German surfers

Well I'm back at work again, on my second run of shifts since returning home. Before my shift this evening I went to see a movie in the German-French film festival that's currently running in Wellington. "Keep Surfing" is about the Eisbach river surfers I saw when I was in Munich in August.

Actually, it's not about the same guys. This documentary film was made a few years ago. Apparently there are hundreds of people who river surf in Munich. Now I know the individual stories of half a dozen of them. Seeing the film took me back to that afternoon when I sat on the banks of the river watching their skill and taking some photos.

So my long journey ended last month now. Looking back I recall that and other highlights. I've stood in Red Square in Moscow, and been inside the Kremlin. I've attended Chile's celebrations for 200 years since independence and photographed the President at close quarters. I've been to the Evita museum in Buenos Aires, and to the cemetary where she was laid to rest. I've attended the wedding of two dear friends in southern Spain, shared meals with a former colleague while we were both in Vietnam and made new friends in many countries.

I went to the site of a mass grave in Cambodia, to one of the cities where the Americans used weapons of mass destruction in Japan and walked alongside the Jewish memorial in Berlin. I caught colds in Hamburg and Bali and got bitten by bed bugs in Agra and Ho Chi Minh City. All my flights took off and landed close to their scheduled times. One of my trains had to be replaced by a bus. I kept track of how much I was spending as a daily average, but can't tell you the total cost of my trip. A lot was pre-paid during the planning process, and it will take a great effort to find all that on my credit card statements and calculate the figure.

In 161 days I saw and did so much. Now it's almost as if the adventure was a dream. I am, of course, making plans for future trips. I believe I've seen 70 or so countries. That's about one third of the United Nations-recognised world. My new goal is to have visited half the world.. meaning I've got to get another 35 countries under my belt. I relish the challenge :-)

End of the road

By the way, I am back home in Wellington ! I've been busy unpacking, washing clothes, putting away things from my storage locker - back to where they go in the flat... and working.

It was a delight to be met by two friends at the airport at half past eleven on Tuesday night. Now it's Sunday, and I've done two shifts back at work, with two more to go until my next days off. My compter log-in works, I remember how to navigate my way around the work systems, but my security card doesn't give me access to the office. That will have to be sorted out on Monday.

On my way back I used three airlines. Between arriving in Australia and departing again I went into Sydney and used the public pool on the edge of Hyde Park. The length of the lap pool is 50 metres, and I swam 12 lengths. That's not bad for someone who's done nothing similar in months !

Anyhow... this travel diary will soon wrap up. I'm planning to write again with some reflections on my time away. Give me a few days and I'll get around to it :-)

Photo Post : More of Vietnam

Preparing spring rolls. Cooking class with David at the Blue Butterfly restaurant in Hanoi.

Holding a snake during the Mekong Delta trip.

Lunch with Eilidh Macleod, a former colleague from BBC Scotland who is currently teaching English in Hanoi.

Thailand

I've been neglecting my online diary for the past few days, during which I've been relaxing in Thailand. Winding down for a few days at a high quality beach resort in north Pattaya, then for a couple more over the weekend at a different hotel closer to the party action in town. At the Pullman resort someone switched on the wave machine, the day I went swimming in the sea. The waves were coming in sideways and the water was warmer than that in the hotel pool. How nice to float in the sunshine, with the salty water helping soothe the skin on my arm which is recovering from some more bedbug bites -- apparently received somewhere in Vietnam.

Everywhere in Pattaya you can see Cyrillic characters and hear people speaking Russian. This is a huge destination for holidaying Russians. In Vietnam I only met one Russian. A 28 year old guy who worked for Ukoil and has two periods of 14 days' holiday a year. He was quite a character, who reinforced the stereotype of Russians taking a tipple as he topped up his coke using a bottle of golden alcohol. Colourful too, he didn't hesitate to join in the Karaoke on board the junkboat in Halong Bay (which sent me to bed early to escape the noise). When the lyrics screen malfunctioned he continued singing "Dragon Boat Cru-iss" when the default logo "Dragon Boad Cruise" came up.

Thailand isn't as cheap as it used to be. I'm sure I used to get 70 Baht for a UK Pound only a couple of years ago. Now I'm lucky if I can get close to 50 Baht. I have, however, bought myself some nice new shoes. A pair of trainers and a smarter pair of New Balance, probably for half the price I'd get them back home.

I'm writing from Singapore Airport, where I'm waiting for a connecting flight to Australia on my way to Wellington and the end of my journey. I arrive into Melbourne, then connect to Sydney. Because there's a time lag before my trans-Tasman hop to Wellington I have the chance to spend a day in Sydney. At least I will go to the central city for lunch, and perhaps a little more shopping.

Meanwhile, I'll add some more photos here from my time in Vietnam.

Video post : Sa Pa trekking

Landscape at Lao Chai village, 13 kilometres by foot from Sa Pa in northern Vietnam.

Photo Post : Sa Pa

H'mong people in the town centre, selling their goods.

Children in one of the villages near Sa Pa.

Lanterns and other goods for sale.

Food preparation facilities inside one of the houses.

Landscape.

Sa Pa

Sa Pa is in the far north of Vietnam, very close to the border with China. Tourism has developed here over the past 20 years, so the H'mong people no longer confine themselves to simple village life but make clothing and other souvenirs to sell to the many visitors who come trekking.

It's pretty cold at night, being 1,500 metres high. To reach the town and surrounding villages I've taken an overnight train from Hanoi, followed by a bus, and am now doing two days of walking. It's nice to get away from the big city for a while. The largest mountain here is named Fransipan. The people look very different to other Vietnamese. They're similarly persistent, however, in offering motorbike rides and things for sale.

Video Post : Halong Bay

Inside the big cave in Halong Bay.

One of the many junk boats that take tourists around the beautiful bay in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Photo Post : Hanoi

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum.

Hanoi's Opera House by night.

Street food, just outside the main market.

Wedding couple, posing for photos in the grounds of the Temple of Literature.

Living beside the Red River.

To eat, or not to eat (dog)

Vietnamese people seem divided over the question. Many react in the same way as most Westerners would when offered the chance to eat dog meat. Others seem perfectly happy with the concept.

On the bus journey back from the Mekong Delta to Ho Chi Minh City I saw a motorbike with a cage strapped to the back, inside which there were six or seven live dogs crammed together. Perhaps they were on their way to a restaurant !

Apparently, dog meat in Ho Chi Minh City is prepared like cubed beef or other meats would be. Whereas in Hanoi, it's said to be eaten in big chunks. There you might be given a leg to gnaw on.

At Ngon restaurant in Hanoi David and I tried fried sparrow. I can tell you, there's not a lot of meat on those tiny birds !

Photo Post : Vietnam

Inside the post office in Ho Chi Minh City, under the gaze of Uncle Ho.

Street sweeper and bikes.

War Remnants Museum, HCMC.

Patriotism on display in Ho Chi Minh City.

Mekong Delta trip, with David. Do you like our hats ?

Barbecue meal, preparing to cook beef, pork and deer.

Vietnam

Time is running away from me now. I have just two weeks to go before my journey ends. I am aware that I've not been updating this online diary so often, which is partly because I am travelling with my friend David from Wellington and we are doing so much that I don't get the spare time to write.

We crossed into Vietnam by land from Cambodia. The bus driver went at speeds of up to 130 kilometres per hour and was a great fan of sounding his incredibly loud horn. Basically, no other vehicle had the right to be on the road and had to get out of our way.

The border crossing was smooth in leaving Cambodia, then slow in entering Vietnam because just one official was checking the passports of all 30 or 40 people on the bus. I bought a Viettel sim card from a woman at the border. It cost me $4 US and had more than that in credit. A week later I've still used only half of it. After a few days I've got the hang of the money. 20,000 Dong to a US dollar. It's possible to get through a million in one day.

The food in Vietnam is absolutely fantastic. So much variety by comparison to Cambodia. So healthy too. There's coriander and other salad leaves with everything. Noodle soup, called Pho, is available everywhere. You get to fill and roll your own spring rolls. At barbecue restaurants you cook the meat yourself (we had deer). As you may know, some people in the north of Vietnam eat dog meat. We have not tasted that, but we have picked at the tiny breasts of deep fried sparrows.

Cambodia snapshots

Sleeping rikshaw driver.

Buddha and I.

Bikes are everywhere in Cambodia and Vietnam.

Was that a good place to leave a bicycle ?

Happy buffalo ?

New Zealand hair cut, obviously.

Khmer Rouge - content warning !!

A tuktuk ride out of Phnom Penh will take you to Choeung Ek, one of thousands of sites where mass graves have been found from the Khmer Rouge era in the mid to late 1970s. Anyone who was educated was eliminated, along with their entire families so there would be no-one left to take revenge at a later date. Cambodians today actually encourage visitors to take photographs at the site of the genocide. They say it is important that the story be told, so it will be less likely that anything similar could happen again.

Above, victims of the Khmer Rouge, who experimented in applying their own brutal form of Communism to Cambodia, after an initial wave of popular support when they overthrew a corrupt regime.

A chilling sign, requesting that people do not walk on the mass grave. Scraps of clothing and pieces of human bone continue to surface after rains. There are mass graves here that remain unexcavated. Nine thousand human skulls are contained in the memorial stupa on this one site alone.

One of the cells at the torture prison, S-21, in Phnom Penh. The site was once a school, and is now a genocide memorial.

Photo Post : Angkor Wat and other temples

Daybreak at Angkor Wat.

Bakong.

Ta Som.

A monk viewing sunset at Phnom Bakheng.

Children playing outside Ta Prohm.

Cambodia

The first thing to say about Cambodia is that the visa on arrival is processed by about ten different officials who are very serious about their task. Arriving at Siem Reap airport, passengers are told the form given out by Air Asia is no longer used and a new form has to be filled in. While this is being done, applicants are overlooked by a row of uniformed men on a raised platform. Payment is then made, passport and photo handed over, and the checking process begins. Each man checks a different piece of information from the application form and gives it his stamp of approval. Eventually, the passport makes its way along to the end of the line and is returned to its holder, ready to be shown to an immigration official who then stamps visitors into Cambodia.

Siem Reap is a small city and the gateway to Angkor Wat and the other temples around it. A lot of the roads are in need of repair, with big puddles forming when it rains. The people are quietly spoken, somewhat shy but friendly. Around every temple there is someone persistently trying to sell postcards, books, scarves, drinks etc etc. A polite "no thankyou" often does the trick, but not always !

Cambodia is a country that has been through a lot. Hundreds of years ago the vast temple complexes were built and the territory of Cambodia stretched far beyond its current borders. Neighbouring countries have encroached, brutal wars have been fought, and the era of the Khmer Rouge reduced everything to year zero with the brutal atrocities that followed the overthrow of a corrupt regime.

Visiting the killing fields outside Phnom Penh and the S-21 prison complex in the city, where so many people were tortured, puts into context the fact that so many people alive today have lived through what happened. What ended only 12 years ago with the final demise of the Khmer Rouge. Surviving members of the leadership are now undergoing trial for the genocide. Pol Pot died, of course, and cheated justice.

Reading achievement

I have finally completed the 905 page epic that is "Hawaii" by James A Michener. I found this tattered copy abandoned in Munich Airport nearly two months ago, repaired it, and read it bit by bit. It tells the story of Hawaii and its people, from the formation of the islands until the years following the Second World War. Tiny print in this paperback edition, which appears to have been printed in the early 1960s and will now be passed on to the book shelf at the Central Boutique Angkor Hotel in Siem Reap.

Fish pedicure

I'd seen these big fish tanks in Bali, but they're even more common in Cambodia. So-called Dr Fish, which give you a pedicure by eating your dead skin. They peck away at feet and legs while you sit and have a beer. It's supposed to be very therapeutic. $2 US in Siem Reap, where I'm with another good friend from Wellington. I'll spend the final four weeks of this big trip with David, travelling through Cambodia and Vietnam before having a relaxing few nights in Thailand.

Photo Post : Kuala Lumpur

Petronas twin towers.

Looking down from the bridge, connecting the towers at the 41st floor.

Masjid Jamek mosque.

Kuala Lumpur's monorail.

Photo post : Bali

Kuta Beach. The sun was shining soon after a heavy rain shower.

Memorial to the 202 people who died in the terrorist attack on Kuta nightclubs. Most of the victims were Australian.

So there's a blind cafe in Bali too ! I think I'd prefer to see what I'm eating here.

Bali

Walking down the street in Kuta means encountering an endless succession of hawkers who are best ignored, for they don't understand a polite "no thank you".

Hawker : Hello boss...
Me: (no response)
Female hawker : Hello sir massage...
Me : (no response)
Hawker : Hi mate (in an Australian accent), what are you looking for ?
Me : (unaware I was looking for something, no response)
Hawker ; Where you going ?
Me : (thinking that's none of your business, no response)
Female hawker : (stepping into my path and holding out hand) Hello mate (Aussie accent)
Me : excuse me (meaning, get out of my way)
Hawker : Hello sir (holding out a leaflet)
Me : No thank you
Same hawker : come and take a look at my shop
Me : No thanks
Same hawker : t-shirts, Billabong...
Me : How many times do you want me to say no ?

Singapore (and getting here)

Singapore's cheap, efficient and air-conditioned MRT provides a blessed escape from the humidity outside its train carriages. There's also entertainment on board in the form of hilarious jingle announcements. In a kind of 1950s/60s style sing song, like they would have had in Britain and the United States, passengers are urged to give up their seats for the less able. There's also a little ditty on the platform which goes "train is coming, train is coming" in a tune not dis-similar to that of the BBC's tacky tv game show Blankety Blank. Get the picture ?

I took the MRT from the airport into the city centre last night to find my budget hostel accommodation. At least it has air-con and free internet.. but it's a big step down from the luxury of the final days in India.

Because of a special schedule change to pick up Australian athletes from the Commonwealth Games, my plane from Mumbai left at 6am (with a 3am check in) and went via Delhi. Once there, an organisational farce unfolded as first no-one greeted passengers disembarking to go into transit for two hours, then security wouldn't let us through re-screening because they didn't have our flight on the list, and Qantas had to write out boarding passes by hand so they could get an official security stamp. The rigmarole was repeated when it came time for boarding again, and our optimistic departure time of 10:10am ended up being somewhere closer to 11am. Paperwork wasn't in order. There was no printer to give a hard copy of the passenger manifest, and the cabin service manager ended up having to write one out by hand using the boarding pass stubs.

There were lots of people in yellow and gold tracksuits, who had spent the previous two weeks competing in the Commonwealth Games. They all had to sit in economy. There were a couple of officials with me in business class, and one of them gave me a lapel badge designed for the Australian team.

I'm in Singapore for a couple of nights before moving on to Bali for four nights. This morning I caught up with a businessman friend, Richard Tan, who I met when I was in Singapore a few years ago and have kept in touch with since. We had tea and cake, then some delicious soup for lunch and just spent the time chatting.

Yesterday I reached the three-quarters mark. I've got one quarter of my trip to go. It feels as though time is hurtling towards the end, but I've got more than a month still to enjoy in South-East Asian countries.. plus I'm looking forward to being joined for most of that time by my friend David, who is flying out from Wellington and will meet me in Malaysia.

Anjaana Anjaani

Bollywood

One of the things I enjoy when visiting India is going to the movies to watch a Bollywood blockbuster. Last year it was Ghajini and Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi. This year I've seen Dabaang and Anjaana Anjaani.

I wanted to put a link to a YouTube video trailer for Anjaana Anjaani, but technical incompetence prevented me... so please do a Google search and find it yourself.

It was definitely the best the film I saw this year and has the beautiful Priyanka Chopra in the leading lady role. Like all good Bollywood it's a visual and sound spectacular. Not everybody's cup of chai, perhaps, but I enjoyed it.

Photo Post : Goa

Goa

Another Indian train, another delay. The overnight Konkan express from Mumbai CST station departed about an hour and a half late. It arrived two and a half hours late, but I slept through much of that, rocking gently in the first class sleeper carriage.

There were two other Britons in the sleeper compartment. They'd flown to Mumbai about 24 hours before and planned to go to three places in Goa. Apparently they're hoping to see some of the real India ! The food they've had in Mumbai will not have been typical, and I don't think they'll get a true impression of the country by confining themselves to Goa.

With the Portugese influence, Goa is cleaner, the roads are good, people dress differently. Now I'm staying in a resort for a bit of ease and luxury. It was the idea of my travelling companion in India, Shane from Wellington, who had already had a week in the country before I arrived. He is certainly in need of a rest, and the price was good. All inclusive (meals and train/airport transfers) for $87 (NZ) per person, per night in a two bed, two bathroom suite. We're not on the beach, but will take a shuttle to the sister resort, which is.

I'm almost three quarters of the way through my journey. I have five weeks or so to go in South East Asia, where I'll be joined by another friend from NZ. Are you packed and ready David ??

Remarkably, no mosquito bites so far. If it stays this way, I won't bother with the four extra weeks of mossie pills once I've left this zone. In Cambodia and Vietnam I'll be on different pills anyhow, because of the drug resistant strains of mosquitos there. What I do have is some bed bug bites. It took me a while to realise what they were, but some online research has confirmed it in my mind. I presume I got them in Agra. An annoyance, but at least I won't get any illness from them.

Photo Post : Mumbai

Mumbai High Court building.

Taj hotel, which was one of the targets for the terrorist attacks in 2008.

The Gateway of India.

Photo Post : India

Look at the symmetry...

A train at Agra Cantt railway station.

Walking past the Taj Mahal complex East Gate.

Columns and archways, part of the Amber Fort.

Please take our picture ! They gave me a thumbs up when they saw the result.