So now I'm well and truly off the beaten track! For two weeks I've been staying in remote mountain villages in northern Thailand and learning about the culture of the Akha hill-tribe, a group of people living throughout neighbouring regions of Thailand, Laos, Burma, Vietnam and China, whose population numbers 2.3 million in total. Why would I go and do a crazy thing like that you ask? Well I am one crazy guy, and it looked far too interesting to miss. As a traveller I am a fly buzzing on the cake of life, and here comes another cherry.
The volunteer camp I've gone on is run by a Thai organisation called AFECT, who have been working since 1981 to try and preserve Akha culture. The Akhas' traditional way of life is under threat, as they have few democratic rights in Thailand, and evil Christian missionaries from the US are seeking to convert as many of their villagers and villages as possible to Christianity.
The Akhas inhabit hundreds of little villages in the border region known as the Golden Triangle, which historically produced a lot of the world's opium. Their people have been left to struggle with opium addiction and poverty, unsupported by the government. AFECT is trying to help these communities, and to raise international awareness of their plight.
Last week we spent four nights in a place called Hue Yo, which is a tiny village up in the mountains that numbers fifty or so inhabitants. There is only one street, lined with simple wood and straw houses, and no electricity. Dogs and chickens run around everywhere. Children play in the street, running wild and free. One time I saw a pair of kids playing with a dead bird as if it was a toy doll!
The Akhas live by simple means, supporting themselves through crops of vegetables and plants, and keeping chickens and other livestock. As a guest of a local family, I lived as they lived, sleeping on the ground in a bare-floored breezeblock building, and bathing in a small bamboo hut by pouring bowlfuls of cold water on myself from a trough (not to mention having to master the dreaded squat toilets). It was an experience far-removed from the Chiang Mai Plaza Hotel, and I didn't miss the scented hand-towels one bit!
Also on my volunteer project are people from Oklahoma (Zach), Italy (Sonia), Norway (Mathilde), Austria (Julia), Canada (Danelle), and - like on my last project - lots of Koreans! (I won't attempt to spell their names.) They are all great people and I've enjoyed meeting them and travelling with them very much. The two weeks have flown by 'like a speeding antelope' (as I opined at breakfast this morning) and it will be a shame to move on. I feel like I've gained a great insight into this region's culture; a culture that may sadly vanish before too long.
The guides take care of the ten of us well, providing us food and shuttling us round in two flat-back trucks. Up and down the dusty mountain roads we go, travelling through kilometre after kilometre of unspoilt woodlands sprinkled with tiny hill-tribe settlements. It's exciting to travel on the back of a truck - it feels like doing a road-trip in the American desert! Despite our general bonhomie the rest of my group possibly suspect me of being an alcoholic, due to my frequent sulks when I am unable to obtain beer.
During our stay at Hue Yo we helped the villagers to sweep up leaves in the forest, as a defence against forest fires. This was quite a tiring task and our guides Miti and Aiyo treated us to a buffet lunch of roast pork and dog (yes, dog!) served on banana leaves for our troubles. My curiosity got the better of me and I'm ashamed to say, I tried some dog. To all the dogs I have ever patted, I apologise. It actually tasted okay. The meat is a bit fatty and I guess it is quite similar to duck. Oh, and we saw an Akha guy make a bong from a length of freshly-cut bamboo!
Bonus fact: did you know that the only word the country of Laos has contributed to the international vocabulary is 'bong'? (Bong technology originates from Lao hill tribes apparently.)
The next day we went to see all the nearby villages take on each other at a local sports day! With a sports field, a marching band and a bloke compering the festivities on a microphone, it reminded me a bit of an English country gala! Our group got to take part in the procession, where all the villages paraded along in their finery to the sports field. The women wore traditional Akha headgear and dresses, while in something of a break in tradition, the men wore knock-off replica football shirts!
Each village adopted a football team's strip. Hue Yo wore AC Milan shirts. Other villages wore Man U, Chelsea, Marseille, Roma and Argentina shirts. It was definitely a football-themed day. (There was even talk our volunteer group would take part in an exhibition match, but thankfully for me that was probably just someone's joke!) The villages' men took on each other at football and takraw (foot-volleyball), with winners and losers seeming to enjoy the fun equally. The women spectated, while some danced in cheerleader troupes or sold ice lollies.
We were unable to determine if Hue Yo won or lost in the championships - when we asked Aiyo he issued the rather ambiguous reply, 'yes... no', and didn't clarify further. As with much I've seen on this project, you have to shrug and accept it only makes sense in the context of life in Thailand!
After the games finished we went to see a museum dedicated to opium warload Khun Sa, housed in his derelict former forest hideout. The Golden Triangle area produced up to 70% of the world's heroin back in the 80s, and Khun Sa was one of the world's most powerful figures in heroin production.
Later in the week we took a memorable trip to the top of a mountain called Doi Tung that lies on the border with Burma. We dismounted from the trucks and climbed the hill, emerging in a stunning vista of untouched green pastures that was bisected by a stern wooden fence running the length of the border, wreathed in barbed wire. Staring across the hill to the Burmese guardpost on the other side, I saw the two armies are very much interested in keeping their two countries as separate as possible! (Interestingly, the countryside in a totalitarian state looks much like the countryside in any other. And they say the grass is greener!)
It's been fun to travel in Thailand, but by Christ I've found it difficult to master the Thai language. It is a tonal language, meaning you have to put the correct emphasis on every word and speak it in a certain pitch. Different tones/pitches give words entirely different meanings, so trying to pronounce the words right is not enough; it won't be understood unless you use the right tones. I quickly gave up and resigned myself to being a dumb tourist yet again!
We've also been learning the Akha language, which is completely different from Thai, but shares the similarities of being a tonal language and hence difficult to master. We were given comprehensive printouts with lots of phrases on, then we discovered the phonetic spellings made no sense! I can just about manage 'uddu tamar' (hello) and 'goo long hooma' (thank you) after two weeks. Give me a month and I might manage to learn the Akha for 'make me a cup of tea'!
Our group quickly struck up a rapport with one another, and we all spent a weekend back in Chiang Rai (where I attempted to write that last blog in a hungover state). After several days of roughing it, we treated ourselves to hot showers and western-style toilets at the friendly (but mosquito-riddled) Ben Guesthouse. Miracle of miracles, they even let guests help themselves to beers from the fridge at any time of day or night, on condition we noted it down on the tab at reception! Heaven on earth indeed.
Every day at breakfast the crazy old guy whose job it was to hands out flyers to travellers at the bus station would walk into the reception/restaurant room and cheerfully announce to us, "I'm off to the moon, to hunt for the mafia!" Maybe he is some form of crazy genius who only converses in abstract metaphors. Or maybe there's just something in the water round here.
On Saturday (8th March) a group of us went trekking to a remote waterfall on our day off. That was one intense day of hill-climbing. I decided to wade into the waterfall fully-clothed, rather than let the others see my nipples. Physical exertion in the day was followed by much drinking in the night, as we treated the weekend as an excuse to go and sample the Chiang Rai night market and get uproariously drunk. We ended up in a western-style rock bar called the Teepee Bar, run by a young Thai guy who seemed to have created the bar as much as for a place to get drunk as to make a living! The next evening I went for a Thai foot massage in one of the town's many massage shops. The sign on the door proudly proclaimed 'no hill tribe workers - and no ladyboys!'
This week we've stayed in another remote village (sometimes it's hard to ascertain the names of these little places but I think it's called Heel Kaulag), visited our project leader Miti's grandparents in her home village, and done more sightseeing. This project has involved lots of sight-seeing and being the tribes' guest - there's hardly been any work to do! I've found this a bit frustrating, but there's been lots of happy times and interesting experiences to be fair. The people at AFECT are brilliant and have looked after us really well, especially compared to the shambles of the Delhi project I was on.
After the camp finishes we all go our separate ways, which is sad. I am off to Laos. Maybe I will find the origin of the humble bong?
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Thailand part 2 - life in the year 2551...
Hello again readers. How's the family? I am still in northern Thailand, and the weeks are starting to fly past so incredibly quickly. I'm now halfway through my hill tribe volunteer project, on a rather warm and muggy Sunday afternoon in the sleepy northern city of Chiang Rai.
I'm staying in the city for the weekend with the rest of my new volunteer group, who seem like a quite spiffing bunch of people. As with the Delhi group we are a mix of nationalities: American, Canadian, Italian, Norwegian, Austrian, and we have another large contingent of South Koreans. International volunteer work seems to be a favourite passtime of South Koreans!
At the moment I'm in an internet cafe full of Thai kids playing shoot-em-up computer games - a typical sight in Thailand, even in rural areas! (Internet addiction is a common problem in many places in Asia - in South Korea they even have 'internet boot camps' where children are forced to spend time away from computers as rehabilitation!)
It is the year 2551 here in Thailand. Thais use the Buddhist calendar, which started over 500 years before the Christian one, so 2008 is 2551. Crazy! Despite being a huge tourist destination, with internet cafes chock-full of kids, Thailand still has its roots grounded in tradition. I've seen glimpses of the fascinating culture and the tourist brochure cliches about the 'land of smiles' are true - the people are really bloody friendly! The day-to-day living is very cheap and you start to realise there is a lot of financial inequality in the world.
Heck, if I can pick up a beautiful wife for the price of a Mars Bar I ain't complaining! No, that's not funny. Take it from me - Bondy cares about the troubles in the world.
The last few weeks have been a hectic whirl of travelling and sight-seeing, and it's high time I spent a day on my own slowly unwinding. And filling you in on my adventures of course dear reader! So much has happened... I'd got up to Bangkok last time I wrote this 'ere blog.
I didn't see much of the city in the three or four days I spent there. The city traffic is so bad it is very hard to travel round, and the taxi drivers have a love of ripping tourists off, so I was limited to journeying round on foot round the Grand Palace and the major temples. They were stunning though - check out Google pictures here, here and here. I've fallen into this daily routine when I'm travelling on my own of sightseeing in the morning and afternoon, going to an internet cafe in the evening, then at night I get food and try to perfect the art of "looking cool while sat on my own nursing a beer". And the damage to my wallet is light!
Thailand seems to be in something of a state of flux right now. The popular former PM Thaksin Shinawatra is back in the country to face corruption charges, and the country is in a 100-day mourning period for the king's sister, who died in January at the age of 84. (The royal family is highly revered, particularly the king, who is worshipped as if he was the Pope.) Also there have been elections, resulting in a 3-day ban on the sale of alcohol for fear of rioting. Despite the tough government sanctions, there is not even the merest sniff of trouble on the country's streets - it's a really relaxed place.
I saw a royal procession while I was in Bangkok. I was walking towards the Grand Palace when a burly man in uniform ushered me over the street to where a big crowd of people had gathered. "Okay," I thought, "the street's closing... this makes sense."
All the streets around the palace had suddenly become lined with crowds, waiting to see the king leave his palace by limousine. A phalanx of futuristically-uniformed motorbike cops were followed by a succession of security guards in an endless convoy of souped up Mercs. By now the moment when we would see the king was approaching, as the crowds began excitedly shouting 'song phra charoen' (long live your majesty). Then a stretched limo with a few shadowy figures sat inside sped by, and that was that. Off he went on his important state business. That was half an hour of my life I would never get back!
After Bangkok I spent a week in Chiang Mai, which is Thailand's second city. It is actually a lot smaller than Bangkok - it's more like a town. It's got a square moat, inside which is the kilometre of so of the old town. I travelled up there on the night train and woke up in the morning as the train was slowly winding its way through the stunning tropical scenery of the Thai countryside.
I'd booked to go on a three-day Thai cookery course and the package included four nights at a top hotel, the Chiang Mai Plaza! I swear I have never stayed in anywhere so ridiculously posh in all my life. It's the sort of place politicians and movie stars would go to get up to all sorts of seedy pursuits away from the public eye. The lobby is the size of an aircraft hangar, decked out in gilded mirrors and marble, and there are bell boys following you round everywhere if you look like you're carrying something heavy. It was kinda cool to be pampered after roughing it for several weeks but I just don't need that much luxury. The free breakfast buffet was amazing though, it had poached eggs and bacon! Mmm... bacon.
The cookery course was a fascinating learning experience that left me bamboozled under a tidal wave of knowledge. One of several such schools in Chiang Mai, it is run by a legendary Thai chef called Sompon Nabnian who has done TV work around the world. He actually taught most of the classes himself, demonstrating how to cook the dishes while dispensing James Bond-style wisecracks. I learnt about basic ingredients in Thai cooking, such as lemongrass, fish sauce and kaffir lime, and cooked over a dozen dishes (such as hot and sour prawn soup, Thai green curry and spicy glass noodle salad) in a class of around 25 people. The ingredients you need are easily available in the west, so I guess I'll be opening a Thai restaurant when I get home (if I can remember the recipes that is)! After you cook your food you get to eat it, and after a day of cooking and eating six or seven dishes you are bloody full!
I liked Chiang Mai, it's a very green and pleasant place - a nice change from the wall-to-wall noise of Bangkok. I also saw Doi Suthep, a stunning golden hilltop temple which you have to climb 306 steps to get to, and I stayed in a homely wooden guesthouse in the old town, nicely titled 'VIP House'!
The next day I did a day safari, which is a popular tourist package trip where you get to ride on an elephant and travel down a river on a bamboo raft. It featured a free lunch buffet with fried chicken drumsticks, and a snake show where three Thai guys prodded snakes in a miniature ampitheatre. I had a few good adventures and met plenty of fellow travellers while propping up the bar every night. Life was good.
Last Saturday (1st March) I came to Chiang Rai to start my volunteer group. Chiang Rai is a different city to Chiang Mai, but it's confusingly similar in name. It lies in the far north of the country, close to the border with Burma and Laos; a small town with a bustling night market.
I met up with the other volunteers at the bus station, and our Thai project leaders came to greet us with two pick-up trucks. We crowded on to the back of the trucks with our bags, and sped away into the countryside to spend the weekend in a basic wooden hut on the grounds of a rural children's home. After two days of team bonding and basic cultural orientation, we left the fringes of civilisation to head out into the wilderness, and live for a few days with a hill-tribe!
But I'll have to leave it there for now - it's been good fun but it will take another whole day to explain! Tata for now, again.
I'm staying in the city for the weekend with the rest of my new volunteer group, who seem like a quite spiffing bunch of people. As with the Delhi group we are a mix of nationalities: American, Canadian, Italian, Norwegian, Austrian, and we have another large contingent of South Koreans. International volunteer work seems to be a favourite passtime of South Koreans!
At the moment I'm in an internet cafe full of Thai kids playing shoot-em-up computer games - a typical sight in Thailand, even in rural areas! (Internet addiction is a common problem in many places in Asia - in South Korea they even have 'internet boot camps' where children are forced to spend time away from computers as rehabilitation!)
It is the year 2551 here in Thailand. Thais use the Buddhist calendar, which started over 500 years before the Christian one, so 2008 is 2551. Crazy! Despite being a huge tourist destination, with internet cafes chock-full of kids, Thailand still has its roots grounded in tradition. I've seen glimpses of the fascinating culture and the tourist brochure cliches about the 'land of smiles' are true - the people are really bloody friendly! The day-to-day living is very cheap and you start to realise there is a lot of financial inequality in the world.
Heck, if I can pick up a beautiful wife for the price of a Mars Bar I ain't complaining! No, that's not funny. Take it from me - Bondy cares about the troubles in the world.
The last few weeks have been a hectic whirl of travelling and sight-seeing, and it's high time I spent a day on my own slowly unwinding. And filling you in on my adventures of course dear reader! So much has happened... I'd got up to Bangkok last time I wrote this 'ere blog.
I didn't see much of the city in the three or four days I spent there. The city traffic is so bad it is very hard to travel round, and the taxi drivers have a love of ripping tourists off, so I was limited to journeying round on foot round the Grand Palace and the major temples. They were stunning though - check out Google pictures here, here and here. I've fallen into this daily routine when I'm travelling on my own of sightseeing in the morning and afternoon, going to an internet cafe in the evening, then at night I get food and try to perfect the art of "looking cool while sat on my own nursing a beer". And the damage to my wallet is light!
Thailand seems to be in something of a state of flux right now. The popular former PM Thaksin Shinawatra is back in the country to face corruption charges, and the country is in a 100-day mourning period for the king's sister, who died in January at the age of 84. (The royal family is highly revered, particularly the king, who is worshipped as if he was the Pope.) Also there have been elections, resulting in a 3-day ban on the sale of alcohol for fear of rioting. Despite the tough government sanctions, there is not even the merest sniff of trouble on the country's streets - it's a really relaxed place.
I saw a royal procession while I was in Bangkok. I was walking towards the Grand Palace when a burly man in uniform ushered me over the street to where a big crowd of people had gathered. "Okay," I thought, "the street's closing... this makes sense."
All the streets around the palace had suddenly become lined with crowds, waiting to see the king leave his palace by limousine. A phalanx of futuristically-uniformed motorbike cops were followed by a succession of security guards in an endless convoy of souped up Mercs. By now the moment when we would see the king was approaching, as the crowds began excitedly shouting 'song phra charoen' (long live your majesty). Then a stretched limo with a few shadowy figures sat inside sped by, and that was that. Off he went on his important state business. That was half an hour of my life I would never get back!
After Bangkok I spent a week in Chiang Mai, which is Thailand's second city. It is actually a lot smaller than Bangkok - it's more like a town. It's got a square moat, inside which is the kilometre of so of the old town. I travelled up there on the night train and woke up in the morning as the train was slowly winding its way through the stunning tropical scenery of the Thai countryside.
I'd booked to go on a three-day Thai cookery course and the package included four nights at a top hotel, the Chiang Mai Plaza! I swear I have never stayed in anywhere so ridiculously posh in all my life. It's the sort of place politicians and movie stars would go to get up to all sorts of seedy pursuits away from the public eye. The lobby is the size of an aircraft hangar, decked out in gilded mirrors and marble, and there are bell boys following you round everywhere if you look like you're carrying something heavy. It was kinda cool to be pampered after roughing it for several weeks but I just don't need that much luxury. The free breakfast buffet was amazing though, it had poached eggs and bacon! Mmm... bacon.
The cookery course was a fascinating learning experience that left me bamboozled under a tidal wave of knowledge. One of several such schools in Chiang Mai, it is run by a legendary Thai chef called Sompon Nabnian who has done TV work around the world. He actually taught most of the classes himself, demonstrating how to cook the dishes while dispensing James Bond-style wisecracks. I learnt about basic ingredients in Thai cooking, such as lemongrass, fish sauce and kaffir lime, and cooked over a dozen dishes (such as hot and sour prawn soup, Thai green curry and spicy glass noodle salad) in a class of around 25 people. The ingredients you need are easily available in the west, so I guess I'll be opening a Thai restaurant when I get home (if I can remember the recipes that is)! After you cook your food you get to eat it, and after a day of cooking and eating six or seven dishes you are bloody full!
I liked Chiang Mai, it's a very green and pleasant place - a nice change from the wall-to-wall noise of Bangkok. I also saw Doi Suthep, a stunning golden hilltop temple which you have to climb 306 steps to get to, and I stayed in a homely wooden guesthouse in the old town, nicely titled 'VIP House'!
The next day I did a day safari, which is a popular tourist package trip where you get to ride on an elephant and travel down a river on a bamboo raft. It featured a free lunch buffet with fried chicken drumsticks, and a snake show where three Thai guys prodded snakes in a miniature ampitheatre. I had a few good adventures and met plenty of fellow travellers while propping up the bar every night. Life was good.
Last Saturday (1st March) I came to Chiang Rai to start my volunteer group. Chiang Rai is a different city to Chiang Mai, but it's confusingly similar in name. It lies in the far north of the country, close to the border with Burma and Laos; a small town with a bustling night market.
I met up with the other volunteers at the bus station, and our Thai project leaders came to greet us with two pick-up trucks. We crowded on to the back of the trucks with our bags, and sped away into the countryside to spend the weekend in a basic wooden hut on the grounds of a rural children's home. After two days of team bonding and basic cultural orientation, we left the fringes of civilisation to head out into the wilderness, and live for a few days with a hill-tribe!
But I'll have to leave it there for now - it's been good fun but it will take another whole day to explain! Tata for now, again.
Monday, 25 February 2008
Thailand part 1: comfortably numb
Hello again. My never-ending journey has brought me to a new country - Thailand!
It's a fascinating old place, full of Buddhist temples, monks and markets, cheap as fook to stay in, and bloody hot! It takes a while to fully make sense of the local culture, and I'm still staring at the metaphorical road-map scratching my head. Luckily I'm staying in the country for a full month and I will get to see and do an amazing amount.
So another week, another country. The joy of travelling has rather lost its meaning in recent days; Singapore induced a cloud of gloom and homesickness over me that took a long while to shift. Its pleasant soullessness affects you like a mosquito that's been zapped with repellent - you lose your bearings and find yourself drifting aimlessly, day after day, on autopilot. And before you know it that juicy human limb is far out of reach. I don't normally go around attacking human limbs you understand, though I dare say I would if I were a mosquito. It would kind of be my job, you know?
Anyway, Singapore is a bit boring. After I wrote that humungous blog pontificating on just how boring Singapore is, quite literally two more things happened. The first is I randomly met Joe, an Asian-American guy staying at the hostel, and we hung out together briefly. He bought me lots of food and then began to annoy me with his fog-horn voice and brash mannerisms. All these random acts of kindness from strangers - I must look like a proper charity case! Either that or I have an indescribable winsome charm.
We went to look at Raffles Hotel (a big hotel founded back in the mists of time by Sir Stamford Raffles, owner of one of the poshest names I have ever seen). Then he told me a lengthy anecdote about him biking up the coast of California with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Spacey. I always doubt people who claim to know famous people. There's always some bloke in the pub who 'had that Cat Stevens in the back of my cab once', or 'used to clean Sting's plumber's windows'. I tend not to come out and pour scorn on their wild claims in case they're telling the truth, in which the banner of stupidity would be transferred directly on to my head. But hanging out with the governor of California and one of Bill Clinton's close personal buddies... Jesus, give me some credit!
My head still ringing from Joe's over-amplified dulcet tones, I bid farewell to the hostel and headed off to the one attraction I'd not seen in Singapore yet - Sentosa Island. This is a small island that lies just to the south of the main harbour, which some developer presumably spotted back in the mists of the 20th Century and thought, "ooh, there's a nice green island over there - this doesn't really fit with our 'bland skyscraper' motif, let's bulldoze the f**k out of it, slap all the indigenous wildlife in new and exotic beefburgers and put a theme park there!"
What the theme of the theme park is, I haven't a clue. Fun? Tourist-land? It's like the rest of Singapore - enjoyable on the surface but without history and meaning. There's some nice rides, and if you like theme parks, you'll love Sentosa, the land where tourists come to do tourist things of various descriptions! I didn't love it especially. There is a monorail ride over the harbour that links it with the mainland, lots of different zoos and rides, and some man-made beaches. It didn't push many of my 'fun' buttons but then I'm not eight anymore. I have turned to the dusky pleasures of women of the orient and opium, and become a withered and depraved old curmudgeon.
I went on a luge ride (which is kind of like riding down a dry bobsleigh on a kid's trike) and that was fun - though I'm a bit ashamed to admit it. It reminded me of the happy childhood times before I was a man and had to fight for king and country. Cheered by my experience, I headed through an artificially-planted woodland glade in the direction of the 4D Magix cinema, to watch a 3D film about pirates with Leslie Nielsen in it.
The film was terrible (Leslie Nielsen, what are you doing man!? You're a comedy legend!) but watching the 3D action was quite cool through the NHS-style square specs they give you. It was noticably lacking in the extra dimension, although the chairs wobble in time with the slapstick action and hidden water-jets squirt in your face when a character falls in the sea. These cheesy gimmicks became incredibly annoying after a couple of minutes, but the rest of the cinema laughed like goons! Foreigners - they've no bloody idea what comedy is, I tell thee.
By now I was all Sentosa'd out, and engulfed in a cloud of gloom. I was the mosquito thinking, 'where the f**k did that pasty white English person with delicious blood go?' I don't know how it did it but Singapore had got to me. I was jaded. You're not meant to feel like this on the trip of a lifetime!
I got my things and rode out on the metro to Changi airport; back to the palace of glittering modernity that had ushered me into this strange land. I checked in for my flight at the 'budget' terminal, which turned out to be a small shed hiding behind the rest of the airport, and that was that.
The flight north to Bangkok lasted two hours, treating us to a breathtaking sunset up in the clouds over the Gulf of Thailand. I flew with Tiger Airways, a cheapo airline who do flights around Asia and Oz. No frills, minimum of fuss and it only cost about thirty quid including airport tax. When we touched down the first thing I noticed was the heat. It's intense, even at night.
I found a cheap bus that would take me to the centre of town, and off we headed through the traffic. Journeying through the city at night I saw an abundance of spectacular temples whizzing past us, featuring ornate multicoloured stone chedis (towers) and pointy oriental-style roofs painted in magnificent shades of red and gold. You generally see lots of Thai flags and ceremonial bunting out on the street, and everywhere there are pictures of a bloke with specs. That being the all-powerful King Bhumibol of Thailand. He's the ninth monarch from the Chakri dynasty, rulers of Thailand since the 18th Century. Don't criticise him EVER or you will go to jail!
Apart from that one important rule, it's a very relaxed place with very friendly people. Thai roads are crazy though. Traffic is very bad in the big cities and you could die of old age waiting to cross the road. The traffic literally never stops! And if you get stuck at a red light, you could be waiting ten minutes for it to change. Shanty towns can spring up at stationary road junctions. People are born and die waiting for the light to change to green. And the big highways have several different strands of traffic woven in together, the lanes built on one-by-one as the years have gone by. On a typical highway you might see one lane going forward, next to three lanes going back, next to another two lanes going forward, next to another three lanes going back! Mad. I don't know how that system works, but it does!
In recent decades the city of Bangkok rapidly mushroomed in size like a bacterial culture growing in a petri dish, acquiring mile upon mile upon mile of suburbs quicker than it knew what to do with them. And the city centre district of Khaosan Road, where I was coming to stay, is incredibly packed. Since the early 90s Khaosan Road has been the place for backpackers. Teeming with life every hour of the day, the strip is full to the brim with stalls, restaurants, clubs, bars, hotels and a ladyboy or two lurking in the shadows I dare say (not that I went looking mind). The neon glow rising from the street at night matches sunlight pound-for-pound in brightness.
Narrow alleyways sprawl off the main strand, each revealing a teeming microcosm of city life and dozens of bars and hotels nestling incestuously together. Unlike Delhi the crowding feels safe and intimate; it's like being part of a greater living organism and I loved the buzz of the crowds (and I'm not even a of nestling incestuously, either).
In one such narrow alleyway I found the New Joe guest house, a compact and friendly little place offering various commodities such as food (via the adjoining restaurant), laundry, internet, a bar and a travel agent (most Thai hotels have some sort of tourist info service). Oh, and rooms with beds in obviously.
I don't know who New Joe is, or how or in what way he differs from the old Joe, or if maybe they came from a long succession of Joes, or even a dynasty of Joes, or if there was a bitter power struggle between the new and old Joe that was eventually won by New Joe, but hell, not everything has to make sense in life. I dumped my bags in my room and ran off gratefully to enjoy a beer at a nearby backstreet reggae bar, watching a rerun of a classic Real Madrid-Roma footy match from 2004 - the halcyon galactico days of Zidane, Figo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo (the fat one). Later I got talking to an English guy with a young Thai wife. Ahh, the Thai bride phenomenon. The morsel of comfort for every single man in his 40s and older!
European football is incredibly popular in Thailand, particularly English football. I've met tons of Thais supporting Liverpool, and Man U, and even a Man City fan (who proudly boasted that dodgy ex-Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra is the club chairman, much to my amazement). They follow their chosen team with a religious frenzy, despite the team belonging thousands of miles away in a place they're unlikely ever to visit. It's crazy to see - that's the power of western marketing unleashed on the world!
Three days is nowhere near long enough to see all that Bangkok's got to offer, but three days was all I'd got. The next day I got up, doused myself in factor 40 suncream and headed out into the great unknown. The first mission (working out where the f**k the New Joe guest house is on the map) was accomplished over a coffee at breakfast. Now I wanted to see the Grand Palace and the nearby temples of Wat Pho and Wat Arun, a short walk across town. This second mission would not be as easy as the first.
Bangkok is geared up to tourism in a big way, and the streets are crawling with canny touts trying to befriend western visitors with polite chit-chat and draw them into their friend's rickshaw for a sight-seeing trip. The sight-seeing trip inevitably involves a visit to a crafts shop of some description, where there is the risk you will be locked inside until you make a purchase. Mmm, think of that lovely commission the guy's gonna get! The best way is to smile and politely decline, and remain unflappable like Roger Moore.
I know that now with hindsight. I was misled by a tout near the Grand Palace who told me it was shut (they always tell you it's shut, it's bollocks) and he convinced me to go in the rickshaw to see two other temples. They were both stunningly beautiful and it was well worth the 40 Baht (60p) fare, and canny backpacker that I am, I refused to go in when the driver made the customary stop outside a craft shop. (You have to get up pretty early in the day to beat me, Johnny Foreigner!)
But Bangkok boasts a bewildering array of over 200 temples that the touts are eager for you to see. (You wonder why they bothered building so many temples, but then our cities have lots of chuches I guess.) As a tourist you should ignore the other 200 temples or anywhere else the tout wants to take you, and concentrate on seeing the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Wat Arun first, as these are the biggest and best. After you've seen a few of these amazing Buddhist temples they all start to look the same, and what is life when you can no longer appreciate beauty?
Taking a rickshaw ride in Bangkok is like buying a lottery ticket; you never know if you're going to come out of the other side in the right place or even see your hotel again! Luckily he obligingly dropped me back on Khaosan Road and off I headed to feed my troubling addiction to internet cafes. The next day I caught a boat across the river to see the temple of Wat Arun, which was truly splendiferous. It will be months before I get round to uploading my photos but you can see good pics of it on Google here.
I got chatting to a Japanese student on the boat and we climbed the monumental stupa (tower) to get a bird's eye view of the temple and the river. He took a photo of me and I did a two-finger 'peace' sign as a bit of a joke. I took photos of him to return the favour and he innocently copied my peace sign both times, presumably thinking this to be some sign of religious respect. Don't you just love it when humour doesn't translate! I know I do. I felt a bit guilty about that actually.
Anyway I'll have to leave it here as I'm out of time and I need to go do things. That was a week ago and I've since gone up to Chiang Mai (city in northern Thailand) and done lots of other stuff like Thai cooking schools and riding on elephants. And tomorrow I start a two-week volunteer project, this time working with remote hill tribes. Amazing times. Curses, this thing is taking forever to write! We'll catch up with it somehow. Fare thee well, reader.
It's a fascinating old place, full of Buddhist temples, monks and markets, cheap as fook to stay in, and bloody hot! It takes a while to fully make sense of the local culture, and I'm still staring at the metaphorical road-map scratching my head. Luckily I'm staying in the country for a full month and I will get to see and do an amazing amount.
So another week, another country. The joy of travelling has rather lost its meaning in recent days; Singapore induced a cloud of gloom and homesickness over me that took a long while to shift. Its pleasant soullessness affects you like a mosquito that's been zapped with repellent - you lose your bearings and find yourself drifting aimlessly, day after day, on autopilot. And before you know it that juicy human limb is far out of reach. I don't normally go around attacking human limbs you understand, though I dare say I would if I were a mosquito. It would kind of be my job, you know?
Anyway, Singapore is a bit boring. After I wrote that humungous blog pontificating on just how boring Singapore is, quite literally two more things happened. The first is I randomly met Joe, an Asian-American guy staying at the hostel, and we hung out together briefly. He bought me lots of food and then began to annoy me with his fog-horn voice and brash mannerisms. All these random acts of kindness from strangers - I must look like a proper charity case! Either that or I have an indescribable winsome charm.
We went to look at Raffles Hotel (a big hotel founded back in the mists of time by Sir Stamford Raffles, owner of one of the poshest names I have ever seen). Then he told me a lengthy anecdote about him biking up the coast of California with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Kevin Spacey. I always doubt people who claim to know famous people. There's always some bloke in the pub who 'had that Cat Stevens in the back of my cab once', or 'used to clean Sting's plumber's windows'. I tend not to come out and pour scorn on their wild claims in case they're telling the truth, in which the banner of stupidity would be transferred directly on to my head. But hanging out with the governor of California and one of Bill Clinton's close personal buddies... Jesus, give me some credit!
My head still ringing from Joe's over-amplified dulcet tones, I bid farewell to the hostel and headed off to the one attraction I'd not seen in Singapore yet - Sentosa Island. This is a small island that lies just to the south of the main harbour, which some developer presumably spotted back in the mists of the 20th Century and thought, "ooh, there's a nice green island over there - this doesn't really fit with our 'bland skyscraper' motif, let's bulldoze the f**k out of it, slap all the indigenous wildlife in new and exotic beefburgers and put a theme park there!"
What the theme of the theme park is, I haven't a clue. Fun? Tourist-land? It's like the rest of Singapore - enjoyable on the surface but without history and meaning. There's some nice rides, and if you like theme parks, you'll love Sentosa, the land where tourists come to do tourist things of various descriptions! I didn't love it especially. There is a monorail ride over the harbour that links it with the mainland, lots of different zoos and rides, and some man-made beaches. It didn't push many of my 'fun' buttons but then I'm not eight anymore. I have turned to the dusky pleasures of women of the orient and opium, and become a withered and depraved old curmudgeon.
I went on a luge ride (which is kind of like riding down a dry bobsleigh on a kid's trike) and that was fun - though I'm a bit ashamed to admit it. It reminded me of the happy childhood times before I was a man and had to fight for king and country. Cheered by my experience, I headed through an artificially-planted woodland glade in the direction of the 4D Magix cinema, to watch a 3D film about pirates with Leslie Nielsen in it.
The film was terrible (Leslie Nielsen, what are you doing man!? You're a comedy legend!) but watching the 3D action was quite cool through the NHS-style square specs they give you. It was noticably lacking in the extra dimension, although the chairs wobble in time with the slapstick action and hidden water-jets squirt in your face when a character falls in the sea. These cheesy gimmicks became incredibly annoying after a couple of minutes, but the rest of the cinema laughed like goons! Foreigners - they've no bloody idea what comedy is, I tell thee.
By now I was all Sentosa'd out, and engulfed in a cloud of gloom. I was the mosquito thinking, 'where the f**k did that pasty white English person with delicious blood go?' I don't know how it did it but Singapore had got to me. I was jaded. You're not meant to feel like this on the trip of a lifetime!
I got my things and rode out on the metro to Changi airport; back to the palace of glittering modernity that had ushered me into this strange land. I checked in for my flight at the 'budget' terminal, which turned out to be a small shed hiding behind the rest of the airport, and that was that.
The flight north to Bangkok lasted two hours, treating us to a breathtaking sunset up in the clouds over the Gulf of Thailand. I flew with Tiger Airways, a cheapo airline who do flights around Asia and Oz. No frills, minimum of fuss and it only cost about thirty quid including airport tax. When we touched down the first thing I noticed was the heat. It's intense, even at night.
I found a cheap bus that would take me to the centre of town, and off we headed through the traffic. Journeying through the city at night I saw an abundance of spectacular temples whizzing past us, featuring ornate multicoloured stone chedis (towers) and pointy oriental-style roofs painted in magnificent shades of red and gold. You generally see lots of Thai flags and ceremonial bunting out on the street, and everywhere there are pictures of a bloke with specs. That being the all-powerful King Bhumibol of Thailand. He's the ninth monarch from the Chakri dynasty, rulers of Thailand since the 18th Century. Don't criticise him EVER or you will go to jail!
Apart from that one important rule, it's a very relaxed place with very friendly people. Thai roads are crazy though. Traffic is very bad in the big cities and you could die of old age waiting to cross the road. The traffic literally never stops! And if you get stuck at a red light, you could be waiting ten minutes for it to change. Shanty towns can spring up at stationary road junctions. People are born and die waiting for the light to change to green. And the big highways have several different strands of traffic woven in together, the lanes built on one-by-one as the years have gone by. On a typical highway you might see one lane going forward, next to three lanes going back, next to another two lanes going forward, next to another three lanes going back! Mad. I don't know how that system works, but it does!
In recent decades the city of Bangkok rapidly mushroomed in size like a bacterial culture growing in a petri dish, acquiring mile upon mile upon mile of suburbs quicker than it knew what to do with them. And the city centre district of Khaosan Road, where I was coming to stay, is incredibly packed. Since the early 90s Khaosan Road has been the place for backpackers. Teeming with life every hour of the day, the strip is full to the brim with stalls, restaurants, clubs, bars, hotels and a ladyboy or two lurking in the shadows I dare say (not that I went looking mind). The neon glow rising from the street at night matches sunlight pound-for-pound in brightness.
Narrow alleyways sprawl off the main strand, each revealing a teeming microcosm of city life and dozens of bars and hotels nestling incestuously together. Unlike Delhi the crowding feels safe and intimate; it's like being part of a greater living organism and I loved the buzz of the crowds (and I'm not even a of nestling incestuously, either).
In one such narrow alleyway I found the New Joe guest house, a compact and friendly little place offering various commodities such as food (via the adjoining restaurant), laundry, internet, a bar and a travel agent (most Thai hotels have some sort of tourist info service). Oh, and rooms with beds in obviously.
I don't know who New Joe is, or how or in what way he differs from the old Joe, or if maybe they came from a long succession of Joes, or even a dynasty of Joes, or if there was a bitter power struggle between the new and old Joe that was eventually won by New Joe, but hell, not everything has to make sense in life. I dumped my bags in my room and ran off gratefully to enjoy a beer at a nearby backstreet reggae bar, watching a rerun of a classic Real Madrid-Roma footy match from 2004 - the halcyon galactico days of Zidane, Figo, Roberto Carlos and Ronaldo (the fat one). Later I got talking to an English guy with a young Thai wife. Ahh, the Thai bride phenomenon. The morsel of comfort for every single man in his 40s and older!
European football is incredibly popular in Thailand, particularly English football. I've met tons of Thais supporting Liverpool, and Man U, and even a Man City fan (who proudly boasted that dodgy ex-Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra is the club chairman, much to my amazement). They follow their chosen team with a religious frenzy, despite the team belonging thousands of miles away in a place they're unlikely ever to visit. It's crazy to see - that's the power of western marketing unleashed on the world!
Three days is nowhere near long enough to see all that Bangkok's got to offer, but three days was all I'd got. The next day I got up, doused myself in factor 40 suncream and headed out into the great unknown. The first mission (working out where the f**k the New Joe guest house is on the map) was accomplished over a coffee at breakfast. Now I wanted to see the Grand Palace and the nearby temples of Wat Pho and Wat Arun, a short walk across town. This second mission would not be as easy as the first.
Bangkok is geared up to tourism in a big way, and the streets are crawling with canny touts trying to befriend western visitors with polite chit-chat and draw them into their friend's rickshaw for a sight-seeing trip. The sight-seeing trip inevitably involves a visit to a crafts shop of some description, where there is the risk you will be locked inside until you make a purchase. Mmm, think of that lovely commission the guy's gonna get! The best way is to smile and politely decline, and remain unflappable like Roger Moore.
I know that now with hindsight. I was misled by a tout near the Grand Palace who told me it was shut (they always tell you it's shut, it's bollocks) and he convinced me to go in the rickshaw to see two other temples. They were both stunningly beautiful and it was well worth the 40 Baht (60p) fare, and canny backpacker that I am, I refused to go in when the driver made the customary stop outside a craft shop. (You have to get up pretty early in the day to beat me, Johnny Foreigner!)
But Bangkok boasts a bewildering array of over 200 temples that the touts are eager for you to see. (You wonder why they bothered building so many temples, but then our cities have lots of chuches I guess.) As a tourist you should ignore the other 200 temples or anywhere else the tout wants to take you, and concentrate on seeing the Grand Palace, Wat Pho and Wat Arun first, as these are the biggest and best. After you've seen a few of these amazing Buddhist temples they all start to look the same, and what is life when you can no longer appreciate beauty?
Taking a rickshaw ride in Bangkok is like buying a lottery ticket; you never know if you're going to come out of the other side in the right place or even see your hotel again! Luckily he obligingly dropped me back on Khaosan Road and off I headed to feed my troubling addiction to internet cafes. The next day I caught a boat across the river to see the temple of Wat Arun, which was truly splendiferous. It will be months before I get round to uploading my photos but you can see good pics of it on Google here.
I got chatting to a Japanese student on the boat and we climbed the monumental stupa (tower) to get a bird's eye view of the temple and the river. He took a photo of me and I did a two-finger 'peace' sign as a bit of a joke. I took photos of him to return the favour and he innocently copied my peace sign both times, presumably thinking this to be some sign of religious respect. Don't you just love it when humour doesn't translate! I know I do. I felt a bit guilty about that actually.
Anyway I'll have to leave it here as I'm out of time and I need to go do things. That was a week ago and I've since gone up to Chiang Mai (city in northern Thailand) and done lots of other stuff like Thai cooking schools and riding on elephants. And tomorrow I start a two-week volunteer project, this time working with remote hill tribes. Amazing times. Curses, this thing is taking forever to write! We'll catch up with it somehow. Fare thee well, reader.
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Photos: Delhi and the volunteer camp (January)
Okay, it's hard to sum up Delhi without using the words 'smelly', 'smoggy', 'chaotic', or the phrases 'men pissing in the street', 'packs of wild dogs', 'cows eating rubbish' or 'beggars sleeping peacefully in the gutter', but I'll give it a try. To be fair it is also a vibrant, bustling and colourful place that can open your eyes in wonder.
Here is Jama Masjid mosque, an important building for Muslims and a historic place of worship, built in the 17th Century:
Hinduism is the dominant religion in India and most cars and buses have a small Hindu shrine on the dashboard. Religious Hindu drivers feel a spiritual connection with their vehicle, and consider it a soul-mate through which they can earn a living. Who needs furry dice!
(Check out the smog in that last picture!)
On my first day I gratefully retreated to my bed at the Hotel Chand Palace - a typical budget place nestling in amongst countless other hotels in the backpacker district of Pahar Ganj, where travellers come to rest their weary heads and escape the noise, heat and hustle (and indeed the bustle) on the streets outside.
The bottle next to me wrapped up in newspaper is beer - restaurants without an alcohol licence often sell alcohol 'under the counter' in such a fashion to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities. It's still pretty obvious what it is though! I christened this new discovery 'newspaper juice'.
That's not to say we didn't do any good - our group had lots of useful ideas on what we could teach the children, and we spent around three hours a day working with them. The charity-run school Tejas Asia operates a number of free schools throughout Delhi, providing poor children with food and a basic education:
And at the end of the project we treated them to a picnic and a massive bag full of sweets:
The kids went nuts when they saw the sweets - we nearly incited a riot, though thankfully nobody was injured! It was a great experience and the two weeks flew by. We got quite a rapport going with the children and they nicknamed us 'baya' (Hindi for big brother) and 'didi' (big sister). Saying our goodbyes was difficult.
It's hard to say how much of an impact our project made, because efforts like this are just a drop in the ocean and there is an unending amount of poverty out there. But there is a momentum to bring lasting change in India, and we helped support part of it.
Here is Jama Masjid mosque, an important building for Muslims and a historic place of worship, built in the 17th Century:
I also visited the Red Fort in Old Dehi, a magnificent giant walled compound dating from the 17th Century with similar historical ties. It was built to defend the ancient city of Shahjahanabad (and no I definitely did not just copy and paste the name out of Wikipedia 'cos I couldn't be bothered typing it!):
To get round the city it is easiest to travel by rickshaw. A rickshaw is essentially a moped with a roof that totters around on three wheels at unsafe speeds. There are millions of the things buzzing round the streets, providing income to a whole section of the population:
The idea might seem kind of scary to us pampered westeners used to luxuries such as seatbelts and doors (and hey, who needs those!) but it is a mega-cheap way to travel. I've seen a rickshaw with eight or nine Indians squeezed in travelling down the highway! Now that's how to car-share.
If you don't feel up to a rickshaw ride why not hop on the bus! Delhi has a good bus system - the down-side is the buses are ancient, over-crowded and most of them look like they've been driven off a cliff several times. But once you've got over the fear of dying, riding the bus becomes easy!
Hinduism is the dominant religion in India and most cars and buses have a small Hindu shrine on the dashboard. Religious Hindu drivers feel a spiritual connection with their vehicle, and consider it a soul-mate through which they can earn a living. Who needs furry dice!
This bus even had Christmas decorations up in the front window! This is a typical way of marking Hindu new year:
The swastika is an sacred symbol in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions and many buildings in India are adorned with it. Don't panic, they're not Nazis!
Marriage is an important part of Hindu life. Arranged marriages are still the norm in India; these days a marriage will only go ahead with both partners' consent, after an initial meeting. It's sort of like a first date, but then you have to choose whether you want to spend the rest of your life with the person. Talk about a big decision!
Marriage is an important part of Hindu life. Arranged marriages are still the norm in India; these days a marriage will only go ahead with both partners' consent, after an initial meeting. It's sort of like a first date, but then you have to choose whether you want to spend the rest of your life with the person. Talk about a big decision!
One day our volunteer group got randomly invited to a neighbourhood Hindu engagement party! This was a vibrant, colourful affair with lots of food and loud Bangra music. I even got to have my photo taken with the bride. (How uncomfortable do I look!)
Hindus don't drink alcohol, so thankfully things like punch-ups and crap dancing are rare sights at their weddings! On the contrary, they could put John Travolta to shame with their highly skillful Bollywood-inspired moves, and wedding ceremonies are typically huge, lavish extravaganzas that last for days.
Delhi can be a bit bewildering at first. Even as an experienced traveller (I've backpacked round eastern Europe three times amongst various other japes), when I arrived I took one look and thought, 'f**k me, this is intense!'
Here are some more everyday street scenes from India's capital:
On my first day I gratefully retreated to my bed at the Hotel Chand Palace - a typical budget place nestling in amongst countless other hotels in the backpacker district of Pahar Ganj, where travellers come to rest their weary heads and escape the noise, heat and hustle (and indeed the bustle) on the streets outside.
99% of Indian hotels seem to have the name 'palace' in their name - depending on the hotel, it's usually either a bit of a misnomer or a total misnomer. Not that anyone cares, the Trade Descriptions Act is just the stuff of a madman's dreams over here! This is my room - basic but clean:
And this is how I spent my first evening - slurping a lentil dhal (similar to soup), watching bad Indian TV and celebrating my discovery of room service with a beer!
Then I chanced upon some Premiership football on a sports channel, took a photo of my feet and dozed off. What an amazing life I live!
I whiled away a few evenings in similar homesick fashion till I adjusted to being in India. I was pleased to soon meet a group of new people. I had arranged to work on a two-week international volunteer camp, teaching street children through Cardiff-based charity UNAexchange.
The day after I visited the Taj Mahal I got to meet my fellow volunteers - a mix of Korean, American, Dutch and Indian people who volunteered through charities in their own countries. I was the only Brit and as such probably represented all this country's terrible baggage in their eyes. I behaved myself though and didn't start any football riots or invade any countries. In fact I behaved like a charming gent and, if anything, helped restore their unerring faith in the inherent goodness of British people. Honest.
We spent a fortnight together and had some great times. Here we are enjoying a meal in Pahar Ganj - what a lovely bunch we are!
The bottle next to me wrapped up in newspaper is beer - restaurants without an alcohol licence often sell alcohol 'under the counter' in such a fashion to avoid attracting the attention of the authorities. It's still pretty obvious what it is though! I christened this new discovery 'newspaper juice'.
This is the guest house in the district of Rohini where all 13 of us stayed for several nights:
And yes, the term 'guest house' literally translates as 'room with duvets on the floor'. Such luxury! It was very basic and cramped, even by Indian standards. We slummed it there for a few nights before seeking out some proper beds in a basic hotel.
As for the project, well that turned out to be far from plain sailing. Having paid the equivalent of a hundred quid each at the start of the project (to cover our food and accomodation), we quickly became disillusioned with our project leader Daya, who was rather reluctant to part with money for teaching materials and our food, and seemed to be dishonestly holding all the cash back for himself. Also he did very little to co-ordinate us or manage the project; we were left to figure it out for ourselves. Complaints have been made - here's hoping they've been heeded, so the volunteers' work can be put to more effective use in future.
As for the project, well that turned out to be far from plain sailing. Having paid the equivalent of a hundred quid each at the start of the project (to cover our food and accomodation), we quickly became disillusioned with our project leader Daya, who was rather reluctant to part with money for teaching materials and our food, and seemed to be dishonestly holding all the cash back for himself. Also he did very little to co-ordinate us or manage the project; we were left to figure it out for ourselves. Complaints have been made - here's hoping they've been heeded, so the volunteers' work can be put to more effective use in future.
That's not to say we didn't do any good - our group had lots of useful ideas on what we could teach the children, and we spent around three hours a day working with them. The charity-run school Tejas Asia operates a number of free schools throughout Delhi, providing poor children with food and a basic education:
The level of poverty amongst these kids is very high and they all live in the slums in the surrounding district of Nizamuddin. Many of them only have one set of clothes and come from families who have to beg for a living.
The children were a delight to work with, and seemed to really enjoy our company and our attempts at communicating in Hindi. Westerners were a weird new experience for them and they were very curious about us and our lives.
The children were a delight to work with, and seemed to really enjoy our company and our attempts at communicating in Hindi. Westerners were a weird new experience for them and they were very curious about us and our lives.
This is me playing guitar and initiating a 'sing-song':
We brought chalk for them to draw with...
We brought them toothbrushes and showed them how to brush their teeth...
And at the end of the project we treated them to a picnic and a massive bag full of sweets:
The kids went nuts when they saw the sweets - we nearly incited a riot, though thankfully nobody was injured! It was a great experience and the two weeks flew by. We got quite a rapport going with the children and they nicknamed us 'baya' (Hindi for big brother) and 'didi' (big sister). Saying our goodbyes was difficult.
It's hard to say how much of an impact our project made, because efforts like this are just a drop in the ocean and there is an unending amount of poverty out there. But there is a momentum to bring lasting change in India, and we helped support part of it.
Friday, 15 February 2008
Singapore - so clean you could eat your dinner off it.
And so on Thursday afternoon, I bade farewell to India, cutting my way through the crowds and the smog of Delhi in a rickshaw bound for the airport. If it was an episode of Michael Palin the credits would have been rolling and it would be time to turn over for the snooker. But it wasn't, and they weren't. There are so many other things I wish I could have seen in India, but as a country it boasts so many fascinating sights and attractions that it would take years for you to see everything there is to offer.
I have travelled from Dharamasala in the north to Goa in the south and in these five weeks I only scratched the surface. It is a perplexing, mysterious, chaotic, beautiful, cruel and shocking land. And it's not often you visit a place that needs at least six adjectives to describe it! It's a giant melting-pot of cultures, featuring several major religions, over ten official languages and a population of one billion, increasing by 3% every year. (As you might imagine, it is facing a slight population crisis!)
But seeing Delhi again, I was reminded what an overwhelming city it is. It is a horrible mess of overcrowding, pollution, pushy touts and intense, intense poverty that groans under the sheer weight of the millions of people living there. The roads are choc-a-block with buses, rickshaws and taxis, continuously belching smoke up into the evil haze of carbon monoxide floating over the city. There is a regularly-quoted statistic that spending a day in Delhi is like smoking an entire pack of cigarettes. I dread to think how much soot is in my lungs now! There's probably enough to coat an entire Dickensian orphanage.
Walking around the tourist areas, you are hounded every step of the way by touts, stall-holders and rickshaw drivers, all competing for your business. Getting from A to B through crowds of people while fending off approaches from wannabe salesmen is a challenging pursuit. Seeing all the homeless people and beggars huddled on the streets you feel ashamed to be a pampered westerner - especially as you have to remain immune to all the pleas for money and assistance and keep on walking, otherwise you wouldn't last a single day.
Parts of the city are nice (the area round India Gate is pretty), and there's a few interesting buildings (the Red Fort and Jama Masjid mosque are two I saw), but it's far from an easy place to visit, and once was definitely enough for me. The only meaningful conclusion I could draw as I made my way to the airport was, 'thank f**k I'm leaving!'
The night flight to Singapore took 5 hours, and the time flew by thanks to a bumper selection of in-flight movies and some unexpectedly foxy Geisha-like air hostesses serving us drinks. I tried to grab a morsel of sleep as the plane soared over the sea, my mind a rabbit warren of unclean thoughts. Stuck in limbo-land between time zones, I only managed an hour or so.
We touched down in Singapore's pristine Changi airport at 5am local time, and went through the formalities with customs and the touching reunions with our baggage. With two new passport stamps in a day I was well happy! So far so good, and I headed off to meet my pickup in the arrivals hall. But due to a cock-up with the booking there was no driver to pick me up!
I scoured the terminal building, interrogating groups of drivers who were waiting to ferry people far richer than me to accomodation far posher than mine, all to no avail. After two hours I thought 'f**k this,' and headed off on the MRT (metro) in search of my hostel, dreaming of the abrasively witty and expletive-laden email I would later send to STA Travel.
Normally, the first glimpse that you get of a new country as you step off the plane is misleading, as all big airports are utterly alike: smartly-decorated, bland, homogenised, signposted in English and betraying nothing of the country they are in. But the shiny modern airport terminal I had arrived in proved to be a foretaste for the rest of Singapore - slick, sterile, ultra-westernised, hyper-efficient, and ruthlessly air-conditioned!
A small island port off the coast of Malaysia that was historically an important trading place, Singapore was under British rule until the 60s, and has now evolved into a dense jungle of skyscrapers populated by a mixture of Chinese, Malaysian and Indian cultures. It is a pleasant but strangely soulless tableau of eastern and western culture; a popular stop-off point for travellers on their way to either Australia or Thailand.
Despite being very crowded and having one of the highest population densities of anywhere in the world, Singapore is remarkably green and tranquil. Measuring about 30 miles by 20, it is a very well-ordered place, with lots of parks, grass and tree-lined boulevards. There is a harbour, and a nice river that winds through the city, fronted on both sides by restaurants, fancy colonial buildings and state-of-the-art office blocks. The shortage of natural resources means that everything gets recycled and re-used, even the water.
The strict limits on car ownership (only 12,000 new cars are allowed on the roads each year!) mean there is little smog and pollution. You can walk all round the city centre and smell fresh air. And the public transport works so well Hitler could set his watch to it. The buses and MRT (mass rapid transit) system connect all areas of the island and are bloody cheap to use.
Suffice to say it is a whole world away from Delhi! You couldn't find two more different cities anywhere on Earth. I can't help worrying what they do with all the poor and homeless people here. Do they dispose of them in a big incinerator or some kind of a squashing machine? Maybe they give them jobs at Starbucks? (There are millions of Starbucks here.)
Much of the city is built on reclaimed land. Depressingly, a phalanx of giant cranes are at present beavering away at the corner of the harbour constructing a new super-casino development. 90% of the population live in high-rise flats - with land at a premium, only the richest of the rich can afford a house.
All the suburbs look well-ordered and tidy. No-one dares drop litter - I've no idea what the penalty is but it may well involve getting fined six months' wages or facing a firing squad. It is a fair and free place to live, but you can sense a subtle threat that any wrongdoing will be treated harshly by a man carrying a big stick. The fine for smoking on the metro for example is S$1000, over three hundred quid!
Singapore is very hot all year round. It sits almost slap-bang on the equator and the heat is sweltering, even at night. I staggered up the hill to my hostel on Friday morning, bedraggled and drenched in sweat after three days' solid travelling, and even through solid cloud cover the temperature was about 30C. I was a man in need of a serious lie down.
Fortunately the hostel turned out to be f**king ace! After weeks of roughing it in spartan Indian guest-houses I was delighted to get a piping hot shower delivered with the full force of western plumbing! The dorms are cosy (despite the strange smell of sweaty feet lingering in our room) and the whole place is furnished from top to bottom in ultra-hip Ikea stylings. You get free breakfast, free internet and even free tea and coffee while you surf the web. They have nightly movie screenings.
I'm filling my boots with all the free stuff. I'm spending Sunday evening going goggle-eyed in front of a computer, gorged to the nines on caffeine, while the dialogue from some Hollywood flick booms from the corner of the room. I'm into my third day here and I'm still suffering a litle with jetlag. Tonight is supposed to be my 'quiet night in' where my body clock resets itself and remembers its arse from its elbow.
I've done most of the sight-seeing I want to do. Singapore is nice to visit for a few days, but once you've seen everything it begins to get dull. The place lacks that little bit of tradition and soul necessary to give it a unique identity. You almost forget where you are after being here a while - you could be anywhere in the west!
On Friday I explored the city centre and went on a bumboat (the hilarious local name for motorised river taxis) along the river, watching the driver and his cronies bickering in Chinese with some amusement. That evening I had a meal and a leisurely beer at a riverside restaurant, and felt myself unwind as the daylight of my first day faded and the kaleidoscopic night-time skyline blinked gradually into life. What a mistake that was, it's a bloody pricey area to eat out! Suitably chastened by the bill, I headed back to the hostel but couldn't locate any affordable alehouses in the vicinity. My Friday night had died a death.
On Saturday I went on a coach tour round the city and visited the Little India and Chinatown districts. I've just visited real India so Little India didn't intrigue me much, though Chinatown looked cool. Next came a totally unnecessary visit to a jewellery store. It always pisses me off when you're on a tour and the guide/driver ushers you into a store - it happened loads in India. You can almost see them salivating at the prospect of commission. This gave us less time at the botanical gardens in the north of the island, which were lush and inviting and could easily have kept me entertained for a few hours!
That evening I went on the world-famous night safari, which was pretty good, but not the mind-bending rollercoaster ride the travel agent's hype had led me to anticipate. It's just a zoo. At night. You get zoos everywhere. Admittedly though they put on a good show featuring some interesting and well-trained creatures, and you got to ride out into the middle of the animals' habitat on an electric buggy. I got chatting to a guy from Leeds and we saw all manner of creatures; hippos, elephants, bats, buffalo, ant-eaters and many others. It was a cool way to spend an evening but the jet-lag had left me weary and cynical and I gratefully returned to my bed that night.
Today I journeyed out by bumboat (teehee) to Pulau Ubin. This is an island about a mile long that lies just to the north of Singapore, very close to the border with Malaysia. Unlike the rest of Singapore it has survived completely undeveloped, covered in trees and lush vegetation and home to a small fishing community. I hired a push-bike so I could cycle round the island, and spent a couple of hours roving up and down the peaceful roads, occasionally dodging people who were blissfully cycling on the wrong side. It was a nice and relaxing alternative to staying in the city.
The island is dotted with traditional cottages (nowadays selling cold drinks to the small but steady stream of tourists passing by), while numerous wooden dwellings on stilts crowd the waters around the island. It allows you a glimpse of Singapore's vanished past, and a clue as to its cultural identity that has been all but lost in the frantic drive towards modernisation.
Well that's all for now, I've prattled on for bloody ages and I need to get some sleep! Nighty-night y'all!
I have travelled from Dharamasala in the north to Goa in the south and in these five weeks I only scratched the surface. It is a perplexing, mysterious, chaotic, beautiful, cruel and shocking land. And it's not often you visit a place that needs at least six adjectives to describe it! It's a giant melting-pot of cultures, featuring several major religions, over ten official languages and a population of one billion, increasing by 3% every year. (As you might imagine, it is facing a slight population crisis!)
But seeing Delhi again, I was reminded what an overwhelming city it is. It is a horrible mess of overcrowding, pollution, pushy touts and intense, intense poverty that groans under the sheer weight of the millions of people living there. The roads are choc-a-block with buses, rickshaws and taxis, continuously belching smoke up into the evil haze of carbon monoxide floating over the city. There is a regularly-quoted statistic that spending a day in Delhi is like smoking an entire pack of cigarettes. I dread to think how much soot is in my lungs now! There's probably enough to coat an entire Dickensian orphanage.
Walking around the tourist areas, you are hounded every step of the way by touts, stall-holders and rickshaw drivers, all competing for your business. Getting from A to B through crowds of people while fending off approaches from wannabe salesmen is a challenging pursuit. Seeing all the homeless people and beggars huddled on the streets you feel ashamed to be a pampered westerner - especially as you have to remain immune to all the pleas for money and assistance and keep on walking, otherwise you wouldn't last a single day.
Parts of the city are nice (the area round India Gate is pretty), and there's a few interesting buildings (the Red Fort and Jama Masjid mosque are two I saw), but it's far from an easy place to visit, and once was definitely enough for me. The only meaningful conclusion I could draw as I made my way to the airport was, 'thank f**k I'm leaving!'
The night flight to Singapore took 5 hours, and the time flew by thanks to a bumper selection of in-flight movies and some unexpectedly foxy Geisha-like air hostesses serving us drinks. I tried to grab a morsel of sleep as the plane soared over the sea, my mind a rabbit warren of unclean thoughts. Stuck in limbo-land between time zones, I only managed an hour or so.
We touched down in Singapore's pristine Changi airport at 5am local time, and went through the formalities with customs and the touching reunions with our baggage. With two new passport stamps in a day I was well happy! So far so good, and I headed off to meet my pickup in the arrivals hall. But due to a cock-up with the booking there was no driver to pick me up!
I scoured the terminal building, interrogating groups of drivers who were waiting to ferry people far richer than me to accomodation far posher than mine, all to no avail. After two hours I thought 'f**k this,' and headed off on the MRT (metro) in search of my hostel, dreaming of the abrasively witty and expletive-laden email I would later send to STA Travel.
Normally, the first glimpse that you get of a new country as you step off the plane is misleading, as all big airports are utterly alike: smartly-decorated, bland, homogenised, signposted in English and betraying nothing of the country they are in. But the shiny modern airport terminal I had arrived in proved to be a foretaste for the rest of Singapore - slick, sterile, ultra-westernised, hyper-efficient, and ruthlessly air-conditioned!
A small island port off the coast of Malaysia that was historically an important trading place, Singapore was under British rule until the 60s, and has now evolved into a dense jungle of skyscrapers populated by a mixture of Chinese, Malaysian and Indian cultures. It is a pleasant but strangely soulless tableau of eastern and western culture; a popular stop-off point for travellers on their way to either Australia or Thailand.
Despite being very crowded and having one of the highest population densities of anywhere in the world, Singapore is remarkably green and tranquil. Measuring about 30 miles by 20, it is a very well-ordered place, with lots of parks, grass and tree-lined boulevards. There is a harbour, and a nice river that winds through the city, fronted on both sides by restaurants, fancy colonial buildings and state-of-the-art office blocks. The shortage of natural resources means that everything gets recycled and re-used, even the water.
The strict limits on car ownership (only 12,000 new cars are allowed on the roads each year!) mean there is little smog and pollution. You can walk all round the city centre and smell fresh air. And the public transport works so well Hitler could set his watch to it. The buses and MRT (mass rapid transit) system connect all areas of the island and are bloody cheap to use.
Suffice to say it is a whole world away from Delhi! You couldn't find two more different cities anywhere on Earth. I can't help worrying what they do with all the poor and homeless people here. Do they dispose of them in a big incinerator or some kind of a squashing machine? Maybe they give them jobs at Starbucks? (There are millions of Starbucks here.)
Much of the city is built on reclaimed land. Depressingly, a phalanx of giant cranes are at present beavering away at the corner of the harbour constructing a new super-casino development. 90% of the population live in high-rise flats - with land at a premium, only the richest of the rich can afford a house.
All the suburbs look well-ordered and tidy. No-one dares drop litter - I've no idea what the penalty is but it may well involve getting fined six months' wages or facing a firing squad. It is a fair and free place to live, but you can sense a subtle threat that any wrongdoing will be treated harshly by a man carrying a big stick. The fine for smoking on the metro for example is S$1000, over three hundred quid!
Singapore is very hot all year round. It sits almost slap-bang on the equator and the heat is sweltering, even at night. I staggered up the hill to my hostel on Friday morning, bedraggled and drenched in sweat after three days' solid travelling, and even through solid cloud cover the temperature was about 30C. I was a man in need of a serious lie down.
Fortunately the hostel turned out to be f**king ace! After weeks of roughing it in spartan Indian guest-houses I was delighted to get a piping hot shower delivered with the full force of western plumbing! The dorms are cosy (despite the strange smell of sweaty feet lingering in our room) and the whole place is furnished from top to bottom in ultra-hip Ikea stylings. You get free breakfast, free internet and even free tea and coffee while you surf the web. They have nightly movie screenings.
I'm filling my boots with all the free stuff. I'm spending Sunday evening going goggle-eyed in front of a computer, gorged to the nines on caffeine, while the dialogue from some Hollywood flick booms from the corner of the room. I'm into my third day here and I'm still suffering a litle with jetlag. Tonight is supposed to be my 'quiet night in' where my body clock resets itself and remembers its arse from its elbow.
I've done most of the sight-seeing I want to do. Singapore is nice to visit for a few days, but once you've seen everything it begins to get dull. The place lacks that little bit of tradition and soul necessary to give it a unique identity. You almost forget where you are after being here a while - you could be anywhere in the west!
On Friday I explored the city centre and went on a bumboat (the hilarious local name for motorised river taxis) along the river, watching the driver and his cronies bickering in Chinese with some amusement. That evening I had a meal and a leisurely beer at a riverside restaurant, and felt myself unwind as the daylight of my first day faded and the kaleidoscopic night-time skyline blinked gradually into life. What a mistake that was, it's a bloody pricey area to eat out! Suitably chastened by the bill, I headed back to the hostel but couldn't locate any affordable alehouses in the vicinity. My Friday night had died a death.
On Saturday I went on a coach tour round the city and visited the Little India and Chinatown districts. I've just visited real India so Little India didn't intrigue me much, though Chinatown looked cool. Next came a totally unnecessary visit to a jewellery store. It always pisses me off when you're on a tour and the guide/driver ushers you into a store - it happened loads in India. You can almost see them salivating at the prospect of commission. This gave us less time at the botanical gardens in the north of the island, which were lush and inviting and could easily have kept me entertained for a few hours!
That evening I went on the world-famous night safari, which was pretty good, but not the mind-bending rollercoaster ride the travel agent's hype had led me to anticipate. It's just a zoo. At night. You get zoos everywhere. Admittedly though they put on a good show featuring some interesting and well-trained creatures, and you got to ride out into the middle of the animals' habitat on an electric buggy. I got chatting to a guy from Leeds and we saw all manner of creatures; hippos, elephants, bats, buffalo, ant-eaters and many others. It was a cool way to spend an evening but the jet-lag had left me weary and cynical and I gratefully returned to my bed that night.
Today I journeyed out by bumboat (teehee) to Pulau Ubin. This is an island about a mile long that lies just to the north of Singapore, very close to the border with Malaysia. Unlike the rest of Singapore it has survived completely undeveloped, covered in trees and lush vegetation and home to a small fishing community. I hired a push-bike so I could cycle round the island, and spent a couple of hours roving up and down the peaceful roads, occasionally dodging people who were blissfully cycling on the wrong side. It was a nice and relaxing alternative to staying in the city.
The island is dotted with traditional cottages (nowadays selling cold drinks to the small but steady stream of tourists passing by), while numerous wooden dwellings on stilts crowd the waters around the island. It allows you a glimpse of Singapore's vanished past, and a clue as to its cultural identity that has been all but lost in the frantic drive towards modernisation.
Well that's all for now, I've prattled on for bloody ages and I need to get some sleep! Nighty-night y'all!
Thursday, 14 February 2008
Delhi: I'm leaving town baby....
Hello, and happy Valentine's day. The occasion when greetings card company executives get their first bonuses of the year is upon us - enjoy the Bahamas chaps! Us single people are feeling like crap.
A tad cynical perhaps? Yes, right now I feel like a kid who got dragged from a toy store to go shopping for drills and workbenches with his dad. I really didn't want to leave Goa. Of all the places I've been in India it was the finest. I've had to come back to Delhi to catch my flight; tonight I leave for Singapore.
It's been two days since I last wrote my blog, and I've spent most of that time cooped up in a train carriage! Some interesting facts: 1) India is a bloody big country; 2) Delhi is a long way up the country from Goa; 3) trains in India don't go particularly fast; 4) to get to Delhi from Goa takes 39 hours by rail. Hooray!
If I was a rich man I would buy a ticket on a plane and get to Delhi in two hours. But if I was a rich man I could afford a lot of things, like oysters and champagne, my own private rail carriage, and a working robot clone of Nell McAndrew. Possibly I would sport a rakish moustache and tweed trousers, and a monocle.
But I'm not a rich man; I'm a budget traveller, used to doing things the cheap and difficult way. By combining travelling and sleeping I saved on airfare and two nights' accomodation. And Christ it was a boring journey! Not having anybody to talk to, the time really dragged.
I played my guitar till the lights went out, then I went to sleep dreaming of travelling across Australia, earning money from gigs - some bar or restaurant out there will have me surely! I awoke to another full day of rolling landscapes, bustling platforms, barely-edible train meals and air-conditioned tedium.
One of the things I love about India is chai - sweet spiced tea, served in short measures. It's sold everywhere. Indian trains swarm with chai wallahs (tea-men) who constantly beaver up and down the carriages selling lovely hot chai for 5 Rupees. By the end of the journey I had a towering stack of empty paper cups, rotting teeth and a hole in my wallet, but the chai somehow saved me from going insane!
But enough of that, let's resume the Goa story: After 40 minutes of speeding along dusty country lanes and over scenic hillsides, I arrived in Arambol. It has a beautiful beach, one of the best in Goa. The giant crescent of golden sand is lined with beachside huts and guarded at either end by rocky cliffs.
I parked my bike and set out in search of the Banyan Tree, walking north along the cliffs and rounding a corner. I saw Sweetwater Lake, a small inland lake where people take their children to swim, and knew I was on the right track. I headed inland, down a well-trodden path snaking through forested hills. Overhead a dense canopy of leaves and branches blocked out the sun.
I passed various travellers heading the other way down the trail, then I met a middle-aged lady in a bikini who I assumed must be suffering from some disgusting skin disease all over her body. Seconds later it dawned on me that she was just caked in mud from a mudbath! Good job I never went into practising medicine eh.
After a long series of twists and turns the path snaked up to a rocky clearing festooned with banners and colourful symbols, and petered out. Bongo drums and meditation chants rang out from the clearing. I had found the Banyan Tree!
Now I've never visited a hippie commune before so I didn't know what to expect. Peter really sold the place to me; he said it was a great place to hang out, you get chatting to new people straight away, everyone is welcome, musicians jam together all day long, and the people living there constantly cook food and share it out so nobody goes hungry. A beautiful utopian dream, maaaan!
The clearing was a bare rocky floor, about fifteen feet wide, set into the side of the hill. Hindu shrines were set out at each corner of the clearing, and the branches of the tree were fashioned into an archway to welcome new arrivals. Several people sat in a circle on mats, either meditating or relaxing, and in the middle lay the smoking remains of a camp-fire. I removed my shoes, said hello and joined them, waiting for a cue as to what to do. Staring vacantly seemed to be the done thing.
Immediately my attention was drawn to a strange old man called Thomas who was standing above us on a nearby rock, repeating the words, 'to find peace, you must stop worrying about the future and find forgiveness for the past'. He seemed to be in a world of his own, as if suffering from schizophrenic delusions.
With his grey hair, glasses and slightly creepy German accent he reminded me of the character Herr Lipp from the League of Gentlemen. He kept repeating his mantra as if he was practising lines for a play. For some reason he was also wearing a woolly hat which had three knitted rats attached to the front of it - but hey, I suspect there's a perfectly logical reason for that kind of thing when you're a delusional schizophrenic!
Seems like I caught the commune on a bit of an off day - there was trouble in the camp. Thomas has been staying out in the forest for some time, behaving erratically, causing problems for the other residents (some of whom have lived there peacefully for years) and stirring up discontent. Initially I wondered if headcases like Thomas were part and parcel in hippie communes (and maybe they are), but looking back, everyone else I met seemed sane and well-balanced; he was the only oddball.
The mood at the Banyan Tree was subdued, and after spending a couple of hours jamming on guitar with a bongo player and relaxing there in the shade I left the others and went to grab some dinner.
Personality conflicts are a frequent problem in hippie communes, Peter said later. It was great to see one but I found it's an experience I can only submerge myself in for so long. You start to feel trapped and need to get back to the world: hot showers, comfy beds, electricity and the like.
The next day I met Peter again in Arambol and had breakfast at a German bakery on the beach. We hooked up with a Swiss girl called Nadjia and rode out to explore a spectacular ruined fort near the Terekhol River, the northernmost point of Goa. Afterwards we took a look round an idyllic expanse of sand next to it, known as Paradise beach.
The area currently seems like an unspoilt paradise, but there are signs this will be the next 'hip' place in Goa to attract swarms of tourists. It moves in cycles; first Anjuna, now Arambol. Will Paradise Beach be next? The smattering of touts offering boat rides from the beach suggest the tourist juggernaut is already approaching.
My initiation into the Goa hippie/traveller circuit continued apace that evening; I spent a night at the Banyan Tree, jamming on guitar around the fire with several other travellers, including a Nepalese didgeridoo player. Thomas insisted on spending the whole evening talking to me, which was nice. I always attract the nutters. I understood little of the things he said, though I gathered from his rambling, garbled life history he was once a puppeteer. It worries me greatly that he might have worked with children!
Eventually he crawled off to his own space in the forest to crash. Rid temporarily of his presence, we all slept peacefully under the stars, surrounded by the noise of crickets and the howling of monkeys. It was a nice evening but in the morning I woke covered in mosquito bites. Why I didn't put the repellant on I'll never know. I gathered my things, and left for my comfy friendly bed in Anjuna.
In my remaining time I explored some more on moped round north Goa, enjoying the freedom and the sun. I returned to the Blue Tao restaurant in Anjuna on Monday evening and got invited up on stage to play a few songs. We got chatting to two girls from Wales who were from a family of triplets, and a Swedish guy called Otto who was celebrating his birthday. Suddenly I was meeting people, and I didn't want to leave!
As I travel I meet people and I leave people behind, but the bottom line is I'm out here on my own. It's a thrilling ride, but there are moments nearly every day where I get sick of being on my own and dream of the day I can come home and be around familiar people again. That day is a long way off but I dare say I'll meet many more friendly faces upon the way!
Today I'm meeting my travel buddy Laura for lunch in Delhi, then I have to find my way to the airport. I'll catch you when I get to Singapore!
A tad cynical perhaps? Yes, right now I feel like a kid who got dragged from a toy store to go shopping for drills and workbenches with his dad. I really didn't want to leave Goa. Of all the places I've been in India it was the finest. I've had to come back to Delhi to catch my flight; tonight I leave for Singapore.
It's been two days since I last wrote my blog, and I've spent most of that time cooped up in a train carriage! Some interesting facts: 1) India is a bloody big country; 2) Delhi is a long way up the country from Goa; 3) trains in India don't go particularly fast; 4) to get to Delhi from Goa takes 39 hours by rail. Hooray!
If I was a rich man I would buy a ticket on a plane and get to Delhi in two hours. But if I was a rich man I could afford a lot of things, like oysters and champagne, my own private rail carriage, and a working robot clone of Nell McAndrew. Possibly I would sport a rakish moustache and tweed trousers, and a monocle.
But I'm not a rich man; I'm a budget traveller, used to doing things the cheap and difficult way. By combining travelling and sleeping I saved on airfare and two nights' accomodation. And Christ it was a boring journey! Not having anybody to talk to, the time really dragged.
I played my guitar till the lights went out, then I went to sleep dreaming of travelling across Australia, earning money from gigs - some bar or restaurant out there will have me surely! I awoke to another full day of rolling landscapes, bustling platforms, barely-edible train meals and air-conditioned tedium.
One of the things I love about India is chai - sweet spiced tea, served in short measures. It's sold everywhere. Indian trains swarm with chai wallahs (tea-men) who constantly beaver up and down the carriages selling lovely hot chai for 5 Rupees. By the end of the journey I had a towering stack of empty paper cups, rotting teeth and a hole in my wallet, but the chai somehow saved me from going insane!
But enough of that, let's resume the Goa story: After 40 minutes of speeding along dusty country lanes and over scenic hillsides, I arrived in Arambol. It has a beautiful beach, one of the best in Goa. The giant crescent of golden sand is lined with beachside huts and guarded at either end by rocky cliffs.
I parked my bike and set out in search of the Banyan Tree, walking north along the cliffs and rounding a corner. I saw Sweetwater Lake, a small inland lake where people take their children to swim, and knew I was on the right track. I headed inland, down a well-trodden path snaking through forested hills. Overhead a dense canopy of leaves and branches blocked out the sun.
I passed various travellers heading the other way down the trail, then I met a middle-aged lady in a bikini who I assumed must be suffering from some disgusting skin disease all over her body. Seconds later it dawned on me that she was just caked in mud from a mudbath! Good job I never went into practising medicine eh.
After a long series of twists and turns the path snaked up to a rocky clearing festooned with banners and colourful symbols, and petered out. Bongo drums and meditation chants rang out from the clearing. I had found the Banyan Tree!
Now I've never visited a hippie commune before so I didn't know what to expect. Peter really sold the place to me; he said it was a great place to hang out, you get chatting to new people straight away, everyone is welcome, musicians jam together all day long, and the people living there constantly cook food and share it out so nobody goes hungry. A beautiful utopian dream, maaaan!
The clearing was a bare rocky floor, about fifteen feet wide, set into the side of the hill. Hindu shrines were set out at each corner of the clearing, and the branches of the tree were fashioned into an archway to welcome new arrivals. Several people sat in a circle on mats, either meditating or relaxing, and in the middle lay the smoking remains of a camp-fire. I removed my shoes, said hello and joined them, waiting for a cue as to what to do. Staring vacantly seemed to be the done thing.
Immediately my attention was drawn to a strange old man called Thomas who was standing above us on a nearby rock, repeating the words, 'to find peace, you must stop worrying about the future and find forgiveness for the past'. He seemed to be in a world of his own, as if suffering from schizophrenic delusions.
With his grey hair, glasses and slightly creepy German accent he reminded me of the character Herr Lipp from the League of Gentlemen. He kept repeating his mantra as if he was practising lines for a play. For some reason he was also wearing a woolly hat which had three knitted rats attached to the front of it - but hey, I suspect there's a perfectly logical reason for that kind of thing when you're a delusional schizophrenic!
Seems like I caught the commune on a bit of an off day - there was trouble in the camp. Thomas has been staying out in the forest for some time, behaving erratically, causing problems for the other residents (some of whom have lived there peacefully for years) and stirring up discontent. Initially I wondered if headcases like Thomas were part and parcel in hippie communes (and maybe they are), but looking back, everyone else I met seemed sane and well-balanced; he was the only oddball.
The mood at the Banyan Tree was subdued, and after spending a couple of hours jamming on guitar with a bongo player and relaxing there in the shade I left the others and went to grab some dinner.
Personality conflicts are a frequent problem in hippie communes, Peter said later. It was great to see one but I found it's an experience I can only submerge myself in for so long. You start to feel trapped and need to get back to the world: hot showers, comfy beds, electricity and the like.
The next day I met Peter again in Arambol and had breakfast at a German bakery on the beach. We hooked up with a Swiss girl called Nadjia and rode out to explore a spectacular ruined fort near the Terekhol River, the northernmost point of Goa. Afterwards we took a look round an idyllic expanse of sand next to it, known as Paradise beach.
The area currently seems like an unspoilt paradise, but there are signs this will be the next 'hip' place in Goa to attract swarms of tourists. It moves in cycles; first Anjuna, now Arambol. Will Paradise Beach be next? The smattering of touts offering boat rides from the beach suggest the tourist juggernaut is already approaching.
My initiation into the Goa hippie/traveller circuit continued apace that evening; I spent a night at the Banyan Tree, jamming on guitar around the fire with several other travellers, including a Nepalese didgeridoo player. Thomas insisted on spending the whole evening talking to me, which was nice. I always attract the nutters. I understood little of the things he said, though I gathered from his rambling, garbled life history he was once a puppeteer. It worries me greatly that he might have worked with children!
Eventually he crawled off to his own space in the forest to crash. Rid temporarily of his presence, we all slept peacefully under the stars, surrounded by the noise of crickets and the howling of monkeys. It was a nice evening but in the morning I woke covered in mosquito bites. Why I didn't put the repellant on I'll never know. I gathered my things, and left for my comfy friendly bed in Anjuna.
In my remaining time I explored some more on moped round north Goa, enjoying the freedom and the sun. I returned to the Blue Tao restaurant in Anjuna on Monday evening and got invited up on stage to play a few songs. We got chatting to two girls from Wales who were from a family of triplets, and a Swedish guy called Otto who was celebrating his birthday. Suddenly I was meeting people, and I didn't want to leave!
As I travel I meet people and I leave people behind, but the bottom line is I'm out here on my own. It's a thrilling ride, but there are moments nearly every day where I get sick of being on my own and dream of the day I can come home and be around familiar people again. That day is a long way off but I dare say I'll meet many more friendly faces upon the way!
Today I'm meeting my travel buddy Laura for lunch in Delhi, then I have to find my way to the airport. I'll catch you when I get to Singapore!
Monday, 11 February 2008
Arambol - born to be wild (aka the moped diaries)!
Hello! Right now I'm sat in the most uncomfortably sweaty internet cafe I've ever been in. I'm at Madgaon railway station in Goa, waiting to catch the train back to Delhi. Outside, swarms of rickshaws ferry passengers to and from the station while the sun covers the swathes of palm trees in afternoon heat. I can't believe five weeks have passed already. Soon I will be leaving India.
Goa was brilliant. I can't wait to go back. So much happened since I last wrote! Let's start with Friday evening: I wandered down the street in Anjuna, looking for a cheap fly-blown place to drown my sorrows for an hour or two, and I spotted a sign on a doorway: 'Live music - Peter from Australia!' Suitably intrigued, I jumped from the saddle of my metaphorical horse and headed inside.
Inside was a restaurant (not a metaphorical one, a real one), and I sat down and ordered prawn curry. Peter, a youngish musician guy around my age, was performing cover songs on guitar for the assembled diners. It's rare to hear Western music anywhere in India so I sat back to enjoy some familiar tunes with a beer.
After his gig I got talking to him and asked him where was fun to go. He told me to head to Arambol (20 miles up the coast) and check out the traveller scene, and then visit a banyan (fig) tree out in the forest where lots of hippies live!
Peter is travelling round India for several months and - talk about a dream job - earns his keep performing at the restaurant five nights a week! He gets enough money from playing guitar and singing to continue travelling as long as he wants, visa permitting. I think that is an awesome thing to do. You don't always need a plan when you travel, just head off on the road and try to use your talents and abilities to earn money! (I am an expert lover and also a skilled assassin. I think this will earn me lots of money.)
We hit it off pretty well and after his gig he offered me a lift on his moped. We visited the nearby town of Chapora (which buzzes with travellers at night-time) then stopped at an outdoor nightclub in Vagator to watch a gymnastic and juggling show. I learned later it was the finale of a four-day international juggling festival! There was a special energy in the crowd; it reminded me of the first time I visited the Sziget festival in Hungary and saw people partying in forest glades without an advert in sight.
Galvanised by my nocturnal moped experience (I'd never ridden on a motorbike before), I headed out the next day in search of a scooter to hire. Public transport in Goa is patchy at best so to explore properly, you need to rent your own transport. I struck a bargain to rent a shiny new Honda Activa bike for three days at the bargain price of 500 Rupees (less than a tenner). 240 more Rupees secured me a full tank of petrol. I quickly acclimatised myself to the bike's controls and off I flew down the road to Arambol!
Goa was brilliant. I can't wait to go back. So much happened since I last wrote! Let's start with Friday evening: I wandered down the street in Anjuna, looking for a cheap fly-blown place to drown my sorrows for an hour or two, and I spotted a sign on a doorway: 'Live music - Peter from Australia!' Suitably intrigued, I jumped from the saddle of my metaphorical horse and headed inside.
Inside was a restaurant (not a metaphorical one, a real one), and I sat down and ordered prawn curry. Peter, a youngish musician guy around my age, was performing cover songs on guitar for the assembled diners. It's rare to hear Western music anywhere in India so I sat back to enjoy some familiar tunes with a beer.
After his gig I got talking to him and asked him where was fun to go. He told me to head to Arambol (20 miles up the coast) and check out the traveller scene, and then visit a banyan (fig) tree out in the forest where lots of hippies live!
Peter is travelling round India for several months and - talk about a dream job - earns his keep performing at the restaurant five nights a week! He gets enough money from playing guitar and singing to continue travelling as long as he wants, visa permitting. I think that is an awesome thing to do. You don't always need a plan when you travel, just head off on the road and try to use your talents and abilities to earn money! (I am an expert lover and also a skilled assassin. I think this will earn me lots of money.)
We hit it off pretty well and after his gig he offered me a lift on his moped. We visited the nearby town of Chapora (which buzzes with travellers at night-time) then stopped at an outdoor nightclub in Vagator to watch a gymnastic and juggling show. I learned later it was the finale of a four-day international juggling festival! There was a special energy in the crowd; it reminded me of the first time I visited the Sziget festival in Hungary and saw people partying in forest glades without an advert in sight.
Galvanised by my nocturnal moped experience (I'd never ridden on a motorbike before), I headed out the next day in search of a scooter to hire. Public transport in Goa is patchy at best so to explore properly, you need to rent your own transport. I struck a bargain to rent a shiny new Honda Activa bike for three days at the bargain price of 500 Rupees (less than a tenner). 240 more Rupees secured me a full tank of petrol. I quickly acclimatised myself to the bike's controls and off I flew down the road to Arambol!
Elsewhere in India I would recommend you never ever try and drive. The roads are extremely busy (especially in the big cities) and the motorists are lunatics. But Goa has much quieter roads than anywhere else I've been and it's reasonably safe to drive yourself - all the tourists do. And when in Rome, do as the Romans do - beep your horn at anything in sight and go as fast as you f**king want! As you speed past a beautiful field lined with palm trees, with the wind rushing through your hair, you realise what it is like to be truly free.
Shit, my time is up... my train leaves in 30 minutes. I have to collect my luggage. I'll continue the Goa story once I return to Delhi. Bye for now!
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