Flashpackers

The Birthday Surprise

2007-07-01T22:34:00.000+09:30

Tim and I had been discussing the possibility of going to San Sebastian, the foodie heaven located in Northern Spain, ever since we saw the photos from Hassan (when we were in Mumbai).

So try to imagine my utter delight when Tim surprised me with a pre-organised holiday there for my birthday in January!!
He had even booked in holiday time with work with one of my managers (whom he had met at a pub 2 months prior), so on the Friday morning he serenades me with the line:
"Trace, you're not going into work today... cos we're going on holiday to San Sebastian for 4 days! Happy Birthday!" Music to my ears. :)
Even better news, was that we would be there for the annual San Sebastian Day festival! We couldn't wait.

Donostia-San Sebastian is in the middle of Basque country and is the Summer capital of Spain. Unfortunately, being January, it was freezing. We actually saw snow as we were leaving but I digress.
It's not the easiest town to reach... but Tim had organised flights to Biarritz, cab to Hendaye where we crossed into Spain to catch a train to San Sebastian. So by the time we arrived at our flash hotel, that comfy bed was very tempting... luckily we ventured out into the night.
The city's festival is the patron saint's day featuring parades and is on the 19th of January every year. The proceedings last for a full 24 hours, starting at midnight in the town square until midnight the following night. Very rarely does the festival fall on a Friday... but in 2007 it did. The whole town took advantage of that - and the Spanish know how to party!

As if the festival wasn't exciting enough, Tim and I had never been to Spain before and so had not had the chance to experience tapas. The Spanish ideal is to have a glass of wine or a small beer along with one tapas morsel in an establishment before heading off to the next place. You pay at the end for what you take, and each tapas costs between 1 to 5 Euro. Indecently cheap for what you get. We were absolutely in heaven!

Blissed out in a tapas bar.

Eating my nemesis... the sea urchin. Mmwa-ha-ha!!
Victory is mine ya little bastard!

Vino tinto & tapas porfavour!

Bread, roast red pepper, quails eggs and local jammon... marvellous!

The near deserted San Sebastian square at about 10pm on Friday night...
apparently it was once used as a bull ring.

Plate upon plate of glorious tapas... yes, those are piles of morrells
with two truffles the size of your fist resting on top.

The rammed square at midnight.

Time to get out of here!

The chefs drum on their whisky kegs...

They parade around the old quarter with
a followed by a full marching band.

This lovely old man was collecting kisses and handing out shots
of his whisky. I obviously don't need any more.

Tim in his element.

The San Sebastian coat of arms: a fork and spoon. Love it.

The Basilica of Santa Maria del Coro is dedicated to San Sebastian's
patron saint, and where the soldiers performed their routine.

These kind old men made a young pissed lady very happy, just by
giving her their festival hat. Bless. I'm so touched in this photo!

The next day we were extremely hung over but we just couldn't stay inside all day... the festival was still on! So we went back to the scene of the crime in the hunt for a cooked breakfast, and discovered that there were more parades with loud drums and trumpets. Perfect remedy for a hang over, I can tell you!

The best hangover photo ever taken. I remember feeling like seven
shades of shite at the exact moment this photo was taken.

Cooked breakie San Sebastian style: eggs, jammon ham & chips.

After breakfast and a bit more of a wander around town, we felt sufficiently better so we thought we should probably get back into the spirit of things and so headed to... an internet shop. Tim printed off some top tapas bar tips from a website he had been researching (www.todopintxos.com), and armed with where to go for the gourmet shit, we headed off into the night.

A typical tapas bar will have the ageing hams hanging from the ceiling.

This dish cost 3 euros. It's foie gras with apple jelly and it was
am-az-ing. Just amazing. Three euros!

This is the most tender and delicious stuffed squid with a tomato chutney
and it only cost 2.50 euros!

Crab pate in a pastry shell.

The hangover long forgotten, we're really having a lot of fun. :)

Anchovies marinated in garlic and oil... yum!

By the time my birthday actually rolled around, we had been living it up for two nights straight but of course, that was no reason to slow us down! So for lunch, we headed to another tapas bar and got to know the locals. :)

This tapas bar wasn't in any guides but it had a really nice vibe...

... and fabulous ham!

Happy Birthday to me!

We chatted with these two guys in broken Spanglish for hours, they
were great fun, and the guy in the grey top made a mean bloody mary.

Another amazing birthday - thank you Tim! :)

Slackpackers

2007-04-22T21:39:00.000+09:30

Well, its been a long time since we posted, so its about time I offered a catch up. We have been living in London now for just over 9 months, and we are loving it.

Well, mostly anyway.

We have been more like Slackpackers when it comes to updating this blog, so its time to post some more.........

Back to the Future

2006-09-25T00:39:00.000+09:30

Back to the future is what it felt like, landing in London.

Things working.... Electricity that is on for more than half the day.... No donkeys, cows, or other random animals.

We had a lot of great experiences in India, but I'm sad (I think) to say that one of the best of them was leaving the place... From my perspective at least.

Even leaving India is a difficult process. The main airport in Delhi doesn't have a massive volume of traffic, but none the less, it cant handle it, and has to run flights at all times of the day and night.
our flight was leaving at 6am.
not so bad I hear you say, but India being India you have to be at the airport 3 hours before your flight is leaving. And it takes an hour to get there from new Delhi.
2am. Not much point sleeping then.
we decided the best option was to just sit in a bar and drink the night away.

this resulted in two things, drunkenness (well... duhhh), and total honesty with the locals.

Now, I know I bitch lyrical about India on this blog, but understand, Indians are fiercely proud of their country and their culture, so we generally avoided telling the locals of our gripes, mostly anyway. The thing is that you get asked about your opinions on India a lot, the locals will stop you and ask you what you think of their country, with beaming expectant smiles on their faces. Its hard to let them down really.

so when a young Indian came and sat at our table (to chat up Traci), he coped it.
there was way to much conversation to go into, but here's a brief snippet.
"so how do you like my country"
"I don't, its a shit hole, well.... More of a shit pile really"
"so why did you come to India"
"no idea, I must have banged my head or something"
to Traci:
"so, what do you think of Indian men"
"I think Indian men show themselves for what they really are"
"yeah? What's that?"
"Arseholes. I hate them, they're pigs"

the funny thing is that he still thought he had a chance with Traci.
his honest belief was that white women were slags, and they all love Indian men - of course, that must be the reason that they come here - to have sex with Indian men.

So anyway, getting on that plane was a real relief. Even if it was disrupted by the terrorism scare in England.
even if we had to wait in the plane for an hour after landing.
none of this could matter. We weren't in India any more.
one positive thing I can say is that I am now a much more patient man.

We spoke to my Mum (Hi Mum :) ), and asked her to bring a salad to the airport for us, sounds weird but we wanted, no needed, one. Indians don't eat fresh things, and in our three months there neither had we.

lettuce has never tasted so good.

Yes Miss Moneypenny

2006-08-03T21:17:00.000+09:30

Or, rather, No Miss Moneypenny.

Udaipur, the setting for some of the Octopussy film, sucks.

Honestly, I cant even be arsed to bag it. It's too much hass.

So please just take the usual tirade and insert it here.

Anyway, at the time of writing, we are actually in London. We have been really slack with posting, which is partially due to us being over traveling - and especially over India.

So I will bring you up to date.

Jodhpur, the Blue City

2006-08-03T21:11:00.000+09:30

(check this post later for some added photos!)

Jodhpur is more what I expected India to be like: snaking alley ways, old mud brick houses painted various shades of blue or white, and of course, the ubiquitous cow wandering around eating cardboard.

We ended up spending about 4 days there in which we managed to pack in lots of nothing, and going to the fort. The fort is this massive, rambling creation set on top of the hill (as forts are), and was great fun to explore.. just not in the heat of the day! The fort also has a brilliant audio tour, complete with pompous Englishman narrator, which points out interesting features along a set path including the museum.

Generally, we were pretty disappointed with the food at most places we ate at in Jodhpur, however we did find a guest house/restaurant called Amar Niwas that was homely and acceptable. That sounds harsh doesn't it? We're getting tired of sauces on everything, so it's difficult to impress the flashpackers at the moment.
Give me a fresh salad that doesn't just consist of tomato/onion/capsicum, and I'll inhale it quicker than you can say, "do you want balsamic dressing with that?". Having said that, they did make us a superb goat curry that melted in our mouths (the little bugger was killed that morning for us), and their version of palak paneer (spinach and Indians' version of cheese) actually had discernible pieces of spinach in there, rather than the pureed green goop one usually gets served in restaurants.

The city really was a joy to walk around, we found the people to be really friendly - especially the kids. I think their English teacher at school must encourage them to go up to westeners and practice, because we found ourselves constantly talking to excitable kids about where we come from, what our names are, what our houses are made from, and do we have any pens/chocolates/rupees for them.

On The Up Side

2006-08-03T20:52:00.000+09:30

I feel that I should retract at least some of that last post. We have now traveled to Rajasthan, and we are both loving it. It can still be dirty and smelly, but it is so much better than Delhi.
And that, I guess, is the point. All of the things I said are 1000% accurate when talking about Delhi. It is the festering boil in the armpit of the Universe, but that doesn't necessarily apply to the rest of India.

The Bowel Movements Conversation

2006-07-28T17:31:00.000+09:30

Honestly, I'm getting pretty sick of India. It seems, a lot of the people I meet here feel the same - apart from all the hippy nuts and berries religion tourists that is.
Seriously, what is up with these people?
They come from all over the affluent parts of the globe, Europe, Australia, the US or wherever, and their itinerary will always include 'finding' themselves.
At home they wander around in suits, or jeans, or skirts, or what ever happens to be 'in'. At home they probably have no real interest in religion - Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism or any other ism you care to mention, but drop them in India and everything changes.

They do things like locking themselves in yogic retreats for 11 day stretches, places where you are not allowed to speak, listen to music, smoke, drink anything but water, or eat anything but dahl, rice and curd. They live in Ashrams for a week or two, a kind of one stop spiritual enema shop. They buy crystals, man. They wear Indian sadu clothing, or maybe novice monk robes. They may even shave their head.

They spout such bollocks as:
"Yeah man, its so spiritual, you know, you really get to know yourself. My chakras are glowing man, can you feel the energy? No? Hold this crystal, it will channel the energy to you man."
FlashPacker Translation:
"I paid a fortune to do something I could have easily done at home. In fact I could have done it anywhere! No special equipment required, all I have to do is do the world a favour and shut the f%$k up for 11 days and sit on my arse. I really am a dumb wanker, please kick me repeatedly in the head"

And:
"Yeah man, I'm so centered now. I've dealt with all this stuff. Thing is I didn't even know that it was bothering me until I went, but now man, I'm just so centered"
FlashPacker Translation:
"I got stung by a business baba, a money guru, a rupee sadu. He drew me in with a line like, 'I can feel from your aura that you have had a lot of hardship in your past, let me help you heal yourself. I feel that maybe you have had some unhappiness in your family'. Of course I've had hardships in your past - everyone has, but at least I don't have the hardship of carrying a heavy wallet around with me now."

And my favourite (this only comes from the females):
"Like wow, like, you know, my guru says that I am really in touch with my self. He says, like, I'm already a level 3, which is like amazing, because, like all the men starting were only level 1. He says that with a little personal tuition I could reach a level 4, or maybe even a level 5! He says that the quickest path to enlightenment is via tantra. We start a week long intensive tantra course tomorrow"
FlashPacker Translation:
"My guru says that he really wants to touch me, and I'm so vacuous that I buy into all his crap. This is what is known as being Royally F$#ked, as not only with I leave with a much lighter wallet, buy I might even get a few freebies. I hear that Ghonorea and Warts are on special this month. I might even win the grand prize - A Brand New Baby."

I say to you all: if you like it so much, why don't you give up your previous nationality? Marry an Indian? Stay forever?....... What's that? Oh, you'd miss your Playstation too much? Oh what a shame. You never know though, maybe Sony will release a "Yogic retreat: the mega crystal tantra odyssey" game, then you'll be set.

No please, I'm serious, stay forever. We don't want you and your patchuli stench around us.

And for anyone who hasn't been to India, I'm dead serious. People like this really do exist. They exist in droves.

Anyway, back to the title of this post. The Bowl Movements Conversation. Whenever travelers meet in India they inevitably get round to this conversation sooner or later: "Have you been sick much?" or something similar. This is because pretty much everyone gets sick at some point, or more likely at multiple points (unless of course, you're hippy nuts and berries patuli wearing chakra kid - then your crystal will protect you, and if you do get the squirts, this is just your crystal expunging your bad energy).
Why do all the travelers always get sick in India?
Well in a word, its because India is filthy, and understand me here, I don't mean just your run of the mill filthy, I mean FILTHY. There is more concentrated filth here than in New Scotland Yard. I honestly think it is the most filthy place in the world, if not the entire universe.
I saw a bin here the other day. I almost had a heart attack. It was empty though. I think the locals must have thought it was some wired new fangled art installation or something.
If you catch a train anywhere, you will notice that there aren't many bins on board. Indians prefer to just throw all their rubbish out of the window. The few bins that exist (one per carriage), are bottomless! The bottom of the bin is open. You put rubbish in the top, and it pushes the rubbish out of the bottom and onto the tracks.
The toilets on the train are pretty much the same as the bins. Straight onto the tracks. Amusingly, there is a sign in the toilet reading "Please try to not use at stations". Not "Do not, under any circumstances, use at stations". But then again why should it. It is perfectly acceptable to just drop your pants and take a crap pretty much anywhere you feel like here.

this is why people get sick when they visit India. You are touching, inhaling and ingesting concentrated human filth every second of the day, so if you do come, make sure you bring some crystals with you.

Sikh and Ye Shall Find

2006-07-20T17:49:00.000+09:30

Or: How Traci came to inflict her singing on and old Indian man, whilst on a crowded bus from Pathankot to Amritsar.
(Answer: he asked me)

Who could refuse a request from such a sweet old man with smiling eyes to "sing a song from your country"? I succumbed to the moment, and agreed to do something that would usually send me quivering into a corner with fear and shame.
The first song that came to my cowards' mind was the Australian national anthem (at least I knew the words), but when I started to sing, he stopped me abruptly by saying, "No, no... something with a tune. Sing something with a tune."
Embarrassed, I said to him that actually there is a tune to the national anthem, it's just that I have a terrible voice. Those of you who have been inflicted with my singing will know this to be true. But, he just smiled encouragingly at me, and waited, presumably thinking that I actually had it in me to sing some kind of aria that would invoke the beauty of my country and tell a story of it's victories and hardships in a range of melodic tones.
Unfortunately, the only other song that came to mind was Rolf Harris', 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' which I lamely sang two lines of. This of course convinced the old man that in fact I was tone deaf, and he didn't burden either of us again by asking me to sing another one.

It was a combination of having sat on buses for about 8 hours that day, and the hoard of rickshaw wallahs frothing at the mouth at the site of fresh blood, that made me want to walk the 2 ks to our hotel from the bus station.
Hotel Grace is recommended by the LP guide, and it's very close to the sole attraction of Amritsar, the Golden Temple, so we decided to hole up there. Hole being the appropriate word.
Our attached shower literally sent out three individual and ineffectual pin pricks of water when turned on at full bore, and there was also a disconcerting hole in one of the walls (facing the car park) that had been covered by a sheet of red felt into which someone had kindly poked some holes. Other than that, it was actually a very spacious room and it did have a TV, a large double bed and a working western style toilet. It would do for a couple of nights.

Next morning I was woken up to the sound of pigeons cooing on our window ledge, which has never happened to me before, and I'm sure I'll always associate it with Amritsar. More importantly however, today was the day when we would visit the Golden Temple, the most holiest of Sikh temples.

The Golden Temple.

Before entering the huge complex (which is surrounded by a high white marble wall and, oddly, looks more like a shopping complex with it's many permanent stalls than a holy site), you must take of your shoes and wash your feet and hands and cover your head. The Sikhs were prostrating at the temple entrance, and it was difficult not to be humbled by the sight of it all.

The Golden Temple is not only surrounded by high marble walls, but it's set in the middle of an immense square lake which you walk around in a clockwise direction to reach the temples' entrance. At the opposite end of the lake to the temple, we watch hundreds of people bathing in the holy waters, and as we continued walking around, we saw many more hundreds of people either praying or meditating in this peaceful environment. There was also a constant sound of Sikh Sufi music that emanated from a microphoned quintet inside the temple itself. It created a beautiful atmosphere for prayer or just to admire the amazing temple.

The Golden Temple situated on the man made lake and surrounded by high marble walls.

Despite this beautiful temple being the focus of prayer and beauty, we had no fewer than five photos taken of us in as many minutes, by some men who were presumably Hindus. I allowed four photos, until I realised that they were all taking turns to have their photo taken while standing next to me (so they can pretend that I was their girlfriend and brag about it to their mates later), so only Tim appeared in the last photo. Could they have picked a more inappropriate place to act like such disrespectful, immature wankers??

Anyway, once we finally reached the temple walkway (it's a looong walk around the lake), we joined the throng of people in reasonably orderly queues to wait for our turn to enter the Golden temple. The walkway was covered by a long marquee, and had several fans cooling us from above. To my eyes, it looked very much like an expensive and beautiful wedding marquee.
Once we finally reached the temple, we couldn't help but be awestruck by the lavish interior complete with a massive crystal chandelier. There was a fenced off section on the ground level where the Sufi band was playing, and where another Sikh man accepting the gifts from the never ending succession of worshipers.

The covered entrance to the Golden Temple.

We walked through the temple and up to the first floor and then we walked around the temple (in a clockwise directions of course). At the back of the temple, we paused at a sign that said, "please take a step back to drink the holy water". I was initially puzzled by the sign, until I saw all the people kneeling down to drink the water from the lake - the sign was merely asking them to make room for others whilst they drink the brown water. This is the same holy water that the people had been bathing in on the opposite side of the lake.
It's official then: cleanliness really isn't next to godliness.

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining

2006-07-14T17:27:00.000+09:30

After our Spitian trip, we felt we deserved to relax for a week or so. In this time we literally did nothing apart from play cards and eat lots of "western" food.

Eventually, we summoned the energy, and the will, to pry our bums off of the comfortable floor seating in our Old Manali guest house (and away from the ever cool-under-pressure, Pratha) and head to McCleod Ganj for a change of scenery.

This is highly ironic, as we really just moved from one lazy environment to a very similar one in Bhagsu (near McCleod Ganj). Our guest house restaurant even has floor cushions and a similarly helpful and friendly waiter as the one at Veer guest house in Manali. This one is a Pratha reincarnate called Ravi.

Days flew past. Did I mention that there's also an internet cafe AND a shop stocking all manner of goodies on site?

Then, out of the drizzly skies came salvation: a silversmith course! And it too is in the same complex as our guest house!

However, what started as a worthy distraction for a minimum of three days became a test of ones' spirit and determination, as the ability to file a precious metal and be able to tell the difference between 70, 90 and 96% silver became important.
We persisted, and have come up trumps with some lovely rings and a silver bangle for our trouble. Ben and Ellie got well stuck into it, and even went so far as to buy lots of different semi-precious stones to incorporate into their pieces.

Here are some action shots of the class:

Tim squished behind one of the working tables.

Completely absorbed in filing a ring.

Ben getting frustrated in the corner.

Our guru, Ravi, who has the patience of a saint and fixes your mistakes, but only once you've
adequately proved (i.e. after the third attempt) that you're really really bad at it.

The Amazing Spiti Valley Jeep Trip

2006-06-28T17:10:00.000+09:30

Who could resist? Six days of being driven through the beautiful Spiti valley by a very consciencious driver, getting taken to interesting buddhist monasteries and gompas along the way, and maybe the most important thing, getting out of Manali...

Possibly the best way to document this incredible journey that we shared with Jamie, Ben and Ellie is to show you a photo diary of each day, along with a little description. Enjoy.

Day One - Manali to Kaza

We set off bright and way too early from Manali on the 20th of June with loads and loads of snacks for our trip: crisps, masala twisties, 1.5 kilos of yaks' cheese and some crackers, about 6 litres of water each, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 bottle of whisky, and lots of mixers.

Our happy troupe consists of Ben, Ellie, Jamie, Tim and myself, with our capable driver Ramesh behind the wheel. Manali is in the Kullu valley, and to get to the Spiti valley, you need to go over two high passes: Rohtang pass (3970m) and Kunzum pass (4551m). We also drove past the Bara Shigri glacier - literally "big glacier" in Spitian dialect (that sounds like what Australians would call it, doesn't it?), which is the longest glacier in the world at 12km long.

The view along the Kullu valley.

We were held up by seas of goats and sheep along the way...

... and many, many trucks.

"Horn Please!"

We were seriously trying Ramesh's patience by constantly asking him to stop the car so we could take
photos of all the road signs (more examples at the end of this post for your enjoyment). The roads
were terribly maintained around the Rohtang pass... there was a lot of
inconvenience, but at least they apologised for it.

A common sight on the Rohtang pass: Indian families driving up there to see snow for the very first time, then
they build shrines out of snow and have snow ball fights, then they eat grilled corn on the cob (and throw
the cob out the window onto the snow).

Tim with a mixture of clean and dirty snow as the backdrop on the Rohtang pass.

Photo opportunity on the other side of the Rohtang pass.

The Kunzum pass is far enough away from Manali to be peaceful.

Me in front of the gompa on top of the Kunzum pass. Ramesh took a silk scarf from this site
for good luck... he assures us it's not stealing.

The view above one of the two food stall at Batal.

From the balcony at our guest house in Kaza.

Day Two - Ki Monastery and Kibber Village (stay in Kaza)

On our second day we set off from Kaza on a day trip to Ki and Kibber one person short, as poor Ellie was suffering from altitude sickness and could hardly stand.

The first stop was Ki monastery (4,116m), which is the repository of rare Thangka paintings and texts. The new hall was occupied by several chanting monks so we couldn't enter, but another monk kindly opened up the old part of the monastery for us, and even served us some chai. This section of the monastery had recently been blessed by the Dalai Lama on it's 1,000th year of operation.

Kibber has the slightly subdued title of the 'highest permanently inhabited village in the world... with a motorable road... and electricity'. At 4205m above sea level, it is bloody high, and we found it difficult walking up the hilly paths. All the houses looked very Tibetan with their thick, white washed mud brick walls.

The Spiti river cuts through the valley and completely fills the flood plain at the right time of year...

... it looked beautiful whilst we were there.

Ki monastery, perched on top of a small hill, is often featured on postcards for the Spiti valley.

A close up view of Ki monastery.

One of the many beautiful teaching paintings in the outer foyer of Ki monastery. A monk briefly explained
that it's a story about respecting your elders (in this instance, the duck).

Kibber village with their Tibetan-style houses was great fun to walk around, albiet very slowly.

The houses were grouped together on the side of a hill.

The view from half way up Kibber village... we couldn't make it up the whole way due to the altitude.

One of the many prayer flags waving in the breeze in Kibber village.

Day Three - Langza and Comik monastery (stay in Kaza)

On our third day, Ellie was still feeling under the weather and this time Ben stayed back in Kaza with her, whilst Jamie, Tim and I ventured out on a day trip to Langza and Comik.

The drive to Langza provided some spectacular scenery of the surrounding mountain ranges in all their glory. Langza itself was a very small village and had a hill-top Buddha over-looking the amazing scenery. There were also lots of incredibly ancient fossils to be found in the area... we even found some fossilised sea shells at over four thousand metres! If we found it difficult to walk around in Kibber, it was almost prohibitively so in Langza, and we had to pause for breathe ever couple of metres ascent.

Comik monastery is just a short distance from Langza and is home to another very old monastery (for men only) which we visited. Bizarrely, it was home to a stuffed snow leopard which hung macarbly in the monastery doorway. The friendly monks served us some chai and gave us each a red or yellow blessed string to wear around our wrists.

Beautiful Langza village with the snow dusted mountains as a backdrop.

The village was difficult to walk around due to the altitude... even on relatively flat ground. The difference
between this and the previous photograph is me pausing to catch my breath.

The hill-top Buddha over looks Langza.

The houses in Langza were also built in the simple Tibetan style.

We loved driving through the beautiful mountains.

Two of the friendly monks outside Comik monastery.

The tiny village of Comik.

Day Four - Kungri monastery and Dhankar monastery
(stay in Tabo)

The whole troupe left Kaza early on this morning to head down the Pin valley to see the Kungri monastery (built in 1330 AD). Kungri monastery has some beautiful and vivid buddhist teaching paintings inside the new monastery section, and part of the complex is devoted to early schooling for young children from the area. Whilst we were at Kungri, the children were in the middle of an English lesson and we spent about half an hour talking with them and generally disrupting the lesson.

On the way back down the Pin valley, we stopped off at a rickety wooden bridge that crosses the Pin river, so we could experience just how cold the water actually was.

After coming out of the Pin valley, we hung a right down the Spiti valley again and headed towards Dhankar. Dhankar monastery (3890m) is set on top of a ridge and used to be a castle of the Spiti ruler, Nano. It's now the repository of buddhist scriptures but is rarely visited compared to Ki, even though it has an arguably much more dramatic setting.

The scenery along the Pin valley was very dramatic.

An adorable little donkey walking along the road. I love their fuzzy disproportionately large heads.

The Pin river freezes over in winter and most of the Pin valley will be blanketed by ice and snow.

The new section of Kungri monastery with it's beautiful interior paintings.

Ellie testing out the freezing water. None of us brought our bathers unfortunately.

The Pin valley is supposed to be home to many Siberian Ibex and some Snow Leopards.
We didn't see any, but we weren't that disappointed... or that surprised.

The very rickety wooden bridge. Mental note: don't try and cross a rope bridge when someone
else is already walking on it. Very scary.

Approaching Dhankar village and monastery.

It's position on the ridge line is perfect for it's previous incarnations as a
fort and a castle.

Dhankar with it's incredible background of mountains.

The village of Dhankar is spread out below the monastery. Ben wants to live here... I can see why.

The view from the top of the monastery.

Protecting omens supporting the prayer flags.

A rare opportunity where we were able to take photos inside the monastery. This is the often seen
buddhist painting of the cycle of life. 'Om mani padme hum' - may all sentient beings be happy.
The snake, bird and pig in the inner circle represent characteristics that one has to give up to achieve enlightenment.

Jamie with an offering.

The monks use these masks as part of their ceremonial dances.

The ancient buddhist texts are carefully stored in these boxes at Dhankar.

Day Five - Tabo monastery to Losar (stay in Losar)

Tabo monastery is over one thousand years old (built in 996 AD) and is a UNESCO world heritage site due to it's exquisite wall paintings. It's the largest monastic complex in Spiti valley, with the old section comprising of nine temples, chortens, a monks chamber and a nuns chamber. When we arrived, a monk gave us a tour of the complex (in a clockwise direction, of course) none of which we could take photos of.

That night we stayed in Losar and watched some of the World Cup. This is also when we found out that Australia had got through to the next round - yay!

Giving the Hull from England a run for it's money is this version we drove through in
the Spiti valley. This man went on to babble something in Spitian dialect to us, which
Ramesh translated as, "everything is possible".

We all found this sign hilarious... much to Ramesh's confusion. Tim later explained it to him.

The chortens at the Tabo monastery were covered with rocks engraved with the buddhist
prayer, om mani padme hum.

Day Six - Losar to Manali via Chandertal Lake

Our last day of the jeep trip was mainly spent driving back to Manali, although we did stop off at Chandertal lake. At over 4,000m it's one of the highest lakes in the world, and Ben wanted to fish in it. I left the camera in the car, so we don't have any photos unfortunately.

Instead I thought I would include all the photos of crazy road signs we saw leading up to the Rohtang pass. It reminded me of the Australian equivalent, "Drink drive: bloody idiot".

Head for the Hills

2006-06-15T19:31:00.000+09:30

There are worse places to have to spend a week or two than Mumbai.

The Flashpackers guide lists the worst places to have to spend a week or two as Delhi, Cleethorps and the inside of an elephants arse (in that order).

Given this, we weren't too bothered about the prospect of hanging around to sort out our travel arrangements and get our camera fixed (its had a hard life), figuring on a day or two to fix the camera and about two weeks to get train tickets.
Amazingly we managed to book the whole of our next leg of travel in one day, in fact it took less than one hour. We did it al in one building, all at the same counter - the first one we had walked up to.
This feat of concentrated organisation didn't go unnoticed though, the helpful official was noticed by a spy from the union of useless workers (India's largest union), beaten to death (unefficiently) and replaced by a broken stapler.

The upshot of this is that we had tickets out of there, we were heading for the hills, the one and only place to be during this season (metres of rain in the south and 50 degree temperatures on the plains).

We passed through Shimla, the old summer capital of India during the British Raj, and headed on to Manali, the summer capital of the Traveler Raj.

This is basically why this blog has been so silent for so long. Manali is a chilled out place, a very very chilled out place. A chillumed out place in fact, and its infectious.

Neither Traci or I smoke weed, hash, charas or any other dope deriditive, but pretty much everyone else in Manali does. And there is a lot of weed in Manali. A LOT of weed. Its not just that you can buy it everywhere (the hotel we were staying in will deliver it to your room and put it on your bill), it IS everywhere. 90% of the plants at the side of the road, in gardens, and covering hillsides are weed plants. If you were to pick it all, and roll it into joints, I'm pretty sure that there would be enough to get all of Australia simultaneously stoned..... For a week or two at least.

So after months on the road were happy to move in to a place. Actually take the stuff out of our backpacks for a change. Well we did this in spades.

We came, we watched the world cup, learnt some new card games and ate lots of deserts (due to all the stoned people, the locals have perfected all manner of tasty chocolatey goodies). Before you know it nearly two weeks have slid past.

666... The Number of The Beast

2006-06-06T22:30:00.000+09:30

Today seems like an appropriate day to let you all officially know that we're ignoring the risks and... we're eating meat in India.

Crazy, I know... but us foodies will NOT restrict ourselves to vegetarian if it means that we're going to miss out on some fabulous dish!! Hell no!

We at flashpackers assumed we would never be eating meat in India, to try and delay the inevitable squirts, but we found ourselves going straight for the "non-veg" section of the menu everytime. Now, it's come to the point where I will refuse to go into 'pure veg' restaurants... at least give me the choice!

As Hasan so sagely put, "Life's too short for sh*t food". Here, here!

Granted, if you're vegetarian, India's the place to visit (as opposed to China, where they consider chicken a type of vegetable)... it has a very varied and delicious selection of 'veg only' dishes.

However, I have 2 words for those considering avoiding meat: Achari Kebab (tandoor chicken that has been marinated in mango chutney). A dish surely sent from the heaven... it starts off sweet, and then the spicey chutney backnotes kick in.

I can go on: anything from the tandoor; Pork Vindaloo; Chicken Xacutti; Prawn Masala; Chicken Jazeez; Mutton Rogan Josh... the list goes on and on.

Yum!

Why People Complain About Travel In India

2006-06-02T19:00:00.000+09:30

We are finally in Mumbai now (arrived last night) but it was a long time coming. We were trying to get our damn tickets for the 31/5 for three days leading up to it... it's a long and painful story.

After Tim spent hours trying to register onto the official train site and then trying to buy tickets (it's completely useless, and so is the help desk) we discovered that you can only book from that site if you are a resident of India. The good thing - we could see that there was availability on a sleeper train from Thivim station (our closest station) to Mumbai on the 31st of May. The problem is that the travel agent in Vagator cannot book tourist quota tickets for the train, just regular tickets that the locals can buy.

The next day, we hired a motorbike and went to Thivim station under threatening skies, but after lining up for an hour, we discovered that we couldn't buy the tickets there. Apparently you can only buy them from the departure station (Margao, about 35ks south as the crow flies), not the boarding station - bastards.

So we drove in the pouring rain straight to Calangute to try and find another booking agency that may be able to obtain tourist quota tickets so that we wouldn't have to ride all the way down to Margao in the rain. We're soaked to the bone by this point. The guy from Moon Tours said he could, but it was too late that day, we had to come back the next morning before 10am - fine.

The next morning, it was of course still bucketing down and we were running late, so we called the manager of the store on his mobile at 9.45am to ask if the 'boy' had left for the station yet, and he said "No, he hasn't but you have to hurry, he has lots of tickets to buy and I don't know how long I can delay him for."
Tim put in a super human effort, and we arrived there at 10.05am... I jumped off the back of the bike and raced inside only to find the store closed (security gate rolled down and everything). Fortunately, we recognised an employee that was waiting out the front of the shop from the day before, and she told us that the 'boy' had already left for the station... at 9.30am!! Lying bastards!!
Tim called the manager on his mobile and told him what a useless a-hole he was for 5 minutes, which made us both feel slightly better, but now time was running out because the tickets we wanted were for the following night and we were really starting to panic.

We then spent the next 3 hours in Calangute, going from travel agent to travel agent (in the rain) trying to see if they could buy tourist quota tickets. [NB: you cannot do this by the way... anyone who says they can is lying.] There was also a power cut due to said rain, so even the places that said they could do it (which they couldn't), needed a photocopy of our passport (which of course you need electricity for) or alternatively, wanted to charge us a huge fee each. All in all, a horrible pain in the arse.

Eventually, we caught a local bus into Panajim and then another local bus into Margao and then a rickshaw into the train station... and got our tickets in five minutes! Woo hoo!
It doesn't end there unfortunately.

So Wednesday night rolls around, we catch a bus into Mapusa and then another one to Thivim station... we're about half an hour early for our blessed train... just in case. We're waiting on the platform and we kept hearing all these announcements on the loud-speaker in Hindi but didn't think too much of it. Eventually, we asked an India girl whether there was any news about our train, and she helpfully told us that it was running late. OK, no worries, so we went and sat back down for about another 3/4 of an hour. I thought I better go ask the train master when it would actually be arriving... good thing I did, because the bloody train was running 12 HOURS late!! He told us to come back the next day at 6am.
F*%k.

So we're stuck at Thivim station (which is not exactly the tourist hub of Goa)... it's dark, and the only close accommodation was charging 400 rs per night (bastards)!! We decided to catch a bus into Mapusa and stay there instead, so we hopped on an absolutely packed bus and had to put our bags in the front cage section where the driver and a couple of old guys were sitting... no problem as we did that on the way in. However, when we got off at Mapusa, we found that someone had kindly rifled through Tim's daypack (which had our ipod and both passports in there as well as a couple of hundred Aussie dollars), but thankfully nothing was taken.
We didn't know that at the time, and both screamed at the bus driver and I took his license plate number and said I'd be making a formal complaint... this made us feel a bit better. ;)

We found a hotel (309 rs), had a nice meal with a couple of surprisingly cold beers and tumbled into bed at about 10pm knowing that we have to get up at 4.45am to get the taxi that we've booked for 5am the next morning (150 rs). I know, I know. It would have worked out cheaper to stay 20 metres away from the train station and pay the higher room rate.
There's more...

We get to Thivim station half an hour before the train arrives, and we're told that it will actually be getting here at 7am (bastards!!) - the confusion was that it will leave Margao station at 6am, not arrive at Thivim at that time.
So finally, we get on the train (at 7.30am) and have a bit of a kip for a couple of hours etc etc. We even ate some train food which hasn't even made us sick... yet!. But instead of our train taking 12 hours it took us 18 hours to get to Mumbai. Bastards!!

One really good thing was that we met this great guy called Hasan who gets to travel the world for work (he's a photographic artist and Assistant Professor at a New York university... he works on various projects all over the world and is even going to show some work at the Tate Modern in October! Respect!), so he's very interesting to talk to.

Thank god we're out of Vagator!! We were horribly bored.

I can see why so many people complain about travel in India.

Palolem Beach

2006-05-28T17:38:00.000+09:30

After dropping Chris off at the airport, Tim and I picked up Carol and Emily from Jackie's Day n' Nite, and we all headed down south to Palolem beach, full of anticipation (it's supposed to be lovely).
Tim had to drive the loan car the whole way (I was not confident enough to drive in India!), but we found that the traffic wasn't too bad at all... being a Sunday, and it was a very scenic drive with lots of beautiful buildings etc.

Me and Emily in the back seat, listening to the Rolling Stones.

A Goan girl out the front of a little church in Mapusa.

Indian guys in the back of a well decorated truck... horn OK please!

When we arrived, there was much oohh-ing and aahh-ing coming from the backseat as Emily and I pressed our noses to the window... "look at the beach! look at the shops! look at the restaurants!". I think we all knew that we were going to stay longer than our pre-arranged 2.5 days.

The great thing about arriving somewhere on the edge of the season in India (and this is particularly true for Goa), is that it's much less hectic, generally cheaper but you can still get a good sense of the "vibe" of the place.

For Palolem beach that meant: fisherman pulling in their nets and fishing boats; Indian women in their saris wading in the water; little kids playing cricket; dogs defending their territory; and people congregating in the beach front restaurants.

Palolem is a lovely beach, and we all had a very relaxing time there. :)

Me, Emily and Carol on Palolem beach.
Tim modeling my new scarves.
The inviting ocean...
The beach dogs were very freindly and very territorial.
Everyone's got to have a cheesy photo like this...
Sunset, walking back to our hut on the beach.

Looking back at Palolem beach from the point.

One morning, we felt like a bit of pampering, and so we headed down to the Intercontinental Hotel to see how the other half lived... very, very well it would seem. Carol, Emily, Tim and I sat pool-side with a cold drink in our hands admiring the grounds. Our bill for two cocktails and two sodas (plus a bottle of mineral water) came to over 1,000 rupees!! Not for those on a budget, clearly.

Tim and Carol (his mum), pool side, at the Intercontinental.

Emily and I (foreground), with Carol (background), at the Intercontinental... darling.

Vagator

2006-05-25T19:36:00.000+09:30

Chris, Traci and I finally arrived in Goa at about 5pm having spent several lifetimes sitting on a day train from Mumbai.
It was a dangerous train ride, sitting opposite us was India's Wobblyest Headed Man, and we were convinced that at any moment his head would finally succeed in doing what it had been trying to do for all of its 45 odd years - Detach its self from its body. For what reason it wanted to do this we were unsure, but it could only have been driven by evil. None of us wanted to be there to find out.

We left the train station and headed straight to Vagator beach, famous as a party spot since the sixties.
The village itself has a very Portuguese feel; little chapels everywhere, and large hacienda style houses made of red stone with sprawling verandas. The beach is beautiful, ringed by palm trees, and surrounded by a small cliff, on top of which is a club (one of the many).

An old portugese colonial house

During the high season the place would be absolutely heaving; people everywhere, all night parties in the clubs and impromptu raves on the beaches (only problem with this being the music: Psy Trance and other similar crap).
We were arriving at the very tail end of the season, and everything was already starting to wind down or close up shop completely. Not that we were going to let this stop us.

Little Vagator beach

First things being first, we headed straight out for a beer at the nine bar which, despite the crap trance, was an excellent club. Sat on top of a cliff with great views of the sunset, walls made of large red stone blocks that seem so popular here, a sand dance floor and tasteful decor (not a UV glow spider web in sight). I was bloody impressed... I could see that it was going to be a good week :)
All the little things that pissed us off about the Thai party scene were not a problem in Goa. There was hardly any litter, and there wasn't that unfinished feel to everything (like buildings with half a wall missing, even though they have been there 10 years, stuff like that). Anyone who has been to both places will know what I mean, all three of us had the same feeling.

The view from the 9 Bar, Little Vagator

Friends on the beach

"Fu*k Koh Pha Ngang" was uttered more than a few times.

The only problem was that the season was finishing. Restaurants, Guest Houses, Bars and Clubs were starting to shut for the season, all the good DJ's had gone home.

We spent a couple of days kicking around, drinking beers on the beach and generally winding down (for Chris a much to short get away from work, and for us, leaving India with out actually leaving it).

And then we wound right back up again...

Fear and Loathing..... Papadam Style.

We had run out of beer one night, some time around 11. The nine bar was closed. What were we to do?
Walk to Anjuna we thought... It's not that far, next town south along the beach. There's beer there for sure.
In the end we only got about a tenth of the way.

While climbing down to little Vagator beach we bumped into a bunch of Indian guys hanging out on the porch of their flash hotel room:
"Hi, Hello, where are you going?" asked one of them,
"Just off to get some beer" I said.
"Beer? No everything is closed" the guy replied "We have beer, come, sit, we will get some more.... we will send for the boy" (a phrase we would come to hear a lot)

Although hesitant at first, we thought why not? and he clearly did have beer :)

And so we met Suria, a rich Indian industrialist who was in Goa to party for a couple of weeks, but had no one to party with.
As soon as we sat down the other Indian guys left, they had basically been keeping Suria company, and we were the shift change!

Suria put us all to shame. Although he was ten years older than the oldest of our group he had been partying for eight days when we met him, and showed no signs of slowing down..... no wonder those other Indian guys slipped off so quick after we arrived!

We spent the next four days hanging around with him in his plush hotel room overlooking the beach. He would not accept a single rupee for anything, despite our protests, but we came to realise that this is perhaps the norm for him - being absolutely loaded meant that he basically bought what ever he wanted, and he wanted some party mates for a few days, so who were we to ruin his holiday!

I remember little of those four days.
I'm pretty sure we had a good time though, and all the photographic evidence certainly suggests we did.

Chris and Jemeela, who was staying at our guesthouse

Mumbai Madness

2006-05-23T18:05:00.000+09:30

Our train ground to a halt in Mumbai, and we were quite relieved to find that it was several degrees cooler than Rajasthan, but unfortunately we were both still suffering from Delhi belly. We argued with the touts about which dingy shite hole was better to stay in than the other ad-nausium, until we spotted a German girl who had found a cheap and comparably clean shite hole further up the road. So having finally found a place to spend a minimal amount of time in, we had a day to have a look around Mumbai and get our bearings before our mate Chris arrived from Japan.

Amazingly, in the space of just a day and a half, Tim and I were asked several times if we wanted to be paid for doing a couple of hours work. Tim was asked if he wanted to be in a TV commercial (not sure what for), and I was asked if I wanted to be in a Bollywood movie wedding scene and be a model for something or other. It would have been an awesome experience, but because we had to pick Chris up from the airport we had to turn them all down... we would have made some rupees from it too! Damn it. Next time we're back in Mumbai, we'll have to get an agent darling.

The whole picking-Chris-up-from-the-airport thing was a fiasco from the beginning. We should have realised this when the first taxi we caught to Mumbai airport overheated and broke down about a third of the way there. After transferring to another taxi we were on our way again (even though we had to fight to keep to the already agreed price), and in the end, Chris' plane was on time and he was is good spirits.
That is until we were allocated the most useless taxi driver this side of the Arabian Sea to take us from the airport to Colaba (the main tourist area). He had no idea where he was going and didn't speak any English... but at least he stopped and asked directions from other taxi drivers. Annoyingly, he would only drive further 800m before stopping to ask another taxi driver for more directions. At least the cab hadn't broken down.
After the taxi ride taking an extra hour and a half longer than it was supposed to due to us stopping all the bloody time, the unthinkable happened... we broke down... in the middle of a major intersection. We had to get out and push the damn taxi to a "safer" spot... still in the middle of the intersection, but somewhat out of the way. What better introduction to India can you get?

After finally arriving back at our flea bitten palace, Tim and Chris went out for a celebratory beer... Tim came back 4,000 rupees poorer and completely shite faced at three in the morning... telling me all about his eventful night. It started with warm beer (with 8% strength) at one bar, included some horrifically expensive drinks at the Taj Hotel (with the most attentive minion in the men's toilets imaginable... apparently he did everything but shake 'it' for them), and finished with a taxi driver tricking them into going into the depths of hell for more warm beer in the middle of nowhere. I'm sorry I missed it. :)

As a major Indian city, Mumbai is better than most (read: Delhi)... she has a really vibrant pulse with a rich street life and the local people are entertaining, whilst the faded Victorian architecture is beautiful and surrounded by tropical greenery... but as Chris was only with us for a week, we booked a day train to Goa the next day.
(mental note: 12 hour day trains suck arse.)

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

2006-05-11T02:10:00.000+09:30

Yep, we have finally made it.
India.
The land of music and film that's so cheesy its almost stilton.
The land where everyone's head is attached very, very loosely.
The land where every fart is like a box of chocolates (you never know what you're going to get, but in this heat there is every chance it will be brown and runny).
India.

I have been wanting to come to this place for years and years, but it just seemed to get put off again and again.
This trip was supposed to be six to ten months traveling India, with a few weeks stop over in Thailand.
That stop over turned into six months in South East Asia and China.
India was put off again.
But we are finally here... and is it a let down after such a build up I hear you say?
Pigs arse is it! We love it.

There is one thing that is less than perfect though, the heat. Due to us arriving 5 months later than we expected to we are here for the middle of the Indian summer.
There's a phrase to describe people who travel India during the summer; "Mad Dogs and Englishmen". There is something in that phrase... not sure what exactly, but something.
Something along the lines of "ITS TOO BLOODY HOT YOU DICK HEAD".

We at FlashPackers are made of somewhat sterner stuff however, and aren't about to let a little bit of heat stop us. Are we?
Besides, were from Adelaide, it gets pretty bloody hot there too. Mid forties during the summer some times, so surely we can handle an Indian summer. Can't we?

The plan is to head out of Delhi for Mumbai and the coastal south beyond, stopping off along the way in the Rajasthani desert for a quick taste of Bundi
(a small place, rarely visited because it is old, dry and well past its glory days - when its wet though, its apparently glorious).

Should be doable.

When it gets too hot we can always retreat to the comforting, welcoming arms of a icey cold beer, just like back home on the farm..........
Except most of India has a pretty serious religious exception to beer (which is about as far from FlashPackerism as you can get).
(Nice name for a pub that, "The Welcoming Arms", must remember that one)

Ok, no beer, that's still doable. We can always find a pool somewhere surely?
Nope. Not much of a chance there. Not many pools - unless you count "pools" with more turd than water as a pool.

And there's no bloody beaches - its a bloody desert mate.

Even hot and dry, Bundi was beautiful. Unfortunately, with the temperature in the shade hovering around 49 degrees, lack of beer, pools or beaches, even us FlashPackers were not able to fully enjoy it. We spent a few nights in a beautiful old Haveli (old house) and had to move on for Mumbai.

At night the old palace is lit up. This is the view from our Haveli roof

The same view during the day

The gateway to the old quater of the town. It was all pretty old if you ask me!
Too hot for cows

Thank you, Come again.

Kanchanaburi... But Not For Long... and then Back to Bangers Again.

2006-04-29T18:06:00.000+09:30

We arrived in Kanchanaburi on Wednesday afternoon, and after seeing how damn hot it was, ignored our recommended hotel and went straight to the only guest house in town that has a pool: Little Creek. What a stroke of genius that was!
This place is awesome. The little bungalows even had an African theme and, while none of us had been to Africa and so wouldn't know, we all decided that it was spot on. Kay, the owner of the resort, was a champion (and regaled us with funny stories and plied us with alcohol) and he actually designed all the bungalows and surrounds. Did I mention that he made his name in the restaurant business? The food was fabulous - it even had a proper wood oven pizza and real cheese. We were in heaven!

On Thursday we decided to hire a couple of bikes and drive to some of the destinations around Kanchanaburi, but we thought it would all come to nothing when we could only find one chopper look-a-like bike (and not two). Fortunately, it was only 1,000 baht to hire a car for the day - a much better idea.

Our first stop was the Erawan falls. We spent a couple of hours swimming in most of the seven different levels of Erawan falls - all of which are full of these fish that nibble on your feet/hands/back/arms... whatever you leave floating still for too long. It's quite disconcerting. On level 5, Bol and Tim joined in with the young Thai kids and slid down this massive boulder into the cool green water below. If only I hadn't been in a string bikini I might have followed them.
Apparently, there are a bunch of cheeky monkeys at level 7, but alas, we had to leave for our second stop... the tiger temple!

Tim and Bol after sliding down the rocks in the Erawan Falls.

A beautiful peacock on the grounds of the Tiger Temple.

This tiger temple is run by some monks who, as the booklet would have you believe, one day decided to start looking after tigers. They've been charging 300 baht per person ever since. We did get to do the unthinkable however: pat some live tigers! It was quite an odd feeling... you know they're a dangerous animal, but they're so used to human company that they really don't mind. When we were there they were a bit restless as it had just been raining, and as this helps cool them down they get more active and so wanted to go and play. Since they're chained up, this is impossible, although the monks did have to bring some of the tigers in line by hitting them with sticks and slapping their faces. How very zen. Even though I do feel somewhat jaded by that experience, at least I can say I patted a tiger! Unfortunately, we don't have any photos of that, only video footage... you'll have to wait a while for them.

That night, back at Little Creek, we had another sumptuous dinner of pizza and beer (hey, when you find a wood oven you have to make the most of it) which ended up with Aussie frogs, samsong buckets and live music (thanks Adam and Pete!). Excellent.

On Friday, needless to say, Tim and I were ready for a big day of sweet FA... or maybe we could join in with all the stuff that Bol and Em had planned. Just in case, we thought we would call the Indian embassy (who have been processing our visa request for a week by this point) to see if we could pick up our visas on Monday (instead of Friday like they asked us to)... so that we would have more time to do bugger all. This was the response: "No madam, if the delivery day is Friday then please be picking it up on the Friday. Goodbye". This thoughtful man I spoke to neglected to mention that, despite the particular section of the embassy closing at 1630, you have to drop your passports in at the embassy between the hours of 1200 and 1300.... and not to just rock up and expect to receive them at any old time. "No, no, no. You drop your passports in, sir, and then you can pick them up with your new Indian visa between the hours of 1530 and 1630". I guess we're waiting until Monday.
Just to be on the safe side, we moved our flights back to Wednesday night. Who knows what he might say next: "I'm sorry sir, but did you not see that small sign behind my desk saying that you must wear the colours of the Indian flag when picking up your visa? Please be coming back tomorrow in the appropriate attire".

So we had to say good bye to Bol and Em (at least for a little while) and go back to Bangkok to sort everything out. It wasn't so bad though... we got to meet up with some more of our newly made friends in Bangers and finally go and visit the Golden Buddha!

Tim fiddling with Neil's computer. Apparently, one fine day, Neil is going to
leave Sri-Auyatthia guest house (and Thailand) and go and see something.
We at flashpackers find this unlikely, and are pretty sure that the next time
we go to Bangkok, Neil will still be sitting in the same chair. ;)

Neil getting ready to get up and move... oh, false alarm.

The famed Golden Buddha.

The beautiful scerene face of said Buddha...

... and the intricately decorated feet.

One of the frescos on the wall surrounding the massive Buddha.

Me and the gorgeous Philiy.

Tommy and Philiy holding the bunch of lotus flowers. A jeweller by
trade, but Tommy also taught us how to fold the petals into this lovely creation.

Lia, the champion from Adelaide, who almost didn't make it past day 1 in Bangkok.
(mental note: don't get involved with any gambling schemes... they're all in on it!!)

Friends, Songkran and the Island Life

2006-04-25T18:39:00.000+09:30

After much anticipation, Bol and Em finally arrived in Bangkok!! They copped a massive taxi bill from the airport to Tavee guest house, but apart from that, they arrived happy and safe. We showed them around Bangkok for their first day taking almost every form of transport possible on the way into Khao San and into the city: river taxi, sky train, tuk tuk, metro and taxi... all we needed to complete the set was one of the public buses!
That night we went to see Bol's cousin Chris and his lovely wife Moo Dang who were exceedingly generous to us all. Moo Dang cooked the BEST red duck curry EVER and Chris pulled out all the stops with some delicious red wine from SA. He had a surprise up his sleeve as well: one ice cold bottle of Coopers Pale Ale. Oh my god... you should have seen our reactions, well, specifically Tim and I. We literally fell backwards in total shock. Bol very kindly let us have it as he realised that we were starved of the best beer in the world for the past five and a half months. We were all well and truly spoilt.

Bangkok is a great place, but we were all looking forward to a bit of R & R on the islands (hey, traveling is tough!), so after booking two rooms at Harmony on Koh Pha Nhang and organising our bus/catamaran tickets we were off!
Harmony Beach Club is another place where we feel at home, and we quickly got back into our usual routine of trying to drink the guest house dry. The first night we were there, Harmony had put together a massive bbq with all sorts of delights for 300 baht per head. Of particular note was their calamari rings... mmm so tender.

Songkran is the Thai New Year and is traditionally celebrated by trickling water over loved ones shoulders and head to bring them good luck, and by putting a bit of talcum powder on their cheeks to show respect for the dead. Of course, with time, this has turned into an all out water fight which, in some areas of Thailand, lasts for days. We decided to head into the main town of Hadd Rin to experience the festival, but we ended up hiding in bars to avoid getting soaked by dirty water. My particular favourite is the super soaker charged water stream in the eyes.

In total, we spent just over a week on Koh Pha Nhang, and a couple of days on Koh Tao. We spent some of those days hiring motor bikes and going to different beaches around the island of Pha Nhang. It was Em's first time on the back of a bike, and she loved it... until we hired a trail bike that is. On Koh Tao, we snorkeled with sharks in Shark Bay (funny that) and Tim and I went on a couple of scuba dives, both were excellent fun.
Em, Bol and I stuffing around on a beach in Koh Pha Nhang.
A beautiful rocky cove in Koh Pha Nhang.
Em and I went mental over the cutest dog ever... it's a pom and pekenese mix called Bim bim. It was difficult to be around it, it was that cute. I don't know how the owners got along with their day... see for yourself.
Me and Bim-bim... he's so god-damned cute it hurts.
Unfortunately, we had to high tail it back to Bangkok so Tim and I could apply for our Indian visas... I would have loved to spend more time on Koh Tao!! Believe it or not, "thank you, come again" is a phrase we've heard a lot over the past week, as we have had to go into the embassy about 4 times.
At least we'll get to go to Kanchanaburi...

Back to Bangers

2006-04-06T18:29:00.000+09:30

What more to say, other than the title.
While sitting in a guesthouse in Kunming working out our next leg of travel, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Maccau, Bangkok, we realised that basically, we couldn't be arsed to travel such a long way in a short space of time. We had also seen a sign in the guesthouse advertising cheap flights to Bangers, and after adding up the cost of the Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Maccau, Bangkok option we realised that it would be cheaper to fly from Kunming. Even given the fact we would have to forfeit the flight we had booked from Maccau.

"Bollocks to it, can't be arsed" we both said, and booked a flight for the next day.

A lot of interesting things happened in the time we were in Bangers, including the rescuing of an Aussie girl from the clutches of an illegal gambling syndicate, but as I said previously: can't be arsed. Maybe ill write about it later, but its sunny out side, and other assorted excuses.

Ooh Ah Shangri-La

2006-04-01T16:03:00.000+10:30

After walking to the eastern end of the gorge, our plan was to take the less used northern road to Zhongdian, via the limestone terraces at Baishutai.
Chinas southern province of Yunnan is very mountainous, especially this part of it, and because of this its quite sparsely populated. This is the southern tip of the Himalayas, with peaks ranging in height from about 3800m to 5700m, getting higher and higher the further north you travel. Zhongdian, in the far north of Yunnan, is the start of the Tibetan world, with the border being only 150k's to the north. The majority of the population are ethnically Tibetan, and have held onto their own language and traditions despite the onslaught of the Han Chinese.

When I walked the gorge four years ago, there was only a dirt track leading down to Daju, the town of at the eastern end of the gorge, but now there's a tarmac road leading all the way through to Zhongdian. For us this was perfect as it made for easy travel, but it is such a new route that it isn't in any guidebooks yet :)
Without doubt, the bus ride from Daju to Zhongdian was one of the best we have been on. The road repeatedly wound its way up mountain sides, through passes, and back down again into villages nestled on hillsides.
At the top of the passes we were sometimes at the snowline, surrounded by grey and white peaks, while the bottom of the valleys were almost subtropical, in between the two the climate and vegetation changed at almost every bend.

This green fairy floss lichen stuff hung from every tree on the higher passes

We reached Baishutai around 5pm, and with only a couple of hours until sunset we set off immediately to see the limestone terraces, which are just behind the village on a hillside.

Its always hard for us to know if were going to like tourist attractions like Baishutai's limestone terraces, as there's never much in guidebooks about out of the way places like that, and the tourist information literature is always biased. The LP will have one paragraph saying something like "The terraces are easily accessible from the village, are X years old, and cost 30RMB to get in", the tourist literature will say something like "Come and marvel at natures wonderful gifts at the amazing Baishutai.... etc etc", and after the Lugu Hu episode we were a bit wary.

Fortunately, we did marvel at natures wonderful gifts at the amazing Baishutai.

The terraces look like they were ordinary rice terraces once upon a time, but a mountain spring rich in dissolved calcium at some point started running over them and caked them in lime. The result is truly stunning. Unfortunately we didn't take that many pictures, but we did take plenty of video, so we can get some from that later.

The whole place was like a fairy grotto, with impossible ancient looking trees, twisted, gnarled and stunted, often covered with moss and lichen.

The locals believe that if a woman drinks from the spring she will become pregnant.... With a population of 1.3 billion, you wouldn't imagine that the Chinese would need any lessons in reproductive biology, but there you go, apparently there is no need for men any more, just drink from the spring.
Needless to say, I kept a pretty close eye on Traci, just in case she felt the need for a drink!

I wasn't going to write about the following episode, but enough time has passed for me to get over my wounded ego :)
On the way back out of the park I noticed a very inviting looking highly polished, steeply sloped concrete wall..... Of course, I couldn't let it pass..... I had to slide down it, despite Traci's all too valid protests of "that's a bloody stupid idea". All went well until I gathered a lot of speed and had to jump off the end. One badly twisted ankle, probable broken rib, and bruised ego later I had to admit that it probably was a stupid idea. Fortunately, Traci captured the whole thing on video for posterity.

As we drove further north, the villages started to change, gradually showing more and more Tibetan influence. As we came over the last mountain pass, we dropped down into a large grassland plateau dotted with Tibetan villages, gompas, and herds of yaks.

They use these racks to dry things, anything from hay to yaks skins

A typical Tibetan house

Tibetan architecture is a little bizarre to look at, houses have sloping walls about 50cm thick which are coated with mud and painted white. I suppose it would be pretty good to have half metre walls in the Himalayas though!

We arrived in Zhongdian around lunch time, and after dropping our bags at our hotel and putting on nearly every item of clothing we had (yup, it was bloody freezing.... literally) we set off to explore the town.
Zhongdian is a weird place to say the least. We wandered around a food market among hanging Yak carcasses, Yak heads, Yak feet, and Yak skin blankets (Yaks are bloody huge by the way, and Yak meat tastes excellent). We drooled at the amazing variety of mushrooms they have in that region (fresh shitake mushrooms for about AUD 50c a kilo.... A KILO!!!!), and generally did a good job of working up an appetite in preparation of our first Tibetan meal.
Having now tried quite a lot of Tibetan dishes, I think the best way to describe them is coronary inducing. I'm not sure which ethnicity has the highest rate of heart disease, but I'll bet the house on the fact that which ever one can claim that title can only do so because the Tibetans haven't been tested. This can be the only explanation.
One morning we were treated to a typical Tibetan breakfast: Yaks butter, fried in Yaks cheese (I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be Yaks cheese fried in Yaks butter, but that's not the way it looked); Tibetan crispy pork with chilly (the fattiest bits of pork belly, fried in.... yes you guessed it, Yaks butter) and to wash it down there was a large pot of Tibetan tea. To make Tibetan tea, you take a large pile of Yaks butter, dilute it (very slightly) with Yaks milk then add tea and spices. FOR BREAKFAST FOR GODS SAKE. It took us nearly an hour to recover from that.

The highlight of our visit to the Tibetan world was definitely visiting the gompa (Tibetan for monastery), a little way out of the town.
I'm not usually very interested in places like that, being a militant atheist, but this place was very different. The second we stepped into the grounds we were debating whether we should extend our stay, just so we could spend more time there. Unfortunately photography isn't allowed in the monastry, so we only have a few pics.

The side view of the monastery

It was an incredibly calming place to be, which is something to be cherished when traveling through China. We didn't get past the courtyard for the first hour, we just sat watching and listening to the monks debating, chanting, and philosophising.
The younger monks sat around an older one, and by the looks of it, the younger ones posed questions or arguments to him, which he dutifully answered. On getting an answer, the younger monks would chant in the low guttural tones that Tibetan Buddhists do and roll beads through their hands.
Being up high in the mountains with nothing but the squalks of birds, chanting monks and chiming bells is a great experience. We just sat and soaked it up.

A chicken, reflecting on the life of Buddha described in the fresco

part of the monastery complex

Tibetan is much prettier to look at than Chinese

The view from the monastery courtyard

In the end, half a day was enough at the gompa and we made our way back to town, just in time to catch our bus back to Lijiang.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

2006-03-30T15:36:00.000+10:30

Tim and I delayed our trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge by a day or so, so we could spend an extra day with our mates Tess and Andy who we have been travelling on and off with since we left Vietnam.

However, when the day finally arrived, we were perplexed. If the entrance fee to get into the TLG was 50 yuan, how on earth could Mama drive you to the gorge AND get you inside for only 40 yuan?? I won't divulge, but it's ingeniously simple and just another example of how Mama takes care of her guests.

So after waiting as long as possible to get over our colds (thanks again for that one Andy!!), Tim and I set off for the gorge on a Sunday, along with another Aussie guy called Gene. We sneakily arrived at the start of the gorge trek at about 2pm and set off under clear blue skies.

Tiger Leaping Gorge is breath taking, in both senses of the word. The Jade Dragon Mountain backdrop is just beautiful (when it's not shrouded by clouds), and with the Yangtze surging along below us, it's a pretty difficult combination to beat.
We decided to (really) take our time with the hike, and do it over three days. This meant that for the first day we only walked for 2.5 hours, which in turn meant that there was plenty of time for food and beer at our first stop, the Naxi Family guesthouse. The room was pretty basic (and we didn't even try to use the showers once we heard what everyone else had to say about them), but the owners were lovely, and we had a great time chatting with all the other people who were doing the trek over dinner.

On our second day, Tim and I set off under threatening skies, ready for the most challenging part of the trek - the infamous '28 bends' (probably closer to 40). These bends in the path lead you up the mountain a further 1200 metres in elevation over about 4k's before leveling out for the rest of the time.
Having said that, I enjoyed the second days' trek much more, even though it took us about six and a half hours. It might have been because we had enough time to get a bit of a rhythym going... who can say.

That night we stayed at the Halfway guest house (which isn't), along with several other elderly couples we met previously at the Naxi Family guest house (I told you we set a blistering pace). For four years, Tim has been telling everyone about these incredible toilets, and even went so far as to tell other trekkers along the way to hold on until they reached Halfway. I think in the re-telling over all this time, the long drop became thousands of metres, the view down the valley became longer and grander, and I somehow always pictured western style toilets. So, I was not without some disappointment when I resurfaced from said loo, especially since I had been eyeing off bushes along the path for the last 2 hours. Granted, the view was still spectacular, but some things are probably better left unsaid.

One of the other things Tim remembered that drew us to this guest house was the warm family reception that he and Christa received last time. Unfortunately, this had also changed, as one of the cute little kids from four years ago had now turned into an annoying teenager that was rude to everyone there. After some words to the owner, and a free (and awkward) meal with the family, everything was apples again. I think the Chinese woman who translated parts of Tim's outburst got a free room for the night for her troubles, which she was embarrassed about. We have since heard from other backpackers that did the trek through the gorge, that most were unimpressed with the attitude they got from the other guesthouses aswell, so it wasn't just the Halfway house.

The next day of the trek was always going to be the easiest as it was either at the same level, or down hill... yay! We had to walk over a massive waterfall that covered the path at one point, and I was glad for the fact that there had been very little rain there recently. This last part of the gorge trek only took three hours and we even managed to over-take some people. Granted they were about 70 years old and had bad knees, but it made us feel good just the same.

It's such a shame that this beautiful gorge is going to be damned up... apparently they will start the first stage next month! The water level will rise another 400 metres and change the landscape forever, so I for one am very glad that I have seen it in it's original glory.

The scenery throughout the gorge trek was varied and stunning.

First stop: Naxi Family Guest house... a lovely stop.

Tackling the "28 bends" on day two.

Direct translation: watch out!

Tim on the trail on day two... it's a long way down!

Me with the Jade Dragon mountains in the background.

Unlike most farmers, this one's a stunner.

A typical little stone village along the trail.

Relaxing at the end of the trek.

Lijiang and Mama's

2006-03-30T15:27:00.000+10:30

We arrived in lovely Lijiang on Tuesday the 22nd of March, just in time to extend our China visas which expired the next day (phew!).

Lijiang's old town is very picturesque, with beautiful old buildings and little streams criss-crossing the paths and running along beside the houses. However, every single shop in the old town sells either tourist crap, clothes, shoes or it's a restaurant... and it's choking with Chinese tour groups! It's really funny seeing all the tour guides walk along with their flags held high, and a gaggle of Chinese tourists obediently following behind, wearing their matching baseball caps. At night, they all converge on bar street (which Tim assures me, was NOT there four years ago) and have singing competitions with each other from one side of the street to the other... absolute chaos, but fun to watch!

Lijiang is criss crossed by rivers filled with gold fish.

The cobbled lanes of Lijiang with their tourist crap.

An unbeatable combination of cherry blossoms and Chinese lanterns.

A good a place as any to get down to the serious business of Chinese checkers.

We had several recommendations from travellers in Chengdu to stay in Mama's guesthouse when we get to Lijiang (one guy even went so far as to call it the best guesthouse in China!). They were full of praise about how awesome and cheap it was, and when they spoke about Mama, their eye glazed over as they retold how much she fed you and how sweet she was.

The only trick now is... how do we find it?! Mama's guesthouse is hidden away in a quiet corner of the old town, but thankfully she provides a great service where you can call Mama from anywhere in Lijiang and she will come and get you.

After a half-baked attempt to find the guesthouse on our own (via a warm beer), I was lucky enough to make the call to Mama (who endearingly, refers to herself in the third person). This is basically how the conversation went:

Me: "Ni hao?"
Mama: "Hello?"
Me: "Hello, we have just arrived in Lijiang, and we would like to stay with you."
Mama: "Hello?"
Me: "Yes, hello?"
Mama: "Hello? Mama here"
Me: "Hello Mama. Where is your guesthouse?"
Mama: "Mama.... where are you?"
(oh good, we're getting somewhere)
Me: "OK, we are near Misu Misu bar in the old town."
Mama: "Hello?"
Me: "Yes, hello? Can you hear me?"
Mama: "Police come there"
Me: "What?"
Mama: "Hello?"
Me: "What?"
Mama: "Police come get you"
Me: "Police?"
Mama: "Hello?"
(at this point, Tim was giving me this 'what's happening' look, and I gave him a 'I have no idea' look in return)
Mama: "Hello? Mama come get you!"
Me: "OK! OK, we will wait here."
Mama: "Hello? Police wait there." Then she hung up the phone.

Not one minute later though, she called back and spoke to the owners of the store that we were calling from, and they gave the phone back to me.
Me: "Ni hau"
Mama: "Hello?"
Me: "Hello Mama"
Mama: "One moment police"
Me: "OK" Then she hung up the phone. At least she knew where we were now.

Before I knew it, the store owners were passing the phone back to me again... it was Mama.
Me: "Hello?"
Mama: "Hello? One moment police, Mama come get you"
Me: "OK, we wait here"
Mama: "One moment police"

So, being pretty positive that Mama knew where we were now, we went into the bar for another beer while we waited. I spotted Mama in the crowd instantly... we even waved at each other through the bar window. She is an elderly Chinese woman with a warm face and a ready smile, and she bustled into the bar with one of her daughters/helpers and tried to take our 18 kilo bags off us.

As she was leading us through the maze of laneways, Mama asked us where we were from, then proclaimed that "now Mama have four Audalia's"... which I'm guessing meant that there were already another couple of Aussies at her guesthouse. After storing our bags in our room, Mama took Tim and I by the elbows and lead us to a table with four other travellers already seated and eating dinner. Pointing to one of the couples, and then at us, Mama proclaimed, "Two Audalia, two Audalia... four Audalia's" and sat us down. Bless her, she wanted us to sit next to someone that we had something in common with.

If that wasn't the nicest introduction to a new town I've ever had, we then found out why people's eyes really glazed over... dinner at Mama's. For 8 kwai per head (not per dish), Mama will feed you until you explode with such a variety of tasty dishes my mouth is salivating as I write this. And she won't stop either... not even if you say you're full (this means nothing to Mama), she will only stop when there are at least 3 untouched dishes of food on the table. Breakfast is very similar. It only cost 2 kwai for the thick bread, fried egg and sliced tomato feast, which of course she keeps adding to until you plead with her to stop... and then she'll give you another portion of sliced tomato. If you don't escape from Mama's domain in time for afternoon tea, Mama will feed you more food (usually a banana and a piece of bread with tomato) and tea for free. We watched one Israeli guy tell Mama he didn't want any banana, and Mama wouldn't listen... she wouldn't have a bar of it, and forced it onto him ("Eat!"). Bless her.

At night, Tim and I would sit up drinking cheap beer with the other guests at Mama's - it has such a great vibe there. And of course, it's always entertaining to hear Mama have an almost identical struggle with the English language over the phone to some other helpless traveller trying to find her.

It truly is the best guesthouse in China, and it's made our stay in Lijiang so enjoyable that we hardly notice how touristy it is. The best thing about it... it's not in the LP guide. :)

"Way...?"

No way dude

2006-03-30T14:36:00.000+10:30

If you haven't seen the film "Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure", or its sequel what ever it was called, then this post may be lost on you, but hey, at least you missed out on watching a shitty film!
When Chinese people answer the phone they pick up and say "Way", and they often use this phrase through out their conversation. Its kind of like "hello" mixed with "ah ha" mixed with "hmmm".

The up shot of this is that you often hear people saying "Way...... Way..... Way..... Way..... Way". The first time I heard this I was almost in tears, it sounds exactly like they have just received a call from Bill or Ted:

Way
No way dude
Way
No way dude
Way
Dude, no way
Way
Totally dude

Ripped Off and Jaded in Naxi-land

2006-03-19T17:18:00.000+10:30

How horribly wrong the LP can be... especially in China.

For starters, it couldn't be done. If we wanted to go from Chengdu via Lugu Hu lake on the way to Lijiang, we would have to take all provisions, a tent and a sleeping bag... but then Lugu Hu is very sleepy and practically untouched. No one told that to the hundreds of Chinese tourists, and no one at the bus station got the memo either.

We caught an over night train from Chengdu to Xichang, got straight onto a bus, and arrived at Lugu Hu without starving or sleeping in the wild. Then we paid 80 yuan each (about AUD$16!!) to get into the bloody lake. This better be good.

No, no it wasn't. All the taxis at Lugu Hu town were price fixed to 20 yuan per person to go about 5 k's around the lake to the 'sleepy' little town of Lige... this was annoying right from the start as the 8 hour bus ride from Xichang to Lugu Hu was only 67 yuan each. To make matters worse, the taxi driver drove like a freaking maniac on the loose gravel, winding mountain roads (I think he actually sped up for the hair-pin corners), and when we pleaded with him to slow down he literally turned around in his seat to look at us and cackled like a mad man. Finally, he pulled over at a look out and got out of the car. We thought he was kindly stopping for us to a) kick him in the balls, or b) take a photo. No... apparently the car couldn't make it all the way down to Lige as it was too dangerous (Hello? Slow down!), but we can walk down this steep embankment here through all the nettle bushes, and walk the remaining 800 metres to the guesthouse... that's what all the tourists do!

The 'sleepy town' of Lige may well have been this way 4 years ago (although we seriously doubt this), but it was now a mass construction site of bland wooden "old Naxi" houses.

OK, where here now, what can we do? Well, we could get one of the Naxi women to row us in a little boat around the cove (not the lake mind you) for 10 yuan per person which would take about 20 minutes. Or we could pay 150 yuan to go to one of the islands in the middle. Or we can join in with a traditional Naxi dance for 10 yuan per person. Traditional Naxi dance my ass... they played a tape of their songs on the boom box, walked around in a circle with the gullable Chinese tourists... and checked their mobiles.

Lugu Hu wasn't even that pretty. The surrounding mountains had red soil and sparce vegetation, so for us it looked very much like Australia (not a bad thing, but we've seen it before... for free), but I can understand that for the Chinese tourists it's very different.

The one great thing about Lugu Hu was the company. We met a little ball of energy and enthusiasm called Jing, and she made our time there a lot more bearable. The other good thing about the whole Lugu Hu fiasco (apart from leaving it the next day), was the thought that we didn't wait until we had already arrived in Lijiang before taking a full 9 hours to get up there and find it was shit.

[NB: when we arrived in Lijiang, we found a 2003 edition of the Rough Guide which detailed exactly the situation in Lugu Hu, and if we had read that we wouldn't have bothered.]