Well and truly on the backpacker rat trap is Vien Viang. If you're aged 17, extremely pasty and too young to realise that you are offending not just the locals with that rediculously small bikini but my sensibilities too then this is the place for you. It would seem obvious (by the volume of fat westerners) that at least the food here is good and for me that's a good reason to spend a few days in a place after my rapid detox diet of the last week.
My last few days in Luang Prabang are spent waiting for blood test results to arrive from Bangkok. They don't so I have to call and remind the doctor that I haven't yet died and he should send the results through. He does and I am diagnosed with Aeromonas Veronii Boviar Sobria along with a secondary Salmonella infection. The Aeromonas comes from leeches, the salmonella from Bangkok. I'm back on the antibiotics (the antibiotics that I was taking should have prevented this, but you get what you pay for and at 3 rupees a tablet I think I got chalk). The Salmonella should sort itself out while the ofloxacin goes to work on the leech killer.
It's the next day by the time I feel some improvement and I eat for the first time in quite a while. Physically I now resemble the locals and I seem to be accepted into their society as they stop laughing at me and start pitying me. Extra rice is bought out at most meals with a concerned mama-san forcing me to eat more.
I visit the only sight I now haven't seen in Luang Prabang and fortunately Lauren is there to hold my hand - a waterfall about 25km away. There are black bears and a tiger there, rescued from poachers and kept in a compound with very jump-able looking fences. The tiger looks so well fed I think the keeper decided it was easier to keep him fat than build a better fence.
And then for a truly magical holiday moment. We go swimming in a lagoon under the waterfall as the Laos heavens open. It is never wise to be in the water in a thunderstorm, but it is a special feeling. The water from the lagoon is freezing, the rain luke warm and the surroundings beautiful.
Two hours later we are back in Luang Prabang and spend the rest of the day drinking. Lauren finally admits "when I first met you I thought you were a dick". I have to explain that I have heard that so often it is almost a cliché. She didn't say so but I think I managed to endear myself to her eventually.
Then it's off on a VIP coach to Vien Viang. Six hours later we pull into an old airstrip (Lima 21 as the Americans called it during the war) and I tuk-tuk out to a hostel. It's more like a resort than a hostel. And if I had a budget it would be out of it, but I settle into my little air-conditioned riverside bungalow more than a little smug that I'm a flashpacker.
I meet some new friends Jo, Nicole and Jennifer. Jo is ex 3-para. And when he left he went into private security in Afghanistan and Iraq. He scares me. Nicole is a kiwi girl and Jennifer a Canadian. The only thing to do in Vian Vieng is hire tractor tyre inner tubes and float down the river for 4 hours. If you stop (and there are many, many bars on the river bank encouraging you to do so) it can take the entire day. At each stop there is either a zip line or swing to entertain the drunk revellers. For 25000 kip you can purchase a bucket of local whisky, red bull and lime. It's not a particularly nice drink but I don't think the palettes of most of the drinkers are that refined. After my second bucket I decide it is the nectar of the gods themselves. It is getting dark, a thunderstorm is directly above and the more sober of our group get out an hour away from Vien Viang. Jo and I carry on enjoying the thrill ride as only a couple of paralysed drunks can.
The following day is more of the same. Nicole and myself now have a bucket craving while Jo goes on a long run. The day is very similar except that one bucket in we see a kid take a swing on one of the trapeze only for it to snap causing him to smackdown on his back. I've had enough of the swings by this stage and decide to invest all my energy into the bucket drinking.
After two days of that I've exhausted all that Vian Vieng has to offer. Jo and Nicole, clearly more organised than myself, have moved on to the next thrill-seekers town. I'm now drifting around the town from bar to bar to find new bucket buddies.
ROCK ON.
Photos of Laos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600474677266/
Sunday 24 June 2007
Sunday 17 June 2007
I'm a pathetic westerner, get me out of here.
I've tried to see everything in the best light and embrace the new cultures that are different at every stop, but now I've come to realise that when people don't even know how to cook an egg without nearly killing the person they are serving it to their culture needs attention. According to the Lonely Planet (and this is clearly a statistic that they just made up) 50% of travellers get food poisoning in Myanmar. Being the traveller's bible and a bunch of authors who seem to think that getting ill is all part of the experience they actually kind of embrace that as adding authenticity to a place. I consider it a legitimate reason to send the Ghurkas back in, reclaim Burma as part of the British empire and add cooking to their school syllabus.
I don't get sick in Burma. I fly out celebrating this fact only to order an egg in Bangkok and get salmonella (that's a self-diagnosis - it could be denge fever, I'll never know). I'm supposed to fly to Luang Prabang the day after I arrive in Bangkok, but I am so close to death I decide Laos might just push me over the edge. So I lie low in Bangkok for another couple of days. It's a difficult balancing act being ill when on your own. You constantly need to check you can still walk so that if you need attention you can still go and get it from a doctor. But at the same time if you can still walk you probably don't need a doctor just yet. If you pass out no one will know so you have to constantly work out how close you are to unconsciousness and all the time you have to feed yourself to try and prevent that happening. But if eating makes you sick you have to find a restaurant close enough to your room that will give you enough time to eat, return to your room and then throw up the food you have just eaten. To sum it up my three days in Bangkok are a new low point on the trip.
I'm so fed up lying in my dark little hole of a room in Khao San that I decide Luang Prabang actually can't be any worse. So even though I feel no better I decide to go for it. My taxi driver would probably argue that this decision was a poor one after I throw up in the back of his cab, but I tip well and when you get right down to it, I just don't care.
Two hours later I'm in Luang Prabang. It's the second largest town in Laos with a population of 25,000. There are only seven people on my plane; some little Lao Airways twin-prop. The other people seem to have read their guide books as they arrive with $35 and a passport photo for their visa. For once I'm completely unprepared and to the other travellers I must look like a retard as I have neither a passport photo or the $35 (or indeed any kip - the local currency). The airport has no photo booth or money changer so I'm starting to think I'll have to head back to Bangkok. Luckily the Myanmar government had stapled a picture of me into my passport and the visa guy says I can use that. I borrow the dollars from some french couple and I'm in.
The airport has a baggage carousel and I think they are quite proud of it. Our bags are in the back of the plane with us and it would have been very easy for us to take them with us but protocol obviously dictates that the carousel must be used. So quarter of an hour after landing they turn it on. Seven bags come out, making use of about 4 metres of this 50 metre carousel, at which point it is turned off again. No doubt there are a few local kids missing out on an education so that I can experience that western convenience.
I check into some random guesthouse and carry on where I left off in Bangkok by rolling around on the bed, clutching my stomach and crying to myself. I pull myself together just enough to look around the town the next day. Their 'sites' are only worth seeing if you are easily pleased and have a special interest in low quality buddhas. I paid 20,000 kip to see buddha's footprint. I have no idea why. All I've done for the last month is complain about buddhist iconography and yet I still feel obliged to check it all out. This footprint is a particularly good example of why I'm about ready to write off the entire religion. It's a plaster cast of a couple of indentations in a rock with a gold foot painted around it. You have to give the monks some credit that they actually get stupid suckers like myself to give up $2 to see it.
I'm supposed to go trekking and kayaking for the next two days in the jungle, but after another night throwing up (and remember I've not eaten for 4 days so I have no idea where this stuff is coming from) I decide that, whilst I'm not exactly close to emergency medical help here, going into the jungle and moving even further away from western drugs would be wreckless in the extreme.
So two more days of lying around waiting to die ensue. It's now Monday. I've been sick for nearly seven days. This is the first day I've actually felt like I can sit further than 10 metres from a bathroom without risk of an embarrassing situation occurring, so I assume I am starting my recovery.
Why does anyone go travelling?
I don't get sick in Burma. I fly out celebrating this fact only to order an egg in Bangkok and get salmonella (that's a self-diagnosis - it could be denge fever, I'll never know). I'm supposed to fly to Luang Prabang the day after I arrive in Bangkok, but I am so close to death I decide Laos might just push me over the edge. So I lie low in Bangkok for another couple of days. It's a difficult balancing act being ill when on your own. You constantly need to check you can still walk so that if you need attention you can still go and get it from a doctor. But at the same time if you can still walk you probably don't need a doctor just yet. If you pass out no one will know so you have to constantly work out how close you are to unconsciousness and all the time you have to feed yourself to try and prevent that happening. But if eating makes you sick you have to find a restaurant close enough to your room that will give you enough time to eat, return to your room and then throw up the food you have just eaten. To sum it up my three days in Bangkok are a new low point on the trip.
I'm so fed up lying in my dark little hole of a room in Khao San that I decide Luang Prabang actually can't be any worse. So even though I feel no better I decide to go for it. My taxi driver would probably argue that this decision was a poor one after I throw up in the back of his cab, but I tip well and when you get right down to it, I just don't care.
Two hours later I'm in Luang Prabang. It's the second largest town in Laos with a population of 25,000. There are only seven people on my plane; some little Lao Airways twin-prop. The other people seem to have read their guide books as they arrive with $35 and a passport photo for their visa. For once I'm completely unprepared and to the other travellers I must look like a retard as I have neither a passport photo or the $35 (or indeed any kip - the local currency). The airport has no photo booth or money changer so I'm starting to think I'll have to head back to Bangkok. Luckily the Myanmar government had stapled a picture of me into my passport and the visa guy says I can use that. I borrow the dollars from some french couple and I'm in.
The airport has a baggage carousel and I think they are quite proud of it. Our bags are in the back of the plane with us and it would have been very easy for us to take them with us but protocol obviously dictates that the carousel must be used. So quarter of an hour after landing they turn it on. Seven bags come out, making use of about 4 metres of this 50 metre carousel, at which point it is turned off again. No doubt there are a few local kids missing out on an education so that I can experience that western convenience.
I check into some random guesthouse and carry on where I left off in Bangkok by rolling around on the bed, clutching my stomach and crying to myself. I pull myself together just enough to look around the town the next day. Their 'sites' are only worth seeing if you are easily pleased and have a special interest in low quality buddhas. I paid 20,000 kip to see buddha's footprint. I have no idea why. All I've done for the last month is complain about buddhist iconography and yet I still feel obliged to check it all out. This footprint is a particularly good example of why I'm about ready to write off the entire religion. It's a plaster cast of a couple of indentations in a rock with a gold foot painted around it. You have to give the monks some credit that they actually get stupid suckers like myself to give up $2 to see it.
I'm supposed to go trekking and kayaking for the next two days in the jungle, but after another night throwing up (and remember I've not eaten for 4 days so I have no idea where this stuff is coming from) I decide that, whilst I'm not exactly close to emergency medical help here, going into the jungle and moving even further away from western drugs would be wreckless in the extreme.
So two more days of lying around waiting to die ensue. It's now Monday. I've been sick for nearly seven days. This is the first day I've actually felt like I can sit further than 10 metres from a bathroom without risk of an embarrassing situation occurring, so I assume I am starting my recovery.
Why does anyone go travelling?
Monday 11 June 2007
Regime Change
Back in Bangkok after what I thought would be one of the more difficult parts of the trip, but in fact turned out to be the most amazing and enjoyable place I have visited. There were of course, lots of negatives and I shall spend my time dwelling on those.
Mandalay is like a sauna (if you put all your trash inside a sauna). But it has a lazy attitude which I appreciate and I'm acclimatising to the heat so I can amble about comfortably enough. Every traveller goes to at least one Moustache Brothers show. The lonely planet raves about the comedy/culture show featuring Li Mar Par who is mentioned in the Hugh Grant movie; About a Boy. It is two hours of my life that I will never get back and for that reason I should struggle to find something worthwhile in it... but no, it's less entertaining than American TV.
In a change to my usual routine I take a ferry to Bagan rather than fly. Sometimes the journey is the reward and sometimes you spend 14 hours on a ferry wondering if the destination could be any worse. It leaves Mandalay at 5.30am and since I'm not an early morning person the first few hours are the most difficult. When I do wake up and have a mango for breakfast I'm slightly more chirpy than my usual self. I'm travelling with an English girl; Ornella, a Canadian girl; Lauren, a German girl; Anna and a French-Canadian guy; Mathieu. Unusually they are all nice people and I don't have to pretend to enjoy the conversation - I actually do.
Bagan is one of those places that would be over-run by tourists if air-con coaches could get there from a resort in 2 hours. As it is you can explore the entire place (and it's on the scale of Angkor Wat) completely alone. It's all pagodas but Myanmar has rekindled my interest in Buddhist culture. Theravada buddhism as it was practiced in the 11th/12th centuries has a lot of depth to it. The buddhas are slightly different, the monks don't have to dedicate themselves quite so much and the pagodas are mainly just brick. Nothing fancy until you build 3000 of them in the same place. 200 photos later and we call it a day. It's my birthday so the day needs to be finished off with some drinking. Kiwi Murray is treating me to dinner and all my new friends turn up to celebrate with me. It's a late night by Myanmar standards and I struggle back to my room close to midnight.
From Bagan it's more or less straight back to Bangkok after a rest day by the pool where I manage to lightly sautee my chest.
I'm sad to say goodbye to Myanmar in some respects. Everything is cheap, getting around is much easier than I thought it would be, the people are the nicest I've met anywhere and the weather is close to ideal. People moan about the government, but if they added a couple of wi-fi hotspots near the pagoda places you would have an ideal holiday destination. So for me we should end all the trade embargos and embrace a society where yes, the odd person gets shot, but the ones left un-shot smile a genuine "I'm happy to be alive" smile.
It's on to Laos next, for more of the same I suspect.
Photos of Myanmar: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600338193549/
Mandalay is like a sauna (if you put all your trash inside a sauna). But it has a lazy attitude which I appreciate and I'm acclimatising to the heat so I can amble about comfortably enough. Every traveller goes to at least one Moustache Brothers show. The lonely planet raves about the comedy/culture show featuring Li Mar Par who is mentioned in the Hugh Grant movie; About a Boy. It is two hours of my life that I will never get back and for that reason I should struggle to find something worthwhile in it... but no, it's less entertaining than American TV.
In a change to my usual routine I take a ferry to Bagan rather than fly. Sometimes the journey is the reward and sometimes you spend 14 hours on a ferry wondering if the destination could be any worse. It leaves Mandalay at 5.30am and since I'm not an early morning person the first few hours are the most difficult. When I do wake up and have a mango for breakfast I'm slightly more chirpy than my usual self. I'm travelling with an English girl; Ornella, a Canadian girl; Lauren, a German girl; Anna and a French-Canadian guy; Mathieu. Unusually they are all nice people and I don't have to pretend to enjoy the conversation - I actually do.
Bagan is one of those places that would be over-run by tourists if air-con coaches could get there from a resort in 2 hours. As it is you can explore the entire place (and it's on the scale of Angkor Wat) completely alone. It's all pagodas but Myanmar has rekindled my interest in Buddhist culture. Theravada buddhism as it was practiced in the 11th/12th centuries has a lot of depth to it. The buddhas are slightly different, the monks don't have to dedicate themselves quite so much and the pagodas are mainly just brick. Nothing fancy until you build 3000 of them in the same place. 200 photos later and we call it a day. It's my birthday so the day needs to be finished off with some drinking. Kiwi Murray is treating me to dinner and all my new friends turn up to celebrate with me. It's a late night by Myanmar standards and I struggle back to my room close to midnight.
From Bagan it's more or less straight back to Bangkok after a rest day by the pool where I manage to lightly sautee my chest.
I'm sad to say goodbye to Myanmar in some respects. Everything is cheap, getting around is much easier than I thought it would be, the people are the nicest I've met anywhere and the weather is close to ideal. People moan about the government, but if they added a couple of wi-fi hotspots near the pagoda places you would have an ideal holiday destination. So for me we should end all the trade embargos and embrace a society where yes, the odd person gets shot, but the ones left un-shot smile a genuine "I'm happy to be alive" smile.
It's on to Laos next, for more of the same I suspect.
Photos of Myanmar: http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinsouthgate/sets/72157600338193549/
Sunday 3 June 2007
Road to Mandalay
Been away for a month now. Feels like I've packed enough in. I know the number of blog posts are on the skinny side, but that's not for lack of material, just lack of effort. I can never shake my general apathy, even in blogging.
No one has yet found a way to silence me. So I feel comfortable enough to tell you a little bit about Myanmar while I'm still in the country.
On my last day in Yangon I stumble across a demonstration to free Ang Suu Kyi. Apparently it is supposed to be her last day under house arrest, but it isn't so people take to the streets. All very peaceful, but lots of guys taking photos of the crowd (including me). I assume they are tourists, but someone says they are secret police. I assume everyone else has since been rounded up and shot, but as a westerner they probably have more difficulty putting a name to the face. So this is borrowed time.
Take a flight up to Heho on some dodgy old fokker 80 plane, but it makes it and I meet an 80 year old New Zealander who is also travelling on his own. I'm almost inspired but the apathy takes hold. Inle lake is a relief after the humidity, pollution and general shitness of Yangon. The accomodation seems really nice too, but my first night there and I wake up with something crawling across my face. Without power to turn any lights on I assume it's a gecko (and I quite like geckos), but I wake up to find a whole family of cockroaches have started squatting in my bed. The next few nights are more or less sleepless.
The lake itself is beautiful. Most of the sights seem to be of the pagoda/stupa/wat variety. Lots of buddhas, lots of monks - a similar theme to everywhere else in this part of the world. I stop taking photos at this point. I'm conscious that, unless you have visited the religious icon in the picture, they must lose their appeal after the third flickr set.
So after five relaxing days in Nuang Shwe (a mini-holiday) I jump on a plane to Mandalay. It's a 20 seater twin-prop and the rainy season well and truly kicks in. We bounce around for the 30 minute flight but the karma saves me and we touch down in Mandalay on the hottest runway ever. It's 40 degrees and 95% humidity. I haven't seen the hostel yet but I'm pretty sure this is hell on earth.
Hostel has air-con, so it's actually more like heaven. But the air-con only works when the government supply power and that comes in 6 hour on, 12 hour off cycles. I feel sad. I'm sure when we moved out in the 50's we left this place in a much better state than it is now. It's like giving a kid a car you've built for their 12th birthday - you know they will crash it but they have to make their own mistakes. They are such sweet kids though, you can't stay mad for long.
Mandalay has lots of things to see and I don't want to hang around so I go straight to the hill, climb it, take a photo and on to the fort and palace. Both nice (surprisingly there is a stupa there - no one tells you that until you get there). The next day is for the old towns in the vicinity - lots of pagodas around to be seen. Our guide brings his neice along who is studying English. She is supposed to be 22 and learning at university. Either a testament to how appalling their education system is or she was away the day they learnt how to count in English. She looks about 12 and for the entire day tries to persuade me that I would like her as a wife. On the whole they are a reserved, modest people, but she hasn't learnt that life lesson yet. After the fifth time I have to push her off me she accuses me of being shy. Perhaps she is right. We don't part ways on good terms. She is crying into her uncles arms and refuses to say goodbye. Just another broken heart I leave behind - you grow immune to it after this long on the road.
No one has yet found a way to silence me. So I feel comfortable enough to tell you a little bit about Myanmar while I'm still in the country.
On my last day in Yangon I stumble across a demonstration to free Ang Suu Kyi. Apparently it is supposed to be her last day under house arrest, but it isn't so people take to the streets. All very peaceful, but lots of guys taking photos of the crowd (including me). I assume they are tourists, but someone says they are secret police. I assume everyone else has since been rounded up and shot, but as a westerner they probably have more difficulty putting a name to the face. So this is borrowed time.
Take a flight up to Heho on some dodgy old fokker 80 plane, but it makes it and I meet an 80 year old New Zealander who is also travelling on his own. I'm almost inspired but the apathy takes hold. Inle lake is a relief after the humidity, pollution and general shitness of Yangon. The accomodation seems really nice too, but my first night there and I wake up with something crawling across my face. Without power to turn any lights on I assume it's a gecko (and I quite like geckos), but I wake up to find a whole family of cockroaches have started squatting in my bed. The next few nights are more or less sleepless.
The lake itself is beautiful. Most of the sights seem to be of the pagoda/stupa/wat variety. Lots of buddhas, lots of monks - a similar theme to everywhere else in this part of the world. I stop taking photos at this point. I'm conscious that, unless you have visited the religious icon in the picture, they must lose their appeal after the third flickr set.
So after five relaxing days in Nuang Shwe (a mini-holiday) I jump on a plane to Mandalay. It's a 20 seater twin-prop and the rainy season well and truly kicks in. We bounce around for the 30 minute flight but the karma saves me and we touch down in Mandalay on the hottest runway ever. It's 40 degrees and 95% humidity. I haven't seen the hostel yet but I'm pretty sure this is hell on earth.
Hostel has air-con, so it's actually more like heaven. But the air-con only works when the government supply power and that comes in 6 hour on, 12 hour off cycles. I feel sad. I'm sure when we moved out in the 50's we left this place in a much better state than it is now. It's like giving a kid a car you've built for their 12th birthday - you know they will crash it but they have to make their own mistakes. They are such sweet kids though, you can't stay mad for long.
Mandalay has lots of things to see and I don't want to hang around so I go straight to the hill, climb it, take a photo and on to the fort and palace. Both nice (surprisingly there is a stupa there - no one tells you that until you get there). The next day is for the old towns in the vicinity - lots of pagodas around to be seen. Our guide brings his neice along who is studying English. She is supposed to be 22 and learning at university. Either a testament to how appalling their education system is or she was away the day they learnt how to count in English. She looks about 12 and for the entire day tries to persuade me that I would like her as a wife. On the whole they are a reserved, modest people, but she hasn't learnt that life lesson yet. After the fifth time I have to push her off me she accuses me of being shy. Perhaps she is right. We don't part ways on good terms. She is crying into her uncles arms and refuses to say goodbye. Just another broken heart I leave behind - you grow immune to it after this long on the road.
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