left a bitter taste in the mouth. We split the difference.

Angkor What?

A few days ago we left Phnom Penh and traveled by bus to a tourist attraction that has that rare quality: it actually warrants all the attention lavished upon it and the locals trying to make a fortune out of travelers only barely detract from the experience.

This I have only encountered twice before. Once in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and the other was the Taj Mahal. You may never have heard of the Temples of Angkor, but, if the figures are to be believed, this is one of the world's must-sees whose profile is burgeoning at an alarming rate. 451,046 tickets were sold in 2004. This rose to 690,987 in 2005. This is alarming because the Cambodian government turned the site, previous under the jurisdiction of archaeologists, over to its tourist board, and by the time this nation, poor as it is, realises the benefit of investing in the upkeep of its most valuable asset, it may be too late. As it stands, most of the upkeep is funded and carried out by foreign NGOs and universities - mostly German and Japanese.

I have been feeling a little guilty for having posted nothing in the last while, but I think that, due to the amount we have been packing in to every day, our trip to Angkor feels like it was infinity-plus-one days ago. Honestly, I have actually been dreading writing this post. Occasionally something escapes my descriptive abilities and when this happens I think I'll wait until some time in the future, when I'm asked, preferably in a pub, with a pint of Guinness in front of me, to describe a place or an experience that doesn't lend itself to a dirty keyboard in a third world internet-hovel (cf. the train station in Calcutta). My post on Varanasi (which was written in a back street in Varanasi, in a shack, which was deriving its electricity from a generator, on account of a power cut) is an example of when I forced myself, and it nearly finished me off. This may be similar, so I'm going to be brief. Ask me about it in June.

We got a bus to Siem Reap, Angkor's nearby town. We had the privilege of being driven by bus down a fairly passable road of which the Cambodians are immensely proud. When asked how one found the "very good road", one is obliged to nod sagely and agree that it is "excellent". We found a really nice guesthouse called Smiley's which did the most spectacular fresh pineapple juice. The town was quite relaxed and there were some good bars and restaurants. We ate a hot Indian.

Curry that is.

The first evening we went to the main attraction - the temple called Angkor Wat - to watch it as the sun set. It changed colour from a noble stone to a fiery red and, as the ageless eye of Phaeton once more dipped below the distant horizon, the ancient edifice was silhouetted against the dusky tropical sky. Or at least that's what had happened the day before. When we were there it was cloudy, so it just sorta got dark.

The sun rose with a vengeance the next morning. We asked a guy to be our driver for the next two days and he told us where we could go. To the temples, of course. There's Angkor Wat, which is the largest and most impressive. This is near to what used to be a town of almost one million inhabitants, known as Angkor Thom. Only royalty was allowed to build with stone, so the wooden houses have rotten away to leave a hugely impressive collection of temples and palaces, in varying states of decay, within the old city walls.

The pictures will hopefully speak for themselves, but they can't do the place justice. Angkor Wat is sculpted all over. At one stage Deirdre sat down on a stone along the causeway to read something from the Lonely Planet. I was aghast and asked her kindly not to sit on the finely crafted Khmer architecture. However, a quick glance around for an appropriate surface left us with nothing but finely crafted Khmer architecture, so we shrugged and plonked ourselves where we were.

As I mentioned before, this place I can only compare in grandeur to two other buildings that I have experienced. Although less decorative than the Vatican or Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat outstrips these two buildings for two reasons:

• Firstly and most obviously, is twice as old as either of the others, dating from the 12th century.
  
• Secondly, it is miles away from anywhere. The population figures are thought to be wildly exaggerated. These are estimated from inscriptions on the temples themselves, describing how many people were required for their upkeep. One of the bigger temples (but not one of the big three - Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Phrom) claims to have required 80,000 for its upkeep, including clergy, dancers and the like. Imagine a very large football stadium full to capacity. Now think about fitting them all into a temple, let alone running it. So they're big filthy liars; Angkor Thom was not that populous but is still that isolated, and they managed to drag all that rock (because these things are never built of local rock, presumedly so future generations can marvel at the fact that an army of men had to drag it from miles away) and build big stuff.

The gallery is now ready. The linkis located at the top right of this page.

I think the heat is getting to me and I still haven't done my 'dramatically-tie-the-opening-paragraph-to-the-closing-one-by-posing-a-series-of-ridiculous-rhetorical-questions-bit' yet.

So now you know about Angkor. Or do you? Can one really know a place without experiencing it? Will Angkor Wat still be standing when you get out from behind that computer and see it for yourself? Was that really a rhetorical question? Or that? Who knows? That one was definitely rhetorical. I mean - that one was definitely rhetorical?!?

Enough of this foolishness. For a better description of stuff without all the prevarication, look at Dee's blog. The link is at the top left of this page. I warn you, it's pink.

We are now in Ho Chi Minh City, after a hellish journey. Well, hellishish. I'll explain in my next post. The general plan is to go to the beach in Nha Trang for a few days.

Tootles.

Toby.

In with the old...

Our bags have arrivied! Quite a relief to get out of our filthy clothes and into something a little more comfortable. I had been wearing jeans and the same smelly t-shirt for so so long. I don't know exactly how long, since that would take some careful maths on account of the time difference, and I have a feeling the local beer is stronger than at home, so I'm not in the mood.

We go to Siem Reap on the morrow to visit the legendary Temples of Angkor. Can't wait.

I've been a bit trigger happy today, but I reckon people want to see pictures, so here they are!

Moto city.

We sat on the balcony this afternoon, reading our books in our new clothes from our newly-arrived bags. Say hello to Dee everybody.
Hello Dee.

I thought I'd capture some of the pink and yellow craziness I had mentioned and I really liked this house.

A yellow wall - specifically of the royal palace.

I thought this a prime example. I took the picture. Then I noticed the two policemen with big guns guarding the house under the awning in the bottom right of the shot. Oops.

Pink.

Today we visited S-21, the school that was converted into a prison camp in 1975 to inter enemies of Pol Pot's regime. The standard stay was 2-4 months of torture. After the confessions had been extracted they were sent to the Killing Fields 13km away. Pol Pot was overthrown in 1979, having killed 20,000 people at this prison and almost 2 million of his own in total. This museum opened in 1980.

It may sound ridiculous, but I couldn't get over how much this looked like a school.

The courtyard is actually quite pretty, masking the horrors that happened here.

More classrooms turned torture chambers.

We went to the Royal Palace yesterday. T'was pretty spectacular.

Flaggy.

This is inside the Royal Palace. That's the thrown room in the background. Deirdre had to cover her shoulders. She might not look it in this photo, but was not happy to be in a hoody in the Cambodian heat.

I'm waving. I haven't elevated my arm fully since our bags still hadn't arrived at this stage and, well, you know.

A nelephant. We like nelephants.

This is the view from the Foreign Correspondent's Club (the FCC, or simply the F) where we had dinner this evening. A favourite with ex-pats, it has good view over the river and the street below. Can anyone spot a motorbike?

This is the view from the balcony, showing the confluence of Phnom Penh's two rivers: the Tonlé Sap and the Mekong.

And this is Deirdre.

And this is me.

I think this is Cambodia's National Assembly.

Our first sample of Phnom Penh's nightlife.

The same random bar.

Deirdre's head in Kuala Lumpur Airport. Special.

Arrving in Phnom Penh

Just a quick word to kick things off. We have arrived in Cambodia. Our bags have not, despite assurances from the girl at the transfer desk in Kuala Lumpur that they would. That was yesterday. The guy at the airport reckons they'll be in by tomorrow. *sigh*

At the moment we're smelly but happy. Phnom Penh is a lovely city. It's pretty clean and not as poor as I was led to believe. The buildings are painted in the same colour as they pave the streets - all light yellow and dark pink.

The major feature is the motorbikes. Loads and loads and loads. Most of them taxis, it seems. Haven't got one yet, since I'm travelling with Deirdre and she prefers the tuk-tuks. But we have to go to the airport tomorrow, to pick up our bags, and it'll be costly enough to get back from, so I'm thinking of heading out on a bike. They're scary though. The crossroads seem to have only one rule - survival of the fittest. Trucks have right of way over cars, cars over tuk-tuks, and tuk-tuks over motorbikes, which have to weave their way through carefully, although they make up more than 90% the traffic.

I hope to write more extensively later. In the mean time, feel free to leave comments.

And keep in touch.

Toby.

On returning...

Unfortunately, I'm no longer stoned on a sandy beach (though it's better than being sanded on a stoney beach, I'd imagine) in Goa. I came back to the first world with a bump. It took me a couple of days to settle back in. To be honest, I was a little over-awed by the amount of wealth in Dublin these days. I was looking upon my old city with new eyes.

But I lost my perspective all too quickly. I started back in university two day after returning from India and have since sat big exams. I have spent more on Christmas this year than I did on the previous 22 combined. I became the consumer I was before.

However, for those first two days I was bitter and twisted and angry at the world surrounding me. It was great. It turned me into one of those really boring travelers who gets home and tells everyone how lucky they are and how awful the country just visited is, and I started most sentences with "When I was in India..." Admittedly they were something along the lines of "When it rained in Calcutta, the sewers would overflow and we had to wade through shit to get to work - but you continue to complain about the price of your goat's cheese and roasted vegetable panini."

And that was the end of the adventure. I wouldn't reccommend India to everyone, but if you don't mind things a bit rough then it's truely, deeply rewarding.

If you haven't seen this blog yet, I hope you enjoy it. If you were reading it all along then I hope you enjoyed the trip as much as I did. I check from time to time to see if I get any comments, so please let me know what you think.

Yours,

Toby.

The beach is all but deserted.

I'm still on Anjuna beach. Didn't move. Nope. Like it here. Typing this is my greatest mental excersion of the last week.

We spend our days reading on the beach, or riding around the area on bikes, visiting nearby beaches. We have some lunch and then we push off again. We usually have dinner somewhere closer to home. Sometimes I swim. We play football in the evenings. Then we might go to a bar, or sit around the guest house in hammocks, having a laugh, listening to music, playing Playstation.

My brain is switched to standby.

The beach is all but deserted.

This is still officially monsoon season for today and tomorrow, so the package holiday crowd haven't arrived yet, just back-packers getting the early sun of the post-monsoon Indian Summer. They say in a month there will be ten thousand holiday-makers in Anjuna. At the moment you would be pushed to find one hundred. It's so totally chilled. I live on very little. I go home in two days. Not looking forward to leaving here.

Toby.

This is Dave and Rob. They are the ones who saved me from the firey Kashmiri and the guys with whom I am hanging around these days.
















This is Dave with Sung. If he introduces himself, Sung says he's Danish, but don't be fooled by his golden locks and blue eyes. Underneath those teutonic good looks, he is, in fact, Cambodian. He doesn't have much strength in his limbs and sometimes needs a walking frame, but, interestingly, he chose India to back-pack around, despite the fact that it's renowned as the hardest country in which to do so.

This is Rob with a trance-loving Israeli (is there any other kind) called Almog and the only Indian woman I've met who is travelling by herself, Simar.

Almog has been travelling for 10 months now, but bought a new slim Playstation 2 a few weeks ago, so that gave something to do of an evening. Until, that is, I mentioned that I had a chess board. This delighted him, so we played chess instead. Now the whole bloody guest house is playing chess and all I want to do is shoot zombies. Dang.

He also has a pair of seriously large speakers, with a home-made look to them, that I think used to belong to a car. He plays trance music on them all day. Double-dang.

I love this country because I can wear a skirt and a ridiculous hippy shirt, with big sandals and aviator sunnies, all day, and no one cares.

This is the view from the fort looking back towards yet another beach.

Here are some pictures I took of last night's sunset, just to fill up some space.

I'm in Goa, and you're not.

Yes, Goa is great, all palmy-beachy in the heart of Summer. The rain here has just stopped, so there are really few people around. It's seriously chilled out. My hotel is on the beach and I'm paying four euro per night for the room. The sea is warm and beer cold. I'm not sure I'll have much else to say on this blog any more. I'm hoping my life will be eventless for the next week.

Ah.

I still did some sightseeing when I arrived though. I met a couple of English sisters on the plane, so we saw the sights of the capital, Panaji, on our first evening. That took ten minutes, so we went and had dinner instead. Prawn vindaloo I had. Tasty.

The next day we went to Old Goa. This was the capital when the Portugese first arrived, and all the religious orders were sent to convert the locals. Therefore, there are half a dozen of the biggest cathedrals in Asia within a few minutes walk of each other, in a town that is essentially a really well kept ghost-town, but that, it is said, used to rival Lisbon in its magnificence.

Later that day, we hopped on a bus to the beach we had carefully chosen. They decided on this beach because it is supposed to have the perfect mixture of a laid back atmosphere with a good night-life. I decided on coming here because it's called Anjuna, and so sounds like everybody's favourite Celtic vocal ensemble. I think I made the right decision.

By sheer coincidence, I met a couple of guys down here that I had met in Delhi (when they saved me from a firey Kashmiri who wanted to kick my ass - a story for another time), so yesterday we rented mopeds and toured around a bit. I ate crab curry on the beach as the sun set over the Arabian Sea. And to think, I could have been dragging 25kg of luggage through 40 degree heat, trying to find a cheap hotel in Jodhpur. Yes, I think I made the right choice.

I think I might go to another beach in a day or so. Then again, I might not. I can do what I like. Life is good.

Toby.

Me, happy to be in Goa and out of Delhi, finally.

Half a tower from an old church in the former capital, Old Goa.

This is the courtyard of a monastery in Old Goa.

This is the view from my hotel. Oh yes.

Easy rider.

The view from last night's dinner table. I had crab curry. It was good.

And here are the lads I had dinner with.

This is one of the many Portugese-style churches in Goa. This one is in Panaji, the capital.

The Taj Mahal and the Flight from Hell (to Goa).

I ended up booking my ticket and flying to Goa in a fit of pique, but am delighted to be out of Delhi, and even happier to be in Goa. While on the flight, I found the time to write the following piece on Agra and the Taj Mahal:

"I am writing this on the plane to Goa. Man that air hostess is hot. These are the worst people for boarding planes I have seen. It defies belief. You'd never think they were given seat numbers on their boarding cards: they just sit wherever they want. Their hand-luggage is bigger the back-pack I checked in - the back-pack I was worried might be too heavy for a domestic flight. The guy in front of me has already reclined his seat all the way back and we haven't yet taken off. And, although I haven't checked, I wouldn't be surprised if his tray-table wasn't stowed in the fully upright position. Twenty-something, middle class, Indian men are the worst behaved of any nation I know, and this flight is full of them.

"Ooo, they all just shut up for the safety spiel, perhaps because those giving the demonstration are worth keeping quiet for. I knew there were more attractive women in this country, it just turns out they were all on aeroplanes. Should have guessed.

"So, I am meant to be writing about Agra and the Taj Mahal, and since the former is almost the biggest hole we've seen (Siliguri was worse), I'll concentrate on the latter.

"Becky and I met our driver at our hotel early in the morning.We picked up our tour guide for the next few hours en route, and arrived at the Taj Mahal complex by 07.00.

"The guy next to me keeps elbowing me in the ribs. No idea of personal space. As soon as the announcement requesting everyone to stay seated had finished, a man stood up. And there goes another one. This could be the longest two-hour flight in history. My neighbour keeps trying to read over my shoulder. I hope he reads the rib thing. Maybe I should write more legibly to make sure. Now where was I?

"Ah yes. There is an exclusion zone of about 1km radius around the Taj Mahal itself where cars cannot drive, due to fears about pollution affecting the marble, so we hopped on the electric bus that shuttles tourists to the main attraction. There was also a camel in the car park. I never found out why.

"Despite the fact that we're at the end of the runway and the engines are powering up, there's a man near the front of the plane that won't stop pressing the button calling for the air-hostess. Unbelievable.

"Anyway. A brief history lesson: The Taj Mahal was built, as you may be aware, by the 17th Century Mughal Emperor, Shah Jahan. He paid for and helped design the building after his favourite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, died giving birth to their 14th child. (This is what happens when people don't have television.) The Taj became her tomb, and is known as the eternal monument to love, but I have a different theory about its origins.

"In my learned opinion, Emperor Shah Jahan erected the Taj Mahal as an eternal monument to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is the most symmetrical building there will ever be. The gardens are symmetrical. The mosque and living quarters flanking the building look identical. The Taj itself looks identical from four different sides. The inlay work is disturbingly regular in design.

"Not content with all of this, he wanted to build an identical building of black marble on the other side of the river to act as his own tomb, with a bridge linking the two. It was at this point that his third son, Aurangzeb, intervened. Having killed all other potential successors, he had his Father put under house-arrest in Agra fort, where he lived out his last seven years, presumeably spent washing his hands and avoiding the cracks in the floor. Aurangzeb imprisoned his Father to curb his spending and seize control, but his timing meant that Shah Jahan never got to enjoy his last magnificent erection - the Red Fort in Delhi.

"When the Emperor died in 1666, Aurangzeb, who obviously never quite understood his Father's obsession with symmetry, buried him in the Taj Mahal next to his wife, and thus his tomb is the only thing to ruin the symmetry of the building. A pathetic end. In fact, it is my learned opinion the Aurangzeb deliberately suggested this final resting place to his Father in a final attempt to finish him off.

"So, in summary, good day, nice building, was prepared to be under-awed but was not. Sunrise made it look pretty. Took lots of pictures."

You can see these pictures at http://TobysTaj.blogspot.com.

At the end of the flight, when the exasperated air hostess had finally got them all to turn off their phones and sit in their seats, she went and strapped herself in for landing. And then, as soon as we had descended below the clouds, all the men sitting in the aisle seats undid their seatbelts, stood up and leaned right over to see out of the window. They behaved more like 14 year-olds on a school trip. It really was unbelievable.

But I'm here now.

And it's great!

Toby.

Charming, as ever.

Delhi-tful. Not.

We arrived in Delhi after Varanasi, but it was closed. It was Independence Day, which meant that, instead of the carnival atmosphere I was expecting, the city shut down for the day. So what did we do, having spent the last twelve hours or so travelling? That's right, we travelled some more.

We decided to splash out on a three day trip that included some fancy hotels and our own driver. First we drove to Agra, where we decided it was too late go and see the Taj Mahal, and it was raining, so we got up early the next morning to see it. Our driver arranged the tour-guide for us, which meant we got the most out of it. Pictures can be seen at http://TobysTaj.blogspot.com/. Needless to say, it's a fantastic sight, and I promise to write a piece on our time there when I get the chance.

After there we went to Jaipur (http://TobysJaipurGallery.blogspot.com). It is an interesting, affluent place and we had a very entertaining tour guide for our day there. The previous evening, 'we' had gone shopping, and Becky had dashed any delusions I had about my own haggling skills. The girl's a bitch. She had grown men in floods of tears , begging for those last few rupees. Got a good price though.

After seeing Jaipur's sights, we headed back to Delhi and went out for a nice meal and a few drinks for Becky's last night in India. She flew home the following day, leaving me to fend for myself. I found a fairly pleasant hotel for a good price, but was feeling lousy with a cold, so stayed in my room for most of the rest of the day, and then went to find somewhere to eat. Alone. Sniff.

The next day I went serious sightseeing in Old Delhi (http://TobysDelhiGallery.blogspot.com/) which was busy but very impressive. Yesterday, I went sightseeing in New Delhi, which, apart from a few old tombs of Mughal Emperors, was nothing like anything I have seen in India. It is very spaced out, green, with big new monuments, and it didn't appeal to me. What's more, I had, as my rickshaw driver for the day, a young guy who didn't have a clue where I wanted to go, even after I showed him on a map and showed him a picture of the tomb I wanted to visit. It was a little frustrating.

But not nearly as frustrating as the rest of the day.

Before I headed out to see the new city, I had gone to the New Delhi train station to buy my ticket out of there. I had planned to go to Udaipur, and had filled in my form saying so and was waiting in the queue to buy my ticket, when I opened my Lonely Planet on a stunningly beautiful picture of the city of Jodhpur. So I changed the proposed detination on the form.

After I had trawled around the leafy expanses of New Delhi for the day, I collected my luggage from my hotel and went for a few drinks with another traveller I had met that day in the station, who was getting a train to Jaipur that was leaving at about the same time as mine. After an hour or so, we left for the station, and I enquired at the information window from which platform my train left. It turns out it would have been more appropriate to ask from which station.

My ticket said the train was departing from "Delhi", which apparently means "Old Delhi". I was annoyed. I jumped into a rickshaw and paid him double to get him to race to an internet cafe so I could chat to my girlfriend online, when it turns out it was closed early. I was increasingly annoyed. I then went back to the bar I had left twenty minutes earlier and bought another pitcher of beer and proceeded to share it with an Austrian bloke who had just arrived in Delhi. I bought a big fat cigar, lit it, picked up my luggage and started the ten minute walk back to the hotel where I had been staying.

On the way, I met a Russian guy called Andre, who was a bit strange, but we sat down in the middle of the pavement and started playing guitar and singing. At this point in the evening it started to rain. Hard. My cigar went out. I was soaked through.

I walked to the station, where I tried to get a refund on my ticket, but the man said that window was closed until four in the morning. I tried to ascertain when the next train out of Delhi was. He said the 5.15 to Mumbai. I asked where I could get a ticket. He said it was full. I asked when the following train was. He said the 7.30 to Mumbai. I asked if I could have a ticket for that. He said it was full. I wondered why he was being so unhelpful. He pointed me towards the information window in the next hall. I went there. He asked me where I wanted to go. I said anywhere. He said I should go to the booking office in the next hall. I realised that was from where I had just come. He shrugged. I went back to the first desk and asked the man if I could book a ticket. He said to go to the tourist information office. I asked if it was still open. He said it opens at eight o'clock. I died a little inside.

I decided to go and find an hotel, which meant braving the elements once more. They had almost all shut up shop for the night, so I had to go to a tout, because, although one pays a little extra to cover their commission, they know where is open and has rooms. I ended up in an awful place and collapsed in a drunken, tired, cold-ridden, wet heap on the bed, where I awoke, some hours later, in the same position (though you should replace 'drunken' with 'hungover'). I got stung for some made up government charge as I was checking out and three seperate people tried to tell me that the Tourist Office in the station was closed because it was Sunday, presumably to steer me to their own travel shops. When I finally got to the tourist office, I found my friend from the previous day sitting there. Apparently she too went to the wrong station. That made me feel a little better.

So, I have decided to forget Rajasthan and am going to splash out on a flight from here to Goa, since I managed to find a good deal. Otherwise it's a two day train ride and I don't really want to have to brave Mumbai on this trip. I think I will now spend a little more time than intended in the South, where the weather is meant to be a little more bearable, and maybe stray from the tourist trail I have been following for the last two weeks. Can't wait.

Toby.

This was when 'we' went shoe-shopping. One of us was very excited about it.

Me and an elephant.

Some Shiva worshippers carrying water from the Ganges in two little silver jars at the end of a stick. Actually, I think it's an excuse to have festivals all the time and do nothing else, but whatever works for them.

An elephant pooing. Adolescent, I know, but still a good action shot. I think.

A bear and a monkey. Of course.

A Paddy in a paddy field. Classic.

The first McDonald's we'd seen in six weeks. We got a bit excited. And they only serve chicken and fish. And no chicken nuggets, which makes me wonder if there's beef in them.

Action shot.

Things to Do in Varanasi When You're Dead

1) Get burned in a funeral pyre
2) Get sunk in the Ganges attached to a big rock
3) Get sent down the Ganges in a banana tree

I am afraid my eloquence has deserted me. I cannot explain Varanasi. I will try to give a brief overview.

It is busy. I thought Kolkata was mental, but this place is proper crazy. Crossing the road is a virtual impossibility. There are so many cycle-rickshaws, auto-rickshaws and taxis that are literally bumper to bumper that there is simply no way through one lane of it, let alone three.

There are so many people selling things and services here too. The level of hassle is way above anything experienced so far. In the really touristy zones, there are people who will come up to shake your hand - not an uncommon experience when one comes across an Indian who wants to try out his knowledge of Western customs - and then say he's giving you an hand massage. And it's really hard not to proffer one's hand when approached thusly. In fact, if anyone has tried to be our friend in any way, we have run a mile. It is the one time I have been greatful for our high levels our Traveller's Paranoia - a disease insidious in onset but instantly recognisable by feelings of guilt, after one is needlessly suspiscious of and even rude to someone who is being friendly and helpful for no personal gain.

We went for a boat ride at about a quarter past five and saw the various ghats (set steps leading down to the river), of which there are 365 in Varanasi, including the five from which one must bathe to wash one's sins away, and the few burning ghats, where the dead are cremated - a certain way of ending the cycle of reincarnation and attaining Nirvana. We stopped off at one of these ghats and had the ritual explained to us, whilst a dead man was set alight by his first-born about two metres away from us.

Upon returning to the boat, the man who was rowing could be observed drinking a few handfuls of water from the river:

The internationally agreed safe level of coliform bacteria present in water to be considered safe for bathing is 500 per 100ml. The Ganges has 1.5 million per 100ml. People who want to bathe to cleanse their sins away should have a proper bath when they get home. The fact that the man was drinking this water defies belief.

An hour later, we returned to the main ghat whence we departed, where they began the ritual that occurs at sunset. I think it is called 'The Ritual of Cramming White People into Boats for Ridiculous Money'. Or something along those lines. We managed to get a boat, just the two of us and the two people taken to operate the craft, for Rs150 each, for one hour. I heard some (fat) tourists agreeing prices of Rs500 each in a boat of ten people. Haggling has become one of the great discoveries of this holiday, since I was never very good at it before and now rather enjoy it. If I can't get just one rickshaw-wallah in a crowd of them to agree reluctantly to a silly price at which he really should have balked, then it wasn't worth it. It's not that I don't realise the absurdity of the situation. Yesterday we took ten minutes to beat down one guy from 50 to 40 rupees. This is a difference of 20 cent. And where were we going? Well we had decided to treat ourselves to dinner in the Radisson. Not the cheapest meal we have enjoyed - certainly many tens of times more expensive than the Rs10 I insisted on doing rickshaw man out of (and ended up giving him in the end). But it is nice to think we are scamming them for once.

And this really is the city of the scam. Some rules for visiting Varanasi:

1) Do not trust anyone, they just want your money
2) Nobody wants to be your friend, they just want your money
3) Haggle like the bejaysus, they just want your money
4) If you can accept that you will be scammed a little while you are here, you will be happier for it.

We chose our hotel from the information given to us in the Tourist Information Office in the station, whose sole purpose is to ensure tourists don't get ripped off. We jumped in a taxi and arrived at our first choice, which was full. The Lonely Planet advises that one asks at reception, as the taxis have arrangements with individual hotels, so will happily say that the hotel of your choice is full, or burned down, or has just had its signs removed, upon arriving at his prefered hotel. They also claim that doormen will take a bribe from the taxi driver to say likewise, or be a plant and not the doormen at all. So, as I said, we checked at reception. Full. No problem - our second choice hotel was just around the corner. This had only the deluxe rooms available. Surprise, surprise. So we broke our rule of not spending more than Rs500 per night on a room (this one was Rs1100), but it was worth it, as the room really is very nice. But after coming down from the room after two minutes to buy some water, the taxi man was back and had Rs300 in his hand. We had only paid him Rs20 to drop us to the hotel (admittedly a bit scabby, but that's the fun, isn't it?), so he obviously took a commission for bringing us there, despite the fact that we were the ones who had requested it. I was going to tell the hotel receptionist, but I rathered the taxi driver had it than the hotel - scamming the scammer, as it were.

You know that myth about cows walking freely in the streets in India? There are lots of cows here. Lots of cows. There was a particuarly busy intersection I liked to call the Dead Cow Roundabout that was such a melee, but wasn't aided by the fact that there was a cow blissfully resting in the middle of it. There are lots of cows here.

And it may be because they're sacred, but you wouldn't know it from the way they're kicked and slapped. While I've been sitting here, there was a lot of commotion, followed by the unmistakeable sound of a human fist impacting on unsuspecting flesh. Fortunately it was bovine flesh, but the supposedly calmest of animals was, at that stage, anything but. And I was expecting the people to COW-tow to them!

(What? I'm not apologising for that. )

That's all the news for the moment. We go next to Delhi (14 hours by train - although they always tend to underestimate the time taken subsantially in our experience), instead of Agra as planned, since the Taj Mahal is doable as a day trip, and Agra sounds disgusting. Becky flies home on Thursday and then it's just me all on my lonesome.

A funeral procession just went past, presumably towards a burning ghat, with all its colour, shouting and banging of drums. This town is full on crazy.

Toby.

The Varanasi waterfront.

Nothing like the smell of a funeral-pyre to set the mood for a romantic boat-ride on the Ganges with your brother's girlfirend. Perfect.

Crazy but colourful!

The view from a cycle-rickshaw in Varanasi

So Toby, why did you spend so long in Darjeeling and why are there so few pictures?

An excellent question. Well, there's the fact that it was lovely and cool, as I have said. The views were fantastic. Let's see... Were there any others reasons why I spent four nights up that mountian?

Oh yes.

I managed to leave my new digital camera in the 4X4 that took us up the mountain. I paid the guy Rs150 to drive four hours on one of the most difficult roads in the world, and then left a camera that I bought for Rs7500 on his dasboard. I didn't hold out much hope of seeing it again, as one may imagine, but the legendary congeniality of the people living up there shone through and, after a few phone calls, I had it back in a couple of days. That meant hanging around for one more day than we had intended however, which was augmented again by the fact that there was no room on the train on the day we wanted to leave, which meant being there for four instead of two nights.

And, although I had my camera for the last day or so, we were in the middle of a cloud and the fabulous views were obscured. The cloud also meant that nothing dried. Becky washed her shoes one evening and Toby could be found that night using her hair straightener to dry them off.

They were damp again by the morning.

So anyway, the good news is, I have my camera back and there will be pics galore. I'm sure you'll all be thrilled, since I have a sneaking suspiscion most people claim to read this site, but mostly look at the pictures.

I am Hugh Heffner.


Toby.

The train from Patna to Varanasi stopped at some station for about 30 seconds when this happened.

The view from the restaurant where we had breakfast this morning.

This is me stuck somewhere up a mountain.

This is the 'Toy Train' that takes an interminable nine hours to get up the mountain. We didn't bother. You can't really tell here, but it's actually derailed!

Trains, Tea and Trekking

I eventually packed and we set off for Darjeeling. I'm not even going to try to explain what the train station in Kolkata was like. It was just so busy. It would have to be seen to be believed.

The train journey lasted twelve hours, though we had been told ten. There are no compartments, just 72 bunks in each carriage.

(What? I had twelve hours to kill. Counting the bunks seemed the obvious thing to do. No?)

There were also the carriages where the people were packed in like cattle, but it was only about five euro for our tickets, so we didn't feel like scrimping to that extent. In our carriage there was an Indian family across from us, and I was evidently the most interesting thing their daughter had ever seen, because I was stared at for the whole journey. At about five in the morning an old dude dressed in orange, with a painted face started shuffling down the carriage, clanging little cymbals and singing Harekrishna. I woke up and groaned. This sort of thing doesn't happen on the DART. The girl opposite laughed at me.

After we alighted the train, we had to get a 4X4 to give us a lift up the mountain from which Darjeeling hangs. Although only 90Km, it took another four hours. The view was fairly spectacular though, which helped the time pass.

Darjeeling - named after a type of tea as I understand it - is really beautiful. The buildings are colonial in origin, believe it or not, and the people here are obviously more affluent than in Kolkata. Despite its relative obscurity, they have a very Western style of dress and this internet cafe is much better than any I found in Kolkata. They also have a much more Oriental appearance here than in Kolkata, and the girls are a whole lot better looking (not hard).

It's a lot cooler up here. I had a shower when I arrived and it was the cleanest I have felt since I left Ireland. I didn't break out in a sweat straight away. I don't have to lie down under a ceiling fan for the day. It is actually pleasant. Yes, pleasant. What's more, the air seems a lot thinner. This could just be my imagination, however. Carrying 30Kg of luggage up and down the hills in this town, having spent the previous month doing as little as possible, may have just revealed how unfit I am, as opposed to the lack of oxygen. Hard to know.

Becky and I went pony trekking in the Himalayas today. And I feel like saying that again. Becky and I went pony trekking in the Himalayas today. So there. It was really fantastic. Mostly foggy in the tea plantations, but every now and then the clouds broke to reveal a breath taking view down the mountain. It has been the highlight of the last five weeks.

The Nepalese border is closed for the moment due to Maoist terrorist activity, so we will more than likely have to bypass Kathmandu and head straight to Varanasi. Since we now have a few days in hand we have decided to stick around for one more night.

Toby.

Every journey...

Confucius, he say "Every journey begins with a single step".

Well here's some wisdom for you:

Every journey begins with a bit of a headache, caused by packing whilst hungover from celebrating the 'last night in town'.

To add to our woes, Barbara left this morning (at half past four), and Becky and I got up to go to the airport with her. When we left the hotel, there was a Spanish girl there who was also going, so the two decided to share a taxi, and, what with their luggage and all, there was no room for Becky and me to accompany them.

Dang. Had to go back to bed.

So now it's just the two of us. We're heading off to Darjeeling today, but our personal belongings seem to have doubled in the past four weeks, so I'm hiding from the packing in an internet cafe while Becky has gone to get her hair done.

We had a good night last night. We went out to the Calcutta Cricket and Football Club with the sons of the doctor who arranged our elective here, and they bought us fairly heroic amounts of drink. There were also a couple of guys called James with us who have just finished their degrees in Maths and Physics in Oxford, and the lot of us are going to watch the Ashes later.

So to recap - Posh English chaps watching cricket in India. Who says we lost the Empire?

We will be in Darjeeling tomorrow morning, so hopefully I'll have more to say then. In the mean time, I have to finally pack up, go and do a bit of last minute sightseeing, and drop in the remainder of the charity money we raised to the Motherhouse.

But first I have to leave this place - my first single step of the next four weeks' travelling.

(and I still have this damn headache)

Toby.

Here's the reason for today's headache.

Barbara was moaning that I didn't have a picture of her on the site. So here she is.

Then Becky was complaining that the pic of Barbara was better than the one of her cleaning her shoes, so here she is again.

Ramakrishna Mission Seva Pratishthan (The Hospital)

We have spent the last four weeks on four different rotations in the hospital - Medicine, Surgery, Paediatrics and Obs & Gynae. We went to the hospital every day from nine(ish) until two o'clock. Or one. Sometimes twelve. A couple of times we left at eleven.

The one thing I can say about the hospital is that, although the facilities are fairly poor, the doctors really do know their stuff.

Was that two things?

Anyway...

A feature of a communist government, such as that in West Bengal, is that everywhere ends up overstaffed. The Ramkrishna Mission Hospital is no different. There are loads of doctors, and a lot of them seem to spend a substantial part of the day hanging around. Certainly, when we were doing our Paediatrics rotation, we had to kick the doctors into any sort of teaching, and then they'd tell us that their team only had two patients on the ward. Well then whose are all the other kids? How many paediatric teams does one ward need?

I think the exception is when they do their outpatients clinics. Oh Holy God. Literally thousands of people crammed into the waiting room. A doctor told us, as we were going home one day, that he couldn't meet us the next morning because he had outpatients. He said that even if he only sees thirty patients, it makes a difference to the team's workload.

Sorry? Thirteen patients? No. Thirty. Three zero. Only. Thirty.

Wow.

And the setup is... well... different from that which you may have experienced in the Western World. A team's outpatients clinic consists of maybe four doctors sitting around what looks like a fair sized dining room table, chatting to a patient each. Confidentiality flies out of the window. If a doctor wants a second opinion, he just asks the guy across the table, so that the other patients (both the ones sitting at the table as well as the ones waiting in line around said table), the patients' families, the porter and the bewildered medical student can hear. X-rays and lab reports are passed freely back and forth, so it's a miracle anything ends up back in the right chart. They're big into paper-weights here because the ceiling fans blow a gale and tend to scatter things if they are not pinned down. That is, of course, when the fans are working. If they are not then I leave drips of sweat all over the charts, such that I wonder if it wouldn't be better to laminate it all. I got an almighty slagging from the other doctors for that.

The other curious thing about the hospital, apart from the abundance of doctors, is that it is run by monks who have no medical training. So hand-washing is not a big issue, but one has to change one's shoes when going into the Intensive Care Unit, the Coronary Care Unit, the Labour Ward, the Dialysis Unit and the X-Ray department. We even have to change our shoes a second time from ordinary surgery clogs to special flip-flops when entering the Caesarean Section theatre. And there are many more practices that were never done in the West or were abandoned years ago that are still practised here as a result of policy-making by a religious leader. A big, fat, extremely rude religious leader. And orange really isn't his colour.

I won't have any pictures of the hospital, because we lied to the monks and said we were flying home this morning and that we couldn't come in. So if I turn up in tourist garb with a camera and get spotted, they might take back their certificate.

They gave us a certificate.

In fact, they really like pieces of paper in this country. Bureaucracy creates jobs. Therefore, everything is written in triplicate and signed and countersigned. Only, they don't do today what can be put off until tomorrow. The whole first day was taken up with setting us up in the hospital. Despite the fact that they emailed us and told us that they would accomodate us in a four week elective, they weren't expecting us. But eventually they found the emails they had sent. I could be cynical and imply that the catalyst for their change of heart, after about an hour of not doing very much about us, was the fact that I produced the 3 X 7,000 rupees that was requested before we arrived (and I can tell you that 21,000 rupees in 100 rupee notes looks pretty impressive), but I wouldn't do that. These are holy men after all.

I'd say I was going to hell, but since these Hindus chaps believe in reincarnation, I'll probably just come back as one of the lizards living in our bathroom.

It could be worse. I could be a patient in the Ramakrishna Mission Hospital.

Toby.

An hilarious little man who sells bags and postcards outside our hotel.

Becky cleaning her shoes in our bucket in our skanky bathroom. This needs doing regularly.

Taxi heaven on Park Street - the fanciest road in Kolkata. This one-way street actually changes direction at two in the afternoon. Disaster.

Flury's Cafe - a posh place where the girls hang out if they're in need of good food and air con. Even I went there. Once.

Rickshaw Wallahs. They made me pay them 10 rupees for this shot.

The Pink Palace - otherwise known as the Shilton Hotel. Home Sweet Home.

The view from our bathroom window.

On arrival...

You will be thrilled to know that my two friends and I landed safely in Kolkata (Calcutta) yesterday. Having been warned that we would be completely mobbed at the airport, the lack of attention was a little bit of a let down.

The fun to be had in a taxi, however, was no exaggeration, and we feared for our very existence as we weaved in and out of the other cars and buses. They, of course, were doing likewise, so the result seemed like total chaos, but they seem to be making a living out of it, so we got a taxi to the hospital this morning for the laugh.


We rented a room at the Hilton... sorry, I mean Shilton Hotel. There is also a Hilson is a few doors down. But hey, what's one more scam? Our room is simple enough, but the (cold) shower works, we have a television and we have three (rock hard) beds - all for the princely sum of 7.84 euro per night between three of us. I admit that at those prices we could probably afford to go a little further up-market, but it's all about the experience. Of living in a total dive.
After a brief kip, we went for a small wander around. Over 13 million people in this city and I think half of them tried to sell me a belt. Or wallet. Or shirt. Or the most random pieces of junk. Place your orders now folks.

Every guide book and website on this city tells of how we have all been brain-washed by Mother Teresa's propaganda, and that the poverty in Kolkata is not as bad as we in the West think it is.

Yeah right.

There are simply people everywhere. EVERYWHERE. It's just people and people and people. And taxis. But mostly people.

We are in Kolkata for 4 weeks, working in some big old hospital (hence the taxi ride I spoke of earlier - we weren't really going to the hospital for the laugh, we simply chose our mode of transport to that end). It's cramped and packed full of beds. I can't imagine infection control is a top priority. We even saw a nurse washing a pair of latex gloves, presumably to be re-used. I have to say, if I happen to fall ill, I'll take my chances under Becky and Barbara's care.

I suppose I should say somehing about the food. Errr.... It's really cheap and, due to my insatiable appetite (for adventure) I never have a clue what I'm ordering, but it's all been good so far and none of us have the runs. Yet. Although, we have taken bets on who will be first to fall.

So, it's monsoon season. The weather has been a bit Irish (except that I hear it was a sunny 28 degrees in Ireland, so maybe not), except that it's damn warm and I have never experienced such humidity. A sweaty beast at the best of times, I now spend the day bathing in my own bodily secretions. Pleasant.

I think that's all my news from the last 36 hours. We are out of here in four weeks. Barbs is going home while Becky and I head off on our travels, flying out of Mumbai (Bombay) at the beginning of September.

I hope to write again soon,

Toby.