NZ - South Island with Jamie

Getting on the road Jamie and I headed inland towards Lake Tekapo. It was a stunning day and we were able to watch the mountains slowly growing as we made our approach. The lake itself was yet another perfect glacial display, so intense in colour, so inviting against the backdrop of snow topped mountains and in the foreground a collection of pink, purple and yellow lupin flowers, picture perfect! We drove up Mount John nearby to an observatory and cafe, a very windy cafe and enjoyed panoramic views of the valley. Further on we stayed the night at one of Jamie’s favourite old haunts, Buscot Station, a large sheep and cow farm whose owner, Tony, began taking in backpackers after the loss of his wife. Tony is a well travelled man and loves nothing more than to blether away with all his guests and he takes an interest in everybody. This time we were just transiting through as we headed to Queenstown to make our final preparations for walking the Routeburn Track over the weekend.

The Routeburn Track is one of New Zealand’s ‘Great Walks’ and ideally takes 3 fairly leisurely days to cover it’s 32kms. There are campsites and huts to stay at along the way, all run by the Dept of Conservation and the huts provide basic beds and gas cookers, so we must carry our bedding, food, cooking implements and clothing for all weathers. The track is not a loop and therefore transport is needed to complete it, we opted to have our rental car relocated for us so that we could drive to the start of the track and then have the car waiting for us at the other end.  The people who provide this service are clearly very keen on fitness and the outdoors and in order for them to fulfil their duties the couple are often seen running along the rugged mountain track in all weathers, a route they can complete in 3.5-4 hours, making the rest of us feel pretty lazy!

The Routeburn Track

Day 1 - We started the trek from Glenorchy which is beautifully placed near Paradise! Along at the North end of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by enormous mountains which all had a fresh dusting of snow from the previous days chilly weather, it’s a stunning place to park your car and head off into the relative wilderness, with the assistance of a well laid path and some huts to sleep in along the way, I am using the term wilderness a little loosely! Up into the trees we tramped, crossing rivers and passing small waterfalls, one of the rivers had a group of canyoners wet-suited up and sliding down the rocks of a waterfall. This was an easy climb of around 1500 feet taking less than 4 hours to reach the first hut, the Falls Hut which was our home for the night. Despite being a lovely sunny day we were chilled through while sitting in the hut for a couple of hours so we decided to make the most of the sun and climbed a few hundred feet further to a lookout point above the hut. From here we had a beautiful view of the hanging valley below us and the surrounding mountains towering over us. The weather forecast for the following day indicated a *severe weather warning* for high winds and heavy rain coming in the afternoon so all residents were advised to be up and out early to avoid the worst of the weather.

Day 2 - Jamie and I were a little leisurely; we were nearly the last to leave the hut at around 8am, so far the weather was holding up and while we’d packed carefully for the impending doom of torrential rain and we set off optimistically in our nice weather clothes. Today’s trek was to involve about 2hours of climbing up 600-700ft to get to the saddle of the hill where we enter a new valley and skirt around the steep mountainside above the tree line for about 2-3 hours before dropping down around 750ft through the shelter of the trees to the next hut. This means that the best view is at the saddle as you move from Mount Aspiring National Park in to Fiordland National Park and that the following couple of hours are very exposed, so strong winds would not be enjoyable. I really don’t enjoy walking in waterproof clothes, less so when it’s uphill, so we motored to the top of the hill, overtaking most of the other people on the way and completed that section in an hour without much difficulty. Approaching the Harris saddle we passed the small Harris Lake which is nestled nicely at the top and got a glimpse into the next valley which was slowly filling with low lying clouds. We skirted our way along the mountainside, over rivers and small waterfalls, grateful to have the chilly wind behind us as the people walking towards us passed by with chilly red noses and cheeks. The views were cracking, a great valley, full of trees, glimpses of the river running along the bottom when the clouds occasionally cleared; we seemed to stay just ahead of an incoming mass of mist which was slowly creeping in along the glen. Eventually we reached the top of the valley which is home to Lake Mackenzie and our next hut. We dropped down into the shelter of the trees and as we neared the bottom the rain began to drizzle down, our timing was not far from perfect, although it meant reaching our destination before mid day. We had little to do for the rest of the day but sit indoors watching the lashing rain and feeling sorry for the people who continued to arrive at various points throughout the day, soaked through. This hut was chilly but someone soon got the fire going and with cups of tea and games of cards we happily whiled away the hours.

That night the resident ranger gave us a talk about various aspects of his job, a legend in this area, Clive has been working this part for around 26 years and returns every summer to take up his post. He entertained us no end, a very funny man he told many stories and had the whole hut (capacity of 50 people) in hysterics. He also added pieces of natural interest, for example, the only flowers growing up that high are white, something that I had noted along the walk. The reason for this is apparently that not butterflies or bees live up there only moths and they pollinate white flowers!

Day 3 - After a short lie-in we got moving and headed out of the Routeburn Track. The day started with a short uphill out of the lake area and then skirted along the mountainside for a couple of hours. The weather was calm and nice so it was an easy trek, the biggest excitement coming in the form of the Earlman waterfall, the biggest waterfall on the track which can be rather large if there has been any rain, in which case there is an alternative route to avoid walking through the downpour of the falls. Having carried our wet-weather gear with us for all this time, Jamie and I decided maybe it was time to use it, so we opted to continue the trek via the waterfall. It was a proper soaking!! We got wet to the skin in seconds, but it was a thrill at the same time, it seems to be perfectly fine to get sodden wet if you choose to do so. We still had plenty walking time to dry off, during which time we were romanced by some Kia’s that were swooping around us and playing in the trees. Towards the end we could hear the sounds of the nearby road with traffic flow and soon enough we popped out of the forest and in to the car park where our car was waiting for us. We’ve reached the end of a fantastic 3-day adventure, what a wonderful walk through some incredible scenery in an amazing country!

We were so close to Milford Sound it seemed silly not to take the drive out there, experience that fantastic drive once more. At the end of it Jamie took a cruise around the sound while I relaxed my feet and read some more of my book. We drove back through the valley and the Homer Tunnel and stayed the night in Te Anau. Jamie got a fishing licence and I chilled out for the next day and we ended up staying there a second night too.

After Te Anau we headed back inland to Mount Cook Village, 55km from the highway this place is tucked away nicely in the mountains. From our accommodation we had stunning mountains views which included the Huddleton Glacier clinging to the side of a steep mountain. We walked up fairly close to the glacier and watched it for a while. Being accompanied by my science boffin brother we had to watch it quite a lot but it paid off as we got to see some activity in the form of either icefall or avalanche, it’s hard to tell which from afar.

We took a walk up the valley towards Mount Cook or Aoraki as it’s known in Maori, there’s a lovely valley walk which takes us past the glaciers and over some suspension bridges and pops out at the end of the Hooker glacier. From here we have a great view of Mt Cook’s lower peak which towers high above all the other mountains and is completely white on top. It looks as though there are several overhanging sections of snow high up on the mountain which would look incredible falling down at some point. At the bottom of the glacier is a small lake with some icebergs floating around, there is a lot of glacial moraine and some of it stacks high in the form of gravel/rock hills and cliffs which is quite dangerous as rock falls may occur at any point. Despite the signs warning of this one tourist thought it a good idea to climb the rock hill, sending pebbles hurtling down over the path that people were taking at their own peril. Not content with just climbing the rock hill he then thought it was a great idea to pick up a large rock and send it over the side, bouncing down the hill, loosening other rocks to follow and creating a new rockfall which then had to cross the path that people were walking along below, no need to point out the stupidity of some people on this planet!

Our next walk took us to the glacial lake at the end of the Tasman glacier, here there are boat tours available to visit the icebergs floating around and get to the edge of the glacier. We sat at the viewing point for well over an hour taking in the sights and enjoying the serenity of the place, the mountains we are surrounded by encapsulate your mind and draw you in to another place where your imagination can take liberties. We left Aoraki Village in order for Jamie to take in some more fishing, during which time we stayed with a familiar face at Buscot Station. Once the fishing was completed we headed back up the road to the East Coast. It was sad to say goodbye to the mountains of the West side but I am sure that the East coast has new adventures in store.

Having driven past Christchurch we wound our way up through the hills to reach the peninsula beyond the city and spend a couple of nights in the small French village of Akaroa. A cute wee seaside town Akaroa has a very calm atmosphere, it’s very pleasant to stroll around the colonial buildings and the aurrounding scenery involves water and hills, two of my favourites! Here we celebrated my 34^th birthday with a couple of beers and a few games of cards; don’t even try to tell me that age is boring me! But Akaroa was the end of the line for our adventures together, Jamie dropped me in Christchurch for a bus while he headed out to the airport, and once again I find a farewell bringing me closer still to the end of my journey... I can hold off the home-coming for a further 12 days yet though!

NZ - South Island taster

To get to South Island I sailed the Cook Strait, across the small channel and through the Marlborough Sounds, a maze of inlets and headlands. I spent a couple of days in Picton, where the boat lands. It’s a great wee town with some lovely local walks around the nearby peninsula and longer walks for anyone with more time. I was coming to the end of my time alone and decided to tackle something which always seems taboo for women, going to the pub alone! So I took myself and my book off to the local Irish bar and sat with a drink, something I’ve never had ‘the bottle’ to do before. By the end of a great night there was a table of 6 of us, who were all alone but sitting together. I realise people do this all the time, but I never had and it was liberating to be able to go out and have such a great night without my friends around me.

Getting the bus to Christchurch I had excitement in my belly knowing that when I reach my destination I will be greeted by friends from home, a far off place I haven’t seen for so many months. After a fun evening catching up we collected out camper van and got on the road for new adventures. We had a stunning introduction to the South Island driving through Arthurs Pass, one of the pathways through the massive mountains surrounding us. We spent our first night camping near a town called Hari Hari on the banks of a beautiful lake with plenty of greenery surrounding us. Our first big day out took us to the two main glaciers of New Zealand tourism, the Fox and the Franz Josef which are situated along the west coast. Taking in the stunning scenery on our walk up to the glaciers, the rivers are fresh and inviting with pristine waters of opal green, the mountains and cliffs around us are home to a wonderful collection of waterfalls, trees and birds and the walking trails are beautiful. While we didn’t take the time or effort to go on to the glaciers, partly due to the dodgy weather in the area, we thoroughly enjoyed walking the routes provided to take in the local scenery. En route to Queenstown we stopped in to view the blue pools which are just slow parts of the river where the crystal clear water collects and create stunning little pools tinted by the glacial colours. It’s tempting to jump right into them, and one of the visitors did that very thing, jumped off the bridge into the water! With a rather cool Antarctic breeze blowing through, a brief dip in a glacial pool is probably a pretty fresh way to start the day!

Queenstown is a lively hub of activity where all manner of extreme sports are available to try out, it is the gateway to Fiordland, the base for ski slopes, the home of bungee jumping and the destination of travellers of all ages with all sorts of different agendas. Our first activity was jet boating, we spent an hour blasting our way up the river behind the Remarkable Mountains, mixing natural beauty and serenity with occasional 360 degree spins! It was both interesting and fun, travelling around 80kmph in a little boat. Afterwards we took the gondola up the hill behind Queenstown, this is the steepest gondola ascent I have experienced and in no time at all we were perched in a clearing on the shelf of a mountain. The views of the surrounding area are breath taking, Queenstown is nestled nicely in this wonderful setting, on the shore of a deep blue lake, surrounded be enormous mountains capped with snow, you can easily see why people flock to this place. From here some people return to the bottom by parasending, we opted for a short blast on their luge and then back into the gondola. The luge is a purpose built track with little buggies you can ride down for a few hundred metres, they can really flee along if you let them, round tight corners and through a wee tunnel, brilliant fun!

Our next day involved a tour out to Milford Sound. It’s a long road and so we decided to let someone else do the driving while we sat back and enjoyed the scenery, driving through deep valleys with steep slopes on either side of us, patches of snow, many waterfalls, rockfalls and the Homer Tunnel before coming out at the end of the sound where we are greeted by the familiar sight of mitre rock and the water stretching out through the sound. We took a cruise around and it was a highlight of the New Zealand trip. Fortunate with the weather we had a calm cruise with plenty time to gape at the cliffs and majestic mountains towering over us. The many waterfalls vary in strength, some thunder over the rocks while others gentle trickle over the edge of a cliff and the wind carries them away in a cloud of mist and rainbows. We were lucky with the wildlife and not only saw lots of furry seals lazing on the rocks but also spotted 6 little crested penguins. These tiny little guys don’t look like they are very much bigger than a bowling pin, they clumsily waddle around the rocks falling over and disappearing for a while before picking themselves back up and coming back into view. They have yellow stripes down the side of their head which is their crest, it’s long haired and makes them look like they have really bushy eyebrows. Such a fantastic sight, I was delighted to have seen them in the wild, they are only spotted when they are between their onshore home, up in the bushes, and the sea as they take some time out on the rocks.

Leaving Queenstown we had to pop in at the AJ Hackett bungee bridge to watch some people taking the plunge. Like a conveyor belt they went, strapped in, pushed off and rescued by the raft on the river below. While it’s not something I would like to experience I found it interesting watching the mini movie about AJ Hackett and his friends, who apparently pioneered the sport, originally by jumping feet first they developed it through the ‘80s including some international jumps and an arrest after jumping from the Eifel Tower.

Driving to Dunedin started out along a fairly slow gorge road alongside another stunning glacial river, no matter how often you see the water here a second glance is always needed as you can never quite believe how fresh and alluring the water looks. Those colours just invite you to jump right in! If it wasn’t so cold I don’t imagine we’d get anywhere, we’d be pulling in every 10 minutes to go for a swim! It is cold though so instead we thoroughly enjoy our drives, 3 Highland girls trooping through New Zealand with Scottish folk music playing on the stereo, fantastic!

Dunedin is home to New Zealand’s Cadbury factory, and while I know we have them at home we had to take the tour, it was short but sweet! Our campsite was at the beach in St Kilda, a nice rugged beach with a healthy breeze blowing to remind us of home. We went for a night out in the local bars and had a fun night, meeting all sorts of characters. The bar we went to was clearly a very local place with lots of very drunk people having a brilliant time, is it wrong to add that it was just like home? No pretences, just people letting go for a Saturday night. Afterwards we went to another bar and the people there were absolutely horrified at where we’d just come from, I don’t suppose anyone wants tourists to see the true parts of their home but to appreciate a place you have to see it’s good and it’s bad points.

Dunedin has a strong Scottish connection, apart from named after our capital city (Dunedin is an anglicised version of the Gaelic for Edinburgh) they also happen to have a Scottish festival every November, good timing on our part I’d say! We missed most of the events but were in time for the local Highland Games and got to watch their Highland dancing competition, their races, their caber tossing, stone running and most unusual for us was the competition between young ladies, they had a name for it but I’m afraid all any of us could think about was a certain episode of Father Ted when their local fete had a ‘Lovely Girls’ competition! I’m so pleased we never had competitions like this at our games day at home, it was cringe-worthy! We did enter one event, the welly throwing, or ‘gum-boot’ throwing. Mairi came third and won a prize, my welly nearly took out an old man standing nearby, Shona’s however actually hit the judge!! We definitely left our mark in Dunedin!

The next stop on this part of our tour was the east coast village of Moeraki to admire the spherical boulders that live on the beach. Created by a combination of erosion and subterranean pressure these huge marbles sit grouped together on the beach creating a big playground for people to climb on and even in, as some have broken up. Nearby is the Moeraki lighthouse, situated out on a small peninsula near the village the lighthouse looks over cliffs and beaches and also has a small track down to a penguin hide where we could quietly sit and watch the local residents. The penguins we saw here were Little Blue’s and are bigger than the previous ones rising up to what looked to be around 70-80cms. We saw two standing on the beach chatting to each other (that’s really what it looked like) and another one was standing close to our hut under a small shelter looking over its fuzzy grey baby which was sprawled out on the ground before it. It’s very special to have this opportunity, I feel really lucky again, for the umpteenth time on this trip.

We were soon back on the road and after a last wilderness camp outside Herbert we headed back to Christchurch were I’m joined by Jamie (my brother) and I say goodbye to Mairi and Shona and our campervan. Together we all took a drive out to Sumner a village on the peninsula outside Christchurch, this is my first introduction to destruction caused by 2 earthquakes in the area in 2011. The road is extremely bumpy with barriers and road works and temporary detours dotted around. Cliff edges are lined with ‘maersk’ shipping containers to stop rocks falling on to the road. Other cliffs are completely cordoned off as houses stand perilously close to the edge at the top while others are crushed in the rubble below, these houses have been condemned and the owners forbidden from returning to them. It’s a sad sight for a place you can imagine was terribly beautiful before, I can’t imagine it’s nice to have your lovely home town ripped to pieces around you and replaced with rocks and huge rusting containers. It’s an incentive to come back and help if I can, there’s so much work to be done and I haven’t even seen the city yet!

Saying these farewells is the start of the end I feel, but for now it’s the opening of a new chapter.

NZ - North Island continues...

I started my day out in Rotorua with a crater walk around the Waimangu Valley. A supposedly 2-hour walk through the past, down by a crater lake which is alive with steam blowing over the surface, bubbling around the edges, and small streams coming off it all bubbling away. The volcano was last active around 1907 and was a popular attraction then as people gathered to view and enormous geyser erupting regularly from one of the craters. The walk then took me up over the side of another crater with cracking views of the rest of the area all the way down to the lake, with patches of steam puffing out from various parts of the landscape and steep slopes drawing the eye down into the depths of the craters. At the end of the walk the small pool at the base was alive with frogs calling and birds feeding from the many fresh mosses and lichens that grow in this geothermal wonderlands. The walk took me half the time as was advertised so I walked back up to the top again and got to enjoy all the wonderful scenes all over again. I then headed to a 3D maze which I had promised to visit, an amazing creation of wooden fences containing around 1.7km of walking to get through the instructions, you must visit each corner of the maze and then do it all in reverse in order to get back out again. What a fun hour, at least it was great fun at first though it wasn’t long before I was cursing every single time I met a dead end, convinced I might actually have to shoot red stars from my wand in order for Dumbledore to rescue me! I was so impressed with the creation, this man had built this by himself and it would be amazing fun for a group of people to entertain themselves. On my way out of Rotorua I went to see a lovely bubbling mud pool, a small lake of hot mud! It was great, the noises, the unexpected explosions every few minutes – fantastic spectator sport!!

I headed on down to Lake Taupo next and spent a couple of nights there. Another crater walk was on the cards and this was quite different but still really interesting and enjoyable but 1/6^th of the price! I really like hanging out here and I began to unwind a little and relax around the lake and rivers in the area, although the exception to this would be my visit to Huka Falls which is an exceptional amount of water rushing furiously down a very small channel! It’s one of the more memorable of the waterfalls I have visited in New Zealand so far, though not for beauty, it’s memorable due to its ferocity.

From here I drove on to the Taranaki region which is centred around the 6000ft volcano, Mount Taranaki. Other than this one mountain the landscape is pretty flat stretching out to the coast. There are loads of really good walking treks here and I took the chance to cover a few miles on the mountain, in among lots of trees and ferns I had ample opportunity to let my imagination get a little carried away. One of the villages here is a funny little place, called Stratford, where all the streets are named after Shakespeare and his works. There’s Broadway, Lear St, Juliet St, Miranda, Sylvia and a whole lot more, a very strange little place. Though it is also home to one of the coolest activities I have ever seen as you can go touring the train tracks on your own while driving your own little converted golf buggy which has been made rail-friendly and there are different routes you can do out on the tracks, I thought it was a great idea!

From here I was heading north, back towards Auckland but via the lovely little surfing town of Raglan. There’s a lot happening in this little corner, a really nice place to just enjoy. There’s also a tiny little airport/ field in the area which seemed to be hosting some form of light aircraft event as there were around 60 small planes lined up along the edge of the field, as well as 4 gyrocopters which were open topped and looked a little like a motorbike come helicopter! Interesting! These planes spent all afternoon going for little spins and I was hooked watching them. The following morning one of the tiny little ones took it upon himself to go up and entertain me with lots of tricks and it was fascinating watching this little toy plane looping de loop, plunging into death spirals and twirling around, I imagine whoever was in there has a fairly sturdy stomach!

Around the Taranaki area I stayed in one of my favourite campsites so far, it was situated 14kms into the forest; it was free and was just a big clearing in the woods with perfect night time sky viewing. I was late getting in so my car bonnet was still pretty warm after darkness fell and I spent a good couple of hours lying on the bonnet, leaning against the windscreen watching the stars, it’s so magical and mesmerising. I definitely spotted the Southern Cross here while gazing aimlessly, lazily watching shooting stars and dreaming about life’s beauty. Once it was too cold to stay out I peeled myself away and tucked myself up in my sleeping bag.

Back in Auckland I was incredibly lucky to stay with family friends who looked after me really well, despite being home to a lovely little 4 month old, Joe. Together we visited the local beauty spots of Peha beach and the surrounding area, it’s such a wonderful place to have on the edge of a city I can see why people are happy to move to Auckland, it’s a lovely mixture of being in the middle of nowhere (in that NZ is a million miles from everywhere) and also in the centre of something very much alive. I then spent a couple of nights in Wellington, another gorgeous wee city, wee being the operative word! It’s hard to believe this little place is the capital city, a great wee place to soak up some culture, visit the national museum, wonder the harbour, and venture up small hills to take in nice views. I like Wellington, it’s yet another reminder of Canada whose capital city of Ottawa is so small in context with the country and the other cities it competes with. This is where my North Island adventure ends; next stop is the South Island and meeting up with people from home for new adventures in the final part of this trip.

Kia Ora New Zealand

Arriving in Auckland was like planting a big smile and waiting to see how long it could stay in bloom. I’ve wanted to visit here for so long, but was too much of a wimp when I was in this part of the world last time, owing to being 20 years old and travelling alone and feeling like a year in Australia was a big enough achievement for the time being! Now, 13 years on I am far more confident and cannot wait to find out what goodies lay within the New Zealand store, country number 24 on this journeys list, last but not least as they say. While travelling nearly 40 years ago my parents made good friends and it’s their apartment I had to good fortune to stay in while I was in Auckland for 3 days. Right in the centre of town and with harbour views stretching out from their 11^th floor balcony, I could not believe my luck! Thank you so much! Such a beautiful city surrounding me, such an active harbour to observe and such a happy person you cannot imagine! I have arrived!

Walking around Auckland is easy and enjoyable; it’s a clean and inviting city which is easy enough for me to navigate. I took the ferry over to the other side of the harbour, to Devonport, a charming Georgian area with glorious old buildings and the southern hemisphere’s oldest remaining operating picture house. Here the houses are wooden, the streets quite open, it’s near the water and I can’t help comparing it to Halifax in Nova Scotia, my immediate thought is how similar I feel while walking around here.  Devonport is also home to 2 small volcanoes, the larger of which I climbed the towering heights of all 187 metres of it, to a lookout point at the top, complete with restored disappearing canon. The mechanism allowed soldiers to raise and lower the gun as and when it was needed. Imagine the stamina needed to keep turning those wheels to raise the weight of a canon! The weather had been drizzly but clear when I left Auckland, at the top of the hill there was absolutely nothing in view other than grey gloom, but it cleared up once I reached the bottom again! I wondered around the harbour of Auckland, in among all the posh yachts and the viaduct where all you can see are money signs all around you.

I also took a walk out to an old cemetery, situated near the city centre, named by a travel book as the forgotten place. It’s such a beautiful cemetery, I saw no stones dating later than the early 1900s and its full of old trees and greenery and it’s a bit crumbly, and some of the tree roots are knocking the stones over at angles, it’s a truly wonderful place, really enchanting and mysterious. However, for some reason Auckland City saw it fit to build a road through it! I was flabbergasted! Stones have been laid flat or moved to make room, under the road there are empty metal fence cages that once housed stones, and some of the stones are just propped up against the concrete supports. What an outrage, I wonder how this was ever passed off as a good idea in a board room, I hope they get haunted!

With nerves of steel (ahem) I went to collect my hire car, my luxury item for the next 12 days. I haven’t driven for months, I’ve been on mopeds in different countries all driving on different sides of the road, I didn’t have a clue what was normal anymore, and I was feeling a little apprehensive venturing out on my own. So, armed with my car, my tent and my brand new travel kettle I headed off into the North Island wilderness for my adventures. It was lovely to be back on the road, in charge of a vehicle, listening to the radio, with no plans beyond the next few hours. I headed north into the Northlands area and spent my first night in a riverside clearing with toilet facilities provided by the Department of Conservation who have named several camping areas throughout New Zealand at varied prices, mine was free. The following day I started with breakfast at Shipwreck Bay, the beginning of 90 Mile Beach. It’s funny, I’ve also been to 75 Mile Beach in Australia, and I think that’s actually longer because 90 Mile Beach is only 64 miles long!! Anyway, after a nice walk along 90 Mile Beach I was heading for Cape Reinga. This is the most northerly accessible point of New Zealand, only a couple of hundred feet short of one of the other peninsulas, it’s as far north as I will get in this country. It’s a beautiful site too; a lighthouse stands proud at the point, waiting for people to pose beside it, as it does not do a whole lot more these days. Here, is where the Tasmanian Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, it is also where the Maori spirits leave New Zealand to return to their  Polynesian homelands when someone dies.

The countryside of North Island is so green, it’s lovely and fresh and as its spring there is no shortage of lambs and calves, which is playing with my head because I know it’s November! Naturally the vast amount of greenery, along with both rolling hills and more rugged hills, takes me home to Scotland but I admit it’s not the first country that comes to mind, memories of Nova Scotia are all around me here and I am touched by the thought that Scottish clearances took people not only to Nova Scotia but to this country too, I’m delighted they had countries so like home to set up in. The birds are also those from home, petrels and gannets are out and about. I drove around the east of the peninsula to set up camp in the Bay of Islands, a paid site in Waitangi where I can have a warm shower in the morning, a good start to an amazing day.

I spent the morning cruising the Bay of Islands, we were fortunate on our boat and came across a large school of bottlenose dolphins that we sat watching for a while.  There must have been at least 40 dolphins or more, as there were about 5 in view at any given time. They were feeding along with some gannets that always seemed to be fighting over the same fish! They hung around long enough for us to get our fill of their antics, but were clearly more impressed by the yacht behind us, dolphins do love yachts! The next part of the trip involved the hole in the rock, a great big natural arch in one of the outer islands, blessed with good weather we were able to go through it which was fun. We then went ashore one of the islands, where an even better surprise awaited me, swimming along the shallow waters of the beach was a ray, I am delighted to add that to my list of animals sighted in natural habitat! At the start of the trip I hoped for an orca (as usual) but never dreamed that a ray was waiting to greet me, as yet the orcas continue to evade me! One of these days, I will find one! Back on the road I pulled off at the promise of a glow worm cave, the Kawiti caves were my next stop. Limestone caves, full of stalagmites and stalactites, we spent the best part of an hour meandering out way through some underground walkways seeing the rock formations of the past millennia! The treat comes when the guide turns off his torch and suddenly the ceiling is like the sky at night, tiny little lights are dotted about the whole place making one of the most magical scenes you could imagine. Interestingly, the glow worms turn their lights on when they are hungry in an effort to attract insects (like a moth to a flame) and apparently only cave worms in New Zealand have evolved in this manner as other caves have bats whose droppings attract the insects. A dark, damp, underground passage and this is where we find the most wonderful sky at night, how incredible! I was agog!

Back on the road I drove to Whangarei and visited their local waterfall, a 28m drop and a lovely big pool at the bottom, perfect for swimming in the summer time, but this is not summer time so onwards we go! My next stop was the Abbey Caves, free caves for anyone who’s brave enough to go exploring the natural rock formations and the promise of more glow worms.  I stopped and took the long walk down to the caves; I was keen to prove that I am not a wimp and that I can go into a big bad dark cave all on my own, me and my head torch. There were two caves, the first one was big and bad and dark and I had trouble getting into it so I headed to the next one... here I almost fell head first into it! It was at this point, realising that nobody knew where I was and that I am a calamity all to myself and likely to fall over all the rocks, and apart from anything else – I’m shit scared of being alone in the dark!! So I decided it was for the best that I maybe did not explore the caves alone, an adventure in the mind, and that’s where it shall stay! So I headed to my campsite for the night, another DoC site, this time on the beachside outside the village of Waipu. Strolling along the beach before sunset it dawns on me again how like Nova Scotia this place is, and how like Scotland they both are, and how glad I am that both times of travel the most Scottish places I have visited have been the last stop before going home!

I stopped at Waipu Cove to breakfast at the beach, though it’s chilly it’s very comforting to feel so close to home when you’re alone, and the beaches here are exactly like the ones in Barra, cold and wet, but you know you’d still jump in the water for a laugh! Waipu is a very Scottish town, they have a pipe band, they have a highland games every New Years Day and they have a museum dedicated to the people who left Scotland to live in Nova Scotia, then left Nova Scotia to move to New Zealand (via Australia) having not found it as good as they had hoped there. I wonder how it’s possible that a further 6 months at sea is preferable to living in Nova Scotia, times must have been very difficult. A very interesting museum, I’m glad I have already visited so many things in Nova Scotia to put these pieces of the puzzle together, although no Barrachs were listed there were Lewisaich and Harraich who were on board and moved here.

I drove back through Auckland and headed to the Coromandel Peninsula, a beautiful stretch of scenery with huge hills on one side and the sea on the other, everything you could hope for in a landscape in my mind. I stayed the night in Whitianga, another site near a beach allowing for a lovely evening stroll along the sea side. The next morning I was up and away early in search of a hill walk I was keen to do, 40km down the coast. Once I got there I realised I had read the map wrong and the walk was in fact in the very spot I had just left that morning, I hoped this wasn’t the start of a bad day, a day that would wipe the New Zealand smile from my face, so I continued on along the coast before cutting inland towards Matamata. While this wasn’t a very interesting place in its own right it is now home to ‘Hobbiton’ the hobbit village created for the Lord of the Rinds trilogy, and now being used for the Hobbit trilogy, how very exciting. Once I arrived I enquired as to the whereabouts of the village and how I might get to see it, well I’m afraid the only way to see it is by tour and that will cost way more than I am willing to pay! I was a little taken aback, are they not making enough money out of the films?!The tour is only the outside of the houses, and the lake and a tree, you don’t even get inside! I was quite annoyed at the price of that so got back in the car and headed towards Rotorua, the place on everyone’s lips, every single person I have ever met ensures me that Rotorua is the place to visit. Once I arrived I went in search of the obvious, a nice big geyser! At the entrance to this they told me it would set me back a ridiculous sum, to see a natural phenomenon!! I’d say the start of the day was quite correct; this was not going to be a good day! All was not lost though; I’d been advised to visit the local red woods and headed there to go for a walk. This was the best tonic I could have asked for, a wonderful walk through the dense forests, in complete silence except for the birds, and it was completely free! How divine! That night I camped at another DoC site next to one of the Rotorua lakes, a very pleasant place with black swans swimming around and utter peace and quiet to research the following day’s activities. I clearly needed to research this better than I had first assumed, I refuse to be held to ransom as a tourist, and I know that not everyone wants to rip us off, surely this country can cater for all different kinds of tourist? Let’s hope so!

The almost home straight - To Sydney

2 Oz weeks, Darwin to Sydney

My flight from Bali to Darwin was quite long as it included 13 hours in Singapore airport, but that was fine by me as it saved me around 120 GBP which is going to be put to good use in the real world where Asian prices no longer exist! We didn’t hang around in Darwin and I never saw any of it, we headed straight off to see some of Kakadu National Park. We drove out to Jabiru and visited a site of rocks and rock paintings with great views out over the plains of the Northern Territory, it was green and fresh looking though the temperature was hot. As some of the flights were a day later than originally planned we were running a little late on our itinerary and this meant that Kakadu was a short visit and we rushed through it to get back on the road and get some miles under our belt. I was really disappointed by our short time here as this was the only part of the Australian trip that I have not previously covered and really wanted a chance to explore it more, never mind, it wasn’t for me this time around. Katherine was our next stop and we visited the Katherine Gorge before continuing down through the Red Centre taking in the Devils Marbles, Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and the lovely quirky town of Coober Pedy. This is a great town, I have fond memories of it from years ago, situated in the middle of Australian nowhere, Coober Pedy is an unusual place with a lot of character. Around 80% of the population live underground in dug out homes which keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The town makes it’s living from opal mining and you can visit the mines or buy some of their beautiful precious stones. One of the local caves was home to a well known character by the name of Crocodile Harry, possibly the original Crocodile Dundee. This man was full of stories and mischief and when I visited his home in 1999 he was still around greeting people and chattering away. Now Harry has passed on but his house is still open to the public as it is a cavern of goodies and interesting artefacts, home to one of Tina Turner’s bras for example as one of the Mad Max films had parts shot in this cave.  There are many other caves open to the public, private homes, public accommodation, restaurants or churches many of which are an absolute pleasure to visit. The surrounding area has little in the way of landscaping and has had pictures comparing it to the moon, making it an ideal place for other movies to be filmed.

The camping through this part of Australia had concerned me at first, as an arachnophobe I never really believed it was the right place for me to lay my head but once inside my tent I felt safe from the claws of the devil spiders. The first night of camping was at a creek with crocodile warnings around it, but none of us had any intention of going for a swim so we felt safe enough! It was here I encountered a spider which was to almost become a friend, we found her relatives all around us almost all the way through Australia, and she was a rather attractive white spider with a head torch! Her eyes reflected our head torches at night as a pale light surrounded by a gentle blue halo. She became known to us as Albino Annie and not a night went past that I didn’t see her creeping around the campsite. I liked her because she was easy to spot and that is essential when you have to leave your tent in the middle of the night to visit the open-air bathroom! Less welcome was the sight of burrows around the size of a small mouse but maybe more likely to be home to some very large spiders, I am delighted to have not encountered their residents as they were uncomfortably close to my tent. At night the skies were so clear, we had hours and hours of star gazing to keep us occupied, there was no shortage of shooting stars and with my outside door open I could lie in my bed and gaze for as long as I could keep my eyes open.  One night was wild and windy and wet but other than that the weather held out really well and allowed us to thoroughly enjoy our final two weeks camping, star gazing, sitting around camp fires, toasting marshmallows and reminiscing our months of travel and adventure and growing relationships. I can’t believe two weeks’ worth of nights can be summed up in that small paragraph, it was a magical time.

From day one we have been lucky to spot a variety of wildlife, the incredible birds here, ibis, lorikeets, cockatoos, galahs, emus, cockatiels. The bugs, stick insects, a praying mantis, grass hoppers, termites and their enormous mounds and a variety of spider which I have looked up in an effort to name them but failed miserably as soon as their pictures arrived on screen! There have also been many wallabies and kangaroos dotted around the landscape which are always fun to watch, such an oddity.

We travelled on to Port Augusta where we reached the opposite end of the country and a new sea, then on through Peterborough, Broken Hill, Nyngan, Dubbo, Bathurst and on to the final destination of Sydney. We got to walk around a dry salt plain of Lake Hart, we did a lap of the Bathurst race course, we had some wine tasting at the Highland Heritage Cellars of NSW, we had a lovely trip over to Sydney, the temperature becoming more and more comfortable, the land becoming more and more like that of home. The camping became cold, the long trousers and fleeces came back out of the bottom of the rucksack and everything appears to be returning to normal slowly wiping away the traces of Asia and the tropics. The spider hitchhiking in my bag in Indonesia hasn’t reappeared, I wonder where he came from, somewhere between China and Indonesia, now I can’t find him! The food is western again, some people are finding themselves feeling bloated or a little unwell from eating it again, and there’s not a grain of rice in sight at breakfast time! Our final night was spent in a campsite at Lake Lyell, a lovely serene place with hills and still water and a perfect place to spend our final night together as a group. The final day allowed us a visit to the stunning Blue Mountains where the blue haze hangs over the valley which is thick with trees below us. It’s a beautiful place and well worth more than a couple of hours, but that is all we have here, why delay the inevitable final farewell for the group, back in the bus and onwards to Sydney.

We drove in to Sydney with mixed emotions, out of the 24 people who began this adventure only 12 of us have completed the entire trip which makes the achievement all the greater as it clearly wasn’t as easy as we had thought when we originally signed up. It was a triumphant moment, standing at the harbour having our photo taken with the Harbour Bridge in the background, we did it!! 28 weeks living in the pockets of strangers, a social experiment of sorts that I am unlikely to experience again, it has been most interesting. I have camped more than I imagined I would ever enjoy, I have cooked on fire and eaten all manner of animals and animal parts I wouldn’t eat at home, I’ve seen sights I have often dreamed of and visited countries I thought might never be possible, I have visited 23 countries along the way. I have learned so much about the world and feel a richer person for it. I feel quite honoured to have been lucky enough to take on this trip, my life is so easy in comparison to thousands of those I’ve passed on the journey and I hope that I never take this for granted, having said that I have shared a smile with so many, and it’s a private moment like that that I take away and treasure. I live in a country with 4 seasons which is the only way I think I could ever live, I am blessed with an uncommon love of varied weather and I embrace days of rain and wind as much as I do the sun. I have the freedom and finances to travel the world and hopefully the good sense to appreciate the riches I have waiting for me at home. While the UK to OZ adventure is complete I have not finished my travels yet, I still have a relaxing week in Sydney to enjoy before heading off for a couple of months in New Zealand, this story is not yet over!

But for now.... I did it!!

Selamat Pagi Indonesia

A ferry took us away from Singapore and on to our first Indonesian island, Batam. We were warned beforehand that we would be staying in a fairly nice hotel as it was the cheapest option for accommodation which is not a brothel! So it’s fair to say that this place does not have a great reputation, maybe in part due to the large number of boats coming and going from this part of the world. Whatever the reason, I saw no signs of the sex trade and just made use of the local food carts to indulge in my first Indonesian meal, a lovely coconutty chicken curry with spicy vegetables, happy happy! We were in Batam in order to catch the bigger ferry to Jakarta, this ought to take around 26 hours and as always I was quite excited about the prospect of another mode of transport, I always love boats and find it interesting when I can compare them to others I have been on.

Boarding the ferry we were in 3^rd class, which is one level up from economy class but there are obviously 2 others above us. Instead of benches for sitting on the benches are huge and have many mattresses on them so that each aisle has about 6 beds opposite each other, going to breadth of the boat there are about 20 beds across and many many more of them stretching the length of the ship, it accommodates a lot of people! As I chucked my bags on my bed and climbed on I could immediately count 8 cockroaches crawling around on it, scuttling away from my flying bag, looking around I could see these were not the only cockroaches, this was going to be cockfest! It’s a funny thing to say but I immediately accepted that I was going to spend the journey being crawled on by bugs, once that had sunk in I didn’t seem to mind at all and fell asleep within half an hour of boarding, waking a couple of times as my friend was trying to flick cockroaches off me! As the journey got underway it became clear that cockroaches weren’t the only pets aboard, small rats were also spied running around the deck. The safety of the passengers is at the top of every Asian’s list and with this in mind we were frequently locked in as the crew checked tickets, mopped the floor or maybe just thought it was funny to freak out the westerners, of which we were the total sum on board. There were 3 free meals a day, rice and fish for lunch and dinner and an omelette for breakfast, the food was fine, certainly not the worst I’ve eaten. The toilets were less than average, sometimes my flip-flops weren’t thick soled enough to keep my feet dry but having a head cold I was exceptionally lucky to not be able to smell what I could see, as the flushers didn’t work very well!! I was in a cubicle at one point and my foot was getting a lot of splashes from the cubicle next door, good grief how I prayed that I was next to a shower block! Thank you thank you – I was!! I’m not sure I had enough alcohol gel to clean my feet if that was a squat toilet next door, eurgh! There was a prayer room aboard and it was in full session as I walked past, looked like hundreds of flip-flops and sandals had been abandoned outside the door, a sight we are unlikely to see back home. The most exciting part of the trip was knowing that we were crossing the equator, which we did at around midnight. Having travelled for 6 months already it’s hard to believe it’s taken this long to cross the equator! The ferry was (of course) late and we ended up aboard for around 33 hours, but overall I quite enjoyed my ferry journey, it might not sound like the most enjoyable sailing but it’s their ferry and part of the lives I have come to experience so who am I to turn my nose up at it? Admittedly I slept most of the way, head colds are not always welcome while travelling but this was perfect timing as I didn’t have to move and could sleep as much as I wanted.

 I only had one day to explore Jakarta and chose to do so by foot, heading through the city via the national Monument of Indonesia, the old town square and the marina. Jakarta does not seem very geared towards tourists although there are several museums to visit there do not appear to be any amazing tourist must-sees here. Two of us walked 5km through the city, as the only white people and often as the only females we got quite a lot of attention, at times unwanted, but overall very friendly and positive. The streets are built up and are a strange mixture of regular cheap Indonesian shops with a sprinkling of very rich and posh looking coffee shops, banks or residential suites. The old town is not very obvious against the rest of the city and we did not recognise that we had reached it until it opened out into the square, a large open and relaxed space. We continued through in search of the old marina and while attempting to follow our map we ended up in the tiny winding paths of a seaside village, full of people shouting ‘hello mister’ and waving at us from point-blank range. When we reached what seemed to be a dead-end and looked confused all the locals would point in the direction for us to continue, through a gap between house walls and on we walked until it opened out onto a small wooden bridge from where we could see their little wooden boats and bigger boats in the distance, all lined up at the marina we had been trying to find! The locals kindly assisted us with directions out of their meandering village and we popped back out on the main road where we started, though none the wiser as to which way we should have gone in the first place!

We took a train to Jogjakarta, or Yogyakarta, leaving Jakarta the slums were on display, little shacks propped up between the train tracks, children playing nearby and begging from the journeying passengers. Out of the city it was a lovely train journey, through green Indonesian fields and crops and I spent the journey staring out the window, mesmerised by the landscape and watching the people working their fields. Jogja is far more touristy and has a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere. There’re a lot of markets around us and plenty street food to choose from. We visited an art exhibition of batique work by the teachers at the local art school, fabulous colours and interesting modern and traditional works using wax and local dyes. I haven’t seen batique work for many years and I had no idea that such wonderful art could be created using this method.

We ate from the same lovely man every night having different combinations of Nasi Goreng which is mostly just chicken fried rice, but so much tastier! We had a spicy one, a very garlicky one and I also traded in the rice for noodles one night making it Mie Goreng. This man’s cart has a built in oven and from it he slides out his little cooking stove which looks like a plant pot. It’s a clay or concrete pot with a fire burning within, a hole in the side to waft the flames and a section on top to accommodate his wok. The cart has cooked chickens, coriander and large spring onions hanging from the top, there are pots of salad, bottles of oil, soya sauce and chilli sauce, smaller pots of garlic, salt and other spices, and a big drum of stock (presumable the liquid left from cooking the chickens). He has a small chopping board for chopping the vegetables and at the side of the cart are containers filled with noodles and rice, already cooked. From here he can make delicious fresh dishes of fried rice or noodles or soups within minutes, and he has a couple of stools to sit and eat at the side of the street. This fantastic fresh food is so flavoursome that I’m getting hungry thinking about it and comes at the bargain price of 10,000 Indonesian Rupiahs which works out at around 60p in the UK!

From Jogja we visited Borodupur, Indonesia’s answer to Angkor Wat. There are a collection of temples to visit but I settled on this one site, a huge Buddhist monument in the shape of a pyramid you can climb to the top of it and wonder at the many pieces of art carved out in rock. This fantastic 9^th Century building seems to have rows and rows of stone bells, which make a beautiful sight on their own, get closer and you can see that each bell has a Buddha sitting inside it and as some are broken you can clearly see the Buddha sitting proud.

That afternoon we ventured into the world of cave tubing, a far more relaxed form of the tubing we had tried out in Laos. Before we started we were offered some local snacks, a plate of fried grasshoppers!! Of course I ate one! It was very crunchy and pretty salty but not at all bad, having said that, I refused a second one! We sat in our lorry tyre inner tubes and were taken slowly through dark caves by our guides who pointed out the different rock formations and shone their torches up at the bats hanging from the cave roof above us. It was a great little adventure that was over all too soon, but to pad out the day they then took us to another river to gently float down admiring the countryside and savouring the tranquillity. To get to this other river we had a walk through some local paddy fields, among working people who all shouted ‘Halo’ and waved at us. As we reached the end of our tubing adventure we heard a small clatter and looked round to see a large coconut had just fallen from a tree and was bobbing towards us. We took the coconut home and a kindly local chopped it up for us, he wasn’t pleased with it’s quality, said that it was too old and would be better if it were greener, not than any of us knew the difference, I thoroughly enjoyed my large chunk of fresh coconut flesh, it was very nice.

The next day 10 of us ventured off on an extra trip to visit an active volcano. Mount Bromos last eruption came to an end only 21 months ago and so it still funnels out blasts of steam from the sulphur pool within which is visible from the edge of the crater. We were firstly ferried to a viewpoint for sunrise and treated to a stunning sight as out of the darkness three volcanoes appeared before us, Bromo being the smallest but also the only one emitting clouds of steam making the sight all the more special. We were then taken to its foot from where we could climb to the rim of the crater and view the yellow pool inside, watch the steam rising out, listen to the deep rumbling and catch a whiff of rotten eggs, sulphur is not kind to the nasal passage! Everywhere you walk is soft fine lava dust and it gets everywhere. Mount Bromo is a definite highlight of Indonesia, it’s not often I get this close to active volcanoes and it’s the first time I’ve been able to see and hear things happening inside from the lip of a crater. Very exciting! Add to this the threat of slipping and falling in and it’s a real adventure playground!

The local villages reminded me of the Himalayan villages as they all walk around in winter clothes, wearing blankets around their shoulders, their homes have flags flying and they seem to have a similar atmosphere, it’s a very pleasant feeling. Up here they make use of their nutritious lava soil with crops growing on every spare piece of land, cabbage and onions in abundance!

The bus journeys to get to and from Mount Bromo gave me hours and hours of window watching as we travelled through more greenery, miles of crops and villages and hills in the backdrop. From Mount Bromo we were travelling directly to Bali to meet the rest of the group and it was another long day but we had another ferry journey to break it up which was short but provided a nice breath of fresh sea air.

Bali is the surf beach paradise that it promises. We are staying in the fairly touristy Kuta area which is full of shops, stalls, bars and a big long beach busy with surf wannabes and bikini babes! It was exactly what I imagined and a fine place to relax for a couple of days and catch up on some domestic duties. It’s the final stop for Asia and so the last chance to feed my belly with delicious Asian food! The airport is nearby and built on a piece of land jutting out into the sea, from Kuta it looks like they are ditching into the sea but having walked to the airport along the beaches I can confirm that there is some form of landing strip to greet the planes!

Indonesia a gorgeous country to travel around and I admit I have been caught out here as I hadn’t dreamed that I would enjoy it as much as I have, on the contrary I was quite intimidated by it and a little concerned about past coverage of Jakarta and Bali terrorist attacks. I am disappointed in myself, I always try not to let media coverage or people’s opinions change my outlook of a place and give everywhere a fair trial so I have been delighted by what I’ve found and I would place Indonesia high on my list of favourite countries, not that such a list exists, how can I possibly choose?! Sadly it’s the last part of Asia and the end of a huge part of my trip, I’m so unwilling to leave but it’s time to get back to the western world and see what Australia holds in store! 

Malaysia and Singapore

The night train to Butterworth in Malaysia was mostly comfortable but we didn’t get a lot of time to enjoy our beds as the train was running late and didn’t collect us until nearly 3am, we then had to get back out of bed for the border crossing at 9am. It was one of the smoothest border crossings yet, a stamp out of Thailand and a stamp into Malaysia all within the same office and back on the train to find, most disappointedly, that the beds had magically turned back into seats and so the rest of the journey was a more normal train sleep, drooling against the window! From Butterworth we took a ferry across to Penang Island to spend the night in Georgetown. As a former colony it has some nice buildings, a nice park area at the waterside and a few bars to keep us entertained. With only one night here we didn’t get to see it all but we got a taste of Penang which was good as it’s another place I know my parents visited nearly 40 years ago!

The following day involved boat and bus to reach Kuala Lumpur, the exciting big city of Malaysia and home of the beautiful Petronas Towers. Arriving in the evening we headed straight out for a walk through the city, past the KL Tower and arriving ultimately at the beautiful twin towers. I was taken aback by their beauty, I’ve seen many fabulous buildings which stop you in your tracks (or not) and this one is definitely a highlight and a sight to behold, the lights shining out, the elegance, the way they command your attention and hold it. I couldn’t just take a photo and walk away; I had to allow my eyes to saviour it. The city is so clean and accessible, it was lovely to walk around at night time, I really enjoyed listening to the live music and taking in the lights and the atmosphere, Kuala Lumpur scored a lot of points that night.

After enjoying the towers so much in the dark I was keen for a daytime visit not to end as a disappointment, and I am pleased to say there was no disappointment in store for me. As stunning as they are lit up at night, the towers are equally eye-catching in the daylight, so much glass and silver metal draws the eye right in and once again I am captivated by the presence of something very attractive! Such a beautiful building! Walking around them also holds various pleasures, from the small lake to the fountains to the flashes of air conditioning blasting you as you walk past the doorways of the very expensive shops housed within. It’s like a small burst of heaven when you walk past an air conditioned doorway, a small but very enjoyable blast of freezing air to break up the monotony of constantly sweating! We’ve been sweating for a long time now, the last time I remember not sweating was China, there was actually a point in China when I had a fleece on!! That seems a long time ago now.

The rest of my Kuala Lumpur experience involved wondering around the city, and what a lovely city it is. It’s such a clean place, seems very orderly, there is of course a China Town and lots of Chinese food on offer all around the city, the Malaysian food is either well hidden, not advertised as Malaysian or it’s just a combination of Asian foods, I can’t quite decide.  We also spent a night in the nearby shopping centres theme park with all sorts of fun stomach-churning rides to play on, it was a lot of fun.

From KL we headed to Malacca for a couple of days of exciting discovery, and discover we did, mostly though we discovered that this seems to be a very odd place and I’m not entirely sure why so many tourists come to visit this town! There are fort remnants, and canons and a variety of churches and temples and of course a China Town but most of these we discovered on the first few hours of being in the town. As our time there expanded we then discovered that the pavements are a little secret known only to the lucky few, in the middle of China Town there’s a garden devoted to some brass animals and a brass statue of Mr Malacca (also Mr Asia, Mr World and Mr Universe, though who competes in that that didn’t compete in Mr World I do not know!!) and then there were the cyclos or rickshaws with their over-the-top flowers and flashing lights turning a normal mode of transport into something really quite different!  The best part for me was a beautiful church up on a hill, St Paul’s, which is the roofless remains of a church lending itself as a fantastic outdoor performance area.  There was some dancing on while we were there and what a great place to enjoy some visual arts, under the stars.  With some time to spare we took a wander along the sea front to take in the sights of the nearby boats afloat in the Malacca Straits, there weren’t loads to watch but I still like to see the huge barges being pulled by tugs and any container ships that might be at sea at the time.

The following day we took a bus to Singapore and that was the end of our time in Malaysia, a country which hasn’t lived up to expectations in my mind. I have enjoyed my time here and Kuala Lumpur was an easy winner as my favourite part but overall I am leaving Malaysia a little bit disappointed by my inability to match it with a fantasy.

Singapore is well known for all its rules and cleanliness but I think this time around (I visited Singapore briefly in 1999) I found it to be a little more relaxed and Kuala Lumpur had raised the bar with cleanliness leaving Singapore behind in second place. The highlight of Singapore was the coincidental occurrence of the Grand Prix which was taking place during our visit, this immediately gave the city an extra buzz and the atmosphere was easily passed on to the rest of the city. A stroll along the busy shopping area of Orchard Street proved to us the wealth of the city, we were passed by Lamborghinis, Porches, all sorts of fancy cars in among all the fancy hotels and posh shops there’s a lot of money floating around. Between the shops were formula one cars on display, podiums to have your photo taken on and temporary shops selling merchandise.

On the night of the final race two of us took a walk into the city centre, it’s about a 45 minute walk and along the way we became aware of a kind of buzzing noise, of course it was the sound of racing cars in the distance. As we neared the race circuit the noise got louder and louder and it was quite eerie walking a city at night with the background soundtrack. Eventually we reached the closed roads of the race course, we could stand just metres from the road and while we couldn’t see the cars the sound of them tearing past was immense, and very exciting, it soon became our mission to see the cars! The whole place is well sealed but we managed to find a building with a fairly climbable wall, a metre up and hello! There go the cars! It was too much for us, we both actually squealed with delight every time one went past! We lasted in our spot for a couple of minutes before security moved us along, but by then we didn’t mind we were elated with our success. Eventually we found a pedestrian bridge right next to a bridge the cars race across and we sat there for the rest of the race watching them flash past us, we then had a perfect view of the end fireworks. Sitting on the bridge, listening to the cars zooming past with the backdrop of a beautiful city, followed by a walk along the riverside, what a gorgeous night, I thoroughly enjoyed my evening out in Singapore.

The next day was just as exciting, we walking into the city again and headed around the riverside towards the marina. There are some really lovely buildings here painting a cityscape befitting of such a rich capital. Fortunately the route we walked was similar to that of the Grand Prix and so it was natural for us to walk the empty streets of the race-course while they dismantle the masses of concrete and iron in place. It was really quite special to have this opportunity to see the marks on the walls where wheels have connected, to see the skid marks and crash marks where a car had smashed into a wall and to stand in the place where Michael Schumacher had taken out another car and come to a skidding halt. Pieces of rubber remain strewn around the place and only a handful of tourists have taken to the race-course like we have, making it a pleasant dander around. These things generally wouldn’t be all that interesting to me, but it all added up to a far more enjoyable Singapore adventure than I had bargained for, I thoroughly excited myself and can declare quite truthfully that without the Grand Prix Singapore would not have scored nearly as high on the smile test. I leave here with a far more positive view of the place and can’t help thinking of it with a gentle buzz in my heart.

Sa-Wat-Dee Thailand

The journey into Thailand was uneventful, the main difference between this and any other was the sheer number of people at the border, I don’t think we’ve had any queues this long before, it’s funny to think that back in Pakistan, crossing into India we were the only people at the border crossing, we also had to sit around for over half an hour as they waited for the power to come back on so that they could process our passports! It was also the busiest no-mans-land we’ve passed through as there were people everywhere! Once through the border we were not able to continue on the same bus as we were then transferred to minibuses which made the country seem instantly posher!

It was with an air of excitement that we arrived in Bangkok, so much to see, so much to do and only 3 nights and 2 days to do it in. What a great city, I so enjoyed wandering around, passing through all the different markets, seeing all the various street foods on offer, wandering through our own touristy area with its busy market and pub life, Khao San Road is another fantastic place to sit and people watch. Especially as day turns into night and the scenes in front of you change accordingly, the people get drunker and some of the street vendors start to offer a different variety of wares, none of which you would want in your bag for any Asian border crossing!!

We took a trip out to the popular floating market near to Bangkok, and it was nice to be taken around the canals in a little boat, surrounded by other little boats, some full of tourists, others selling food and souvenirs, sometimes congestion halted our progress but any boat is always fun for me. What wasn’t fun? This is not what we all come to see! The place is packed to the hilt with tourists and tourist tat, all the stalls selling the same things (at bumped up prices) and sometimes when you don’t buy they don’t like it. Places like this make me wish I was not a cog in the tourism machine, what was once an amazing little local market is now yet another place in the world where the tourists provide the money and the locals are just slaves to the industry. Their previous way of life has disappeared and in its place they find themselves practically begging people to buy their goods, they get haggled down and get angry at tourists, tourists become unfriendly in return and the atmosphere is tainted. The whole thing is tainted and I hate being a part of it. These are the kind of places I sometimes want to avoid on my journey, but I have to experience this to appreciate the other places a little more, and like a good little tourist... I still took a photo!

That night we went in search of a ladyboy drag show, the best known and most talked about one is not open as they move venues so the only one we’ve found takes place in a nightclub and we have to entertain ourselves until it opens. We headed to the touristy area of Patpong, a great wee night market is in full swing and we headed to one of the local gay bars where we passed a few hours with some lively karaoke! After that with still a few hours to kill we headed for the tourist attraction (I use the word very loosely) of a ping pong show! Girls shooting ping pong balls and various other bits and bobs out of their bits and bobs! Here, the ladyboys only dance as clearly they cannot partake in the main attraction! It was a bit cringe-worthy, but funny also, best when the girls were laughing and looking like they don’t hate their job. The funniest part being when a ping pong ball hit me in the chest and stuck to me!! I had goo in my hair!! Once that was done we headed to our drag show and weren’t disappointed, several ladies took the stage in amazing make-up and sparkly dresses, miming their hearts out as others danced in the background. I really enjoyed my night. At the end of that the lovely sparkly compeer must embarrass some audience members and who better to choose than our very own baby-faced Dan! ‘Are you sure you’re not gay, are you sure?’ they taunt as they take him on stage and physically molest him! I take my hat off to him as not once did he let out his girlish squeal as he stood there, hands in the air, taking the various stages of fondling like a man! Bangkok lived up to its reputation that night and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The next day we took a map and conducted a self made walking tour of the city, passing the palace, wats, gardens, Chinatown, bridges, various monuments and sitting Buddha’s. I’m delighted to see how much character Bangkok still has, it’s still very much an Asian city despite its richer areas with high rise buildings and fancy restaurants there are still loads of lovely little cute parts of the city bustling with locals. The highlight was the Sky Bar, though it wasn’t open. Once of the poshest high rise buildings in the centre is home to a 65^th floor restaurant and outdoor bar and there is a strict dress code that we failed as backpackers for several reasons! As the bar has been made famous in the film ‘Hangover 2’ the owners are happy to allow visitors up to that floor to take photos from inside and despite our current attire the lift attendant kindly points out that they open at 6pm should we wish to change and return, it’s lovely to not be judged ‘not good enough’ by someone in such a posh place. From there we headed down to the river to catch a ferry back up to our part of the city and got to enjoy the pleasures of another boat journey, seeing the city from another angle and passing yet more buildings which demonstrate the variety in wealth on display here. That evening was spent people-watching on Khao San road while trying and failing to find another show to go to. A fantastic day in a fantastic city, another couple of days would not have been wasted here.

We left Bangkok to travel to Kanchanaburi, home of the Bridge over the River Khwae and various museums dedicated to the Death Railway and war cemeteries. Another story which came as new to me, prisoners of war and citizens were used to build a very tough 415km stretch of railway linking Thailand and Burma during World War II by order of the Japanese. In the building of this around 100,000 people died from starvation, disease, accidents and mistreatment. The Japanese were fierce slave-drivers who forced people to work without enough food or medical supplies, even when someone was literally dying and could barely stand up from exhaustion, malaria, dengue fever, they were still forced out to help with the railway. Over 400km of railway including hundreds of bridges were completed within 16 months! While the original bridge was bombed parts of it have been used in the rebuild and the one that stands there today takes both pedestrians and trains across it.

We hired bikes to cycle around the area and ended up at some more Buddha caves, the best Bhudda caves we’ve visited yet. The path took us about 30 or 40 feet underground into deep caves which were great fun to explore, made better by the fact that around every corner there was a Buddha wedged into a crevice! Stalagmites and stalactites create beautiful surroundings as we clamber over and under the rocks. Nearing the end it opens into a large cave with a couple of bats flying around, off this is a smaller cave with even more bats flying around our heads! We’re then taken up steps and pop out into the real world again, sweat pouring off us but all the happier for finding such a fun little place to explore. Next stop was one of the 3 war cemeteries, they’re well kept, beautiful gardens and it’s really nice to see such care is still taken over them, there’s even a dog that seems happy to stay here and watch over the place.

We also hired a couple of small but fast boats to take us up and down the river for an hour. We split into two groups and raced each other along the River Khwea Yoi having a great time to ourselves, it was only lunchtime and yet we passed much bigger boats with parties going on aboard, loud music and dancing!! We hovered nearby to poach some music and then zoomed away on our fun boats.

Kanchanaburi is the first taste of really amazing Thai food. I am in love! The curries and the soups are just so delicious, while they’re all similar in that they have many of the same ingredients; they are all very different too. Tom Yum is the spicier coconut soup, Tom Kha is not spicy but a slightly sweet coconut soup, Massamai curry is a coconut curry, Patang curry is a more aniseedy flavoured coconut curry using an aniseed flavoured leaf we’ve found in a couple of other dishes. I was so preoccupied with these dishes it took me until the last night in Thailand to remember to try any of their better known coloured curries, the red the green or the yellow, tastes of which have left me wanting more! As far as culinary delights are concerned two weeks in Thailand is just not long enough, I cannot eat enough to fulfil my required intake of Thai flavours, I must endeavour to learn more about these dishes when I return home. Even my beloved pork porridge has been dumped at breakfast time in favour of Tom Kha! How can I ever go back to the western world where we don’t have rice for breakfast?!

Kanchanaburi  to Ko Samui was a longer journey with an overnight train, a bus, a ferry and then a minibus. Once we arrive though we have 5 days on this holiday island to relax, recharge and explore, relaxing being top of the list as we’ve been on the go quite a lot lately. The island has a ring road of about 100km and various other small roads branching off it, beaches dotted around, forested hills in the middle and various towns spread around, it’s fairly built up and there are plenty tourists. The nearest beach to us is a nice little bay with another small island at the end which you can walk to at low tide. Once again, the food adventure continues and we are lucky to be staying near a variety of street vendors who all serve fantastic local food usually between 50p and 2 GBP, I wish I could eat more than two meals a day while I’m here, but I am just never hungry enough!

We hired mopeds for a day to go around the island and see the local sights; the big Buddha (one of them) stands tall overlooking a gorgeous blue/green bay. The mummified monk, who is not mummified at all, is a dead body propped into a sitting position as was his wish, on display in a glass box outside his temple, it’s not an attractive sight made worse by the Rayban sunglasses covering his eye sockets! Continuing our moped tour we climbed hills, explored some forest tracks and got soaked at an alarming rate when we got caught out in a down pour. We then visited some well known rock formations of Ko Samui, the Grandpa and Grandma Rocks which are really just rude shapes found on the shoreline and turned into a must see tourist attraction.

For our last night in Ko Samui some of us went in search of some more ladyboy and drag shows. The nearby tourist haunt of Chewang provided us with a selection of shows to choose from and so we opted for two. The first was a tongue in cheek show on a tiny stage with all the feathers and sparkles we could ever have dreamed of. The second was a scaled up version of this on a proper stage with proper seating and beautiful flirtatious waitresses trying to woo the men into spending more money. It was a really great night, we sang our hearts out as they mimed at the top of their lungs and it fulfilled our need for Thai ladyboy entertainment. It was also interesting to see all their different glitzy costumes and to note how they have been adapted depending on what stage of physical alteration each dancer has reached, for example some have their cleavage out while others have it completely covered as maybe no operations have taken place. No matter, they all put a lot of effort into their performances and made our night amazing!

Leaving Ko Samui we get back in our minibus, onto the ferry and then board a bus to Surat Thani where we stop for a few hours to await our night train to Malaysia. A busy hotel housed us for those few hours where I sat people watching in the lobby and noticing all the single ladies arriving to keep people company for a few hours and then leaving later on, once again the adult industry is showing its face as night time calls to the lonely.

Asian Photos

 Mount Everest or Sagarmatha is the central mountain, Nepal

Terracotta Warriors, Xi'an, China 

The Bayan, Angkor Thom at Angkor Wat site, Cambodia 

Ta Prom Temple, Angkor Wat site, Cambodia

Helicoptering out of Lukla, Himalayas, Nepal

Sour Sdey Cambodia

What a pleasure the drive to Cambodia was! The driver and his crew were the friendliest ever and they took all our paperwork from us and filled in our departure and arrival cards for the border and handled everything for us, all we had to do was show up and wait for it to be processed. It was such a joy and made up for many of the grumpy bus drivers we’ve had in Vietnam. Our first stop in Cambodia was Phnom Penh, the capital city where there’s a bustling night market, a busy river side touristy street and as much people watching as you can stand. I thoroughly enjoy people watching and took an afternoon out to sit outside a cafe, write a blog, and partake in that very activity. The odd thing about this city though is that many of the westerners appear to be ageing single men, some of whom have a young local girl on their arm, some of whom gather together with other single ageing men through the day and then the night time would be anyone’s guess, mine being the adult industry which would appear to be in full swing in this place! I never expected it to be so obvious. All through South East Asia we have seen the occasional older white man with a young local lady but here there are way more of these men, and I’m trying hard not to judge what I see.

Our first day out here had to be to the Killing Fields, another country with an horrific story to tell, and so recent as it only happened in the late 70s. Cambodians flooded the streets in April 1975 to celebrate the end of the war when Pol Pot (Khmer Rouge) came into power, just hours later they were being evicted from their homes and sent to work in the fields. Over the next 3 years this regime massacred around 2 million people, nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population, and threw their bodies into mass graves, 129 of which are spread across the country, they also terrorised those who remained. A school in Phnom Penh was turned into an interrogation centre known as S-21 where people were brought in and tortured for several months before being taken to the killing fields. S-21 housed around 20,000 people and I believe that only 7 people survived this by becoming useful to the Khmer Rouge. This place is now the main museum and walking around it is eerie and sad, makeshift cells still exist, blood can still be seen on the floors and photographs and paintings help us to understand some of the horrors that took place. Outside the city is the site of one of the killing fields or mass graves which is now an open air museum come park with an audio guide telling stories and a memorial stupa which has 9 floors of human skulls displayed within. Walking around what is now a beautiful memorial park gives us time to listen to the stories and reflect peacefully on the disturbing things we are hearing. When the rains come and shift the soil, relics continue to rise up out of the ground, as we walk around there are loads of rags coming through as well as some human bones poking out and once a month the staff collect them and care for them. The Khmer Rouge considered bullets to be too expensive and so used farming equipment from a nearby shed to kill the prisoners. These poor men, women and children were taken from S-21 blindfolded; they had already been tortured, they were thin and weak and scared, they were brought to the mass grave and made to line up along the edge of it where they were battered until they fell in. In the worst section the ‘killing tree’ existed next to the grave of hundreds of children as they had been hit against the tree and then thrown into the pit. The Khmer Rouge then sprayed the graves with chemicals, this would help kill those who were about to be buried alive but it also masked the smell of the graves which were surrounded by land mines in an effort to hide the evidence. Pol Pot was afraid of anyone who might rise against him and so killed anyone with an education; this meant that once it was all over rebuilding the city was very slow as there were no architects or engineers left in the country to do the work. Today the leaders of the Khmer Rouge are in custody and awaiting trial, Pol Pot died too soon to face charges and the others are so old they will never face the punishment they deserve. A terribly sad and tragic tale of needless suffering and death in an otherwise peaceful society.

A walk around Phnom Penh brought us to markets, indoor and outdoor, wats, lots of cafes and eateries, the river and the palace. It’s a nice city, small and lively and I enjoyed my time here but I’ve arrived at that awful place where I have little interest in the temples and the wats and the stupas. I still love the look of them and I still get a wee kick from seeing the monks walking around in their orange robes, it’s such a special sight for a westerner, but I have no desire to enter the temples or spend any time around them, I am becoming indifferent to them. After the killing fields my favourite part of this city has been the busy night market near our hostel, selling loads of food. There’re many types of fish, whole or chopped, buy a bag of fish heads? Crabs all bound up with reeds, giant (and I mean giant!!) prawns, eels, alive and dead. I couldn’t resist a skewer of barbecued chicken which the vendor then dusted with a salt and squeezed lime juice over, that was really tasty!

We moved on from here to Siem Reap, another fairly touristy town but that is mainly due to its close proximity to Angkor Wat (city of temples), the largest Hindu temple complex in the world dating back to around the 12^th century.  A sleepy 5am start to the day ensured we were there in time for a non-existent sunrise and able to start the long day of exploring ancient ruins and temples. The Angkor Wat building itself is recognised the world over by its 5 towers which also feature on the Cambodian flag. Along with Angkor Wat we also visited Angkor Thom and Ta Prom Temple, only 3 out of the many that are situated here. Angkor Thom is a small(ish) city containing many different buildings including the Bayon which is incredible, several rock peaks stand tall each with different faces looking out over the area. Ta Prom is also known as the jungle temple as the trees have grown into the building making it such a magical place to roam around, it all looks like something created by the imaginations of the film industry, such a fantastic place to spend the day. We spent around 7-8hours wandering around the sites, once again thanking the lack of Health and Safety for enabling us to rummage about in places deemed too dangerous in other countries, up and down ridiculously steep steps, under semi-collapsed archways, it’s the kind of place that makes you wish you were a child again because adventures here would be the best! What a fantastic day out, and like everywhere else, there’s food stalls dotted about selling their wonderful food! What more could I ask for?

Like Phnom Penh the rest of the visit involved markets and food stalls and wondering about. I treated myself here to a reflexology foot, hand and shoulder massage and what a treat it was at the bargain price of about 3 GBP for an hour. After he’d done my feet, my legs, my hands, arms, head, neck, shoulders and back I couldn’t help wondering what the full body massage involves?!

Along the road to the Thai border the Cambodian dream draws to a close, looking out the window of the bus the land is flat and there are miles of paddy fields and people working the land. I’d love to return to this country, I feel there is a lot more to explore here and it would be really great to get away from the touristy spots and get a better feel for the place. The people are smiling and friendly, the food is tasty and cheap and the land is green and fresh. With such a sad history I am interested to see how it continues to develop.

Sing Chao Vietnam

Crossing the border into Vietnam I felt so lucky to have got over whatever illness I had as this is the first border we’ve come across where the officials scanned us to test out body temperature. Had I still been unwell and measured an unhealthy temperature I wonder where I would be right now as we had already officially left Laos and if Vietnam wouldn’t let me in I might be taking up residence in No-Mans-Land! But all’s well that ends well and so none of that matters.

Out first stop was the town of Hue (pronounced hway) where we were only staying for one day so we spent it on a boat and took a cruise up the Perfume River to see a temple and a tomb and enjoy a day out on the river. We passed many fields and paddies where people were working away but all along the river we passed many small boats, low to the water and filled with sand or gravel, heading in the direction of the city. Further up the river we found where they had come from as the river was alive with activity, lots of boats working the same part of the river dredging the sand, separating it from the water, loading it on to boats and sending it homeward for use as building materials. Most of the workers we have seen wear the cone shaped hats made from reeds that we have all seen on the tv, I had wondered if this was now just a tourist gimmick but they’re still very much in use by locals, they must be cheap and effective. The language barrier became more apparent on this day out as the tour guide’s English was good but he couldn’t grasp our use of tact or consideration, he looked around us all so he could compare someone’s belly to Buddha’s, he read a girls palm and told that she’s stupid and soft in the head and then he said we all have big bums! It was really quite funny; we wonder how aware he was of the offensive way this had been put across.

Our next stop in Vietnam was a town called Hoi An, best known it would seem for making clothes for people, every second shop is a tailor keen to make a made-to-measure dress of jacket or shoes at a very reasonable price. While I didn’t have anything made many other people were unable to leave Hoi An without something new for their wardrobe. Other than that it was a lovely little town to walk around, ignoring the tourist shops there are some lovely old buildings to look at, it’s a very pleasant place to wander and soak up. A huge market on the riverside sells everything from fresh seafood to all fruit and vegetable varieties you can think of to household goods. Some of the stalls had a load of vegetarian alternatives, vegetarian meat slices, vegetarian beef chunks and even vegetarian pigs ears! Why any vegetarian would look for them I never did find out though as asking a question means getting chased around the market by the stall owner offering you a better price or asking why you don’t want to buy the thing you showed an interest in! It’s a nightmare, running away from them, and it also means we are back in the tourist hell of being asked every 5 minutes if you want to buy something, very annoying!

The main historic tourist attraction is the Japanese Bridge, just a small bridge over a small part of the river, it’s a covered bridge and very quaint and also has the alternative name of the Faraway People’s bridge which is my personal favourite. This part of the river is where a lot of international trade took place and so boats arrived here from many different countries leading the locals to name the bridge after the ‘faraway people’, how lovely is that?

While I’m so far enjoying my time in Vietnam I have to say that it hasn’t yet lit any fires in my soul and I’m keen to see other parts of the country that I might find more interesting. I know the north is far more enchanting but we aren’t heading in that direction, we’re heading south towards Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) via the beach, so I’m sure the landscape will appeal to me more soon. In the mean time, I am just making the most of their food and soaking up what is left of their culture through the tourist haze. The food is not bland but a curry I recently ordered had little in the way of flavour, it was more like a chicken soup, it tasted lovely but it never would have entered my mind to have compared it to a curry. The other dishes I’ve had have all been delicious though, very typically Asian with rice, noodles, soups and spiced meat, very nice, but once again the tourist trail shows its face as we are being given cutlery rather than chopsticks which we have to ask for.

Heading to the beach now on a sleeper bus, I miss seeing the countryside out the window but I enjoy the night buses, I still find it a novelty to have a bed on a bus!! After all the times I’ve slept on buses and trains these sleepers are just genius and I doubt I could get bored of them. Next stop Nha Trang.