We were scheduled to leave at 8 a.m. to catch the ferry from Newhaven at 6.30 p.m. So we left at 11 and again at 11.10 after we had remembered a couple of things. We were leaving from Tufnell Park in North London and headed out towards Sutton.
We were heading for Sutton because Bart had printed off a map from there to Brighton. Before we got there I decided to fall off. Bart had mounted the kerb and I attempted to follow. Oh, did I mention that we were cycling, with Paris as Bart’s destination and Rome as mine. My bike had been properly serviced with new tyres, chain etc. And a mirror specifically fitted on the left hand side for parts foreign. Anyway Bart had successfully mounted the kerb on to the pavement without stopping so I followed. The bike, however, had other ideas when I didn’t attack the kerb at right angles. The process of relocating myself on the pavement seemed to involve quite a few cuts and bruises plus breaking off the newly fitted mirror and breaking my watch. Oh well two less things to worry about – what is behind me and what time it is.
Upon asking some locals in Sutton where The Spoons was they denied the presence of such a fine establishment in Sutton. Hah, we soon found one – four pints of various liquids and two burgers for 11 quid was lunch. For the non-cognescenti, The Spoons are Witherspoons pubs. These are fine establishments that sell good beer and indifferent food cheap, open at 7 and are populated most commonly by non-Ferrari owners, even non-Mercedes owners, even non-VW owners, in fact non-owners; they are Bart’s natural habitat. When Bart started taking photos of my injuries the locals started taking an interest and estimated the time to cycle to Rome as five years. Bart produced a pair of cycling gloves given to me by Mother that may have reduced the damage to my hand in the aforementioned fall. He also produced the map but had to ask the locals the way to the start. They had clearly taken a view on our character and directed us to the next pub 300 metres up the road past the prison and the hospital. We left tem the broken watch as a souvenir.
Once we got off the main roads, it was good cycling – dry but not too sunny through the English countryside at its best when everything is green, the crops are growing well, the cows are content sitting around chewing the cud. The only problem was excessive stops to consult the map. At the next watering stop this duly got ripped up and, unencumbered by any such trivialities as maps or a compass, we proceeded much more quickly – shame about the direction. We were not bothered at all. Just two friends out for a nice bike ride; we knew that we had missed the ferry so who cares where we went as long as we enjoyed the country. We seemed to zigzag our way south, only occasionally along footpaths until we hit a sign saying Cycletrack to Brighton. The A23 is a large dual carriageway (four lane highway for the ignorant amongst us) with lots of traffic and most would not consider a cycletrack running alongside such a road as ideal. On this occasion I disagreed. We had already cycled about 90 kilometres during the day – and most of it outside London not flat – and the four hours kip meant that I was beginning to flag. Oh I forgot to mention why I was not up with the lark. Well actually I was, celebrating Mother’s birthday with only Rude Pete left for company by 6 in the morning. Rude Pete is well named. Some of you will recall a time before I became nice that I could come up with a turn of phrase that some might consider a little impertinent, well I have nothing on Rude Pete. He is the real deal, can be gratuitously offensive to all nice people and he is the reason why political correctness had to be invented - brilliant. The big road also meant avoiding the dreaded Ditchling Beacon. This is a steep climb up the South Downs that has featured in the Tour de France that Bart was looking forward to climbing – I was not, I had already had my one permitted get off and walk moment of the day. Bart found a reviving watering hole at just the right moment where he had a coffee and I had a couple of pints which dispelled my tiredness enough for me to wobble into Brighton at about 8.
We (well Bart) found a grotty B&B where the front door key didn’t work. Dinner in a Thai restaurant during which Bart established that we could catch a ferry at 9.30 in the morning. In fact the evening sailings were at 10.30 so we could have left that night; where Bart had got 6.30 from remains a mystery. I suspect it had been to make me get up early. Well, I had taught him.
Of course, the early sailing meant that we would have to leave the B&B at 7.30, too early for breakfast. I was still feeling a bit tired but we were now more evenly balanced as Bart had decided to spend the night listening to my gentle night noises rather than sleep. So Breakfast consisted of a cup of tea and my blood pressure pills, a bit different from the previous day when breakfast had been grapefruit juice and blood pressure pills. A gentle ride along the coast to Newhaven was OK. You tend to think that coast roads are flat – you would be mistaken. Consequently Bart kept leaving me behind but we arrived in plenty of time to join the queue to buy tickets to Dieppe. In front of us there were some loud people complaining that foot passenger tickets could not possibly be sold out even in school holidays. Upon getting to the front of the queue we found out that cyclists are a different category from foot passengers and they were – sold out. The choice seemed to be to sit in a pub all day and get the night sailing, or a train to Dover. We decided to wait and, sure enough, the nice lady let us on. I said that was because we had not been abusive until Bart pointed out that they had let the noisy people on as well.
The journey was uneventful if you discount the screaming brats, the irrational desire to join queues and our inability to find a table with a combined IQ of 270 odd. Why do people stand in a queue for twenty minutes when they can wander off for half an hour and come back to no queue?
The ferry journey is misnamed. It should be Newhaven to Nowhere or possibly “Newhaven to somewhere near Dieppe that you have to cycle up a bleeding steep hill and down again to get to Dieppe with ignorant British drivers passing three inches from your handlebar ends.” The French are much more considerate to cyclists than British car drivers. The Brits think “I pay my road taxes, these ****ing cyclists do not, they have no right to get in my way when I am rushing from the back of one queue to the back of another queue.” The French think “I used to cycle quite a lot when I was not an old fart, I will give the cyclists plenty of room”. It is quite normal for French drivers to wait three or four hundred metres behind you until there is a suitable moment to overtake. If they overtake you with cars coming the other way it is normal to put there outside wheels over the line down the middle of the road to squeeze the opposition car and give room to the cyclist; quite impressive when the overtaking vehicle has sixteen wheels.
Dieppe is quite a pleasant town and we began to feel like we were in France, lots of bars and restaurants with interesting menus and well turned out waitresses. Of course, it being 3.30, you could not get any of the food from the aforementioned well turned out waitresses, it being France.
The road out of Dieppe was going in roughly the right direction, i.e. south but was crowded. However, there were few bars so no cause to stop until a roundabout with a bar on it after about thirty kilometres(km). I was, surprise, surprise a little thirsty so we stopped for a beer. Bart left after ten minutes because he couldn’t stand the two blokes in the bar. Being a queen, it didn’t occur to him that we had to pay. Anyway we turned off the main road through the lovely village (with nice bars) and on our way up this lovely D road. You must bear in mind that Motorways (Highways to many of my foreign friends) are A roads in France, A roads are N roads, D roads are B roads and C roads are C roads. I trust that I have made that clear. We were confident that it was going somewhere but we didn’t really care, it was beautiful – smooth road, gentle ups and downs, lines of trees, properly shuttered houses, luuverly gardens and not many people. In fact it reminded me of what got me hooked on travelling almost forty years ago. Being a good parochial Derbyshire lad not from a wealthy family I was 20 before I ventured abroad and that was to bounce round France with a mate in a minivan. I wonder how many people under forty know what a minivan is? Or was? Anyway, it was the sight of long straight roads with avenues of trees down them and shuttered houses that made me think something along the lines of “I travelled 22 miles across the Channel and this is how different things are, what must it be like a few thousand miles away” I have never looked back since.
Actually the avenues seem to have disappeared. I am writing this a day later and we have seen a line of trees down one side of the road on quite a few occasions and we have been through a few woods but no avenues.
We are content ambling along but we are getting thirsty and find a shop in a village that sells cider (oh, I forgot to mention that we were in the apple and cider route – what a coincidence) and buy a bottle. This village is short of seats so we sit on the church steps to swig the bottle, In fact it is so good that we get another and drink that too. Only those of you with no taste and access to Bart could possibly want to see the film resulting from the pair of us entertaining each other. However, time is passing and we begin to think about food and bed. Not to drag the story out we get to a junction and decide that Buchy, at nine kilometres, is the place for us. However, the road did not look very interesting so we turned off quite quickly and did about 15K before deciding that we were getting nowhere. Bart, who speaks excellent foreign of varying dialects, including Frogish, accosts a local and is assured that Buchy, 4 Km away is the place to go with plenty of places to eat.
Obviously the first thing we do on arrival at this illustrious town is inspect the local pigeon loft. I realise that prioritization might vary but we were looking for somewhere to sleep that was cheap. Allow me to explain. These days I am not skint, I am not rich but I can afford the odd hotel room. Bart works for a charity so we were looking for a ditch to sleep in.
We cannot find a hotel of any sort in this fine village so I realise that we are truly ditch bound. We settle for eating Before ditch hunting. It being Saturday night Buchy was packed with busy restaurants. Well there was an Italian that was full. Could we come back in an hour? “Don’t know.” This confirmed Bart’s extremely dime view of the French. In the posh joint (i.e. the other restaurant in town that was open on a Saturday night) they let us in but hid us upstairs. We had the cheapest menu and only one bottle of wine for seventy euros but the food was damn good. On completion, it was out of town to look for a ditch.
By now it was almost fully dark but in a mere two or three kms I spotted what looked like an abandoned caravan – my eyesight is superb when I want something. When we checked it out we found that there was a small piece of nettle-infested grassland next to the caravan with an abandoned house as well. Clearly the place for us. The caravan was locked and Bart decided that the grass was thick enough to sleep on. We identified a couple of sleeping spots and retired to our house for late night snacks and wine. This, being Bart, meant him curling up in his sleeping bag whilst I drank the wine. And, of course he dozed off. This did leave a slight FCFCproblem. We had no tents, two survival blankets (big plastic bags), a sleeping bag (that Bart was curled up in) and a sleeping bag liner. So I retired with both survival blankets, the liner and Bart’s sweatshirt ( I only have T-shirts with me) to the outside world.
More next episode.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Whither Now?
Travel time. A month - that is all, what sort of a holiday is that? All the other teachers got at least 6 weeks, but not me. I would complain but I have no basis for it, except jealousy.
Destination – Malaysia. Malaysia and Trinidad were two countries that I always liked the sound of when I was young because of the ethnic, or is it racial, mix. Trinidad has West & East Indians plus a fair number of Chinese and Europeans, so at least the food should be good. Well I was there nearly 25 years ago and the food wasn’t good. Wimpys were the most noticeable ingredient. For those of you too young to remember this was a chain of British burger places (as opposed to the British building company of the same name) before McShit came to rule the world. I didn’t like Trinidad – expensive and rather characterless. I spent more time on the sister island of Tobago before moving on to Grenada, where I lived for a while.
So would Malaysia turn out the same way as Trinidad? Broadly speaking it is about 50% Malays, 25% Chinese, 10% each of Indians and the indigenous peoples (the Malays are not the original people) plus a few others.
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur - or KL as it is universally known – late at night. A funny trait this, they give cities two word names and then promptly abbreviate them – Johor Bahru is JB, Koata Kinabalu is KK etc. Mike had recommended a hotel but, naturally, I hadn’t booked, despite the hotel being on the internet. Naturally this fine establishment was closed when I got there but my taxi driver, fortunately, was quite persistent and someone eventually came to the door said they were full and recommended somewhere round the corner. Eventually I found the entrance and got a room. Enquiries about a reviving beer were not greeted with success – it was only 1.00 a.m. and this is a capital city – what is wrong with these people?
The first shock was the price of the room – 80 Ringgits – 15 euros. (I will quote all costs in the local currency and euros. If you think in sterling deduct a third from the euro figure; if you think in US Dollars, add a third to the euro figure; if you think in Canadian, Aussie or Kiwi Dollars – oh dear!) This was 40% of my theoretical daily budget, so a behavioural change was called for; I moved to somewhere the following day at half the price. In fact accommodation in Malaysia isn’t bad and you can generally find places to suit every budget from about 2 euros a night for a bed in a dormitory upwards. I am too old for that sort of stuff and most people don’t really appreciate you blundering around at whatever time you get in followed by a bout of snoring so I largely stuck to rooms for myself at this sort of price.
The second shock. A quick wander round a few markets on the second day obviously called for lunch and the first beer. A 640 ml bottle of Tiger beer was 15 RMs (3 euros). Those of you who appreciate my beer consumption will understand that this is a serious issue for a budget of 40 euros a day (it is about 1 euro in a bar or restaurant in China) and called for another behavioural modification – I would have to go the bank more often.
KL’s most famous building is the Petronas Towers but it also has the fourth largest TV tower in the world, Menara KL. This is on a hill in the middle of the city so in the late afternoon I headed for that. On the way I came across a sort of wildlife area which was free and you could get to the tower through it, but the gatekeeper was very keen that I understood that the park closed at 6.00 p.m. So in I went; it wasn’t that great but I was off the roads so I was fine. Up the tower and you do have great views of the city. KL is a pretty modern city, most buildings are less than 20 years old and many of 40 floors or more while many of the old British colonial buildings are now used as museums or government buildings; although the Selangor Club is still a going concern in the middle of the city with a somewhat different clientele than 50 years ago. The viewing platform is not at the top of the tower but the hill is 90 metres higher than the Petronas Towers, which is a kilometre or so away, so consequently we were level with the very top of the Towers
I left the TV tower at 5.20 or so and continued heading North through the Park. I got to the North Gate at 5.50 – locked and no sign of anybody. It was (and probably still is) two metres high with barbed wire at the top so I didn’t really fancy climbing over it. Shit, this is my first day and I am going to get locked in a bloody park!
I thought “I know that the TV Tower is open until 10 so there has to be some way out from there” so a quick about turn and the direct route back got me there for 6.10 to a very welcome pair of open gates. (Can a pair of gates carry an adjective “welcome”, aren’t they inanimate? Spot my English mistake in that?) Once I was safely through them I was distinctly relieved and had a better look at how I would have escaped had they been closed. With extreme difficulty is the correct answer. The gates were also 2 metres high, nobody older than 2 could have got under them and the barbed wire at the top was, of course, angled outwards. The adjoining walls were about 1½ metres high with metre high fences topped by more outward facing barbed stuff. I was very glad not to be wandering around in the undergrowth in sandals, amidst the scorpions and snakes, as it got dark, looking for a potential escape route.
Malaysia is a Muslim country but, fortunately, they don’t take it too seriously and I was staying in a place that had the attraction of a rooftop bar (complete with visiting snake on my first night). This is OK except all the customers are backpackers. That is they are either 18 or 22 and on their way to or from Australia. All they talk about is where they have just been or where they are going next with lots of enthusiasm and plenty of “like”s, as in “Sydney was like great fun”. Fair enough but not exactly my stage in life and I didn’t really have much common ground with people at that stage in their travelling career (with the odd, very honourable, exception of course) and I don’t travel to meet lots of Brits (and the majority, or close to it, are, the rest being almost entirely European) so this was not a great success. The Muslim bit was quite interesting – I only saw one burka on the whole trip and only about ten veils. However, the modesty thing is important so all the Moslem women wear the headscarves but nobody seems to see the incongruity between wearing a headscarf and tight jeans. I didn’t complain.
KL has plenty of shops, but of course nothing in comparison to Guangzhou – shopping is not just a pastime or hobby in China, it is a way of life. KL also apparently has plenty of nightlife but I didn’t really go looking for it and a couple of days looking round the city was enough for me. One place that you might not immediately pick out from a guidebook as worth a visit but which I thoroughly enjoyed, is the butterfly house in the park. I have read nothing to indicate that Malaysia is famous for butterflies – it should be, I saw many different species during my trip with lots of variety in shape and size as well as colours and colour combinations.
I did stay one more day for a Hindu festival called Thaipusam that takes place on the outskirts of the city at Batu Caves and happened to be on at the time. This attracts hundreds of thousands of people over the three days it is on. The interesting bit is the body piercing by the devotees. Priests stick various needles through various parts of the bodies of the entranced believers without drawing blood or any apparent pain. Places pierced include cheeks, tongues and varying parts of the torso. Sometimes these needles are attached to things to be carried or dragged to the main cave (and some of the things to be dragged weighed tens of kilos) which is a kilometre or so away and up 272 steep steps.
Varifocals (and bi-focals come to that) make walking down steps a bit difficult because you have to look straight down to get the “distance’ vision part of the lens looking at the step you are about to tread on and I can assure that you looked because the riser was as big as the tread but each step was less than a foot length – OK going up, but a bit trickier coming down in a crowd. On the way up I had wondered why there were a lot of abandoned sandals near the bottom; it was a lot easier in bare feet. Now anybody left paying attention will be wondering how the devotees dragged the stuff up the steps. The answer is that they didn’t, each devotee had loads of family and friends who actually carry the thing when he moves. The whole piercing thing has been banned in India (I am not surprised) so there are not many places that you can now see it or join in fully – hence the numbers. At the big cave at the top (which smells of a mixture of flowers and rotting fruit and has been thoughtfully whitewashed up to a height of three metres to allow graffiti artists to show their talents – or lack of them) the worthies get de-needled and then spend a while blessing all and sundry. There was rubbish everywhere – in China there would have been an army of cleaners on constant duty – 90% women, naturally
Next, the Jungle. This is not far from KL but takes a 3-hour bus journey, a two-hour wait, a half hour bus trip and a three-hour boat journey. This seems to typify Malaysia; it is not a very big country and journeys are normally only three or four hours, you just seem to have to do two, three or even four to get anywhere.
King George V National Park was created in 1938. At Independence this was renamed Taman Negara (literally “The National Park”) because there was only one in Malaya (as it then was). This must have looked a bit short-sighted even then you would think i.e. what happens when you create a new one, is that “The Other National Park”? It doesn’t worry the Malaysians, other parks a re called “Taman Negara Niah” etc. but there is still the original Taman Negara with its name unchanged since 1957.
On the way up the river I met a Vietnamese-American called Twee. Her family name is Le and, typically of the Far East, the family name comes first. Now even with my appalling French the possibility for bad puns is legion but I could not think of anything that she wouldn’t have heard before and, amazingly, restrained, myself. Speaking of names, some of you will not know the names that many of my students give themselves. Their Chinese names are normally pretty close to unpronounceable for me and I spend so much time trying not to sound like a complete plonker reading out their names (which I then instantly forget) that I am too busy in this task to actually look at them. This means that name-face recognition is minimal. The students get over this problem by giving themselves English names. These can be Sue or Jack but there is lots of imagination – Purple, Fairy, Wonderful (male) Darkhorse, Simple, Happy & Crystal were all in one class last term and that is not untypical. However, most people’s favourites are Volcano and Triangel – no, I have not misspelt the word and yes, she is pretty good looking.
For my loyal reader I will return to the story. 4 of us, plus a guide, were to do a 2-day jungle walk. My travelling companions were a good lot; although I was, of course, by far the oldest. The youngest was 29, nobody was garrulous and nobody happy-snappy so we weren’t stopping every 5 minutes. As you enter the park proper, they inventory things like plastic bottles, batteries, clothes etc. – an excellent idea to my mind. The problem was that I went in with two less batteries and one more plastic bottle than I came out with! We then had a short ride to a canopy catwalk. This has a standard rope bridge technique with two long ropes between trees, ropes hanging down from the main ropes with ladders at the bottom covered in boards. I have been on much ropier (sorry) constructions in the Himalayas but not 45 metres in the air. I did not do much looking except at the tree platforms and never down – I don’t think that Harrison Ford’s age is going to result in my getting a call for the next Indiana Jones film. We were expecting a quick out and back route but in fact there was almost a complete circle with a circumference of several hundred metres and a height gain of 40 or 50 metres – I was very pleased it was an uphill walk. We were getting near the end and I had just commenced one section when it started swinging quite a lot and I thought that Mark, who is Irish and half way across the section at the time, had decided to put the wind up some British bastard. I beat a hasty retreat but I had misjudged him, it swayed aplenty when I got to the middle on my own. Good fun.
Two hours up the river and a lunch stop was interrupted to cross the river to get away from a King Cobra in the water. We were told that it is the most venomous snake in the world; it isn’t but I wasn’t keen on contesting the theory. After lunch, we crossed back to cobra side to get out of the boat and start the walk! Jungle walks are good for trees, fungi and sounds; you see very little in the way of wildlife. This is because it, the wildlife, is mostly up in the canopy, the vegetation is very thick, everything sees you before you see it and animals are most active early in the morning and round unset – those are my excuses anyway. We did see lots of interesting fungi, some interesting ladybirds, heard reverberating trees and glimpsed some rhinoceros hornbills above the canopy. The guide also showed us the mounds that some crickets build – 6 or 7 centimetres high; I had never seen them before. Highlight of the day was a bat cave. No Michael Keaton or Val Kilmer in their but lots of bats. Access was quite interesting, up a slippery rock-face for about ten metres with a rope for your hands. Up is easy enough but coming down? Actually it was OK. Inside was great, a floor covered in bat shit with insect life crawling all over it, lots of bats and a couple of snakes up in the rocks where they were resting after a good lunch. If I can’t be Indiana Jones, perhaps David Attenborough is more like it “Here in the heart of 130 million year old jungle, I am standing on a metres deep pile of guano with literally ten’s of thousands [Duck for effect as bat flies 2 metres over head] of bats creating a whole ecosystem in this one cave.”
This is real jungle and Katie took on the job of leech magnet, which meant that I did not get sliced once even though I was not good at balancing on the pieces of wood crossing the streams. The night was spent in a cave. It was Twee’s first night camping - ever. Quite brave really - camping in a cave in the middle of a jungle with 4 complete strangers contemplating whether to go back to being a New York architect or give it all up to try and hang on to her marriage. Fortunately, we did not see any snakes in that cave. There were a couple of Mynah birds roosting and a single firefly came walsing through about 2 a.m. The rats licking out the tins caused a bit of consternation but otherwise it was fine. No beer, of course, but I had had the good sense to take my minidisk player. Just as it started getting light I saw lots of eyes looking down at me and though “I don’t remember that many bats in here”. Inspection a little later revealed no bats. What could it have been – gloworms? In a cave? Algae? Ghosts? Matt, the guide, didn’t know. I really could not work it out but it was not my imagination, as I noted there had been no beer and they faded quite quickly as it got light. Perhaps it was the absence of beer.
A good walk out the following day, of which the highlight was either a 20 metre long tree-trunk acting as the bridge across a tiny stream or a brilliant red dragonfly, and check out of the park. We all went off in different directions. I was heading south-east to an island. It took 3 days. A boat ride and two buses brought me to Kuantan with the Rough Guide is quite rude about but I got a decent hotel with a BATH (I only have a shower at home in Guangzhou), to get cleaned up after the jungle, followed by a decent meal. The hotel had sachets of Sunsilk shampoo –does it still exist? (“I love the taste of sunsilk in the evening.” – Apologies to Colonel Killgore) The Rough Guide is good, up-to-date, well written and unpretentious. More to the point it is not Lonely Planet so you can escape other travellers. However, it is not too hot on maps and this can be very important after a few days in the Jungle when you have had an excellent meal for 30 Ringgits (6 Euros) and are anxiously looking for the Boom Boom Bar & Bistro because it is one of the few places in town that sells beer. The failings of the map were, of course, no stopper to an intrepid traveller.
Up with the lark for the morning buses – both full, so I was condemned to a day in this town. I filled part of it with a boat ride on the river for which I was the only customer. This was tedious and a waste of my very valuable time until we got off for a jungle walk. Fortunately, one of the crew (there were two) came with me as a guide and was good at spotting and pointing out things, which included kingfishers, hornbills, sea eagles plus a monitor lizard and a crocodile next to each other. I learnt, perhaps a little late in life, that eating live mud-skippers is the way to a successful sex life.
I reached Mersing that evening. There is nothing of interest in Mersing and I was glad that I had been delayed in Kuantan, although the restaurant that evening had easily available, cheaper beer and a cheerful owner. However, I was glad to get the ferry in the morning to Tioman Island because nobody should have to spend 2 nights in Mersing.
Tioman Island is pure tourism. Some fairly successful film was made there in the 1950s and it became one of the most famous islands in the world but who has heard of it now? There are a series of small villages up the side of the island but it is distinctly mountainous so all movement is by boat, except for the very rich and ostentatious, of course who use helicopters. I chose one particular village based upon the fact that The Rough Guide said it had the best nightlife. Well I don’t know about the other villages but one bar opened for the year on the day I arrived – phew! The beer was surprisingly cheap considering I was on a tourist island and the tourists were mainly foreigners with a few Singaporeans and a negligible number of Malaysians.
I had come to the island to relax. I had a back problem for which the doctor had diagnosed swimming. When I had tried swimming before leaving on my holiday I found it distinctly painful but seemed to do some good so I was here to swim 3 times a day and other than that do nothing – apart from a few beers of course. I found a comfortable air-conditioned hut at a reasonable price and settled in. I proved to be the only guest in a place with 22 huts and it stayed like that for the next 4 days. I was next to a large pond that ran into the sea 50 metres away; a happy coincidence because the pond was full of life – birds, butterflies, interesting plants etc. but the stars were the monitor lizards. For those of you not familiar with these creatures, they walk above the ground, not on it, and can grow to a metre long in the body with a tail rather longer. Add to this a forked tongue that flicks out a further 15 or 20 centimetres and you have quite a substantial animal weighing up to 30 kilograms or so. The tails make them good swimmers and they also climb trees as well so this is a versatile animal that is also omnivorous and a real scavenger. There were plenty of the lizards in the pond and one afternoon whilst I was sat reading on my balcony I saw 4 of them on the land within 5 metres of me – they seemed to like the shrubs nearby. They would walk past on the grass a metre or so from me, notice me, stop for a glance for a few seconds and disdainfully plod on happily ignoring me. Splendid things.
Oddly, or not so oddly, I met the couple who had been my next door neighbours in Taman Negara. This is not really that surprising when you are travelling – people tend to go to the same places so it is not so much a coincidence as predictable that you will meet people that you met a week before.
4 days of swimming, sitting around getting suntanned and evenings drinking was enough for me so it was the ferry back to Mersing. Unfortunately, it was scheduled for 3 p.m. but was 2 ½ hours late. Of course, after another 2 ½ hours on the boat I was too late for the last bus and was condemned to a second night in Mersing!
My esteemed restaurateur actually closed early whilst I was still drinking to take me and a Canadian (who had been visiting Mersing for nearly 20 years) off to another restaurant where a Swiss couple, who were long-term residents of this not very fair town and friends of mine host, were having the opening night of their restaurant. This evening proved entertaining mainly for the swearing ability of the Chinese, one in particular - it reminded me of working on the shop floor of a factory when I was 18. Everybody was, for reasons which continued to elude me, trying to persuade that this dozy little town was splendid and Han, mine host, reopened his restaurant after the Swiss one closed so that a Scot, he and I could continue the debate. I have to concede that a town where a bar reopens at 2.30 a.m. just to please me – a passing tosser - has something going for it but even the Guinness tasted like the African version i.e. nothing like Guinness.
Johor Bharu was the destination for the following day because it is the gate to Singapore. 5 seconds at the bus station there was enough to persuade me to get on the bus for Singapore straight away.
Singapore is a smart modern city that achieved its spectacular growth 30 years ago so it looks like any other modern western city; the fact that it is almost on the equator is irrelevant. This means that it is expensive. I checked in at the second cheapest place in the city centre that The Rough Guide had to offer - $75 Singapore (40Euros) but with bath – but was too late and disorganised that night to do much. What a surprise!
The following day it was tour the old parts of the city and the cricket ground. This is OK but absolutely nothing of any real note. Raffles is a big disappointment – there are better hotels in Guangzhou. Because I was wearing shorts and sandals I was not allowed to penetrate more than a few steps into the rather non-descript (by the price standard) foyer – a rule that does not apply to residents. Difficult to get worked up about such prejudice when you know that you are there just to gawp and not spend money. A very rapid tour of the ridiculously overpriced shops and a drink in the Long Bar is obviously called for. This is, naturally, a Singapore Sling. Slightly irritating that they demand payment when the drink is brought but perfectly sensible when you have to pay $19 S (12 Euro) for a pretty tasteless drink that has no discernible trace of alcohol in it – only the extremely drunk or extremely rich would order another. Funnily enough I did not act like either at 2 in the afternoon.
Right, I have done my tourist bit, wallowed in the bath and consequently was more than happy to set out for a decent meal. I am sorry to have to report that Malaysia lives up, or down, to my impressions of the food in Trinidad, despite the strong Chinese influence; almost everything is western or rice and something of little taste or interest. I know that Guangzhou has the best food in the world so I have to make allowances, and I do, but the food in Malaysia is crap. You only have to visit some Malaysia’s poorer neighbours to eat much better. I wanted a decent meal. Full stop.
Well I got it. Down to Boat Quay, find a decent seafood restaurant with a big TV that the proprietors can easily be persuaded to change from Asian 9 Ball Pool to the Rugby 6 Nations Championship and I am set. Let me explain a little, I do not believe that TV should be in restaurants and pubs unless such establishments specifically cater for people who are specifically interested in the Tele. This regrettable practice is, however, universal in China and means end-to end football, only interrupted by the National Basketball Association games for Houston; who have a Chinese player. Most of you will know that I would rather be found with dirty underwear in an accident, photographs of George W Bush in my wallet or have an empty glass rather than watch these tedious displays of moronic meanderings but cricket or rugby – that is a different matter.
So now I am set with my lobster, white wine etc. and who cares how much it costs. I moved closer to the screen to eat my pud (or sweet to the upper middle class poncy types) and met Ollie & Melody. Fortunately they bought the next bottle of wine so my bill was only $160 (90Euro). Ollie, an Everton fan, wandered off to look for the game against Fulham – I couldn’t contain my excitement – and Melody was the happy to reassure me – between text messages to her ex-boyfriend in Spain- that she had won half an hour’s oral sex the night before because she was Welsh; the Welsh having been lucky enough to scrape a win against England. After checking Ollie watching the boring game we were off to The Irish pub for their game. Loads of yanks off the aircraft carrier on the way home from the Gulf via Tsunami land. I am trying to explain the rules of rugby whilst Melody is taking the piss out of them about the morality of invading Iraq. Fortunately they left, whether out of boredom from listening to me or being fed up with having the same old arguments shoved in their face, I neither knew nor cared, I was in one piece.
Ollie duly arrived and we were off to a club. He kept assuring us that he had to get up in the morning (it was Sunday night) and this was his last drink. About 3 it became true and he wandered off after saying I could kip at their place. For the next couple of hours Melody flirted with me and everybody else in the place – male or female. Yes, she is definitely bi-sexual Essex Welsh.
The next morning I woke after check-out time so I couldn’t flee the country before spending yet more money. I restrained myself and went for a walk down Orchard Road – Singapore’s most famous shopping street. I got a tap on the shoulder and it was the couple from Taman Negara and Tioman Island. We went to the nearest bar for a beer ($15 or 8 Euros a pint) in what turned out to be a Marriot Hotel whilst I tried to figure out why they were following me around. Were they spies? Did they think I was a spy? Was I so interesting that I had to be followed? I did not give anything away. Yes, in Singapore you can get through money at a burn rate that the dot.com companies would be proud of. (Why do we write dot.com – shouldn’t it be dotcom or .com?) The main compensation over Malaysia is that it has lots of good-looking Chinese women in short skirts.
Back to JB (Johor Bahru for those who have not been paying attention) for a night. This is not a very interesting town but it was New Year’s Eve. That is Chinese New Year, as most of you will call it, known as “Tet” in Vietnam (and some of you are old enough to remember the Tet Offensive that made us all realise that the Americans could lose the Vietnam War) but also called “Spring Festival” in China and, perhaps, most accurately, “Lunar New Year”. I was in China the previous year for this and it was good fun – mainly chucking lots and lots of very, very noisy fireworks around for hours, the sort of thing you never did as kids (well not much) – but this was much more restrained. I put it down to the lack of alcohol intake by the Muslims, but most Chinese are not real boozers either so it may just be my prejudices coming out.
Off to Sarawak in the morning. This is not part of peninsula Malaysia but part of Borneo. For the geographically challenged it is time to get the atlas out, because I am not going to tell you.
I flew to a town called Miri. This is because it is near Bruneii – to which I was heading in a few days. The guidebook describes Miri as lively. Not on New Year’s Day it is not, in fact it was closed. The next day was barely any better, nor the next day. I came to realise that the people of Malaysia take, so called, Chinese New Year a lot more seriously as a holiday than the Chinese do. For the Chinese it is really another retail opportunity to sell to all those people on holiday. What shops, restaurants and bars that were open in the town seemed to be largely Chinese run, even though the proportion of Chinese is lower in Sarawak than on the peninsula.
By the end of the second day my sole achievement was to establish myself as the regular opponent at Pool for Phillip, the owner of a local bar, so it was time for the Jungle again.
The highlight of this particular Park (Taman Negara Niah) is – caves! Yes, they did seem to figure prominently on this trip. I was doing an overnight stop so was in no hurry to get started as it was raining. The guidebook also recommends being at the caves at dusk when the bats go out and the swiftlets come in. These little swifts nest in the caves and it is their spit that gives bird’s nest soup its flavour. So I decided to check in before setting off.
The guidebook and the tourist office in Miri had both said I should book, so I had. There were separate registers for locals and foreigners. I was the first foreigner for 3 months. I was put in a chalet with four en-suite rooms, each with 4 beds. There was a large comfortable lounge area, fridge and cooking facilities. Not bad for 40 Ringgits (8 Euro). The receptionist insisted that I leave the key at reception every time I left, in case there was a sudden rush. There wasn’t, but I did have to share my living area with a cat who wandered in and out; naturally this set me wondering about the easy access for snakes. I kept the bedroom door firmly shut.
To get into the Park and start walking you have to get across a river that is about 10 metres wide. A simple rope bridge you would think. Oh no – a ferry, yes a ferry for 10 metres. Swimming was not a realistic option (and one that was reinforced when I saw another swimming snake later) so I had to be back by 7.30 to get the last ferry. My plans changed rapidly when I got on the plank walkway. This was well built and maintained, comfortably wide but goes up and down quite a bit and was slippery, very slippery. Ideas of blundering back in the dark by myself along that path were rapidly changed. It is a pleasant enough walk to three caves and I was in no hurry, unlike all the people rushing back who were doing this as a day trip.
The first cave is not much but for the second one you are warned that you will need a torch. I had a torch and there were plenty of people around so I declined the services of a guide (with huge torch) and in I went. It does get quite dark fairly quickly despite the cave having a huge mouth and the route being straight through. This is because you go down lots of steps. It is coming up the other side that I saw the men collecting swiftlet spit! They are at the top of very long poles – perhaps forty metres high, clambering around in the nests. When I say poles I mean there were two men, each up their own pole, one of whom one had got off his pole to clamber around in the cave roof. I imagine that they find it difficult to get life insurance. After that, you soon see the “exit” a hundred metres or so in front of you and you are thinking that was OK but nothing special when you notice that the path drops away to your right and there are people coming up out of the ground, so down you go. You are walking on bare rocks and wooden slats – sometimes raised, all damp of course from the dripping rocks and water walked from the rains with a thin layer of bat shit in places to add a little spice. It soon gets dark – very dark. Where have all the people gone? At one point I turned my torch off and yes, it was completely black. On with the torch and hurry on, I am only looking at the path and not at anything else – this is definitely not a place to be dropping your torch. For what seemed like about twenty minutes I hurried on completely on my own until light appeared and I was glad to get out. I am not really afraid of the dark but I am slightly claustrophobic and I was very relieved.
The last cave – only a few minutes walk further - is supposed to be the highlight because it has some very early cave paintings. Frankly these look like few grubby brown marks that you would notice if they were not fenced off!
There was another shower so I wasn’t hurrying. After half an hour, there was only me and a group that had already reached there when I arrived. I didn’t think there was another way back, apart from the one I had come. When this concept was confirmed by the group, I rapidly decided that I was not going back after them and set off! I timed the completely dark bit going back – 6 minutes - and I spent the whole time saying to myself “Don’t drop the torch. Don’t drop the torch” (I had already changed batteries in the third cave.) Again, I saw nobody else.
The food was very poor and no beer was to be had so what is one to do after dinner? On the wildlife front, Malaysia is famous for two things Orang Utans and fireflies. I had already decided that the Orangs could probably live without yet another tourist staring at them from 40 or 50 metres away so it had to be the fireflies. I have seen these in various parts of the world but never seen them in big numbers and on this trip I had seen just one. Wander away from Park HQ at night and it soon gets pretty dark. The first thing I see is glow-worms, quite a few, but then start seeing the odd firefly then more. I got up to about 20 in my field of vision (for those that don’t know about fireflies, you cannot be sure because they only light up intermittently). This is hardly enough to get Sir David and a film crew out but I was satisfied.
Some of the more interesting walks in the Park were closed so I was left with a walk to a “longhouse” village for the following morning. This, the longhouse, not the morning, is the traditional way of living in this area that has largely fallen into disuse. There was a junction in the path on the way and I chose left and quickly came to a filthy modern looking ugly village. So I turned round and headed up this “path” which was made up of a couple of longitudinal boards about two metres long attached right at the end to supports a metre or so off the ground. Naturally, the locals don’t weigh 85 kilos so bouncing along these slippery boards was quite interesting. After a kilometre I came to a better bath going left and right with some women selling beads, necklaces etc. After enquiring I realised that I was back on the path from yesterday talking to the women from whom I had bought a job lot of cheap presents for my female friends in China. About turn and back to the village – it really was poor, ugly and non-descript.
Another quiet night in Miri and I was off to Bruneii. How to get there? Taxi, naturally. Communal taxis run twice a day.
The reason for going to Bruneii (apart from country collecting - No. 49) is that I have some friends who live there. They have been there five years and I have been in China most of the last 3 ½ but we had failed to meet. Lou works as a teacher for Shell, which means that she gets a good expatriate house. Mike is an environmental trainer for a local company and they have a daughter, Lucy, who, though not yet 2 at the time, could converse with one very effectively. They also have a Philippino maid (who got my T-shirts far cleaner than I ever do) who is a grandmother and ten years younger than me!
Bruneii is stricter on alcohol than Malaysia – you cannot buy it. Lou can, however, buy wine and spirits through Shell and beer is brought over the border so I settled down to five days of swimming, swigging beer, and reading – just what I needed. It was weekdays and I went nowhere except to see Lou and Mike at work and a few restaurants – excellent. I was fed up with my rucksack and my own company and thoroughly glad to work on my back and my tan. They have a different lifestyle than I do. Their friends are mostly expatriates, mine are almost all Chinese. They work harder than I do and I congratulated them on getting a house with a pool. Wrong, Mike had put it in. They have only been there two years and I said that they were lucky to have come to a house with a nice garden. Wrong, Mike had done it. I knew better than to comment on the conversion of part of the carport to a bar, complete with dartboard and glitter ball. My only useful activity whilst I was there was to help Mike erect the pole-dancing pole. They have a very nice lifestyle.
That was it. When I got back to Guangzhou it was 9 degrees so the site of a sun-tanned gweilo walking down the street in shorts and flip-flops attracted quite a bit of attention.
Did I enjoy the trip? Not really. Better than sitting around at home, of course but there were few really good points – the jungle was the highlight, at least until I got to Bruneii. So what was wrong?
The food was poor. The towns and cities were largely of little interest. There is considerable racism. The Chinese dominate economically but the Malays politically and the government has been very active since the formation of Malaysia promoting Malay rights. (Singapore was kicked out soon after the formation of the country for the Chinese interfering in mainland politics.)
However I think that the real reason is that all three countries have a vaguely British feel about them. There are several possible reasons:
The prevalence of English. Everybody speaks some and it is the language of instruction at most higher levels of education and training. I am just not used to this any more.
Everybody drives on the correct side of the road. I am used to driving (or being driven) on the wrong side of the road. Of course those of you that have been to China or India know that traffic rules are subjects for entertainment rather than obedience so this caused another shock – the standard of driving is not bad at all.
The sheer number of tourists and white settlers. I walk the streets of Guangzhou at the weekend and expect to see nobody who is not Chinese. There are white faces everywhere in these countries; you are rarely out of site of white people for more than a few minutes. I know I was going to tourist spots but even Shanghai does not have this level of people of European origin.
Will I go back?
Singapore - No.
Malaysia – Only as part of a trip to Bruneii
Bruneii – Yes, with my dirtiest T-Shirts.
Destination – Malaysia. Malaysia and Trinidad were two countries that I always liked the sound of when I was young because of the ethnic, or is it racial, mix. Trinidad has West & East Indians plus a fair number of Chinese and Europeans, so at least the food should be good. Well I was there nearly 25 years ago and the food wasn’t good. Wimpys were the most noticeable ingredient. For those of you too young to remember this was a chain of British burger places (as opposed to the British building company of the same name) before McShit came to rule the world. I didn’t like Trinidad – expensive and rather characterless. I spent more time on the sister island of Tobago before moving on to Grenada, where I lived for a while.
So would Malaysia turn out the same way as Trinidad? Broadly speaking it is about 50% Malays, 25% Chinese, 10% each of Indians and the indigenous peoples (the Malays are not the original people) plus a few others.
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur - or KL as it is universally known – late at night. A funny trait this, they give cities two word names and then promptly abbreviate them – Johor Bahru is JB, Koata Kinabalu is KK etc. Mike had recommended a hotel but, naturally, I hadn’t booked, despite the hotel being on the internet. Naturally this fine establishment was closed when I got there but my taxi driver, fortunately, was quite persistent and someone eventually came to the door said they were full and recommended somewhere round the corner. Eventually I found the entrance and got a room. Enquiries about a reviving beer were not greeted with success – it was only 1.00 a.m. and this is a capital city – what is wrong with these people?
The first shock was the price of the room – 80 Ringgits – 15 euros. (I will quote all costs in the local currency and euros. If you think in sterling deduct a third from the euro figure; if you think in US Dollars, add a third to the euro figure; if you think in Canadian, Aussie or Kiwi Dollars – oh dear!) This was 40% of my theoretical daily budget, so a behavioural change was called for; I moved to somewhere the following day at half the price. In fact accommodation in Malaysia isn’t bad and you can generally find places to suit every budget from about 2 euros a night for a bed in a dormitory upwards. I am too old for that sort of stuff and most people don’t really appreciate you blundering around at whatever time you get in followed by a bout of snoring so I largely stuck to rooms for myself at this sort of price.
The second shock. A quick wander round a few markets on the second day obviously called for lunch and the first beer. A 640 ml bottle of Tiger beer was 15 RMs (3 euros). Those of you who appreciate my beer consumption will understand that this is a serious issue for a budget of 40 euros a day (it is about 1 euro in a bar or restaurant in China) and called for another behavioural modification – I would have to go the bank more often.
KL’s most famous building is the Petronas Towers but it also has the fourth largest TV tower in the world, Menara KL. This is on a hill in the middle of the city so in the late afternoon I headed for that. On the way I came across a sort of wildlife area which was free and you could get to the tower through it, but the gatekeeper was very keen that I understood that the park closed at 6.00 p.m. So in I went; it wasn’t that great but I was off the roads so I was fine. Up the tower and you do have great views of the city. KL is a pretty modern city, most buildings are less than 20 years old and many of 40 floors or more while many of the old British colonial buildings are now used as museums or government buildings; although the Selangor Club is still a going concern in the middle of the city with a somewhat different clientele than 50 years ago. The viewing platform is not at the top of the tower but the hill is 90 metres higher than the Petronas Towers, which is a kilometre or so away, so consequently we were level with the very top of the Towers
I left the TV tower at 5.20 or so and continued heading North through the Park. I got to the North Gate at 5.50 – locked and no sign of anybody. It was (and probably still is) two metres high with barbed wire at the top so I didn’t really fancy climbing over it. Shit, this is my first day and I am going to get locked in a bloody park!
I thought “I know that the TV Tower is open until 10 so there has to be some way out from there” so a quick about turn and the direct route back got me there for 6.10 to a very welcome pair of open gates. (Can a pair of gates carry an adjective “welcome”, aren’t they inanimate? Spot my English mistake in that?) Once I was safely through them I was distinctly relieved and had a better look at how I would have escaped had they been closed. With extreme difficulty is the correct answer. The gates were also 2 metres high, nobody older than 2 could have got under them and the barbed wire at the top was, of course, angled outwards. The adjoining walls were about 1½ metres high with metre high fences topped by more outward facing barbed stuff. I was very glad not to be wandering around in the undergrowth in sandals, amidst the scorpions and snakes, as it got dark, looking for a potential escape route.
Malaysia is a Muslim country but, fortunately, they don’t take it too seriously and I was staying in a place that had the attraction of a rooftop bar (complete with visiting snake on my first night). This is OK except all the customers are backpackers. That is they are either 18 or 22 and on their way to or from Australia. All they talk about is where they have just been or where they are going next with lots of enthusiasm and plenty of “like”s, as in “Sydney was like great fun”. Fair enough but not exactly my stage in life and I didn’t really have much common ground with people at that stage in their travelling career (with the odd, very honourable, exception of course) and I don’t travel to meet lots of Brits (and the majority, or close to it, are, the rest being almost entirely European) so this was not a great success. The Muslim bit was quite interesting – I only saw one burka on the whole trip and only about ten veils. However, the modesty thing is important so all the Moslem women wear the headscarves but nobody seems to see the incongruity between wearing a headscarf and tight jeans. I didn’t complain.
KL has plenty of shops, but of course nothing in comparison to Guangzhou – shopping is not just a pastime or hobby in China, it is a way of life. KL also apparently has plenty of nightlife but I didn’t really go looking for it and a couple of days looking round the city was enough for me. One place that you might not immediately pick out from a guidebook as worth a visit but which I thoroughly enjoyed, is the butterfly house in the park. I have read nothing to indicate that Malaysia is famous for butterflies – it should be, I saw many different species during my trip with lots of variety in shape and size as well as colours and colour combinations.
I did stay one more day for a Hindu festival called Thaipusam that takes place on the outskirts of the city at Batu Caves and happened to be on at the time. This attracts hundreds of thousands of people over the three days it is on. The interesting bit is the body piercing by the devotees. Priests stick various needles through various parts of the bodies of the entranced believers without drawing blood or any apparent pain. Places pierced include cheeks, tongues and varying parts of the torso. Sometimes these needles are attached to things to be carried or dragged to the main cave (and some of the things to be dragged weighed tens of kilos) which is a kilometre or so away and up 272 steep steps.
Varifocals (and bi-focals come to that) make walking down steps a bit difficult because you have to look straight down to get the “distance’ vision part of the lens looking at the step you are about to tread on and I can assure that you looked because the riser was as big as the tread but each step was less than a foot length – OK going up, but a bit trickier coming down in a crowd. On the way up I had wondered why there were a lot of abandoned sandals near the bottom; it was a lot easier in bare feet. Now anybody left paying attention will be wondering how the devotees dragged the stuff up the steps. The answer is that they didn’t, each devotee had loads of family and friends who actually carry the thing when he moves. The whole piercing thing has been banned in India (I am not surprised) so there are not many places that you can now see it or join in fully – hence the numbers. At the big cave at the top (which smells of a mixture of flowers and rotting fruit and has been thoughtfully whitewashed up to a height of three metres to allow graffiti artists to show their talents – or lack of them) the worthies get de-needled and then spend a while blessing all and sundry. There was rubbish everywhere – in China there would have been an army of cleaners on constant duty – 90% women, naturally
Next, the Jungle. This is not far from KL but takes a 3-hour bus journey, a two-hour wait, a half hour bus trip and a three-hour boat journey. This seems to typify Malaysia; it is not a very big country and journeys are normally only three or four hours, you just seem to have to do two, three or even four to get anywhere.
King George V National Park was created in 1938. At Independence this was renamed Taman Negara (literally “The National Park”) because there was only one in Malaya (as it then was). This must have looked a bit short-sighted even then you would think i.e. what happens when you create a new one, is that “The Other National Park”? It doesn’t worry the Malaysians, other parks a re called “Taman Negara Niah” etc. but there is still the original Taman Negara with its name unchanged since 1957.
On the way up the river I met a Vietnamese-American called Twee. Her family name is Le and, typically of the Far East, the family name comes first. Now even with my appalling French the possibility for bad puns is legion but I could not think of anything that she wouldn’t have heard before and, amazingly, restrained, myself. Speaking of names, some of you will not know the names that many of my students give themselves. Their Chinese names are normally pretty close to unpronounceable for me and I spend so much time trying not to sound like a complete plonker reading out their names (which I then instantly forget) that I am too busy in this task to actually look at them. This means that name-face recognition is minimal. The students get over this problem by giving themselves English names. These can be Sue or Jack but there is lots of imagination – Purple, Fairy, Wonderful (male) Darkhorse, Simple, Happy & Crystal were all in one class last term and that is not untypical. However, most people’s favourites are Volcano and Triangel – no, I have not misspelt the word and yes, she is pretty good looking.
For my loyal reader I will return to the story. 4 of us, plus a guide, were to do a 2-day jungle walk. My travelling companions were a good lot; although I was, of course, by far the oldest. The youngest was 29, nobody was garrulous and nobody happy-snappy so we weren’t stopping every 5 minutes. As you enter the park proper, they inventory things like plastic bottles, batteries, clothes etc. – an excellent idea to my mind. The problem was that I went in with two less batteries and one more plastic bottle than I came out with! We then had a short ride to a canopy catwalk. This has a standard rope bridge technique with two long ropes between trees, ropes hanging down from the main ropes with ladders at the bottom covered in boards. I have been on much ropier (sorry) constructions in the Himalayas but not 45 metres in the air. I did not do much looking except at the tree platforms and never down – I don’t think that Harrison Ford’s age is going to result in my getting a call for the next Indiana Jones film. We were expecting a quick out and back route but in fact there was almost a complete circle with a circumference of several hundred metres and a height gain of 40 or 50 metres – I was very pleased it was an uphill walk. We were getting near the end and I had just commenced one section when it started swinging quite a lot and I thought that Mark, who is Irish and half way across the section at the time, had decided to put the wind up some British bastard. I beat a hasty retreat but I had misjudged him, it swayed aplenty when I got to the middle on my own. Good fun.
Two hours up the river and a lunch stop was interrupted to cross the river to get away from a King Cobra in the water. We were told that it is the most venomous snake in the world; it isn’t but I wasn’t keen on contesting the theory. After lunch, we crossed back to cobra side to get out of the boat and start the walk! Jungle walks are good for trees, fungi and sounds; you see very little in the way of wildlife. This is because it, the wildlife, is mostly up in the canopy, the vegetation is very thick, everything sees you before you see it and animals are most active early in the morning and round unset – those are my excuses anyway. We did see lots of interesting fungi, some interesting ladybirds, heard reverberating trees and glimpsed some rhinoceros hornbills above the canopy. The guide also showed us the mounds that some crickets build – 6 or 7 centimetres high; I had never seen them before. Highlight of the day was a bat cave. No Michael Keaton or Val Kilmer in their but lots of bats. Access was quite interesting, up a slippery rock-face for about ten metres with a rope for your hands. Up is easy enough but coming down? Actually it was OK. Inside was great, a floor covered in bat shit with insect life crawling all over it, lots of bats and a couple of snakes up in the rocks where they were resting after a good lunch. If I can’t be Indiana Jones, perhaps David Attenborough is more like it “Here in the heart of 130 million year old jungle, I am standing on a metres deep pile of guano with literally ten’s of thousands [Duck for effect as bat flies 2 metres over head] of bats creating a whole ecosystem in this one cave.”
This is real jungle and Katie took on the job of leech magnet, which meant that I did not get sliced once even though I was not good at balancing on the pieces of wood crossing the streams. The night was spent in a cave. It was Twee’s first night camping - ever. Quite brave really - camping in a cave in the middle of a jungle with 4 complete strangers contemplating whether to go back to being a New York architect or give it all up to try and hang on to her marriage. Fortunately, we did not see any snakes in that cave. There were a couple of Mynah birds roosting and a single firefly came walsing through about 2 a.m. The rats licking out the tins caused a bit of consternation but otherwise it was fine. No beer, of course, but I had had the good sense to take my minidisk player. Just as it started getting light I saw lots of eyes looking down at me and though “I don’t remember that many bats in here”. Inspection a little later revealed no bats. What could it have been – gloworms? In a cave? Algae? Ghosts? Matt, the guide, didn’t know. I really could not work it out but it was not my imagination, as I noted there had been no beer and they faded quite quickly as it got light. Perhaps it was the absence of beer.
A good walk out the following day, of which the highlight was either a 20 metre long tree-trunk acting as the bridge across a tiny stream or a brilliant red dragonfly, and check out of the park. We all went off in different directions. I was heading south-east to an island. It took 3 days. A boat ride and two buses brought me to Kuantan with the Rough Guide is quite rude about but I got a decent hotel with a BATH (I only have a shower at home in Guangzhou), to get cleaned up after the jungle, followed by a decent meal. The hotel had sachets of Sunsilk shampoo –does it still exist? (“I love the taste of sunsilk in the evening.” – Apologies to Colonel Killgore) The Rough Guide is good, up-to-date, well written and unpretentious. More to the point it is not Lonely Planet so you can escape other travellers. However, it is not too hot on maps and this can be very important after a few days in the Jungle when you have had an excellent meal for 30 Ringgits (6 Euros) and are anxiously looking for the Boom Boom Bar & Bistro because it is one of the few places in town that sells beer. The failings of the map were, of course, no stopper to an intrepid traveller.
Up with the lark for the morning buses – both full, so I was condemned to a day in this town. I filled part of it with a boat ride on the river for which I was the only customer. This was tedious and a waste of my very valuable time until we got off for a jungle walk. Fortunately, one of the crew (there were two) came with me as a guide and was good at spotting and pointing out things, which included kingfishers, hornbills, sea eagles plus a monitor lizard and a crocodile next to each other. I learnt, perhaps a little late in life, that eating live mud-skippers is the way to a successful sex life.
I reached Mersing that evening. There is nothing of interest in Mersing and I was glad that I had been delayed in Kuantan, although the restaurant that evening had easily available, cheaper beer and a cheerful owner. However, I was glad to get the ferry in the morning to Tioman Island because nobody should have to spend 2 nights in Mersing.
Tioman Island is pure tourism. Some fairly successful film was made there in the 1950s and it became one of the most famous islands in the world but who has heard of it now? There are a series of small villages up the side of the island but it is distinctly mountainous so all movement is by boat, except for the very rich and ostentatious, of course who use helicopters. I chose one particular village based upon the fact that The Rough Guide said it had the best nightlife. Well I don’t know about the other villages but one bar opened for the year on the day I arrived – phew! The beer was surprisingly cheap considering I was on a tourist island and the tourists were mainly foreigners with a few Singaporeans and a negligible number of Malaysians.
I had come to the island to relax. I had a back problem for which the doctor had diagnosed swimming. When I had tried swimming before leaving on my holiday I found it distinctly painful but seemed to do some good so I was here to swim 3 times a day and other than that do nothing – apart from a few beers of course. I found a comfortable air-conditioned hut at a reasonable price and settled in. I proved to be the only guest in a place with 22 huts and it stayed like that for the next 4 days. I was next to a large pond that ran into the sea 50 metres away; a happy coincidence because the pond was full of life – birds, butterflies, interesting plants etc. but the stars were the monitor lizards. For those of you not familiar with these creatures, they walk above the ground, not on it, and can grow to a metre long in the body with a tail rather longer. Add to this a forked tongue that flicks out a further 15 or 20 centimetres and you have quite a substantial animal weighing up to 30 kilograms or so. The tails make them good swimmers and they also climb trees as well so this is a versatile animal that is also omnivorous and a real scavenger. There were plenty of the lizards in the pond and one afternoon whilst I was sat reading on my balcony I saw 4 of them on the land within 5 metres of me – they seemed to like the shrubs nearby. They would walk past on the grass a metre or so from me, notice me, stop for a glance for a few seconds and disdainfully plod on happily ignoring me. Splendid things.
Oddly, or not so oddly, I met the couple who had been my next door neighbours in Taman Negara. This is not really that surprising when you are travelling – people tend to go to the same places so it is not so much a coincidence as predictable that you will meet people that you met a week before.
4 days of swimming, sitting around getting suntanned and evenings drinking was enough for me so it was the ferry back to Mersing. Unfortunately, it was scheduled for 3 p.m. but was 2 ½ hours late. Of course, after another 2 ½ hours on the boat I was too late for the last bus and was condemned to a second night in Mersing!
My esteemed restaurateur actually closed early whilst I was still drinking to take me and a Canadian (who had been visiting Mersing for nearly 20 years) off to another restaurant where a Swiss couple, who were long-term residents of this not very fair town and friends of mine host, were having the opening night of their restaurant. This evening proved entertaining mainly for the swearing ability of the Chinese, one in particular - it reminded me of working on the shop floor of a factory when I was 18. Everybody was, for reasons which continued to elude me, trying to persuade that this dozy little town was splendid and Han, mine host, reopened his restaurant after the Swiss one closed so that a Scot, he and I could continue the debate. I have to concede that a town where a bar reopens at 2.30 a.m. just to please me – a passing tosser - has something going for it but even the Guinness tasted like the African version i.e. nothing like Guinness.
Johor Bharu was the destination for the following day because it is the gate to Singapore. 5 seconds at the bus station there was enough to persuade me to get on the bus for Singapore straight away.
Singapore is a smart modern city that achieved its spectacular growth 30 years ago so it looks like any other modern western city; the fact that it is almost on the equator is irrelevant. This means that it is expensive. I checked in at the second cheapest place in the city centre that The Rough Guide had to offer - $75 Singapore (40Euros) but with bath – but was too late and disorganised that night to do much. What a surprise!
The following day it was tour the old parts of the city and the cricket ground. This is OK but absolutely nothing of any real note. Raffles is a big disappointment – there are better hotels in Guangzhou. Because I was wearing shorts and sandals I was not allowed to penetrate more than a few steps into the rather non-descript (by the price standard) foyer – a rule that does not apply to residents. Difficult to get worked up about such prejudice when you know that you are there just to gawp and not spend money. A very rapid tour of the ridiculously overpriced shops and a drink in the Long Bar is obviously called for. This is, naturally, a Singapore Sling. Slightly irritating that they demand payment when the drink is brought but perfectly sensible when you have to pay $19 S (12 Euro) for a pretty tasteless drink that has no discernible trace of alcohol in it – only the extremely drunk or extremely rich would order another. Funnily enough I did not act like either at 2 in the afternoon.
Right, I have done my tourist bit, wallowed in the bath and consequently was more than happy to set out for a decent meal. I am sorry to have to report that Malaysia lives up, or down, to my impressions of the food in Trinidad, despite the strong Chinese influence; almost everything is western or rice and something of little taste or interest. I know that Guangzhou has the best food in the world so I have to make allowances, and I do, but the food in Malaysia is crap. You only have to visit some Malaysia’s poorer neighbours to eat much better. I wanted a decent meal. Full stop.
Well I got it. Down to Boat Quay, find a decent seafood restaurant with a big TV that the proprietors can easily be persuaded to change from Asian 9 Ball Pool to the Rugby 6 Nations Championship and I am set. Let me explain a little, I do not believe that TV should be in restaurants and pubs unless such establishments specifically cater for people who are specifically interested in the Tele. This regrettable practice is, however, universal in China and means end-to end football, only interrupted by the National Basketball Association games for Houston; who have a Chinese player. Most of you will know that I would rather be found with dirty underwear in an accident, photographs of George W Bush in my wallet or have an empty glass rather than watch these tedious displays of moronic meanderings but cricket or rugby – that is a different matter.
So now I am set with my lobster, white wine etc. and who cares how much it costs. I moved closer to the screen to eat my pud (or sweet to the upper middle class poncy types) and met Ollie & Melody. Fortunately they bought the next bottle of wine so my bill was only $160 (90Euro). Ollie, an Everton fan, wandered off to look for the game against Fulham – I couldn’t contain my excitement – and Melody was the happy to reassure me – between text messages to her ex-boyfriend in Spain- that she had won half an hour’s oral sex the night before because she was Welsh; the Welsh having been lucky enough to scrape a win against England. After checking Ollie watching the boring game we were off to The Irish pub for their game. Loads of yanks off the aircraft carrier on the way home from the Gulf via Tsunami land. I am trying to explain the rules of rugby whilst Melody is taking the piss out of them about the morality of invading Iraq. Fortunately they left, whether out of boredom from listening to me or being fed up with having the same old arguments shoved in their face, I neither knew nor cared, I was in one piece.
Ollie duly arrived and we were off to a club. He kept assuring us that he had to get up in the morning (it was Sunday night) and this was his last drink. About 3 it became true and he wandered off after saying I could kip at their place. For the next couple of hours Melody flirted with me and everybody else in the place – male or female. Yes, she is definitely bi-sexual Essex Welsh.
The next morning I woke after check-out time so I couldn’t flee the country before spending yet more money. I restrained myself and went for a walk down Orchard Road – Singapore’s most famous shopping street. I got a tap on the shoulder and it was the couple from Taman Negara and Tioman Island. We went to the nearest bar for a beer ($15 or 8 Euros a pint) in what turned out to be a Marriot Hotel whilst I tried to figure out why they were following me around. Were they spies? Did they think I was a spy? Was I so interesting that I had to be followed? I did not give anything away. Yes, in Singapore you can get through money at a burn rate that the dot.com companies would be proud of. (Why do we write dot.com – shouldn’t it be dotcom or .com?) The main compensation over Malaysia is that it has lots of good-looking Chinese women in short skirts.
Back to JB (Johor Bahru for those who have not been paying attention) for a night. This is not a very interesting town but it was New Year’s Eve. That is Chinese New Year, as most of you will call it, known as “Tet” in Vietnam (and some of you are old enough to remember the Tet Offensive that made us all realise that the Americans could lose the Vietnam War) but also called “Spring Festival” in China and, perhaps, most accurately, “Lunar New Year”. I was in China the previous year for this and it was good fun – mainly chucking lots and lots of very, very noisy fireworks around for hours, the sort of thing you never did as kids (well not much) – but this was much more restrained. I put it down to the lack of alcohol intake by the Muslims, but most Chinese are not real boozers either so it may just be my prejudices coming out.
Off to Sarawak in the morning. This is not part of peninsula Malaysia but part of Borneo. For the geographically challenged it is time to get the atlas out, because I am not going to tell you.
I flew to a town called Miri. This is because it is near Bruneii – to which I was heading in a few days. The guidebook describes Miri as lively. Not on New Year’s Day it is not, in fact it was closed. The next day was barely any better, nor the next day. I came to realise that the people of Malaysia take, so called, Chinese New Year a lot more seriously as a holiday than the Chinese do. For the Chinese it is really another retail opportunity to sell to all those people on holiday. What shops, restaurants and bars that were open in the town seemed to be largely Chinese run, even though the proportion of Chinese is lower in Sarawak than on the peninsula.
By the end of the second day my sole achievement was to establish myself as the regular opponent at Pool for Phillip, the owner of a local bar, so it was time for the Jungle again.
The highlight of this particular Park (Taman Negara Niah) is – caves! Yes, they did seem to figure prominently on this trip. I was doing an overnight stop so was in no hurry to get started as it was raining. The guidebook also recommends being at the caves at dusk when the bats go out and the swiftlets come in. These little swifts nest in the caves and it is their spit that gives bird’s nest soup its flavour. So I decided to check in before setting off.
The guidebook and the tourist office in Miri had both said I should book, so I had. There were separate registers for locals and foreigners. I was the first foreigner for 3 months. I was put in a chalet with four en-suite rooms, each with 4 beds. There was a large comfortable lounge area, fridge and cooking facilities. Not bad for 40 Ringgits (8 Euro). The receptionist insisted that I leave the key at reception every time I left, in case there was a sudden rush. There wasn’t, but I did have to share my living area with a cat who wandered in and out; naturally this set me wondering about the easy access for snakes. I kept the bedroom door firmly shut.
To get into the Park and start walking you have to get across a river that is about 10 metres wide. A simple rope bridge you would think. Oh no – a ferry, yes a ferry for 10 metres. Swimming was not a realistic option (and one that was reinforced when I saw another swimming snake later) so I had to be back by 7.30 to get the last ferry. My plans changed rapidly when I got on the plank walkway. This was well built and maintained, comfortably wide but goes up and down quite a bit and was slippery, very slippery. Ideas of blundering back in the dark by myself along that path were rapidly changed. It is a pleasant enough walk to three caves and I was in no hurry, unlike all the people rushing back who were doing this as a day trip.
The first cave is not much but for the second one you are warned that you will need a torch. I had a torch and there were plenty of people around so I declined the services of a guide (with huge torch) and in I went. It does get quite dark fairly quickly despite the cave having a huge mouth and the route being straight through. This is because you go down lots of steps. It is coming up the other side that I saw the men collecting swiftlet spit! They are at the top of very long poles – perhaps forty metres high, clambering around in the nests. When I say poles I mean there were two men, each up their own pole, one of whom one had got off his pole to clamber around in the cave roof. I imagine that they find it difficult to get life insurance. After that, you soon see the “exit” a hundred metres or so in front of you and you are thinking that was OK but nothing special when you notice that the path drops away to your right and there are people coming up out of the ground, so down you go. You are walking on bare rocks and wooden slats – sometimes raised, all damp of course from the dripping rocks and water walked from the rains with a thin layer of bat shit in places to add a little spice. It soon gets dark – very dark. Where have all the people gone? At one point I turned my torch off and yes, it was completely black. On with the torch and hurry on, I am only looking at the path and not at anything else – this is definitely not a place to be dropping your torch. For what seemed like about twenty minutes I hurried on completely on my own until light appeared and I was glad to get out. I am not really afraid of the dark but I am slightly claustrophobic and I was very relieved.
The last cave – only a few minutes walk further - is supposed to be the highlight because it has some very early cave paintings. Frankly these look like few grubby brown marks that you would notice if they were not fenced off!
There was another shower so I wasn’t hurrying. After half an hour, there was only me and a group that had already reached there when I arrived. I didn’t think there was another way back, apart from the one I had come. When this concept was confirmed by the group, I rapidly decided that I was not going back after them and set off! I timed the completely dark bit going back – 6 minutes - and I spent the whole time saying to myself “Don’t drop the torch. Don’t drop the torch” (I had already changed batteries in the third cave.) Again, I saw nobody else.
The food was very poor and no beer was to be had so what is one to do after dinner? On the wildlife front, Malaysia is famous for two things Orang Utans and fireflies. I had already decided that the Orangs could probably live without yet another tourist staring at them from 40 or 50 metres away so it had to be the fireflies. I have seen these in various parts of the world but never seen them in big numbers and on this trip I had seen just one. Wander away from Park HQ at night and it soon gets pretty dark. The first thing I see is glow-worms, quite a few, but then start seeing the odd firefly then more. I got up to about 20 in my field of vision (for those that don’t know about fireflies, you cannot be sure because they only light up intermittently). This is hardly enough to get Sir David and a film crew out but I was satisfied.
Some of the more interesting walks in the Park were closed so I was left with a walk to a “longhouse” village for the following morning. This, the longhouse, not the morning, is the traditional way of living in this area that has largely fallen into disuse. There was a junction in the path on the way and I chose left and quickly came to a filthy modern looking ugly village. So I turned round and headed up this “path” which was made up of a couple of longitudinal boards about two metres long attached right at the end to supports a metre or so off the ground. Naturally, the locals don’t weigh 85 kilos so bouncing along these slippery boards was quite interesting. After a kilometre I came to a better bath going left and right with some women selling beads, necklaces etc. After enquiring I realised that I was back on the path from yesterday talking to the women from whom I had bought a job lot of cheap presents for my female friends in China. About turn and back to the village – it really was poor, ugly and non-descript.
Another quiet night in Miri and I was off to Bruneii. How to get there? Taxi, naturally. Communal taxis run twice a day.
The reason for going to Bruneii (apart from country collecting - No. 49) is that I have some friends who live there. They have been there five years and I have been in China most of the last 3 ½ but we had failed to meet. Lou works as a teacher for Shell, which means that she gets a good expatriate house. Mike is an environmental trainer for a local company and they have a daughter, Lucy, who, though not yet 2 at the time, could converse with one very effectively. They also have a Philippino maid (who got my T-shirts far cleaner than I ever do) who is a grandmother and ten years younger than me!
Bruneii is stricter on alcohol than Malaysia – you cannot buy it. Lou can, however, buy wine and spirits through Shell and beer is brought over the border so I settled down to five days of swimming, swigging beer, and reading – just what I needed. It was weekdays and I went nowhere except to see Lou and Mike at work and a few restaurants – excellent. I was fed up with my rucksack and my own company and thoroughly glad to work on my back and my tan. They have a different lifestyle than I do. Their friends are mostly expatriates, mine are almost all Chinese. They work harder than I do and I congratulated them on getting a house with a pool. Wrong, Mike had put it in. They have only been there two years and I said that they were lucky to have come to a house with a nice garden. Wrong, Mike had done it. I knew better than to comment on the conversion of part of the carport to a bar, complete with dartboard and glitter ball. My only useful activity whilst I was there was to help Mike erect the pole-dancing pole. They have a very nice lifestyle.
That was it. When I got back to Guangzhou it was 9 degrees so the site of a sun-tanned gweilo walking down the street in shorts and flip-flops attracted quite a bit of attention.
Did I enjoy the trip? Not really. Better than sitting around at home, of course but there were few really good points – the jungle was the highlight, at least until I got to Bruneii. So what was wrong?
The food was poor. The towns and cities were largely of little interest. There is considerable racism. The Chinese dominate economically but the Malays politically and the government has been very active since the formation of Malaysia promoting Malay rights. (Singapore was kicked out soon after the formation of the country for the Chinese interfering in mainland politics.)
However I think that the real reason is that all three countries have a vaguely British feel about them. There are several possible reasons:
The prevalence of English. Everybody speaks some and it is the language of instruction at most higher levels of education and training. I am just not used to this any more.
Everybody drives on the correct side of the road. I am used to driving (or being driven) on the wrong side of the road. Of course those of you that have been to China or India know that traffic rules are subjects for entertainment rather than obedience so this caused another shock – the standard of driving is not bad at all.
The sheer number of tourists and white settlers. I walk the streets of Guangzhou at the weekend and expect to see nobody who is not Chinese. There are white faces everywhere in these countries; you are rarely out of site of white people for more than a few minutes. I know I was going to tourist spots but even Shanghai does not have this level of people of European origin.
Will I go back?
Singapore - No.
Malaysia – Only as part of a trip to Bruneii
Bruneii – Yes, with my dirtiest T-Shirts.
The Silk Road
Ah the Silk Road Samarkand, Tashkent, Bokhara – what places could be more evocative of the orient?
Well I didn’t go to any of those. I went to Kashgar. The Silk Road runs from modern Xian in what is regarded as the North-West of China. China has had many capital cities but Changan (as it used to be called) was the capital most of the time from pre-Christ until after 1,000 A.D. The Silk Road is more a concept than a road but is being pushed in modern times as a tourist concept. China has effectively waxed and waned in size for a long time but what is modern Xinjiang Province (or more accurately Autonomous Region) has often been under very tenuous control from the centre and there have been troubles there in relative recent times (the 1990s) although the situation is pretty calm these days.
Let us start with size. Xinjiang is big. It is a bit further from East to West than North to South. From Guangzhou you fly for 5 hours to get to Urumqi, which is about a third of the way across the place. You then fly for another 1½ hours to Kashgar and you are getting towards the western edge. Add Germany, France & Spain together and you are getting on for half way there. I am, of course, too lazy to do the numbers properly, that will have to wait for the book.
Anyway I arrive in Kashgar and what do I find – Muslims. Now before you start thinking that I am a racist let me explain. China is a non-religious country. It is not that they are anti-religion, it is just that they are not much interested. It is one of the things I like about the place. I find very little attractive about religion, unless you class paganism as a religion – particularly the middle-eastern religions. Don’t misunderstand the situation, the government spends quite a lot of money rebuilding Buddhist and Taoist temples and many people go to them and bow, light candles etc. but they are a small proportion of the population. They would probably spend a few bob on Christian Churches if there were any interest. The cynics amongst you will no doubt say or think something about bread and circuses. Anyway the fact that this is a Muslim city makes it interesting. The people are over 90% Uighur (pronounced Wuger) and are Turkic. Their language could probably be half understood by Turkish people. Now is this odd or what. I am several thousand kilometres from Turkey and there are no Turkic peoples between. This is not as odd as it may seem. Those of you who know your history will know that the Turks came from “The East” – as did the Germans, Franks etc. It is just that the Turkish movement was only a few hundred years ago, not 1600 or 1700 years ago.
What is the city like? Not Chinese. The centre of the city is the mosque. However, that is not what the city is really about. It is what it has always been, a trading place. There are lots of markets for various things. The touristy stuff like knives and carpets is Ok (although it is a little disconcerting when you find a “Made in Belgium “ label) but the local stuff is much more interesting.
Ever bought bread that lasts for weeks? Join the club. These are big spirals – a bit like pizza bread but actually they taste OK. You see them being laid out in large numbers in the shops and obviously they are not freshly baked but who cares, they are nutritious and not crawling with weevils. I didn’t eat many but that is because I like food to taste nice – not just of pizza base.
Rusting steel drums on roofs. (“Word” rejected “rooves” and Collins 21st Century dictionary doesn’t mention it but I could have sworn that is what we used to say when I was a kid.) Be honest, this is a subject that you have often dwelt upon.
There are quite a few of these things. You walk down a back street and there they are – lots of them sitting on somebody’s roof. Nearby you are likely to see lots of galvanized buckets and similar. There must be a connection but I am too stupid to understand the process.
As you know, I have a penchant for beer. Although this is a Muslim city it is not too Muslim. There is a delightful area, near the city centre that is a distinctly relaxed area where you can sit around and buy food as you need it from the local street vendors who also sell BEER.
I was travelling with Chinese friends and, bless them they were only trying to help, they were warning me – a vastly more experienced traveller than any of them – that I should be careful, these people were not Chinese and I should be careful. China is quite a racist country. Of course, we did not eat Xinjiang food, we had to go to indifferent Chinese restaurants in stead.
There is a mausoleum on the edge of the city. There is a dodgy story about a concubine associated with the place. She was captured by the Imperial Army, grew to be the emperors favourite and was ordered to commit suicide by the Emperor’s mother. This may well be true but for you and I the interesting things are the building itself and the sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) inside. The building is covered in a sort of mosaic; this is the bit that I found interesting – the patterns themselves were nothing special but the concept …
I lied about the sarcophaguses – they are no such thing. They are representations of coffins – the bodies are buried below – but they are in appropriate sizes and kept decorated with simple ribbons and swaddling. Interesting.
Off up the Karakoram Highway. I don’t know about you, but there are not many roads that I can name (and I don’t mean Oxford Street or Broadway I mean real roads) but after the late lamented Route 66, The Khyber Pass, The Pan-American Highway and one or two others what is left?
The Karakoram Highway is, therefore, irresistible. It was only built in 1982 and opened to the public in 1986 but I regard it as one of the great roads of the world. What a chance.
I was travelling with 5 other people. A couple are my friends and they have a son. They brought along another very nice couple so when the journeys split to two cars I travelled with the other two, which was fine.
The Highway is a trading road between China and Pakistan and follows the old reading route. I do not hold a Pakistan visa, and neither do my friends, so getting to the border is the limit of our ambitions. However, this is a few hundred kilometres away so it was a reasonable trip. So how do you travel? Obvious isn’t it – you get a taxi. My friends had been off to investigate and got a deal that would take us most of the way to the border in the afternoon, go to the top in the morning and back to Kashgar the following evening. This was for the princely sum of 1,100 RMB (110 Euros) per taxi – we did need two. As you know my middle name is caution and I wasn’t keen on the driver doing all that distance the following day and ending up coming down some winding pass with a knackered driver at high speed in the dark so I suggested taking an extra day. How much? Another 100 RMB! So that was agreed by everybody.
Off we go. The first hour is flat across the Taklamanakan Desert. This is the real deal, dry dusty and almost no sign of life higher than a few centimetres except the odd oasis of a village occasionally. We are accompanied by three sets of poles with associated wires. Three! Now one could possibly be for telephones, although I doubt it, so why three? My conclusion was that there were three different sets of power lines. China isn’t big on repairs. If something breaks you don’t repair it, you get another one and that is what I think had happened here.
I took lots of photos of graveyards! In a country as big and varied as China these vary a lot. The particular type here was a clay structure a metre or so high with a dome shape. I assumed the body was underneath because these things do get slowly eroded and I never spotted any skeletons inside.
We joined a river and started to climb – slowly. The first thing of note that happens is that the road is blocked by a landslip. Not an auspicious start. I was left wondering what lay ahead but it was easy enough to get round – just drive off the road. This is a good quality road, only two lanes but well tarmaced most of the way. There was the odd stretch of road that hadn’t been recently repaired and, sometimes, tributary streams had covered the road with rocks – these bits had to be taken slowly. I was left wondering why a JCB or similar wasn’t located in the area to clear the rocks once a week or something like that but who am I to teach the Chinese about road maintenance.
Up we climbed but the basic scenery did not change. This was still desert, it just happened to have a river running through it. Even right next to the river there were barely any signs of greenery. The geology is interesting. The Indian tectonic plate is still pushing the Himalayas and behind them Xinjiang. This is very new land, constantly changing and constantly eroded so this riverbed was full of rocks and the “rocks” around were conglomerates of the rocks and mud brought down by the river and now being eroded again. There is no strata to the rocks at all; they are so new that there has never been any significant pressure to create the strata, and then the rocks are immediately pushed up by the force coming from the south and eroded again.
The road twisted and turned quite a lot but there was only one pair of hairpin bends between the start at 1100 metres above sea level and a lake where we stopped at 3,600 metres. We had stopped at a hamlet of sorts to see how poorly the people lived (and, of course, have the opportunity the buy some crap or other). There the houses were stone but by the Lake they had turned into Yurts. These are round tents – normally about 3 metres across – normally associated with Mongols but also used by Kyrgyzics – the local people at this point. It was a great place to watch local women still weaving by hand.
I have missed one item of considerable interest to me. At about three thousand metres we had passed a small lake. Wow, you say, how interesting. However on the far side of the lake there were some hills rising a few hundred metres higher. OK, nothing interesting or unusual so far but the sides of the hills were covered in very large sand dunes. I have never seen anything like it. I have no idea how they form or what keeps them there but they were (and probably still are) spectacular and very odd.
Off again over a pass at 4,200 metres (with just one more pair of hairpins) and down into a basin with a little bit, but not much more, vegetation. We arrived in Tashkurgan – our destination for the night at about 6. Here the population are Tajikis and you can see the difference between them, the Kyrgyzics and the Uighurs. However, what makes this odd little town interesting is beer and prostitutes! I was happy to sample the former and admire the latter. The reason for this combination of delights is that Tashkurgan is the first stop for traffic coming over the border from Pakistan – a country where these relaxations are strongly discouraged. I don’t know how many of the latter there are but there were quite a few Russian looking young ladies around.
Off again in the morning and we get about 2 kilometres out of town and wait for an hour and a half. Why? The area between the town and the Pakistan border is controlled by the army and a permit is required to go further. We had arrived before 10 – the hour, approximately, of opening of the office. Processing didn’t take long but it required a certain Major to sign the permits so we, and a few other carloads of people, had to wait. Don’t you love bureaucracy?
Off we go again slowly upwards. The scenery hasn’t changed too much – brown-grey, rocky and not much greenery with lots of large mountains cropping up through the gloom – it was never clear blue skies all the way to the top. Bactrian camels – surprisingly healthy looking – start to crop up quite regularly.
About every 50 kilometres there were belching ugly looking chunks of machinery that were producing tarmac. This is because the whole road on the Chinese side is being rebuilt – our driver told us that the whole exercise would be completed by the end of August (this was late July) to a good standard that any car would be able to drive along at a good speed. This, however, led to a couple of delays. Normally there would be a diversionary track around the roadworks but not on a couple of occasions so each time we had to wait an hour or so whilst the tarmac was laid and covered in stones.
As we approached the border at 4,600 metres four things changed. The area finally got greener with some grass! I also saw a very large mountain – I cherish the idea that I saw K2 (I have seen Everest) but, of course I have been too lazy to check. There are glaciers and streams everywhere as you approach the Khunjerab Pass and you see Himalayan Marmots – these are rodents about the size of hares that have burrows – lovely.
The top is great. There is a border post a couple of hundred metres short but our permit allowed us to go to the top and wander round – I even went 10 metres down the other side into Pakistan. You are only allowed to stay ten minutes but, in true Chinese fashion, it is much more important to take photographs of you at the top next to the border sign than to look around at the fabulous panorama. Ten minutes became twenty and then thirty – who cared? The border guards did. A bus came over from Pakistan, stopped and people got off. They were immediately herded back on the bus by the Chinese border guards and sent packing down the Chinese side of the valley.
Back down we go passing the trucks coming up very slowly. The gradients are low (there had been just one more pair of hairpin bends) but the altitude means that the trucks are only moving at 10 or 15 kph. Back to Tashkurgan and a look at what is laughingly called “Stone City”. This is mud and of dubious vintage but you can let your mind loose and imagine what it is all about.
At this point there is a mild clash of cultures. We are high up in beautiful mountains and we have spent almost all the time in a car. Not my cup of tea – I want a walk. The town is in a basin and it would take an hour to reach a decent hill to climb so on both evenings that we were there there wasn’t enough time. I suggested that I be dropped off at the lake that we had visited on the way up and make my own way back to Kashagar – bus, truck, hitch or whatever. The idea of leaving me to fend for myself was not acceptable to my friends – they can’t get their heads round the concept that I have travelled the world on my own and survived very easily.
In the morning the position was not resolved. The drivers – hardly surprisingly - wanted to get home claiming that the melting of the snow by late afternoon brought many rocks on to the road – forgetting the fact that they would have been going down the road much later on the original 2 day schedule. I suggested a three hour stop but eventually settled for two.
So back to the lake and off I go. This is a lake, so flat, and there are no lumps around the edges so the walk is truly flat and even but it is 3,600 metres. Thinking of the altitude, off I went at a good place but not flat out. I catch up with a small camel train – 4 camels – and just about manage some sort of conversation with the leader but this does not last as they are diverging from the circuitous route. I am going great and reach the top of the lake in an hour. (The Rough Guide says it is a days walk round the lake, the locals estimated 5 hours.) However, as you know lakes are temporary features that fill up so it is a mess of mud and water at the top so I have to keep going in the same direction to a village.
At the second house I get offered a tea but have to decline because of time pressure – a pity. A yurt further on had a sign saying “Resturant” but again I didn’t stop. I regret these two missed options – I am sure that both would have been interesting. I phone my friends and tell them to drive back up the road to meet me. They cannot get the idea that I have walked round 2/3rds of the lake in 100 minutes. Forgive the conceit but I felt great – I had stretched my legs wonderfully at this height.
Back to Kashgar and on to the next destination – Lake Kanas.
This sounds easy but this is Xinjiang. It takes 2 flights to get somewhere near but not close. An hour or so is required on a bus to get from the airport town to the next town. This is a beautiful place – the prettiest town that I have been to in China. There are no large buildings but well designed almost alpine looking houses, streets full of flowers, clear blue skies, no crowds etc. I really liked it.
So we hire a couple of taxis, as usual. Unfortunately these were tiny – about the old Fiat 650 size with the usual Chinese drivers i.e. ropey. This was a real contrast with the driver in Kashgar – who was the best driver that I have come across in China. Anyway, off we go and once we get going we end up in a large glacial valley. This is green with quite a few fir trees. A bit like a valley in the Alps or Scotland with a vast number of goats, sheep and cattle. Actually I haven’t seen many yurts or camels in Scotland but I may be ignorant after 5 years in China. Perhaps there are loads of hippies living in yurts in the frozen north. Of course global warning may have brought camels to the glens but they would be dromedaries not bactrians.
Our destination is not Kanas but some other place where we may be able to get a place to stay. The drive takes 5 hours and the last hour is in the dark on a true mountain road with a dodgy driver – I am not comfortable. We arrive about ten and there are plenty of places to stay in this true tourist town. Essentially it is a Mongolian village which has succeeded in attracting tourists in large numbers. The reason for this is unclear, it is a nice enough place but not outstanding – it is the drive there that is interesting, if scary. We are up before the lark to photograph the sunrise. This is Ok but nothing that unusual. After that what to do? Wander round the village and the valley, see a few eagles and not too much else. After lunch what to do? Off to Kanas. Of course this 3 hour drive costs rather more than the 5 hour one the day before but the drivers have us by the proverbial short and curlies.
We get to Kanas. The reason that we had not gone there originally was that it was alleged to be booked up. This is never really true in China and our drivers assured us that they knew a woman who could put us up. Sure enough there was a place. It was a shithole but relatively cheap. I don’t argue with the locals so we stayed.
The reason that I had been happy to go to Kanas was that my mate Bill had said that the walking was great so the following day I set off on my own bright and early up the side off the lake. This is on a wood walkway – China is good at these – for a couple of hours. Tourists rapidly thin out. I was the only Guailo I saw in the three days that I was there so I mean Chinese tourists. They are not adventurous – they like structure and follow the rules. I have no such problems. I followed the path to the end and had long before left any other people behind. I had hoped to emulate my feat of a few days earlier and walk round the lake. Some hope. The wooden walkway ran out and I tried to carry on but after half an hour of blundering around along the lakeside and the woods surrounding it progress was ridiculously slow so I turned back. This gave me an opportunity to study a bird of prey from above. This beauty was tracking back and forth along some cliffs alongside the side of the lake a few tens of metres above the lake but below me. I am a terrible twitcher but I can only work out from my birdbook that it was a grey faced buzzard. One thing I do know is that it was wonderful to watch.
Back to the area of hotels via a rather interesting lunch of – how shall I put it – yogurt with no taste or body but it was wet and, of course, I was thirsty.
I had decided that the afternoon should be spent walking down the river that is the outpouring of the lake, where there is no path. Hmm. After 2 hours I gave up and it took me twenty minutes to get back. I had managed less than 2 kilometres blundering about in the mud, marshes, streams, undergrowth etc. Not my most successful outing.
The following day it was off to the Black Lake. I assumed that this was a couple of hours stroll but I was a little inaccurate in this. 3 of us were ready to leave at 9, 3 were not. Irritation is a travelling companion of travelling with people but you can usually overcome this – despite other peoples (never mine, of course) bad manners. What irritated me was that the latecomers decided that they wanted to go by horseback so why had we had to wait?
Anyway the three walkers wandered off, soon to be overtaken by the riders and their guide. Nice walk, a steady incline amongst trees and farmland – nothing special if you discount circling eagles – lots of them. I have not often been out walking with lots of eagles overhead. Needless to say, even after consulting my birdbook, I could not identify them. Onwards and steadily upwards with a minor but slightly irritating interruption of some guy hassling us for money – it can happen anywhere in the world at any time of the day in any location.
Up we went and up again. It was not difficult and I could have gone faster but it took us 5 hours. One of the things I liked was that I could have gone significantly faster but I was held up by people half my age – I felt great. At the top there was no snow but there was snow below on the north facing slopes opposite; it must have been well over 4,000 metres. I was greeted by a lovely panoramic view of mountains all around us with the “Black Lake” below. I didn’t venture down to the lake because I was assured that it was marshy all round and there did not look like there was much life there. It could have been a peat bog by the looks of it.
The other two had lagged behind and when they arrived I told them that I was off back down straight away - I had set myself the objective of catching up the horses even though they had 40 minutes start. Ego or what? Ego triumphed; I caught them half an hour before the end whilst the horses had to take a rest! The ageing process is something I find unpleasant – I am not built to accept it. The idea of growing old gracefully is not in my thought processes. I know, I know, doing anything gracefully is not in my thought processes.
That was it really. A lazy day the dodgy drivers in the Fiat 650 imitations are summoned and we get back for a night in the beautiful town ( I am sure it is called Beijing) and then on the bus back to the airport town where my friends leave. I stayed for an afternoon of failed lizard hunting in the surrounding hills. Disappointing.
The following day it is back to Urumqi and thanks to the friend of a friend who had organised a lot of my trip. This is a typical Chinese city and not very interesting. The only thing of note was that I spent 40 dollars playing a shooting game with tennis balls. 40 dollars! I should have read the sign.
Back to home. There was one final sting in the tail. I arrived back at my apartment block and couldn’t get in. It was 1.30 a.m. and I was due to fly to Europe at 8.30 p.m. the sane day so the option of wandering off and finding a hotel (or getting my friends up) was not looking good. I worked out after a while that somebody had bolted the door to the block. There was only one flat being used at the time – all the other foreigners were away – so I guessed who it was. I shouted. I can shout very loudly. The neighbours lights went on, people came out to see what the mad guailo was doing etc. A light went on in the flat of the only lady in residence but she did not appear. I broke the door down – it was easy. The bolt would not have kept anybody out for long. I reached her flat and made a lot of noise banging on the door and an altercation ensued. She would not open the door; can you blame her?
And you thought I was a nice calm guy!
Well I didn’t go to any of those. I went to Kashgar. The Silk Road runs from modern Xian in what is regarded as the North-West of China. China has had many capital cities but Changan (as it used to be called) was the capital most of the time from pre-Christ until after 1,000 A.D. The Silk Road is more a concept than a road but is being pushed in modern times as a tourist concept. China has effectively waxed and waned in size for a long time but what is modern Xinjiang Province (or more accurately Autonomous Region) has often been under very tenuous control from the centre and there have been troubles there in relative recent times (the 1990s) although the situation is pretty calm these days.
Let us start with size. Xinjiang is big. It is a bit further from East to West than North to South. From Guangzhou you fly for 5 hours to get to Urumqi, which is about a third of the way across the place. You then fly for another 1½ hours to Kashgar and you are getting towards the western edge. Add Germany, France & Spain together and you are getting on for half way there. I am, of course, too lazy to do the numbers properly, that will have to wait for the book.
Anyway I arrive in Kashgar and what do I find – Muslims. Now before you start thinking that I am a racist let me explain. China is a non-religious country. It is not that they are anti-religion, it is just that they are not much interested. It is one of the things I like about the place. I find very little attractive about religion, unless you class paganism as a religion – particularly the middle-eastern religions. Don’t misunderstand the situation, the government spends quite a lot of money rebuilding Buddhist and Taoist temples and many people go to them and bow, light candles etc. but they are a small proportion of the population. They would probably spend a few bob on Christian Churches if there were any interest. The cynics amongst you will no doubt say or think something about bread and circuses. Anyway the fact that this is a Muslim city makes it interesting. The people are over 90% Uighur (pronounced Wuger) and are Turkic. Their language could probably be half understood by Turkish people. Now is this odd or what. I am several thousand kilometres from Turkey and there are no Turkic peoples between. This is not as odd as it may seem. Those of you who know your history will know that the Turks came from “The East” – as did the Germans, Franks etc. It is just that the Turkish movement was only a few hundred years ago, not 1600 or 1700 years ago.
What is the city like? Not Chinese. The centre of the city is the mosque. However, that is not what the city is really about. It is what it has always been, a trading place. There are lots of markets for various things. The touristy stuff like knives and carpets is Ok (although it is a little disconcerting when you find a “Made in Belgium “ label) but the local stuff is much more interesting.
Ever bought bread that lasts for weeks? Join the club. These are big spirals – a bit like pizza bread but actually they taste OK. You see them being laid out in large numbers in the shops and obviously they are not freshly baked but who cares, they are nutritious and not crawling with weevils. I didn’t eat many but that is because I like food to taste nice – not just of pizza base.
Rusting steel drums on roofs. (“Word” rejected “rooves” and Collins 21st Century dictionary doesn’t mention it but I could have sworn that is what we used to say when I was a kid.) Be honest, this is a subject that you have often dwelt upon.
There are quite a few of these things. You walk down a back street and there they are – lots of them sitting on somebody’s roof. Nearby you are likely to see lots of galvanized buckets and similar. There must be a connection but I am too stupid to understand the process.
As you know, I have a penchant for beer. Although this is a Muslim city it is not too Muslim. There is a delightful area, near the city centre that is a distinctly relaxed area where you can sit around and buy food as you need it from the local street vendors who also sell BEER.
I was travelling with Chinese friends and, bless them they were only trying to help, they were warning me – a vastly more experienced traveller than any of them – that I should be careful, these people were not Chinese and I should be careful. China is quite a racist country. Of course, we did not eat Xinjiang food, we had to go to indifferent Chinese restaurants in stead.
There is a mausoleum on the edge of the city. There is a dodgy story about a concubine associated with the place. She was captured by the Imperial Army, grew to be the emperors favourite and was ordered to commit suicide by the Emperor’s mother. This may well be true but for you and I the interesting things are the building itself and the sarcophaguses (sarcophagi?) inside. The building is covered in a sort of mosaic; this is the bit that I found interesting – the patterns themselves were nothing special but the concept …
I lied about the sarcophaguses – they are no such thing. They are representations of coffins – the bodies are buried below – but they are in appropriate sizes and kept decorated with simple ribbons and swaddling. Interesting.
Off up the Karakoram Highway. I don’t know about you, but there are not many roads that I can name (and I don’t mean Oxford Street or Broadway I mean real roads) but after the late lamented Route 66, The Khyber Pass, The Pan-American Highway and one or two others what is left?
The Karakoram Highway is, therefore, irresistible. It was only built in 1982 and opened to the public in 1986 but I regard it as one of the great roads of the world. What a chance.
I was travelling with 5 other people. A couple are my friends and they have a son. They brought along another very nice couple so when the journeys split to two cars I travelled with the other two, which was fine.
The Highway is a trading road between China and Pakistan and follows the old reading route. I do not hold a Pakistan visa, and neither do my friends, so getting to the border is the limit of our ambitions. However, this is a few hundred kilometres away so it was a reasonable trip. So how do you travel? Obvious isn’t it – you get a taxi. My friends had been off to investigate and got a deal that would take us most of the way to the border in the afternoon, go to the top in the morning and back to Kashgar the following evening. This was for the princely sum of 1,100 RMB (110 Euros) per taxi – we did need two. As you know my middle name is caution and I wasn’t keen on the driver doing all that distance the following day and ending up coming down some winding pass with a knackered driver at high speed in the dark so I suggested taking an extra day. How much? Another 100 RMB! So that was agreed by everybody.
Off we go. The first hour is flat across the Taklamanakan Desert. This is the real deal, dry dusty and almost no sign of life higher than a few centimetres except the odd oasis of a village occasionally. We are accompanied by three sets of poles with associated wires. Three! Now one could possibly be for telephones, although I doubt it, so why three? My conclusion was that there were three different sets of power lines. China isn’t big on repairs. If something breaks you don’t repair it, you get another one and that is what I think had happened here.
I took lots of photos of graveyards! In a country as big and varied as China these vary a lot. The particular type here was a clay structure a metre or so high with a dome shape. I assumed the body was underneath because these things do get slowly eroded and I never spotted any skeletons inside.
We joined a river and started to climb – slowly. The first thing of note that happens is that the road is blocked by a landslip. Not an auspicious start. I was left wondering what lay ahead but it was easy enough to get round – just drive off the road. This is a good quality road, only two lanes but well tarmaced most of the way. There was the odd stretch of road that hadn’t been recently repaired and, sometimes, tributary streams had covered the road with rocks – these bits had to be taken slowly. I was left wondering why a JCB or similar wasn’t located in the area to clear the rocks once a week or something like that but who am I to teach the Chinese about road maintenance.
Up we climbed but the basic scenery did not change. This was still desert, it just happened to have a river running through it. Even right next to the river there were barely any signs of greenery. The geology is interesting. The Indian tectonic plate is still pushing the Himalayas and behind them Xinjiang. This is very new land, constantly changing and constantly eroded so this riverbed was full of rocks and the “rocks” around were conglomerates of the rocks and mud brought down by the river and now being eroded again. There is no strata to the rocks at all; they are so new that there has never been any significant pressure to create the strata, and then the rocks are immediately pushed up by the force coming from the south and eroded again.
The road twisted and turned quite a lot but there was only one pair of hairpin bends between the start at 1100 metres above sea level and a lake where we stopped at 3,600 metres. We had stopped at a hamlet of sorts to see how poorly the people lived (and, of course, have the opportunity the buy some crap or other). There the houses were stone but by the Lake they had turned into Yurts. These are round tents – normally about 3 metres across – normally associated with Mongols but also used by Kyrgyzics – the local people at this point. It was a great place to watch local women still weaving by hand.
I have missed one item of considerable interest to me. At about three thousand metres we had passed a small lake. Wow, you say, how interesting. However on the far side of the lake there were some hills rising a few hundred metres higher. OK, nothing interesting or unusual so far but the sides of the hills were covered in very large sand dunes. I have never seen anything like it. I have no idea how they form or what keeps them there but they were (and probably still are) spectacular and very odd.
Off again over a pass at 4,200 metres (with just one more pair of hairpins) and down into a basin with a little bit, but not much more, vegetation. We arrived in Tashkurgan – our destination for the night at about 6. Here the population are Tajikis and you can see the difference between them, the Kyrgyzics and the Uighurs. However, what makes this odd little town interesting is beer and prostitutes! I was happy to sample the former and admire the latter. The reason for this combination of delights is that Tashkurgan is the first stop for traffic coming over the border from Pakistan – a country where these relaxations are strongly discouraged. I don’t know how many of the latter there are but there were quite a few Russian looking young ladies around.
Off again in the morning and we get about 2 kilometres out of town and wait for an hour and a half. Why? The area between the town and the Pakistan border is controlled by the army and a permit is required to go further. We had arrived before 10 – the hour, approximately, of opening of the office. Processing didn’t take long but it required a certain Major to sign the permits so we, and a few other carloads of people, had to wait. Don’t you love bureaucracy?
Off we go again slowly upwards. The scenery hasn’t changed too much – brown-grey, rocky and not much greenery with lots of large mountains cropping up through the gloom – it was never clear blue skies all the way to the top. Bactrian camels – surprisingly healthy looking – start to crop up quite regularly.
About every 50 kilometres there were belching ugly looking chunks of machinery that were producing tarmac. This is because the whole road on the Chinese side is being rebuilt – our driver told us that the whole exercise would be completed by the end of August (this was late July) to a good standard that any car would be able to drive along at a good speed. This, however, led to a couple of delays. Normally there would be a diversionary track around the roadworks but not on a couple of occasions so each time we had to wait an hour or so whilst the tarmac was laid and covered in stones.
As we approached the border at 4,600 metres four things changed. The area finally got greener with some grass! I also saw a very large mountain – I cherish the idea that I saw K2 (I have seen Everest) but, of course I have been too lazy to check. There are glaciers and streams everywhere as you approach the Khunjerab Pass and you see Himalayan Marmots – these are rodents about the size of hares that have burrows – lovely.
The top is great. There is a border post a couple of hundred metres short but our permit allowed us to go to the top and wander round – I even went 10 metres down the other side into Pakistan. You are only allowed to stay ten minutes but, in true Chinese fashion, it is much more important to take photographs of you at the top next to the border sign than to look around at the fabulous panorama. Ten minutes became twenty and then thirty – who cared? The border guards did. A bus came over from Pakistan, stopped and people got off. They were immediately herded back on the bus by the Chinese border guards and sent packing down the Chinese side of the valley.
Back down we go passing the trucks coming up very slowly. The gradients are low (there had been just one more pair of hairpin bends) but the altitude means that the trucks are only moving at 10 or 15 kph. Back to Tashkurgan and a look at what is laughingly called “Stone City”. This is mud and of dubious vintage but you can let your mind loose and imagine what it is all about.
At this point there is a mild clash of cultures. We are high up in beautiful mountains and we have spent almost all the time in a car. Not my cup of tea – I want a walk. The town is in a basin and it would take an hour to reach a decent hill to climb so on both evenings that we were there there wasn’t enough time. I suggested that I be dropped off at the lake that we had visited on the way up and make my own way back to Kashagar – bus, truck, hitch or whatever. The idea of leaving me to fend for myself was not acceptable to my friends – they can’t get their heads round the concept that I have travelled the world on my own and survived very easily.
In the morning the position was not resolved. The drivers – hardly surprisingly - wanted to get home claiming that the melting of the snow by late afternoon brought many rocks on to the road – forgetting the fact that they would have been going down the road much later on the original 2 day schedule. I suggested a three hour stop but eventually settled for two.
So back to the lake and off I go. This is a lake, so flat, and there are no lumps around the edges so the walk is truly flat and even but it is 3,600 metres. Thinking of the altitude, off I went at a good place but not flat out. I catch up with a small camel train – 4 camels – and just about manage some sort of conversation with the leader but this does not last as they are diverging from the circuitous route. I am going great and reach the top of the lake in an hour. (The Rough Guide says it is a days walk round the lake, the locals estimated 5 hours.) However, as you know lakes are temporary features that fill up so it is a mess of mud and water at the top so I have to keep going in the same direction to a village.
At the second house I get offered a tea but have to decline because of time pressure – a pity. A yurt further on had a sign saying “Resturant” but again I didn’t stop. I regret these two missed options – I am sure that both would have been interesting. I phone my friends and tell them to drive back up the road to meet me. They cannot get the idea that I have walked round 2/3rds of the lake in 100 minutes. Forgive the conceit but I felt great – I had stretched my legs wonderfully at this height.
Back to Kashgar and on to the next destination – Lake Kanas.
This sounds easy but this is Xinjiang. It takes 2 flights to get somewhere near but not close. An hour or so is required on a bus to get from the airport town to the next town. This is a beautiful place – the prettiest town that I have been to in China. There are no large buildings but well designed almost alpine looking houses, streets full of flowers, clear blue skies, no crowds etc. I really liked it.
So we hire a couple of taxis, as usual. Unfortunately these were tiny – about the old Fiat 650 size with the usual Chinese drivers i.e. ropey. This was a real contrast with the driver in Kashgar – who was the best driver that I have come across in China. Anyway, off we go and once we get going we end up in a large glacial valley. This is green with quite a few fir trees. A bit like a valley in the Alps or Scotland with a vast number of goats, sheep and cattle. Actually I haven’t seen many yurts or camels in Scotland but I may be ignorant after 5 years in China. Perhaps there are loads of hippies living in yurts in the frozen north. Of course global warning may have brought camels to the glens but they would be dromedaries not bactrians.
Our destination is not Kanas but some other place where we may be able to get a place to stay. The drive takes 5 hours and the last hour is in the dark on a true mountain road with a dodgy driver – I am not comfortable. We arrive about ten and there are plenty of places to stay in this true tourist town. Essentially it is a Mongolian village which has succeeded in attracting tourists in large numbers. The reason for this is unclear, it is a nice enough place but not outstanding – it is the drive there that is interesting, if scary. We are up before the lark to photograph the sunrise. This is Ok but nothing that unusual. After that what to do? Wander round the village and the valley, see a few eagles and not too much else. After lunch what to do? Off to Kanas. Of course this 3 hour drive costs rather more than the 5 hour one the day before but the drivers have us by the proverbial short and curlies.
We get to Kanas. The reason that we had not gone there originally was that it was alleged to be booked up. This is never really true in China and our drivers assured us that they knew a woman who could put us up. Sure enough there was a place. It was a shithole but relatively cheap. I don’t argue with the locals so we stayed.
The reason that I had been happy to go to Kanas was that my mate Bill had said that the walking was great so the following day I set off on my own bright and early up the side off the lake. This is on a wood walkway – China is good at these – for a couple of hours. Tourists rapidly thin out. I was the only Guailo I saw in the three days that I was there so I mean Chinese tourists. They are not adventurous – they like structure and follow the rules. I have no such problems. I followed the path to the end and had long before left any other people behind. I had hoped to emulate my feat of a few days earlier and walk round the lake. Some hope. The wooden walkway ran out and I tried to carry on but after half an hour of blundering around along the lakeside and the woods surrounding it progress was ridiculously slow so I turned back. This gave me an opportunity to study a bird of prey from above. This beauty was tracking back and forth along some cliffs alongside the side of the lake a few tens of metres above the lake but below me. I am a terrible twitcher but I can only work out from my birdbook that it was a grey faced buzzard. One thing I do know is that it was wonderful to watch.
Back to the area of hotels via a rather interesting lunch of – how shall I put it – yogurt with no taste or body but it was wet and, of course, I was thirsty.
I had decided that the afternoon should be spent walking down the river that is the outpouring of the lake, where there is no path. Hmm. After 2 hours I gave up and it took me twenty minutes to get back. I had managed less than 2 kilometres blundering about in the mud, marshes, streams, undergrowth etc. Not my most successful outing.
The following day it was off to the Black Lake. I assumed that this was a couple of hours stroll but I was a little inaccurate in this. 3 of us were ready to leave at 9, 3 were not. Irritation is a travelling companion of travelling with people but you can usually overcome this – despite other peoples (never mine, of course) bad manners. What irritated me was that the latecomers decided that they wanted to go by horseback so why had we had to wait?
Anyway the three walkers wandered off, soon to be overtaken by the riders and their guide. Nice walk, a steady incline amongst trees and farmland – nothing special if you discount circling eagles – lots of them. I have not often been out walking with lots of eagles overhead. Needless to say, even after consulting my birdbook, I could not identify them. Onwards and steadily upwards with a minor but slightly irritating interruption of some guy hassling us for money – it can happen anywhere in the world at any time of the day in any location.
Up we went and up again. It was not difficult and I could have gone faster but it took us 5 hours. One of the things I liked was that I could have gone significantly faster but I was held up by people half my age – I felt great. At the top there was no snow but there was snow below on the north facing slopes opposite; it must have been well over 4,000 metres. I was greeted by a lovely panoramic view of mountains all around us with the “Black Lake” below. I didn’t venture down to the lake because I was assured that it was marshy all round and there did not look like there was much life there. It could have been a peat bog by the looks of it.
The other two had lagged behind and when they arrived I told them that I was off back down straight away - I had set myself the objective of catching up the horses even though they had 40 minutes start. Ego or what? Ego triumphed; I caught them half an hour before the end whilst the horses had to take a rest! The ageing process is something I find unpleasant – I am not built to accept it. The idea of growing old gracefully is not in my thought processes. I know, I know, doing anything gracefully is not in my thought processes.
That was it really. A lazy day the dodgy drivers in the Fiat 650 imitations are summoned and we get back for a night in the beautiful town ( I am sure it is called Beijing) and then on the bus back to the airport town where my friends leave. I stayed for an afternoon of failed lizard hunting in the surrounding hills. Disappointing.
The following day it is back to Urumqi and thanks to the friend of a friend who had organised a lot of my trip. This is a typical Chinese city and not very interesting. The only thing of note was that I spent 40 dollars playing a shooting game with tennis balls. 40 dollars! I should have read the sign.
Back to home. There was one final sting in the tail. I arrived back at my apartment block and couldn’t get in. It was 1.30 a.m. and I was due to fly to Europe at 8.30 p.m. the sane day so the option of wandering off and finding a hotel (or getting my friends up) was not looking good. I worked out after a while that somebody had bolted the door to the block. There was only one flat being used at the time – all the other foreigners were away – so I guessed who it was. I shouted. I can shout very loudly. The neighbours lights went on, people came out to see what the mad guailo was doing etc. A light went on in the flat of the only lady in residence but she did not appear. I broke the door down – it was easy. The bolt would not have kept anybody out for long. I reached her flat and made a lot of noise banging on the door and an altercation ensued. She would not open the door; can you blame her?
And you thought I was a nice calm guy!
The Cuban Missive Crisis
For this title you have to thank Joe. I was going to call it “A Tale of Incompetence” but I thought no-one would believe me.
It all started off in a fairly ordinary way for any ordinary round the world trip – drunk. Let’s face it, can you imagine Magellan or Drake setting off sober – they would not have set off if they were sober. It was quite simple really, I had arranged to travel avoiding the dreaded Christmas Day in England by booking a flight at 12.30 on Boxing Day; the ignorant amongst us – i.e. the Americans – can look that up.
The only problem was that the flight was 12.30 a.m. – hmm! Fortunately my American friends next door saw the way through this – a bottle of gin before I set off. This worked extremely well in that I had one beer during dinner on the 10% full plane and fell asleep for most of the flight. I changed planes in Frankfurt and got to Bristol (despite The Sloth being half an hour late picking me up – what a surprise) by 10.30 or so on Boxing Day. It did take me a couple of minutes to work out why I had a bag of sliced lemons in my pocket. Nora had equipped me for the potential meanness on the flight for the right ingredients for a decent G & T.
A few days of normality ensued i.e. seeing lots of people all over England (although not all I wanted to see, of course) and drinking huge amounts of alcohol. New Years Day was symptomatic of the aging process. About 10 of us went for a walk. We were in the pub inside 45 minutes and didn’t take much longer walking back. These days were pretty well incident free apart when I visited my dad. Dad had a big stroke six years ago which has imposed severe physical limitations on him but that has not stopped him enjoying getting out in the country, so that is what we did when I arrived on his doorstep. Off we went, driving up Swaledale and we were going much better than I expected because, those of you who live in Northern England may recall, there was quite a lot of snow in late December in Yorkshire. I thought that I didn’t want to go to the top of the valley, it was too far and the conditions on the road were likely to get worse, and inquired from Dad if I could cut off north to join the A66 – a main Trans-Pennine road. (Maps? What are those?) He assured me that it was fine, I could take the road up to Tan Hill and join the A66 there but there were three or four hairpin bends out of the valley that might be a bit icy. Why was I so stupid – I knew that the Tan Hill Inn is the highest pub in England – I had been there 30 years before whilst walking the Pennine Way. Anyway, up we went and sure enough the hairpins were a bit slippery but with a front wheel drive car and keeping it in a low (but not too low) gear meant we were fine through those. Up through a hamlet and we are on to compacted snow. “Dad, how far?” “Not far.” So I keep going for a couple of kilometres up a gently rising road – no problem, just a bit of wheelspin. Then the road steepens a bit – and I mean no more than 1 in 10 – and the wheelspin on the front starts in earnest. OK, I try different gears, I back down and try again, I try spinning my way up this short climb, I try spinning enough to get through the snow to the road to give me some grip; it is a hire car – Hmm!
So what do I do? Shall I get my Dad to sit on the bonnet (hood if you are American), it is front wheel drive after all? A little tricky for an 85 year old in the frost – perhaps his reactions are not up to falling off the front and then jumping out of the way when I get some grip. Shall I get him to drive? A bit dodgy when his clutch foot is extremely weak. Push – no definitely not. So back down the road backwards. I did get out and look a couple of times where it was fairly flat and thought that I might be able to swing the car round far enough so that the front end would be pointing down the road after the swing off the road but no way. So I happily (?) reversed all the way back to the hamlet, sometimes between a ditch and a nasty drop off. Only took half an hour and all very exhilarating in a rather unexpected way. When I asked Dad why we had gone that way he said “Well, you were driving” You can’t really call your father a “duplicitous bastard” when he is that aged.
From then on things could only get worse.
I went and saw some friends in Ireland and the second-best sea-foam I have ever seen but that is not why I went. Gary has always had “a job” and now he doesn’t have one. That is life. I went to try and persuade him that you can make money to live without “a job” but by doing other things. We have lots of contacts in China willing to do things that make money for some or all of us, including Gary’s area of expertise. Could I persuade him? If you know Gary you don’t need an answer. If you don’t you will have guessed by now.
Things got worse. I had intended another foray to the North but I was too tired before the next thing – skiing. It may seem bizarre but the main thing that you miss living in a Chinese city in exercise – walking, skiing and golf in my case. Skiing is the most compact holiday of those three – ski all day and drink until 2.00 a.m. every night – you have to get up at 8.00 a.m. to be first out on the slopes. You never think about work – you are too busy concentrating on trying not to die or so busy celebrating surviving the day.
On the first lift I put my goggles down and the lens fell out of my glasses. Ah well it happens, you put it back but you are reminded that you normally ski in Contact Lenses – which I had forgotten. This event recurred.
Karel is not the man to go with if you want a gentle day out. He is a couple of years older than me, much fitter and a vastly better skier. However, he thinks he is still young and took up snowboarding 4 years ago so we should be OK despite the fact that I have not been skiing for three years. How stupid can you get? We get a flight at some ungodly hour of the morning, which means that we get half a days easy skiing when we get there. Ho Ho Ho. Towards the end of the afternoon we are heading off the mountain but end up on a black run. For the ignorant the grades are green, blue, red and black – no prizes for guessing the order. Now, in Italy, I can make a fair attempt at skiing black runs, this is not elegance personified as you may well have guessed, but I expect to get down them without falling over most times. This was France – where a black is a black, or f******g steep. Anyway walking back up the slope in ski boots is a definite no-no, so off you go. Boarders can just tilt backwards and scrape their way down the slope – just as Karel did. Skiers have to ski across, make a turn, ski back, make another turn etc. Even non-skiers will have realised that this means that you are pointing down the slope at some point in the turn. On most slopes this is OK, but a French black? Anyway I made a few but sure enough, at one point, I didn’t quite get round the turn and over I went. As an experienced faller on ski slopes this is not really a problem, the difference was that on this occasion I started gathering speed after I had fallen over – not the usual occurrence. Now that may not be such a problem if you knew what you were doing or where you are going. Tricky those two I found. The decision making process can also be a little suspect on these occasions. Of course, I come to a halt after 100 metres or so when the slope levels out a bit but, funnily enough, my confidence isn’t great after such an event. I walk to a lift, go down and go to the bar.
Can it get worse? Of course.
The following day I had left Karel to go down some silly black run at the end of the day. I took a long, slow green run off. However, I had noticed on the bus into the resort the day before that the black towards the bottom didn’t look too bad so I headed 30 metres off the green to pick up the last bit of the black. Ah! A sheet of ice. Hmm, perhaps not. Easy, take your skis off and walk back to the green. There were a few other people there who had obviously made the same mistake but didn’t have my powers of recovery. I had taken my skis off, turned to walk back when I slipped. Yes, again I went down a 100 metres at least gaining speed etc. Boring, boring, boring. Two differences were that I lost my skis and collected a girl.
An interesting experience, falling down a ski slope, completely disoriented, your head pointing in various random directions at any given moment, not knowing where you are going or what is going to happen next whilst you are apologising for being a complete pillock.
She stops, I don’t know how, a good 30 metres above me; I am about 20 metres directly above a huge stanchion for a lift and, no, I don’t want to think about it, thank you very much. So now I have to walk back up the slope (for non-skiers, this is no joke, it will take about 200 steps) sweating like the proverbial pig to apologise and then try and find my skis. Wonder of wonders, a beautiful blond appears with my skis and dismisses my behaviour as perfectly understandable; her friend is fine. I grovel for a bit and leave as quickly as decency allows (and no Sleazy, Sheepshagger etc. I did not get a phone number, even though I deserved to buy dinner for half the town).
So can things get worse? Of course.
The following day is a non-confidence day, I even manage to fall a long way down a blue run. However by Tuesday it is time I started showing a bit of form so I was determined to improve. It was snowing. A minor fall on an easy run meant that Karel was a couple of minutes in front of me. Another fall meant that the gap was growing and, after waiting a few minutes, he assumed that I had passed him and went up the lift. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Skis are designed to come off when you fall over. However, this doesn’t always happen at low speeds and sure enough my left ski had not come off. Bit of a bugger when you do the splits. I knew that I was injured but if you have any sense of claustrophobia you do not want to come down in a body bag off a ski slope. Don’t get me wrong, these guys are brilliant skiers and you are laced in tightly so that they have control of the movement of the toboggan that you travel in with you interfering in no way and they will get down any slope, one in front to clear the route and another behind pulling the sledge with you in it.
Notice I said pulling the toboggan; that is that they are going at full skiing speed, often a lot faster than I would ski. Do I want to be in that thing? No. I put my skis back on and got to a lift, found Karel and went down. By the time I got to the doctor it hurt.
Straps, money, pills an exercise routine for a physiotherapist when I got back to England etc.
Yeh, yeh ,yeh So we went to see Bouncy. One of the great advantages of a skiing holiday in a chalet is that you meet fun people. (We have only had one experience when this did not happen). In this case it included a 21 year old who was a good skier (or so he said) and a better drinker. The latter I can testify too – it is the first time I have ever been outdrunk on a skiing trip – Ben was so drunk one night that the whole chalet woke up, not because of Ben falling over but my laughing at him. I have to say that, despite my injury, the only reason that Ben managed as much skiing as me in the whole week was because I drove him out on the last day, normally he had hangovers. The other really fun guy, Kev, was supposed to be boarding but always seemed to get back by about 3 in time to relax before the first of the, normally, two visits each the day to Bouncy. I was, of course, in the, outdoor, jacuzi or the, indoor, sauna most of the last three days. Life is tough when you are an injured skier.
So skiing could not be considered a great success. Back to England one day, Toronto the next and Havana on the third day.
Havana! Cuba has been on my list for 30 years and Castro’s accident last year made me realise that there was no putting it off. I am sure that when he dies the mighty dollar will win and the country will change very rapidly. In fact it already has. The collapse of the Soviet Union left Cuba deeply in the shit. Its main product has always been sugar and when the USA cut off imports in 1960 they were, how can I put it, fucked. The Soviet Union took up the slack pushing Cuba into an alliance that was stronger than they, Cuba, wanted and, largely, causing the crisis that this article is named after.
The USA, being the good liberals that they are, learnt nothing from this and have continued to try and repress Cuba ever since. I regard Castro as one of the great men of the twentieth century for withstanding this totally irrational intolerance from big brother.
The inability to sell their sugar was a big problem for Cuba in the early 90s and brought quite a lot of hardship. There solution was the classic Caribbean answer – tourism. This is now Cuba’s biggest business, overtaking sugar by the late nineties.
Havana is a beautiful city. I am sure it was probably even more so in the early part of the last century but many buildings have now been restored to their former, Spanish, glory. Not all, there are many rundown areas, but it is still a fabulous city to look at.
What else? Cuba is famous for beautiful girls and there are many of them. The problem is exactly that – they are girls. In many cases the onset of puberty is about a week before the onset of obesity – they eat too much sugar! An interesting fashion note here. In China, and other parts of the world, young women in uniform often wear something that looks like a skirt from the front but is actually a pair of shorts that you see from the back. In Cuba they have it somewhat differently. The school uniform in some schools is a pair of shorts with what can only be described as a rather thin loincloth over the top. Weird.
Music. Ah the music. Cuba is, of course, famous for the Buena Vista Social Club. You would never guess if you only go to restaurants. You get a trio singing three quick boring songs, always including “Guantanamera” (or however it is spelt) in ten minutes and then they pass the hat. Go to a decent bar. There they will play four or five songs and pass the hat and try and sell their CDs. I bought a couple of CDs but did not get CDs for the best two bands that I heard. These four or five songs will take close to an hour but the bands are fantastic. Take the tunefulness and lyrics of the BVSC and add driving drum rhythms that would put Africans to shame – fantastic. Find a bar that you like and go back, they change the acts each night and rotate them over three or four days.
I had arrived on a Friday afternoon so it was Monday morning before I saw the queues. The first one was at an electricity place – presumably to pay the bill but after that the queues were common. I never went to Eastern Europe in the Warsaw Pact days (in fact I still haven’t much) but I guess this was the face of communism that the western press used to always go on about. Cubans still get a basic ration issue but this is, apparently, barely minimal. To buy other things they often need Convertible Pesos, hence everyone wants to get hold of them so people who can rent out a room or two are comfortable – others may not be so. The stuff in shops was poor quality and little choice.
By this time my glasses had given up and the lower part that holds the lens in on the right hand side had broken. Cuba has, possibly, the best health system in the world. You don’t believe me? Read where some of the medical progress has come in recent years or about the export of doctors to underdeveloped countries. I was, however, disappointed that the posh specs shop that I tried could not fix my glasses so I bought some sellotape, did the necessary myself and could still read.
However, there is always a however, Cuba is competing in the luxurious Caribbean tourist market. Cheap it ain’t. Even though I was staying in people’s houses, a sort of B & B, this still cost 30 Convertible Pesos a night. This is easy to do and hotels cost at least double that. However, I was still spending 100 bucks a day. The local peso buys things cheap but you never get in to that market. Cuba set up the Convertible Peso as a dollar equivalent and you pay in that currency unless you stay for a while and can obtain the local currency – in 9 days I did not. Things in local currency cost 10% or less than in convertible currency. The illustrious president of the USA has upped the anti against Cuba and the Cubans responded so now you pay an 8% premium for using the US dollar i.e. the Convertible Peso (in Cuba, it is worthless outside) is worth more than a dollar. This includes credit cards and taking money from an ATM. So, despite the fact that credit cards issued in the US are not acceptable, you are charged the premium because the transaction is converted into USeless dollars. Take another currency in cash – lots of it – Euros, Pounds, Canadian or Aussie dollars, they probably even take Bhat.
This cost made me decide to go to a beach resort for a few days – particularly so that I could swim and strengthen my dodgy leg for the next part of the trip. The main attraction was the fixed price – 90 Convertible per day including all food and drink – yes booze. Well you know me. This was, of course, a mistake. I stayed in the hotel the first night and got thoroughly pissed with a Russian who I am pretty sure would not remember me. After that I had to go out and find bars with decent music so I spent more money. The swimming was also less than successful. I was in a tourist resort full of fat old people but it took me a good hour to find some fat bastard swimming shorts – perhaps this is indicative of the problems of supply. After that I did not swim – I do not like even slightly cold water!
The cars. It is true. There are a good number of small Japanese and French cars but also lots of the old American monstrosities – I went to the bus station in a 1928 something or other. There is something fascinating about watching somebody washing out a huge six cylinder engine block with water by the side of the road. They also have “eggs”. These are converted motorbikes with two wheels on the back, rather like a tuk-tuk in South-East Asia but they are yellow-orange and shaped like their name.
Cuba is a fascinating country – unlike anywhere else I have ever been. Go there soon. Just do it better than me – a few days in Havana and a few in Trinidad and a beach up the west end or a bit of walking (there are lots of big birds) would be much better.
Back to Toronto and then on to see Ian & Yvonne in western New York State for a weekend’s skiing.
One thing first. This was Toronto, where I packed the cigars I had bought whilst in Cuba in my ski boots hoping that they would avoid detection by the US customs machine. You are not allowed to take anything from Cuba into the USSA (perhaps I will leave that reference to the old USSR!) and any American who is caught having gone to Cuba is fined $7,500. I needn’t have worried – US customs and immigration are in Toronto and they want to get you on to the aircraft.
Those of you know who this couple in New York State will know about how they spend six months of the year living near a frozen lake and driving through metres high snow banks. Bullshit. I have a photograph that shows about 10 square centimetres of snow outside their house. The lake was full of waves. This was late January. Do not trust them.
It was fun though. The first night was going to see the local amateur musical show. Not quite the quality of Cuba although, to be fair, the brass band were pretty good. At this point, well actually in the pub afterwards, my glasses gave out and the top half of the right side also became detached from the rest of the frame. As you know my eyesight could give a mole a good run for its money so I was pretty keen on getting to an optician in the morning so where did we go first – wait for it – Walmarts! Impossible I thought. 18 bucks and half an hour later I come out with my lenses fitted into new (admittedly rather ugly) frames. All praise to Walmart.
That evening I & Y invited a couple round who we gradually realised that I had met on my previous visit 5 ½ years earlier. The lady is Russian and the guy is big and likes to be shrouded in mystery – wants you to think, that he was a spy - that type of stuff. Anyway conversation fell to hunting and he was asserting that hunters conserved the wildlife of America – the usual self-justifying bollocks that you get from these bloodthirsty types. My arguments were going quite well until I did an imitation of a hunter using a submachine gun to mow down the animals – rat-tat-tat-tat-tat - when my chair broke and I collapsed on the floor. Seemed to undermine my argument.
We went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which was excellent. True to form we had tried to go to another museum first but it was closed for six months. This turned out to be a good thing because the R & R HoF needs several hours. 2 hours in most museums is enough for me but I would have been happy to stay there 6 or 7 hours.
The following day we went to a local pancake house with some other friends of Y & I (who I had also met before) for breakfast. Closed. After lunch we went back to their place with loads of beer and ended up watching The Superbowl. Pleasant although, surprise surprise, not a great game. But is that what I had gone round the world for?
Of course it snowed heavily all day so Ian had a bit of fun driving home. So we can ski after all. Not quite, it was Monday the following day and they were working and I was off to my next destination.
I am not allowed to tell you where that is except Northern California. Neil & Kuldip had got married in August 2000 and I hadn’t seen them since so what did I expect? They live in a three-story house with Kuldip’s brother – Paul. Pol, Pohl or something similar. Let me describe the bottom floor where I was staying. My bedroom was (and probably still is) big. That is to say the size of a large master bedroom in most houses, six sided of course. It had its own en-suite which, of course, I did not use. Next door was a shower –steam room combination with an overhead jet and normal shower head plus the steam, much better. When I got up fairly early the day after I arrived I used my personal laundry room to wash and dry my clothes. This I did because I could not see any deer out of my bedroom at the time – that came later.
The rest of that level was quite minimal. I walked out the corridor into the rather well equipped bar. Off that is
1. A bit of a junk room – bigger than most living rooms
2. A wine cellar with plenty of racking for a couple of thousand bottles, although there were definitely no more than 500 bottles there – I checked.
3. A cinema. There are only 8 seats – fully reclining leather naturally.
Yes, they have it tough. P has made lots of money and has decided that he wants to make films. Those of you who know Neil will guess the rest – this household is entirely dedicated to films. They watch films all day – short and long; if you go out to visit somewhere you are scouting for talent or locations; if you are sat at a computer you are checking out the opposition or looking for ideas; if you are (rarely) sat at a desk doing some real work you are phoning or emailing people about business. Everything. They have actually made some films but never got then to market – which they assured me would be profitable. Why? In my opinion it is because they have too much money to drive them. Odd isn’t it, Neil has never two happenies to rub together but they need a real kick up the arse to actually show that they can deliver what they aspire to.
As a confirmed anti-American (well politically) I have to say that northern California is beautiful. We went to Santa Cruz, Monterrey and Carmel (Clint was mayor if you remember) – lovely. But of course we were scouting for talent (lots) and locations – remember Neil, the haunted house just before you get to the city limit of Monterrey.
An evening in a Jacuzzi at Narita airport near Tokyo and then home.
P.S. An Irony
I had come home a few days early because I had a visitor. We went to Yunnan province – my 5th visit and did stuff that I had done before. We went to Lijiang where we sat around in the sun drinking and wandering round the lovely old town. I don’t really know Shelley that well but we had a great time, especially walking Tiger Leaping Gorge. I have walked this before but it is a wonderful walk, now apparently closed to foreigners because they want to build a damn. It is three kilometres deep and much steeper-sided than The Grand Canyon. I am not belittling the GC – it is spectacular – but so is TLG. We met some fine people – an Aussie student who was a perfect gentleman, an English cook who spends more than half of his time travelling the Silk Road and a German film producer. The mantle of incompetence was definitely passed on. Julia lost her pouch with her passport and money in it. She speaks competent Chinese and a few hours of frustration in the local police station caused her to get pissed off and abuse the local police. She had to go back sham-faced in the morning and grovel when an old lady handed everything in – and wouldn’t take any money. Shelley took over by leaving her cash card in an ATM. A bit of a bugger when she was due in Auckland in 4 days, having been to Manchester first.
It was, perhaps, the best bit of the whole trip.
P.P.S. I hung around in Guangzhou for a week, bored, so went to Thailand for a week before teaching started – but that is a different story.
It all started off in a fairly ordinary way for any ordinary round the world trip – drunk. Let’s face it, can you imagine Magellan or Drake setting off sober – they would not have set off if they were sober. It was quite simple really, I had arranged to travel avoiding the dreaded Christmas Day in England by booking a flight at 12.30 on Boxing Day; the ignorant amongst us – i.e. the Americans – can look that up.
The only problem was that the flight was 12.30 a.m. – hmm! Fortunately my American friends next door saw the way through this – a bottle of gin before I set off. This worked extremely well in that I had one beer during dinner on the 10% full plane and fell asleep for most of the flight. I changed planes in Frankfurt and got to Bristol (despite The Sloth being half an hour late picking me up – what a surprise) by 10.30 or so on Boxing Day. It did take me a couple of minutes to work out why I had a bag of sliced lemons in my pocket. Nora had equipped me for the potential meanness on the flight for the right ingredients for a decent G & T.
A few days of normality ensued i.e. seeing lots of people all over England (although not all I wanted to see, of course) and drinking huge amounts of alcohol. New Years Day was symptomatic of the aging process. About 10 of us went for a walk. We were in the pub inside 45 minutes and didn’t take much longer walking back. These days were pretty well incident free apart when I visited my dad. Dad had a big stroke six years ago which has imposed severe physical limitations on him but that has not stopped him enjoying getting out in the country, so that is what we did when I arrived on his doorstep. Off we went, driving up Swaledale and we were going much better than I expected because, those of you who live in Northern England may recall, there was quite a lot of snow in late December in Yorkshire. I thought that I didn’t want to go to the top of the valley, it was too far and the conditions on the road were likely to get worse, and inquired from Dad if I could cut off north to join the A66 – a main Trans-Pennine road. (Maps? What are those?) He assured me that it was fine, I could take the road up to Tan Hill and join the A66 there but there were three or four hairpin bends out of the valley that might be a bit icy. Why was I so stupid – I knew that the Tan Hill Inn is the highest pub in England – I had been there 30 years before whilst walking the Pennine Way. Anyway, up we went and sure enough the hairpins were a bit slippery but with a front wheel drive car and keeping it in a low (but not too low) gear meant we were fine through those. Up through a hamlet and we are on to compacted snow. “Dad, how far?” “Not far.” So I keep going for a couple of kilometres up a gently rising road – no problem, just a bit of wheelspin. Then the road steepens a bit – and I mean no more than 1 in 10 – and the wheelspin on the front starts in earnest. OK, I try different gears, I back down and try again, I try spinning my way up this short climb, I try spinning enough to get through the snow to the road to give me some grip; it is a hire car – Hmm!
So what do I do? Shall I get my Dad to sit on the bonnet (hood if you are American), it is front wheel drive after all? A little tricky for an 85 year old in the frost – perhaps his reactions are not up to falling off the front and then jumping out of the way when I get some grip. Shall I get him to drive? A bit dodgy when his clutch foot is extremely weak. Push – no definitely not. So back down the road backwards. I did get out and look a couple of times where it was fairly flat and thought that I might be able to swing the car round far enough so that the front end would be pointing down the road after the swing off the road but no way. So I happily (?) reversed all the way back to the hamlet, sometimes between a ditch and a nasty drop off. Only took half an hour and all very exhilarating in a rather unexpected way. When I asked Dad why we had gone that way he said “Well, you were driving” You can’t really call your father a “duplicitous bastard” when he is that aged.
From then on things could only get worse.
I went and saw some friends in Ireland and the second-best sea-foam I have ever seen but that is not why I went. Gary has always had “a job” and now he doesn’t have one. That is life. I went to try and persuade him that you can make money to live without “a job” but by doing other things. We have lots of contacts in China willing to do things that make money for some or all of us, including Gary’s area of expertise. Could I persuade him? If you know Gary you don’t need an answer. If you don’t you will have guessed by now.
Things got worse. I had intended another foray to the North but I was too tired before the next thing – skiing. It may seem bizarre but the main thing that you miss living in a Chinese city in exercise – walking, skiing and golf in my case. Skiing is the most compact holiday of those three – ski all day and drink until 2.00 a.m. every night – you have to get up at 8.00 a.m. to be first out on the slopes. You never think about work – you are too busy concentrating on trying not to die or so busy celebrating surviving the day.
On the first lift I put my goggles down and the lens fell out of my glasses. Ah well it happens, you put it back but you are reminded that you normally ski in Contact Lenses – which I had forgotten. This event recurred.
Karel is not the man to go with if you want a gentle day out. He is a couple of years older than me, much fitter and a vastly better skier. However, he thinks he is still young and took up snowboarding 4 years ago so we should be OK despite the fact that I have not been skiing for three years. How stupid can you get? We get a flight at some ungodly hour of the morning, which means that we get half a days easy skiing when we get there. Ho Ho Ho. Towards the end of the afternoon we are heading off the mountain but end up on a black run. For the ignorant the grades are green, blue, red and black – no prizes for guessing the order. Now, in Italy, I can make a fair attempt at skiing black runs, this is not elegance personified as you may well have guessed, but I expect to get down them without falling over most times. This was France – where a black is a black, or f******g steep. Anyway walking back up the slope in ski boots is a definite no-no, so off you go. Boarders can just tilt backwards and scrape their way down the slope – just as Karel did. Skiers have to ski across, make a turn, ski back, make another turn etc. Even non-skiers will have realised that this means that you are pointing down the slope at some point in the turn. On most slopes this is OK, but a French black? Anyway I made a few but sure enough, at one point, I didn’t quite get round the turn and over I went. As an experienced faller on ski slopes this is not really a problem, the difference was that on this occasion I started gathering speed after I had fallen over – not the usual occurrence. Now that may not be such a problem if you knew what you were doing or where you are going. Tricky those two I found. The decision making process can also be a little suspect on these occasions. Of course, I come to a halt after 100 metres or so when the slope levels out a bit but, funnily enough, my confidence isn’t great after such an event. I walk to a lift, go down and go to the bar.
Can it get worse? Of course.
The following day I had left Karel to go down some silly black run at the end of the day. I took a long, slow green run off. However, I had noticed on the bus into the resort the day before that the black towards the bottom didn’t look too bad so I headed 30 metres off the green to pick up the last bit of the black. Ah! A sheet of ice. Hmm, perhaps not. Easy, take your skis off and walk back to the green. There were a few other people there who had obviously made the same mistake but didn’t have my powers of recovery. I had taken my skis off, turned to walk back when I slipped. Yes, again I went down a 100 metres at least gaining speed etc. Boring, boring, boring. Two differences were that I lost my skis and collected a girl.
An interesting experience, falling down a ski slope, completely disoriented, your head pointing in various random directions at any given moment, not knowing where you are going or what is going to happen next whilst you are apologising for being a complete pillock.
She stops, I don’t know how, a good 30 metres above me; I am about 20 metres directly above a huge stanchion for a lift and, no, I don’t want to think about it, thank you very much. So now I have to walk back up the slope (for non-skiers, this is no joke, it will take about 200 steps) sweating like the proverbial pig to apologise and then try and find my skis. Wonder of wonders, a beautiful blond appears with my skis and dismisses my behaviour as perfectly understandable; her friend is fine. I grovel for a bit and leave as quickly as decency allows (and no Sleazy, Sheepshagger etc. I did not get a phone number, even though I deserved to buy dinner for half the town).
So can things get worse? Of course.
The following day is a non-confidence day, I even manage to fall a long way down a blue run. However by Tuesday it is time I started showing a bit of form so I was determined to improve. It was snowing. A minor fall on an easy run meant that Karel was a couple of minutes in front of me. Another fall meant that the gap was growing and, after waiting a few minutes, he assumed that I had passed him and went up the lift. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. Skis are designed to come off when you fall over. However, this doesn’t always happen at low speeds and sure enough my left ski had not come off. Bit of a bugger when you do the splits. I knew that I was injured but if you have any sense of claustrophobia you do not want to come down in a body bag off a ski slope. Don’t get me wrong, these guys are brilliant skiers and you are laced in tightly so that they have control of the movement of the toboggan that you travel in with you interfering in no way and they will get down any slope, one in front to clear the route and another behind pulling the sledge with you in it.
Notice I said pulling the toboggan; that is that they are going at full skiing speed, often a lot faster than I would ski. Do I want to be in that thing? No. I put my skis back on and got to a lift, found Karel and went down. By the time I got to the doctor it hurt.
Straps, money, pills an exercise routine for a physiotherapist when I got back to England etc.
Yeh, yeh ,yeh So we went to see Bouncy. One of the great advantages of a skiing holiday in a chalet is that you meet fun people. (We have only had one experience when this did not happen). In this case it included a 21 year old who was a good skier (or so he said) and a better drinker. The latter I can testify too – it is the first time I have ever been outdrunk on a skiing trip – Ben was so drunk one night that the whole chalet woke up, not because of Ben falling over but my laughing at him. I have to say that, despite my injury, the only reason that Ben managed as much skiing as me in the whole week was because I drove him out on the last day, normally he had hangovers. The other really fun guy, Kev, was supposed to be boarding but always seemed to get back by about 3 in time to relax before the first of the, normally, two visits each the day to Bouncy. I was, of course, in the, outdoor, jacuzi or the, indoor, sauna most of the last three days. Life is tough when you are an injured skier.
So skiing could not be considered a great success. Back to England one day, Toronto the next and Havana on the third day.
Havana! Cuba has been on my list for 30 years and Castro’s accident last year made me realise that there was no putting it off. I am sure that when he dies the mighty dollar will win and the country will change very rapidly. In fact it already has. The collapse of the Soviet Union left Cuba deeply in the shit. Its main product has always been sugar and when the USA cut off imports in 1960 they were, how can I put it, fucked. The Soviet Union took up the slack pushing Cuba into an alliance that was stronger than they, Cuba, wanted and, largely, causing the crisis that this article is named after.
The USA, being the good liberals that they are, learnt nothing from this and have continued to try and repress Cuba ever since. I regard Castro as one of the great men of the twentieth century for withstanding this totally irrational intolerance from big brother.
The inability to sell their sugar was a big problem for Cuba in the early 90s and brought quite a lot of hardship. There solution was the classic Caribbean answer – tourism. This is now Cuba’s biggest business, overtaking sugar by the late nineties.
Havana is a beautiful city. I am sure it was probably even more so in the early part of the last century but many buildings have now been restored to their former, Spanish, glory. Not all, there are many rundown areas, but it is still a fabulous city to look at.
What else? Cuba is famous for beautiful girls and there are many of them. The problem is exactly that – they are girls. In many cases the onset of puberty is about a week before the onset of obesity – they eat too much sugar! An interesting fashion note here. In China, and other parts of the world, young women in uniform often wear something that looks like a skirt from the front but is actually a pair of shorts that you see from the back. In Cuba they have it somewhat differently. The school uniform in some schools is a pair of shorts with what can only be described as a rather thin loincloth over the top. Weird.
Music. Ah the music. Cuba is, of course, famous for the Buena Vista Social Club. You would never guess if you only go to restaurants. You get a trio singing three quick boring songs, always including “Guantanamera” (or however it is spelt) in ten minutes and then they pass the hat. Go to a decent bar. There they will play four or five songs and pass the hat and try and sell their CDs. I bought a couple of CDs but did not get CDs for the best two bands that I heard. These four or five songs will take close to an hour but the bands are fantastic. Take the tunefulness and lyrics of the BVSC and add driving drum rhythms that would put Africans to shame – fantastic. Find a bar that you like and go back, they change the acts each night and rotate them over three or four days.
I had arrived on a Friday afternoon so it was Monday morning before I saw the queues. The first one was at an electricity place – presumably to pay the bill but after that the queues were common. I never went to Eastern Europe in the Warsaw Pact days (in fact I still haven’t much) but I guess this was the face of communism that the western press used to always go on about. Cubans still get a basic ration issue but this is, apparently, barely minimal. To buy other things they often need Convertible Pesos, hence everyone wants to get hold of them so people who can rent out a room or two are comfortable – others may not be so. The stuff in shops was poor quality and little choice.
By this time my glasses had given up and the lower part that holds the lens in on the right hand side had broken. Cuba has, possibly, the best health system in the world. You don’t believe me? Read where some of the medical progress has come in recent years or about the export of doctors to underdeveloped countries. I was, however, disappointed that the posh specs shop that I tried could not fix my glasses so I bought some sellotape, did the necessary myself and could still read.
However, there is always a however, Cuba is competing in the luxurious Caribbean tourist market. Cheap it ain’t. Even though I was staying in people’s houses, a sort of B & B, this still cost 30 Convertible Pesos a night. This is easy to do and hotels cost at least double that. However, I was still spending 100 bucks a day. The local peso buys things cheap but you never get in to that market. Cuba set up the Convertible Peso as a dollar equivalent and you pay in that currency unless you stay for a while and can obtain the local currency – in 9 days I did not. Things in local currency cost 10% or less than in convertible currency. The illustrious president of the USA has upped the anti against Cuba and the Cubans responded so now you pay an 8% premium for using the US dollar i.e. the Convertible Peso (in Cuba, it is worthless outside) is worth more than a dollar. This includes credit cards and taking money from an ATM. So, despite the fact that credit cards issued in the US are not acceptable, you are charged the premium because the transaction is converted into USeless dollars. Take another currency in cash – lots of it – Euros, Pounds, Canadian or Aussie dollars, they probably even take Bhat.
This cost made me decide to go to a beach resort for a few days – particularly so that I could swim and strengthen my dodgy leg for the next part of the trip. The main attraction was the fixed price – 90 Convertible per day including all food and drink – yes booze. Well you know me. This was, of course, a mistake. I stayed in the hotel the first night and got thoroughly pissed with a Russian who I am pretty sure would not remember me. After that I had to go out and find bars with decent music so I spent more money. The swimming was also less than successful. I was in a tourist resort full of fat old people but it took me a good hour to find some fat bastard swimming shorts – perhaps this is indicative of the problems of supply. After that I did not swim – I do not like even slightly cold water!
The cars. It is true. There are a good number of small Japanese and French cars but also lots of the old American monstrosities – I went to the bus station in a 1928 something or other. There is something fascinating about watching somebody washing out a huge six cylinder engine block with water by the side of the road. They also have “eggs”. These are converted motorbikes with two wheels on the back, rather like a tuk-tuk in South-East Asia but they are yellow-orange and shaped like their name.
Cuba is a fascinating country – unlike anywhere else I have ever been. Go there soon. Just do it better than me – a few days in Havana and a few in Trinidad and a beach up the west end or a bit of walking (there are lots of big birds) would be much better.
Back to Toronto and then on to see Ian & Yvonne in western New York State for a weekend’s skiing.
One thing first. This was Toronto, where I packed the cigars I had bought whilst in Cuba in my ski boots hoping that they would avoid detection by the US customs machine. You are not allowed to take anything from Cuba into the USSA (perhaps I will leave that reference to the old USSR!) and any American who is caught having gone to Cuba is fined $7,500. I needn’t have worried – US customs and immigration are in Toronto and they want to get you on to the aircraft.
Those of you know who this couple in New York State will know about how they spend six months of the year living near a frozen lake and driving through metres high snow banks. Bullshit. I have a photograph that shows about 10 square centimetres of snow outside their house. The lake was full of waves. This was late January. Do not trust them.
It was fun though. The first night was going to see the local amateur musical show. Not quite the quality of Cuba although, to be fair, the brass band were pretty good. At this point, well actually in the pub afterwards, my glasses gave out and the top half of the right side also became detached from the rest of the frame. As you know my eyesight could give a mole a good run for its money so I was pretty keen on getting to an optician in the morning so where did we go first – wait for it – Walmarts! Impossible I thought. 18 bucks and half an hour later I come out with my lenses fitted into new (admittedly rather ugly) frames. All praise to Walmart.
That evening I & Y invited a couple round who we gradually realised that I had met on my previous visit 5 ½ years earlier. The lady is Russian and the guy is big and likes to be shrouded in mystery – wants you to think, that he was a spy - that type of stuff. Anyway conversation fell to hunting and he was asserting that hunters conserved the wildlife of America – the usual self-justifying bollocks that you get from these bloodthirsty types. My arguments were going quite well until I did an imitation of a hunter using a submachine gun to mow down the animals – rat-tat-tat-tat-tat - when my chair broke and I collapsed on the floor. Seemed to undermine my argument.
We went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, which was excellent. True to form we had tried to go to another museum first but it was closed for six months. This turned out to be a good thing because the R & R HoF needs several hours. 2 hours in most museums is enough for me but I would have been happy to stay there 6 or 7 hours.
The following day we went to a local pancake house with some other friends of Y & I (who I had also met before) for breakfast. Closed. After lunch we went back to their place with loads of beer and ended up watching The Superbowl. Pleasant although, surprise surprise, not a great game. But is that what I had gone round the world for?
Of course it snowed heavily all day so Ian had a bit of fun driving home. So we can ski after all. Not quite, it was Monday the following day and they were working and I was off to my next destination.
I am not allowed to tell you where that is except Northern California. Neil & Kuldip had got married in August 2000 and I hadn’t seen them since so what did I expect? They live in a three-story house with Kuldip’s brother – Paul. Pol, Pohl or something similar. Let me describe the bottom floor where I was staying. My bedroom was (and probably still is) big. That is to say the size of a large master bedroom in most houses, six sided of course. It had its own en-suite which, of course, I did not use. Next door was a shower –steam room combination with an overhead jet and normal shower head plus the steam, much better. When I got up fairly early the day after I arrived I used my personal laundry room to wash and dry my clothes. This I did because I could not see any deer out of my bedroom at the time – that came later.
The rest of that level was quite minimal. I walked out the corridor into the rather well equipped bar. Off that is
1. A bit of a junk room – bigger than most living rooms
2. A wine cellar with plenty of racking for a couple of thousand bottles, although there were definitely no more than 500 bottles there – I checked.
3. A cinema. There are only 8 seats – fully reclining leather naturally.
Yes, they have it tough. P has made lots of money and has decided that he wants to make films. Those of you who know Neil will guess the rest – this household is entirely dedicated to films. They watch films all day – short and long; if you go out to visit somewhere you are scouting for talent or locations; if you are sat at a computer you are checking out the opposition or looking for ideas; if you are (rarely) sat at a desk doing some real work you are phoning or emailing people about business. Everything. They have actually made some films but never got then to market – which they assured me would be profitable. Why? In my opinion it is because they have too much money to drive them. Odd isn’t it, Neil has never two happenies to rub together but they need a real kick up the arse to actually show that they can deliver what they aspire to.
As a confirmed anti-American (well politically) I have to say that northern California is beautiful. We went to Santa Cruz, Monterrey and Carmel (Clint was mayor if you remember) – lovely. But of course we were scouting for talent (lots) and locations – remember Neil, the haunted house just before you get to the city limit of Monterrey.
An evening in a Jacuzzi at Narita airport near Tokyo and then home.
P.S. An Irony
I had come home a few days early because I had a visitor. We went to Yunnan province – my 5th visit and did stuff that I had done before. We went to Lijiang where we sat around in the sun drinking and wandering round the lovely old town. I don’t really know Shelley that well but we had a great time, especially walking Tiger Leaping Gorge. I have walked this before but it is a wonderful walk, now apparently closed to foreigners because they want to build a damn. It is three kilometres deep and much steeper-sided than The Grand Canyon. I am not belittling the GC – it is spectacular – but so is TLG. We met some fine people – an Aussie student who was a perfect gentleman, an English cook who spends more than half of his time travelling the Silk Road and a German film producer. The mantle of incompetence was definitely passed on. Julia lost her pouch with her passport and money in it. She speaks competent Chinese and a few hours of frustration in the local police station caused her to get pissed off and abuse the local police. She had to go back sham-faced in the morning and grovel when an old lady handed everything in – and wouldn’t take any money. Shelley took over by leaving her cash card in an ATM. A bit of a bugger when she was due in Auckland in 4 days, having been to Manchester first.
It was, perhaps, the best bit of the whole trip.
P.P.S. I hung around in Guangzhou for a week, bored, so went to Thailand for a week before teaching started – but that is a different story.
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