Thailand - Lazy Style!

We got back to Thailand a few weeks ago and haven't done much of anything with our time. We stayed in Hat Yai for a few days then continued up North to Krabi. We first tried beaching at Ao Nang but it had a distinctly "5 star family resort" feeling about it. And while that's not a bad thing, it isn't really what we had in mind.

As luck would have it, two friends of mine from Canada happened to be on Ko Lanta, an island a few hours away from Ao Nang. We boogied over there and had a fabulous four days, possibly longer, with them before their visa ran out and they had to head over to Malaysia*. We ended up staying on Ko Lanta for 10 days and enjoying each one, though neither of us have any idea where the time went. Our usual day consisted only of a 1.5 hr walk in the morning, breakfast, 2 h on the internet, lunch, some tv/reading, dinner, movie on tv, and bedtime. That isn't much to accomplish in a day, but it was a nice chance to chill out.

We eventually decided we needed a change of pace or risk permanent settlement in our lovely Ko Lanta cabin. We moved over to Ko Phi Phi and were suddenly in the thick of backpacker-land. This isn't to say it's bad, but it's one of those beach towns that doesn't pay much attention to the beach. Instead, the "town" is made up of snaking alleys of pubs, t-shirt shops and booze stalls. Some people's heaven, I know, but after a few days of grumpy service and drunk 20-somethings, we'd had enough and decided to dash back to the mainland for a few days in Phuket Town, where we are now.

The only other thing to mention was the terrifying ferry crossing to Phuket. I would never claim to be the best in boats, but we were both somewhere between green with seasickness and white with fear by the end of the trip. The boat kept luching and rolling side-to-side while huge waves smashed into the boat head-on. If this wasn't bad enough, the unatural creaking of the ferry, screams of locals and retching of tourists was enough to make fear creep into the boldest heart and bile rise in the most resolute throat. We were both very happy to hit the mainland, ship intact.

Tomorrow we head to Hong Kong and the real countdown to home is on - only about two weeks as of now. We'll be in Hong Kong for about nine days, then back in Thailand for another five. We head back to Australia on the 27th (and Broome on the 2nd), so to the people there, we'll see you soon!

Sorry about the lack of photos. I'll try to post some soon.

* We have come down with a serious case of "island time" and can't distinguish one day from another, so exact day counts can be tricky.

Things we did in Malaysia

Okay, behind again (surprise, surprise).

What we did long ago in Sabah...

We arrived in Kuching after our time diving near Kota Kinabalu. What a fabulous place! There were so many things to do in "day-trip-able" distance. We started it off by heading out to see the Rafflesia, Malaysia's big smelly flower that can grow to about one meter across and apparently smells like badly rotten meat when it blooms. Happily we missed the reek, but had the good fortune to see two of them (they have no specific blooming season and are only open for about nine days). This is one of the few things that Phil had not seen during his two previous trips to Malaysia.

The other happened to be some rehabilitated orang-utans. We met a very nice Aussie on our last day in KK who had been to the Orang-utan Rehabilitation Centre and said that not only had he seen about seven of them, his whole group had been chased by Richie, the dominant male. Richie looked a lot more chilled out when we saw him (thankfully because he's huge) and we also got to see a number of mellow females and some very active babies. They only come down to be fed when there isn't much fruit available in the forest, so we were lucky to be there at the right time and get to see all the fun.

And continuing with the theme of luck, we got to see some great stuff in Bako National Park. Not only did we get to see a lot of fabulous Proboscis monkeys (all of whom look like little old men wearing white underpants) but we also had the amazing luck to see a flying lemur (a nocturnal animal) during the daytime! It was great, but of course I don't have a picture to post (though Leigh should be proud because all the ones up are ours, including the proboscis monkey who was only about five meters from Phil, happily munching on leaves, when this picture was taken). We did a number of very sweaty walks in the rainforest but saw the best wildlife near the park headquarters.

After Kuching we headed to Melaka, a town on the coast just South of Kuala Lumpur. Like everything we saw in Malaysia, we were happily surprised. The town was lovely, with a nice little canal running through it which you could stroll beside. We stayed in Chinatown and had the good fortune to be there for the weekend evening market where we ate our fair share of dim sums and little chocolate/caramel filled pancakes. Yummy.

Melaka also offers an astounding number of museums and historical buildings which we checked out. Phil obviosly enjoyed the Maritime Museum (yarr!) and there was an interesting, but incredibly hot, Beauty Museum which documented various types of mutilation-for-beauty (piercings, neck/ear/etc stretching, waist-cynching).

After a very full few weeks of intensive sightseeing (well, for the likes of us anyway), we had one evening in Kuala Lumpur's chinatown before starting our two-day bus ride up to the border with Thailand on some very comfy buses.

Malaysia-licious

After a very brief stint back in Delhi, only because we couldn't get on a flight to Bangkok the same day as our Kathmandu-Delhi flight, we headed on to Thailand. My goodness, I never noticed how clean and orderly that country is. Imagine if I had returned to Canada or Australia right from India - I would have been gob-smacked for days. As it was, I spent the first day wandering around open-mouthed and enjoying the peace and quiet. We even went to McDonalds - hmmm, little burgers for the first time in 6 months! - and everyone did exactly what they should. No one cut in. No one let their children make a horrible mess and scream and shout. No one left their stuff behind on the table (and floor, and chairs...). It just all worked. Ah, amazing.

We have spent most of the two weeks post-India not doing much at all. In Bangkok we walked around, shopped a little, both got haircuts (mine is very short now and a nice change). We flew from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and did the same - walked and shopped (though didn't get much as that city is expensive!).

About a week ago we flew into Kota Kinabalu (KK) and onwards to the dive resort of Layang Layang. The diving there was fabulous! We saw a whole school of hammerhead sharks (!!), a huge turtle, some nice reef sharks, some enormous tuna, a few excellent lionfish, as well as all the usual suspects who hang around on the reef. Housekeeping staff provided a new towel animal everyday, much to our delight.

The downside was that the resort was a bit of a dump, the dive groups were twice as big as they should have been (11-12 people), and simple things like mask de-fogger were missing. All in all, glad we went, won't be going again.

I should also mention that Phil fell through a step (the wood had rotten away) about 15 mins before our last dive, just as we were heading out to get suited up, and got a nasty gash on his leg which meant we didn't go out diving. Not to worry! We got Phil all pumped full of tetnus shot goodness when we arrived back in KK yesterday and even fanagled some free t-shirts from the resort. Except for some soreness (which seems to be a 50/50 split between his gash and where he got his injection!) and a cool scar-to-be he's doing well and in very good spirits.

The upcoming plan is roughtly this: we are heading to Kuching for a few days (national park, museums), then onto Melaka (near KL). From there we will head North back to Thailand for a few weeks of loafing in the sun at Krabi and Ko Phi Phi (maybe Phuket as well?), then back to Bangkok where we are hoping to take a quick hop over to Hong Kong to see some friends of Phil's, then back to Australia for early June. This is all very likely to change.

Sorry for not keeping the blog up well lately! We'll try to update more often. Now, we're off to eat satay!

NEPAL

Quite surreal arriving in Kathmandu, it seemed so quiet, yeah OK there was the occasional honk of a car horn, but it was so quiet! It didn't even seem to be that polluted, or maybe we were just still scarred from India. We got a nice hotel for a few days and we managed to meet up with Andrea's friend from home, Barb, so that was nice seeing a friendly face, even if it was just for one day! Our stay in Kathmandu became extended as we both suffered from a dose of the flu, so most of the time was spent in our hotel room, oh the joys of travelling. We didn't miss much, we checked out the busy tourist area of Thamel, which is perfect if you want to buy counterfeit clothing or watch young kids sniffing solvents on the street, but quite frankly we could have stayed in Sunderland to see this. We did enjoy the tourist friendly restaurants, something that India seems to have completely missed the boat on.

We did check out the marvellously surreal temple to the tooth ache god! A gnarled lump of wood that is completely covered in coins which have been nailed in the wood?? I can't think of anything witty to write about the possible link between toothache, a lump of wood and nailed coins. Any suggestions please....

Once we'd semi recovered we headed to Pokhara, a wonderful, albeit touristy, town on the side of a lake with magnificent mountain views. But with it's easy to walk on streets, lack of hassle, great selection of eateries and bars. Compared to India it was heaven.

It was from here we organised our trek. We were to do the Annapurna Sanctuary trek to the Annapurna Base Camp (ABC) 4100 M , and we selected a route that would take 11 days.

The trekking was amazing, and it's made so much more comfortable due to the number of small guest houses that line the trails. So unlike other treks there's no need to sleep in a tent and eat out in the cold. No, here you got private rooms with real beds (!), hot showers, a fine selection of food choices and even heaters under the dinner tables. Luxury! Our guide and porter made the whole experience hassle free.

We had good weather which allowed us some wonderful views. It certainly got colder the higher we got, and we were very thankful for our rented down sleeping bags and jackets.

Unfortunately Andrea's knees were playing up, if she had made it up to the base camp it would have meant a slow and very painful descent. So to avoid any major knee damage she took a rest day as I pushed on. Once at the base camp the snow fall was so heavy I couldn't actually see anything! The snow continued during the night and there was a risk of being snowed in here! Fortunately the snow had stopped and the morning was virtually clear and the views around the base camp were amazing. It sits in this large bowl surrounded by a ring of peaks, some over 8000m. I didn't stay long this morning as we had to get moving incase of any more snow and we had to pass a few avalanche prone areas before it got too late into the day.

This also gave me plenty of time to catch up to Andrea.

With Andrea's knees giving trouble on the down, we opted for a short cut home, which saved us 2 days! Hooray!

We didn't spot any yaks or a yeti, but we did find a dead drowned rat in one of the toilets!

The last few hours of the trek were relaxing. It was funny passing trekkers who were just starting their trek, should they be envious of us on the brink of being home after 9 days, or should we be envious of them having marvellous days of some of the world's best trekking ahead of them? I think we looked happy, relieved and they looked happy, excited.

The day we finished the trek was the Holi festival day where people (mainly kids) take great joy in covering people (mainly themselves and tourists) in coloured powder. So it was great fun seeing these brightly coloured people everywhere, Andrea ended up with bright red cheeks!

So it was back to Pokhara to get cleaned up after 9 days, get shaved and put on some clean clothes and head out for a few beers and hoped we wouldn't get recovered in paint!

We then headed back to Kathmandu avoiding Maoists, Tibetan demonstrators and anyone else who would slow us down.

India, the final chapter! Camel Strike!

So we rolled on to Jaisalmer, truly in desert country now. We started seeing more of those classic scenes of hundreds of people traveling on the roofs of buses. We also saw a curious convoy of army trucks transporting dozens of office chairs all covered in camouflage material! Who knows where they were heading....hide the chair perhaps? The fort at Jaisalmer was impressive, over a hundred bastions enclosing a 'working town', however a few bastions have collapsed recently due to overcrowding within the fort as it's ancient drainage system can not cope with the volume of er, sewage should we say. Which is quite ironic as since we've been in India we are now quite used to coping with a lot of shit.

We decided to do the tourist thing and a take a Camel safari and stay over night in the desert. So we were driven out into the wilds to met our camel drivers and of course the stars of the show, our camels. Well, they were ill tempered, had shocking teeth, bad breath, constantly farted and were generally a bit miserable......and then we met the camels!

Being on the camels was fun for the first half hour or so, and soon became very boring. Things livened up a little when we reached the sand dunes, but we both felt like kids on a donkey being led up and down a beach. It just seemed a little pointless. The evening was amazing though, they set up a bed for us and we slept in the dunes under the stars. It was so cool waking up in the morning at dawn and watching all the colours change.

We decided to cut our trip short and have one more hour's ride in the dunes before we headed back to town, MISTAKE. Going down one of the steep dunes, my saddle worked it's way loose and started sliding down Simon's neck, ( Simon was the name of my camel), obviously this gave Simon the hump ( sorry, it had to be said!). I'm not an expert but I don't think camel's necks are designed to carry such a weight that was dumped on to it, we have eaten a lot of curries in the last few months. I presumed Simon didn't take well to either my apology or explanation, as this was when he started trying to bite me. I don't think I'll ever forget his face or the noise he was making. Equally I don't think he'll forgot my face or the noise I was making. The saddle continued to slip forward and then sideways, I had flashbacks of Spirit (an unfriendly and ultra high speed horse I had the misfortune of sitting on [I certainly wasn't riding it] in S. Africa) and images of being unceremonilessly dumped head first from what seemed like a great height into the sand. It was quite scary. I managed to free my feet from the 'stirrups' and fortunately Andrea's camel (Daniel, if your interested) was in reaching distance and I ungracefully boarded him.

We decided to walk the rest of the way.

We then took our final train back to Delhi, enjoying the fact that we wouldn't have to do this again. Certainly a time to reflect on our time in India, the negatives certainly outweighed the positives. It certainly can be a frustrating and baffling place. This was completely summed up on a Delhi train platform, in the middle of hundreds of people, where a man had stripped down to his undies and was taking a shower, however no one was taking any notice of him whatsoever as they were all to busy gawking at Andrea, who was dressed very conservatively.

Back in Delhi we took things easy, well as easy as you can in Delhi, and counted down the hours until our flight to Nepal.

Delhi International airport was a joke. You've never seen crowds like, hundreds and hundreds of people at 4 a.m., and this was outside! We thought maybe The Beatles were landing here. Anyway, that wasn't our problem anymore, we'd soon be on a plane out of here........eventually, after the delay of course.

Delhi onwards

As we had decided to fly out of Khajuraho and save ourselves a 12 hr bumpy bus ride, we arrived in Delhi. Delhi was nowhere near as bad as we were expecting, actually we found a good hotel and decided to stay an extra day just to relax! We knew we'd be returning here in a few weeks and we'd see the sights then.

We took the finest looking train we'd ever seen ( in India of course) to Agra, the home of the Taj Mahal. The super fast train is put on in the morning so people can do a day trip from Delhi, so it was mainly full of tourists. They even served tea and coffee and breakfast, it was more like a plane and certainly nothing like the other trains we have been getting around on. The first thing noticeable about Agra train station were the amount of people defecating on the track. The guide book didn't mention anything about this! We WILL be writing letters. Unfortunately this is not an uncommon sight in India. It doesn't leave much to the imagination. I could imagine some one having just arrived in India and spending a couple of days in a nice Delhi hotel, eating at good restaurants, then taking the wonderful train to Agra, having a bit of brekkie and then a bit of a nap thinking, "Ah, India's not too bad is it?" and then waking up in Agra train station and seeing THAT! Wow. I bet they weren't expecting to see the black hole of Kalcutta so soon!

Anyway, the Taj Mahal was amazing. Quite surreal seeing it with your own eyes. Too many cliches available to describe it. I took far too many photos, enough said.

Agra itself is a bit of a dump, it's train station hardly lets the town down. We resisted buying one of the many ' Via Agra - what a wonderful erection! ' ( or something like that) tee shirts.

We then headed into our final region, Rajasthan, expecting a lot more tourists which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but where there's tourists, there's touts.

So Rajasthan ( the land of the Kings), full of forts, palaces, men with huge moustaches and muticoloured turbans and saris.

Jaipur, the great bustling capital of Rajasthan, with it's pink walled old city, palace and a huge sun dial! A city of great contrasts, you walk over the road from the palace and you'll find yourself walking a round with goats, chickens, pigs, camels, the odd elephant and of course a few dogs and cows ( nothing new with these 2).

The nearby Amber fort was one of the best we'd seen.

Then to Pushkar, a small easy little town to get a round. Quite peaceful even by Indian standards. This sacred town allows no meat, alcohol or eggs. Sounds great eh! Nice to keep out all those egg eating trouble makers, really there's nothing worse!

We actually managed to get an 'under the table' omelet! No joking, we ordered it on the hush hush, but soon after the order was placed 2 local guys came into the restaurant and sat at the table next to us. We must have been waiting 40 mins for this omelet. The owner then made up a story to get me to go into the kitchen, here he told me that the two men next to us were police and that's why they couldn't bring out my food! So they had to wait for the 2 boys from the egg squad to leave. Afterwards the owner explained more about the delay, explaining, "We couldn't even have started to cook it. They would have smelt it!" Wow, these boys must go through some serious training to join the police force out here. They can sniff out a cooking egg from only a few away. I wonder what the penalty is for serving up illegal eggs? Do you think the police have problems with poachers?

We then headed to the small town of Chittor to gorge ourselves with eggs and to check it's fort, according to the guide book 'The finest fort in Rajasthan'. We disagreed. It was, however, the finest in Chittor.

Then to Udaipur. Famous for being a city in Rajasthan that doesn't have a fort. It does have a palace in the middle of a nice looking lake, so who needs a fort. But the true claim to fame that everyone who has ever been to Udaipur will tell you , is that the James Bond movie Octopussy was ( partly) filmed here. All the guesthouses, hotels and restaurants advertise that the movie is played every night. We didn't see it once. We also took a cooking course here and it's take home message was ' why grill, boil, steam or bake when you can just deep fry everything?'.

Oh yeah, this guy could deep fry until his heart was content, but judging from the fat content of the daily diet, I'd imagine his heart was seldom content. Infact, we were amazed he made it through the lesson.

We then moved on to Jodhpur, where the men don't wear those ' baggy at the top, tight at the ankle' riding pants that the town lends it's name to, but instead they all wear ill fitting polyester trousers pulled up so tight that they should help slow down the rampant over- population problem they have here. Jodhpur's fort was pretty amazing, but the gangs of street kids asking for ' one chocolate' or ' money, money' was quite off putting.

And so, on to our last stop, Jaisalmer, before we head back to Delhi.

(note: all of these photos were taken by Phil - instead of lifted from the internet like most of our pictures - so we have included two pictures taken from the Black Hat Dance for Tibetan New Year that we saw in Darjeeling.

Almost Full Circle!

We noted today that we are only about 800 km from Mumbai where we started. It was a pretty random moment of realization.

We have just arrived in the town of Udaipur after a dash around a few places in the state of Rajasthan. But first, a retrospective:

After Varanasi we took a flight to a town called Khajuraho known for its erotic temples. I have to say, as you can probably see for yourself, that they are pretty graphic and acrobatic, but erotic art aside the ruins are fabulous. They're from the 1600s and in mint condition - the best ruins we've seen in India so far and well worth the flight.

We kicked off our time in Khajuraho with an excellent sound and light show, the kind of thing that would normally be pretty low-grade and cheesy, but was actually really interesting and whetted our appetite to see the ruins close-up in the morning. Besides two sets of noisy neighbors, not too bad in this neck of the woods, we got to hear almost everything said by the narrator.